Sitting of 22 February 1983

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]
Oral Answers to Questions
  EDUCATION AND SCIENCE

    Cypriot Students
    Mr. Raceasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what representations his Department has received concerning the fees to be charged to students from Cyprus who are undergoing courses in the United Kingdom.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. William Waldegrave): A number of representations have been received from hon. Members and from interested bodies seeking concessions on tuition fees for students from Cyprus.
    Mr. Race: How many student placings will be funded by the £1 million which I understand has been earmarked by the Government? Is the Minister satisfied that the proposed arrangements will allow as many Cypriot students as want to obtain places in the United Kingdom to be accepted?
    Mr. Waldegrave: I confirm that £1 million has been allocated for each of the next three years to increase the number of Cypriot students corning to Great Britain. It is too early to say how many that will support, as the arrangements are still under discussion.
    Mr. Rhodes James: Is my hon. Friend aware that the Government's acceptance of the Overseas Students Trust report has given great pleasure to those who had the privilege of working on the report?
    Mr. Waldegrave: I know that my hon. Friend played a significant part in the writing of that report. The Government have made progress on the basis of the report.
    Mr. Christopher Price: As Cyprus is an associate member of the European Community, is there any chance of giving Cypriots privileges similar to those that we already give to Guadaloupe, Réunion, Saint Pierre, Miquelon and other French dependencies, which would allow Cypriots to come here at home student fee rates as do students from Greece, which is closely connected with Cyprus, and Hong Kong?
    Mr. Waldegrave: Plainly, the assignment of a considerable sum of money to Cyprus will lessen the gap to which the hon. Gentleman referred.

    Primary Schools (Expenditure)
    Mr. Knoxasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science how much was spent in real terms
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    per pupil in primary schools in England in the most recent year for which figures are available; and how this compares with the figures for 1978–79.
    The Secretary of State for Education and Science (Sir Keith Joseph): Net institutional recurrent expenditure per full-time equivalent primary pupil in England in 1981–82 was £619 compared with £581 in 1978–79, at 1981–82 outturn prices. The figures show an increase in real terms of approximately 6 per cent. over the three-year period, when pupil numbers fell by some 10 per cent.
    Mr. Knox: Do the figures not belie the Opposition's claim that under this Government education standards have fallen?
    Sir Keith Joseph: I do not accept that education standards can be judged solely on financial expenditure. I should like to emphasise to the House that the Opposition's claim is completely ill-informed. We now have a record number of teachers in relation to numbers of pupils in our schools.
    Mr. Kinnock: Would the Secretary of State say that Her Majesty's Inspectorate's view is entirely ill-informed? If not, will he acknowledge that the HMI said that standards of numeracy, literacy and much else in both primary and secondary schools are threatened by the impact of Government expenditure cuts on maintained schools?
    Sir Keith Joseph: It is common ground that there is considerable scope for improvement in many subjects in many schools. However, I repeat that there are more teachers in relation to the number of pupils than ever before.

    School Voucher Scheme
    Mr. Allan Robertsasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what discussions he or his Department has had with the Sefton metropolitan district council about a proposed school voucher scheme.
    Mr. Aitkenasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science whether he has now reached a decision on voucher schemes for schools and sixth form colleges; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Chapmanasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science whether he proposes to introduce further measures to extend parental choice of school.
    Sir Keith Joseph: It is known that I am considering a number of possibilities, including vouchers, for extending parental choice and responsibility in school education. As I have said before, I have yet to reach conclusions on this. Informal discussions have been held on my behalf with elected members of a number of authorities about the possibility of pilot voucher schemes. Official consultations would have to await firm proposals.
    Mr. Roberts: Is the Secretary of State confirming that he has had informal discussions with Conservative members on Sefton council? is that why they are secretly discussing the possibility of a pilot scheme in Sefton? Will he assure the people of Sefton that there will be no attempt to introduce such a pilot scheme in Sefton before the general election?
    Sir keith Joseph: I cannot corroborate or deny discussions with individual authorities— [HON.

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    MEMBERS: "Why not?"]—because they have been informal discussions with elected members on the basis of confidentiality, which I am not free to breach. Nevertheless, I can certainly give the hon. Gentleman the assurance that he seeks.
    Mr. Chapman: I welcome a pilot scheme to test the validity of such a dramatic innovation in our education system. However, will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that many people wish to see a pilot scheme in a London borough as well as in a predominantly rural area and in urban areas outside London?
    Sir Keith Joseph: The Government have taken no decision on this as yet. I shall certainly bear my hon. Friend's point in mind if a decision is made.
    Mrs. Shirley Williams: In view of the Secretary of State's accountability to the House, why will he not give the names of the local education authorities involved? Secondly, will the scheme that he is now discussing include private schools?
    Sir Keith Joseph: I am not discussing any particular scheme. I am considering a number of options. I am not free to give names, because the discussions into which a representative of mine entered were on a confidential basis. The Government have made no decision yet.
    The right hon. Member for Crosby (Mrs. Williams) and the Labour party seem to oppose wider choice in education as in many other things. They abolished direct grant schools. The Conservative party favours wider choice, and not just for the well off and/or the clever. If I can find a practicable way to widen choice, I shall certainly propose it to my colleagues.
    Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: Will the Secretary of State confirm that one of the arguments for the voucher scheme is the Government's dissatisfaction with state schools? Will he also confirm that he has chosen to have discussions with certain authorities because, in the Government's view, the schools in those areas are the least adequate?
    Sir Keith Joseph: I should have thought that it was common ground throughout the House that we want schools to improve their standards. Some have more scope for that than others.
    Mr. Peter Bottomley: Can my right hon. Friend even guess why Opposition Members are so worried about the extension of choice if they believe that the present schools are those that any parent with free choice would choose?
    Sir Keith Joseph: My hon. Friend makes a valid point.
    Mr. Kinnock: Will the Secretary of State acknowledge that choice, to be effective in a democracy, must extend to everyone and that it must be a real choice not limited by size of purse? Does he recall his own immortal statement that the poor are poor because they do not have enough money? If he proposes, as apparently he has proposed to the so-called family policy group, whose papers I have, to make access to essential facilities more dependent on personal payment, will he not be adding deprivation of freedom to poverty of income, thus tightening the noose of disadvantage as well as destroying liberty? As a self-professed libertarian, how can he possibly defend the commercialisation of education, the expense of a voucher system, the uproar that it would cause and, above all, the disadvantage for those with neither the wish not the means to take advantage of it?
    Sir Keith Joseph: The voucher scheme may or may not prove practicable, and it may or may not be proposed by the Government; but the concept is designed to provide those who have not the money to feel able to choose a school for their child with just that facility.

    Open University (Degree Course Costs)
    Mr. Freudasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what has been the average cost of obtaining a degree course at the Open University to a student commencing (a) now, (b) in 1979 and (c) in 1975.
    Mr. Waldegrave: The cost of taking a single credit Open University degree course, with attendance at a summer school, is estimated to be c286 in 1983. The comparable figures for 1979 and 1975, at 1983 prices, are £268 and £254, respectively.
    Mr. Freud: Is the Minister aware that there is substantial hardship among the unemployed who are taking or intending to take Open University degrees? Will he set up a fund for that growing sector of society?
    Mr. Waldegrave: I am happy to inform the hon. Gentleman that the Government set up such a fund two years ago, with £500,000, which is being fully used to help to bring the benefits of the Open University to unemployed people.
    Mr. Greenway: Does my hon. Friend agree that the fund is being well taken up by unemployed people successfully following Open University courses and that the number applying for such courses is holding up extraordinarily well, particularly for the summer schools?
    Mr. Waldegrave: My hon. Friend knows the Open University extremely well, and what he says is correct.
    Mr. Whitehead: Is the Minister aware that 46 per cent. of those who were offered places at the Open University but had to turn them down gave the increase in fees as the reason? Is that not an indictment of the Government's policy on Open University fees?
    Mr. Waldegrave: What the hon. Gentleman says is perfectly correct. That is why for the next two years the Government have moderated the increase to keep in line with inflation. Labour Members should tread a little warily here, as the Labour Government were responsible for by far the biggest increase in Open University fees—60 per cent. in one year.

    Teacher Education and Training (North-East)
    Mr. Beithasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what progress he has made with his plans to establish a significant centre of teacher education and training in the north-east of England.
    Mr. Waldegrave: Before the location of such a centre is decided my right hon. Friend will want to consider the effect of the recent reorganisation of initial teacher training on recruitment to institutions in the north-east.
    Mr. Beith: Then what was the meaning of the Secretary of State's announcement in November? Is the Minister aware that as there have been about 10 college closures in the north-east in the past decade, it is hard for people in the region to believe that the Government intend to set up a significant new teacher training centre there? By what date does he intend the project to be carried out?
    Mr. Waldegrave: The Advisory Committee on the Supply and Education of Teachers is being asked to look again at the supply of teachers next year. That must be the first stage. The time scale must be two or three years. We need to see how demand holds up in the different colleges.
    The meaning of my right hon. Friend's announcement was perfectly clear. We were worried that there was not a sufficient teacher training presence in the north-east in the public sector.
    Sir William Elliott: Is my hon. Friend aware that there is considerable regret in the north of England about the closure of St. Mary's Roman Catholic teacher training college in Fenham, Newcastle? Is he further aware that the nearest Roman Catholic teacher training college is in Leeds? Will he bear in mind the desirability of the maintenance of teacher training colleges with a religious base?
    Mr. Waldegrave: I can, of course, give my hon. Friend the latter assurance. I remind him that St. Mary's, Fenham closed of its own free will before the Government's recent exercise on teacher training.

    Religious Education
    Mr. Greenwayasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he is satisfied with the operation of the religious education provisions of the Education Act 1944; and if he will make a statement.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Dr. Rhodes Boyson): I have no doubt that we could—and should—provide better religious education for our young people. We have made it clear that we look to local education authorities, governing bodies and schools to live up to their statutory responsibilities.
    Mr. Greenway: Although one does not not wish to see rigidity in this area, does my hon. Friend accept the importance of RE teaching? Is he aware that 80 per cent. of parents, whether or not they are churchgoers themselves, want RE teaching for their children, but that in 80 per cent. of schools there is known to be no regular act of worship, as by law there should be, or proper RE teaching? As the law requires that there should be proper RE teaching in all schools, why are we not getting it?
    Dr. Boyson: The Government have made clear time and again their belief in the enforcement of the provisions of the 1944 Act about the act of worship once a day and religious education in schools. If this is not taking place, we can deal with the matter only if it is brought to our attention. There have been only four complaints in the past 14 months, all of which we have dealt with.
    Mr. Ashton: If there is to be more religious education in schools, what kind of computer will the Minister recommend to show how Tory millionaires in the Cabinet can shove camels through the eye of a needle and get to the kingdom of heaven?
    Dr. Boyson: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman is moving into the electronic age, but I am not sure that he can drag his camel with him.
    Mr. St. John-Stevas: Is my hon. Friend aware that statistics from his Department show that only 58 per cent. of schools provide religious education for all fourth-year pupils, and 18 per cent. provide it for none at all? Is it not
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    a scandal that this Government, of all Governments, should preside over what is becoming a collapse of moral and religious education in schools? When will we train more religious education teachers and get them into post?
    Dr. Boyson: The figures to which my right hon. Friend referred were based on the 1978 secondary schools survey. The enforcement of the 1944 Act depends upon local education authorities, governors and heads of schools. It also depends on the influence of the churches in certain areas. Last year we increased the percentage of teachers training for religious education, and last October there were about 50 newly trained RE teachers without posts. That shows that there are sufficient RE teachers to fill any vacancies.
    Mrs. Shirley Williams: Is not the Minister's answer incompatible with his Department's decision to cut back teacher training colleges with a religious base more severely than the usual teacher training colleges, and especially the De La Salle college, which is one of the few Roman Catholic colleges in the north-west?
    Dr. Boyson: I cannot refer to the De La Salle college, because the matter is sub judice. However, the number of teachers training in secondary school teaching for 1983 will be higher than it has been for many years.

    Croxteth Comprehensive School
    Mr. Parryasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will make a statement on the present situation in Liverpool's Croxteth comprehensive school.
    Dr. Boyson: Croxteth county comprehensive school ceased to exist with effect from September 1982, and ray right hon. Friend has urged the local education authority to bring to an end the unlawful occupation of the premises of the former Croxteth school.
    Mr. Parry: Is the Minister aware that the occupation by the parents and the action committee, who have been providing classes and meals throughout the winter, has captured the imagination of the people of Liverpool? Is he further aware that they have recently been served with a summons for a rates bill of £27,000?
    In view of the Government's belief that parents should provide schools for their children, does the Minister agree that that is exactly what the parents at the Croxteth comprehensive school are doing? Will the Secretary of State visit Croxteth to see at first hand what is taking place so that he can inform his advisers?
    Dr. Boyson: It should be made clear that the school was closed, not by my Department, but by the Liverpool education authority with the agreement of my Department. It did so because the school was under-subscribed, with only between 50 and 60 per cent. of the places being filled. Only one pupil from outside the catchment area attended Croxteth school in its last year, while one third of the children inside its catchment area opted out. Therefore, there was nothing to show at that stage that there was any massive support for the school, but we have noticed what has happened since.
    Mr. Christopher Price: How can the Minister persuade us or anybody else that he is in favour of parental choice if he uses his powers to prevent parents wishing to keep a school open from doing so? Would Croxteth qualify for a voucher system, if such existed?
    Dr. Boyson: The answer to the hon. Gentleman's second point is yes, so he can join the ranks of those who support the voucher system. If only three parents wish their children to attend a certain school, do we keep it open when it should provide 1,500 or 2,000 places? There must be a limit.
    Mr. Christopher Price: They could use the vouchers.
    Dr. Boyson: Yes, parents could pay the teachers with vouchers. I have already explained that parents opted out of the catchment area for the Croxteth school in favour of the Ellergreen school. They believed that Ellergreen school was more satisfactory because of the facilities that it could provide.
    Mr. Kinnock: Does the Minister realise that he makes himself look even more incredible than usual by advertising the idea that the Tory party is in favour of choice, while imposing enormous qualifications and restrictions? Have not the parents at Croxteth effectively demonstrated their preference for that school by making enormous sacrifices to provide their children with education at that school?
    Dr. Boyson: The Opposition's lackaday belief in parental choice is suspicious. If Croxteth school had been full, and if parents had been queueing for places for their children, the local authority would not have issued a section 12 notice to close the school. The school was not full. It was running down. People did not wish to move within the area; they wished to move out. The local authority suggested the closure and my Department agreed. Another factor is that there is a limit on the number of full courses that a small secondary school can provide. There were only 24 pupils in the sixth form, and three sixth form classes had only one pupil each. Even with their alchemist sense of finance, the Opposition must find that excessive.

    Unemployed Teachers
    Dr. M. S. Millerasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science how many unemployed teachers there were 10 years ago, five years ago and last year in (a) primary education, (b) secondary education and (c) further education.
    Sir Keith Joseph: In round figures, the numbers of people registered as unemployed and seeking teaching posts in England in September 1973, 1978 and 1982, respectively were 1,000, 4,000 and 9,000 for posts in primary schools; 1,000, 6,000 and 13,000 for posts in secondary schools; and 1,000, 3,000 and 6,000 for posts in higher and further education.
    Dr. Miller: Why should there be any unemployed teachers in Britain in an era in which education is, if anything, more important than it has been throughout our history?
    Sir Keith Joseph: The teaching force has fallen proportionately far less than the number of children in schools. The more jobs that are not justified in the public sector, the fewer there will be in the private sector. The trading base has been partly wrecked in the past by Government overspending.
    Mr. Forman: What efforts are being made by my right hon. Friend's Department to ensure that some of the
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    13,000 unemployed secondary school teachers receive retraining so that they can teach some of the shortage subjects that are important to the future of Britain and its industrial base—for example, mathematics?
    Sir Keith Joseph: I cannot give an immediate answer to that question. Retraining courses are available, and there will be an increasing demand for retraining to meet the expected rise in numbers in primary education.
    Mr. Foulkes: The Secretary of State has revealed that there are nearly 30,000 unemployed trained teachers in England. What other avenues of employment would he recommend them to seek?
    Sir Keith Joseph: There must be an infinite number of answers to that question. The proportion of teachers unemployed is, I fear, far less than the proportion of unemployed people with other skills in the private and public sectors because of the bad state of the economy, due, in part, to excessive Labour Government spending, with its consequences on inflation, interest rates and taxation.
    Mr. Madel: Can my right hon. Friend confirm that under the new technical education initiative being organised by the Manpower Services Commission additional funds will be available for retraining unemployed teachers? Should not local authorities, therefore, lose no time in making applications for those funds?
    Sir Keith Joseph: My hon. Friend is right in general, but I would not wish to encourage too large a hope for additional teaching numbers in the new pilot scheme. Large numbers of local education authorities have already expressed interest.
    Mr. Dobson: If the Secretary of State is interested in increasing parental choice and improving education standards, does he agree that one of the quickest ways of doing that is by putting those 30,000 teachers back to work? Does he propose instead to close or permit the closure of even more than the 350 schools whose closure he has allowed in the past three years?
    Sir Keith Joseph: The hon. Gentleman seems to ignore the fact that there are now 1 million fewer children in schools than there were seven years ago. He also ignores the problem of who would pay for the extra teachers in post. Presumably he would be happy to see more firms go bankrupt and more people thrown out of work in the private sector to pay for them.

    Continuing Education
    Mr. Dormandasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will make a statement on the future remit for a national body for continuing education, following the termination of the present council's remit at the end of October.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. William Shelton): My right hon. Friend is reviewing the need for a Government—financed national body for adult and continuing education and hopes to make a statement in the spring.
    Mr. Dormand: I welcome the proposals for the establishment of a national body for continuing education, the details of which, I understand, have been sent to the

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    Department anyway. Does the Minister agree that the most important step that can be taken in this regard is to provide a statutory basis for adult education? When will the Government introduce legislation on that issue?
    Mr. Shelton: We are considering the matter raised in the first part of the hon. Gentleman's question. It is unlikely that ACACE will continue in its present form. It has accepted that its continuation is not sensible. As to the second part of the hon. Gentleman's question, a statement on adult education reform will be made in due course.
    Mr. Beith: Does the Minister agree that there is a self-evident need for a development, rather than a reduction, of adult and continuing education, bearing in mind changing technology? Does he agree that that requires a national body with development powers and resources of a kind that the existing structure does not have?
    Mr. Shelton: I assure the hon. Gentleman that the Government attach great importance to adult and continuing education. I pray in aid the PICKUP scheme, which is the subject of the next question.
    Mr. Greenway: Does my hon. Friend agree that adult education will never have the status and scope that it ought to have until it has a statutory basis? Will he reconsider what he said earlier?
    Mr. Shelton: I have said only that no decision has yet been made. When it is made, it will be announced.
    Mr. Whitehead: The Minister has said that he is reviewing the need for such a body. Has not the work of ACACE in the past five years proved the existence of that need beyond any peradventure? Does he agree that it would have been more appropriate today to have paid tribute to the work of that body in the past five years? Even the Minister's hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway), now realises that we need a statutory basis for adult and continuing education. Why cannot the Government say that, in principle, they recognise that?
    Mr. Shelton: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I am pleased to express the Government's thanks for the work that ACACE has done. It has worked hard and performed extraordinarily well. We are grateful to it. Nevertheless, it believes that the six years during which it has existed is probably enough to fulfil its present remit. We are considering the remit that it has recommended to US.

    Mid-career Education and Training
    Mr. Wolfsonasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what importance he attaches to the provision of mid-career education and training opportunities.
    Mr. William Shelton: Our initiative for professional, industrial and commercial updating, known as PICKUP, reflects the considerable importance we attach to the provision of mid-career education and training opportunities.
    Mr. Wolfson: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that reply. What discussions has his Department had with other relevant Departments, especially the Departments of Industry, Employment and Health and Social Security, to achieve a co-ordinated strategy for mid-career training?
    Mr. Shelton: I assure my hon. Friend that discussions have been continuous and fairly extensive. I can cite as an example the workshops that have been held throughout the country. Eight have already been held and a further seven are planned. They are meant to bring together the various bodies that my hon. Friend mentioned for discussions on how the scheme may best proceed.
    Mr. Newens: Is the Minister aware that many people who have taken mid-career educational courses have subsequently found themselves unemployed? In those circumstances, is it not nonsensical for us to talk about mid-career education, when the Government are doing nothing about giving the type of boost to industry that is necessary to give people the opportunity to make use of whatever skills they acquire?
    Mr. Shelton: It seems that most of the people who are taking part in the PICKUP scheme are in employment and updating their skills for continuing employment. I accept that there may be some who find that they are unemployed. Nevertheless, in general, the scheme is for people in employment. By and large, the fees are paid for by the company for which those people work.
    Mr. Rhodes James: Although a great deal has been done in the past three years, does my hon. Friend agree that present circumstances highlight the weakness of the grant structure, especially for those who have taken a first degree and are not entitled to take a second? Does he agree that that brings the problem of discretionary grants into the discussion?
    Mr. Shelton: That is an interesting question, but it is different from the one that we are considering. Should the Government decide to introduce a loan scheme, it would be interesting to see whether that scheme could be extended to cover people in adult and continuing education.
    Mr. Pavitt: Does the Minister agree that the PICKUP programme is utterly inadequate in view of the rapidly changing circumstances of automation in industry? Does he agree also that it is time that we took off the shelves the tremendous number of reports in the Minister's Department and tried to achieve a more active programme of work that will meet the changing conditions in which we now live?
    Mr. Shelton: The Department has put £2 million towards the programme. That is more than the Labour Government ever did. Indeed, the Labour Government had no scheme of any sort.

    Ethnic Minority Children (Swann Committee)
    Mr. Peter Lloydasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science when he expects to receive a further report from the Swann committee on the education of ethnic minority children.
    Sir Keith Joseph: The committee expects to submit its final report later this year.
    Mr. Lloyd: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the objective must be to enable the children of racial minorities to get the same benefit from school as the rest of British children? Does he agree that care must be taken not to put them into a special category, which cuts them off from the majority?
    Sir Keith Joseph: I agree wholeheartedly with both of my hon. Friend's propositions.
    Mr. Jim Marshall: While the Secretary of State is waiting for that further report, may I ask what advice he will give to headmasters whose schools have a majority of non-Christian children, about carrying out their legal obligations to provide religious instruction as outlined by the Education Act 1944?
    Sir Keith Joseph: Decisions about advice to schools are for local education authorities.
    Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: With regard to the division in the committee as to whether discrimination or disadvantage is the cause of non-achievement among West Indians, does the Secretary of State agree that it would help if he told the committee that it ought to address its mind to both subjects, as both are relevant to underachievement?
    Sir Keith Joseph: I fear that I did not hear the first word of the hon. Gentleman's question. I shall draw the attention of Lord Swann to the hon. Gentleman's question so that he can see what he has said.

    University Expenditure
    Mr. Cryerasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science when he next expects to meet the University Grants Committee to discuss priorities for university expenditure.
    Mr. Waldegrave: My right hon. Friend has at present no plans to meet the University Grants Committee, but my right hon. Friend and I have frequent meetings with the committee's chairman.
    Mr. Cryer: When the Minister next meets the University Grants Committee, will he tell it to reverse the savage cuts it has imposed on universities such as Bradford, Aston and Salford, so as to give young people a wider opportunity of choice, and so that the many thousands of young people who have been denied the opportunity of a university education can have that chance? Does he agree that it is significant that the only college to obtain university status is the private, Right-wing extremist college which is now the University of Buckingham? Does he further agree that that shows that the Government are pursuing their policy of private affluence and public squalor in the university sector?
    Mr. Waldegrave: The absurdity of the last part of the hon. Gentleman's proposition is covered by privilege. I do not think that he would want to say it outside the House. It was a foolish remark. With regard to the first part of his question, we have often debated the reshaping of the university system.
    Mr. Geoffrey Robinson: When he next meets the University Grants Committee, will the Minister bring to its attention the fact that, despite its priorities for engineering and industry, the largest increase in the most recent applications is of students who wish to study classics? Is he aware that the number has increased by 12 per cent.? Does he further agree that that is utterly ridiculous and that it is time other priorities were established and enforced?
    Mr. Waldegrave: I think that the hon. Gentleman is deceived by an increase in a small base number. The overall increase in science and technology by the end of the period will be much larger in absolute numbers.

    Catering Advisers
    Mr. Haselhurstasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science how many catering advisers his Department employs; and at what cost to public funds.
    Sir Keith Joseph: Two, at a total salary cost of £30,904.
    Mr. Haselhurst: Why does my right hon. Friend need this advice? Cannot the task of deciding what is fit for children to eat in schools safely be left to local education authorities?
    Sir Keith Joseph: I need this advice to enable me to persuade more education authorities to copy the example of the substantial minority that are still providing an excellent choice for children who want school meals at much less cost.
    Mr. Foulkes: Does the Secretary of State agree that his advisers, however inadequate, are proving much more successful than those who advise the Prime Minister?
    Sir Keith Joseph: I think that I can safely say that that is rubbish. My Department employed 10 catering advisers, but now, because of the effective economies of many local education authorities, it needs only two.

    Research Fellowships
    Mr. Hal Millerasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what proportion of the new research fellowships in science and technology he announced in December are going to universities and to research councils, respectively.
    Mr. Waldegrave: The 45 additional research fellowships in information technology subjects will be funded by the Science and Engineering Research Council and located in institutions of higher education. The 200 new lecturer appointments in the natural sciences, and the 70 such appointments in information technology subjects, will be funded by the University Grants Committee.
    Mr. Miller: Will my hon. Friend accept that there is considerable concern in the west midlands that the technical research places lost at Midland universities, especially at Aston, should now be replaced under the scheme in view of the importance of higher technology to the industries of the region and in accordance with what we understood to be Government policy, which included the funding of a science park?
    Mr. Waldegrave: The Government have met all the recommendations of the Alvey committee on information technology on the provision of extra students and teachers. It is open to Aston university to bid for some of these places.

    Peace Studies and Defence
    Sir John Biggs-Davisonasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will issue guidance to local education authorities as to appropriate teaching material relating to peace studies and defence.
    Dr. Boyson: It is for schools themselves to decide exactly what they will teach, but what is offered should always be education and not indoctrination. Care should be taken not to overload the curriculum.
    Sir John Biggs-Davison: Is my hon. Friend aware that one-sided propaganda for one-sided disarmament is circulating in our schools? Will he ascertain to what extent local education authorities and head teachers are making use of the excellent material that is provided by Government Departments giving a balanced view of this great issue, so that it may be sensibly covered?
    Dr. Boyson: If my hon. Friend has evidence of one-sided propaganda going into schools we shall be glad to receive it, as we receive material from others. The Foreign Office has material available and it sends it to schools that wish to receive it. We have made that public property.
    Mr. Christopher Price: Is the Minister aware that the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Sir J. Biggs-Davison) is right and that one-sided material from the Ministry of Defence is pouring into our schools, which has not been asked for by the schools? As previous Governments have taken action to prevent unsolicited mail arriving at private houses, will the hon. Gentleman consult his colleagues in the Ministry of Defence with a view to stopping this unsolicited flow of one-sided material into the schools?
    Dr. Boyson: I am informed that material from the Ministry of Defence goes out only to schools that request it. Material from the Foreign Office—it was sent out originally at the suggestion of the National Union of Teachers—was distributed widely. As I have said, material from the MOD is sent only at the request of the schools. It is for the heads and staff of the schools to decide what use is made of whatever material appears in the schools.
    Mr. Bill Walker: Does my hon. Friend agree that part of the teaching at schools is bound to be history? Does he accept that the 37 years of peace in Europe, which have been secured by successive Governments following the same policies, form part of the overall issue of peace and defence?
    Dr. Boyson: I agree with my hon. Friend. The way in which peace is kept and freedom is maintained is part of history and teaching thereof. The fact that peace has been kept ever since the second world war through the strength of the West is something that should be covered in history.
    Mr. Kinnock: In the interests of balance, will the Minister draw to the attention of schools the fact that we live in a country in which the Government increased their defence expenditure by 10·9 per cent. in the current year while cutting education expenditure in real terms by 0·5 per cent?
    Dr. Boyson: It might be advisable for the hon. Gentleman to note that we have 1 million fewer children in our schools than seven years ago. There is no doubt that the mass of the British people are delighted that we are able to defend ourselves against any external threat.

  PRIME MINISTER

    Further Education Pupils (Financial Assistance)
    Ql. Mr. Andrew F. Bennettasked the Prime Minister what plans Her Majesty's Government have to increase financial assistance to pupils remaining at school after they are 16 years old.
    The Prime Minister (Mrs. Magaret Thatcher): We have no such plans at present.
    Mr. Bennett: Will the Prime Minister take this opportunity to congratulate all state schools on the excellent job that they do and dissuade her ministerial colleagues from continuing to attack them with policies such as the voucher scheme? Will she persuade her Ministers to put all their energies into extending opportunities of choice for 16-year-olds who would like to stay on in sixth forms but who do not have the financial means to do so?
    The Prime Minister: I am always congratulating those who are doing an excellent job and I am happy to respond to the hon. Gentleman's invitation. As to the Child Poverty Action Group, to which I believe the hon. Gentleman was referring, its scheme would cost £500 million a year. Most of that would be spent on those who would stay on in education anyway. There has been a significant increase in recent years in the number of 16-year-olds who are staying on in education, which is very good news.
    Mr. Peter Bottomley: Will my right hon. Friend consider examining whether the pattern of financial assistance for those of school-leaving age and above is what she believes to be rational? Will she come forward with Proposals —preferably after she has had success at the next election—for a more rational scheme than the present one?
    The Prime Minister: We have considered the scheme and the varying grants that are available across the board. It is not easy to make changes without introducing more anomalies. That is the problem.
    Mr. Hardy: Will the Prime Minister consider the fact that, in this year of grace, we are spending more on locking up young people than on providing for their further training and employment?
    The Prime Minister: We are spending a large amount on providng for their further training and employment. As the hon. Gentleman knows, a new scheme will be introduced in September, which will cost about £2 billion, for training young people. We would hope that by the age of 16 young people will either stay on in education, have a job, or have some training, so that unemployment is not an option.
    Mr. Fry: Is my right hon. Friend aware that it pays some 16-year-olds who have left school, and for whom places are available at work centres, to stay at home because the cost of transport to the centres has to be taken from their supplementary benefit payments? Will she ask her right hon. Friends to consider removing this disincentive so that more of our 16-year-olds may spend their time on worthwhile employment rather than sit at home doing nothing?
    The Prime Minister: Yes. I shall do that, but I believe that special travelling allowances are provided for journeys to some skill centres.
    Mr. Foot: Will the right hon. Lady be kind enough to confirm to us that it is a £2 billion scheme? We are gratified to learn that she is moving in the direction that we have been advocating. I hope that she will confirm the figure here and now. We shall certainly welcome it and show our usual generosity in doing so.
    The Prime Minister: The amount has not been increased. The scheme will cost a great deal over a long period.

    Engagements
    Mr. Tom Clarkeasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 22 February.
    The Prime Minister: This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House I shall be having further meetings later today.
    Mr. Clarke: Is the Prime Minister aware that a number of countries are deserting monetarist policies? Will she accept that she, too, has a splendid opportunity to respond in that way by accepting the recommendations of the second report of the Brandt commission? Will she, therefore, offer hope to 4 million unemployed in this country and those in the developing world, who are suffering from starvation?
    The Prime Minister: As the hon. Gentleman will know if he has looked at the many communiqués from the economic summits, their top priority is to keep inflation down and to try to get interest rates down as a means of increasing employment in all our countries as well as making us competitive in goods that we send to the developing countries. He will also know that the London Business School's recent studies concluded that reflation is little help on jobs and that it could result in putting up the numbers of people out of work as well as vastly putting up the level of inflation.
    Sir Timothy Kitson: During the course of the day will my right hon. Friend send a sharp note to those responsible for buying the food for the British forces in the Falklands and tell them that we have a "Buy British" campaign? Is she aware that when the Select Committee on Defence was in the Falklands last week it was surprised to find that the apples were from France, the bacon from Denmark, the pork from eastern Europe—
    Mr. Canavan: The corned beef from Argentina.
    Sir Timothy Kitson: —the beef from Uruguay and the tinned beef from the Argentine? We found some cabbages from Lincolnshire, but surely Britain can do better than that?
    The Prime Minister: Having helped to launch the Food from Britain campaign, I shall certainly see that my hon. Friend's strictures are brought to the attention of the appropriate people and hope that British food firms will be urged to put in competitive tenders to feed British soldiers.
    Mr. David Steel: May I return to the question that I asked the Prime Minister a fortnight ago, now that she has the facts of the case? Does she intend to intervene with the Allied Corporation of New Jersey to stop the transfer of a profitable subsidiary company in high technology from this country to Germany, with the loss of 500 jobs?
    The Prime Minister: I assume that the right hon. Gentleman means the Linotype company in Cheltenham—
    Mr. Steel indicated assent
    The Prime Minister: He did not, in fact, mention it. I understand that no financial inducements were offered by the state of Hessen, but, as the right hon. Gentleman will probably have heard at lunchtime, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Industry is meeting the management of this company to see whether anything can be done. I should also point out that we do have a great deal of inward investment. Indeed, last year inward investment provided some 10,000 jobs.
    Mr. Winnickasked the Prime Minister what are her official engagements for 22 February.
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Winnick: Is the right hon. Lady aware that the information given in parliamentary answers shows that most people, particularly those on the smallest incomes, are paying considerably more in income tax and national insurance than in 1978–79, while the most wealthy are paying substantially less? Does the right hon. Lady believe that a few pre-election tax bribes in the Budget will help to disguise the fact that her Government have been dedicated to helping the rich at the expense of the rest of the community?
    The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman is correct on one thing. We certainly did reduce the level of tax on top earnings to 60 per cent. It was an overdue reform, as we depend so greatly on management if we are to be competitive in future. With regard to the level of income tax and national insurance, the Labour party is always urging me to spend more or to increase pensions, unemployment benefit or sickness benefit. By how much would the hon. Gentleman increase taxation? By how much would he increase national insurance, or, alternatively, by how much would he reduce public expenditure?
    Mr. Mark Carlisle: Has my right hon. Friend had the opportunity today to see reports in the paper to the effect that the Labour group on the GLC is apparently proposing to give a grant of £50,000 to the "Troops Out" movement? Will she take this opportunity to condemn it, not only as an abuse of the spending of ratepayers' money, but as an affront to the whole of our nation?
    The Prime Minister: Yes, I wholly agree with my right hon. and learned Friend that this is an abuse of ratepayers' money. I believe that it is an insult to our security forces, the army and the police, whose job it is to protect the weak and the innocent—a task which they are carrying out magnificently.
    Mr. Meacher: Is the Prime Minister aware that, according to recent Government publications, living standards under her Government have fallen by no less than 8 per cent. since the fourth quarter of 1979? Is she also aware that, contrary to all her election promises, the tax burden on the average family has increased under her Government by no less than 15 per cent.? Does this not suggest that her Government have not only been a catastrophe for the unemployed but pretty much a disaster for those still in work?
    The Prime Minister: I note that the hon. Gentleman is always careful to take the last quarter of the Labour Government. If he considers real personal disposable income, he will find that it dropped substantially in 1975, in 1976 and in 1977 and that for the greater part of our time—
    Mr. William Hamilton: Wriggle, wriggle.
    The Prime Minister: —it has been well above what it was during the lifetime of the Labour Government. With regard to taxation, perhaps the hon. Gentleman would give me a list of the expenditure that he would reduce.
    Mr. Skinner: Not doing very well today.
    Mr. Robert Atkinsasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for 22 February.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Atkins: Is my right hon. Friend aware that none of the other parties in the House has any policy for the developing technologies, which are providing new jobs and will continue to do so? Knowing, as I do, my right hon. Friend's commitment to these developments, does she think that even the fourfold increase that her Government have given to these developments—as compared with that of the Labour Government—is enough?
    The Prime Minister: We have increased expenditure under the Science and Technology Act 1965 in real terms by 50 per cent. In specific areas, such as information technology—we have to be specific on this, because general increases in Government expenditure will not necessarily help—we have increased it from £50 million in 1979 to a target of £200 million in 1983.
    Mr. Foot: Since the right hon. Lady is so eager to clear up these questions of taxation and her own promises in the matter, may I ask how much a person has to earn per week to get tax relief under her Government, and how that compare, with the pledges that she made at the last election?
    The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman has concentratedare on increases in taxation. Yes, there have been increases in taxation for many people. It is absolutely essential. If one is to have public expenditure, one must cover it largely by taxation. I can only ask the right hon. Gentleman, again and again, if he wants taxation to come down, as I do, to say precisely where he will cut public expenditure. Will it be only in defence?
    Mr. Foot: Can the right hon. Lady point to one occasion on which she told the country what the tax reliefs were to be and when she said that the tax reliefs would be confined only to the top people in the country?
    The Prime Minister: That is not so. The standard rate of income tax was 33p in the pound—it is now 30p.
    Mrs. Shirley Williams: Is the Prime Minister aware that the police support unit of the Greater London council is recommending a grant of £50,000 to the "Troops Out" movement? Will she, in an effort to improve Anglo-Irish relations, confirm that her Government have no intention of amending the Ireland Act 1949 to disfranchise Irish citizens resident in Britain?
    The Prime Minister: The right hon. Lady asked two questions. I understand that the GLC police committee will today consider the grant. As to her second question, I have no announcement of any sort to make.

Mentally Handicapped Persons (Report)
3.30 pm
Mr. Jack Ashley: I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 9, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely,
"the report of the Association for Patients and Staff that alleges injustice and brutality in some hospitals for mentally handicapped people."
The matter is specific because it deals with the treatment of mentally handicapped patients in long-stay hospitals, and the lack of effective procedures to protect those vulnerable people who cannot complain themselves. The matter is important because the report makes serious allegations of cruelty, brutality and even barbarity in some of our hospitals. That includes physical and sexual assaults, beatings, isolation, pulling a woman by her pubic hair, tying children to chairs, keeping patients on the toilet all day and the excessive use of drugs for the severely handicapped.
The matter is urgent because, if those grave allegations are substantiated, we are dealing with a major public scandal that involves cruelty to helpless people. It would be a grave reflection on the House if we failed to take immediate steps to deal with such cruelty and to establish effective procedures.
The report has been criticised by one trade union leader. He is entitled to his opinion, but so is the House. This is a controversial, important and urgent issue. I hope that you will rule, Mr. Speaker, that we should debate it as soon as possible.
Mr. Speaker: The right hon. Gentleman gave me notice before 12 o'clock midday that he would seek leave to move the Adjournment of the House for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that he thinks should have urgent consideration, namely,
"the report of the Association for Patients and Staff that alleges injustice and brutality in some hospitals for mentally handicapped people."
The right hon. Gentleman has brought to our attention a very serious matter. The House will have listened with anxious concern to what he said. He is aware that this is not the only way in which the matter could be discussed and that I have limited power in this regard.
The House has instructed me to give no reasons for my decision. I must rule that the right hon. Gentleman's submission does not fall within the provisions of the Standing Order. Therefore, I cannot submit his application to the House.

Housing
3.34 pm
Mr. Joseph Dean: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision for people living in industrialised and semi-industrialised built housing.
My purpose in introducing the Bill is to try to give justice to a section of the community who, through no fault of theirs, are in difficulty because of the accommodation they occupy and the financial burden that it imposes upon them. I am, of course, referring to those described in the Bill who live in industrialised and semi-industrialised built accommodation.
Some examples will show the size and nature of the problem. Day by day, week by week, increasing evidence emerges that this policy has been an almost total failure. Huge sums of money are needed to correct it. It is grossly unfair to expect council house tenants in general to meet that expense by suffering substantial rent increases over long periods. Of the total of about 5£5 million units of public sector accommodation, almost 1 million have been built by industrialised or semi-industrialised systems. How did that happen? To increase public sector housing production, successive Governments promoted, approved and tailored the subsidy system to encourage local authorities to adopt systems that have proved to be disastrous.
One example is the Hunslet Grange development, in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Rees), which was built 14 years ago at a cost of about £5 million. Remedial costs of £1·5 million during those 14 years bring the total cost to more than £6 million. The decision has now been taken to demolish the property because it is no longer lettable and is structurally dangerous. That leaves an outstanding loan of £4·76 million or, in replacement terms, £863,000 a year from the Leeds city council housing revenue account. That means a 22p a week increase on every council house rent in Leeds for the next 40 years. Those figures do not take into account repayment costs.
Almost every other local authority with a large housing stock has inherited similar problems, including Hull, Sheffield and Manchester, which, in using the Bison and Camus systems, have a problem at least two and a half times greater than that of Leeds.
I warned the Minister in an Adjournment debate in June last year that the problems in the properties that I have mentioned, which are all deck access flats, were but the tip of an iceberg that was surfacing quickly, and that the low-rise system-built dwellings would follow sooner or later. A conservative estimate of the money required to deal with the problem is a minimum of £3,000 million. I have mentioned that figure at least twice in the Chamber. The Minister has chosen not to say whether it is wrong, but it is significant that he has not pointed an arrow in its direction.
The low-rise type industrialised and semi-industrialised systems are now deteriorating as fast as the others. The Minister has taken action to deal with the problems of those who have bought council-owned Airey houses. I do not know why the Minister has been so selective in deciding that only those who have bought Airey houses from local authorities shall receive assistance for remedial treatment. However, another group that must be charged

805
for its culpability in foisting this disaster on the nation during the past 15 to 20 years are the builders who sponsored, designed and orchestrated the sale of those houses to local authorities.
It is an absolute obscenity that council tenants who have no say in the type of accommodation that is built, and young couples who are not yet in council houses but who in future may be council house tenants, will be called on, unless action is taken, to finance the removal and replacement of these monstrosities, which were not the result of their actions. In the Bill I hope to relate some of the responsibilities to the private sector which, as I said, built, sponsored and promoted the systems.
I realise that it is out of order for me to ask for Government finance in a ten-minute Bill, but this is a national problem. It could be said that, since 1 million units will eventually have to be disgorged from our housing system, the slum clearance programme over the past 20 years has been an abject failure. In some respects, it can be said that the cure has almost killed the patient.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Joseph Dean, supported by Mr. Gerald Kaufman, Mrs. Ann Taylor, Mr. Ted Graham, Mr. Allan Roberts, Mr. Robert Litherland, Mr. Michael Welsh, Mr. David Winnick, Mr. John Evans, Mr. Arthur Palmer and Mr. Frank Allaun.

Housing
  HOUSING
  Mr. Joseph Dean accordingly presented a Bill to make provision for people living in industrialised and semi-industrialised built houses: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 22 April and to be printed. [Bill 88.]
OPPOSITION DAY
[8TH ALLOTTED DAY]
OPPOSITION DAY

  Unemployment (West Midlands)
  Mr. Speaker: Before I call the first hon. Member to speak to the first motion, may I say that there is a great deal of difficulty? Every hon. Member for a constituency both in the west midlands and in Yorkshire and Humberside is hoping to catch my eye, and the number of hon. Members who will catch the eye of whoever is in the Chair depends on the length of other hon. Members' speeches. I earnestly hope that that will be borne in mind in the first debate, and particularly in the second debate, where far more constituencies are involved.
  3.42 pm
  Mr. George Park: I beg to move,
  That this House condemns the policies of the present Government which have led to the near collapse of the West Midlands economy, have brought about the fastest growing unemployment in mainland Britain, have led to a continuing shrinkage in the foundry, manufacturing, machine tools, engineering and car components industries; deplores the transformation of the Region from a leader in industry to a leader in unemployment and calls upon Her Majesty's Government to take immediate steps to reverse the Region's structural industrial decline.
  My hon. Friends and. I appreciate this further opportunity to bring to the attention of the House and the Government the serious situation in the west midlands region. However, we earnestly hope that on this occasion the Minister who replies for the Government will make some attempt to answer the points raised in the debate, and that he will not merely indulge in a tirade against trade unionists that bears no relation to the facts.
  Since our previous debate on 7 February, there has been partial recognition of our plight in the decision of the Secretary of State for the Environment to accord programme authority status to Coventry, Walsall and Sandwell. Unfortunately, that will not, as the right hon. Gentleman at first thought, give access to the European regional development fund, and it is now clear from his letter to me that only those in assisted areas are eligible to apply to that fund.
  It is true that the Government are trying to extend the scope of the regional development fund to take in inner city designated areas, but we all know how protracted discussions with the Commission can be, and the 'west midlands may be beyond help before those negotiations come to a conclusion. Objections that have been heard to assisted area status are largely based on the belief that financial aid should be given on a sectoral or industrial basis, not on a geographical basis. That idea is worth consideration.
  Conservative Members may say that this motion will serve only to "talk down" the region, but, before they do so, I ask them to consider the fact that there are now 367,343 registered unemployed in the region and we all know that that is not the true total. There are 19,000 people on short-time working—they are on the edge of the precipice—and 49 people are chasing every vacancy in the west midlands. A recent survey showed that 23 per cent. of employers in the west midlands expect to reduce their labour force again in the near future.
  Mr. David Winnick: Did my hon. Friend see a recent press report in the Express and Star two weeks ago, pointing out that there was one vacancy in an engineering factory at Tamworth, and that 600 people turned up for that one job?
  Mr. Park: Yes, my attention was drawn to that press report. It demonstrates the serious endeavours of people in the west midlands to find work, no matter how remote the possibility.
  In all the redundancies that have been declared, no sector of the population has escaped. Professional, managerial, clerical, skilled, and semi-skilled people have all been affected by the redundancies. Only a minute proportion of school leavers can hope to gain a place in the sharply reduced totals of apprenticeships. The majority of the job losses have been in manufacturing, where one in four of the jobs that existed when the Government came to power have gone. There are 300,000 people in the west midlands conurbation who now claim supplementary benefit, and that puts them on or below the poverty line.
  Prospects for future employment are not made any brighter by the policies adopted by some large companies. For example, Lucas, Dunlop and GKN are investing heavily abroad, helped by the removal of exchange controls. British Leyland is now purchasing components abroad. That may be understandable in a strict commercial context, but in view of the amount of taxpayers' money that has gone into BL, one would have thought that when home suppliers cannot match the competition, the Government would insist on knowing the reasons, and if, for instance, it was a question of investment in new tools and equipment, that they would have done something about it.
  A Minister in the Department of Industry is reported as saying that British Telecom may buy digital exchanges from abroad. If it does that, it will mean further massive redundancies in the GEC factories in Coventry. For the Government to stand back and allow jobs to go abroad without lifting a finger, as part of the dogma of free trade competition, is a dereliction of duty.
  Of course, this arm's-length relationship is typical. The Government are content to rely on what are euphemistically called gentlemen's agreements, particularly for the motor industry and machine tools. The people involved in reaching those agreements are themselves importers. The retiring president of the Machine Tool Trades Association, Mr. Gailey, told its annual meeting:
  "We hope to see enough moderation of the rate of imports in 1983 to allow the survival of a vital sector of a strategic industry in this country, but not so much as would seriously endanger our importing members".
  He went on to say that new orders in 1982 were only 35 per cent. of the 1979 level and that there had been closures and redundancies every week in the machine tool industry, with the inevitable consequence that the skill and ability to make machine tools are dissipated.
  That trend is highlighted by the decision of the John Brown group in Coventry to suspend its development work on two new machines and instead to assemble an American machine. The development of a new machine for Webster and Bennett Ltd.—part of the same group—has been held up, which means that the John Brown group will not be exhibiting at the European trade fair in June because it has nothing new to offer. In those circumstances, buying British, or even thinking British, has a hollow ring about it.
  808
  The Department of Trade says that, because of the general agreement on tariffs and trade we cannot unilaterally determine the imports of motor vehicles into Britain. But other countries which are signatories to GATT do not seem to suffer from that disability. We also see that British Leyland is poised to strike a new deal with Honda for a replacement of the Rover car, but I do not suppose for a moment that the Government will do anything about insisting on a high domestic content of components if that deal is struck.
  Hon. Members keep asking about the Nissan project. To my mind that is like inviting a fox into a hen coop. If the Government are prepared to provide attractive incentives to the Japanese to locate their industries in Britain in direct competition with our companies, why do not they provide similar incentives for British industry? Are the Government prepared to do anything specific—even unilaterally—about the disparity in import and export tariffs? What action has been taken about the counterfeiting of components which undercut our home products? Are the Government to continue playing cricket while others practise karate? If these practices continue it is obvious that even the most strenuous efforts by British companies to improve their competitiveness will be negated.
  The CBI agrees that the Government can play a crucial supportive role in the recovery of the national economy, including that of the west midlands, by shifting resources into the region through capital investment programmes and local authorities. It has submitted to the Chancellor for his Budget consideration specific suggestions such as the boosting of capital investment on viable projects such as roads, sewers and communications; the abolition of the national insurance surcharge; the reduction of transport and energy costs; the re-introduction of an improved version of the small engineering firms' investment scheme; and support for research and development. Any or all of those suggestions would benefit the west midlands. To that list I would add only one other—the removal of the additional car tax.
  The motion before the House refers to a structural decline because some industries such as steel have disappeared from the region and the foundry industry is to be severely cut back by a haphazard scheme devised by Lazards with the object of destroying firms irrespective of their efficiency. Those basic industries which do survive will not in future be able to offer the same number of jobs, if only through the advance of technology. The west midlands is more dependent on manufacturing industry than any other region. Over 40 per cent. of its labour force is employed in that sector, compared with the national average of 28 per cent. At present there is serious and widespread spare capacity in most of the region's manufacturing industries, so any upturn would have little effect on unemployment.
  An alternative is the creation of jobs in industries and services which are currently under developed, the nurturing of new ideas sparked off in the science parks and elsewhere, and the kind of support for new ideas which seems to be more readily available abroad than in Britain. The development of small firms can help but it will not deal with the hundreds of thousands at present unemployed. The region's infrastructure stands in need of renewal and development—the completion of the motorway network south of Birmingham and the improvement of roads in the black country, and the

  809
  railway system. In a previous debate I also mentioned the clearance and redevelopment of derelict industrial land and buildings. All that requires positive thinking from the Government and a move away from the discipline of the dole queue.
  The Labour party cannot accept that high unemployment is inevitable and that we must learn to live with it. The problem is now so massive that it cannot be contained by special programmes aimed at various age groups, which too often undermine wage levels and working conditions. The play of the market has been shown to be completely destructive in human terms. The Government must abandon their arm's-length approach and become actively involved in the problems of industry. In the debate on 7 February some Conservative Members professed sympathy and support for the case put forward by my hon. Friends and myself. If they are not to be accused of shedding crocodile tears, they should carry that support into the Lobby tonight and vote for the motion.
  3.56 pm
  The Under-Secretary of State for Industry (Mr. John MacGregor): My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South-West (Mr. Butcher) has asked me to explain to the House that he would very much like to be present today, but he cannot be here because he has other responsibilities on the Standing Committee considering the British Telecommunications Bill. Indeed, I understand that he is probably dealing with amendments upstairs at the moment.
  The hon. Member for Coventry, North-East (Mr. Park) will realise that, in the interests of brevity, I cannot cover all the points that he raised, but I shall endeavour to deal with some of them.
  I should like to deal immediately with the point that the hon. Gentleman raised about the designation of inner urban areas in Coventry and access to European Community aid. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State did not mislead the House. The hon. Gentleman asked whether that designation would provide an opportunity for access to European Community funds. That is precisely what it will provide—an opportunity. However, as my right hon. Friend has already explained in more detail to the hon. Gentleman, we are seeking to establish that inner city areas, like assisted areas, are eligible for both the European regional development and social fund facilities, and the newly designated inner city districts will join in that.
  We are seeking to achieve precisely what the hon. Gentleman asks for and, as he knows from the letter that he has received from my right hon. Friend, officials from the Department of the Environment are preparing to put Coventry's case before the Commission. I want to put that on the record. As I am endeavouring to be brief, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not pursue the matter further.
  Mr. Park: I do not want any more misinterpretations. The letter that I received from the Secretary of State for Industry states clearly that, currently, only those in assisted areas are eligible. There cannot be any misinterpretation about that.
  Mr. MacGregor: The Government are endeavouring to extend that to the other inner urban areas. That is what we are trying to achieve for Coventry and all the other areas.
  810
  I fully recognise the anxieties of all hon. Members—anxieties which the Government wholly share—about the real problems in the west midlands, which have created rising unemployment and serious difficulties for many industries. It is obviously distressing, both from the national and the local point of view, that a region that once led the world in having the most modern and prominent industries of the day should now find itself overtaken so dramatically by overseas competition in those very industries, and also find that it does not have as wide a base in the new industries of the future as it had in the car and engineering industries—the metal-bashing industries as they are known—in the past.
  Because I wish to be brief, I shall make only two other points about the background and the problems that we have previously debated. First, it is ludicrous to suggest that the situation has arisen only in the past three or four years. I have seen references to reports written 20 years ago drawing attention to the dangers ahead. The more fair minded of Opposition Members have conceded that this situation has been creeping up on the west midlands for two decades or more.
  Mr. Denis Howell: That is not what the hon. Gentleman said at the last election.
  Mr. MacGregor: Had the tasks of dealing with the car industry's—
  Mr. Howell rose—
  Mr. MacGregor: The right hon. Gentleman can deal with those points when he speaks in the debate. He is simply leaving other hon. Members out of the debate. I shall not give way.
  Had the tasks of dealing with the car industry's poor productivity record, the damaging number of days lost through strikes, the overmanning, the lack of sufficient new models to beat the competition and meet consumer preferences here and abroad and the problem of component supply, too often of insufficiently good qualify or competitive price, been tackled earlier with the vigour with which they have been tackled over the past three or four years, the state of the west midlands today would be very different. Significant improvements have been made in recent years. The number of man hours lost at BL as a percentage of total work time was as high as 5·9 per cent. in 1977, during the period of the previous Government, and fell to 0·5 per cent. last year. Wage settlements have become more realistic. That is the legacy that the Government are tackling.
  Secondly, I repeat what I said in the earlier west midlands debate, in which I took part, in December 1981, that it would be an uphill climb for the west midlands to reach its former level of relative prosperity. I note that in the recent debate on 7 February of this year the hon. Member for Birmingham, Stechford (Mr. Davis) repeated that comment. I make no apology for it. Given the speed of change today, the intensity of world competition, and the background of over-dependence on what were becoming three increasingly uncompetitive industries which have often been described in the House, it is bound to take time to achieve the recovery of the west midlands and the car industry—only now are the new models coming on stream—and the reconstruction of the industrial base of the region.
  I have just come from a Financial Times conference on automated manufacturing, at which I have been speaking.

  811
  A senior American industrialist spoke there of the—[Interruption.] This is not a laughing matter, but is vital to the future of our industry. That industrialist spoke of the
  "serious challenge to the United States manufacturing capability and productivity in the face of intense world business competition … America's manufacturing effectiveness must be renewed and the factory of the future is the key to this renewal."
  That is as true of our industries, and, alas, in robotics we are engaging in the race much further behind our competitors than we should have been.
  At that same conference there was much talk of the lack of worldwide demand. The markets have diminished—that is now the major factor—while other things over which we have more control in this country are coming right. As the hon. Gentleman will know from talking to exporting industries in the west midlands, that is one of the key difficulties that faces many of our exporting industries. That is the background, and to get anywhere near the right prescriptions for the future we have to face it.
  I want to devote the main part of my speech today to outlining the ingredients of the strategy which the Government are pursuing, and I take first regional policy. As the House knows, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Industry has made it clear on many occasions, following the review of assisted areas last summer, that, in the interests of stability and continuity for industry, we intend to make no further changes in regional policy and assisted area status except in the most exceptional circumstances during the lifetime of this Parliament. And in looking at these matters, unemployment is only one of the factors that is taken into account. We must look far wider at the "other circumstances" to which the Industrial Development Act 1982 refers. The heart of the west midlands is of course in national terms superbly located with ample road and rail communications—I know some of my hon. Friends want some aspects improved—and that great national advantage remains—something which the traditional assisted areas do not share. It is an advantage that will weigh heavily with potential investors. A further part of the region's industrial legacy which must count in its favour is its reservoir of industrial talent and skills. That reservoir will form a tremendous asset as the world recession clears and the economy starts to expand again.
  The House also knows that officials of the Departments concerned have completed the first stage of a review examining the working of current regional economic policies and identifying ways in which they might be made more effective. This is a long-term task, and I know that all the Opposition parties are similarly engaged on such a review. Ministers are considering this first stage. We now have to decide what further work, if any, we want to commission in preparation for any possible policy changes. But I repeat that no further substantial change in regional policy or to the assisted area map is envisaged in the lifetime of this Parliament.
  I know, too, that while, naturally, some voices have been raised in favour of considering the possibility of assisted area status for the west midlands within the region itself, there are very strongly divided views, both in the chambers of commerce and in the CBI, among industrialists and, indeed, as was clear from our recent debate on the Consolidated Fund, here in the House, on
  812
  both sides as well. I have listened to many people discussing this issue. I have no doubt that that debate will continue and we will listen carefully to the views.
  I stress again that under this Government a number of the relative disadvantages, as they are seen from the west midlands, of regional policy have been lifted from west midlands' shoulders. The reduction in assisted area status from 44 per cent. of the working population to 27 per cent. is one of them. There are many fewer parts of the country, which did not need that relative incentive advantage over the west midlands, which now have it. The suspension of IDCs has removed an obstacle to the expansion of new and existing industries within the west midlands which, I accept and had long thought, was one of the reasons why the west midlands was not able to build up a more widely based and different industrial structure over the last 20 years.
  There is one further point that I should like to make. Those who call for assisted area status, from other parts of the country as well as the west midlands, frequently do so on the ground that this will make them eligible for various European schemes. I draw to the attention of all small and medium-sized businesses in the west midlands the fact that only last month I was able to announce a new European scheme for which for the first time all qualifying firms in the non-assisted areas will be eligible. The west midlands benefits from the new loans under the new Community instrument from the European Investment Bank, which are available to firms with fewer than 500 employees through ICFC to cover up to 50 per cent. of the fixed asset costs of projects in manufacturing industry, mining and extraction, tourism and industry related services outside the assisted areas.
  We believe that that money will bring forward projects which would not otherwise have taken place because of the relative advantage the scheme offers in borrowing costs. Although the cost may vary from time to time depending on interest rate levels in the Community and other countries, loans under the scheme are currently being lent by ICFC at the attractive rate of 11½ per cent. for an eight-year term. The Government are playing an important role by providing the necessary exchange risk cover to protect the borrower against adverse exchange rate movements.
  I am pleased to say that there has been strong interest in the west midlands in the scheme, from both professional advisers and potential borrowers. It is, of course, too early to say how many of the inquiries will result in loans being offered and accepted, but, as always, there is much more that can be done to make known to all firms in the region what is available. I hope that my hon. Friends and hon. Members will draw this scheme to the attention of firms which talk about being excluded from the European schemes. They now have this one available to them. Details are available from the Department of Industry's small firms centre in Birmingham and if anyone is interested in applying for a loan he should approach the ICFC's office in Birmingham. I hope that before long some of the clearing banks will also join the scheme.
  I have talked about regional aid. As I have often stressed in terms of Government assistance—assistance from the taxpayer—it is vital, if we are to get an accurate picture, not to exaggerate the impact of the aid through regional industrial instruments and to ignore what comes in other ways. I give just one or two examples of relevance to the west midlands.

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  The hon. Gentleman has urged the Government to do something about the west midlands. I want him to know what the Government have been doing. BL has received funding to date of £1,230 million, a substantial proportion of which will have gone direct to the car industry and its component suppliers in the west midlands. This compares with £1·87 billion to the end of December 1982 in regional development grants for all regions, not just one. That sets the matter in context.
  It must surely be good news for the west midlands that BL is now in a much better position to compete in the market. It has new models produced with modern facilities and much higher levels of productivity. With Longbridge and the LM 10 facilities at Cowley, we are now achieving productivity levels that are comparable to the best in Europe. Productivity in Jaguar doubled between 1980 and 1982. In Austin Rover, productivity jumped from 5·9 cars per man year in 1979—when we took office—to 10·1 in 1982. The management, supported by the Government, achieved that.
  Mr. Peter Snape: With full co-operation from the shop floor.
  Mr. MacGregor: I agree that there was full co-operation throughout the firm. In 1982 there was a loss of less than one working day through disputes in the Austin Rover group. The future of the Austin Rover group depends very much on the new model and I am sure that the whole House will wish it every success on its launch next month. When Opposition Members ask what we are doing for the west midlands, there is the evidence. In the most crucial industry in the west midlands enormous strides have been made in putting right mistakes and causes of trouble and making it thoroughly competitive again.
  I know that there is great concern among many of my hon. Friends about the large tariff differences between Spain and ourselves on cars. I shall not dwell on that today, because there was a substantial exchange yesterday during Question Time. Suffice it to say that the Government have been very active in promoting their views and urging action within the Commission, with a great deal of speed, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade is in Brussels today at a meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council, to which the Commission is reporting on its continuing discussions. As my hon. Friends know, he will be meeting industry leaders in the west midlands next Monday, and my hon. Friends will wish to await the outcome of those meetings.
  Mention has been made of BL's components strategy—
  Mr. Nick Budgen rose—
  Mr. MacGregor: I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me for not giving way, but I am anxious to enable as many hon. Members as possible to participate in the debate.
  I should like to make several quick points about the components strategy. First, individual decisions on the source of supply of component are rightly a matter for the commercial judgment of the BL board of management. I know that BL understands the benefits, both to itself and to the United Kingdom's economy as a whole, of a strong United Kingdom components industry. At the same time,
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  it cannot lose sight of the need to keep down its costs and so improve its overall competitiveness. This same consideration must, of course, apply to component manufacturers if they are to survive and to supply not only BL but other United Kingdom and foreign car manufacturers. The Government have asked to be kept informed on those matters and have taken a close interest in them.
  Secondly, we have made it clear that component manufacturers are eligible for the various forms of financial assistance available from the Government, through selective financial assistance and in other ways, towards capital investment or innovation projects. Thirdly, I am sure that the House will have been pleased to learn recently that Dunlop and Austin Rover have reached agreement on a contract for Dunlop to supply wheels to Austin Rover. The retention of this business is of great importance to Coventry. I should point out that BL's use of suppliers in the United Kingdom remains at the very high level of around 90 per cent. Finally, it is worth noting that the recent, adjustment in exchange rates will have had a beneficial impact on this issue.
  The assistance that the Department of Industry gives for both investment and innovation is very important to the building up of the new industries. Since May 1979, offers of £29 million have been made for investment in the west midlands under section 8 of the Industrial Development Act 1982. Since April 1981, offers of £24 million have been made under the innovation schemes.
  Another important point that is often not brought out is that major firms in the region, such as GEC, have benefited from Government assistance in their efforts to win major overseas contracts. The Castle Peak power station in Hong Kong is expected to be worth some £200 million to factories in the west midlands, and the Rihand power station in India will be worth a further £40 million. Those are significant benefits for the west midlands.
  There are also significant benefits to the west midlands from the new urban initiatives announced by the Secretary of State for the Environment on 15 February 1983. As has been said, from 1 April 1983 Coventry and Sandwell will join Wolverhampton as programme authorities and Walsall will become a designated district. Birmingham is already a partnership authority. Resources allocated to these authorities will total £32 million for 1983–84 and emphasis will be given to projects that contribute to the economic regeneration of the older industrial areas.
  In addition, the urban development grant scheme will be available within all of these areas. The scheme was launched last April and is designed to use public funds to attract much larger resources from the private sector, and, of the 41 projects so far approved nationally, six are in the west midlands. These will involve total estimated project costs of almost £5·5 million. A substantial number of other projects are currently at a detailed state of negotiation. Dudley was one of the first enterprise zones and since designation 300 acres have become available for new development. Discussions on establishing an enterprise zone in Telford are well advanced. The zone will consist of 275 acres of publicly and privately owned land and will come into operation this summer. The combination of relaxed planning controls and other incentives to development will be a tremendous boost to this part of the west midlands, which has suffered badly during the recession.

  815
  Another important aspect is that more than 125,000 people in the west midlands currently benefit from the Government's special employment and training measures, including 67,000 under the youth opportunities programme. It is worth referring to such matters, because they show what the Government are doing to build up new skills and a new industrial base. I wish that I had more time to develop that argument, because there is much that I could say about what is being done by way of science parks and so on to build up those new industries.
  I must mention briefly the impact of the Government's 98 measures that are exclusively or mainly directed to encourage small businesses. The small business sector has always been vital to the west midlands' economy and will be crucial in helping to achieve the transition to the newer industries that the region needs. Suffice it to say that small businesses in the region have benefited greatly from our measures in this area. Indeed, 742 loans have been guaranteed under the loan guarantee scheme, to a value of £24·3 million, in the region so far.
  The west midlands, as was to be expected and as we had always hoped and intended, has benefited particularly from the small engineering firms investment scheme. To date, 261 offers totalling over £6 million have been made to west midlands companies under the scheme. The small firms service continues to receive a very high level of inquiries and offers a marked degree of consultancy help and advice to many small businesses in the region. One of the five pilot areas for the enterprise allowance has been in the west midlands, in Coventry, and that, too, has seen a very substantial take-up—519 people out of 660 applicants benefited in Coventry to the end of January this year. I know of the many efforts that have been made by others in the private sector, chambers of commerce, local authorities and so on to help to build up the small business sector in the west midlands.
  I have spelt out—although briefly—the many ways in which west midlands industry and commerce are benefiting from direct Government measures, and I have done so because of the charge by Opposition Members, repeated today, that assistance is going elsewhere and not to the west midlands. It is necessary to nail that charge and to put the record straight, but I am the first to acknowledge that, far more than these measures, what industry wants and what the west midlands needs is success with the Government's long-term economic strategy. Only in that way will we get real competitiveness back into the United Kingdom economy.
  The fact that the annual inflation rate is now down to 4·9 per cent.—the lowest level for 13 years—must be good news, because it is a critical factor in restoring our competitiveness—[Interruption.] I shall tell hon. Members what industry says in a moment. Without doubt the key to sustained recovery, leaving aside the other major question of world demand, over which we have little control, is to regain and improve our competitiveness. Here too, in other ways, the news is better. In view of the time I shall not go into the figures now, but productivity compared with our recent past and with other countries is improving all the time. But there is still lost ground to make up.
  In that context, helping with industry's costs is vital—I agree with the hon. Member for Coventry, North-East—and is the area in which industry in the west
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  midlands as elsewhere most seeks action. The hon. Gentleman read out a list of things for which the CBI is calling, but that was rich coming from him, because they are all Conservative policies, which build on our strategy, and are the exact opposite of what a Labour Government would achieve. This Government have helped industry's own prodigious efforts to cut costs. We have cut the national insurance surcharge—Labour's tax on jobs—by two percentage points. The announcements last year on industrial gas and electricity prices should help further. The drop in interest rates has made a big difference to many companies' cash flow.
  Let us contrast that action with such evidence as there is of Labour politicians in action and of the Labour party's proposals today. Let us consider rates, which are now the largest single tax on businesses, discounting the employers' national insurance contribution. The House knows of the many steps that the Government have taken to help on rates and to curb the excessive spending ambitions of some local authorities which in the past have found their additional spending underwritten year by year by the taxpayer, but which now face grant penalties if they continue to exceed spending targets through lavish plans. The contrast in the west midlands is there for all to see. A Tory-controlled council, Birmingham city council, has now been able by good housekeeping, prudent management and by the savings achieved through such steps as tendering for its refuse disposal contract, to announce this year a 12 per cent. cut for its ratepayers. It would be tragic if that success, which is vital to the industries and small business in the area, were negated by a substantial rate increase by the Socialist-controlled West Midlands county council.
  This week we have seen the contrast painted all too clearly at the national level too. The London Business School has forecast that under a Labour Government's economic policies, which would trigger off a devaluation of sterling and a wages explosion, the country would be far worse off in every respect—inflation, unemployment, interest rates, the exchange rate and output—than under a Conservative Government. In particular, inflation would reach a massive 17 per cent. by 1986 and interest rates would also soar to 17 per cent.
  It is not surprising, therefore, that we have heard so little from the Labour Front Bench today about how it would deal with the admitted and real west midlands problems. Opposition Members know that industry does not support them. They know that the people of the west midlands understand in their realistic and honest fashion what has gone wrong and what needs to be done to put it right. It is this Government's strategy that will restore the west midlands, on a new footing, to its much earlier position of industrial eminence. That is why we reject the motion.
  4.21 pm
  Mr. Jack Ashley: In a lengthy speech the Minister spelt out the massive help which has been given to the west midlands, and has painted an attractive picture of Shangri-la. If we are to believe the Minister, everything that could be done is being done.
  The Minister also attacked the Labour party for its policies. He cannot attack us for making party political points if he makes cheap party political points. Government Members complained throughout the last debate about party political points being made from this

  817
  side of the House. If the Government are as good as the Minister claims, he should explain why the west midlands has the lowest economic growth rate of any region in the last decade. It has suffered the greatest increase in unemployment in recent years. It has the most serious long-term unemployment problem of any region and it has more unemployed per vacancy than any other region.
  Those are the facts, despite all the help that is supposed to have been given by the Government. That is the state to which the west midlands has been reduced by the Government. It is a political issue, and the Minister is right to make it such. The Government stand condemned for smashing the west midlands, despite the fact that the Minister has attempted to portray it as a fine prosperous area.
  The west midlands is being greatly damaged by the Government. There should be no doubt that the blame for the condition of the area rests squarely upon the Government's economic policies. Dogmatic monetarism may have helped to reduce inflation but at the same time it has reduced the west midlands economy to crisis, verging on collapse. It is hard to imagine a more misguided policy.
  Many hon. Members want to speak, so I shall try to be brief, especially in view of the very long speech by the Minister. One section of the west midlands that has not been given the attention it deserves is Staffordshire, especially north Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent. Staffordshire has suffered more than any other county in the region, and north Staffordshire has suffered most in Staffordshire.
  Between 1979 and 1982 unemployment in Great Britain rose by 143 per cent., in the west midlands by 192 per cent., in Staffordshire by 199 per cent. and in north Staffordshire by 219 per cent. The terrible fact is that unemployment in north Staffordshire has more than trebled during this period.
  It is all very well for Ministers to speak complacently about the rationalisation of industry, but many job losses in Staffordshire are due not to rationalisation but to closures. In the last two years nearly 30 per cent. of those who have lost their jobs lost them through closures. Their jobs have vanished; they have gone for ever. They are a permanent loss to our industrial base.
  The pottery industry has become vulnerable to closures. The main trade union for pottery workers, the Ceramic and Allied Trades Union, has estimated that, of 50,000 pottery jobs in the Stoke-on-Trent travel-to-work area, no fewer than 20,000 have gone. There are sometimes understandable reasons for job losses in old-fashioned and declining industries in the face of international competition, but there can be no justification for damaging such a progressive industry as the pottery industry, which exports a high percentage of its products, which has adapted to industrial change, and which has been free of industrial disputes. If the Government do not change their policies they will kill the goose that lays the porcelain eggs.
  We have also suffered severe losses in the steel industry, notably when Shelton closed, and we are now losing jobs in the rubber industry. The Michelin company, which is based in my constituency, recently annouced a cut of 4,000 jobs in the next two years; 1,000 are in Stoke-on-Trent, which is already devastated by unemployment.
  Thus, in stable, sensible Stoke-on-Trent and north Staffordshire, we are facing an industrial crisis. The fine skills of the people are being corroded by unemployment;
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  the optimism of youngsters is being blunted by despair; the long-term unemployed are becoming embittered, and women workers are losing hope.
  I want to make what I regard as constructive proposals. First, the Government should examine closely the evidence of dumping cheap goods from foreign countries on British markets. One leading business man in the pottery industry has said that Italy and Spain are dumping millions of ceramic tiles here, at less than they cost to produce. I hope the Minister will consider that point. Stoke-on-Trent and north Staffordshire can face competition but we cannot face unfair competition, and we want the Minister to take action.
  Secondly, the Government should give more encouragement and assistance to development associations. The Staffordshire development association has done valuable work in the area and over 2,000 jobs have emerged from projects which it has assisted. That does not solve the problem, but it helps.
  Thirdly, the Government should assist the diversification of industry in Stoke-on-Trent and north Staffordshire. The area is excessively reliant on too few industries; it needs to widen its base and to take advantage of technological advances.
  Fourthly, the Government should stop improvising and start planning for the future. When the recession ends, industrial capacity is unlikely to be made up, because of technological developments. Unless in the long term we develop a new approach to the organisation of work, the frightful and frightening divisive gap between employed and unemployed will become wider and more menacing. Social unrest will become more than a distant fear; it will become a reality.
  Fifthly, the Government should become more alert and responsive to economic changes and their consequences. It is far too easy to lay down a blanket policy such as monetarism and to stick to it, calling it a resolute Approach for reducing inflation. Such lack of sensitivity and flexibility will result not only in the destruction of jobs but also in the loss of opportunity to create new ones.
  Sixthly, despite some adjustments in the exchange rate, I hope that the Government will pursue policies to ensure that we keep a realistic exchange rate. The pottery and rubber industries have been greatly damaged by an unrealistic exchange rate.
  Finally, as no region can prosper without general national prosperity—although I am pleading for Stoke-on-Trent, north Staffordshire and the west midlands—the Government should adopt a reflationary policy using, rather than abusing, the concept of public expenditure.
  I make these proposals in the hope that Ministers are at last beginning to realise the frightful and frightening consequences of existing policies. Governments cannot wave magic wands, but they can and should play an important role in creating a healthy and prosperous economy.
  4.31 pm
  Mr. Percy Grieve: Few hon. Members are held in greater respect that the right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley). I listened with interest to the constructive proposals that he made. I do not agree with all of them. With some, I can go along with the right hon. Gentleman. I cannot, however, accept his stricture that the Government have been responsible for smashing the west midlands. Without the actions of the

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  Government, it is doubtful whether the industries of the west midlands would be anything like as viable and prosperous as they are likely to become. I intend to give the figures to the House.
  The truth, as all hon. Members know, is that between the two wars and immediately after the last war the west midlands became not only the greatest workshop of this country but also one of the great workshops of the world. For too long, it was taken for granted. For too long, the motor industry, which, along with the foundry industry, was at the heart of a great deal of it, was bedevilled by Government policies, by ever-increasing demands for wages, by under-productivity, and by unions which, although over-powerful, were unable to control wildcat strikes by their members. It was bedevilled by the go-slow policies of successive Governments, Conservative as well as Labour.
  Between 1964 and 1970, I heard Donald Stokes and others, at that time at the head of British Leyland, complain frequently that they were never given a fair chance to develop their industry. As soon as it was prosperous, it was made the subject of Government stop-go policies. Whenever it achieved success and desired to expand, it found that IDCs had been used to establish factories in parts of the country that were uneconomic and where labour relations were a great deal worse than those that prevailed at the time in the west midlands. The whole industry was taken for granted. It was bedevilled by Government policies and by gross under-productivity.
  Created by a Labour Government in its united form, British Leyland had to be saved by public money and was put into the hands of a man who did a great deal to bring it back on to the road to prosperity. I refer to Michael Edwardes, who achieved a great deal for Leyland. As a result, Leyland now has a viable future. I speak as an hon. Member in whose constituency an important part of Leyland is located. If it succeeds, in due course the industries that cater for the motor industry will also succeed.
  I accept that spare parts are at the moment being brought from abroad. Why? [AN HON. MEMBER: "Shame."] It is not shame at all. British industry, if it is to survive, must be competitive. When British industry can supply the British motor industry with the parts that it needs at competitive prices, that industry will go with open arms to British industry for those parts. These home truths are not much liked by Opposition Members. However, every observer of British industry knows that they are true.
  Mr. Peter Snape: Clichés.
  Mr. Grieve: One example of the gross over-optimism that prevailed in the motor industry only a few years ago was the investment of £31 million of public money in the new Rover car assembly lines in my constituency. It was assumed that there would be a demand for hundreds of Rover motor cars a week. The figure had never been attained previously and it has never been reached since. It is a tragedy for Solihull that Rover has had to abandon those assembly lines and switch manufacture to Cowley. I am glad to say that production at Cowley is going well. The loss of jobs has been much reduced by the fact that 1,100 new workers have been taken on at Cowley, although 2,000 lost their jobs in Solihull.
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  I wish to give figures showing the present state of British Leyland, especially the Land Rover and the Range Rover, which are still made in my constituency, and the Austin Rover company. The figures from both give grounds for qualified optimism. I am glad to be able to underline in this respect the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State. In 1982, the Land Rover achieved £220 million of exports. Eighty per cent. of British production of utility vehicles was supplied by Land Rover—and that was in a difficult year. Increased production was achieved at a time when Mercedes was cutting back on production of utility vehicles. Altogether, 52,000 vehicles were produced by Austin Rover in 1982, in the face of Japanese competition. Over 300 a week are now being produced and sales have improved by 12 per cent.
  At present, as the House will be aware, £200 million is being invested in a programme for a new Land Rover. It will probably be launched next month. I am sure that all hon. Members will join in wishing the Land Rover and the Range Rover company success in this great new enterprise.
  Another success story has been the Freight Rover. Nothing has been heard about it in the debate. It is a small but nevertheless important part of the motor industry. There has been success with the Sherpa van range. In less than a year, the output of vans has been doubled. The company that was producing 190 vehicles a week in January 1981 is now producing 400 vehicles a week. A new range has been produced. British Telecom has contracted for 3,000 vehicles. I am glad to see that British Telecom is buying British. I suggest to hon. Members that buying British is one way to help this country. There are far too many foreign cars in the House of Commons car park.
  I come now to the Austin Rover end of BL. The group is on target to break even this year. A new medium range car is being manufactured at Cowley, and £210 million is being invested in it. Cowley has taken on 1,100 more people.
  At Longbridge, the Metro was the best-selling car in Great Britain last year. Sales in Europe were up 25 per cent. on 1981. BL achieved its highest sales figures in Europe since 1978, with 51,000 cars being exported to France and Italy. The company's export record is that sales of all cars to France increased by 39 per cent. and to Italy by 16 per cent. in 1982. More than 37,000 cars went to France and 32,000 to Italy. As my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary said, industrial relations were particularly good at Austin Rover in 1982. The number of hours lost through disputes amounted to less than one day. Productivity has risen by 20 per cent. over the past 12 months and doubled over four years.
  To underline the point that I was making about under-productivity, at Longbridge seven cars per man per year were produced in 1980 and 25 cars per man per year in 1982. It is good news, but two swallows do not make a summer. It is a beginning. British Leyland—Austin Rover, Land Rover and Range Rover—is on course. If we can continue the support that the Government have already given, the principal factor being the reduction in inflation, there is a chance for the west midlands motor industry.
  4.42 pm
  Miss Betty Boothroyd: The hon. and learned Member for Solihull (Mr. Grieve) and the

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  Minister began their speeches with a long record of excuses for the state of the west midlands. I hope that Conservative Members will not have the cheek this afternoon, as they have in previous debates, to suggest that the world recession is the chief cause of our industrial and employment problems. A glance at the OECD's comparable figures for unemployment will disabuse them of that argument, as will the Secretary of State's admission that in all other countries of the European Community unemployment since May 1979 has increased by 88 per cent. while in this country it has increased by 154 per cent.
  Responsibility for the horrific scene in this country rests with the Government. They have used unemployment as a weapon against inflation. Their policies have been the principal cause of job losses. In the west midlands, even the Government's own "cooked" figures show an increase of almost 230 per cent. since 1979. I find it difficult to comprehend such an increase. I do not intend to tour the ruins of the region left by four years of Tory policies. We have experienced a far higher rate of increase in job losses than any other region.
  I wonder whether it is the Government's neglect of the region and their constant refusal to recognise the need for special assistance that has spurred the European Commission to take some action to halt the downward spiral. I have been pressing the Commission for a long time to see what help might be given to places in the black country, such as West Bromich, Tipton and Wednesbury, when assisted area status is denied to the entire region.
  Yesterday, I received a letter from Brussels from the Commissioner responsible for social affairs and employment policies about proposals which seem to me to take the criteria for funding out of the Government's hands by amending the operation of the social fund in such a way that the west midlands and areas within it might have access to resources which we have been constantly denied by the inaction of our own Government.
  The Commissioner says:
  "in the proposals we have made regarding the review of the European Social Fund.… we are suggesting that the fund should not in future be linked in any way to regional policy classifications decided at national level."
  It seems a clear statement. It is a considerable and welcome departure from previous policy.
  I understand that the proposals will enable the region to participate in the use of the funds for the improvement of employment opportunities, development of employment policy and restructuring. In other words, we would have access to resources to which we have a legitimate claim but which have been placed out of bounds by this Government.
  The proposals go a step further. They recognise that while there are areas, such as West Bromich, where unemployment levels are higher than the regional average, within such areas there are pockets of even higher unemployment which reach 22 per cent. to 25 per cent. The proposals recognise that these black spots are disguised by the surrounding areas which may have less serious problems. Therefore, under the proposals headed
  "Selection of application for funding"
  the criteria proposed have four components of equal worth.
  The first is overall unemployment levels. We all know that the west midlands unemployment levels are about 4 per cent. higher than the national average. The area will qualify on that basis.
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  The second component is long-term unemployment. The increase in those out of work for over a year in the west midlands since the Government came to office has been 380 per cent. We shall qualify on that basis.
  The third component is youth unemployment. Since the Government took office, the numbers of unemployed persons under the age of 20 in the west midlands have risen 620 per cent. That is disgusting. In my area, Sandwell, the increase is 552 per cent.
  The fourth component is GDP per head of population, which we all know has dropped below the national average.
  There is ample evidence to show that the west midlands, and parts of it, will qualify for intervention. The criteria for selectivity are changing in such a way as to concentrate finance in areas of greatest need, irrespective of regional classification.
  The Commissioner's letter continues:
  "The whole debate about assisted areas status in the UK should, therefore, no longer be relevant, at least as regards the future interventions of the Social Fund."
  These proposals, welcome as they are, represent a condemnation of the Government's inertia and failure to recognise the west midlands' demise. I gave notice this morning to the office of the Minister who will wind up that I want some comments on these proposals. I want to know whether they have yet reached the Council of Ministers, and, if not, why not? When will they reach the Council? When can we look forward to their implementation and receive some help for the west midlands?
  With regard to the immediate situation, the regional CBI and the chambers of commerce have called on the Government for capital investment projects in the region. In a survey issued late last year, the chambers of commerce said that they wanted early implementation of capital spending programmes to provide much needed encouragement to the construction and manufacturing industries in the region. I agree with them. I shall cite one or two examples of areas where action now would achieve a reduction in unemployment and at the same time provide a boost to manufacturing output.
  There are 100,000 people on council housing waiting lists in the region. Those are not my figures, but those of the National Federation of Housing Associations. The Birmingham Architectural Association reports that 500,000 houses in the region are in urgent need of repair. On the Government's own figures, 200,000 construction workers in the region are on the dole and there are enough bricks stockpiled to build a town the size of Leicester. Yet the Government persist in standing between available workers and unused materials, while families in the region pay a high price in the loss of their livelihoods.
  A survey by the Council of Estate Management shows that parts of the Birmingham conurbation require extensive investments in water pipes. Complaints to the Severn-Trent water authority show the need to refurbish water mains at an estimated cost of £50 million just for the backlog, and annual expenditure of at least £2 million to keep pace with deterioration. The authority reports a decaying sewerage system, with 220 miles of tunnels nearly 100 years old and urgently in need of attention. It reports that a 10-year programme of repair and replacement is needed at a cost of about £10 million per year. It was ironic and tragic that a year ago, on the day when I helped to launch Labour's "Plan for Jobs" in the region and spelt out the type of immediate action that

  823
  could be taken, a midlands firm with a famous household name, which for generations had manufactured pipes, tunnelling and sewerage equipment, announced that it was to close because its order books were empty. The tragic fact is that the Government cannot match men and materials.
  There are other examples where investment of this kind would arrest the decay in manufacturing and at the same time rescue the crumbling infrastructure. That approach, however, whether it comes from the Opposition, the TUC or even from the Government's own friends, is rejected by the Prime Minister, who again and again repeats that we cannot solve our problems by throwing money at them. I tell the right hon. Lady that neither can she go on throwing our problems on the scrap heap of inattention and indifference.
  Conservative Members who argue that spending on public sector projects and programmes is the root of all evil should realise that it is the Conservative Government who have failed to make the distinction between spending for investment and spending for consumption, between spending for the accumulation of goods and spending on investment for a secure future. It is the Conservatives who stand accused of squandering the wealth from the North sea and much else in support of ever-lengthening dole queues. It is the Government who are the big spenders, because unemployment is the biggest spender of all. There is work to be done in the region and there are people to do it. If the Government are not prepared to get on with the job, they should get out and let others tackle it.
  4.53 pm
  Sir Hugh Fraser: I shall not follow the hon. Member for West Bromwich, West (Miss Boothroyd) very far, as time is short. I merely comment that she seems to have found a new love for the Common Market, which she hopes will bail West Bromwich out of some of its difficulties.
  I congratulate the Government on some of the things that they have done. In my division, through management efficiency and work force ability, GEC has managed to increase both orders and employment. Yet that is one of the firms that the Opposition propose to nationalise. How absurd can one get?
  I wish to take up some of the serious points made by the right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley). I believe that the Government could provide genuine and immediate help to the west midlands in two ways. First, dumping is undoubtedly taking place in some sectors. The boot and shoe industry is a clear example, as are those to which the right hon. Gentleman referred. The influx of steel products from the Common Market at below price is against every arrangement with the Common Market and should be stopped at once.
  In the long term, it is frightening to remember that the west midlands is—or was—the industrial heart of this country, and it is truly alarming to note from the latest figures that for the first time in history this country now has an adverse balance of payments in relation to manufactured goods. That should disturb us all.
  Personally, I do not believe that these things can be put right with little grants of £50,000 here or there or with money from the EC. A major problem must be put right. Without the true reinvigoration of British manufacturing
  824
  industry, what future will this country have after the oil has gone but to sing for its supper, putting on barbecues and morris dancing for visitors? I am sure that the whole House agrees that that basic problem must be tackled by all political parties both now and in the years to come.
  There are two main ways in which the problem can be tackled. First, we must ensure that costs for industry are reduced. A great deal more could be done in that sphere. Rating of industrial and commercial properties should be re-examined de novo and those rates should be decided not by local authorities but by central Government. Secondly, we should see what can be done about taxes. It is ludicrous in this day and age that there should be a tax on employment, and it should be removed as soon as possible.
  Far more fundamental, however, are the two wider questions of what can be done about the world economy and home investment. One thing is certain. The kind of investment that I wish to see—the hon. Member for West Bromwich, West wants public investment, but I believe that it must come from the private sector or from a mixture of private and public sector—can only be achieved through profits, and the only way to ensure that profits can be made is by reducing the burden on industry. That is the first stage.
  I believe that it is impossible in the long term to achieve industrial revival when real rates of interest are running at 8 per cent., as is happening throughout the western world today. The rate of inflation here is 5 per cent. or 6 per cent., yet most countries are paying 13 per cent. or 14 per cent. for their money. It is simply not worth investing in British industry when that kind of return can be achieved elsewhere. As I have said many times, the great problem facing western capitalism today is to bring interest rates into line. That is why, although it may seem a long way from the west midlands, I believe that the summit conference that is shortly to be held must achieve the vital step of starting some movement so that interest rates can be brought into line. Some of the debts could be put on one side, although I shall not go into detail about that today. World trade must be revived and interest rates brought down. That is the key to the recovery of western capitalism.
  These are serious times. Only through those two methods can we achieve a revival. We must ensure that industry has profits to reinvest. I am sure that the right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South agrees that there are great areas in the west midlands in which new investment is needed. The big companies and the smaller companies that are growing up need a big change in their industrial objectives. That must be done through profits. Above all else, we must have joint action with the Japanese, the Germans and other sound economies—possibly the Americans—to draw the world out of its dangerous and vast depression. We must ensure that Britain's industrial base remains sound and profitable.
  5 pm
  Mr. Denis Howell: I am glad to follow the right hon. Member for Stafford and Stone (Sir H. Fraser) because I entirely agree with him about the great danger to the present world economic order. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) said recently in Birmingham that the whole banking system is threatened with collapse unless great industrial nations join together and follow one policy.

  825
  I am an extreme pessimist about the whole of our economic future. The numbers in work are decreasing rapidly, and the desecration of the industrial might of the west midlands means that the superannuation, pension and other funds upon which we rely for our future prosperity are in grave jeopardy. That message must be spelt out to those still in work. The industrial might of Birmingham is being desecrated; no one can doubt that. There is a remarkable consensus among the CBI, the chambers of commerce, and such firms as Joseph Lucas and IMI, about what needs to be done about the destruction of the industrial might of the west midlands and the power base of industrial Birmingham.
  I represent the inner city constituency of Small Heath. The Government have placed a time bomb under the social fabric of our cities and their industrial life. In Small Heath, 80 to 90 per cent. of last year's school leavers still do not have jobs. What do the Government think that means in social terms for the peace and harmony of our inner-city communities? It is devastating. A whole generation of school leavers will never know the dignity of work. Men and women throughout Birmingham have been made redundant. Some of them are family men with responsibilities, aged between 40 and 50, who know that they will never work again. That must be the background to the debate.
  The Government have brought the problems upon themselves, not least through their tremendous cuts in social services, which have been reduced to a shell in many parts of the west midlands. That affects the old, the sick and the needy, and especially one-parent families. In many of the schools in Small Heath, 60 or 70 per cent. of the children come from one-parent families. The social consequences of the Government's policies during the past two or three years, which have laid waste industrial Birmingham and the west midlands, are too grave for any of us to contemplate.
  The Minister made a gramophone speech today. It was the same speech that his predecessor made last year and the year before. It was in contradiction of everything that the Tory party said in 1979 during the election campaign. Then the theme was that Labour policies were not working, and that the Tories would put things right.
  The work force in Joseph Lucas in 1979 was 20,000-plus. This year it is 13,000, with another 1,200 redundancies to come, together with another 500 redundancies at Girling. The figure for apprenticeships tells its own story. Joseph Lucas used to take on 50 apprentices a year. This year, the figure has been reduced to 25 and next year it will be 13. Yet those represent the skills of our industry on which any growth in Birmingham and the west midlands must depend.
  I have heard horrific stories about the British car industry. Ten years ago it produced 1£7 million cars, but it now produces less than 980,000. We no longer have a car manufacturing industry in Birmingham and the west midlands—we have a car assembly industry. That is the heart of the problem. What can be done about it? I shall spell that out. First, there must be a dramatic change in the economic direction of Britain to produce investment in industry and to create jobs. That means an immediate increase in public expenditure in local government and health services. We must use our oil revenue to invest in the future and to create new industries. What nonsense it
  826
  is for the whole of our oil revenue to be spent on unemployment and social security benefits rather than on investment in the future of British industry.
  Secondly, we must spend money on real jobs for youngsters and on apprenticeships. There is hopelessness in our constituencies when youngsters are training on the special schemes but know that that does not mean real jobs. They know that there will be no jobs for them at the end of the day. We must create real jobs in industry.
  Thirdly, we must stop the ridiculous sales tax imposed on the British motor industry. It is nonsense to have a 10 per cent. sales tax ex-works, and then to impose 15 per cent. VAT. I am not surprised that the component industry says time and time again that in no other area is there such a self-imposed burden on the products of British industry.
  Fourthly, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, West (Miss Boothroyd) said, we must demand some harmonisation in the EC's external tariffs. The Government must take immediate action about the flooding of Britain with motor car components from Spain and Japan. The Prime Minister and Ministers talk about it—the Minister did so today, and I am sure that he was sincere. Ministers want to act, but they are not acting. They must act today. Spain has imposed a 57 per cent tax on British imports, yet it directly, or indirectly through Vauxhall or other companies, sends imports to Britain with a tariff of only 9·2 per cent. Have we all gone mad? Should we continue to allow that to happen in the midst of a recession and growing unemployment?
  What do the Government intend to do about the Japanese? We constantly send trade delegations to Japan, which return with words of comfort from the Japanese, who must be laughing while they bank the money from their import penetration of western Europe. Italy has more sense; it does not allow any penetration from the Japanese motor market. France allows only 2 per cent. penetration; Belgium, Holland, Ireland and Denmark only 4 per cent.; and Germany 8 per cent. Britain has an import penetration of 11 per cent.
  The Government are charged with defending the British economy and the British people from persistent import penetration by the Japanese. They are doing nothing about it. We cannot any longer listen to the honeyed words of the gentlemen in Tokyo. We must take action immediately.
  Fifthly, we must control manufactured imports. The volume of manufactured imports to Britain this year has exceeded, for the first time, the volume of British industrial production. That is a recipe for disaster It is also astonishing. Ministers of this Government have presided over that. We should immediately require that a minimum fixed percentage of components in all motor cars that are imported here should be made in Britain. We must play fair with the British components industry, if necessary by using the measures that we are allowed to take under EC provisions.
  Mr. Richard Shepherd rose—
  Mr. Howell: We must protect the British motor car component industry.
  Mrs. Renée Short: Will my right hon. Friend give way?
  Mr. Howell: No, I must finish quickly; otherwise I would.

  827
  Sixthly, we must develop sensible investment policies. For example, Lucas Aerospace drew to my attention a scheme at Huyton in which the Government provided the cost of buildings and plant and then leased them back to Lucas Aerospace. That is one way to get things moving and to provide the necessary investment.
  Seventhly, we need to designate Birmingham and the west midlands as special development areas. I listened to what the Minister said about that. I hope that he does not mind my saying that he was prescribing sticking plasters when we need a blood transfusion. The Government's urban grant and grants from the EC are hopelessly inadequate. We must attract EC regional grants, but we are not doing so. Why cannot Birmingham, which has the fastest growing rate of unemployment in the country, attract regional grant? Why is the Industry Act 1972 proving so deficient for the west midlands? Why is the Science and Technology Act 1965 hopelessly inappropriate to the needs of the west midlands now?
  Eighthly, we need massive urban aid and partnership grants. We need infrastructure. As the CBI said, we need green belts. It should be possible to whip out the old sewerage pipes and cellars and provide green field sites for industry in the heart of our blighted industrial areas. We need tremendous house building and house improvement schemes as well as general environmental ones.
  Finally, as we must now choose between unemployment at the beginning of the life cycle for school leavers, or earlier retirement for people at the end of that cycle, it would be much more intelligent to provide Government funds so that people who have worked all their lives in industry and want to retire early can do so. There are things which can be done now, which Birmingham wants to be done now and which the west midlands needs. Let the Government get on and do them.
  5.13 pm
  Mr. John Stokes: It is rather a pity that this debate, which is on such a serious subject, should lend itself to people who make what are clearly partly polemical points. I shall try to avoid that.
  I have noticed that the motion is not exactly couched in moderate terms. There is not much common sense about it. There is no mention, for instance, of the world slump. Nor is there any mention of the competitiveness, or lack of it, of firms in the west midlands. Nor is there any mention of the need there, which we all agree exists, for some of the higher technologies. The motion is clearly drafted in party political terms. It bears no relation to the true state of affairs in that part of the country.
  This subject was debated only a fortnight ago. I have read that debate through again. One naturally wonders what new or helpful ideas can come from us today. It is a fallacy to think that from our deliberations today will come a solution or a wonder remedy. In my experience, the House is short of hon. Members with industrial experience, either as managers or as workers. It must infuriate industrial leaders who face difficult circumstances to hear some people pontificating here when they have no real knowledge of the problems involved. Nor does the House have much influence on the state of the world economy.
  We all know that we are now going through the most serious recession since the 1930s. Moreover, we all know
  828
  that it was caused by the fantastic rise in the price of oil. Despite what defeatists say, the fall in the price of oil may give British industry, including that in the west midlands, just the stimulus it needs—more, perhaps, than anything that any Government can do. Of course, I agree with those hon. Members who have talked about the imbalance of tariffs between ourselves and Spain and the unfairness of the trading customs of many foreign companies.
  We in the west midlands are new to slump. Unlike Scotland and the north, we have never really had bad times before. Indeed, when there were bad times, people flocked to the midlands for work. Now the bad times in the midlands are as bad as in Scotland. It is not that people complain. Hon. Members never stop complaining, but I find that my constituents, at whom I marvel, never complain. They do not blame the Government, the Prime Minister or me.
  Traditional industry in the midlands was hit by the world slump. It was probably too production-orientated. Marketing and sales were sometimes neglected. Firms made goods and hoped that there would be customers all over the world to buy them. Moreover, basic research and development was not always all that it should have been. Then there was the overmanning and lack of competitiveness in many companies. That has now been largely put right.
  In the west midlands, we are far too dependent on traditional metal-bashing and engineering industries. We do not have enough of the higher technologies. We are far behind Scotland, which now has a high proportion of such new high technologies. Moreover, we must think whether industry should cater more for the needs of the leisure and service industries, the needs of which are bound to increase as the working week becomes shorter, people retire earlier and holidays get longer.
  One complaint of industry in the west midlands has, and which I wholeheartedly share, is the colossal burden of rates, about which we have heard nothing from the Opposition. We have heard nothing about the awful burden that the West Midlands county council puts on every business in that part of the country. We also have to bear the charges of the nationalised industries, including energy costs. Those charges rise inexorably, although there has, at last, been some remission. Those monolithic corporations, which are not subject to competition, have not slimmed as private industry has done and are still barely aware of the realities of commercial life. The sooner they are taken over by private enterprise the better.
  One vital sector which my hon. Friend the Minister mentioned is the need to foster the small business. Quite a lot has been done—all of us are aware of that from our constituencies—but more could be done. In particular, loans from the banks in the second or third year of a new business, when it is just getting it second wind, are still too hard to get and—if my hon. Friend the Minister will listen—too expensive.
  Industry in the west midlands looks to the Budget for some encouragement. The most important contribution that the Budget could make is to improve morale. Morale is everything, in peace or war, and morale, I am afraid, is low in the west midlands. We must have confidence and hope from my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. A reduction in personal taxation will help demand and industry must be ready to satisfy it.
  The upturn will come and firms must make the necessary preparations. I was distressed the other day to

  829
  hear the head of a huge construction business say that already it was short of bricklayers and was not training enough. That must be put right.
  My right hon. Friend the Member for Stafford and Stone (Sir H. Fraser), who spoke shortly and so well, referred to the vital importance of interest rates. I realise that that is a world problem more than our problem. However, with inflation reducing and interest rates remaining so high, it is difficult to borrow money, get hold of staff, obtain raw materials, make products and then have a profit at the end. That is a problem which I hope will be dealt with by the Government during the summer.
  Industry in the west midlands does not expect or want handouts but it expects parity with the other regions of the United Kingdom. The regions of England are, in their way, quite as important as places in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland. Many of us think that the building industry could be busier. One suggestion is tax help for householders who maintain and improve their property or who engage in improvements, for example to save energy. Such a scheme would help builders and reduce the large black economy, which has been with us for years in the west midlands. The black economy operators would have to produce proper bills for householders, who would then claim tax relief on the amounts set out.
  Such schemes are only palliatives. I do not believe, despite the speech of the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Howell), that people in, the west midlands expect vast public works. They ask in their sensible way, "Where is the money coming from?" If there is to be new commercial investment, they equally sensibly ask, "Where are the customers?" It is customers that industry wants, and customers cannot be produced by the Opposition's rhetoric. A new scheme whereby the Government produce a small sum which can then be topped up by a much larger sum by private enterprise is extremely sound. I am glad that Halesowen, for the first time in history, has had some tangible benefit from the Government.
  We must not be too depressed. In the west midlands we have the brains, the entrepreneurs, the finest skilled work force in England and the right attitude. In some respects our training may need improving, especially in higher technology, but young men and women in the west midlands want to be trained, want to learn a job and, unlike others in some parts of the world, do not all want to become school teachers, for example.
  When the world upturn comes, as it surely will in 1984, we may see a considerable recovery in the west midlands, which is so well placed, geographically and in other ways. Labour Members play a gramophone record of gloom. It never does, either in public or private life, to exaggerate our fears. I have the greatest faith in the Government and so, according to the polls, do an increasingly large number of the electorate. I believe that the Government's sound monetary policies will create the right climate for a proper and sustainable expansion.
  Mrs. Renée Short: When?
  Mr. Stokes: I also have the greatest faith in the men and women on the shop floor in the west midlands, who understand fully what is happening and the reasons, who will surely respond when the time comes.
  5.16 pm
  Mr. Andrew Faulds: We have just heard from the hon. Member for Halesowen and Stourbridge (Mr. Stokes) what I think can charitably be described as a fairly predictable speech. He seemed to argue that his constituents never complain to him about Government policy. There really can be only one reason for that. They know him to be such a devout supporter of this appalling Government that they think it a waste of time to make any representations to him.
  Mrs. Renée Short: They probably never see him.
  Mr. Faulds: I think that his two colleagues on the Government Front Bench may have read behind those veiled panegyric utterances some warnings about what the hon. Gentleman considers is necessary for the health of the west midlands. I am delighted to have the hon. Gentleman's affirmation in that rather wan smile that wafted across the Chamber.
  We have now had in the lifetime of this Government four debates on the industrial decline of the west midlands and the consequent surge in unemployment. At each of those four debates loyal Conservative Back Benchers—we have had them again this afternoon—have tried to excuse the Government by claiming that because of the concentration of the motor car industry and the component industry that decline in the West Midlands was inevitable, that Labour was as much to blame as the Conservative Government, and that, of course the world recession was the overriding reason behind the whole disastrous collapse.
  Well those are convenient excuses for what has been happening, but did any of those Conservative Members with west midland seats, who are soon to be an extinct species—[Interruption.] We hear sickly laughter from the Conservative Benches, but we shall see at the next election.
  Mr. J. F. Pawsey: Yes, wait and see.
  Mr. Faulds: Did any of them warn their electorates that the Conservative Government would treble unemployment in our area? Did they warn that there were not factory walls long enough anywhere in the west midlands to accommodate the thousands upon thousands of unemployed in a Saatchi and Saatchi-type advertisement, riot of hired performers, but of real live unemployed? Do those Tory Members of Parliament not think now in all honesty that they were guilty of some misrepresentation in their unkept promises to mop up the dole queues? Did they warn that the Government's policies would actually close down factory after factory in the thriving west midlands?
  In these four years of Conservative Government policies the west midlands—the great heartland of Britain's industrial activity—has suffered a 30 per cent. loss of its manufacturing capacity. Unemployment has trebled. No Conservative manifesto that I read spelt out those promises. At each of the four previous west midlands unemployment debates over the past four years, Ministers—this brace of sitting ducks is only the latest in a series, kept in perpetual motion so that he cannot be too easily peppered—have presented the Government's case. Did any of the Ministers who were put up at the Dispatch Box tell us the actual facts of what was happening in the west midlands? They made excuses. They said that things would soon be looking up and that the worst was about over. Well, we shall see.

  831
  The Cambridge econometric January forecast presents a much more pessimistic forecast than its October one. If the recent trends continue and the west midlands share of total United Kingdom unemployment continues to rise, unemployment levels of 18·6 per cent. by the end of this year and 28·6 per cent. by 1990 seem sadly inevitable. Can the Minister assure us that those figures will not ensue from present policies? He has no eagerness to leap up to deny them. Where is the promised upturn? The latest regional chamber of commerce survey does not augur well. More firms think that their turnover will worsen. Investment in plant and machinery has been revised downwards. Compared with the 1981 survey, fewer firms were reporting increases in United Kingdom and export orders and more were reporting decreases. There were more cash flow problems.
  All those considerations can point only one way. They mean a further rundown in the labour force throughout the west midlands. When I moved into my constituency in 1966 the unemployment rate was 1·6 per cent. In terms of my constituency, the contraction and cessation of industrial activity has been catastrophic.
  In previous debates on the west midlands situation I have itemised the litany of destruction caused by the Government's policies.
  I do not want to weary the House, but in all fairness to my constituents I have to make the following comments. The closures in Smethwick have included all nationally and internationally known companies—Midland Motor Cylinders, Dartmouth Manufacturing, Smethwick Drop Forging, Chance Brothers, Chatwin's Foundry and others. Massive redundancies have been forced upon many companies in the area. Some companies have enforced those redundancies more willingly than others. Some have tried to keep their work forces as best they could but they have been driven by the hard economic circumstances to dump people whom they wanted to keep. There have been literally thousands of redundancies at the Co-op Bakery, Mansill Booth, Avery's, GKN, Birmid Qualcast, Mitchell and Butler, T.I. Sturney and so on.
  Redundancy payments and the relief of the dole queue ease the situation to a small degree, but no one who has witnessed this deprivation of work among skilled workers, and indeed among unskilled workers, can fail to have sensed the affront to human dignity or the denial of personal fulfilment that these people suffer. Most of us who have constituency problems know only too well of the great increase in family problems that ensues.
  Suffering on this scale was not inevitable. It has not been an act of God. It is the result of a series of acts by this Government. The suffering among the ethnic minorities—there are large number of these people in the west midlands—is of course directly increased by the sad and quite inexcusable extent to which covert discrimination is practised. The figures are available.
  The unemployment percentage rates in the Dudley-Sandwell travel-to-work area, which of course includes Smethwick, have all but quadrupled from 4·4 per cent. in October 1978 to 16·6 per cent. in October 1982. In the area covered by the DHSS office in Smethwick, which does a marvellous job coping with the problem in which it is immersed, the number of unemployed people receiving supplementary benefit has risen from 1,228 in May
  832
  1979—already too high—to 8,730 in February 1983, and the total number claiming supplementary benefit in that period has risen from 7,980 to 20,115.
  In all humanity, it cannot go on like this. The Government must alleviate some of the difficulties. What needs doing? It is all very well all of us complaining, but some of us have to make constructive suggestions. I think that one or two have been made from both sides of the House. A number of colleagues on both sides of the House have argued for assisted area designation for the region. Surely all the relevant criteria apply here. Assisted area designation should be introduced.
  Although I am not happy about the prospect of import controls and have always argued against them, I am now persuaded that they should be applied very selectively where inequitable tariffs exist—certainly in the Spanish case. But I remain perturbed—perhaps my colleagues will part company from me here—at the prospect of import controls which would adversely affect the Third world and its developing patterns of trade.
  There is not nearly enough Government subvention for essential innovation in advanced technologies, because it is clear that that drive into the future, with its needs, is not going to come from local or multinational industry here in Britain.
  There is a very strong case for reconsidering energy costs for industry, in view of the quadrupling of those costs over the past decade.
  We all receive regular representations about the impact of rates on industrial activity. It may be marginal, but perhaps we should consider the need for industrial derating. It is a nonsense that the problem of void rating has not been tackled. If there is an upturn, an awful lot of roofs will have to be replaced in the west midlands. The small engineering firms investment scheme should have much more funding.
  All or some of those measures might help a little, but primarily we need demand in the economy to get that great industrial heart of Britain beating again. The Government can create that necessary change in the economic climate by reflating—however touchy a word that is to them, and however much they dislike it—but there are no signs that they are prepared to do so. The only real hope for Britain is that the electorate will decide within this year that they have had enough of Thatcherism and that they will return a Labour Government that can, and will, get this country under way again.
  5.34 pm
  Mr. David Knox: The point that has come out most strongly in most of the speeches so far in the debate is that unemployment is the most serious issue in the west midlands at present. That is certainly the case in my constituency.
  I suppose that it is not surprising that unemployment has risen more sharply in the west midlands than in other regions in the past decade. The west midlands is, after all, the manufacturing centre of this country and manufacturing industry has been particularly badly affected by depressed world markets, by currency fluctuations and by domestic Government policies since 1974. Indeed it is significant that manufacturing output peaked in early 1974 just at the time when the last Labour Government took office. Since then it has declined by almost a quarter. It is an inevitable consequence of this decline in manufacturing output that unemployment in the west

  833
  midlands has risen from well below the national average to well above it. It has risen from just over 46,000 in February 1974 to about 350,000 today, or from 2 per cent. in February 1974 to about 16 per cent. today.
  The Labour party would do well to remember that it has been in government for rather more than half the time since 1974, so it shares the responsibility for this severe decline in manufacturing output and for the steep rise in unemployment during the past nine years. Obviously, I am particularly concerned about unemployment in my constituency which, for the 30 years after the war, enjoyed an exceptionally low rate of unemployment. Early in 1974 when the Labour Government took office, 650 people were out of work in my constituency. Now, 5,500 people are out of work in the Leek parliamentary constituency.
  Despite this steep rise in unemployment, my constituency receives no special help, apart from assistance which the Development Commission has provided for the town of Leek and the moorlands area surrounding it. We are grateful for this help, which is making a real contribution to helping small businesses. But, given the problem, it is not very much.
  Unemployment in Leek is accentuated by the fact that it borders Stoke-on-Trent. Many of my constituents are—or before they lost their jobs were—commuters to that city. We are told in the Leek constituency that we cannot have any special help because a good deal of the constituency is in the Stoke-on-Trent travel-to-work area, and that the unemployment rate in Stoke-on-Trent is just about the national average. However, that argument does not take into account the fact that my constituents are disadvantaged in getting new jobs in Stoke-on-Trent compared to those living in the city.
  When my constituents seek employment in Stoke, in competition with residents of Stoke, employers inevitably tend to take the person who lives nearer the job rather than someone who lives five or 10 miles away, particularly given the winter weather in north Staffordshire. My constituents therefore find it more difficult to find new jobs than those living nearer the jobs and, consequently, unemployment tends to be higher in my constituency than in other parts of the Stoke-on-Trent travel-to-work area. I ask my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State to consider this matter again. It is a problem which faces not only my constituents but constituents in other parts of the country bordering large cities.
  We are told that the present high level of unemployment is a consequence of excessive wage claims, restrictive practices, overmanning, bad labour relations, managerial incompetence and lack of investment. Industries in my constituency cover a wide range of manufacturing activity and the work force has a wide range of skills. The people are hard-working, but not highly paid. Labour relations have always been good and there have been few strikes. Firms have invested in new plant and equipment. My constituency has a good labour force that is engaged in efficient factories and mills. Management and unions are puzzled by the fact that, having done all the right things, they have not avoided the consequences of different behaviour. High unemployment has afflicted the area despite the exemplary behaviour of both management and workers.
  The steep rise in unemployment during the past nine years must provide a strong case for special help. But, much though we would appreciate such help, it is important to recognise that the best way to help Leek and
  834
  the west midlands is to revive the national economy. Leek and the west midlands were prosperous and enjoyed full employment when Britain was prosperous and enjoyed full employment. But a return to prosperity will not happen automatically. The Government must act to raise aggregate demand for goods and services and, in turn, the demand for people to produce those extra goods and services. There are three ways in which this can be done.
  First, the Government should cut industrial costs by abolishing the national insurance surcharge and by reducing energy prices to industry. Secondly, they should undertake worthwhile public sector investment projects. Thirdly, they should cut direct and indirect taxes and so leave people with more money to spend, which will create demand for goods and services, and so create demand for people to produce those goods and services.
  The effect of those proposals would be to increase employment, which is what all hon. Members wish. We wish to bring the unemployed back into employment. Under-utilised capital equipment should be more fully used instead of standing idle or partially idle as it is now. If there was high demand, there would be more wealth for all of us to share. Unemployment in the west midlands is a waste of resources. It is socially damaging and divisive. Its reduction should be the Government's first priority.
  5.42 pm
  Dr. John Gilbert: My hon. Friends have spoken eloquently about the problems of our region, Birmingham, the black country and their constituencies. They will forgive me if, on this occasion without apology, I speak about the problems of my constituency and borough.
  Many hon. Members have quoted statistics about the decay of the west midlands economy. We have had the highest increase in unemployment of any region during the past few years. We have the worst long-term unemployment in the country, and we have had the greatest contraction in our employment base. Within that gruesome record, the consequences to Dudley have been the most appalling. Not only is it a microcosm of the west midlands, but what has happened in the region has happened to its greatest degree in Dudley. Unemployment in the region has increased by between 200 and 300 per cent. since the Government came to power; in my constituency it has increased by more than 400 per cent. Juvenile unemployment used to be the second lowest in the country, but now it is among the highest. The west midlands forum of county councils said in August last year that in the Dudley-Sandwell travel-to-work area the increase in unemployment was greater than anywhere in the West Midlands.
  However, even that understates the problems of Dudley. Many in the northern end of the borough, for example, in Coseley and Sedgley, register for unemployment in Wolverhampton, so their figures do not appear in the totals for Dudley and Sandwell. Most families in Dudley have members or close friends who have been thrown pitilessly out of work. No sector of our economy has been spared. The list includes large firms, small firms, men in the prime of their careers, young men wishing to start work, women workers, part-time workers, private sector workers and local authority workers. Wherever one looks, there is terrible devastation. Foundry men, school dinner ladies, lorry drivers, shop workers and bakers—the list is endless—are losing their jobs.

  835
  The high unemployment is no accident and has little to do with the world recession. We all know that there is a world recession, but where did it start? It started in Britain as a result of this Government's policies. It is worse here than anywhere else in the industrialised world and it is becoming still worse. We have been told that oil prices should be blamed. I cannot imagine how oil prices can be blamed for a recession in the oil-richest country in Europe.
  The hon. Member for Halesowen and Stourbridge (Mr. Stokes), who I regret is not in the Chamber—
  Mr. Stokes: I am here.
  Dr. Gilbert: I beg the hon. Gentleman's pardon. He is a good friend of mine, although we differ politically. He talked about rates, but we have been suffering from a Tory council in Dudley for goodness knows how many years, with some of the lowest rates in the country, and we still have unemployment. Rates have nothing to do with it. Yet another reason adduced by Conservative Members is that unemployment is our fault. It has come upon us in retribution because our workers are lazy, mutinous and hell-bent on the destruction of their jobs. That theme is taken up from time to time by the Prime Minister when she believes that she can get away with it in front of a sycophantic audience. It is the most preposterous allegation ever made by the enemies of the trade unions on the Conservative Benches.
  I could echo almost word for word the peroration of the hon. Member for Leek (Mr. Knox). He told us that his constituency, like mine, has a loyal and hard-working work force. In the 13 years that I have represented Dudley we have had no major strikes. Firm after firm, and shop steward after shop steward, could tell us about the good industrial relations there. One can ask the chamber of commerce, the trade council, large firms or small firms—the answer is always the same. Yet scores of efficient firms have been laid low and thousands of diligent and loyal workers have been thrown into idleness.
  We need help in Dudley. The enterprise zone is no solution. I hope that my hon. Friends do not believe that Dudley has purloined jobs from their constituencies as a result of achieving enterprise zone status. If anything, it is an albatross round our necks. Few new jobs are being created, as I have always prophesied. Most of the jobs that have been created are in steel stockholding and not in productive industry. The firms threatened are not other firms in the region but small firms immediately outside the boundaries of the zone.
  Above all, Dudley needs a massive infusion of public expenditure to keep men in jobs instead of paying them to be idle. Conservative Members ask, "Where will the money come from?" The answer could not be simpler, and anyone who has studied fifth form economics knows it. There will be a drastic reversal in the torrent of unemployment pay and supplementary benefits into a beneficial flow of income tax payments from those happy to be back at work. Everyone knows that the money will come from there.
  We desperately need such public expenditure. I echo many of the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, West (Miss Boothroyd). We need new housing. The present housing stock must be repaired so that many thousands of families can have decent living accommodation. We desperately need more medical
  836
  facilities and a better sewerage system. We need a better flood control system, because parts of my constituency are flooded regularly each winter and it is high time that something was done about that Victorian relic. We need a new transport system—a black country road route—from the enterprise zone, if it is to produce jobs, giving access from my part of the country to the national motorway system. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Howell) said, we need a serious job training programme, not just for apprentices as he suggested, but for 30, 40 and 50-year-olds. Men should not feel that they have been thrown on the scrap heap at the age of 50, although we should be able to offer them earlier retirement if they want it.
  Our region has been a region of immigration since the 1930s. The phrase "Get on your bike" was known to us long before the Secretary of State for Employment used it. In the 1930s, people in this country got on their bikes to come to the west midlands to find work. They do so no longer. Instead, the people of Dudley and the other proud boroughs of the black country now turn desperately in every direction to seek work. They have nowhere to go. They have little hope. They pray urgently for the opportunity to bring about the end of a Government who have calmly and indifferently watched such things come to pass.
  5.50 pm
  Mrs. Jill Knight: As I listen to this debate I feel more and more sorry for the Opposition. My heart is beginning to bleed for their predicament. One can see how the situation has come about. I wish that the hon. Member for Warley, East (Mr. Faulds) would read the polls as carefully as he reads his lines. If he did, he would know that there is no question of a Labour victory at the next general election. One sees exactly how Opposition minds are working: "Gracious, we are in terrible trouble. The polls are down. We may lose Bermondsey. What shall we do? Of course, let's have another debate on unemployment. We had a debate on that subject two weeks ago, but that does not matter." It does not matter that the Opposition were beaten into the ground two weeks ago, and that they will be beaten again today.
  One is very sorry to see the charade that is being played out today. I cannot help feeling that it is a little like Tommy Cooper trying to saw a lady in half. The trick is supposed to end with the lady, whole and unscarred, stepping from the cabinet. However, if Tommy Cooper did it, he would either slice her clean through the abdomen, or cut off his own thumb. One can see that happening to the Opposition.
  People are not nearly as stupid as Labour Members think they are. We have been told, not once but several times, in the sound and fury that has been generated on the Opposition Benches this afternoon—as Shakespeare said, "signifying nothing"—that this Government are responsible for unemployment in the west midlands. When they say that to people in their constituencies, the answer will come: "Wait a moment, if the Conservatives are responsible for unemployment in the west midlands, who is responsible for it in America or Australia or Canada?" [HON. MEMBERS: "Other Conservatives"'] Not in Canada. In France—a mere stone's throw away, and no doubt a Socialist paradise—Mr. Mitterrand has engineered exactly the same unemployment. There are other countries, too, such as Italy. There is also Germany. [Interruption.] If

  837
  hon. Members were to listen, they might learn something. If Germany had not sent out all her itinerant immigrant workers, her unemployment figures would be just as serious as ours.
  Some hon. Members, particularly the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Howell), mentioned import penetration. I should have liked to buy a totally British car, but the only British car that met my requirements had a Honda engine. Why is a Honda engine in a British Leyland car? The answer, presumably, is that a decision has been made by those responsible in BL that we cannot produce in this country an engine suitable for that car.
  Mr. Denis Howell: Why not buy a Rover?
  Mrs. Knight: I cannot afford one.
  My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary listed all the things that had been done for industry in the west midlands. He spoke of the ·1,230 million that this Government made available to British Leyland because they knew that hundreds of small firms in the west midlands were utterly dependent on orders from British Leyland. That act alone will have saved many jobs in the west midlands.
  My hon. Friend gave a long list of what has been done. I happen to believe that it is important that so much has been done to help small businesses to start. Many people have jobs because of that help. I sometimes wonder why Labour Members do not try to master what has already been done to help the young unemployed, about whom most of us are extremely worried. Do the Opposition know nothing of the scheme, recently announced, whereby all school leavers will either go to a job or to training? Does that mean nothing? I should have thought that it was worth mentioning.
  The help for new technology in our area is crucial. Assistance for projects introducing the new technologies, which are vital if we are to be competitive, is available from the research stage, through the design stage, development and launching of a new commercial project. That is immensely important. I could go on listing the ways in which help has been given, but I shall not do so. It would be infinitely better if everyone tried to help to overcome the serious situation that exists.
  The most recent community programme—one of many—interested me considerably. Its aim was to make available 130,000 jobs—temporary jobs admittedly, but jobs none the less—for people who have been out of work for some time. The idea is to produce projects that will help the community as a whole. In common with many of my hon. Friends, I looked at the scheme with great care. I went through the suggestions made, and I thought that, for the Birmingham area, the suggestion for the clearance of canals and footpaths would be of immense value. In fact, Birmingham has more miles of canals than Venice, and many of us are interested in a project of that nature. However, when I wrote to the chief executive of the council, I was told that we could not do that because the unions objected. What a pity. Why should that happen, when this scheme would help some people who had been unemployed for a long time?
  It is possible that the west midlands depends more on manufacturing than any other region. The figures show that 40 per cent. of the labour force is in manufacturing, while the national average is only 28 per cent. That is why we have suffered while other parts of Britain have
  838
  benefited from the recent consumer boom. Even in the west midlands there was an interesting consumer boom in small shops in the high streets, and more money was spent overall than ever before— £900 million more. But our area needs manufacturing industries, and there is much spare capacity in manufacturing industry in the west midlands.
  I was interested to hear the hon. Member for West Bromwich, West (Miss Boothroyd) talk about the CBI and regional help, but surely the CBI, in common with other business groupings in the west midlands, is not asking for assisted area status. The CBI told me that, and I have no doubt that it has told Labour Members the same thing. The CBI says clearly—how I agree with it—that jobs can only be created by private enterprise. [Interruption.] I cannot believe that the CBI will tell the right hon. Member for Small Heath one thing and me another. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman and I should put our heads together afterwards. It may help if I read a letter from the CBI. It says:
  "When this subject was debated on 7 February several. MPs argued that the region should be given some form of assisted area status. It might be helpful, therefore, to know the reasons why the regional CBI, after some debate, came down against this proposal."
  Mr. Denis Howell rose—
  Mrs. Knight: If the right hon. Gentleman has received a letter which says something completely different, I shall give way.
  Mr. Denis Howell: My hon. Friends the Members for Coventry, North-East (Mr. Park), Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Short) and others, along with myself, had a two-hour discussion with the CBI. It is completely divided. The younger members present at the meeting wanted assisted area status in order to attract EC grants. It is true that nationally the CBI is against it, but in the west midlands it is divided, and the more intelligent want it.
  Mrs. Knight: That will teach me to give way to the right hon. Gentleman. Nothing that he said made any difference at all to what I have said because he has acknowledged that the CBI has come down against the idea which is what I was trying to tell the House.
  There are three vital points. First, business costs must be reduced and rates comes into that. The right hon. Member for Dudley, East (Dr. Gilbert) must understand that rates have a great deal to do with industries' costs. We must reduce or abolish the national insurance surcharge and the cost of energy. Secondly, we must reduce unfair competition, a point which has been made and which I only wish to support. Finally, we must increase capital investment in motorways. I regret that we have heard nothing lately about the channel tunnel, which would help the west midlands greatly.
  There is no magic solution to the problems, but let us at least acknowledge that there are certain needs that must be met. However, in the final analysis it is the west midlands industries, with their own expertise and application, which will successfully surmount all the problems.
  6.2 pm
  Mr. John Forrester: The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Mrs. Knight) chided Labour Members for choosing this subject for debate and questioned why. The answer is that unemployment is the most important issue in Britain

  839
  today. It refuses to go away despite the fact that the Government may wish it to do so. As one famous comedian said—whether it was Tommy Cooper, Eric Morecambe or Ernie Wise I do not know—the Government have to get out of this if they can.
  My right hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) and the hon. Member for Leek (Mr. Knox), referring to north Staffordshire, the Stoke travel-to-work area, Newcastle-under-Lyme and Leek, pointed out that in 1979 unemployment was about 4 per cent., which was below the national average, and now it is about 14 per cent., which is slightly above the national average. I appreciate that in the west midlands the rate is over 16·5 per cent., but what is frightening to people in the area is the speed and extent of unemployment in recent years. A recently prosperous and industrial area has now become one of decay and decline with a fear for the future.
  Many fear that the official statistics do not tell the whole story. For instance, the pottery industry employs many women who do not pay a full stamp and do not register as unemployed. There are those whose benefit has expired, those on temporary job creation schemes and those who have just despaired of ever finding a job again.
  In April 1981 the official figure for those registered as unemployed was 11·3 per cent. in the month that the census figures were taken, and 11·9 per cent. said that they were registering or looking for employment. That was a difference of 735 people against the official figures. Since the Government cooked the way in which the statistics are now presented, we reckon that 1,600 people in the Stoke travel-to-work area are not officially declared as unemployed. That amounts to 30,000 miserable human beings who wonder why their world has fallen apart.
  My right hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South referred to the fact that the Michelin tyre company has already declared that over 1,000 people will be made redundant in the next two years—another burden on an already hard—pressed area. The Government tell us that after this period of history has passed we shall all be slimmer and fitter than we were before. We fear that British manufacturing industry is really suffering from anorexia nervosa, that it is fading away, and that when the great revival comes—it always seems to be around the next corner but one—there will be insufficient industry and skilled workers to take us towards that promised land.
  One side effect of youngsters' difficulty in finding employment in Stoke-on-Trent is that over the past three years another 3 per cent. have decided to stay on at school or to take further education courses. The Department of Education and Science might take note of that when it asks the county council to cut its education budget. We should have incentives other than a depression to encourage young people to stay on at school, which is a desirable objective anyway.
  Many people say that there is no point in training for specific jobs if there is no employment for them. However, I suggest that training opportunities should be increased rather than reduced. Anybody who is skilled by hand or brain will be more likely to be retrainable for some other job in future than someone who is unskilled. Britain cannot afford a whole generation of unskilled people with no training at all if we are to face the future with any confidence.
  840
  The Government often point to the fall in inflation. That is the great panacea. They never remind us that they were responsible for fuelling inflation when they took office in 1979. What a different story it would have been if the nation had followed the Labour Government's pleas for moderation, and if they had also followed sensible policies. Perhaps we would not then be in our present state.
  In addition, we have had high interest rates, a high pound—fortunately that is falling now—and the national insurance surcharge. But, worst of all for the Potteries, the Government have put a tax on gas. For an industry which is a high user of that fuel, that was a crippling imposition. Apart from reducing the national insurance surcharge and bringing down interest rates, the Government should have an energy policy to help British industry.
  The result of Government policies is that many firms in north Staffordshire have gone out of business, despite the fact that for over 100 years they have been able to weather all the depressions that have come along. Indeed, it looks as though they have closed their gates for good. There is a fear that a fundamental change is taking place in north Staffordshire and in the west midlands generally—that the old traditional industries will never return to employing the same number of people as they employed in the past. Since the war, Stoke has seen a dramatic drop in the number of people employed in the mining industry, and there has been a steady decline in the number of people employed in the pottery industry. Despite what the Minister said, the Government should look again at their regional policies and consider whether assistance is being given to the right people in the right places.
  I was interested to hear what was said about money from the EC, but I have been waiting a long time to see any of that money coming into Stoke-on-Trent. I hope that the Minister's statement will give us some hope for the future, but we shall believe it when we see it. We must not allow the west midlands and north Staffordshire to become deserts of the deindustrialisation revolution that appears to be taking place at the moment.
  Successive Governments have positively discouraged other industries from coming to places, such as north Staffordshire, where there were prosperous industries, as the pottery industry once was, so that those other industries would not take labour from existing industry. If the areas satisfied the Government of the day at that time, the Government now have a responsibility to assist, financially or otherwise, with diversification of industry.
  The pottery industry has all the virtues that the Government say are ideal to take the United Kingdom out of the recession. It has hard working operatives, high productivity, and moderation in wage demands. It has not had a national strike this century, yet it is struggling for existence. Why? If the pottery industry cannot survive in this position, what hope can the Government give us? When the rest of the country has all the virtues of the pottery industry, the recession will be well and truly over.
  The pottery industry in the west midlands must not perish. If the Government cannot alter the position, they must make a way for a Government who can.
  The Government must take action on the problem of cheap subsidised foreign imports and imitations. The Government must not stand idly by. Their friends in the CBI and those in the trade union movement are pressing them for action. Industries in this country—certainly the

  841
  pottery industry—can and must live with fair competition, but they cannot compete with dumping and dubious practices. If dumping and dubious practices come from the European Community, that is all the more reason for the Government to take immediate action. The Government have the power to create real jobs and to put people to work on socially useful assets for the future. I hope the Chancellor of the Exchequer will seize that opportunity next month.
  The Government may take satisfaction from the national opinion polls, but they cannot take any comfort from the fact that there are now two nations—the midlands and the north versus the south. Hon. Members must ask themselves how long a nation of this size can survive such a division within its society.
  Neither north Staffordshire nor the west midlands want charity. We have a long tradition of hard work, moderation, skill, dedication, and pride in the products that we manufacture. We want the Government to give this area the opportunity to use those gifts so that we can continue to make our contribution to society.
  6.14 pm
  Mr. Ivan Lawrence: It is a pleasure to follow my county colleague, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Mr. Forrester), although I have a different tale to tell.
  No one in Britain can pretend that unemployment in the west midlands is other than bad. That is beyond dispute. Unemployment is especially bad in this region for a variety of reasons, on some of which we can all agree, such as the recession in the car industry following the rise in oil prices. Naturally, the Opposition are bursting every sinew to blame the Government for everything. Do they imagine that the people do not see what they are up to? The more blame they heap on the Government the less blame they hope they will reap for themselves after years of restrictive practices which have been encouraged and given the force of law by Labour Governments. Now they have a vested interest in gloom. They believe that if they continue blaming the Government long enough and loud enough people will vote Labour at the next election.
  Mr. Snape: We shall see.
  Mr. Lawrence: What a hope! With such a massive lead in the public opinion polls, people have shown a marked resistance to being taken in. Since this series of debates on unemployment, the national opinion polls have been giving the Government an even greater lead. Unhappily for the west midlands, the more gloom and despondency that the Opposition spread the worse the situation gets. "If everything is so rotten in the west midlands," potential investors will say, "then that is the last place we wish to go to." The slower the recovery will be and the longer will be the dole queues. The position is bad, but there is no point in making it worse. It would get better if we highlighted the good points and not the bad points.
  So I will try to offset some of the miseries. I will not spend time on the lengthening catalogue of useful actions that the Government have taken, such as the reduction in the rate of inflation from 22 to 5 per cent. It is an undoubted fact that those firms still in existence are better able to meet competition because of Government policies
  842
  over the past three years than they would have been, I will cheer everyone up a little by talking about Burton-on-Trent and the constituency of Burton.
  We have bad unemployment, but it is better than nearly everywhere else in the west midlands. While the west midlands has 16 per cent. and the national average is 13·5 per cent. Burton has 9 per cent., which is 7 per cent. better than its region. Why is it so much better, despite many of the same problems that everyone else is facing'?
  Mr. Terry Davis: Look at what happened to the Birmingham breweries.
  Mr. Lawrence: That is part of it. If I outline six reasons it may give helpful pointers to other areas in the future.
  The first reason is the diversity of industries. We have brewing, engineering, tyres, plastics, agricultural machinery, iron foundries, food, construction, glass, agriculture and service industries. Perhaps none of that will help other towns and cities immediately, but there may be a lesson for us all to learn. That lesson is diversity. If we diversify businesses and spread them throughout our towns and cities, the large and dying industries will be replaced by a diversity of activities which will be less disastrously affected by future economic downturns.
  Secondly, Burton has good industrial relations. There may be a moral in the relatively low proportion of closed shop trade unionisation in Burton. Nevertheless, the wages earned are among the highest. Even where the unions are strong, a good relationship tends to exist between employers and work force. The main area of conflict is often between the trade unions' paid officials and their members, who get very angry at being kicked around in breach of democratic procedures and suffer the infringement of their reasonable civil liberties. The number of strikes and disruptions in Burton is very low. Nothing attracts support in lean times as much as a dependable work force. One industry that I am trying to attract to Burton from abroad is interested in that factor above all others.
  Thirdly, Burton has the advantage that management not only values good relationships with its work force, encouraged by an open door policy to the manager's office and profit sharing, but is prepared to get off its backside and sell in the world markets and to compete energetically. The factories that are weathering the world economic storm are all fighting in the world for business. They are firms such as Adams, the biscuit makers, setting up its stall for the first time in the United States of America, Robert Mortons, the brewery engineering firm, exporting an entire brewery to the United States of America and whose brewing industry support has secured five major contracts, one of which is in Canada, Everards, the brewers, who are setting up with Morton equipment to produce "Penguin Bitter" in the Falkland islands, JCB, the excavator company, introducing a complete new range of products at the height of the recession and improving its export potential, and the small workers co-operatives in the glass industry in Tutbury resurrected from the ashes of a larger closed factory.
  There is a refusal in Burton construction companies to accept defeat and their order books are beginning to revive. Companies like Robirch, in the food industry, are beginning to expand their operations. This is management at its most dynamic. It is an example to everyone.

  843
  Fourthly, there is active encouragement for businesses from the East Staffordshire district council. It has consistently, under Conservative control, held its rates below the level of its neighbours, and this year hopes to reduce the rates. It is a local authority that has made sites available for small businesses with little or no grant help from the Government. It has negotiated construction contracts with local developers that are an example of cooperation working to everyone's benefit. The key to the district council's activities has been the increased capital investment while the current account has been painfully brought under control.
  Fifthly, there is a very active chamber of commerce and industry in Burton, which works ceaselessly to advise members on how best to brave the chill winds, and to plan constructively for the future and to help with mutual assistance.
  Finally, the farming industry's output and efficiency—both locally in Burton and nationally—are second to none.
  Any Member of Parliament would be proud of this industrial area. I could go on listing the achievements of Burton-upon-Trent and the district. There is optimism in Burton, and its Member of Parliament refuses to talk down that optimism and achievement. The world recession will come to an end, and when it does Burton companies will be found to be competing successfully in the world. So the message from Burton industry to the Government is clear. It is, "Keep it up. Though your medicine is sometimes painful, your policies are right. For goodness sake stick to them, though be careful what you do to us in the Budget." And the message that Burton sends to the people of Britain is, "For goodness sake keep drinking our beer. It is the best there is."
  6.20 pm
  Mr. John Spellar: The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Mrs. Knight) said that the Opposition Benches had an air of frustration. They certainly do because we believe that, if there is a further period of Conservative Government, there will be very little industry left in the west midlands. I refer the hon. Lady to the reply that the Minister of State, Department of Employment gave on Friday about unemployment in the area and about the Northfield jobcentre. In May 1979, when the Conservative party came to office, there were 2,701 unemployed people registered at the Northfield jobcentre. In January 1983, the new, revised, "sanitised for your protection" figure was 10,079. That is the difference. It is not—as the hon. Member for Leek (Mr. Knox) said—that the trend is inevitable, whatever the Government. Under this Government, there has been a dramatic increase in unemployment.
  In the Birmingham travel-to-work area there has been an increase in the number of unemployed from 40,000 in May 1979 to 113,000 in May 1982. In the vehicle industry, the figures are even worse. In May 1979, 2,521 people were unemployed. In May 1982 that figure had risen to 11,717. Heaven knows what the figure is now. According to the redundancy notices issued through the Department of Employment during the past year for the Austin Rover Longbridge plant, the figures are 1,500, 1,000, 600 and, for last year, 3,100. That is just one of the car plants in the Birmingham area.
  844
  Birmingham and the west midlands now have the worst unemployment to vacancy ratio in Great Britain. In the United Kingdom, only Northern Ireland's ratio is worse. I suppose that it is fairly easy to understand the rather sanguine attitude of the Under-Secretaries of State. One of them represents a constituency in East Anglia which has the second best unemployment to vacancy ratio. The constituency of the Under-Secretary of State for Industry, the hon. Member for Norfolk, South (Mr. MacGregor), was No. 464 in the unemployment league table. The constituency of the Under-Secretary of State for Employment, the hon. Member for Eye (Mr. Gummer), is No. 517 in the unemployment league table. Perhaps their consciences are a little easier about what is happening than the consciences of those who represent constituencies that are among the top 100 or 150. The situation is rapidly becoming worse.
  The figures that I have given are reflected in the Longbridge plant in my constituency. In 1979, there were 19,000 manual workers, but that figure is now down to 10,000, and the figures are becoming worse. In the time available, I shall concentrate on the car industry, in particular BL, because of its major impact on my constituency and because its fate and that of the car industry is inextricably bound with the industries that have been mentioned tonight and with west midlands constituencies. Many of the firms mentioned depend heavily on BL. Therefore, we need to know the Government's and the management's intentions for BL. In some ways, we can only speculate, because the Government have built a wall of silence round themselves on the question of BL.
  In the House a few weeks ago both the hon. Member for Bromsgrove and Redditch (Mr. Miller) and I asked the Minister when he would publish the BL corporate plan. In a written question on Friday I repeated that question. The only answer that we receive is that the Minister will be presenting it some time. Why is he delaying? Why is there a gap in the Government's expenditure estimates against British Leyland? Why is there no figure for that? Is it because concerted negotiations are going on and because the Government are putting pressure on BL to take decisions that may be detrimental to the company? Are the Government putting pressure on BL? Are they saying that they will not give the company money in future, or even money already accounted for, unless it sells off Jaguar, Land Rover and special products, and breaks up the corporation?
  Are the Government saying that BL cannot have the finance unless it accepts a financial straitjacket that will make it artificially profitable? I say "artificially" because, with one or two Japanese exceptions, all the world's car manufacturers are making heavy losses. They are not generating enough internal financing to invest for the future. All the major corporations admit that there is an important world problem. Are the Government trying to force BL into short-term financial profitability so that the balance sheet looks right and the sharks in the City will feel able to invest? Is that the way in which the Government are negotiating with BL?
  What is the Government's view about the manufacture of components? Do they see BL merely as an assembler of components, which are possibly British or Possibly —a fear raised by hon. Members on both sides—foreign imports? The figure quoted is possibly up to 20 or 30 per cent. Hon Members should consider the impact of that on

  845
  the west midlands. Is it the Government's policy that BL should be mainly an assembler and that engine and gearbox manufacture, as well as the manufacture of other components, should stop, with the major threat that that poses in particular to the Longbridge plant? The Longbridge plant is not only an assembly plant, but a manufacturing plant. What negotiations and discussions have the Government and BL held with other manufacturers, particularly Honda? What is the nature of the deal? What will it mean for the components industry? The workers in British Leyland and those in the components industry have a right to know.
  What will the company and the Government do about the introduction of vitally needed new models, particularly in relation to the Longbridge complex? I do not want to set up an artificial dispute between Longbridge and Cowley, but the LM 10 and the LM 11 are going to Cowley. BL has announced that the XX will go to Cowley. What is the Government's views about the future of the Longbridge complex? Will they tell us before the general election, or are they keeping quiet until afterwards?
  Will the Government lift the veil from that hidden figure in the expenditure survey and say what they will put in in terms of vitally needed investment for the future of BL? Do they want BL run down to a small-scale assembler, with possibly a luxury division that is soon to be sold off, or do they want BL to stay in the major league, possibly through a merger? We need clear answers.
  We also want more general answers from the Government on the vehicle industry. What do they propose to do about increasing demand? What do they propose to do about cutting the excess tax on vehicle sales? What will the Government do to protect us against rampant and unfair foreign competition? During the Northfield by-election a Minister said that the control of Spanish imports was
  "firmly in the action file."
  We see precious little Government action on anything, but in this instance there has been no action five months later, despite the fact that the issue is vital. Spanish imports are only one of the unfair imports to enter Britain, whether they come from Korea, Eastern Europe, South Africa or Australia. There is a great list that adds up to hundreds and thousands of jobs in the car assembly and motor industry.
  Therefore, we want confidence to be restored in the industry. We want investment not only in manufacture, but in research and design. The uncertainty that hangs over the car and components industry in the west midlands should be removed. That should happen before the general election. Otherwise, the doubt, fear and uncertainty will continue. Tens of thousands of jobs, the lives of tens of thousands of families and the industrial future of the west midlands are dependent on the nature of the reply by the Government tonight.
  6.30 pm
  Mr. Richard Shepherd: No one can say that things are well in the west midlands. Hon. Members on both sides of the House have expressed unhappiness and anxiety about the way in which things have turned out. The concern has not been well served by the motion proposed by the Opposition. It is a silly motion, because it is not true. That is perceived by many people in the west midlands, as is evident from poll after poll. The people recognise that something deeply disturbing has happened to the structural arrangements of employment
  846
  within the west midlands. They know that this goes back many years and that the causes are not easy to remedy rapidly. They do not lay the blame for the long structural decline at the feet of this Government, but they think that certain things might be done to assist recovery.
  The observation has been made that we do not always buy cars from manufacturers within the west midlands. It is difficult to direct free people to purchase goods at certain places when there is an open market. To insist upon a certain quota of imported cars or of components assembled here may mean more uneconomic cars. Commercial firms use their judgment to buy as best they can so that their end product is as cheap and competitive as possible. If quotas or special arrangements are sought for a proportion of the car industry it may lead to the further decline of that industry.
  All the time in my constituency I am being asked whether we could do more. The answer has to be yes. A tight monetary policy may exacerbate recession. One of the largely unfair criticisms that I hear about the Government is that they do not seem to be sympathetic and that they have ignored some of the problems inherent in the west midlands. That observation was made forcefully to me last Friday by an intelligent convener at one of my most important factories. If the Government could demonstrate a more positive and perhaps more sympathetic approach, it would be much appreciated.
  This is happening to some extent. In Walsall we are delighted that at long last we have become a designated district. There is much evidence that we should have designated long ago.
  Almost every hon. Member has referred to the rating problem. My hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Heddle) has harassed the Government about void rating. Because of its inheritance through mismanagement by a former Left-wing Socialist council, Walsall has an awful problem about how to reallocate its resources. If it were to lift the burden on industrial premises it would have to impose a great burden on domestic ratepayers, which would be invidious
  In the rating area of the West Midlands county council much work has been done by the west midlands ratepayers federation, which is representative of all political parties. It is alarmed about the spending policies of West Midlands county council. The chairman of the ratepayers federation, Tony Jarvis, who is a resident of Aldridge, has ably pursued this issue. There would be wide common cause to abolish West Midlands county council. The Government should give serious consideration to that proposition.
  In regard to investment, the convener who I saw last Friday argued strongly that the position in his company had been brought about by a lack of investment in good years. That reflects all too often the pattern of investment, particularly in firms which have grown from family firms into larger concerns. In good years they did not return to their factories the investment that they should have done. That has rendered us less competitive. There is a good work force and good labour relations. Labour relations have improved since 1980. There is also much tougher management. But industry is using equipment that is grotesquely out of date in some instances, which puts it at a severe disadvantage in comparison with its competitors. Therefore, I urge the Government to look favourably at proposals for new investment in capital and equipment under the industrial legislation.

  847
  Energy cost have been touched upon by most hon. Members, as they are in many of these debates. We have not yet got energy costs right. We are still at a disadvantage. I urge the Government to do what they can about energy costs.
  My right hon. Friend the Member for Stafford and Stone (Sir H. Fraser) referred to dumping. The inequality of tariff arrangements such as those that operate in Spain are intolerable and unacceptable. People do not understand why the Government are not moving faster on that score.
  A working party is examining the idea of free ports. I have some knowledge of the success and tremendous stimulation to the economy of southern Florida resulting from free port status for Miami. I understand that the Government are thinking of coastal or near coastal towns. There would be a tremendous boost to the west midlands' economy if a free port were sited there, perhaps at the west midlands airport. This would enable us to process and forward goods through our region instead of their being dealt with in what we regard as more peripheral parts of the United Kingdom.
  If the question is raised whether there is hope, certainly there is, and there are signs of it already. I am glad that the pound has settled at its present level. I should not mind if it were a little lower. Some people say that is a short-term argument, but it is an observable fact—a loathsome expression—that with a lower pound the demand for sterling-priced exports grows in dollar terms. Therefore, we see small signs of an increase in United States dollar orders. Because of the decline of the pound against the mark, there is also an increase in my constituency of German orders. I am sure that the same thing is happening throughout the economy.
  6.38 pm
  Mr. Peter Snape: Inevitably, because of the pressures on the time available for the debate, the winding-up speeches of both myself and the Minister will be truncated. It is right to point out immediately that the purpose of the debate was not, as some hon. Members seem to think, merely to score political points, although in all seriousness and honesty many genuine, relevant political and economic points could well be scored against the Government because of their policies and the impact of those policies on the west midlands over the past three years.
  We were dealt rather a blow in the opening sentence of the Minister's speech, because he made it clear that there would be no change in the Government's regional policy on the west midlands before the general election. There are differences of opinion among various groups in the west midlands about the desirability of the area receiving assisted area status. However, more and more people are coming round to the view expressed by my hon. Friends and by the west midlands Labour party generally that without such status the inevitable decline that we have seen over the past three years will accelerate.
  Even newspapers that one does not normally associate with support for the party to which I have the honour to belong say that there is a good case for the region to receive assisted area status following the decline of industry in the area, particularly since 1979. As recently as last night, my local newspaper, the Sandwell Evening Mail, in an editorial dealing with the manner in which the
  848
  Department of the Environment had misled my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, North-East (Mr. Park) on European grants, concluded by saying:
  "If necessary, Sandwell borough"
  —in which my constituency lies—
  "should be given assisted area status that would qualify it for aid"
  —that is European aid. The editorial went on to say:
  "In fact, there is a very strong case for making the whole of the West Midlands an assisted area. Over to you Mr. King." That is what a prominent newspaper, which at least editorially has traditionally supported the Conservative party, feels.
  The manner in which the Minister dashed our hopes shows that the economic revival of the region is unlikely to take place under the present Government. The Minister, like most of his hon. Friends, had a ritualistic dig at the West Midlands county council. I am always surprised—I should not be—at the constant and non-stop hypocrisy of the Tory party. One would think that the Conservatives had been the great opponents of the creation of the West Midlands county council in the first place.
  I remind the hon. Member for Aldridge—Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) and the Minister that it was the Labour party that opposed the creation of metropolitan county councils in the early 1970s. Most of those who now complain about the budget dutifully trooped through the Lobby to support the creation of that authority. They will no doubt dutifully troop through the Lobby tonight to support their Government, despite the disasters that the policies of that Government have brought on the west midlands.
  All my hon. Friends representing the west midlands are in favour of the cheaper public transport policies of the West Midlands county council. We are also much in favour of the public consultation exercise that the county council has carried out in respect of those policies. I have received 500 leaflets back from people in West Bromwich saying that they want better and cheaper public transport. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Beaumont-Dark) complains about the cost of the initial exercise. The fact that over 500 people in my constituency have been prepared to spend money on a stamp, to address the envelope and, in many cases, to include a letter, shows the popularity of such a policy. It demonstrates why the West Midlands county council was won heavily by the Labour party at the last county council elections.
  The motion mentions certain industries in the region. I should like to refer to most of those industries by name. I start with the foundry industry, which has long been regarded as the industrial bedrock, if that is the right term, of the black country and the borough of Sandwell. The industry has inevitably suffered financial losses and reductions of manpower over the years through the acceptance of modern working practices and changes in those practices. The loss of manpower that occurred during the 1970s came about with the full co-operation of the much-maligned trade unions that have been mentioned today.
  A different approach to the foundry industry has been adopted by the present Government. The latter-day Luddites wear pinstripe suits and work for merchant bankers. At firms like F. H. Lloyd and others throughout the west midlands it is now policy, aided and abetted by the Government, to rip out machinery and smash it up to guarantee that foundry production ceases on the site. If the

  849
  Government had fought the 1979 general election more honestly, they would have pointed out to the people of the west midlands that a vote for the Conservative party was a vote not only for unemployment but to smash up the machinery that would have helped Britain to move forward and out of recession in the 1980s. That is what is happening in the foundry industry under present policies.
  There are various aspects of aid and assistance to this vital industry that the Government have not even bothered to consider. They could have examined the vexed question of the control of imports of foreign castings. However, import controls are regarded as anathema by the Government. They believe in fair trading. Where is the fairness in expecting the British foundry industry to compete with foundries in western Europe alone where energy costs, on average, in most of those countries are anything up to 20 per cent. cheaper?
  Conservative Members have complained about energy costs. They must think that Opposition Members have short memories or that the public are totally unaware of the events of the past four years. Was it not this Government who insisted that the nationalised energy boards should put up their prices—to double them, in fact, in the first 18 months—to ensure that the Treasury, as they put it, would have a better return on capital? Had not Conservative Members considered the impact that the doubling of prices would have on British industry in general and on the foundry industry in particular? Have those hon. Members any right to come to the House and complain about the pricing policies of nationalised industries when they presumably voted for those policies, again as dutifully as they will vote at seven o'clock tonight for the strangulation of the west midlands economy? It is pointless coming to the House to complain about energy prices if one supports a Government who, deliberately and as a matter of policy, have gone out to double those prices in their first two years of office.
  There are other actions that the Government could take to help this hard-pressed industry. There has been reference to the need for the abolition of the 10 per cent. car tax. The foundry industry depends heavily on motor car sales within the United Kingdom. My hon. Friends and myself are united in the belief that there is need for far greater public expenditure on roads, railways and the sewerage system. These are major public works that will have to take place in the 1980s. To put them off only means that when the day comes when they have to be done the cost will be even greater than if the process had been started five years earlier. It is the economics of the madhouse to waste the massive revenues from North Sea oil to keep people standing around in the dole queues. That is what the Government are doing. It is one of the reasons why the foundry industry, like many others, finds itself in its present state.
  The motion mentions machine tools. This reveals a sad decline for a nation that once led the world in the production of sophisticated machine tools. Import penetration has increased from 28 per cent. in 1970 to over 50 per cent. in 1981. The concentration of the British machine tool industry in the 1970s on comparatively low technology machinery—the lathes, the drills, the milling machines and the grinders—has meant that another world lead has been frittered away. It cannot be blamed on the trade unions. The management decisions, the takeovers, the disinvestment and the so-called rationalisation that took place in the 1970s are having their impact in the
  850
  1980s. In the short term, the Government should provide research and development investment funds for this vital industry if it is to compete properly in the 1980s.
  The motion also mentions engineering. A great deal has been heard about the start of new businesses in the west midlands. However, little has been heard from the Conservative Benches about the record bankruptcies in other sectors.
  Mr. Denis Howell: They amount to 230 a month.
  Mr. Snape: As my right hon. Friend says, they amount to 230 a month, many in the small engineering industry. Without an economic upturn and a change in economic policy, there is little hope.
  Car components are mentioned in the motion. I do not think that even the Minister, from the industrial heartlands of Eye, will disagree that the British car components industry is suffering. Without a change in the managerial philosophies in companies such as F. H. Lucas and Dunlop, the decline in the British car component industry will continue. The recruiting abroad by companies such as F. H. Lucas, while sacking workers in this country, does not strike me as patriotism, although I have no doubt that there is a portrait of Her Majesty in its boardroom. For companies such as Dunlop to export their technology and our jobs to China—to name but one country—does not bode well for the future of the British car component industry. We need action from the Government.
  There are currently 57 people unemployed for every vacancy in the west midlands. No Conservative Member mentioned the impact that the Government's economic policies have had and will have on the region. In its report published earlier this year the Cambridge economic unit suggested that if present policies were continued to the end of the decade—heaven forbid—unemployment in the west midlands region would be 21·9 per cent. I dare say that the right hon. Lady the Prime Minister will still be grinning when that happens, but I hope that the people of the west midlands will realise the con trick pulled on them in 1979. Whatever else they voted for, my constituency did not vote for 28,600 people to be on the dole. They did not vote for the Dudley and Sandwell area unemployment figures to be up 271·8 per cent. since polling day in 1979. The posters in the constituencies of my right hon. and hon. Friends and myself which said, "Labour is not working" in 1979 would not need actors to set the same scene in 1983.
  Despite the sniggers of Conservative Members, those of us in the west midlands are looking forward to the next general election with a bit more enthusiasm than some of them.
  6.51 pm
  The Under-Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. Selwyn Gummer): Many points have been raised, and I have even less time than I was promised originally to deal with them. I shall seek to answer them as quickly as I can.
  The right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) raised the fundamental matter of unfair competition, and I believe that that is one of the subjects that we should cover. We must make the distinction between unfair competition and proper competition that we fail to meet. It is a distinction that it ill behoves us to miss.
  The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the pottery industry and said that there is considerable unfair

  851
  competition from both Spain and Italy. We have sought to meet those complaints. We are preparing a major criticism and seeking to deal with the valid case that has been made about Spanish dumping. So far, no case has been made about Italian dumping. If the right hon. Gentleman can provide the evidence from the people whom he says have talked to him about it, we shall take up the matter immediately and deal with it.
  We believe that competition must be fair. We should look, therefore, at the points made about counterfeiting. There has been a considerable amount of counterfeiting of British goods throughout the world, and we must meet the problem. That is why we have, for the first time, set up a major anti-counterfeiting unit in the Department of Trade to deal only with this problem.
  One of the matters to which we can point—not as a direct result of that, but as part of the movement in the world—is the strict new legislation that the Taiwanese authorities have introduced. We look to the Taiwanese authorities to stop the counterfeiting that has gone on there, about which we are anxious, by careful monitoring.
  I do not believe that we meet the problems of unemployment or industrial decline in the west midlands by using expressions that make the position not just worse, but alter its terms. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Howell) should have been a little more careful about the figures he used. He managed to give the impression that 80 per cent. or 90 per cent. of the young people in his constituency were unemployed. He was including all those who were still at school and in further education—[Interruption.] Before Opposition Members shout, the point that they make so often is that the Government are not prepared to meet each point as we go along. I am trying to do that.
  It was also rather curious of the right hon. Member for Small Heath to complain about the 11 per cent. penetration of Japanese car imports, as if there were no Japanese car imports when he was a Minister in the Labour Government. It is curious behaviour to use any statistic that suits the argument rather than statistics—
  Mr. Denis Howell rose—
  Mr. Gummer: I shall not give way, because I have only four minutes in which to speak. When the right hon. Gentleman reads his speech, he will see that what I have said is correct.
  Mr. Howell: The Minister is wrong. I checked my figures this morning.
  Mr. Gummer: It is not reasonable for the right hon. Gentleman to make a statement that undermines the west midlands case. Its case surely is that it was and ought to be the power-house of British industry and be able to compete thoughout the world. We want to enable it to regain that status. It is already, as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Solihull (Mr. Grieve) pointed out, an important exporting area.
  What does the right hon. Member for Small Heath say? He says that we must control imports of manufactures. He bases that upon the argument that we already have an excess of manufactured imports over our manufactured goods. He is wrong. He is £1,500 million wrong on the figures for the first nine months of last year—the latest
  852
  figures that we have. The right hon. Gentleman must not put forward any old figures to support an insupportable case.
  The hon. Member for West Bromich, West (Miss Boothroyd) made some creative proposals. I shall miss out the first four minutes of her speech, which I felt was uncharacteristic. The characteristic part suggested that the problem of the European Community and its investment of the social fund should be looked at seriously. The Government have constantly said that they want the social fund to extend the degree to which it puts its aid where it is needed in specific areas. We have fought for that, and when the Commission produced its proposals in October 1982 we supported them wholeheartedly. We have pressed hard for the negotiations to continue. The proposals will come before the Council of Ministers in June this year, and we hope that it will be possible—
  Miss Boothroyd: It has already been before the Select Committee.
  Mr. Gummer: The hon. Lady knows perfectly well that we must have the support of all the countries within the Community. No country would suggest that we have done other than act as fast as possible. We are pressing this matter as fast as we can. We fully support the points that she has made.
  It does not help when dealing with such matters to avoid the facts. It is worth remembering that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Industry pointed out that the regional development grant for the whole country amounted to £1,870 million since the Government came into office. The majority of that went to the west midlands. We gave British Leyland £1,230 million. It cannot be said that the west midlands has not received a considerable amount. Compared with regional grants, the west midlands has received more than many of the assisted areas merely by the amount that goes to British Leyland.
  I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Dudley, East (Dr. Gilbert) is not here, and I understand why, but he made the most amazing statement. He said that the Conservative Government were responsible not just for everything that went wrong in the west midlands, but for the world slump. It is an economic argument which has not been heard before. Not even the Cambridge economy unit has come up with that before.
  According to the right hon. Gentleman the British Government are so powerful, so remarkable and so central that they have caused the world slump. With that one remarkable statement, the right hon. Gentleman put out of court everything else that he said.
  The only case put forward by the Opposition against the Government's policy for the regeneration of British industry is the worst mixture imaginable. The ingredients are simple. The first—import controls—would result in massive retaliation and hit the west midlands worse than any other part of the country. The second—to remove Britain from the EC—would result in the largest disinvestment in our history. The third—[Interruption.] It is all very well for the Shadow Chief Whip to complain, but it was the Opposition who took the extra time and therefore took time from me. I intend to complete what I have to say.
  The third suggestion is that we should tax successful industries in the west midlands to raise vast sums for bad local councils to spend. If the Opposition want to help the

  853
  west midlands, the first thing that they should do is to ensure that west midlands local government stops the tax on jobs that the West Midlands county council imposes with every increased rate demand.
  Question put:—
  The House divided: Ayes 239, Noes 301.

  Division No. 75]

  [7 pm

  AYES

  Abse, Leo

  English, Michael

  Adams, Allen

  Ennals, Rt Hon David

  Allaun, Frank

  Evans, Ioan (Aberdare)

  Anderson, Donald

  Evans, John (Newton)

  Archer, Rt Hon Peter

  Ewing, Harry

  Ashley, Rt Hon Jack

  Faulds, Andrew

  Ashton, Joe

  Field, Frank

  Atkinson, N.(H'gey,)

  Fitch, Alan

  Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)

  Foot, Rt Hon Michael

  Barnett, Rt Hon Joel (H'wd)

  Ford, Ben

  Beith, A. J.

  Forrester, John

  Benn, Rt Hon Tony

  Foster, Derek

  Bennett, Andrew(St'kp't N)

  Foulkes, George

  Bidwell, Sydney

  Fraser, J. (Lamb'th, N'w'd)

  Booth, Rt Hon Albert

  Freeson, Rt Hon Reginald

  Boothroyd, Miss Betty

  Freud, Clement

  Bottomley, Rt Hon A.(M'b'ro)

  Garrett, John (Norwich S)

  Bradley, Tom

  Garrett, W. E. (Wallsend)

  Bray, Dr Jeremy

  George, Bruce

  Brocklebank-Fowler, C.

  Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

  Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)

  Ginsburg, David

  Brown, R. C. (N'castle W)

  Golding, John

  Brown, Ronald W. (H'ckn'y S)

  Gourlay, Harry

  Brown, Ron (E'burgh, Leith)

  Hamilton, James (Bothwell)

  Buchan, Norman

  Hamilton, W. W. (C'tral Fife)

  Callaghan, Rt Hon J.

  Hardy, Peter

  Callaghan, Jim (Midd't'n & P)

  Harrison, Rt Hon Walter

  Campbell, Ian

  Hart, Rt Hon Dame Judith

  Campbell-Savours, Dale

  Haynes, Frank

  Canavan, Dennis

  Healey, Rt Hon Denis

  Cant, R. B.

  Heffer, Eric S.

  Carmichael, Neil

  Hogg, N. (E Dunb't'nshire)

  Carter-Jones, Lewis

  Holland, S. (L'b'th. Vauxh'Il)

  Cartwright, John

  Homewood, William

  Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

  Hooley, Frank

  Clarke, Thomas(C'b'dge, A'rie)

  Horam, John

  Cocks, Rt Hon M. (B'stol S)

  Howell, Rt Hon D.

  Cohen, Stanley

  Hoyle, Douglas

  Coleman, Donald

  Hughes, Mark (Durham)

  Concannon, Rt Hon J. D.

  Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

  Conlan, Bernard

  Janner, Hon Greville

  Cook, Robin F.

  Jay, Rt Hon Douglas

  Cowans, Harry

  Jenkins, Rt Hon Roy (Hillh'd)

  Cox, T. (W'dsw'th, Toot'g)

  John, Brynmor

  Craigen, J. M. (G'gow, M'hill)

  Johnson, James (Hull West)

  Crowther, Stan

  Jones, Rt Hon Alec (Rh'dda)

  Cryer, Bob

  Jones, Barry (East Flint)

  Cunliffe, Lawrence

  Jones, Dan (Burnley)

  Cunningham, Dr J. (W'h'n)

  Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald

  Dalyell, Tam

  Kerr, Russell

  Davidson, Arthur

  Kilroy-Silk, Robert

  Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (L'Ili)

  Lambie, David

  Davis, Clinton (Hackney C)

  Lamond, James

  Davis, Terry (B'ham, Stechf'd)

  Leadbitter, Ted

  Deakins, Eric

  Leighton, Ronald

  Dean, Joseph (Leeds West)

  Lestor, Miss Joan

  Dewar, Donald

  Lewis, Arthur (N'ham NW)

  Dixon, Donald

  Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)

  Dobson, Frank

  Litherland, Robert

  Dormand, Jack

  Lofthouse, Geoffrey

  Douglas, Dick

  Lyon, Alexander (York)

  Dubs, Alfred

  Lyons, Edward (Bradf'd W)

  Duffy, A. E. P.

  Mabon, Rt Hon Dr J. Dickson

  Dunnett, Jack

  McDonald, Dr Oonagh

  Dunwoody, Hon Mrs G.

  McElhone, Mrs Helen

  Eadie, Alex

  McGuire, Michael (Ince)

  Eastham, Ken

  McKay, Allen (Penistone)

  Edwards, R. (W'hampt'n S E)

  MacKenzie, Rt Hon Gregor

  Ellis, R. (NE D'bysh're)

  McNally, Thomas

  Ellis, Tom (Wrexham)

  McNamara, Kevin

  854

  McTaggart, Robert

  Short, Mrs Renée

  McWilliam, John

  Silkin, Rt Hon J. (Deptford)

  Marks, Kenneth

  Silkin, Rt Hon S. C. (Dulwich)

  Marshall, D(G'gow S'ton)

  Silverman, Julius

  Marshall, Dr Edmund (Goole)

  Skinner, Dennis

  Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

  Smith, Rt Hon J. (N Lanark)

  Martin, M(G'gow S'burn)

  Snape, Peter

  Mason, Rt Hon Roy

  Soley, Clive

  Maxton, John

  Spearing, Nigel

  Meacher, Michael

  Spellar, John Francis (B'ham)

  Mikardo, Ian

  Spriggs, Leslie

  Millan, Rt Hon Bruce

  Stallard, A. W.

  Miller, Dr M. S. (E Kilbride)

  Steel, Rt Hon David

  Mitchell, R. C. (Soton Itchen)

  Stoddart, David

  Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)

  Stott, Roger

  Morris, Rt Hon C. (O'shaw)

  Strang, Gavin

  Mulley, Rt Hon Frederick

  Straw, Jack

  Newens, Stanley

  Summerskill, Hon Dr Shirley

  Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

  Taylor, Mrs Ann (Bolton W)

  O'Halloran, Michael

  Thomas, Jeffrey (Abertillery)

  O'Neill, Martin

  Thomas, Dr R.(Carmarthen)

  Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

  Thorne, Stan (Preston South)

  Palmer, Arthur

  Tinn, James

  Park, George

  Torney, Tom

  Parker, John

  Varley, Rt Hon Eric G.

  Parry, Robert

  Wainwright, E.(Dearne V)

  Pavitt, Laurie

  Wainwright, R.(Colne V)

  Penhaligon, David

  Walker, Rt Hon H.(D'caster)

  Pitt, William Henry

  Wardell, Gareth

  Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)

  Watkins, David

  Prescott, John

  Weetch, Ken

  Price, C. (Lewisham W)

  Wellbeloved, James

  Race, Reg

  Welsh, Michael

  Radice, Giles

  White, Frank R.

  Rees, Rt Hon M (Leeds S)

  White, J. (G'gow Pollok)

  Richardson, Jo

  Whitehead, Phillip

  Roberts, Albert (Normanton)

  Whitlock, William

  Roberts, Allan (Bootle)

  Wigley, Dafydd

  Roberts, Ernest (Hackney N)

  Willey, Rt Hon Frederick

  Roberts, Gwilym (Cannock)

  Williams, Rt Hon A.(S'sea W)

  Robertson, George

  Williams, Rt Hon Mrs(Crosby)

  Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)

  Wilson, Rt Hon Sir H.(H'ton)

  Rooker, J. W.

  Wilson, William (C'try SE)

  Roper, John

  Winnick, David

  Ross, Ernest (Dundee West)

  Woodall, Alec

  Rowlands, Ted

  Woolmer, Kenneth

  Ryman, John

  Wrigglesworth, Ian

  Sandelson, Neville

  Sever, John

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Sheerman, Barry

  Mr. Hugh McCartney and

  Sheldon, Rt Hon R.

  Mr. George Morton.

  Shore, Rt Hon Peter

  NOES

  Adley, Robert

  Body, Richard

  Aitken, Jonathan

  Bottomley, Peter (W'wich W)

  Alexander, Richard

  Bowden, Andrew

  Alison, Rt Hon Michael

  Boyson, Dr Rhodes

  Amery, Rt Hon Julian

  Braine, Sir Bernard

  Ancram, Michael

  Bright, Graham

  Arnold, Tom

  Brinton, Tim

  Aspinwall, Jack

  Brittan, Rt. Hon. Leon

  Atkins, Rt Hon H.(S'thorne)

  Brooke, Hon Peter

  Atkins, Robert(Preston N)

  Brotherton, Michael

  Atkinson, David (B'm'th,E)

  Brown, Michael (Brigg & Sc'n)

  Baker, Kenneth (St.M'bone)

  Browne, John (Winchester)

  Baker, Nicholas (N Dorset)

  Bruce-Gardyne, John

  Banks, Robert

  Bryan, Sir Paul

  Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

  Buchanan-Smith, Rt. Hon. A.

  Bendall, Vivian

  Buck, Antony

  Bennett, Sir Frederic (T'bay)

  Budgen, Nick

  Benyon, Thomas (A'don)

  Burden, Sir Frederick

  Benyon, W. (Buckingham)

  Butcher, John

  Berry, Hon Anthony

  Carlisle, John (Luton West)

  Best, Keith

  Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

  Bevan, David Gilroy

  Carlisle, Rt Hon M. (R'c'n)

  Biffen, Rt Hon John

  Chalker, Mrs. Lynda

  Biggs-Davison, Sir John

  Channon, Rt. Hon. Paul

  Blackburn, John

  Chapman, Sydney

  Blaker, Peter

  Clark, Hon A. (Plym'th, S'n)

  855

  Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)

  Hawkins, Sir Paul

  Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)

  Hawksley, Warren

  Cockeram, Eric

  Hayhoe, Barney

  Colvin, Michael

  Heath, Rt Hon Edward

  Cope, John

  Heddle, John

  Corrie, John

  Henderson, Barry

  Costain, Sir Albert

  Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

  Cranborne, Viscount

  Hill, James

  Critchley, Julian

  Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

  Crouch, David

  Holland, Philip (Carlton)

  Dickens, Geoffrey

  Hooson, Tom

  Dorrell, Stephen

  Hordern, Peter

  Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.

  Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

  Dover, Denshore

  Howell, Rt Hon D. (G'ldf'd)

  du Cann, Rt Hon Edward

  Howell, Ralph (N Norfolk)

  Dunn, Robert (Dartford)

  Hunt, David (Wirral)

  Durant, Tony

  Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

  Dykes, Hugh

  Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas

  Eden, Rt Hon Sir John

  Irvine, Rt Hon Bryant Godman

  Edwards, Rt Hon N. (P'broke)

  Irving, Charles (Cheltenham)

  Eggar, Tim

  Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick

  Elliott, Sir William

  Jessel, Toby

  Emery, Sir Peter

  Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

  Eyre, Reginald

  Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith

  Fairbairn, Nicholas

  Kaberry, Sir Donald

  Fairgrieve, Sir Russell

  Kershaw, Sir Anthony

  Faith, Mrs Sheila

  Kimball, Sir Marcus

  Farr, John

  King, Rt Hon Tom

  Fell, Sir Anthony

  Kitson, Sir Timothy

  Fenner, Mrs Peggy

  Knight, Mrs Jill

  Finsberg, Geoffrey

  Knox, David

  Fisher, Sir Nigel

  Lamont, Norman

  Fletcher, A. (Ed'nb'gh N)

  Lang, Ian

  Fletcher-Cooke, Sir Charles

  Langford-Holt, Sir John

  Fookes, Miss Janet

  Latham, Michael

  Forman, Nigel

  Lawrence, Ivan

  Fowler, Rt Hon Norman

  Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel

  Fox, Marcus

  Le Marchant, Spencer

  Fraser, Rt Hon Sir Hugh

  Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

  Fraser, Peter (South Angus)

  Lester, Jim (Beeston)

  Fry, Peter

  Lewis, Sir Kenneth (Rutland)

  Gardiner, George (Reigate)

  Lloyd, Ian (Havant & W'loo)

  Gardner, Sir Edward

  Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

  Garel-Jones, Tristan

  Loveridge, John

  Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian

  Lyell, Nicholas

  Goodhart, Sir Philip

  McCrindle, Robert

  Goodhew, Sir Victor

  Macfarlane, Neil

  Goodlad, Alastair

  MacGregor, John

  Gorst, John

  MacKay, John (Argyll)

  Gow, Ian

  Macmillan, Rt Hon M.

  Gower, Sir Raymond

  McNair-Wilson, M. (N'bury)

  Grant, Sir Anthony

  McNair-Wilson, P. (New F'st)

  Gray, Rt Hon Hamish

  McQuarrie, Albert

  Greenway, Harry

  Madel, David

  Griffiths, E.(B'y St. Edm'ds)

  Major, John

  Griffiths, Peter (Portsm'th N)

  Marlow, Antony

  Grist, Ian

  Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

  Grylls, Michael

  Marten, Rt Hon Neil

  Gummer, John Selwyn

  Mates, Michael

  Hamilton, Hon A.

  Maude, Rt Hon Sir Angus

  Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)

  Mawby, Ray

  Hampson, Dr Keith

  Mawhinney, Dr Brian

  Hannam, John

  Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

  Haselhurst, Alan

  Mayhew, Patrick

  Hastings, Stephen

  Mellor, David

  856

  Meyer, Sir Anthony

  Sims, Roger

  Miller, Hal (B'grove)

  Skeet, T. H. H.

  Mills, Iain (Meriden)

  Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

  Mills, Sir Peter (West Devon)

  Speed, Keith

  Miscampbell, Norman

  Speller, Tony

  Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)

  Spence, John

  Moate, Roger

  Spicer, Jim (West Dorset)

  Monro, Sir Hector

  Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

  Montgomery, Fergus

  Sproat, Iain

  Moore, John

  Squire, Robin

  Morris, M. (N'hampton S)

  Stainton, Keith

  Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)

  Stanbrook, Ivor

  Mudd, David

  Stanley, John

  Murphy, Christopher

  Steen, Anthony

  Myles, David

  Stevens, Martin

  Neale, Gerrard

  Stewart, A(E Renfrewshire)

  Needham, Richard

  Stewart, Ian (Hitchin)

  Nelson, Anthony

  Stokes, John

  Neubert, Michael

  Stradling Thomas, J.

  Newton, Tony

  Tapsell, Peter

  Nott, Rt Hon Sir John

  Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

  Onslow, Cranley

  Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman

  Oppenheim, Rt Hon Mrs S.

  Temple-Morris, Peter

  Osborn, John

  Thatcher, Rt Hon Mrs M.

  Page, Richard (SW Herts)

  Thomas, Rt Hon Peter

  Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil

  Thompson, Donald

  Parris, Matthew

  Thorne, Neil (Ilford South)

  Patten, Christopher (Bath)

  Thornton, Malcolm

  Patten, John (Oxford)

  Townend, John (Bridlington)

  Pawsey, James

  Townsend, Cyril D, (B'heath)

  Percival, Sir Ian

  van Straubenzee, Sir W.

  Pink, R. Bonner

  Vaughan, Dr Gerard

  Pollock, Alexander

  Viggers, Peter

  Porter, Barry

  Waddington, David

  Prentice, Rt Hon Reg

  Wakeham, John

  Price, Sir David (Eastleigh)

  Waldegrave, Hon William

  Proctor, K. Harvey

  Walker, Rt Hon P. (W'cester)

  Pym, Rt Hon Francis

  Walker, B. (Perth)

  Rathbone, Tim

  Walker-Smith, Rt Hon Sir D.

  Rees, Peter (Dover and Deal)

  Wall, Sir Patrick

  Renton, Tim

  Waller, Gary

  Rhodes James, Robert

  Walters, Dennis

  Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

  Ward, John

  Ridley, Hon Nicholas

  Warren, Kenneth

  Ridsdale, Sir Julian

  Watson, John

  Rifkind, Malcolm

  Wells, Bowen

  Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey

  Wells, John (Maidstone)

  Roberts, Wyn (Conway)

  Wheeler, John

  Rossi, Hugh

  Whitelaw, Rt Hon William

  Rost, Peter

  Wickenden, Keith

  Royle, Sir Anthony

  Wiggin, Jerry

  Rumbold, Mrs A. C. R.

  Wilkinson, John

  Sainsbury, Hon Timothy

  Williams, D.(Montgomery)

  St. John-Stevas, Rt Hon N.

  Winterton, Nicholas

  Scott, Nicholas

  Wolfson, Mark

  Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)

  Young, Sir George (Acton)

  Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

  Younger, Rt Hon George

  Shelton, William (Streatham)

  Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Shepherd, Richard

  Mr. Carol Mather and

  Silvester, Fred

  Mr. Robert Boscawen.

  Question accordingly negatived.

Unemployment (Yorkshire and Humberside)
Mr. Speaker: Before we begin the debate, I must tell the House that it was a great help in the last debate when hon. Members imposed upon themselves a time limit of 10 minutes, which enabled the Chair to call many more hon. Members than would otherwise have been the case.
7.13 pm
Mr. Roy Mason: I beg to move,
That this House deplores the policies of Her Majesty's Government which have resulted in distressingly high unemployment in Yorkshire and Humberside, where unemploy-ment is rising faster than the national average; is concerned at the demoralising effects on those unemployed persons who are suffering indignity, misery and family unhappiness as they strive to live; furthermore finds it disturbing that the numbers of unemployed school leavers and long-term unemployed are increasing with no hope and no future; recognises and deplores that the regions' major industries of steel, textiles, fishing and manufacturing have declined disastrously and therefore calls upon Her Majesty's Government to take urgent action to remedy this decline and regenerate the Yorkshire and Humberside Region.
No one can doubt the gloom about unemployment that hangs over the nation. Anyone visiting Sheffield, Hull, Mexborough, Scunthorpe or Rotherham will see the rundown, dilapidated industries, the factory shells and the rotting trawlers on Humberside. They will see people of all ages, including able-bodied men, wearily searching for work. More and more of them are poorly dressed. The heart has been knocked out of them because they have no jobs and no hope. A decaying environment is growing in some of the towns.
The national employment picture is the worst in memory, and getting worse. Unemployment jumped again in January by 128,000 —an all-time record. Registered and unregistered unemployed are at least 4 million, and the underlying rise still strong. Unbelievably, the Government's spending plans assume that unemployment will rise by another 350,000 in the next financial year.
Manufacturing output fell last November to its lowest for 16 years —one fifth below what the Government inherited in 1979. Investment in manufacturing is only two thirds of the level of four years ago. Surveys show that businesses plan to cut investment even further. The CBI survey shows that 50 per cent. of firms expect to employ fewer people in the next four months, while only 5 per cent. expect to employ more. Companies are still closing plants and cutting jobs at an alarming rate. Indeed, the CBI estimates that manufacturing employment will continue to fall by 22,000 to 23,000 jobs per month. With the January figures showing such a sharp upturn, that kills any speculation that economic recovery is on the way.
Even the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has been publicly critical of Government policy, stating that if there were no change in policy there would be continuing weak economic growth during the next 18 months. It advised that there should be some relaxation of fiscal policy by lowering business costs and increasing public capital spending. So much for the gloomy national scene in which we must operate and live as a region.
There is the oft-quoted phrase of the Chancellor of the Exchequer a year ago, that the recession was bottoming out. Some bottom —in Yorkshire and Humberside it is a
858
bottomless pit. We contend that the economic imbalance between the relatively unproductive south and the vast industrial regions of the north must change. The patterns of unemployment and national misery and suffering are not part of a patchwork quilt. It is the north versus the south —the relatively contented south and the discontented north. The regional employment figures prove that, as do the political opinion polls.
It is a tragic reflection on the Government's policies that the Yorkshire and Humberside region—a basically rich region with all the skills of agriculture, fishing, coal, steel and textiles—has been shattered in such a short time. We do not want to languish in the economic slough and ruin of the Government's policies. We want an economically strong region, able to produce the maximum wealth from its resources for the benefit of the nation. Yet only the coal industry has survived with any real strength. Investment has been the key, from which the increases in productivity, output and new pits have helped to keep the industry alive.
Yorkshire would have been in economic ruin if the coal industry had suffered the same fate as the steel industry, bearing in mind the thousands of manufacturing and service jobs dependent on it. Even so, 2,229 jobs have been lost in coal during the past four years in Yorkshire. Goodness knows what will happen if a MacGregor type becomes chairman of the National Coal Board. That will affect not only the pits. There will be a wave of factory closures and redundancies around every coal mine closure, leaving derelict mining communities in its wake. I hope that, for the sake of the industry, the men in it and the many mining villages, that does not come to pass.
Four years ago our regional unemployment figure was 88,000. Today, including school leavers both registered and unregistered, it stands at nearly 303,000—an unbelievable and colossal increase. What is distressing is that we are outstripping the national average, and the trend is becoming worse. The gap between Yorkshire and the nation is widening still further. Our people are continuing to bear a disproportionate burden of the suffering with each passing day that the Government's policies are in force—another man loses his job; another family is condemned to suffering and indignity; more dreams and aspirations are snuffed out of existence. Despite the great wealth of our natural resources, and the hardy Yorkshire spirit, hope is a commodity in scarce supply. Four years of suffering have taken their toll.
In south Yorkshire, covering the travel-to-work areas of Sheffield, Rotherham, Doncaster and Barnsley, the number of unemployed has risen from 34,367 to 96,380. That is 16·4 per cent., which is well above the national average. It is a threefold increase in four years. I am amazed that our social fabric has withstood such a shuddering fall in employment. The steel industry has borne the brunt—it has suffered nearly 31,000 job losses in four years. Steel towns have been sickened by a series of closures. In the same four-year period, male unemployment has risen from 6·5 per cent. to 17·7 per cent. and female unemployment has risen from 3·8 per cent. to 9·6 per cent. That reflects a serious fall in employment in the textile and allied industries in west Yorkshire. Huddersfield, Halifax, Keighley and Bradford have been crippled.
The fishing industry has suffered, especially Hull but Grimsby too. I refer only to registered fishermen and processors. Since 1979, Hull has lost 4,056 jobs and

859
Grimsby 1,415 jobs. Therefore, 5,471 jobs have been lost in the Humber estuary alone. As yet, there has been no industrial replacement, and so it goes on. There is now only one vacancy for every 85 claimants in south Yorkshire.
The picture is worsened by the fact that regional development grant to Yorkshire and Humberside has declined as a percentage of the total that is awarded to Great Britain. In 1978–79, grant for plant, machinery and buildings represented 13·8 per cent. of Great Britain's total. In 1980–81, it was down to 12·6 per cent. The tale with regional selective assistance to industry has been even worse. In 1977–78, 16 per cent. of Great Britain's total came to Yorkshire and Humberside, whereas in 1980–81 it had come down to 9·8 per cent. Therefore, we have economic starvation, jobless thousands and too many no-hope kids without a future—61,000 of them under 20 years of age. If we do not pick up soon, it could be a county of despair.
There could, however, exist just the boost that we are looking for, in—I hope that the Minister will note this plea—the Japanese Nissan car plant which the Secretary of State said on his return from Japan might still go ahead in the United Kingdom. If that be so, the south Humberside site would be ideal. It would also provide an enormous economic fillip to the region. It would be one of the biggest inward investment projects on Humberside using the steel of Scunthorpe and Sheffield, rectifying job losses in Hull and Grimsby and using the varied skills of the many unemployed people who used to work in the steel and engineering industries. At the same time, the Government can make up for their financial starvation of our industrial development by according the plant equal grant status which may be available in other regions.
We stress that we should like a substantial British content in the product. It should not simply be an assembly plant for foreign imports. Nevertheless, it is a prize worth fighting for. We shall be harnessing our energies to capture it for Yorkshire and Humberside.
The Government's heartless monetary policy has been an abysmal failure for Yorkshire and Humberside. We shall have to change direction substantially if we are to stave off total collapse. What the Government should be doing, and what a future Labour Government will have to do, is take more power of Government industrial intervention and more regional economic planning, expand the public sector and public spending and make a clear commitment to effect a change in the disparities between the regions. Exhortation does not work. We must use the power of public purchasing to stimulate investment in industrial activity in the regions. Where substantial grants are involved, whether investment or capital grants in specific industries, an equity stake for the public must be assured. Privatisation is not the answer. It breeds first and second-class sectors in industry. There is the profit-making sector which survives and the other, which even if in temporary difficulties through the force of market changes, goes to the wall. Some are leaner and fitter, but how much industry is left?
The so-called resolute approach has blinded the Government to the human cost of their policies. They have inflicted the immediate harms of poverty and hardship on millions of our people. They have also spread fear on an unparalleled scale. There is fear of unemployment and fear
860
of nuclear war. That is typical of the Government's callous attitude and their resolute approach. The Prime Minister, with her cold war warrior image of a nuclear striker, has caused vast millions of people to be disturbed and afraid. Fear of unemployment and then of nuclear war has been spread throughout the country. That has been responsible for the rebirth of anti-nuclear weapons demonstrations and the British peace drive.
The Government display the same callous attitude to the unemployed. There are 4 million unemployed people, registered or not registered, more than 300,000 of whom are in Yorkshire. Their husbands, wives, sons, daughters, relatives and even neighbours—untold millions—are directly and indirectly affected. The Government display an unemotional indifference to human suffering, misery, poverty and family strife. They have no concern for the pride of man and the workless who suffer the indignity of the dole queue.
There is a vast reservoir of pent-up emotion against the Government. It is to those millions that we shall appeal. We shall harness them on a theme of jobs and peace, work not war. I prophesy that when the ballot boxes are emptied—the real opinion poll—there will be revealed an avalanche of rejections of this uncaring Government, sufficient to sweep them out of office. We in Yorkshire and Humberside, one of the many regions in the north that are suffering and which still hold the Labour vote, will be ready for the fight whenever it comes. For the sake of the distressed millions, let us hope that it will not be long.
7.26 pm
The Minister of State, Department of Employment (Mr. Michael Alison): The right hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) was brief and I shall try to emulate him in that respect. There was a good deal in his speech with which I did not agree. I do not believe that he would expect me to agree with it. The same applies to much of the motion that he moved. Nevertheless, there is one phrase in the motion that rings bells on both sides of the House and with which my party would wish to be fully associated. It is the phrase that expresses concern
"at the demoralising effects on those unemployed persons who are suffering indignity, misery and family unhappiness as they strive to live."
I hope that no one will adopt a holier-than-thou attitude and try to pretend that compassion is a proprietary party possession, whether it be the Labour party, the Social Democratic party or the Liberal party. We fully share and endorse the sentiments that are expressed in that part of the motion. If the Opposition really believe, as is suggested in the motion, that Government policies have inflicted the pain of unemployment, they must share responsibility for that.
The Labour Government formed by the right hon. Member for Huyton (Sir H. Wilson) in the 1960s presided over close on a threefold rise in unemployment in Yorkshire and Humberside—from 23,000-odd in 1966 to 57,000-odd in 1970. I might add that that was before any oil price shock. The next Labour Government, that formed by the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan), presided over a rise in unemployment in Yorkshire and Humberside from 53,650 in 1974 to 121,000-odd in 1979. That, too, occurred in the relatively palmy days before the 1979 oil price shock. If the Opposition point out that unemployment has risen threefold since 1979, they should bear in mind that there

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was a fivefold rise under the previous two Labour Governments. We should, therefore, deal with something that is rather more cheerful, constructive and forward-looking than what one sees in the rest of the motion.
Mr. John Prescott rose—
Mr. Alison: No, I shall not give way. I want to emulate the right hon. Member for Barnsley, who was very brief.
I can hardly do better than sound a note of optimism for the Yorkshire and Humberside region by quoting in full the second paragraph of the 1983 "Regional Strategy Review", which has been published by the Yorkshire and Humberside county councils association. It is the yellow document which many of my right hon. and hon. Friends will have seen. The paragraph states:
"The region faces the 1980s and 1990s with considerable potential to create new jobs and improve the quality of life. It has a large and experienced labour force, attractive serviced industrial land and buildings, assured energy supplies, an established commercial base, a location in the centre of Britain, areas of good living environment, a range of inexpensive housing and a strong cultural and sporting tradition."
If the right hon. Member for Barnsley wants Nissan to come to Yorkshire and Humberside, that is the sort of statement that we should be hearing, not the gloom and doom that is spread by partisan speeches from the Labour Benches.
Mr. Bob Cryer: Perhaps the Minister will also read the first paragraph of the review.
Mr. Alison: The review shows that there is something on which to build in the region, with a real chance for a better future. I make no apology for showing that there is some good news about even at present. For example, there is the Leeds computer firm, called Systime, which has obtained a £6 million loan from the European Investment Bank to help finance its new £30 million factory which is due to open this year. It could create 800 new jobs, 450 still in Leeds. It is anticipated that during the year Systime will become the largest private employer in Leeds. This is progress in the knowledge-intensive sector in which the Japanese excel. If we can develop in that way, there will be a much better chance of Nissan coming to Yorkshire.
Microvitec of Bradford plans to expand and increase its production of visual display units, which incorporate the latest microelectronic equipment. The company currently employs over 100 people and hopes to increase that to 450 this year and to over 1,000 by 1986.
Work of another sort includes a 600m extension to the main runway of the Leeds-Bradford airport. Work began in June 1982 and is expected to finish in 1984. The project, which includes re-routeing the main Bradford-Harrogate road, is worth about £13 million, and when completed should bring increased foreign business to the region. It is another bait that might help to bring Nissan to Yorkshire.
The Selby coalfield complex—which is in my constituency—is expected to come into full operation in the late 1980s. It will employ about 4,000 men on a three-shift basis. The complex is expected to produce 10 million tonnes of coal a year for 40 years and is the largest integrated coal mining complex currently under construc-tion in Europe. Again, it shows that the Yorkshire and Humberside region is in the van and not at the rear. This is not the gloom and doom of the past. The region is the area to which Nissan might well look with some hope and expectation.
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Associated with the coalfield development is the new east coast mainline railway diversion, the first major new high-speed railway trunk route to be built this century. Trains are scheduled to use the whole 14-mile route from October. Let us hope that it will carry plenty of Japanese business men. It will not do so if we continue to hear speeches of the kind that the right hon. Member for Barnsley delivered this evening.
British Steel has an impressive recent record in spite of the gloomy note that the right hon. Member for Barnsley sounded.
Mr. Prescott: Oh blimey!
Mr. Alison: With great respect, I can hardly hear myself speak when the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) shouts from a sedentary position.
Last spring the BSC just about broke even and the prospect for 1982–83 was for a small profit before interest. However, factors outside the management's control—notably the American protectionist measures and a sharp downturn in world markets, over which the steel industry, the Government and Britain 'lad no control—mean that the corporation is again making heavy losses and is having urgently to reappraise its prospects. In so far as the fate of the steel industry lay in Britain and in British hands, BSC's achievement in reaching profitability was brilliant. In the private sector, a number of rationalisation schemes, involving support under the Government's private sector steel scheme, are currently under consideration.
Mr. Frank Hooley: With a loss of jobs.
Mr. Alison: The prospects for the fishing industry are good following the new agreement on a European common fisheries policy. The favourable quotas agreed for the United Kingdom, combined with conservation measures and the agreements on effective enforcement, mean a likely increase in fishing stocks over the coming decades, which will give our industry the potentiality at least of growth instead of decline.
Despite the problems, the textile and clothing industries remain of major significance to the United Kingdom economy. Employing, as they do, over 500,000 workers—one-tenth of the manufacturing labour force in the United Kingdom—and having an annual turnover of about £9 billion they account for about 5 per cent. of the gross domestic product.
Every Yorkshire man will agree that the wool industry is to be congratulated on its excellent export record. That is something that will cause everyone in west Yorkshire to be proud. The Government are well aware of concern about the industry's future, but it should not be forgotten that textiles and clothing are already the most protected sectors of British manufacturing. The new multi-fibre arrangement will reinforce this protection.
An attitude of hopelessness or despair where a traditional industry is in decline is not worthy of a country such as Britain, nor of a region such as Yorkshire and Humberside, which led the world into the industrial revolution.
Japanese shipbuilding, for example, managed to become the world's lowest cost producer. As late as the mid-1970s it launched over 50 per cent. of the world's ships and was a major source of Japanese prosperity. Yet

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cheaper producers have come along and the latest Japanese plans involve incentives to scrap over 25 per cent. of capacity. I am sure that the Japanese will not sit still and bemoan the fact. They will be out to conquer new territory.
Yorkshire should not be too dazed by Japanese manufacturing potential. In spite of the decline in employment in manufacturing, to which the right hon. Member for Barnsley referred, Britain still has a greater percentage of employment in manufacturing than Japan. Japanese success is due entirely to the extraordinary productivity of the smaller labour force.
Mr. Prescott: And the role of the Government.
Mr. Alison: Japan has nearly four times as many employees engaged in agriculture as Britain and has nothing like our regional or national productivity. If we want to welcome the Japanese, and especially Nissan, to Yorkshire, we want to tell the world what Yorkshire is capable of doing. It is capable of doing at least as well in manufacturing as the Japanese, in the same way as we do better than them when the two agriculture industries' productivity figures are compared.
When the Government took office, 44 per cent. of Britain's working population lived in areas benefiting from regional aid. When we have reviewed regional policy, it has been our intention to concentrate regional aid on the areas of greatest need. It was against that background that the Government considered that assisted area status was no longer appropriate for much of Yorkshire and Humberside, which has a varied industrial base, good communications and a skilled work force.
Mr. Cryer: And high unemployment.
Mr. Alison: We realise that there are particular problems in certain parts of the region—for example, in Mexborough, Hull and Scunthorpe. About 40 per cent. of the working population remain in assisted areas in the Yorkshire and Humberside region compared with a national average of only 27 per cent.
I shall emphasise what has been done for the region since the Government took office. It has received over £180 million-worth of regional development grants and about £40 million-worth of selective assistance. The Government have recognised that parts of the region suffer from serious urban deprivation. Nearly £90 million has been allocated for 1982–83 to Bradford, Hull, Leeds, Sheffield, Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham under the urban programme. These are large sums.
In common with the rest of Britain, the region benefits from many other support schemes generally. Under the Department of Industry's loan guarantee scheme, 557 guarantees have been issued since June 1981 covering loans totalling £16·1 million. I should also mention the aid that is being given to help new technology—this is particularly relevant if we wish to encourage Japanese inward investment—including the microprocessor applications, project and robotic schemes. Under these headings, nearly £15 million of assistance has been offered or paid to 176 firms in the region. There are now enterprise zones at Wakefield, Rotherham and Scunthorpe.
The Government recognise the vital role that small firms can play in the economy and, as my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Industry reminded the House,
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over the past three years we have introduced 98 schemes or measures to help small business men. We certainly need entrepreneurs, and a region which includes Leeds, Bradford, Barnsley and Rotherham and many other industrial power houses, must be full of risk-takers and innovators ready to take on the market. It is profitable business, not the Government, which in the end creates worthwhile permanent jobs. What the Government can do is to pursue policies which help to create the right environment in which firms are able to prosper.
It is also worth pointing out to the House that quite unprecedented levels of Government spending on special support measures have been introduced, designed to protect both jobs and the jobless. These are having a big impact in Yorkshire and Humberside. For example, about 39,000 people in the region are benefiting from the temporary short-time working compensation scheme, the job release scheme, the community programme, community industry and the young workers scheme. In addition, 55,000 young people started courses under the youth opportunities programme in 1981–82 and more than 44,000 have started courses since 1 April 1982.
The Manpower Services Commission plans to provide 63,100 youth opportunity programme places in 1982–83 in Yorkshire and Humberside, of which 9,700 will be the new one-year training places under the youth training scheme. The right hon. Member for Barnsley made a big point of the prospects for our youth in Yorkshire. I should remind the House, and my right hon. and hon. Friends in particular, that for every 10 school leavers who come forward at present, three stay on at school or go on to further education, three find jobs, and for the remaining four we shall now be offering a guaranteed place in our one-year youth training scheme this year of whom at least 50 per cent. will get jobs at the end of it.
I could elaborate on some of the commendable local efforts that are being made by local authorities and private individuals to help us under these various support measures, but I wish to be brief, to enable as many Members as possible to contribute to the debate. It is clear to all but the blind that Britain cannot be isolated from, and has been severely battered by, some economic fire storms, which have laid bare much of the terrain of the Western world's trade and employment.
I shall not repeat and weary the House with figures showing how our neighbours across the Atlantic and the Channel are suffering, as we are, from import penetration, over-capacity in certain areas of production and, in consequence, rising unemployment. The facts are too widely known and appreciated both at home and abroad for repetition to be necessary.
There are, however, some indications that the tide is changing for the West's economy, and the real question is whether Britain will share in any steady upturn in world trade. Here, competitiveness is generally acknowledged to be the key. For example, a 1 per cent. increase in Britain's share in the world export of manufactures is worth 250,000 jobs. Surely a great opportunity is there to be grasped. The key to competitiveness is, in turn, low inflation, low interest rates and low unit labour costs. In all these areas our performance is moving steadily and persistently in the right direction.
Mr. Prescott: Down.
Mr. Alison: The hon. Gentleman says "down". If our unit labour costs are going down, the House may be sure that they consistently went up under the Labour Government.
For example, the percentage rise in manufacturing unit labour costs in 1982 was only 4·9 per cent. That was just 1 per cent. more than Japan's or Germany's and half the rate of increase of the United States. When one contrasts that with the 32·6 per cent. increase in unit labour costs in 1975 alone, one can understand why high unemployment has hit Britain and why we have a chance of reversing that malign post-war trend under the present Government's policy. I therefore urge my right hon. and hon. Friends to resist the motion.
7.44 pm
Mr. Ben Ford: A British Prime Minister once said that in order to produce a solution one should understand the problem. The Minister has not demonstrated to the people of Yorkshire that he understands the problem.
As is natural, I intend to speak about the area that I represent, but I wish to make it plain that I do so in a regional context, and that I and my Bradford colleagues are ready to help any of our colleagues in the Yorkshire and Humberside regions to obtain employment for their areas. That is one of the reasons why we have supported the Nissan project for south Humberside.
One of the great problems that Bradford has suffered over the past 10 years has been the loss of a number of major items normally associated with large cities and the type of area in which Bradford exists. What is most disappointing is that decisions by successive national Governments and bodies associated with them in one way or another have made matters move from bad to worse.
There is no doubt that there is a lack of institutional investment confidence in Bradford at present. The reasons cannot be due to local factors. The area has a good industrial relations record. Despite the national image, it has a good local and surrounding environment. House prices and construction costs are as cheap as anywhere else in the country. The area has innovative skills, and initiatives by both the local authority and private sources have done their best to cope with the problems of industrial decline.
The development of Bradford as a tourist centre, Microvitec, to which the Minister referred, the Saltaire Microfirms project, the revitalisation of Listers and Illingworth Morris, the council's benefit shops and its response to the youth training scheme, which the Government have not encouraged, and programme area status are examples of the council endeavouring to help itself. In addition, an industrial museum and the national museum of photography, film and television are sited in Bradford. These are all initiatives taken by the people of Bradford to try to arrest the decline that has been taking place.
The lack of confidence of institutional investors is probably the most serious outcome of the spiral of decline. This factor more than any other is holding Bradford back. What are the reasons for this lack of institutional confidence? Bradford is the largest city in the country which does not have its own vehicle licensing centre. It was removed after local government reorganisation in 1974. That is symptomatic of the decisions of national bodies in the past nine years.
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British Rail seems determined to obliterate Bradford from the railway map. In the 1950s Bradford had good, fast direct rail links to all parts of the country for both passengers and freight. Over the years the service has deteriorated. In the latter part of 1982 a party of British Rail's own Golden Rail officials were to travel to Bradford for a promotion event for holidays in Bradford. The train was withdrawn—nobody told them—and they were late for the promotion. Bradford is becoming a ghost city for inter-city rail travel. Good rail communication is vital for things such as the national museum of photography, film and television, to which I have referred.
British Rail, in a letter to the leader of the council dated 20 December 1982, accepts that 20 per cent. of inter-city services to Bradford were cancelled, terminated at Leeds, or more than 15 minutes late. Is it surprising that people outside Bradford lose confidence in the service and that those who live in Bradford use other stations? The consequence is a decline in service.
The original alignment for the A 1 -M1 link—the Pudsey-Dishforth Spur—was to the west of Leeds. That was logical on traffic and on regional policy grounds, because it opened up the region from north to south. Decision-makers consider how far a place is from the major route to London. This theory may not fit all the statistics produced at public inquiries, but the point is usually made to us by developers and chartered surveyors. Unfortunately, an east of Leeds alignment is now proposed, and it is the subject of a long public inquiry. The change is again symptomatic of the recent major strategic decisions that affect west Yorkshire. It makes sense to see road decisions as part of regional policy. A west of Leeds route helps the most disadvantaged parts of west Yorkshire, but an east of Leeds route makes the differences in the county worse.
Bradford university is suffering from cuts as severe as any other university in Britain, bar one. A university is important to the image and perception of an area by decision-makers. Bradford university has a good tradition of co-operation with local and national industry. It is a modern, technological university that is more geared to the 1980s and 1990s than many other more academic institutions, yet it suffers more than most.
Those are a few examples of decisions that have operated against Bradford and against Government regional policy. It is no good giving grants to organisations to establish themselves in an area if other decisions that are taken put off those same organisations. The spiral of decline spreads in many minor ways when institutional confidence leaves an area. Specialist stores and services move out. They are minor decisions in themselves, but they build up and become the death of a thousand cuts.
Bradford has many problems and many advantages. It would help the area most if the Government gave a sign that they believed in it. A better rail service and more support for the technological university would be a good start. More help should be given by a Government decision to locate regional government offices in Bradford and in Yorkshire. I understand the Department of Transport offices in Harrogate are to be amalgamated with the Department of the Environment offices in Leeds. We should put the new office in Bradford and give the city some encouragement. Rates are cheaper, house prices are cheaper and the environment is better in Bradford. Government costs could be reduced and institutional investors would see that the Government have confidence

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in Bradford. It would not solve all our problems at a stroke, but it would demonstrate Government confidence in the future of the region. It would be the best form of regional policy decision. Grants to organisations will not help a city much if investors lack confidence. Investors will lack confidence if the Government fail to show confidence. Therefore, I invite the Government to make their actions suit their words.
7.53 pm
Sir Donald Kaberry: I shall not follow the hon. Member for Bradford, North (Mr. Ford) into the merits and charms of living and working in Bradford. I shall leave him to his pleasures there, because I represent part of a larger city nearby. We still have the greatest respect for all those who move in and around Bradford. I wish to spread the debate a little wider. Time is short and many hon. Members wish to speak. I shall make about five general points that affect the development of trade and industry in Yorkshire and Humberside.
The speech of the right hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason)—as we know, everything happens in Barnsley from time to time—reminded me of a phrase used by a former Minister of Labour in a Socialist Government, who, when replying to a similiar debate, said that the speech that he had just heard was not founded on any substance and that the Member concerned had overegged the pudding and found himself out on a limb. That describes the extravagant language of the right hon. Gentleman, especially when he advocated that we should do what we could to bring the Nissan car factory to Yorkshire and Humberside. We all cheered, but if I were to be used as an advocate to visit the management of Nissan and to urge them to come here, I should hide every copy of the right hon. Gentleman's speech.
I disagree with most of the motion, except for the last two lines, which state:
"And therefore calls upon Her Majesty's Government to take urgent action to remedy this decline and regenerate the Yorkshire and Humberside region."
I agree with that in principle. All hon. Members who represent Yorkshire, especially those of us who are Yorkshiremen, want the best that is going. We want every possible assistance from the Government on the same terms as other regions. However, we do not hold out a begging bowl. We have the merit of our capacity to stand on our own feet, but we want our fair share. I welcome this debate not for the content of the motion but for the opportunity to express a few thoughts about where we are going and to wonder how we can guide our future steps.
No hon. Member welcomes redundancies or the closure of factories. Every redundancy is a human tragedy, and the closure of every factory is a disaster. Who knows when it may be used again, especially after the liquidators and the flesh pickers have left only the bare bones of an organisation that will never again have sinews.
My favourite phrase, which has been used recently by many people, is, "Give us the orders and we shall produce the finest products in the world." That is the underlying spirit of all those who live in Yorkshire.
Mr. Barry Sheerman: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Sir Donald Kaberry: I am trying to be extremely brief. I hope that the hon. Gentleman has the opportunity to speak later.
Orders can be won, not only in Yorkshire but in the United Kingdom, only in the face of keen world competition. Price, quality and delivery must all be right.
Many of us have complained about, and tried to highlight, the image of the British working population. Our capacity is easily discounted. Foreign competitors also want orders and they will use any weapon to beat us. Some of us have complained bitterly about adverse publicity of minor incidents in industrial life. Minor strikes are blown up out of proportion on television and radio and in the daily papers. Each such strike is disproportionate to the remainder of that industry, but it is used by our competitors to show would-be providers of orders that it is no good sending orders to Britain because the workers are always on strike. We must stress, more than ever, the unity of our people, especially the unity of those who live in Yorkshire. I say that in the light not only of the recent world recession but of the world population explosion that has happened in the wrong countries for our business prospects. During the past 20 years the population of the East has increased by more than 700 million. There has been a vast explosion in China, India and Japan. We are courting Japan, but the Japanese are all busy at work and there are now 23 million more of them than there were in 1961.
Time is not on our side, if our industries are to be put right. I hope, therefore, that the Government will move quickly—or, as the motion suggests, urgently—and let us know that they are anxious to back the efficiency, skill and price-cutting efforts of the Yorkshire people to get orders not only in this country, but particularly abroad.
There are three ways in which we suffer in Yorkshire. It is a rarity abroad to see a British motor car, yet many of the parts are made in Yorkshire. There are foundries in Yorkshire that make parts for well-known motor cars in the United Kingdom. There are engineering shops which do the fettling and rough machining before the car is assembled. Thus, the continued loss of the world car market reflects badly on Yorkshire's foundries and workshops.
Similarly, the lack of attention to retooling in engineering workshops is a matter on which the Government can help, because it prevented orders from being placed in west Yorkshire, which has many renowned machine tool factories. Those factories are suffering as a result. The loss of our textile trade means that our Yorkshire chemical companies and dyestuff companies lack orders because of the recession in textiles. So there is an effect right across the manufacturing and selling process.
I shall give a few quick headlines to highlight the ways in which I think the Government can urgently step in to help us to develop our way of life in manufacturing in Yorkshire. The first—I accept that it is a matter of controversy—is the control of inflation. So far, the Government are succeeding in controlling inflation. Certainly, there are prophets of doom who say that as the rate has gone down it is bound to go up. However, it is the Government's task to seek to keep inflation down. The second involves energy costs. This is a matter that has concerned us all very much. If the European Community means anything at all—certainly this is a matter of great controversy—harmonisation should become a reality, and

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this country should not suffer at the expense of French, German and Italian companies which have subsidised energy in gas, electricity or transport. We know that that exists, and I urge the Government not only to do something, but to be seen to be doing something about harmonisation of energy costs.
Then there is the small but important matter of overheads in factories. The heaviest local charge is rating. I want non-rating of mothballed factories. I do not want roofs to be stripped, but I want to be able to certify that part of a large building is not being used for manufacturing purposes, even though the machine tools are still there. That can be done simply by certificates and declarations. However, I am told in a letter from the Minister of State that it would require primary legislation. So what? It is an urgent matter, so let us have primary legislation, and let us get down to the non-rating of mothballed factories.
I finish on a strong note that I hope will get a reaction from the Minister. I hope that the Government will seek to concentrate on new industries, electronics, machine tools, robotics, and methods of communication. Under the Science and Technology Act 1965, the Government have wide powers to insist on retooling and to give grants for innovation. They already give money in support of innovation, but it is essential that the Government set a lead to give that drive, certainly to the tool industry, and to insist that all companies engaged either directly or indirectly in Government contracting will retool and take advantage of all the moneys that are available. The process should be speeded up, because at present it is far too slow.
I have much more to say, but I have no time in which to say it. I urge the Minister to give these matters his attention.
8.5 pm
Mr. Richard Wainwright: Last month, in the Huddersfield travel-to-work area, for every registered job vacancy there were no fewer than 72 registered unemployed. That compares with the average for Great Britain of 31 unemployed after every registered job vacancy. I stress that this has happened in an area which, as recently as May 1979, had an unemployment rate of only 3·8 per cent. The suddenness of the transformation has overwhelmed not only the unemployed themselves, but all the local institutions that try to train people for work, look after their needs at work, and try to cope with the job situation. The suddenness is unparalleled in the rest of the country in recent years, leaving aside, of course, Northern Ireland.
In addition to the appalling misery that has been so well described already in this debate, and which I entirely endorse, the direct cash cost to the Exchequer should surely move the Government. The direct cash cost per annum to the Exchequer of the present unemployment in Yorkshire and Humberside must be in excess of £1,515 million—over £1·5 billion a year, a direct cash loss, in addition to the lost production, on which no one can put a value. All this is happening in a region where, in the most manifestly visible form, there is the appalling contrast of work that is desperately needed by the community, things needing to be repaired and modernised, alongside 303,000 people seeking work and unable to find it.
We on the Liberal and Social Democratic Benches believe that the Government should introduce a programme—we are very willing to help them—to get
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approximately 100,000 people off the unemployment register in Yorkshire and Humberside during the next two, or three years. We estimate that it could be done at a net increase in public borrowing of something over £350 million. In our view, that money would be extremely well spent if it got people back to work and got the Yorkshire economy back on its feet.
Because of the pressure of time, I shall give only a few examples. The 1981 census, which has seriously revised many Government statistics, confirmed that tens of thousands of households in Yorkshire and Humberside have neither an inside toilet nor a bathroom. That provides scope for a construction industry which at present is flat on its back. There is an increasingly serious lack of staffed hospital beds. During the past 12 months—other Yorkshire Members will bear out what I say—the waiting lists for general surgery, orthopaedic surgery and dental surgery, and the waiting lists of people wanting to get back to work but too sick to do so, have soared. That is due largely to the shortfall in our hospital programme, especially the staffing. Alas, Yorkshire abounds in the distressing spectacle of modern hospital wards shut because the area authority cannot afford to staff them.
Yorkshire's road system is in a state of serious disrepair and the Government are doing little to assist local authorities in making good the ravages of last winter. West Yorkshire's bid for the TPP programme has recently been met only to the extent of two thirds of its itemised bid for road maintenance and repair. My constituency and other Penine valleys have admirable mills, beautifully constructed in a manner that could not be repeated today and which could be refurbished for use by small businesses, but the capital is lacking and, because we are deprived of assisted area status, access to European funds is now denied us.
Dr. Keith Hampson: Is it not fair to say that last week the Government announced five schemes to convert Yorkshire mills into small units, in particular a large one in Bradford?
Mr. Wainwright: That makes my point, because I said that it was the major parts of Yorkshire which, deprived of access to European funds, are suffering. I am glad to rejoice in Bradford's success, because that is one of the few parts of Yorkshire which still has assisted area status while the rest suffer from the wilful removal of that status at the Government's hands.
I mention only one other project because of the lack of time. That is the superb waterway system which runs east to west across our county and which stands in need of substantial sums for repair and modernisation and can be used for the energy-saving carriage of freight and the provision of good healthy leisure pursuits. Those and other schemes which we often put to local Members would generate orders for private industry. It is a common fallacy amongst Ministers that such schemes suffer front a dependence on the public sector. Their great merit is that they not only provide jobs but generate orders for the suppliers of goods and services in the private sector.
I make one other suggestion. Government nowadays—rightly so—often proceed by way of experiment with new ideas and methods, with pilot schemes in different parts of Britain. My impression is that Yorkshire has lost out on much of this development test bed work. Yorkshire and Humberside is, on the whole, a

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highly representative area. It is what, in Yorkshire, we call a middling area; it has neither the extremes of poverty nor the extremes of riches. That makes it an admirable area for pilot schemes for improving job prospects in Britain.
I should like to see more Government experiments in different methods of industrial training, of which we have not yet found the secret in our county. Pilot experiments in lower interest rates geared to high technology would be valuable, because nobody knows until we try whether the pessimists are right to say that differentially advantageous interest rates always leak away and are sold off to less valuable entrepreneurs or whether it is possible to use subsidised interest rates for specific industrial advance as the Japanese do. There again, pilot schemes would be particularly appropriate in Yorkshire and Humberside.
There are other schemes for developing new inventions and the products of research which first require a pilot test and which ought to come to our county. There is no excuse for Government inertia. Today, the Minister, revelling quite correctly in our Yorkshire scenery, culture and sporting record, took credit for something which has nothing to do with the Government whatever. If he wants to take credit for that, he must take credit for our climate as well. The Government should get off their bottoms and help Yorkshire and Humberside to realise the potential that we know the area has.
8.14 pm
Mr. Stanley Cohen: The object of the debate is not to make political capital, but to emphasise the problems that some hon. Members feel exist in the Yorkshire and Humberside area, and I hope that the Government will accept that.
Reference has been made to the steel industry. We are here to talk about the Yorkshire and Humberside region as a whole, but I hope that the House will forgive me if I concentrate on Leeds, part of which I represent. Unemployment in Leeds, which reflects that of the area as a whole, is well above the national average.
Reference has been made to the contribution of the clothing and textile industries to our exports, but no comparison was made with the position two or three years ago. My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Torney) will recollect that when he and I visited countries abroad we discovered the existence of textile counterfeiting. There was a job loss of about 2,000 per month in the textile industry in the west riding of Yorkshire. Multiply that over a period of years and one begins to appreciate the problem that has to be faced. I hope that the Governent will take that into account, because counterfeiting is certainly taking place and putting the industry at an unfair disadvantage. An import duty of 90 per cent. is imposed on goods from the west riding of Yorkshire to other countries, but when other countries have to pay an import duty of only 10 per cent. on goods that they send to us, that makes a tremendous difference to our competitiveness.
I do not know how many hon. Members have suffered the indignity—I use that word carefully—of being unemployed. I have. I have had to queue at the labour exchange for my dole money, and I know the indignity and embarrassment that I have felt as a consequence. I do not want to see people experiencing that if it can be avoided. I do not want to see that happen, but I know that it does.
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I have contacted the social services, education and the housing departments in Leeds and I should like to quote some figures that I received today. In 1980, 19,300 children received free meals. Last month that figure stood at 24,000—an increase of 20 per cent. The housing department has informed me that it had rent arrears of £33,500 in 1980. Now the figure is £41,000. That is a reflection of the position in Yorkshire, Humberside and Leeds. Those are the Leeds figures, but I am sure they are typical.
The social and economic consequences of unemployment cause me concern. The social services department cannot itemise figures, but it admits that it is being pressurised by the number of social problems confronting it—rent and electricity bills arrears, as well as all the other problems that people have, especially the young. We must look at this issue extremely carefully.
There are no job opportunities. Yorkshire and Humberside has produced, and can continue to produce, much of the wealth of this country. It is a cultural area, but it is regarded as the backwoods.
The Government are not doing enough. I am not blaming this Government especially, but they must bear the responsibility, because they are in power. Successive Governments have failed in their responsibility to propagate the advantages of moving into the provinces. We find that time and time again, not only in this country, but abroad. More money must be put into the Yorkshire and Humberside area to enable it to advertise the advantages that are available so that investment and industry may be attracted to it. The ambition of the people in that area is again to produce, as they have done in the past, the wealth of this country. I hope that the Government will give hon. Members an assurance that the area will be recognised as a force to be reckoned with.
Leeds, with a population of over 500,000, has contributed greatly to this country's wealth. The Minister spoke of what we were producing but he ignored the fact that many major industries—clothing, textiles and engineering—have been allowed to run down. That is of no advantage to the country as a whole, especially to the Yorkshire and Humberside area.
8.23 pm
Sir Patrick Wall: Having listened to the speech of the right hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason), one would have thought that everything had been caused by the Government. He seems never to have heard of world recession. There was no mention of the fact that every European country has been affected by the recession. There was no mention of the fact that Britain now has the lowest inflation rate since the 1960s. There was no mention of the fact that interest rates are down by 5 per cent. since 1981, which is the equivalent of a benefit to industry of £1,000 million.
Of course unemployment at 14·5 per cent. on Humberside is far too high, but one does not stop giving the patient unpleasant medicine when he is beginning to be cured. Of course more can be done. Rates in Humberside under the present county council rose by over 60 per cent. last year. That is driving industry out of Humberside and certainly will not attract the Japanese. Rates are compounded by the unfairness of water rates. By the time of the next general election, I hope that the Government will have done away with the iniquitous rating system that we have in this country.

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I believe that the wages councils should be abolished, because they contribute greatly to youth unemployment. In Germany a youngster gets paid about a third of the wage of a skilled adult. In this country it is more like two thirds. That means that many firms will not employ youngsters. It is just not worth it. That is why Germany has more apprentices and more skilled workers than we do.
British Aerospace, in my constituency, has cut its apprentices by more than 50 per cent. It needs only that number itself. In the past, British Aerospace in Brough had a pool of trained labour for use by the whole of the area. That is no longer possible. Everything should be done to encourage youngsters to work, but at a lower rate of pay. Wages councils are pernicious in that respect.
Anybody talking about Humberside must refer to fishing. The 200-mile EEZ proved a near death blow to the Hull deepwater fleet. With the common fisheries policy, there is now some hope for the future. It is only right that there should be swop deals with Norway, Iceland and various parts of the world. It is only right that a good slice of available grants should go to the deepwater fleet. It has suffered more than any other section of the fishing industry from the loss of third country waters. Hull needs about 20 to 25 freezer trawlers to make it viable. That means an allocation of some 75,000 tons of cod equivalent.
Today I have been told that Hull distant water vessels have not caught up to their quotas. The House may be interested to hear some figures. The cod quota was just under 19,500 tons. Only 11,700 tons were caught by Hull deep water trawlers. Why have they not caught more? The quota for mackerel this year was 51,000 tons and the catch by Hull trawlers was only 32,000 tons. The quota for herring was 5,000 tons but the catch was only 1,200 tons. It seems strange to me that the full initiative of the deepwater fleet has not been used.
I hope that the Minister will be generous to the deep water fleet on Humberside when it comes to restructuring. It now has a future and it should be helped to make that future satisfactory. To qualify for these grants the trawlers have to fish for certain periods. I understand that the Minister is prepared to be flexible over refitting time, but international rules must be obeyed.
I hope that the Minister will do something relevant about redundancy pay for fishermen, which has been the subject of previous debates.
When I toured my constituency in the long summer recess, I found the farmers in very good heart. I found most of the industries in good heart, in spite of what the right hon. Gentleman has been saying. I noticed on the Tape today that the income of farmers increased by 45 per cent. last year. [Interruption.]
In the industrial sector of my constituency, I find that some of the caravan firms have done very well indeed. Paul and Whites in Beverley has done extremely well, as have the Hargreaves Group in Beverley—Howdendyke and many others. The gloom and doom that we have been hearing from the Opposition does not apply in my constituency.
I must refer to British Aerospace in Brough. It has orders for the 146 passenger jet and for more Sea Harriers. I recently visited McDonnell Douglas in the United States. I am delighted at the co-operation that is taking place between British Aerospace and McDonnell Douglas over new technology in the advanced jump jet, the AV8B and the VTXTS, which is the new trainer for the American
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navy. This co-operation between a British and American firm is the right answer and will ensure a good future for British Aerospace, especially in Brough.
I understand that the youth training scheme when it becomes fully effective later this year will have up to 10,000 places in Humberside alone. That is good news for school leavers.
So far, hon. Members have agreed that the south Humberside is the best site for the Japanese, with good communications, skilled labour at Scunthorpe, a port at Immingham and plenty of room to expand. I hope that the final decision will be made soon.
Enterprise zones have been successful, but nothing much is said about free ports. They could well be the answer for Humberside. I have seen successful free ports in Taiwan and they have also been successful in other countries, because they attract foreign investment and create new employment. No duty is charged on the goods manufactured in such free ports, but they must be exported, thus helping the country's balance of payments. Of course there is more in it than that, but I have sent the relevant Minister a full report on the concept of free ports. South Humberside, and particularly the aerodrome at Kilmington, would be a very satisfactory site for this country's first free port.
Humberside has, of course, been hard hit, but, with true Yorkshire grit and common sense, it is fighting through and under this Government and the next Conservative Government it will have a very bright future indeed.
Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse: I am sorry that the Minister is not in his place, because he said that there were signs that things were becoming more cheerful. I regret that I cannot share his view. Yesterday, on my way to the House, I went past the jobcentre in Wakefield. The Minister's constituency is next door to mine, and if he had seen what I saw—youngsters queueing to get in with a look of disillusionment and hopelessness on their faces—he would not have said that.
West Yorkshire county council has estimated that 764,000 people were employed in the area in the period up to June 1982. The decline in employment in west Yorkshire has been significantly higher than the national average. Indeed, in the four years since 1978, an estimated 100,000 jobs have been lost in the county. That represents a 12 per cent. decline in the number of jobs, compared with a national figure of 7 per cent. Unemployment in west Yorkshire has remained about average for Great Britain since mid-1980, although in some areas unemployment is above average. The total percentage for the area is 13·6 per cent., which means that 125,165 people are unemployed.
However, the number of those registered as claiming unemployment benefit does not reflect the scale of unemployment. The county council's estimate of the number of unemployed people in west Yorkshire who are not registered as unemployed is now about 50,000. The true unemployment rate for the county is therefore 19 per cent., compared with 18 per cent. for Great Britain.
In the Castleford travel-to-work area there were 52 unemployed people for every vacancy in January 1983, compared with 31 in Great Britain and an average of 34 in west Yorkshire. I fully appreciate that there are much worse pockets of unemployment that ours in Yorkshire, but it should be borne in mind that the Castleford travel-to-work area has five pits, with a dozen on its perimeter,

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and that we rely to no small extent on the coal industry, which depends for 75 per cent. of its market on Central Electricity Generating Board purchases for electricity generation. In turn, 80 per cent. of the CEGB's fuel base is coal, compared with 10 per cent. nuclear power. Coal employs 60,000 people directly in Yorkshire, as well as others in supporting industries such as railways and power stations. Each nuclear power station the size of Sizewell would probably remove the need for about 1 million tonnes of coal, the output of three to five collieries. If more nuclear power stations are developed, unemployment in coalmining areas will become desperate.
In the near future there may be an appointment to the National Coal Board with the intention of running down the industry. I hope the miners get the message that if they grab at the carrot of redundancy pay that will be dangled before them, they will be selling not only their own jobs but the jobs of their sons. If this happens, Yorkshire will be an even more depressed area. Even though we are blessed with the great Selby coalfield, with a job capacity of 4,000, as we have been told by the Minister, if that is to replace the capacity in north Yorkshire, where 16,000 miners are employed, there will be a loss of 10,000 to 12,000 jobs. We are alive to the possibility. The next chairman of the National Coal Board should have experience in the industry so that he understands it and will not allow it to be butchered, as has happened in the steel industry.
There is scope in the derelict areas of the Yorkshire coalfields to produce hundreds of jobs if grants are made available. Unfortunately, grants have been reduced over the last few years. While the county has attempted to solve the problem, it cannot cope, because as thousands of hectares are reclaimed, thousands more hectares are becoming derelict. A massive injection of capital would help to solve the problem and might lead to jobs for some of the youngsters who are unemployed.
It may be worth stressing in a regional debate the need for regional policies by the Government. Sectoral policies and major development proposals should be given greater attention. This is one way of helping to prevent regional imbalance. Regional policies tend to be used only when a region is obviously in deep economic trouble. Surely it would be better and more cost-effective to take measures to prevent regional imbalance arising in the first place.
8.39 pm
Mr. Edward Lyons: Household incomes in Yorkshire and Humberside are the lowest in Britain. That fact should dominate this debate about our region. The Minister, himself a Member for a Yorkshire constituency, quoted the second paragraph of a regional strategy review of the Yorkshire and Humberside county councils association in which it was stated how experienced was our labour force, how assured were our energy supplies, and so on. All that was correct. However, in playing a game of ping-pong politics, he found it expedient to omit the first paragraph of the document, which stated that Yorkshire and Humberside had serious problems, that its unemployment was above the national average and that its household incomes were the lowest in Britain.
The Minister's speech contained nothing to show that he was prepared to confront the real problems. The
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Minister picked out the good things, and there are good things to be picked out. However no one would have known from the Minister's speech that the textile, clothing and footwear industries in west Yorkshire have lost 33·9 per cent. of their workers and the engineering industry 27·2 per cent. of its workers in the last four years. There has been a loss of 103,000 jobs in west Yorkshire alone.
In the Bradford, Shipley and Bingley travel-to-work areas on 13 January this year, there were 25,258 people officially unemployed, representing a rate of 15·5 per cent. There were three vacancies available for every 100 people unemployed. One does not, of course, blame everything on the Government. One knows that it is important to encourage high productivity, to reduce over-manning and to make British industry competitive. It is not, however, a serious response to the debate to argue how good are the cricket results, when they are good, and to say how pretty the county is. That is an insult to the people who are unemployed in Yorkshire.
Two of the three major industries in Yorkshire and Humberside have suffered the most enormous damage. If the Government, on coming to power, had thought that their policies would produce these results, they would never have embarked upon them. Nothing was said by Conservative spokesmen during the election campaign to show that they envisaged such enormous levels of unemployment either in Britain or within the region, or that they appreciated that the slump ensuing from their restrictionist policies would endure into 1983. The fact that the position is still so bad proves that the Government have been taken by surprise and that they fail to understand the effects of what they have done. There is no real glimmer of light ahead. It is not unpatriotic to say so: it needs to be stated.
The Minister asked the House to appreciate the success of wool textile exports. That is true. The industry is to be congratulated but how does that lone comment appear when the Wool Textile and Clothing Industry Action Committee states that the industry is in a parlous condition and that 240,000 jobs have been lost during the operation of the previous multi-fibre arrangement? What is needed from the Government is powerful action. The trouble is that Yorkshire and Humberside is not so attractive as areas of the south and the south-east, but, with the exception of Bradford, we do not have assisted area status similar to areas in the north-east region and Scotland. Accordingly, Yorkshire and Humberside have the worst of both worlds. However, the Government seem incapable of recognising that and taking action.
The Government must stimulate the nation's economy and that of Yorkshire and Humberside in particular. As my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Wainwright) said, there are a number of ways to do that. My hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Mr. Ginsberg) has problems similar to those of other Members representing textile industry areas. He wishes me to say on his behalf that the Government must take action to stimulate the economy. There are ways in which the enormous burden of expenditure to maintain unemployed people can be reduced. The ethnic peoples are disproportionately unemployed. Youth in this area is disproportionately unemployed. Those people may be alienated from our society. We must worry not just about the economic consequences, but also about the social consequences of endemic unemployment.

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One must consider the state of the railways, and the fact that the Government have now received a report which recommends, as one option, that they should close down railways in large parts of Yorkshire, including Leeds, Bradford and so on. We expect the Government to say that they will have no truck with any such devastating proposals that would destroy communications in Yorkshire. We want the Conservative party, whether in government or opposition, to say that it will have no truck with such proposals.
We want the Government to initiate, for example, heat insulation programmes and railway electrification. During the last debate on the region in 1981 the hon. Member for Skipton (Mr. Watson) suggested a number of schemes that the Government could undertake to reduce unemployment and keep men constructively employed. Those schemes have not been undertaken by the Government.
Most hon. Members representing the region know well what is required. Many people could be put to work in a way which would strengthen the country's economic infrastructure, and which would reduce the enormous and growing disparity between north and south. It is about time the Government took their finger out and did something about it.
8.47 pm
Mr. John H. Osborn: The motion, which has many fallacies, is possibly too simplistic. It assumes too readily that, by taking funds from the profitable and successful by way of taxation, the problems of Yorkshire and Humberside can be resolved. It assumes that the Government can resolve the misery of unemployment and family unhappiness, but there is a limit to what Governments can do. Governments can help and they can hinder. The House must bear that in mind. Nevertheless, I welcome the debate, even though I come from Sheffield and south Yorkshire.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-West (Sir D. Kaberry) said, any Government would wish the area to be prosperous and even for a return to the late 1950s and early 1960s when we were told that we had never had it so good. It was in the 1960s, with perhaps the Jarrow marches in mind, that Lord Hailsham, under Harold Macmillan as Prime Minister, initiated selective help for the north-east—Newcastle, Tyne and Tees.
The northern region has enjoyed a special coherence and entity, new towns and industries, which I encountered on a recent visit. That coherence is true of Scotland and of Wales.
Before local government reorganisation and when Yorkshire was top of county cricket, it had an entity and real pride. There were Yorkshire associations and societies in London and all over the English-speaking world.
Conservative Members recently met the Yorkshire and Humberside county councils association. The association urged Members of Parliament for the area to work together in the area's interests. It was pointed out to me at a recent meeting of the Sheffield chamber of commerce that the Association of Yorkshire Chambers of Commerce shared that wish. That includes Members of Parliament of all parties, but the situation is somewhat difficult, especially in Sheffield where, ironically, the idealism, the policies and perhaps the machinations of the Left-wing city council and the issues that it supports are helping to bring about the decline of some of the city's basic industries at a time when those industries face the winds of competition and
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recession. I admit that the recession is a world phenomenon, but as the only Conservative from 13 to 17 seats in the south Yorkshire area I find the all-party balance a little out of true. Nevertheless, today's debate has brought Members from Yorkshire and Humberside together, and I very much hope that we, as hon. Members, can go forward together to face the challenge confronting our area.
Inevitably I must deal with Sheffield. I welcome the fact that the Open Polytechnic may well be situated in Sheffield at the Manpower Services Commission headquarters, and that the Rev. Dr. George Tolley, who for years was principal of Sheffield polytechnic, may be principal of it. Perhaps the Minister will confirm that that is so.
The Select Committee on Education, Science and the Arts, of which I am a member, has been very much concerned with the Manpower Services Commission, with the youth opportunities programme, with training and with the transition from school to work or, alas, unemployment. Not only in Sheffield, but in other parts of the country, I have met young people who have no jobs and who need encouragement to face the challenge of the future. Some 25 years ago, I was very much involved with apprentice training. I said then, and I still say to young people, that to gain a skill qualification in times of employment, let alone in a recession, at best gives satisfaction at work and play, but that the important thing is to have skills that others need and will pay for.
I was made aware of another factor that must not be forgotten four years ago when I was in the European Parliament, but more recently in the Economic Affairs Committee of the Council of Europe of which I am now a member. Recession and rising unemployment are not confined to Sheffield, south Yorkshire or Yorkshire and Humberside. They have hit Europe and the Western world as a whole. In the EC, unemployment could be 13 million, in the Council of Europe countries 17 million to 18 million, and in the OECD countries 32 million now and perhaps 35 million next year. Unemployment is hitting Socialist, Social Democrat, Christian Democrat, Republican and Conservative Governments alike I hope that the House will bear this reality constantly in mind so that we may face the future and solve the problems together. The world situation does not make the problem any less urgent in Sheffield and Yorkshire, but a pick-up in the United States, for instance, could lead to a pick-up in Europe and in Great Britain with a feed-back to Yorkshire and Humberside.
In the debate on the regions in July, I referred to the fact that the private sector of the steel industry—the special steels industry—had its back to the wall. Like many other Sheffield names, the successor to Samuel Osborn and Co. Limited, the company with which I have been associated, Aurora Holdings, has unfortunately gone out of steel altogether this week, the last plant to go being at Openshaw in Manchester. This was due to a variety of factors. Unfair competition from the British Steel Corporation and high import levels have already been mentioned in the debate. For the special steels industry, however, it is no good locking the stable door after the horse has bolted. This presents the city of Sheffield with a new challenge.
There are one or two small improvements that I wish to see. First, there should be stronger action by the Government to enable purchasers to know when they are

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buying British and when they are not. British wool has had its symbol for many years. The hand tool industry launched its solution at a recent exhibition in Birmingham. But the question of the country of origin is still of concern to the cutlery industry. I hope that the Department of Industry will persuade the Departmant of Trade to reconsider the matter.
Secondly, one or two small successful companies in Sheffield make spare parts for agricultural equipment, the motor industry and other industries. They supply items such as springs, tynes, cutters and so on to repairers and original manufacturers. The new copyright law is making some of the traditional markets dry up—yet that law does not affect those companies' competitors in the EC or elsewhere. This morning I met my hon. Friend the Minister for Consumer Affairs and asked that the Government examine the matter again and act urgently.
Thirdly, an all-important issue is lower energy costs. The right hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) said that the coal mining industy was the only industry to survive in south Yorkshire. The possible arrival of Arthur Scargill and the headquarters of the National Union of Mineworkers in Sheffield are considered to be mixed blessings. As 82 per cent. of our electricity is generated by coal, it is one major cause of Britain having to buy electricity at one of the highest levels in Europe. Mr. MacGregor of the British Steel Corporation has confirmed that that is why electric steel melting is almost impossible in a city such as Sheffield. Perhaps the coal miners' good luck today is the reason why so many steel workers are on the dole. The NUM and the unions presenting steel workers are likely to jump into bed together, but it strikes me that they will be strange bedfellows.
The employers want the price of energy to drop. Cheaper coal would help, as would a positive nuclear energy policy and a successful outcome at Sizewell. But I do not think that Arthur Scargill and the NUM will help to bring that about.
Another small issue is that of the amalgamation of the Steel Castings Research and Trade Association and the British Cast Iron Research Association. I had hoped that they would move to Hoyle Street, Sheffield—which had been a British lion and Steel Research Association laboratory—but I fear that they may go to Birmingham. Can the Minister tell us more about that?
I shall deliberately curtail my remarks. The city and county councils have not done a great deal to encourage industry to the area. The difficulties facing those in the area who wish to stay there must be overcome. The Yorkshire and Humberside region faces a challenge, as do Sheffield and south Yorkshire, and that challenge must be met.
8.58 pm
Mr. Albert Roberts: It is always welcome to say a word about one's own county. I have vast experience of my county and am probably its senior Member in the Chamber. I have been a Member for more than 30 years. I have never yet experienced a time when I could say that the Yorkshire and Humberside region has had a fair deal.
The Minister, whose constituency includes the Selby coalfield, cannot claim any credit for its development. It has been there for umpteen years, and was developed
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under a Labour Government. It replaced pits that were near exhaustion and others that will be exhausted within the next few years. The Government cannot claim any credit for the Selby coalfield.
The right hon. Gentleman also referred to the Yeadon airport. The Labour party asked for an extension of that airport in the 1960s. It received no help from the Government. In fact, the present Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food turned down that request when he was a Minister at the Department of the Environment. Therefore, Yeadon airport is being extended as a result of the pressure brought to bear by West Yorkshire county council, Leeds, Bradford and other areas. Perhaps the Minister will tell us how much money the local authorities who run the airport receive from the Government. I do not know. If there is any help, I suspect that it is meagre.
The county extends from the east coast to within 10 miles of the west coast. We all know the old saying about there being more acres in the county then words in the Bible. We have mixed industry which comprises agriculture, steel, and coal. If only we were a province, we could work out our own salvation. Instead of that, however, we must assist the other areas that go around with begging bowls. When the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Wainwright) referred to the development of our hospitals, some Conservative Members shook their heads. I should like them to calculate the unit costs of hospitals throughout the country. If they take the west midlands, Merseyside and London as examples, I guarantee that they take more from the Exchequer than do we in Yorkshire. That is representative of the type of treatment that we have received for years.
Household incomes in Humberside and Yorkshire have already been referred to. It is undeniable that household incomes in Yorkshire are lower than anywhere else. In the 1950s, when there was industry and full employment, we wanted development in the Normanton area. We were told that it must go elsewhere. At that time, skilled workers in Yorkshire were being poached by the car industry. They went because the wages in Yorkshire were lower than those offered elsewhere. We now hear the pleadings nd bleatings of those areas. We have had to put up with what they are suffering all the time.
We would probably be the most economically sound region if we were allowed to develop. However, when it comes to asking for assistance from the Exchequer, we are told, "Generate your own industry". We will generate our own industry. We have the wit. We could be second to none. Hon. Members know what happens in the Chamber. I get sick and tired of hearing about the assistance that is being given to Merseyside. We hear about it week after week. Nevertheless, its geographical location is second to none. We can all quote indisputable figures. The north-east, the north-west, Yorkshire and the east midlands are the poorest areas. It is high time that the Government paid more attention to their needs.
Signing on the unemployment register has been mentioned. I signed the unemployment register in the 1930s when there was stark poverty. I left school in 1921. We all know about the father of the Secretary of State for Employment and his bike. I could not afford a bike. We only started to have full employment when we were preparing for war. I now hear the Prime Minister talking about inflation. There was no inflation in the 1920s and 1930s. One could buy a semi-detached house for £300. Moreover, in those days, wives did not work, especially

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in mining areas. Even so, 5 million of us were unemployed then. If we could have full employment when we were preparing for war, why can we not have full employment when we are preparing for peace?
I have read the economists' theories. I heard them throughout the 1920s and 1930s and I hear them now. However, no one in the Chamber can claim that he knows the answer to our problems. I recognise that we must generate international trade—I am mature enough to know that. The Prime Minister and others say repeatedly that we must reduce inflation and that when that is achieved we shall automatically have more employment.
Whether we like it or not, we are going through an industrial revolution. It is clear that a great change is taking place and I think that the Government could do much more to assist the British people. In the 1920s and 1930s public works were put into operation. New roads were constructed and local authorities did much more in those days for the unemployed than they are doing now.
I should have liked to see the electrification of the railways up to the north-east. That project would have provided work for the steel industry and for other industries as they became involved. The Government have turned away from that project. If inflation is reduced to 4 per cent., for example, is a Conservative Member prepared to say when unemployment will similarly decrease?
My constituency is contiguous to that of the Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Barkston Ash (Mr. Alison), and we know something about each other. I tell him that it is time that the region had a greater share of the national cake and a fairer share of EC regional aid grants. The figures have been produced by various associations and they are authentic. If Members in the Yorkshire and Humberside region get together, we can cause quite a stir in the House. That is what we should do unless a fair deal is coming in the very near future. If a Conservative Member can prove to me that other regions are not getting as good a deal as Yorkshire and Humberside, I shall be prepared to listen to him with an open mind.
Several Hon. Members rose
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong): Order. It may help the House to know that the Minister who is to reply to the debate hopes to catch my eye at eight minutes to 10.
9.9 pm
Mr. Michael Brown: I cannot hope to rival the wisdom and personal experience which the hon. Member for Normanton (Mr. Roberts) brought to bear in a speech of great eloquence. I recognise that many of the problems to which he drew attention and which occurred in the 1920s and 1930s are to some extent, certainly in my constituency, with us in the 1980s. As a Member of somewhat tender years who looks forward, as do the young unemployed in my constituency, to a somewhat brighter future, I hope that I may have the attention of the House.
I represent a constituency that is heavily dependent on the health and welfare of the steel industry. The Government rightly decided to retain the entity of the steel industry with five major plants, including Scunthorpe and Ravenscraig. The Government have charged the British Steel Corporation with the responsibility of preparing a
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corporate plan, which I understand will be presented to the Government shortly and will take into account the Government's requirement to maintain an industry with five major plants.
The Government's decision is to be applauded, but I hope that the British Steel Corporation will ensure that the total output from those five plants will not be reduced and that it had no intention simply of dividing a certain tonnage that it had in mind by five instead of by four if the Government had not sensibly intervened before Christmas.
The Government can claim a great deal of credit, certainly in my constituency, for recognising that the difficulties in the steel industry have not been caused by themselves and were not necessarily all caused by previous Administrations, but when the right hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) referred to the problems in the steel industry it was as though cuts and closures had not been recommended to the Administration in which he served in 1975–76. It was as though there had been no recommendations to reduce the size of the steel and coal industries, in the hope that a brighter future was around the corner.
We all know that cuts took place in the steel industry in the dying days of the Labour Administration. Unemployment in my constituency increased by about 1,700 at a stroke shortly before the last general election. The Opposition's record is not one of which they can be proud when drawing attention to the fact that the problems in the steel industry today were created in the mid and late-1970s. But never mind—one accepts that we must move forward.
Even if we accept at face value the commitment by the leader of the Labour party, the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Foot), to double the output of steel after the next general election, if the Scunthorpe plant doubles its output of steel it is unlikely that that will involve taking on the 10,000 men who were once steel workers but are unemployed today. I cannot imagine that the efficiency being created in that industry will be thrown away even if the Leader of the Opposition could sell 25 million tonnes. I think that the right hon. Gentleman said 20 million tonnes, but in another throwaway line he said 25 million tonnes. But what is 5 million tonnes between delegates at the Labour party conference?
Let us be clear and let us not deceive former steel workers, who may think that with the doubling of steel output there will be a doubling of those employed in the steel industry. Only a few hundred additional men will be taken on. I should like steel output to be increased, but let us be under no illusions and think that that will involve taking on thousands of former steel workers.
We must devote our attention to the problems of providing alternative jobs and industries, and here the Government have a proud record. They have recognised the problems in my constituency during the past two or three years and have given us development area status, which was requested not only by myself but by the Labour-controlled Scunthorpe borough council as well as the Conservative-controlled Glanford borough council.
The Labour council as well as the Conservative council and Conservative Member of Parliament put pressure on my right hon. Friends to consider the case for an enterprise zone. They accepted the case, which was made just as strongly by Labour councillors as by Conservative politicians.

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We have had the considerable advantage of our case receiving sympathetic consideration by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport for the improvement of the A15 link road, which will link the motorway system and the Humber bridge system and bypass those villages in my constituency that have been adversely affected in recent years. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who is not in the Chamber, will get the message that we will expect him to complete the excellent motorway network which has given south Humberside the opportunity to bring to fruition many of the jobs that industrialists have in mind.
I should like to bend the ears of my hon. Friends from the Department of Industry to a problem that has arisen with regard to the now redundant site of Nypro in Flixborough. The site tragically closed down two years ago, but there is now a serious purchaser who wishes to take it over as a going concern to undertake certain economic activities. I hope that the National Coal Board, as joint shareholder of the assets of Nypro, will be very much more forthcoming than it has been hitherto with regard to any negotiations that might be entered into if there are serious purchasers, which I understand there are, for that site.
The Government have recognised the role of non-governmental agencies in assisting the promotion of Yorkshire and Humberside. I congratulate my hon. Friends on what they have done to support the Yorkshire and Humberside development association. The Government have given some aid to that worthwhile organisation, upon which many hon. Members on both sides of the House rely for information and the encouragement and promotion of Yorkshire and Humberside. The Government also have a proud record in helping the tourist board.
There are unemployment difficulties in the region, but they would have existed whichever Administration were in power.
Mr. Prescott: They would have been smaller.
Mr. Brown: If the hon. Gentleman wishes to make a contribution—he has been in and out of the Chamber and shouting frequently from a sedentary position—he should try to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker.
Some industries in south Humberside have a proud record. My hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Sir P. Wall) said that agriculture has done extremely well. The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) belittled what my hon. Friend said about the achievement of the agriculture industry in Humberside. He should recognise that the contribution of that industry, especially to Humberside, is just as large as that of the heavy manufacturing industries. My hon. Friend also mentioned free ports. Everyone is talking about free ports, because my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has said how seriously he is considering the idea of a free port in Britain. Immingham in south Humberside is well placed to be given serious consideration should my right hon. and learned Friend have something interesting to say on the matter in his Budget speech.
Hon. Members on both sides of the House have played their part in drawing attention to the benefits of Nissan coming to south Humberside. I hope that the Government
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will do all that they can to make the case for south Humberside, so that not only my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Wales and for Scotland will visit Japan to make a case for their areas, but so that my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department of Employment—a Yorkshireman—will visit Japan and put forward Yorkshire and Humberside.
We have been talking about cricket teams, but perhaps we could now move to football. The manager and the team of Scunthorpe United, which was bottom of the fourth division and facing relegation last year, pulled themselves up by their boot straps when they recognised that they were in difficulty and that no Government would help them to get to the top of the fourth division. My constituents think as much of the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East as they do of Hull City football team. The achievement of Scunthorpe United shows that the people of south Humberside believe in self-help. When we seek promotion in the industrial league tables we shall have followed the example of Scunthorpe United.
9.18 pm
Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: The dilemma that faces the hon. Member for Brigg and Scunthorpe (Mr. Brown) is that if his unemployed constituents are to have a brighter future it will come only when he is unemployed. Happily, that will happen in the not-too-distant future. The hon. Gentleman was rather caustic about the Labour Government's record on the steel industry. I remind him that in the five years of the Labour Government there was a reduction in the number of people in work of 20,000. In the four years of the Conservative Government, there has been a reduction of 2·25 million. Our present crisis has been caused by the Government destroying about 20 per cent. of the manufacturing sector.
However, Yorkshire's problems have been worsened by neglect, not only by this Government but by the previous Government, and an interesting feature of the House tonight is to see how many hon. Members with marginal seats are present. I suspect that if our area were like the north-west of England or the midlands there would be a great deal more Government concern about the problems of Yorkshire and Humberside. Perhaps part of the reason is our neglect in not having put our case as strongly as we should have done.
In the few moments that I have at my disposal I shall address myself to the problems of York. The city is not as affected by unemployment as some of the areas represented here. Nevertheless, its unemployment has doubled during the period of this Government, and one of the main reasons has been the rundown in the primary industries that are represented in the city. In particular, the building industry has suffered seriously. The Government could stimulate the industry by putting more money into housing and into some of the major sectors for refurbishing the economy, such as sewerage, which badly needs assistance in York. That is one way in which people could get back to work.
It is interesting that Conservative Members constantly go on about not throwing money at problems to solve them, and then claim either that their Government have put money their way or that their Government should put money their way. The absurdity of the Government's economic policy is simply that they do not recognise that this country, and the international economy, will be stimulated only when we invest more in creating demand,

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and that the problems of inflation are nothing compared with the problems of the unemployed that have been created by this Government in trying to get down inflation. If I had to face the twin problems of inflation and unemployment, I would rather deal with unemployment than inflation. It is not necessarily a feather in the cap of this Government that they have managed to cut three points off inflation during their four-year term at the cost of three million unemployed. That is the total success of this Government.
Two other major problems face industry in York. The confectionery industry is well represented in the city, and it has seen a major turndown for the first time in any recession since the war. That turndown was caused by the combination of the recession and the introduction of 15 per cent. VAT on confectionery. It would be of considerable assistance if the confectionery industry were allowed to go back to the pre-1968 position, when there was no taxation because it was considered to be food. The confectionery industry as a whole, and York in particular, would greatly benefit.
There is another grave concern. In a city where about 15 per cent. of the working population work on the railways, it would be absurd if the Government were to implement any of the major serious options of the Serpell report. We have debated the matter on other occasions, and I shall not weary the House by going through it again. However, if the Government are really serious in not wishing to cut the major railway network, they could say here and now that they do not intend to implement option B in Serpell, which would cut the railways by about three quarters, and would cut employment in York by about the same figure, and, in particular, that British Rail Engineering will not be sold off and will still have a viable future within British Rail. At present it is still getting orders overseas, and there is no reason why it should be sold off. It would be most reassuring to my constituents if we were to be given that assurance now.
Finally, there is the problem of the glass industry. It is an interesting problem for the country as a whole, because it is increasing its efficiency enormously. Its productivity, too, has gone up enormously. The investment in National Glass in York has been by a firm whose management is good and which has had a marked interest in improving efficiency and productivity. Nevertheless, it is finding it extremely difficult to compete these days with supplies from Germany which are causing considerable difficulties for employment prospects within the city.
If, after the next Labour Government take office with an alternative economic strategy, the country were to invest enormous sums of money in improving our competitiveness by improving our capacity to produce good products, there would be a short period during which industries would have to get back on their feet before competition from abroad began to eat into the market. For that reason if for no other, there must be some system of import controls for a limited period. Such a system would have a considerable effect upon such industries as glass. I hope that after the next election, the glass industry, which at the moment faces a rather sombre future, will have much brighter prospects.
9.25 pm
Dr. Keith Hampson: I was particularly struck by the remarks of the hon. Member for Normanton (Mr. Roberts) when he compared the record of our region with
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that of Merseyside. Is not that what is wrong with regional debates? Coming from S hildon as I do, I spoke in the northern region debate. In each of these debates we lack a sense of perspective. Each region is making the same sort of demands. With respect to Labour Members, particularly the right hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason), it is not good enough to say that we want more public spending and a discriminatory policy to correct regional imbalances. All the regions are demanding that. There are the same structural problems in the steel, textile and coal industries in Europe. We are all competing against one another, offering more and more subsidies, and that must be a suicidal course.
We are at a stage when we must think more care fully about the sort of discriminatory aid that we adopt. To designate a region by no means guarantees that companies will go there and that once designated the money available will be taken up in a particular region. We should be giving projects and programmes specific help rather than broadly demarcating great tracts of the country. That is what the Government are beginning to do. At long last we are beginning to follow what has happened in the United States for decades—the matching of funds. It is not a matter of just calling on the Government to do something or blaming them for failing to do something, but of achieving a proper partnership and using public money to stimulate private investment and development.
We are only at the beginning of that process but we have already seen that Yorkshire and Humberside has 34 joint programmes in for urban development grant. In the first round, six were approved last week. As I said earlier, Bradford has over £500,000 to convert a mill into smaller workshop units at a gearing of about 1:4 public to private money. Scunthorpe has had about £1 million in order to trigger off £30 million for the development of the steelworks there. There have been four projects in Wakefield alone; they are not just in Bradford as was said earlier. That must be the way to do it.
It is not just a matter for the Government; it is a perspective which must be determined within the region. It is too glib to say that the Government have not done enough.
My right hon. Friend the Minister described what the Government have done. He mentioned the £15 million in aid to new technology. However, one cannot boast of what has been done as one could in the northern region debate. One of the real tragedies of the Yorkshire and Humberside region is that we are the poorest region for the development of high technology. For example, we are way behind the north-east. The House must look at some of these growth sectors to see whether sufficient help has been given to certain areas.
On regional aid in general, in the last financial year, our region received £47 million a s against £144 million for the northern region. I am not suggesting that my region ought to match the northern region, but it and Merseyside have acute problems. The Government's more selective approach in harness with the private sector is the right way to proceed. The hon. Member for Bradford, North (Mr. Ford) made the forceful comment that confidence could easily go from an area. He went on to say that institutional investment tended not to go into such an area. That is an important factor. One important factor in the development of business confidence is the role and attitude of the local authorities. There is no doubt that in my region, he it in Humberside, Yorkshire or Sheffield, local authorities have

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demonstrated to businesses that want to come into the area their attitude; they are slamming on rates at higher and higher levels. Companies must see a more receptive attitude.
The construction industry is at the heart of any growth in the economy. Whereas 1982 saw an upturn in housing starts of 25 per cent. in England as a whole, the figure for our region is only 11 per cent. Why? With respect to Opposition Members, it is not the Government's fault. The Government have poured in unbelievable sums of money. If one adds up what the Government have just given to Barnsley, Sheffield, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield in additional HIP allocations, it comes to £17 million, with £9 million going to Leeds.
The question involves not just Government money but the attitude, in part, of local authorities. In the first half of the current financial year the region of Yorkshire and Humberside has managed to take up only 33 per cent. of its allocation for housing. The region has spent only 33 per cent. in half a year. Throughout last year only 70 per cent. of the resources available for house building were used.
Surely we are in a partnership. It is a matter of getting the private sector interested and of the local authorities doing much more to do so. It is for hon. Members to ensure that their local authorities do their utmost, whether it is to get high technology going by using the wealth of our universities; whether it is by their attitude to the rates; or whether it is having the imagination to find programmes and projects which will attract institutional investors such as building societies. We lie at the heart of the building society industry. Those are the sort of institutions that local authorities, with enough flexibility of mind and imagination, can draw into programmes to rejuvenate our region.
Mr. Speaker: I am much obliged to the hon. Member for his brief speech.
The winding-up will begin at eight minutes to 10 o'clock. I am anxious to give a south Yorkshire Member and a Humberside Member a chance to speak, so I appeal for brevity.
9.33 pm
Mr. A. E. P. Duffy: When the Prime Minister invoked the famous prayer of St. Francis in Downing Street in May 1979, she promised to unite the nation. After nearly four years of her brand of Government, the nation is more divided than ever. Politically, economically and industrially we are two nations. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Yorkshire and Humberside. Thatcherism is destroying Yorkshire industry. I shall take as an example the steel industry.
Listening to the hon. Member for Brigg and Scunthorpe (Mr. Brown), one would not have believed that unemployment in Scunthorpe was over 30 per cent. Employment in the Sheffield steel industry is now just over 20,000 compared with 43,000 in 1979. Like the hon. Gentleman and the Minister, the Secretary of State for Industry has also tried to put a cheerful, complacent veneer on Sheffield steel. In an article in the Sheffield Morning Telegraph on 12 January 1983, the right hon. Gentleman said:
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"Sheffield and south Yorkshire generally will use its enterprising spirit … and recover its pre-eminence among manufacturing".
The right hon. Gentleman cited a firm in my constituency, Davy McKee, and the contract that it had recently secured. Since the Secretary of State made those remarks, the firm has announced yet further redundancies of 300 plus.
I cannot better indict the Government than by quoting such men as the chairman of the CBI's Yorkshire and Humberside region and the president of the Sheffield chamber of commerce. At about the same time, early last month, the chairman of the CBI in the Yorkshire and Humberside region, Jon Denny, reported in the same issue of the Morning Telegraph, said:,
"How can anyone plan for the future if they are living from day to day? … Much of the industry in the rest of the Yorkshire and Humberside region, which I represent, has been facing a similar fight for survival."
Dr. John Hervey, the president of the Sheffield chamber of commerce, said:
"Sheffield has been feeling the pinch for some time now, but the situation has reached alarming proportions in the last twelve months."
How can one reconcile the views of men on the ground in Yorkshire with the Minister's complacency and the speeches of some of his Back-Bench colleagues?
The Yorkshire and Humberside region is clearly in serious trouble, yet the Government have chosen this time to deprive much of the region of assisted area status. Our region also suffers from an ageing and deteriorating housing stock, yet house building rates have been allowed to fall dramatically. In the inner areas of the major conurbations in west and south Yorkshire there exist the familiar city centre problems of sub-standard living conditions and poor public amenities as well as jobs.
However, when average gross weekly earnings, household weekly expenditure, spending on social security benefits, and regionally relevant public spending per head are compared with other regions—including Scotland, the north and north-west—it shows that our region comes off not merely worse, but very badly. Again, by depriving Sheffield of intermediate area status, the Government have deprived it of EC funds. Through the grant-related expenditure for 1983–84 the Government have cut Sheffield's spending and placed the city in twenty-ninth position in the league table of 36 metropolitan districts. In addition, the Government are punishing Sheffield through the grant penalty system, which will cost Sheffield ratepayers over £14 million in 1983–84, despite its inner city problems.
As the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Wainwright) said, Yorkshire and Humberside is a good proving ground for testing Britain's industrial prospects. It is one of the areas in which a pick-up in the economy will soon manifest itself with the right encouragement and Government policies.
As time is short, I shall touch only briefly on the possible growth points. I must inevitably mention steel. I also want to say a word about joint ventures, of the type cited by the hon. Member for Haltemprice (Sir P. Wall), and about high technology.
Dr. John Hervey, president of the Sheffield chamber of commerce, says:
"It really is quite ludicrous that our exports should be subject to such high tariffs while our foreign competitors are aided by low import tariffs … With their foreign rivals getting gas and electricity so much cheaper, they have been at a big disadvantage in world markets"—

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he is talking about Sheffield's steel producers—
"Government could do a good deal about high energy costs at home."
There are other aids that the Government could provide for steel. The decision by EC Governments to withdraw all types of financial aid from steel by 1985 should be reviewed and preferably resisted by the Government at the earliest moment. High priority could be given to public sector construction projects, of which there are many examples.
On joint ventures we have heard the case for Nissan. I shall not dwell on it, except to say that we have a case, and Opposition Members will be looking to the right hon. Gentleman for the most rigorous prosecution of that case. We shall accept nothing but success. We are determined to win this one. We have rarely won anything from this Government or from previous Governments. We have lost again and again when up against Scotland and Wales and even the northern region. This is one that we shall not lose. That is the spirit and resolution of the Opposition. I hope we shall be joined by Government Back Benchers. If all Yorkshire Members are determined that they will not lose out on this one, and say so to the Government, then we shall not lose out on it.
In regard to high technology, the world is on the edge of a new industrial revolution. Microelectronic gadgetry will reshape our lives. For us the question is what Britain will make of all this. Imports of electronic equipment exceed exports by more than £900 million, and the gap is widening. Britain's most urgent need is to undertake a profound transition from the kind of industry that still depends upon brawn to the brainy world of biomedical engineering, data processing and microelectronics. These are precisely the industries that can constitute beacons for the future development of industry in Yorkshire.
Electronic and microtechnology growth industries are seriously under-represented in Yorkshire and Humberside. We require urgently a centre for industrial innovation and more information technology facilities throughout the region. Above all, we require support from the Government and investment funds to put our region in the forefront of microtechnology. If only the Government would share our faith in the region and ensure that we get the Nissan project, that would give the region a spark back to life. If only the Government would begin in that way to get Yorkshire back to work, they would be taking a practical step in getting Britain back to work.
9.42 pm
Mr. Robert Banks: We all wish to have the Nissan contract in this country, and we want it in Yorkshire. The way to do it is to start talking about what industry is doing in Yorkshire and how well it is doing. Running it down, as some hon. Members have done, will not help to persuade the Japanese to bring the Nissan contract to Yorkshire.
I welcome the debate. It is the best experience for all Yorkshire Members when we are able to debate matters relating to Yorkshire to the exclusion of other parts of the country. I endorse the remarks of my right hon. Friend the Minister of State when he was talking about some of the good contracts and the good news about Yorkshire. I will not talk about the despondency that Opposition Members have spoken about, because I do not believe it is useful to the prospects of Yorkshire.
890
Yorkshire is the cradle of industry, and the diversity of our industries and services takes us into every aspect of the production of national wealth. I regret very much the differences between north and south. It is high time Yorkshire got the recognition it deserves. Our industry is impressive in its achievements. Too often we overlook the praise that is due both to management and to work forces for overcoming difficulties and in so many cases improving on each year's results.
I have many examples in my constituency of companies which are doing extremely well this year compared with last year and even when last year's results are compared with those of the previous year. We have a company in steel factoring which is doing very well, as is a company which is manufacturing chemicals for the protection of metal; that company is exporting to Japan. It is high time we banged the drum a bit about what Yorkshire industry is doing. One thing I am sure of is that Yorkshire industry is capable of taking the country out of recession when the time comes. I believe that the time is now upon us.
The Falklands campaign was a remarkable achievement not least in that the task force was able to be put together in a very short time. Many people in industry were involved in that. That is something that is too easily forgotten. People in industry, like those involved in the task force, are capable of achieving the results that we all want to see—that is, firms making competitive products and selling those products in world markets. Out firms are doing that now and achieving great success. I sense a new spirit of confidence beginning to surge among all our people in industry just as it did among those who were connected with the Falklands campaign. With inflation down—a factor of huge importance to industry—and the pound at a level that gives a definite edge in export markets, and a new awareness of the competitive spirit in our factories, we stand to gain enormously.
We are at a point where we can reverse the economic fortunes of this country which have been in decline for decade after decade. This is the best opportunity we have had in the last 20 years to start going out into the world to make Britain a real leader not only in Europe but in world markets. Companies in Yorkshire are able and willing to do that. They are eager to grasp the opportunities ahead because they have the people of the right mind to do it.
There are great opportunities in the service industries. In my constituency of Harrogate, we have a unique conference centre. I stress to the Minister that our rail link to Leeds and to York is of crucial importance and, in my book, sacrosanct. I trust that the future in my constituency will be one of greater prosperity with new developments in the hotel industry. The centre will bring in new trade and new business. I believe that my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer should grant industrial allowances for hotel developments. It is an industry that will be of great significance in the future. It is the service industries that will provide many new jobs.
I have often been told by Americans that Britain has the technology, the skills and the people. It is just that they do not get together to create the companies that can compete with some of the companies worldwide, especially in America. I believe that we are now beginning to have a new confidence in ourselves to do that. We, in Yorkshire and Humberside, must not accept decline. The spirit exists for reversing the decline. I am glad that there has been the opportunity to hold this debate.
9.48 pm
Mr. James Johnson: My right hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) made a masterly and well-marshalled speech. I could not understand why the Minister, as a Yorkshireman, or, like myself, an adopted Yorkshireman, and sitting for a Yorkshire seat, should say what he did about fishing. The right hon. Gentleman used the word "good". I should like to give him some statistics about Hull. No city has suffered to a greater extent. Less than 10 years ago, there were 111 vessels of over 140ft. Today there are 10. We shall see no vessels built in the coming 10 years unless the Government become compassionate, warm hearted and look north beyond Potters Bar and Watford.
The Government are weighted towards the south. We do not get, particularly in Yorkshire, a square deal. That has been stated a dozen times. Less than 10 years ago, we had 2,400 men at sea. Today we have 600. Four years ago, there was an officers' guild with 300 members. Today we have no guild at all. I could continue with similar statistics. I wish, however, to be more cheerful and helpful towards my constituents than the Minister is towards people in England, Wales, Scotland, and, in particular, Yorkshire.
Our labour force in Hull is fighting back. A co-operative has been formed between the bobbers, the dockers, the fish merchants and the auctioneers. With the help of money from the city council the co-operative is now landing 25,000 tonnes of fish a year. By definition, fishing takes place in small centres. Hull and Grimsby are unique in the fishing industry. We have lost 8,000 jobs, representing 35 per cent. of the city's job losses. I say that without fear of contradiction.
I come to the Humber bridge and the people on the south bank. The Humber bridge now links the two sides of the river. For centuries almost, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire have been at loggerheads. Hull is now allied with Grimsby and the south bank, and we are working for our mutual good. I am told that adversity makes queer bedfellows. We are not yet in bed with Grimsby but we go together to see the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, and we are hoping to receive aid from the stingy Government we are now fighting.
The fishermen and the people of Hull are convalescing; we are fighting hard and fighting back. We shall succeed, given one thing: that we receive help from the Government out of the £140 million of EC money, which the Government can tot up. We want more help from Whitehall. Why cannot the Government show more humanity? They talk about the Victorian values that they have; we have them in Hull, but we have the good ones—independence, decency, honesty and clan loyalty. We are fighting together to save our future.
The Government must change their attitude towards the north, and Yorkshire in particular, and forget their southern bias. We are fighting back on Humberside, and I believe that we can win if the Government give us a little more help. With that help, we shall be able to pull out of the mess that we are in.
9.51 pm
The Under-Secretary of State for Industry (Mr. John MacGregor): In view of the time I shall not be able to respond, alas, to many of the issues and questions that have been raised, but I should like to touch on three of the main themes.
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Many comments were made and questions asked about Nissan, including those by the right hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason), and I shall begin with that. When my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Industry was in Japan recently, the company assured him that it was continuing its serious study of the project. As we know, Nissan made it clear last summer that it had merely postponed its decision whether to go ahead. It had not shelved the project. The proposal represents a major decision for the company and it is natural that it should want to research it thoroughly.
The Government continue to welcome the project, which would be a most valuable demonstration of Japanese commitment to improve the imbalance in our economic relations, and also a valuable demonstration of joint ventures in this key industry which we believe to be of advantage to both counries. The right hon. Member for Barnsley asked about the level of components. One of the key features of the project, as I think he must know, is that it should have a high local content—80 per cent. as soon as possible after full production. Without that, the project would not have been welcome.
As to the choice of site, the company has expressed a preference for a site in a development or special development area. Large parts of Yorkshire and Humberside have that. As the House knows, representatives of Nissan visited a number of sites in Wales, Humberside and north-east England to obtain information for the company's feasibility study. If the outcome is positive and the project goes ahead, the final selection of a site would probably be the subject of further detailed study. The Government have not sought at any stage to influence Nissan's choice of site. It is a matter for the company to decide. If it reaches that stage, it is up to hon. Gentlemen, my hon. Friends and many others to put the case again for their region as other regions will. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate (Mr. Banks) has put the case well today in the way that it should be put.
I come now to rates. My hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Sir P. Wall) referred to the appalling rate increase of 61 per cent. in Humberside last year. Similarly, an increase of nearly 60 per cent. was imposed by West Yorkshire council. They are both, significantly, Labourcontrolled. It comes ill from Opposition Members to weep crocodile tears about industrial costs when these authorities, of a similar political alignment to themselves, are imposing this kind of increased burden on companies. I hope that as a result of the constant pressures that we put on them they will now see sense and introduce far more realistic budgets and rate increases in the coming years. [HON. MEMBERS: "What about jobs?"] Hon. Members talk about jobs, but they must know that local authorities must achieve a balance between trying to help industries and small businesses in their area, which I support, and imposing heavy rate increases or failing to engage in good housekeeping to such as extent that they drive jobs away from their areas. [Interruption.] I have listened patiently to the debate. I hope that the House will now allow me to answer some of the points raised.
Mr. Prescott: Twit.
Mr. MacGregor: The hon. Gentleman makes a stimulating monosyllabic contribution, but I do not think that it advances the debate.
My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-West (Sir D. Kaberry) referred to rating empty properties. As he

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knows, local authorities have a great deal of flexibility in the use of their discretion to levy empty property rates, and some use it to good effect. Indeed, about half of the local authorities in the country choose not to levy empty property rates at all.
I was not present when my hon. Friend spoke, but I was told of his request and I should put these points to him. For the local authority, it is a question of balance in each case. It must consider the impact of the loss of rate revenue on existing businesses and decide on the balance. The Government already have power to reduce local authorities' flexibility in this matter either by extending the grace period when rates cannot be levied or by lowering the rates ceiling, which we introduced in 1981, from 50 per cent. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment and his colleagues have told the House, and I reaffirm it, that the matter is being kept under close review to see whether further changes are necessary.
On assisted area status and the amount of Government aid to Yorkshire and Humberside, I repeat the point that has been made many times in these debates that most of industry in the regions wants us to continue our economic strategy of bringing down inflation, interest rates and industrial costs. Nevertheless, I shall give some of the facts as it is important to set the record straight. I shall not repeat the impressive list of figures that my right hon. Friend the Minister of State gave, but I must reply to the challenge that Yorkshire and Humberside have been discriminated against in the Government's regional policy.
Even after the reduction in the coverage of the assisted areas, much of Yorkshire and Humberside retains assisted area status and thus its eligibility for regional aid. That covers 40 per cent. of the working population. In taking the decision to concentrate regional aid, the Government recognise that there are serious problems in some parts of the region, in the areas of greatest need. That is why most of Humberside is a development area, as are Mexborough and Rotherham in south Yorkshire. Other parts of South Yorkshire, Bradford and parts of orth Yorkshire are intermediate areas. Many other parts of the country would regard that as a substantial amount of assisted area status.
The hon. Member for Normanton (Mr. Roberts) referred to EC money. Regional aid from the United Kingdom Government, to which my right hon. Friend the Minister of State referred, has been backed by assistance from EC funds. About £27 million has been received in loans from the European Investment Bank to help firms in the region with capital investment projects, and a further £33 million has been granted by the European regional development fund for infrastructure projects.
The region has been helped in many other ways, with section 8 assistance and science and technology aid, although I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Ripon (Dr. Hampson) that we should like to see a far greater take-up of the science and technology money.
The figures that I have given do not take into account the large sums that have gone into the region through capital investment by the nationalised industries or the battery of special employment measures operated by the Manpower Services Commission. I therefore totally reject the charge that Yorkshire and Humberside have been unfairly treated.
The region and many of its industries have serious problems although, as my hon. Friends have pointed out, there are also many successes. I am fair minded and I accept that, but the Opposition show a complete lack of
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balance. There have failed to analyse the issues, to recognise that there is a serious recession in the same industries in other countries or to recognise the Labour Government's contribution to the current situation.
This is our fourth regional debate and the reason for the frequency of these debates is becoming clear. They are a smokescreen for the total lack of constructive policies from the Opposition, allowing them to make constituency speeches expressing their concern without any probing of their policies either by their own Back Benchers or by Conservative Members. I believe that concern is on all sides but that our policies are right. That is why we reject the motion.
Question put:—
House divided: Ayes 229, Noes 297.

Division No. 76]

[10 pm

AYES

Abse, Leo

Douglas, Dick

Adams, Allen

Dubs, Alfred

Allaun, Frank

Duffy, A. E. P.

Alton, David

Dunnett, Jack

Anderson, Donald

Dunwoody, Hon Mrs G.

Archer, Rt Hon Peter

Eadie, Alex

Ashley, Rt Hon Jack

Eastham, Ken

Ashton, Joe

Edwards, R. (W'hampt'n S E)

Atkinson, N.(H'gey,)

Ellis, R. (NE D'bysh're)

Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)

Ellis, Tom (Wrexham)

Barnett, Rt Hon Joel (H'wd)

English, Michael

Beith, A. J.

Ennals, Rt Hon David

Benn, Rt Hon Tony

Evans, loan (Aberdare)

Bennett, Andrew (St'kp't N)

Evans, John (Newton)

Bidwell, Sydney

Ewing, Harry

Booth, Rt Hon Albert

Faulds, Andrew

Boothroyd, Miss Betty

Field, Frank

Bottomley, Rt Hon A .(M'b'ro)

Fitch, Alan

Bray, Dr Jeremy

Foot, Rt Hon Michael

Brocklebank-Fowler, C.

Ford, Ben

Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)

Forrester, John

Brown, R. C. (N'castle W)

Foster, Derek

Brown, Ronald W. (H'ckn'y S)

Foulkes, George

Brown, Ron (E'burgh, Leith)

Fraser, J. (Lamb'th, N'w'd)

Buchan, Norman

Freeson, Rt Hon Reginald

Callaghan, Rt Hon J.

Garrett, John (Norwich S)

Callaghan, Jim (Midd't'n & P)

Garrett, W. E. (Wallsend)

Campbell, Ian

George, Bruce

Canavan, Dennis

Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

Cant, R. B.

Ginsburg, David

Carmichael, Neil

Golding, John

Carter-Jones, Lewis

Gourlay, Harry

Cartwright, John

Graham, Ted

Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

Hamilton, James (Bothwell)

Clarke.Thomas(C'b'dge, A'rie)

Hamilton, W. W. (C'fral Fife)

Cocks, Rt Hon M. (B'stol S)

Hardy, Peter

Cohen, Stanley

Harrison, Rt Hon Walter

Coleman, Donald

Hart, Rt Hon Dame Judith

Concannon, Rt Hon J. D.

Haynes, Frank

Conlan, Bernard

Healey, Rt Hon Denis

Cook, Robin F.

Heffer, Eric S.

Cowans, Harry

Hogg, N. (E Dunb't'nshire)

Cox, T. (W'dsw'th, Toot'g)

Holland, S. (L'b'th, Vauxh'll)

Craigen, J. M. (G'gow, M'hill)

Homewood, William

Crowther, Stan

Hooley, Frank

Cryer, Bob

Horam, John

Cunliffe, Lawrence

Howell, Rt Hon D.

Cunningham, Dr J. (W'h'n)

Howells, Geraint

Dalyell, Tarn

Hoyle, Douglas

Davidson, Arthur

Hughes, Mark (Durham)

Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (L'lli)

Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

Davis, Clinton (Hackney C)

Janner, Hon Greville

Davis, Terry (B'ham, Stechf'd)

Jay, Rt Hon Douglas

Deakins, Eric

John, Brynmor

Dean, Joseph (Leeds West)

Johnson, James (Hull West)

Dewar, Donald

Jones, Rt Hon Alec (Rh' dda)

Dixon, Donald

Jones, Barry (East Flint)

Dobson, Frank

Jones, Dan (Burnley)

Dormand, Jack

Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald

895

Kerr, Russell

Robertson, George

Kilroy-Silk, Robert

Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)

Lambie, David

Rooker, J. W.

Lamond, James

Roper, John

Leadbitter, Ted

Ross, Ernest (Dundee West)

Leighton, Ronald

Rowlands, Ted

Lestor, Miss Joan

Ryman, John

Lewis, Arthur (N'ham NW)

Sandelson, Neville

Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)

Sever, John

Litherland, Robert

Sheerman, Barry

Lofthouse, Geoffrey

Sheldon, Rt Hon R.

Lyon, Alexander (York)

Shore, Rt Hon Peter

Lyons, Edward (Bradf'd W)

Short, Mrs Renée

McCartney, Hugh

Silkin, Rt Hon J. (Deptford)

McDonald, Dr Oonagh

Silkin, Rt Hon S. C. (Dulwich)

McElhone, Mrs Helen

Silverman, Julius

McKelvey, William

Skinner, Dennis

MacKenzie, Rt Hon Gregor

Smith, Cyril (Rochdale)

McNamara, Kevin

Smith, Rt Hon J. (N Lanark)

McTaggart, Robert

Snape, Peter

McWilliam, John

Soley, Clive

Marshall, D(G'gow S'ton)

Spearing, Nigel

Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

Spellar, John Francis (B'ham)

Martin, M(G'gowS'burn)

Spriggs, Leslie

Mason, Rt Hon Roy

Stoddart, David

Mates, Michael

Stott, Roger

Maxton, John

Strang, Gavin

Meacher, Michael

Straw, Jack

Mikardo, Ian

Summerskill, Hon Dr Shirley

Millan, Rt Hon Bruce

Taylor, Mrs Ann (Bolton W)

Miller, Dr M. S. (E Kilbride)

Thomas, Dr R .(Carmarthen)

Mitchell, R. C. (Soton Itchen)

Thorne, Stan (Preston South)

Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)

Tinn, James

Morris, Rt Hon C. (O'shaw)

Torney, Tom

Morton, George

Varley, Rt Hon Eric G.

Mulley, Rt Hon Frederick

Wainwright, E.(Dearne V)

Newens, Stanley

Wainwright, R.(Colne V)

Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

Walker, Rt Hon H.(D'caster)

O'Halloran, Michael

Wardell, Gareth

O'Neill, Martin

Watkins, David

Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

Weetch, Ken

Palmer, Arthur

Welsh, Michael

Park, George

White, Frank R.

Parker, John

White, J. (G'gow Pollok)

Parry, Robert

Whitehead, Phillip

Pavitt, Laurie

Whitlock, William

Penhaligon, David

Willey, Rt Hon Frederick

Pitt, William Henry

Williams, Rt Hon A. (S'sea W)

Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)

Williams, Rt Hon Mrs(Crosby)

Prescott, John

Wilson, Rt HonSir H.(H'ton)

Price, C. (Lewisham W)

Wilson, William (C'try SE)

Race, Reg

Winnick, David

Radice, Giles

Woodall, Alec

Rees, Rt Hon M (Leeds S)

Woolmer, Kenneth

Richardson, Jo

Roberts, Albert (Normanton)

Tellers for the Ayes:

Roberts, Ernest (Hackney N)

Dr. Edmund Marshall and

Roberts, Gwilym (Cannock)

Mr. Allen McKay.

NOES

Adley, Robert

Best, Keith

Aitken, Jonathan

Bevan, David Gilroy

Alexander, Richard

Biggs-Davison, Sir John

Alison, Rt Hon Michael

Blackburn, John

Amery, Rt Hon Julian

Blaker, Peter

Ancram, Michael

Body, Richard

Arnold, Tom

Bottom ley, Peter (W'wich W)

Aspinwall, Jack

Bowden, Andrew

Atkins, Rt Hon H.(S'thorne)

Boyson, Dr Rhodes

Atkins, Robert (Preston N)

Braine, Sir Bernard

Atkinson, David (B'm'th.E)

Bright, Graham

Baker, Kenneth (St.M'bone)

Brinton, Tim

Baker, Nicholas (N Dorset)

Brittan, Rt. Hon. Leon

Banks, Robert

Brooke, Hon Peter

Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

Brotherton, Michael

Bendall, Vivian

Brown, Michael(Brigg & Sc'n)

Bennett, Sir Frederic (T'bay)

Browne, John (Winchester)

Benyon, Thomas (A'don)

Bruce-Gardyne, John

Benyon, W. (Buckingham)

Bryan, Sir Paul

Berry, Hon Anthony

Buchanan-Smith, Rt. Hon. A.

896

Buck, Antony

Hicks, Robert

Budgen, Nick

Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

Burden, Sir Frederick

Hill, James

Butcher, John

Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

Carlisle, John (Luton West)

Holland, Philip (Carlton)

Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

Hooson, Tom

Carlisle, Rt Hon M. (R'c'n)

Hordern, Peter

Chalker, Mrs. Lynda

Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

Channon, Rt. Hon. Paul

Howell, Rt Hon D. (G'ldf'd)

Chapman, Sydney

Howell, Ralph (N Norfolk)

Clark, Hon A. (Plym'th, S'n)

Hunt, David (Wirral)

Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)

Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)

Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas

Colvin, Michael

Irvine, RtHon Bryant Godman

Cope, John

Irving, Charles (Cheltenham)

Corrie, John

Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick

Costain, Sir Albert

Jessel, Toby

Cranborne, Viscount

Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

Critchley, Julian

Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith

Crouch, David

Kaberry, Sir Donald

Dickens, Geoffrey

Kershaw, Sir Anthony

Dorrell, Stephen

Kimball, Sir Marcus

Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.

King, Rt Hon Tom

Dover, Denshore

Kitson, Sir Timothy

du Cann, Rt Hon Edward

Knight, Mrs Jill

Dunn, Robert (Dartford)

Knox, David

Durant, Tony

Lamont, Norman

Dykes, Hugh

Lang, Ian

Eden, Rt Hon Sir John

Langford-Holt, Sir John

Edwards, Rt Hon N. (P'broke)

Latham, Michael

Eggar, Tim

Lawrence, Ivan

Elliott, Sir William

Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel

Eyre, Reginald

Le Marchant, Spencer

Fairbairn, Nicholas

Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

Fairgrieve, Sir Russell

Lester, Jim (Beeston)

Faith, Mrs Sheila

Lewis, Sir Kenneth (Rutland)

Farr, John

Lloyd, Ian (Havant & W'loo)

Fell, Sir Anthony

Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

Fenner, Mrs Peggy

Loveridge, John

Finsberg, Geoffrey

Lyell, Nicholas

Fisher, Sir Nigel

McCrindle, Robert

Fletcher, A. (Ed'nb'gh N)

Macfarlane, Neil

Fletcher-Cooke, Sir Charles

MacGregor, John

Fookes, Miss Janet

MacKay, John (Argyll)

Forman, Nigel

Macmillan, Rt Hon M.

Fowler, Rt Hon Norman

McNair-Wilson, M. (N'bury)

Fox, Marcus

McNair-Wilson, P. (New F'st)

Fraser, Rt Hon Sir Hugh

McQuarrie, Albert

Fraser, Peter (South Angus)

Madel, David

Fry, Peter

Major, John

Gardiner, George (Reigate)

Marlow, Antony

Gardner, Sir Edward

Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

Garel-Jones, Tristan

Marten, Rt Hon Neil

Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian

Mates, Michael

Goodhart, Sir Philip

Maude, Rt Hon Sir Angus

Goodhew, Sir Victor

Mawby, Ray

Goodlad, Alastair

Mawhinney, Dr Brian

Gorst, John

Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

Gow, Ian

Mayhew, Patrick

Gower, Sir Raymond

Mellor, David

Grant, Sir Anthony

Meyer, Sir Anthony

Gray, Rt Hon Hamish

Miller, Hal (B'grove)

Greenway, Harry

Mills, Iain (Meriden)

Griffiths, E.(B'ySt. Edm'ds)

Mills, Sir Peter (West Devon)

Griffiths, Peter (Portsm'th N)

Miscampbell, Norman

Grist, Ian

Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)

Grylls, Michael

Moate, Roger

Gummer, John Selwyn

Monro, Sir Hector

Hamilton, Hon A.

Montgomery, Fergus

Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)

Moore, John

Hampson, Dr Keith

Morris, M. (N'hampton S)

Hannam, John

Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)

Haselhurst, Alan

Mudd, David

Hastings, Stephen

Murphy, Christopher

Hawkins, Sir Paul

Myles, David

Hawksley, Warren

Neale, Gerrard

Hayhoe, Barney

Needham, Richard

Heath, Rt Hon Edward

Nelson, Anthony

Heddle, John

Neubert, Michael

Henderson, Barry

Newton, Tony

897

Nott, Rt Hon Sir John

Stanley, John

Onslow, Cranley

Steen, Anthony

Oppenheim, Rt Hon Mrs S.

Stevens, Martin

Osborn, John

Stewart, A.(E Renfrewshire)

Page, Richard (SW Herts)

Stewart, Ian (Hitchin)

Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil

Stokes, John

Parris, Matthew

Stradling Thomas, J.

Patten, Christopher (Bath)

Tapsell, Peter

Patten, John (Oxford)

Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

Pawsey, James

Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman

Percival, Sir Ian

Temple-Morris, Peter

Pink, R. Bonner

Thatcher, Rt Hon Mrs M.

Pollock, Alexander

Thomas, Rt Hon Peter

Porter, Barry

Thompson, Donald

Prentice, Rt Hon Reg

Thorne, Neil (Ilord South)

Price, Sir David (Eastleigh)

Thornton, Malcolm

Proctor, K. Harvey

Townend, John (Bridlington)

Pym, Rt Hon Francis

Townsend, Cyril D, (B'heath)

Rathbone, Tim

Trippier, David

Rees, Peter (Dover and Deal)

van Straubenzee, Sir W.

Renton, Tim

Vaughan, Dr Gerard

Rhodes James, Robert

Viggers, Peter

Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

Waddington, David

Ridley, Hon Nicholas

Wakeham, John

Ridsdale, Sir Julian

Waldegrave, Hon William

Rifkind, Malcolm

Walker, Rt Hon P.(W'cester)

Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey

Walker, B. (Perth)

Roberts, Wyn (Conway)

Walker-Smith, Rt Hon Sir D.

Rossi, Hugh

Wall, Sir Patrick

Rost, Peter

Waller, Gary

Royle, Sir Anthony

Walters, Dennis

Rumbold, Mrs A. C. R.

Ward, John

Sainsbury, Hon Timothy

Warren, Kenneth

St. John-Stevas, Rt Hon N.

Watson, John

Scott, Nicholas

Wells, Bowen

Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)

Wells, John (Maidstone)

Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

Wheeler, John

Shelton, William (Streatham)

Whitelaw, Rt Hon William

Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

Wickenden, Keith

Shepherd, Richard

Wiggin, Jerry

Silvester, Fred

Wilkinson, John

Sims, Roger

Williams, D. (Montgomery)

Skeet, T. H. H.

Winterton, Nicholas

Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

Wolfson, Mark

Speed, Keith

Young, Sir George (Acton)

Speller, Tony

Younger, Rt Hon George

Spence, John

Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

Tellers for the Noes:

Sproat, Iain

Mr. Carol Mather and

Squire, Robin

Mr. Robert Boscawen.

Stainton, Keith

Question accordingly negatived.

Unemployment (Yorkshire and Humberside)

  BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
  Ordered,
  That, at this day's sitting, the Nuclear Material (Offences) Bill may be proceeded with, though opposed, until any hour.—[Mr. Lang.]

Nuclear Material (Offences) Bill
Not amended (in the Standing Committee), considered; reported without amendment.
10.15 pm
The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. David Waddington): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
The Bill has made speedy progress through all its stages and, indeed, it would have been extraordinary had it not received a wide welcome. My only regret is that the Committee stage proceeded at such a pace that I had no opportunity to correct a poor answer that I made to a question put by the hon. Member for Halifax (Dr. Summerskill). I find little comfort in the fact that no one else on the Committee spotted what a mess I had made of it. I should like, therefore, to put the matter to rights.
Mr. Tam Dalyell: The Minister knows that, while there may have been a poor attendance in Committee, it was so speedy that some members of the Committee did not even have notice that it was taking place.
Mr. Waddington: I spoke to the hon. Member for Halifax, but I am very sorry that for some reason or other the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) did not receive notice. But he will, of course, appreciate that that was no responsibility of the Government. I am glad to see the hon. Gentleman present tonight.
The Committee stage passed quickly and some of the things that I said in reply to a question from the hon. Member for Halifax may have been misleading. I should just like to put the record straight on causes 1 and 2 of the Bill.
Clause 2 deals largely with acts which do not amount to offences under our law but which will become offences if done in relation to nuclear material. I was right to point out that clause 2 also deals with some acts which are already such offences. But when I read Hansard I discovered that the example I gave was not really apt. The example that I should have given is that it is already an offence in English law to threaten to kill or threaten to commit criminal damage. In that respect, the clause merely says that it is also an offence to make those threats by means of nuclear material. Beyond that, the clause does indeed create completely new offences in that it makes preparatory acts and threats other than those that I have mentioned criminal offences.
The Bill was widely welcomed on Second Reading and, while some hon. Members expressed their reservations to the use of nuclear power, even they recognised that the objectives of the convention that the Bill will enable us to ratify were laudable. I therefore commend the Bill to the House.
10.17 pm
Mr. Bob Cryer: As my starred amendment demonstrates, I have a reservation about the Bill which I mentioned on Second Reading. My reservation relates to clause 6. Had I been on the Committee, I am certain that the Committee stage would have taken longer. That is only right and proper because we are here to scrutinise legislation. Once legislation has passed through the House, it is enforceable. It is our duty to apply our minds to legislation as it is passing through the House.
Clause 6(2) states:

899
"If in any proceedings a question arises whether any material was used for peaceful purposes, a certificate issued by or under the authority of the Secretary of State and stating that it was, or was not, so used at a time specified in the certificate shall be conclusive of that question."
That seems to exclude the Secretary of State from challenge in the courts. I always think that that is a dangerous path to follow. As the Minister has said, the terms of the Bill are necessary. We are discussing extremely dangerous material. A tiny minority of people behave extremely dangerously and, if coupled with dangerous materials, we have what is literally a potentially explosive situation. So it is right and proper that we should have legislation that safeguards us against the use of dangerous materials by terrorists.
But if people, against whom allegations were being made in court, could demonstrate that materials were being used for defence purposes when, in fact, the Minister was purporting to say that the materials were being used for peaceful purposes, an entirely different light would be cast on the proceedings. The Secretary of State might use that clause to deny any breach of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
On Second Reading the Minister said that the peaceful civil nuclear programme has nothing to do with defence. If that is the case, the Government have no need to worry about the Secretary of State being challenged in court by someone who claims that the nuclear materials were being used not for peaceful purposes but for war. If the Minister can produce the evidence in court, there should be no problem, and such claims can be demonstrated to be palpably false. The question does not arise if that is the basis of our nuclear power programme and if there are no links between the peaceful nuclear power programme and defence.
However, I am suspicious because the Bill provides that the Secretary of State may furnish a certificate, which is not open to challenge. I am not in favour of Secretaries of State being in that position. They should be open to challenge because it is dangerous to hand over such absolute power to a Secretary of State. Such Ministers are appointed by a Government, and the Government are accountable to the House. Yet this clause states that whatever the Secretary of State says is conclusive and not open to challenge in the courts. I have strong reservations about the matter. If what the Minister says is accurate—I am sure that he made the claim fully believing it to be correct—I still have reservations about links between the civil nuclear power programme and defence. Such legislation does not dismiss those suspicions and reservations.
If there is no link between defence and civil nuclear power, the Secretary of State can, if challenged, prove it beyond peradventure in the courts. He or his representative should be able to go to court and say that the challenge is false because the materials are used for peaceful purposes. The clause is unnecessary, and I am sorry that I was not on the Committee, because, as I have said, I would have discussed this matter in a little more detail. Although the Bill is largely agreed, I wish my remarks to be on the record. Everyone recognises that criminal sanctions are necessary when dealing with criminal activities in respect of nuclear material. The problem arises on the margins of
900
the Bill in the application of the powers by the Secretary of State. This clause takes his power a little too far, albeit in what one might call a good cause.
I did not wish the Bill to go through the House without a query being raised again, so that if a problem arises in future it cannot be said that the legislation was not questioned or that it was passed with a total consensus. When we have a total consensus our minds are lulled into acceptance and we should beware. However, having put that warning and reservation on the record, may I say that I shall not divide the House—some hon. Members may have been anxious about that—because most of the Bill is agreed.
10.25 pm
Mr. Tam Dalyell: I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer) that the legislation should not pass without comment. As I said on Second Reading, I am a strident advocate of civil nuclear power, and I again express my gratitude to the Atomic Energy Commission for the care that it has taken over many years, which has meant that, with the arguable exception of Mr. Throughton, no accident has in any way been traceable to the nuclear side. Incidentally there have been accidents on the civil engineering side, but that is a different matter. Of course, no one can be complacent, and I am sure that no one is. That should be said.
I do not want to stray from the margins of order, because there could be controversy over clause 2. However, I want to put one fact on record. Some of us continue to be extremely worried because of breaches of the Treaty of Tlatelolco, the non-nuclear treaty in the Western hemisphere. This may not be the time to do it, but sooner or later there should be an inquiry into the alleged infringement of protocol 1, which was signed by the Labour Government of my right hon. Friend the Member for Huyton (Sir H. Wilson), endorsed by the Government of the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath), endorsed again by the 1974–79 Labour Government, and endorsed—I thought—by this Conservative Government, who nevertheless allowed nuclear weapons to go from both Gibraltar and Portsmouth, although some weapons were taken off, to the South Atlantic.
I shall not test your patience, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but in my opinion there should be an inquiry into the circumstances in which nuclear weapons—if Lieutenant David Tinker is to be believed, and I am sure that he is—went south two days before the Prime Minister said that the crisis had come out of the blue. As I said, I do not wish to test the Chair's patience tonight, because the matter is very much on the fringes of the Bill. All I am saying, and I shall sit down on this thought, is that there really should be an inquiry.
Mr. Cryer: I intervene before my hon. Friend sits down, because what he is saying is relevant to my remarks. Will he accept that the power in clause 6 could be used if people wanted, for example, to hush up the use of this type of nuclear material in the situation that he is describing? If, for example, anyone was charged over the disposition of nuclear material in the Falklands the Secretary of State, with these powers, could declare those materials to be for peaceful purposes. There is no challenge to the Secretary of State if he says that in court, no matter how ludicrous or bizarre the circumstances in which the nuclear material is being dealt with.
Mr. Dalyell: I shall have to reflect carefully on what my hon. Friend says. His point is made by the fact that the Stena Inspector and the Stena Seaspread—as far as one knows, because one is told that it is not in the public interest to comment—are looking for nuclear materials in the tombs of poor Coventry and Sheffield. As long as this continues, there are matters in the South Atlantic of grave concern—or they should be of grave concern—because of the emission of radio nucleids and the way in which this material can build up dangers from the hill into the food stream and the whole ecology.
I see that you are getting impatient, Mr. Deputy Speaker. All I am saying is that I should like a letter to be written to my hon. Friend and myself.
Sir John Biggs-Davison: It is interesting.
Mr. Dalyell: It is an interesting and substantial point.
I shall sit down on condition that the Minister promises that the relevant Departments—the Home Office, the Department of Energy, the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office—will give a long and serious explanation—there may be such—of the legal position concerning the Treaty of Tlatelolco and the whole question of nuclear weapons going south some 48 hours before the Prime Minister said that the crisis had come out of the blue to her. The House will recall that on 26 October the Prime Minister told us, in answer to question No. 1, that the crisis had come out of the blue on 31 March. It is now common knowledge that nuclear weapons—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Paul Dean): Order. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that I am becoming impatient. He is now going outside the scope of the Bill. Only that which is in the Bill can be discussed on Third Reading.
Mr. Dalyell: As the debate is being conducted in such a good natured way, I shall sit down, with the request that there be a letter touching on and hopefully explaining those events.
10.30 pm
Dr. Shirley Summerskill: Although Labour Members welcome the Bill as a necessary piece of legislation to implement the United Nations convention, some important points have been made during its passage which I hope the Minister will take into careful consideration.
One new point which has occurred to me about clause 1 relates to offences committed outside the United Kingdom which could endanger life by reckless conduct in relation to nuclear material for peaceful purposes. It is ironical that we are going to all this trouble to introduce the Bill creating the new offences a few days after we read a report that the Government—perhaps the Minister will confirm or deny this—are defying a decision by representatives of 30 countries who met in London last week to suspend the dumping of nuclear material in the Atlantic 600 miles off Cornwall, which is apparently being done at the moment by Britain, Belgium and Switzerland. Those representatives voted by 19 to 6 to suspend that dumping of radioactive waste at sea while scientists assess the environmental impact of such action. Yet I understand that we are going to continue to do that for at least two years while the study is being carried out. If we are to continue that, will the Minister say why we are defying the
902
decision reached by representatives of 30 countries and will Belgium and Switzerland also continue the practice? That is relevant to the Bill and deserves as much consideration as the other points that we have discussed during its passage.
10.32 pm
Mr. Tom Benyon: I am grateful for a chance to make a brief comment. I represent Abingdon, Harwell is situated in my constituency and I have close relations with Harwell and Culham.
I wish to draw attention to a letter which appeared in The Times yesterday from the director of Harwell, Dr. L. E. J Roberts in order to put the comments of the hon. Member for Halifax (Dr. Summerskill) into perspective. Dr. Roberts said:
"Last year the UK disposed of 2,700 tonnes of packaged waste, of which 90 per cent. was concrete packing. The present regulations, which were drawn up on the advice of an international committee of marine scientists, are based on very conservative assumptions and an annual disposal of 100,000 tonnes of packaged waste for 40,000 years. The scale of dumping could be increased by a large factor before any significant addition was made to the natural radioactivity of the sea'
I wish to draw attention to that to put into perspective what many people understandably think is a highly emotive subject.
Dr. Summerskill rose—
Mr. Benyon: May I finish my point before I give way?
Many people are anxious about the emotive practice of nuclear waste dumping. I am anxious to stress that the committee of international scientists spent a great deal of time looking at the subject. Anyone who visits my constituency and Harwell and meets Dr. Roberts and his staff will be reassured that they are not in the least complacent about the matter. They give the matter an enormous amount of time and study to ensure that all they do is done in the interests not only of this generation but of future generations.
Dr. Summerskill: Does the hon. Gentleman feel that this study, which is going to take about two years to complete, is unnecessary? Is he completely certain that this material can be put into the sea without any possible harm? If not, then surely it is worthwhile to carry out the study. Until we are absolutely certain, we should not incur any more risks while the study is being carried out.
Mr. Benyon: I am sure it is right for the studies to continue. Not being a scientist of even local, never mind international, stature, I have to rely on the advice that I am given by people such as Dr. Roberts. I have every confidence in the amount of time and the reliance that lie and those who have made this careful study place on this matter. I am happy to rely on his views.
10.37 pm
Mr. Waddington: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer) for raising the point he did, because it gives me an opportunity to emphasise something which is often overlooked.
Hon. Members are concerned with the case of somebody committing a crime abroad and fleeing to this country. We are concerned with the question of what happens if a person flees from one country where he has committed a crime to another and that country is reluctant to extradite because the domestic laws of that country prevent it from extraditing its own nationals.

903
There is no difficulty as to the commission of a crime in England concerning either nuclear material for warlike purposes or nuclear material for peaceful purposes.
Hon. Members are concerned in the Bill with giving power to the English courts to try crimes which are committed abroad. One need only think for a short time to realise the difficulties which will be faced. The English courts are given the jurisdiction by the Bill to recognise these new crimes committed abroad, but how is proof to be presented to the English courts to the effect that the nuclear material in issue is nuclear material for peaceful purposes? Unless the courts in this country are so satisfied, they will not be able to convict on the new offences created by the Bill.
The fears voiced by the hon. Gentleman, and I can well understand why he voiced them, are unreal. There is no scope in the Bill whereby a Secretary of State in this country could cover up his tracks by issuing a certificate so as to pretend that certain nuclear materials which had been stolen were nuclear materials used for peaceful purposes when they were used for warlike purposes. A Secretary of State would never wish to get himself into that position even if he were a dishonest Secretary of State. He could prosecute the person under the ordinary law of the land for theft. We are concerned with proof for the English courts to convict somebody of an offence committed abroad.
I must tell the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) that it is not for me to comment on whether the United Kingdom has complied with the treaty of Tlatelolco. However, when he spoke about such matters on Second Reading, I undertook to write to my right hon. Friends and I took steps to ensure that they were informed of the points that he made. The Government have at all times complied, and continue to comply with their obligations concerning the introduction of nuclear weapons into the territory or territorial waters for which they are internationally responsible within the treaty's zone of application.
Mr. Dalyell: This issue is not simply a matter of history, because—if the press is to be believed—concern about nuclear weapons in the south Atlantic was raised with the Foreign Secretary, when he was accompanying the Queen in Mexico. It has certainly been the subject of a statement by the presidents of Panama and Venezuela. Therefore, the question is not hypothetical but real, and the Government will have to respond to it.
Mr. Waddington: I cannot blame the hon. Gentleman for taking this opportunity to raise such points. However, he knows perfectly well that they are not matters for me. I have taken all the steps that I could be reasonably expected to take to ensure that those points are transmitted to those responsible. I shall leave it at that, as otherwise I shall be as out of order, as I suspect the hon. Gentleman has been.
The hon. Member for Halifax (Dr. Summerskill) referred to clause 1(i)(a) and to the words
"endangering the life of the lieges".
I promise the hon. Lady that, as long as she lives south of the border, she has nothing to fear from those words. That is a reference to some obscure Scottish offence, for which I do not feel in any way responsible.
Dr. Summerskill: Will the hon. and learned Gentleman bear in mind the words "by reckless conduct"? It could be said that dumping radio-active material into the sea is reckless conduct committed outside the United Kingdom.
Mr. Waddington: Clause 1 sets out a list of criminal offences under the law of England and Wales or that of Scotland and says that if those same offences are committed in relation to or by means of nuclear material, they shall also be offences triable in this country even if they were committed overseas. All the offences listed in subsection 1(i) (a), (b), (c) and (d) are existing offences under the laws of England or Scotland. The reference to
"Endangering the life of the lieges, by reckless conduct"
is a reference to some form of assault or threatened assault. I cannot now remember its nature, but I assure the hon. Lady that it is an existing offence in Scottish law. However, that does not mean that she was not perfectly entitled to use those words as a peg on which to hang an important point about the dumping of nuclear materials. I make no complaint about that. All I can tell her in that regard is that the International Maritime Organisation, meeting in London last week, noted the Spanish resolution to suspend the dumping of low level nuclear waste, but the resolution is not binding on the United Kingdom or, indeed, on any other country which dumps low level waste.
A study will certainly be considered by the IMO and by the United Kingdom. Of course, we are ever mindful of the risks attendant upon the use of nuclear energy, but we have a record of safety of which we can be proud. We go to endless efforts to cut down the risks. The fact that there have been no known deaths from the use of nuclear energy in this country is the best illustration of the pains to which we have gone to ensure that this new and valuable source of energy does not cause risks to people.
We are equally determined that this new and valuable source of energy should not cause danger to succeeding generations. My hon. Friend the Member for Abingdon (Mr. Benyon) was so right to put the whole thing in perspective. We must never be complacent, but there is always the temptation when something is new and frightening for people to say that the dangers are much greater than they are. One should therefore look with a certain amount of scepticism at some of the reports which appear in the newspapers. One has to contrast them with what has happened since nuclear energy was first used here for peaceful purposes.
Dr. Summerskill: I am sorry to learn that we do not feel obliged to conform with the resolution. The vote was 19–6. Presumably we were one of the six and not an abstention. I do not see any point in 30 countries meeting and deciding on joint action if we then defy it. Can the hon. and learned Gentleman say whether Belgium and Switzerland will defy the decision, or will they abide by it and not dump off Cornwall?
Mr. Waddington: I do not think it is right for the hon. Lady to talk about defiance. Defiance imputes a breach of a legal obligation when all we are talking about is a body of people coming together and reaching a conclusion that it would be advisable to cease the dumping of nuclear waste, whereas other equally well informed or perhaps better informed people have already come to a contrary view.

905
I do not think I can take the matter much further. The usefulness of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is obvious to all. Scientists have been struggling, and will continue to struggle, to make sure that the peaceful use of nuclear energy does not result in new risks to mankind. As I say, we have taken great trouble to see that no risk is caused. We will continue with that purpose in mind. The hon. Lady has to accept that what we are doing is perfectly within our rights. While we will be mindful of the resolution we will also he mindful of the abundant advice which has come from other sources.
Dr. Summerskill: Before he sits down, would the hon. and learned Gentleman answer the two questions I asked specifically? Were we one of the six countries which voted against the resolution? And will Belgium and Switzerland continue to dump off Cornwall?
Mr. Waddington: I think the answer is yes in both cases. Certainly I can say yes to the first question. I will have to check about the second.
Mr. Tom Benyon: I wish to try to put the mind of the hon. Member for Halifax (Dr. Summerskill) at rest. This is not simply because of my constituency interest. I have been privileged to go round Harwell and Culham many times and to talk to those who lead this country and, I believe, the world in nuclear expertise. I am totally satisfied that they are men of enormous responsibility. I do not say that lightly.
I feel genuinely that Dr. Roberts would like to extend an invitation to the hon. Lady and any Opposition Member who feels a degree of disquiet to go round Culham or Harwell. They could put to Dr. Roberts and his team the questions that they now direct to the Minister. I am sure that the hon. Lady, given an open mind—it is a characteristic of her—would come away feeling reassured. It is implicit in her remarks that the hon. Lady feels that Dr. Roberts and his team of scientists are flying in the face of conventional nuclear wisdom that says that dumping in the sea is dangerous and that, despite that, dumping continues irresponsibly.
This is based on a complete fallacy. It is not the case. Dr. Roberts and his team would not accept that point. I am sure that they would take great pleasure—and also provide an excellent lunch—in showing the hon. Lady the steps they are taking to act most responsibly and to explain why her obvious fears need not exist.
Mr. Waddington: The resolution is not binding. Many people do not agree with its terms. We believe that we are doing what is right in all the circumstances. In any event, it has little to do with the Bill. I believe that I would probably meet the wishes of the House if I now sat down, thanking both sides for the support that has been given for this worthwhile measure.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

Nuclear Material (Offences) Bill

  HOUSE OF COMMONS (SERVICES)
  Ordered,
  That the Standing Order of 15th June 1979 relating to the Select Committee on House of Commons (Services) be further amended, by leaving out Mr. John Stradling Thomas and inserting Mr. Anthony Berry.—[Mr. Garel-Jones.]

Forestry Commission
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. — [Mr. Garel-Jones.]
10.52 pm
Mr. A. J. Beith: I am glad to have this opportunity to draw attention to what I expect will prove an increasing problem in many rural areas. Major industrial closures on the scale of the Consett iron works or the Shildon railway wagon works make rural jobs losses in forestry seem a small problem, but the reality is different. Job losses in forestry tend to occur in very small communities. The impact of the loss of even five jobs is as great in relative terms as the loss of 1,000 jobs in a large town.
Many of the villages concerned are like company towns. They were built in remote areas by the Forestry Commission to house their own employees. There is virtually nothing else to do. Harwood in my constituency and other Northumberland forestry villages like Byrness, Stonehaugh and Kielder, come into the same category. There are other small villages which, although not built by the Forestry Commission, are heavily dependent upon it for employment. This is the case in many parts of England, Scotland and Wales.
The irony is that large-scale forestry was brought to places such as the Cheviot hills, the Cumberland fells and the Borders on the basis that it would bring jobs Fanning had to make way for trees. Shepherds had to make way for forestry workers. This caused resentment at the time, some of which lingers on. One of the arguments used when forestry first marched across the hillsides was that it would bring a level of employment to the rural areas that sheep farming could not provide.
The reality has been different. In recent years there has been a decline in jobs in forestry. In Northumberland, the Forestry Commission's staff has fallen by 30 per cent., from 340 to 234, in the last 10 years. Although private contractors have taken over some of the work done previously by the commission's staff on Forestry Commission estates, barely half the number of jobs have been created by private contractors as have been lost. One of the problems is that forestry contractors are often not situated in areas where the jobs are lost. They may be much nearer towns, and not in the small forestry villages where there is little alternative employment.
That brings me to one of the two ways in which the Government's policies seem likely seriously to increase job losses. I refer to the sale of forests, upon which the Government are keen and which form part of their general privatisation programme. The sales result form the Forestry Act 1981, and I believe that they are the subject of a fair amount of pressure on the Forestry Commission by Ministers. I believe that the Forestry Commission has been told, not just in the statute, but behind the scenes, that it must get on and sell forests as quickly as possible so that the Government can demonstrate that they are actively carrying out their privatisation policy with forests, just as they are in other areas of industry, as diverse as heavy industry and British Transport Hotels Ltd. The consequences in forest areas can be serious. Work 'which would have been done by Forestry Commission workers will now be done by contractors probably from elsewhere.
In my constituency 5,600 acres are currently for sale, mainly at Uswayford and Harwood, and 2,000 acres of

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that land has been newly planted. When it comes to fruition it could provide work for 25 men, all of them living in remote villages. The remainder of the area which is for sale, particularly that of Uswayford, is still very young. Much of it was planted between 1974 and 1982. Men employed on maintenance will no longer be required if it is handed over to private ownership and contractors. A similar thing is happening in north Tyne and Redesdale, where a substantial number of forest villages lost many jobs during the earlier period that I described. They are likely to be hit further by sales.
There are a number of questions that I wish to put to the Minister about these sales. Why are such large plots of land in the northern forests being offered for sale? There is a suspicion—I put it no higher—that the Government are meeting considerable resistance to forest sales in some other parts of the country, particularly the south of England. There was plenty of evidence that that would be the case when we debated the Forestry Bill 1981. Many Conservative Members voiced anxieties about the sale of Forestry Commission land in various parts of the south of England.
There is a suspicion that pressure to sell land in the northern forests is that much greater because of the resistance that the Government know they will meet in a number of other areas. The pressure on our forestry villages, which are much more remote than comparable places in the south of England, will be greater. I should like the Minister to reassure me that there will be no unreasonable pressure for sales in the northern forests within the framework of the Government's policy.
What about the recreational potential of the forests, which the Forestry Commission has been developing, and which is creating some new jobs? It is providing work for people in the forestry villages. I do not believe that, for understandable reasons, it is likely that that potential will be similarly developed when the land is in private ownership. Private enterprise will not have that commitment in the forests and jobs will not, therefore, be created.
Above all, I wish to ask the Minister what happened to the criteria set out when we debated the Forestry Bill 1981. The Secretary of State for Scotland, speaking on Second Reading on 26 January 1981, said:
"the Forestry Commission will of course make every effort to minimise the effect of sales on jobs in the forest, particularly in those areas where it is the major employer." — [Official Report, 26 January 1981; Vol. 997, c. 652.]
When replying to the debate the Minister's predecessor confirmed that one of the criteria to be considered in forest sales was the maintenance of employment and the viability of local communities, especially in the socially fragile areas.
"Socially fragile areas" is a somewhat intimidating phrase, but it well describes many of the small upland villages of Northumberland. Already, there is virtually no employment and rural services are rapidly contracting due to depopulation, so those areas are socially very fragile indeed and it is a hard struggle to maintain a pattern of life so that people can stay and work there at all. In other words, they are precisely the type of area that the Minister had in mind when he replied to that debate, and they are already feeling the impact of the sales policy.
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I therefore ask the Government to reconsider their whole sales policy and the application of those criteria, which seem to have been forgotten.
Another aspect of Government policy likely to threaten jobs in the rural areas is the management review that the Forestry Commission is undertaking—again, at the behest of and under some pressure from the Government. As in so many management reviews, it is the lowest tier that seems likely to be removed or to be most drastically affected. So far as I can gather from my own area, the tier that will disappear will be not the district offices but the local offices within the forests. That means that local forest offices in places such as Harwood, Thrunton and Harbottle, where the Kidland forest office is, will be closed. Similar small offices in Redesdale and north Tyne seem likely to be affected in the same way. Jobs for foresters, clerks and cleaners will therefore disappear. District offices will be kept in places such as Rothbury and Bellingham, but in the tiny remote forestry villages jobs will be lost.
The impact of all these measures on rural employment must be considered against the background of other rural job losses. Job losses due to mechanisation in agriculture have been very heavy in Northumberland over the years. More recently, due to the depressed state of the country, there have been job losses in quarrying and brick works, which are staple providers of employment in rural areas. In addition, there has been a serious decline in rural services, which cannot be sustained by the much reduced population in many of the villages.
The Minister and her Department must take a close interest in the countryside. Is she prepared to see our countryside become a depopulated museum? That is the danger inherent in these trends—not only in forestry but through the combined effect of a number of trends. I would expect a Department responsible for agriculture, forestry and fisheries to be a powerful advocate to maintain the pattern of life in our rural areas. I therefore expect it to do a great deal more than it seems to be doing to moderate the thrust of Government doctrine and policy in a matter such as forestry sales so as to ensure that drastic job losses in very small communities will not further undermine the ability of our countryside to remain a living part of our nation in years to come.
11.2 pm
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mrs. Peggy Fenner): I am glad that the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) has raised the question of Forestry Commission policy and jobs in the countryside.
First, the hon. Gentleman sought an assurance that there was no undue pressure for sales in northern England. All the commission's conservancies have been asked to select areas for disposal. The sales are being evenly spread and there is no bias against northern England in favour, say, of the south of England. Indeed, the commission's experience is that woodlands in the south of England at present provide a more ready market—contrary to the hon. Member's suggestion and, I hope, of some reassurance to him. As I shall describe in more detail later, in addition to direct employment the commission has provided a substantial amount of employment for small rural businesses.
The Government's support for forestry was made clear in our policy statement in December 1980, as follows:

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"the Government believe that long-term confidence in both forestry and wood-processing industries in this country is fully justified. We look for a steadily increasing proportion of our requirements of timber to come from our own resources. A continuing expansion of forestry is in the national interest, both to reduce our dependence on imported wood in the long term and to provide continued employment in forestry and associated industries."—[Official Report, 10 December 1980; Vol. 995, c. 927.]
We are therefore well seized of the importance of forestry in terms of employment. In our policy statement, we stressed the increased contribution to be made by the private sector in future forestry expansion. We nevertheless decided that the commission should continue to have a programme of new planting, and we laid emphasis on the fact that some of that should take place in the socially fragile areas—the hon. Gentleman picked up that phrase—where even the maintenance of a few jobs is importance.
The importance we continue to attach to the commission's role in providing employment in the countryside, especially in the remoter rural areas suffering from depopulation, is one that I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would endorse. But in fulfilling that role, the commission—both as a commercial enterprise and as a public body which is still at the investment stage and necessarily dependent on Exchequer funds for part of its revenues—must balance the need to operate efficiently and cost-effectively. That is behind the review that the commission has carried out into its management structures, a matter which the hon. Gentleman raised tonight. It would help the House if I were to put that review into its proper perspective.
The 20 years following the second world war saw a rapid expansion of the commission's estate. During that period there was a large programme of land acquisition, new forests were created, the labour force grew and, at the operational level, the structure of forests and districts became firmly established. But during the sixties there were dramatic changes both in society in general and within the commission. In England and Wales the acquisition of land slowed down and during the decade from the mid-sixties many forests moved out of the labour-intensive stage of planting and establishment on to a care and maintenance basis prior to the harvesting stage. The investment in research and development and in work study began to pay dividends and, increasingly, the mechanisation of forestry operations and the introduction of new techniques, such as chemical weeding, resulted in substantial increases in productivity and a drop in the forest labour force. That, in turn, led to reductions in the numbers of foresters required for supervision.
Major changes outside the commission contributed to changes in the commission's structure. The improvement of road communications made it possible for foresters, who were responsible for individual forests, and district officers, who were responsible for groups of forests, to manage larger areas. The changeover from coal-fired to diesel trains largely removed the threat of forest fires which had, until that time, tied down many supervisors to living locally in the forests.
All those factors made it practicable to increase the size of management units, and the continuing decline in the direct labour force, with its concurrent reduction in the need for supervisors, provided the impetus for change. In the mid-sixties a process of forest and district amalgamations began and has continued steadily since that
910
time. The number of manual workers has declined from about 11,000 in 1964 to just over 5,000 at present, a drop of over 50 per cent. During the same period, non-industrial staff declined by 22 per cent. In 1964, there were 118 districts and 447 forests compared with the present 56 districts and 211 forests, a reduction of some 50 per cent. It was also in the mid-sixties that a review of the commission's management structure resulted in the removal of the English, Scottish and Welsh directorate offices, which formed a level of management interposed between the headquarters and conservancy offices.
Despite those changes, the commission continued with a two-tier management structure below the conservancy, that is, the regional level. This was mainly because it considered that there were distinct jobs to be done at forest level by the technically trained forester grades and at district level by the professionally qualified forest officer grades. The commission has now reached the stage, however, when it acknowledges that the distinction between the forest and district tiers of management has become increasingly blurred and that it would be sensible to consider a single level of management under the conservancy. It is against this background and the pattern of continuing change in the industry in the past 20 years—a period which has seen a revolution in forestry techniques and machinery comparable with that in agriculture in the previous decade—that the present review of the commission's management structure has taken place.
The Forestry Commissioners rightly see the review in the context of their responsibility to improve management efficiency and to reduce overhead costs to match workloads and manpower resources over their scattered estate. They set up an internal working group which reported in the spring of 1982. After a period of consultation with staff representatives, the commissioners decided last December that the way to proceed was to have one level of management below regional level by setting up some 70 forest districts in place of the present 211 forests and 56 districts; to consult with the trade unions with a view to a start being made on the introduction of the new forest district structure on 1 April 1983; and to merge the forester and forest officer grades. They also decided to set up a new working group to review the functions, organisation and staffing requirements at headquarters and conservancy levels, which will report at the end of September.
The new forest districts will offer distinct management advantages through a greater flexibility in the deployment and delegation of work. They will put greater emphasis on functional responsibilities and team work; improve communications between the commission's regional and local offices; and streamline office work at the operational level, which takes advantage of the opportunities afforded by the introduction of computer terminals at operational level. Last, but not least, they will provide a more realistic size of management unit for organising the rapid expansion of timber production that is expected in the next decade and for efficiently deploying the sophisticated harvesting machinery which is now being introduced.
Consultations with the trade unions about the new forest district structure are now in progress. Until they have been completed, it is not possible to say what its final shape will be. What is clear is that it will result in significant staff savings at the operational level. This should not, however, be regarded as a crude staff-cutting exercise. The

911
commission's first aim has been to see that it has a management structure that is as efficient as it can make it and is fully compatible with the significant changes that have evolved in forestry operations in the past two decades.
Mr. Beith: Does the hon. Lady now recognise at this stage of the process that the staff reductions that she has described will involve compulsory redundancies?
Mrs. Fenner: No. The point that I am trying to make and had hoped to develop in the brief time that is available to us is that this is still a matter of discussion with the trade unions. It would be wholly pessimistic of the hon. Gentleman to arrive at that conclusion.
The commission, in its forestry enterprise capacity, is a business. Like any business, it needs to be competitive, and to be competitive it must be efficient. Having undergone a dramatic process of mechanisation which has resulted in impressive increases in productivity, the commission would be failing in its duty if it were to cling to an outmoded management structure. It also has special responsibilities in its role as a forestry authority.
The hon. Gentleman was worried about employment at the last tier. The new management structure will be felt at the supervisory level. However, the commission will not, and could not, place all of its local managers into the New Forest district offices. It will still have people outstationed at forests and villages where there is a clear need for a local presence, and the effects will not, I believe, be as great as the hon. Gentleman fears. I stress that it is not the intention of the commission to diminish the level of contact and co-operation between the private woodland owner and the local commission officers which presently exist.
The commission's aim is the most effective structure to manage its own forests and to support private forestry. Commission staff will therefore continue to be available to give help and guidance.
For the reasons that I have mentioned, the number of people employed by the commission has dropped significantly over the past 20 years. If we are to take a balanced view, I suggest that we must take account of not only the numbers employed by the commission but those employed in the private sector. In addition to its own employees, the commission provides an increasing amount of employment to private contractors and small rural businesses. It has, for example, been the policy of the commission to make some of its timber available standing to give an opportunity to local harvesting firms.
It is also the Government's wish that the expansion of forestry should increasingly be undertaken by the private side of the industry, with the assistance and support of the commission, and the significant contribution that private forestry makes to rural employment should not be overlooked. We have been encouraged by the figures for new planting by private owners, which have increased significantly since our December 1980 policy statement and the new package of grant-aid announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland in July 1981. The area of private afforestation grant-aided by the Forestry Commission in the year ended 31 March 1982 was about 50 per cent. higher than in the previous year. The response to the Forestry Commission's new grant scheme, which started in October 1981, has also exceeded
912
our expectations. In its first year of operation nearly 1,800 applications were received covering about 70,000 hectares.
The hon. Gentleman has expressed his concern about disposals. The sale by the commission of land and plantations is seen by some as posing a major threat to jobs. It was made clear both here and in another place during the debates on the Forestry Bill 1981, which gave powers to put the disposals policy into effect, that this was a limited programme. I tried to reassure hon. Members on many occasions that there is no intention of jeopardising the commission's commercial viability, and certainly the disposals are not being undertaken in order to dismember the commission. The present programme up to and including 1985–86 amounts only to some 8 per cent. of the commission's total assets. Plantations are sold as going concerns to private investors who will wish to look after their investment, and although some redundancies in the commission are likely to prove unavoidable these will be kept to a minimum. It is likely that some at least of the workers affected will be offered employment by the private purchasers.
It must also be remembered that the commissioners, in deciding which woodland to put on the market, have been given a set of guidelines drawn up by forestry Ministers. Included in these guidelines—a copy of which is in the Library of the House—is one which requires the commission to take into account the maintenance of employment and the viability of local communities especially in the "socially fragile areas". That is not the only consideration. Other factors must be taken into account, but the question of jobs is given due weight.
As I have explained, in speaking of the change in the management structure, the Forestry Commission has always sought maximum efficiency. At the same time, it has had a special care for the well-being of those who work in the industry. We do not have to look far to see an example. Despite the difficulties of the past few years, the number of people actually made redundant by the Commission has been surprisingly small. I say "surprisingly", because the effects of the recession have been quite marked on the forestry industry. The commission, faced with a buyer's market, could easily have sat back and discarded workers to await the better times which lie ahead. But it did not. When the roundwood market in this country collapsed in the wake of the pulp mill closures at Fort William, Ellesmere Port and Bristol, the commission—along with the private sector—set out to find an alternative market. This it did, in Scandinavia. If ever there was a case of taking coals to Newcastle, this was it.
Although that market is not as strong as it was a couple of years ago, nevertheless it has provided an important breathing space. It has helped to mitigate the effects which the pulp mill closures might otherwise have had. It has also helped to retain the infrastructure of harvesting and haulage of timber towards the time when we can process it once more in this country. In brief, it saved jobs—not in the towns but in the very heart of the forestry industry, in the rural areas. And it is these people, the forest workers, who will have a major part to play when the forestry industry in this contry begins to expand. That day cannot now be far off. The Commission's actions in seeking export markets, singles it out—I am sure the hon. Gentleman will agree—as a caring employer. It is this

913
same care which will ensure that the restructuring process will be done with as much sympathy and understanding as is possible for the needs of its employees.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-two minutes past Eleven o'clock.

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  Wildlife and Countryside Act
  Wildlife and Countryside Act
  Roadford Reservoir
  Roadford Reservoir
  "How to Use Less Rates"
  "How to Use Less Rates"
  Improvement Grants
  Improvement Grants
  Hyndburn
  Hyndburn
  Hull (Marina Project)
  Hull (Marina Project)
  Hillingdon
  Hillingdon
  Nuclear Waste
  Nuclear Waste
  Right-to-Buy
  Right-to-Buy
  Leicester (Council House Sales)
  Leicester (Council House Sales)
  Departmental Expenditure (MINIS System)
  Departmental Expenditure (MINIS System)
AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD
  European Community (Food Stocks)
  European Community (Food Stocks)
  Rice
  Rice
  Intervention Stocks
  Intervention Stocks
  Agriculture (Annual Review)
  Agriculture (Annual Review)
  Northern Ireland Potato Market
  Northern Ireland Potato Market
  Farm Wages and Incomes
  Farm Wages and Incomes
  Fishing Vessels (Temporary Financial Assistance) Scheme
  Fishing Vessels (Temporary Financial Assistance) Scheme
  Nuclear Waste (Dumping at Sea)
  Nuclear Waste (Dumping at Sea)
  Butter Trans-shipments (Ipswich)
  Butter Trans-shipments (Ipswich)
HOUSE OF COMMONS
  Parliamentary Papers (Deliveries)
  Parliamentary Papers (Deliveries)

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Chelmsford.

Apprentices
Lord Rochester: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are satisfied with the present position regarding the recruitment, training and redundancy of apprentices, particularly in engineering.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, the Government are making available over £50 million this year to support industry's own efforts in the field of initial skill training, including some £15 million to support first year and redundant apprentices in the engineering industry. Continuing support for apprentice training in 1983–84 will be primarily through the Youth Training Scheme, which overall will cost some £100 million in a full year. A major target of the new training initiative, which is strongly supported by the Government, is to reform existing apprentice arrangements by removing unnecessary restrictions and substituting agreed standards of competence. But it is primarily for employers to identify and take steps to meet their own long-term skill training needs, and then for the Government to support these efforts.
Lord Rochester: My Lords, in the past two or three years far fewer craft and technician trainees have been recruited, and many more have been redundant, than in the past. Is it not a regrettable fact that the Manpower Services Commission has been able for the training year 1983–84 to promise hardly any funds to help recruit additional trainees of this kind, to encourage firms to train such trainees for more than one year, or to enable the Engineering Industry Training Board to help them when, as is increasingly the case, they are unable to complete their training?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, the shortfall, if one can so describe it, of apprentices in the engineering industry is not unique to that industry. In fact, there is a similar fall in apprentice recruitment throughout the whole of industry. That fall, due to the recession and the reluctance of employers to take on more apprentices and trainees than is absolutely necessary, resulted in the MSC reducing the amount of support. However, I can tell the noble Lord that, although £50 million has been made available during the current year, there has not been a full take-up of that amount by industry. There are also provisions for taking care of those apprentices who unfortunately find themselves made redundant; there is the adoption scheme—where an
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apprentice might be adopted by another company—and there is facility for the apprentice, in the case of the engineering industry, to return to the training board to complete his training and receive payment during the following years of his apprenticeship.
The Earl of Selkirk: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that an increasing number of craftsmen working on their own account do not today appear to take on apprentices? Is the Government assistance extended to men working on their own account who find it unprofitable, or at least not worth while, to take on apprentices?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, the Government are aware of that, and my noble friend is right in what he says. But there are provisions to enable small businesses who would be willing to take on perhaps one trainee, be it a boy or girl, to join in a community system. By that system, a major sponsoring unit—it might be a company or a chamber of commerce—provides the outline of the training, the small company providing some particular detailed part of the training over a shorter period than a full apprenticeship.
Lord Lee of Newton: My Lords, is the Minister aware that for many years a number of large engineering firms trained far and away more apprentices than they themselves needed, in the knowledge that they would be necessary? Has any progress been made in cutting out the time-serving method and making qualification dependent on ability after serving a certain period?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, the new Youth Training Scheme, which comes into being in September of this year, will go a long way towards meeting the objective of which the noble Lord speaks. This scheme is part of the whole system of young people's training—it is contained in the new training initiative—by which it is hoped to move from the old-fashioned time-served/age qualification to a system whereby a young person will receive what might be described as modular training, gaining certificates, experience and diplomas, all of which, at certain periods of collection, will add to full skill status; and the engineering industry is one of those in the forefront in moving in that direction.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: Is the Minister aware that his comments have revealed a very serious situation, my Lords? Is it the case that the Government are making money available—he mentioned £50 million—to industry to take on apprentices in engineering and other important industries but that this money is not being taken up, and that the decline in the number of apprentices is continuing? Would the noble Lord not agree that, as my noble friend Lord Lee of Newton has suggested, the take-up of apprentices in the engineering industry is extremely important for the future of the country? What steps are the Government taking to ensure that the money available is taken up by industry and that industry is made aware of the keen desire of the Government for an increased number of apprentices to be taken into articles?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, this is a worrying feature. It is perhaps part of the effects of the current recession, out of which we are optimistic of moving shortly. The Government have provided a number of incentives for industries in general to accept more apprentices. That they have not come forward may be one problem; and there is an educational problem here in that, in particular in the engineering industry, young people do not find the prospects attractive. I am not talking in terms of money. In many instances they find that an engineering career does not attract them. There have been more apprentices recruited in this area in the last 12 or 18 months. Nevertheless, the amount of money that is made available—and it is for Government only to support industry's own efforts—has not been taken up. It is for industry itself to look for recruitment that in the future will provide skilled men. The Government can do little more than provide assistance and advice, as well as the environment in which this can be done.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that in answering the Question he has not told us how recruitment, training and redundancy have increased or not increased? Will he take the opportunity to give us some figures, so that we can see whether the shortfall is truly alarming? If it is, will he take very seriously my noble friend's suggestion that the small firms should be encouraged to take on young people and train them as artificers and craftsmen? Because this is an area where, regrettably, the schools are not matching the future need of our country.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, the Government are in fact taking that kind of step, in that the training initiative provides for a change from the traditional four-year apprenticeship, starting at age 16 and finishing at 20, to the system that I have described of diploma and certification involving necessary skills rather more commensurate with the trainees's own abilities. That in itself will allow a greater flexibility. There has been a higher number of redundancies than one would have wished. There were 4,400 last year, the bulk of which, 3,300—I speak from memory; perhaps my noble friend will allow me to confirm the figures to him—were placed by the field officers of the training boards.
Lord Gormley: My Lords, will the noble Lord agree that the high level of unemployment is really the cause of the problem and is responsible for the lower number of apprenticeships being needed? Will he further agree that the high level of unemployment, in particular among highly skilled craftsmen and technicians, will mean a lowering in the training standards that will be available in Britain in the future?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I do not think that I could agree with one of the three propositions which the noble Lord, Lord Gormley, has offered to the House. The level of unemployment generally has little to do with the necessity for industry to undertake recruitment and provide skilled men for the future. If we allow it to go down at this time, a dreadful position will result in, say, five or seven years' time, and so it is very much the responsibility of industry to take a longer-term view where training for the future is concerned.
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So far as the smaller number of craftsmen is concerned, I do not think that this necessarily has a great deal to do with the level of unemployment when one considers the initiatives being taken by both employers' associations and the unions in changing the training arrangement. With regard to a reduction in training standards, I am surprised that the noble Lord himself should offer such a suggestion. It is for industry—indeed, for the whole country—to ensure that training standards in whatever industry, whether it is the textile industry or the engineering industry, to which the Question refers, are not reduced at all. In fact, in a modern technological society exactly the reverse of reduced training standards should apply.

School-leavers: Examinations and Employment
2.49 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their policy for 16-year-old school-leavers who are unemployed but wish to take examinations.
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, from this year, for the first time, all Easter leavers, whether or not they have jobs to go to, will be eligible to return to school to sit for CSE examinations, an option which has always been open to candidates for GCE O-level. I hope, however, that the majority of those with no immediate prospect of employment will decide to remain at school to study for their examinations, rather than to leave speculatively.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that that Answer will give much satisfaction and indeed comfort to many pupils who have been discriminated against, or who were about to be discriminated against? Can the noble Earl reaffirm that the change in the CSE regulations, which now allows the Easter school-leavers to take CSE examinations, is not in conflict with the assurance that has to be given to the social security authorities? If the school-leaver is unemployed, will he no longer have to assure the authorities that he is not returning to school, for either classes or examinations?
The Earl of Swinton: No, my Lords, I cannot give that assurance. In my original Answer, I said nothing at all about benefits. If they return to school to take the examinations, they will not be entitled to receive the supplementary benefit.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, that is exactly the point of the Question. Is it then the case, as has been reported in the educational press recently, that if pupils leave school at Easter they are allowed to take the CSE examinations if they have a job, but that if they do not have a job they are given the choice either of taking the CSE examinations without social security benefit or of taking the social security benefit and not being allowed to take the CSE?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I have studied in great depth the original Question of the noble Lord, Lord Hatch. I can only read it out. It is:
"To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their policy for 16-year-old school-leavers who are unemployed but wish to take examinations".
There is no mention in that whatsoever of supplementary benefit. All I can say (and I must repeat it) is that he is absolutely right in what he says: that they can either stay on at school and take their CSE, or they can leave and, if they have employment, they can return and take the CSE. If they are unemployed, they are entitled to return and take their CSE but are not entitled to receive supplementary benefit.
That is the policy of the Government. This is entirely in line with what has been happening in giving them the choice to go back and take O-levels.
Lord Paget of Northampton: Surely, my Lords, is it not quite outrageous, when you do not provide any of these school-leavers with a job, to proceed to put this kind of penalty upon them—that if they seek supplementary benefit because the family needs it, they must not take their exams? It is quite outrageous.
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, the noble Lord is entitled to his opinion but this is not putting anything on them at all. This is to give them an option. Up to now, they have not had the option to go back and sit the CSE if they wanted to. This is giving them the chance to do it. There is nothing outrageous about that.
Baroness David: My Lords, is the situation then more inflexible than it was? When I was last asking questions on this subject, a 15-hour course, for instance, was allowed to be taken and supplementary benefit was not lost. It does not take 15 hours probably to take a CSE examination. Could I ask whether the Government are becoming more inflexible than they were?
The Earl of Swinton: No, my Lords, they are not, I am happy to assure the noble Baroness. On the 15-hour course, I think, there may be some negotiation between them and the DHSS. As I understand it, the part-time students on the 21-hour courses will not be affected by this. It is simply that the Government take the view that young people remain at school until they take their examinations at the end of their course.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, will the noble Earl clarify the situation? Is it the point that if a young person, a young school-leaver, has ambition and decides to take the examinations, he will be penalised; whereas the unambitious who does not want to take the CSEs will be able to draw supplementary benefit? Is that the position?
The Earl of Swinton: No, my Lords, this is not the position. The answer is that the young person who is ambitious and wants to take his exams will stay at school and do them. That is what we are trying to encourage. We are not trying to encourage people without jobs to leave school early and come back on the off-chance that they might achieve some exam.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, has the noble Earl read the report that, when this issue was first ventilated, the National Association of Head Teachers declared it to be a gross injustice and said that they would make representations to the Ministry about it? Have they yet done so and, if so, what has been the consequence?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I do not know what the National Association of Head Teachers have done, but I can say that the changes which we bring in have been sought for many years by the CSE boards (which include representatives of teachers and local education authorities among their members) and the changes have the wholehearted support of the School Council, which represents both teachers and LEAs.
Baroness David: My Lords, can the noble Earl tell me when Easter leavers are allowed to draw supplementary benefit and when summer leavers are allowed to draw it?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, that is a slightly different question. I shall write to the noble Baroness on that.

"The Legal Basis of Further Education"
2.55 p.m.
Baroness David: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government when they will make a statement on The Legal Basis of Further Education, given that Lord Elton said in answer to a Starred Question on 21st October that they hoped "to be able to make a statement shortly", (col. 228) and the Earl of Swinton said on 20th January that "it should be possible soon" (col. 1525).
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I understand the noble Baroness's impatience for a statement. It is taking longer than we expected to settle certain matters and my right honourable friend will need some more time.
Baroness David: My Lords, I cannot be expected to be satisfied with that reply. Can we take it that the Government, the DES and the Ministers, really do not intend to give any response to all the consultations and comments that have been going into the department and have been there now for much more than six months?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I think the noble Baroness would be wrong to take that attitude. There will be a statement, but it is taking more time than we expected.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, is it not the case that this report by the FEU has been around for something like two to three years, that it raises important questions concerning the status of further education under existing education legislation, and would he not

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agree, in view of the increasing demand for further education, that it is not good enough to brush it under the carpet?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, it has been around for some time, I would agree, but the fact that some very complicated matters arise from it is the reason why it takes the time. It has not been brushed under the carpet.

"Chequebook Journalism": Press Council Report
2.58 p.m.
Baroness Sharpies: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in the light of that part of the recent report of the Press Council which deals with "chequebook journalism", they propose to legislate on the subject.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Elton): My Lords, the Government welcome the Press Council's comprehensive report, which they recognise contains some disturbing findings. The report expresses doubts about the need for, and practicability of, legislation, but it extends and strengthens the council's own guidelines in this area. In principle, we agree that it is preferable to rely on voluntary restraint; we shall continue to examine the practical issues involved in legislation, but we very much hope that the measures proposed by the Press Council will prove to be effective.
Baroness Sharpies: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply. In relation to the Press Council's report, does he agree that the declaration of principle which in 1966 barred only payment of blood money to persons engaged in crime has now been extended to bar payments to people related to criminals and friends of those engaged in crime? Does he really feel that this will provide the council with sufficient teeth, particularly in view of the utter distress caused to the families of the victims of crime?
Lord Elton: Yes, my Lords, we certainly think it right also that the Press Council should take a robust line on this, and we shall watch with very great interest the effects which it has, in view of the quite unsatisfactory circumstances it is designed to remedy.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, what has been the response of the press to this report? Has the Press Council sufficient authority and standing in Fleet Street for its proposals to be carried out by Fleet Street?
Lord Elton: My Lords, as to the response of the press, I think we are more interested in the way it acts than in the immediate reaction it has given in its own columns to this important issue. That will become clear, as will the answer to the noble and learned Lord's second supplementary question about whether
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it has the necessary teeth. If it has not, this is we agree, a disturbing matter.
Lord Ardwick: My Lords, does the noble Lord recall that the Press Council has warned the newspapers that, unless they look after themselves and discipline themselves, it may perhaps be impossible for the Press Council to defend them against legislation? Is he further aware that the National Union of Journalists has gone so far as to contemplate asking for legislation on this subject; and does he know that today two distinguished ex-editors, the noble Lord, Lord Jacobson, and Mr. Charles Wintour, have both suggested independently on different radio programmes that two or three newpaper proprietors could bring this matter to an end? Could he suggest to somebody in high authority in the Government that there should be a quiet talk with those proprietors?
Lord Elton: My Lords, if I can remember the questions in the right order, the answer to the first one is, yes, I was aware that the Press Council had indicated the dangers of legislation to the press, and that is something about which I would not wish the press to be ignorant. The second question was whether I was aware that the National Union of Journalists had made a proposition that it might be necessary to ask for legislation. I was not, frankly, personally aware of that, but I shall see that my right honourable friend is made so aware. As to the two broadcasts to which the noble Lord referred. I heard that given by the noble Lord, Lord Jacobson. On the question of people "leaning" on other people, I think those matters are best left out of the parliamentary record.
Lord Monson: My Lords, setting aside the question of potential witnesses, would the Minister agree that if the friends, relatives and neighbours of an accused person were to be prevented by law from selling their stories it would be prejudging the outcome of the trial as well as imputing guilt by association?
Lord Elton: My Lords, legislation would be difficult, and that is why I earnestly hope that the voluntary self-regulation will be followed by the people concerned. If not, what we have to produce—if we are able to produce it—could be very uncomfortable.
Lord Wigoder: My Lords, is the noble Lord able to say on how many occasions in recent years the Press Council has issued warnings to the press which have been totally unheeded?
Lord Elton: No, my Lords, I cannot. If the noble Lord wants the information, I shall be happy to write to him. I shall be interested in the answer myself.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, does the noble Lord include in his definition of "chequebook journalism" the practice of a once-respectable newspaper, the Guardian, printing Government documents to which it has no entitlement?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I do not know how much it cost the Guardian or in what form the recompense was provided.
Lord Paget of Northampton: My Lords, are the noble Lord or the Government aware that the function of printing news has now passed from Fleet Street to the BBC and independent television, which, in the nature of things, are always hours in front of the newspapers? As a result, Fleet Street has moved over to pornography in its widest sense, and in this function it needs urgent and strict control.
Lord Elton: My Lords, the subject of pornography is outside the Question. That was the second half of the noble Lord's supplementary question. As to the first part, I think it largely depends on what you do at breakfast time.

Business
Lord Denham: My Lords, it may be for the convenience of your Lordships to be reminded that dinner will be available this evening in the usual way. The Committee stage of the Data Protection Bill will be adjourned at approximately 7.30 p.m. for a short period. During this adjournment, the Report stage of the Dentists Bill will be taken.

Data Protection Bill [H.L.]
3.3 p.m.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now again resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now again resolve itself into Corn mittee.—(Lord Elton.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER in the Chair.]
Clause 21 [Right of access to personal data]:
[Amendment No. 109A not moved.]
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone moved Amendment No. 110:
Page 17, line 31, leave out ("the") and insert ("such").
The noble Lord said: With the permission of the Committee, I should like to speak also to Amendment No. 112. These amendments, on which I have been advised by the CBI, are intended to make it clear that the data subject should have to specify the particular information of which he requires copies in writing. As it is drafted, the present Clause 21(1)(b) would oblige the data user to furnish the data subject with all the information held on him, which may amount to a considerable volume of information drawn from a variety of files, much of which would already be known to the data subject and would not be a source of controversy between him and the data user. It would seem that this is a simplifying amendment which would not cut across the principles of the Bill. I beg to move.
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone): This amendment seeks to limit the entitlement under Clause 21 of access to personal data so that it applies not to all data held about the subject
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but only to such as are requested by the data subject. The unfortunate part about this suggestion (if my noble friend will forgive my saying so) is that many subjects will not know what data are held on them or, indeed, whether data are held on them. That is why the Bill is drafted in its present form. To accept his suggestion would be to wreck completely the protection given to the data subject and would disable us from ratifying the European Convention, for the European Convention speaks of individuals being entitled to gain confirmation of whether data about them are held and
"communication of such data in an intelligible form".
This amendment, were it to be pressed, would destroy much of the protection given by the Bill.
Lord Swinfen: May I ask my noble and learned friend this question: What would be the position if a data subject were to ask the Government, as opposed to a particular department, what information was held? Would they have to supply the information held by every single department—the health service, criminal records, motor vehicle licensing, the lot?
The Lord Chancellor: The Government are not a corporation. I take it that the Bill applies to Government departments, and presumbly they are the data users for the purposes of the Bill.
Lord Mottistone: I understand very much the point that is made by my noble and learned friend. I am not going to press this amendment. It may be possible to so cast this amendment that if the data subject wants to ask for particular information only, then he should be allowed to convey his own limitation. I shall look at the matter from that point of view. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
3.9 p.m.
Lord Mishcon Lord Mishcon moved Amendment No. 111:
Page 17, line 3l, leave out ("the information constituting").
The noble Lord said: As the Committee will be aware, the subsection that we have just been looking at entitles the individual to be supplied by any data user with a copy in writing of the information constituting any such personal data held by him. The point of this amendment—which is not heavy; it is a light one which improves the Bill and ought to carry out its meaning—is that it should not be for the data user to decide what information he passes on. It should be for the data user to pass on a copy of the personal data held by him so that there is no dubiety about what his duty is. He is not allowed to paraphrase; he is not allowed to summarise; he is not allowed to decide what is information and what is not. It ought to be a copy of the personal data. That is the reasoning behind this amendment. I beg to move.
The Lord Chancellor: I think I can best answer the noble Lord. Lord Mishcon, whose reasons for moving this amendment I can understand, by referring back to Clause 1 of the Bill, which reads as follows:
"'Data' means information recorded in a form in which it can be processed by equipment operating automatically in response to instructions given for that purpose."

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In other words, it consists of a number of holes punched in a card or a floppy disc, or perhaps a series of asterisks and matters of that kind, put in a technical form in which it can be processed automatically. That, to the ordinary subject, is probably totally unintelligible. What the subject wants to know is what is held about him in an intelligible form; and Clause 21 provides that on request in writing he is to be given the information constituting the data in a form in which he will understand it. My advice is that the removal of the reference to "information" could actually undermine the protection given to data subjects, because what he wants is not data in the technical sense, as I have quoted it from Clause 1, but knowledge of the information which has gone to make up the data.
Thus the Bill as drafted compels the data user to provide a copy in writing of the information and not a roll of magnetic tape, a floppy disc or whatever. I believe that this is a question of draftsmanship and that the draftsman on this occasion is right. But I make no apology to the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, for taking the advice I have received. If there is anything wrong in what I have said I shall be told and shall hope to be able to correct it later. But in the circumstances in which I have spoken to the Committee this is not an amendment which I could ask the noble Lord to press.
Lord Wigoder: May I ask the noble and learned Lord to reflect in due course on whether he is satisfied that the present wording of this clause deals adequately with the situation in which information requested by one data subject is found to contain, as an integral part of its existence, information about other data subjects? For example, in the case of a husband and wife, what would the position there be, when a data subject applied for data about him? Would he also be entitled in the circumstances to obtain data about other data subjects who may not have given their permission for the release of that information?
The Lord Chancellor: I can see very well that such a situation can arise, and I will make inquiries as to what the answer is. It seems clear that under the terms of the Bill as drafted he is not, as such, entitled to that information, but, speaking off the cuff and without prior notice, I can conceive that circumstances could arise in which the mere fact that he was given the information about himself might make it difficult not to disclose other information to which he was not otherwise entitled. Therefore, if I may, I will take that point up, though I shall not have time to seek the answer this afternoon. I am told by my ever ready noble friend Lord Elton that some clue to the answer to this question of the noble Lord. Lord Wigoder, is that the point is dealt with in Clause 21(4)(b). I quote:
"A data user shall not be obliged to comply with a request under this section—…
(b) if he cannot comply with the request without disclosing information relating to another individual who can be identified from that information, unless he is satisfied that the other individual has consented to the disclosure of the information to the person making the request."
It is a perfectly valid point and I will make inquiries as to whether what I have given is an adequate answer. Perhaps the noble Lord will take it that it is, unless I tell him to the contrary.
Lord Swinfen: In my noble and learned friend's original answer he referred to punched holes as being a method of providing information held on the data subject. Is the scope of the Bill then greater than just dealing with computers; or are we talking about all mechanical forms of storing and retrieving information?
The Lord Chancellor: I think that for once I have the answer offhand, which is contained in Clause 1(2) of the Bill. It says:
"'Data' means information recorded in a form in which it can be processed by equipment operating automatically in response to instructions given for that purpose."
I think that is the definition. My noble friend is so much more of an expert than I am in the actual technology involved that he will probably be able to answer his own question from that material. At any rate, that is the best I can do.
Lord Mishcon: I wish that everyone could be as pleasing and as witty as the noble and learned Lord when dealing with questions. It makes it almost a pleasure to withdraw an amendment! But perhaps I may just say this to the noble and learned Lord: it could be that I am on a bad point; on the other hand, it could be the odd occasion on which I am on a good one. In the circumstances, I would ask him to be kind enough to consider at least the point that I am now about to make but about which I have no intention of making heavy weather. He answered me by saying that there was a definition clause in Clause 1. Indeed there is, but there is no definition there of "information". The definitions in Clause 1 are of "data" and "personal data"; and, with respect, it would not make it any more obvious that one is entitled, or only entitled, to the odd punched holes by merely saying that he is entitled to a copy of the information. The information could still be the punched holes. What we all want, of course, is what the noble and learned Lord was referring to; that is, an intelligible translation of the punched holes.
What I am trying to secure—and, with great respect to the noble and learned Lord, I do not think he has completely answered the point—is that a data user is not limited under this subsection merely to supplying his idea of the information contained in the entry relating to the data subject. What he is supposed to do is to translate the entry and let the person concerned, the data subject, have a copy of that literal translation without its being a paraphrase, a précis or whatever.
As I say, that is either a bad point or a good point. It cannot be made either at the present stage of the discussion before the Committee because obviously advice has to be sought. If it is a bad point I will drop it; but if it happens to be a good point I know that the noble and learned Lord, with his usual courtesy, will take note of it.
The Lord Chancellor: Of course I will take note of what the noble Lord has said. My first and instantaneous reaction to the question now raised is that what is proposed to be left out in the suggested amendment is the word "constituting", and I think that word does effect the position which the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, desires to see effected—that is to say, a

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paraphrase or summary will not do; it has to be the information which constitutes the data. But again, if I turn out to be wrong I know that others will put me right and I will instantaneously, or forthwith, or as soon as practicable inform the noble Lord.
Lord Mishcon: In the light of what has been said, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 112 not moved.]
3.20 p.m.
Viscount Craigavon Viscount Craigavon moved Amendment No. 112ZA:
Page 17, line 32, at end insert ("together with a clear interpretation in plain English of any such information where its meaning or significance is not by itself apparent.")
The noble Viscount said: This amendment aims to ensure that personal data are conveyed to data subjects in plain English. The phrase "plain English" is to be found serving a similar purpose in the Consumer Credit Act 1974. In order to encourage support from the Opposition Front Bench, I would be very happy to include the word "Welsh" in this amendment. This paragraph would seem to be the place in the Bill to insert a requirement that information supplied to data subjects should be both intelligible and comprehensible. This amendment seeks to remind, in statute, both the lazy and the devious that a full and meaningful disclosure of all personal data is required when requested by the data subject.
Computers are not usually noted for producing the clearest or most easily decipherable read-outs, and these often include much confusing extraneous information. Of course, the data do not have to be provided in computer print-out form, but in many cases they will be so produced. More importantly, a computer environment sometimes tends to generate jargon and technical words. These must not be allowed to interfere with the subject's understanding of his own personal data. There is, further, a possibility that a data user might deviously be tempted to disguise or hide certain information by a deliberately confusing presentation.
There is, perhaps, a larger point in this amendment and that is hinted at by the word "interpretation". In the Bill as it now stands, to what extent does the providing of personal data require an interpretation of in-house jargon, technical expressions or numerical scales? If one read in one's own personal data that, among other things, one had an alcoholism score of five or a credit rating of 43, what could one deduce from that information? Surely, the presumption should be that the meaning and significance of such figures should accompany the basic information. Similarly, unintelligible jargon or technical terms should be explained in layman's language.
The precedent for this is clearly set out in the Consumer Credit Act 1974. In Section 158, as a parallel to personal data in the present Bill, a credit reference agency may be required to submit to the consumer a copy of his file. Subsection (5) states:
"In this Act 'file', in relation to an individual, means all the information about him kept by a credit reference agency, regardless
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of how the information is stored, and 'copy of the file', as respects information not in plain English, means a transcript reduced into plain English."
There is an expression in computing that some types of computer or program are "user friendly". For most people, the receipt of their personal data is the one point where they will most tangibly come into contact with this Bill. At that point, the provisions of this Bill should make the attempt to be not only "user friendly" but also "data subject friendly" by helpful interpretation and by speaking in plain English. I beg to move.
Lord Swinfen: May I support the noble Viscount on this amendment? Also may I remind our Front Bench of the reply given to me by my noble friend Lord Elton to a question on the first day of the Committee stage—I forget to which amendment—when he confirmed that it would be necessary for the information to be in good plain English or Welsh.
The Lord Chancellor: I do not know that at the moment there is anything in the Bill about Welsh. But as regards the amendment, I had divined the fact that the noble Viscount had drawn his amendment from the wording of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 which uses the term "plain English". It is a conception which I heartily support, but which I would be in some difficulty in defining. That Act requires credit reference agencies, as the noble Viscount tells us, to provide "a copy of the file". The "copy of the file" is the actual thing which, by the terms of the Act, is required to be provided. In that context, it clearly was necessary to require the copy of the file to be translated into English of an intelligible kind, because of the way in which it might have been recorded.
But a moment ago we were talking about the danger of allowing a data user to paraphrase or to bowdlerise, in some form, the information which the data actually contains. This is what the noble Viscount is, in substance, asking me to do. It is, in fact, the other side of the coin to the amendment which was proposed a moment ago by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon. What has destroyed the analogy of the Consumer Credit Act 1974, if the noble Viscount will forgive me for saying so, is the wording of Clause 21(1)(b), because under this clause, as at present drafted, what the data subject is entitled to be supplied with is,
"a copy in writing of the information constituting any such personal data held by him".
In other words, it must be a copy in writing, it must be reduced to writing and it must contain the information and nothing else.
I am bound to say that the advice I have received, which for the moment, at any rate, convinces me, is that to compel the data user to provide the information by means of a copy in writing is exactly what is wanted. If I did less than that, I should not be satisfying the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon. If I did what the noble Viscount has suggested, I should be falling into the trap which was posed to me on the last amendment. I think, therefore, that, as at present advised, the Bill as drafted is better than the amendment as proposed.
Viscount Craigavon: I appreciate what the noble and learned Lord has said. But the way in which he tries to

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reassure me does not exclude someone from producing the most horrendous jargon and technical expressions which an ordinary data subject would need a computer expert to interpret to him. That is part of what I am trying to avoid. Also, may I point out that my amendment includes the word "together", so that the data subject is receiving all the information which he would receive under the Bill as it now stands. In other words, I am not offending the noble and learned Lord in any way, but, in addition to that, I want to add some helpful information.
Finally, on the previous amendment the noble and learned Lord spoke about the word "intelligible", assuming that the information coming out in this way would be intelligible. I think that he quoted the European Convention which—I stand to be corrected—might also mention the word "intelligible". But there is nothing in the Bill that requires the information under this paragraph to be intelligible to a layman. I am grateful for the noble and learned Lord's answer. If I may, I will withdraw the amendment and consider it again later. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
3.29 p.m.
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone moved Amendment No. 112A:
Page 17, line 35, after ("such") insert ("reasonable").
The noble Lord said: This amendment tries to deal with the problem that may arise—and, in this respect, it is not dissimilar to my Amendment No. 110—in the event that a data user, for reasons that he may find convenient as a result of the coming into force of this Bill, centralises a great deal of the control of various data sources within his organisation. It could, therefore, be that he will have a laborious task to extract and supply all the information required. It may be, as a result, that it will be quite possible that the cost to the data user will exceed the maximum figure which is to be prescribed under the present reading of Clause 21(2), because it could well be that that prescribed maximum has not anticipated the sort of cost to the data user that may result if he has a large organisation and well-spread sources of information that he has to put together and extract.
It is perhaps not inappropriate to go back to Amendment No. 110, which I withdrew with the thought that if it was made optional it would be helpful, because if it was optional for a data subject only to ask for information that he knew about—I am not talking about what he does not know—it could well be that it would cost the data user less to provide the information. It would, therefore, be in the data subject's interest to be able to have the flexibility to specify what information he wants.
However, be that as it may. I will perhaps come back to it on Report. The object of these amendments is not to restrict the amount that may be charged, providing of course that it does not exceed the cost of extracting and supplying the information. I beg to move.
Lord Wigoder: Without these amendments is there not a probability that the maximum might be charged as a matter of routine on every single occasion without any limitation on it?
The Lord Chancellor: There may be something rather ironic about a member of the present Administration resisting an amendment which would allow the higgling of the market place to determine the price of the service provided. None the less, that is the position in which I find myself. The purposes of the Bill are to protect the data subject and to enable us to ratify the convention. The convention provides that access should be available without excessive expense to the data subject. The words "without excessive expense" are written into the convention. It follows from that that we must be able to control the maximum which may be charged and we cannot permit the data user to set his own fees and leave it to the courts to decide ex post facto what is a reasonable amount having regard to the amount of trouble to which he has been put. In fact, I understand that it is not the practice elsewhere in Europe to allow users to set their own fees in the way suggested in the amendment. If I were to accept this amendment, it would jeopardise our ability to ratify.
I quite understand that there might be a tendency to charge the maximum, but the maximum will be arrived at with a view to ensuring that excessive cost will not be allowed and certainly it will be in line with what other signatories to the Convention are in fact doing.
I do not know that I can give any better answer at the moment, but it is quite clear that, if we are to ratify the convention and to protect the data subject, we cannot allow the data user to charge his own fees. We must set a maximum. That is the answer which I must give to my noble friend.
Lord Swinfen: Surely this amendment does not prevent the prescribing of a maximum fee. That, I should have thought, was outside the description of "reasonable". "Reasonable" can be a fee which is lower than the maximum fee, it does not have to be higher. That would be nonsense.
The Lord Chancellor: I think my noble friend has misread the amendment. There are two amendments, the second one omits the words "not exceeding the prescribed maximum".
Lord Mottistone: I must apologise to my noble and learned friend for not having mentioned that I was talking to Amendment No. 112A and Amendment No. 112B.
I take the point of my noble and learned friend. Of course data principle No. 7(a) talks about a limitation of expense. However, I think there is room here for somehow meeting the points that have been made by my noble and learned friend and the underlying point of this amendment and the one I had before. I shall read with interest what has been said and perhaps come back on Report. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 112B not moved.]
Lord Mishcon Lord Mishcon moved Amendment No. 113:
Page 17, line 37, leave out subsection (3).
The noble Lord said: Subsection (3) provides:
"In the case of a data user having separate entries in the register in respect of data held for different purposes a separate request must

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be made and a separate fee paid under this section in respect of the data to which each entry relates."
It seems to my noble friends and to me that this is an open invitation for abuse, because an employer could easily hold information about his employees for a variety of purposes. It might well be an honest decision that he makes. He could do it for the payroll. He could do a separate entry for personnel administration, for the pension scheme, for the sports club, and so on. And, by splitting these into many separate entries in the register, the employer could make it impossible, or certainly highly impracticable, for the employee to exercise his rights to subject access.
Finally, I bear in mind the lesson that the noble and learned Lord gave us in gentle terms about what the convention says: that is, it must not be at excessive expense. If there are goodness knows how many sections, and they might all hold precisely the same information, it would be a way of making it excessively expensive for the data subject to be able to get all the information which he wants, though he does not know under which section it has been put by the employer. I only give the employer as one example.
Lord Digby: The implications of this amendment are that, if a data subject applies to, say, one local authority for information about himself and that local authority holds many different files, such as social service files, education and many other files, he would be allowed on one payment to get all the data available in all departments. Even if this information is on one computer, the administrative burden caused by this would be great because very often the information will be on different files. The fact that the data are on the same computer does not mean that there will not be considerable administrative expense in providing the data. If there is one single fee, I feel that local authority resources will be used up to quite a large extent and the revenue intended to finance meeting the requirements of the Bill will be lost.
The Lord Chancellor: Again I have to walk a tightrope between the legitimate requirements of the data user and the necessary protection of the data subject. The first point I would make is that on the whole we hope that we shall not be compelling local authorities, as my noble friend Lord Digby suggests, or big organisations like BP or ICI, necessarily to concentrate all their various computer-contained data in one central organisation. That would impose upon them the kind of expense which my noble friend Lord Mottistone was seeking to avoid in his last amendment.
Let me take, for instance, a personnel roll. The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, gave this as an example, and I thought that it was a happy choice. Let us suppose that an employee is also a customer and that the customer is held on a different roll from the personnel file. If there is a simple request for access to all the data held about the individual, even assuming that it would be easy to identify the individual as the same person from the different particulars which would be contained in the two separate files, it would be necessary to have a single, central organisation containing all the possible rolls upon which any file of a personal character could be held, for whatever purpose.
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I believe that, as drafted, the Bill provides reasonable and adequate protection for the data subject. If one looks first at Clause 6(4), we encourage—and I think properly encourage—the keeping of separate purposes on separate files. It is there provided that:
"Where the alteration would consist of the addition of a purpose for which personal data are to be held, the person"—
that is, the applicant for registration as a data user—
"may, instead of making an application under subsection (3) above, make a fresh application for registration in respect of the additional purpose".
If one turns to Clause 7(2)(a), one sees there the protection which is given to the data subject. The registrar is there clearly encouraged to refuse applications for registration or for the alteration of registered particulars unless,
"he considers that the particulars proposed for registration or, as the case may be, the particulars that would result from the alteration",
will give sufficient information as to the matters to which they relate.
Although I fully understand the point which the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, and his noble friends have put forward, our view is that this provides a correct balance between the legitimate needs of the data user—not to have to keep an all-embracing central file like that which the Department of Health and Social Security keeps on all of us at Newcastle but to be entitled to keep separate ones—and those of the data subject, who is protected by the joint provisions of Clause 6(4) and Clause 7(2)(a) against the kind of misuse which gave the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, cause for apprehension. Therefore we believe we have struck the right balance. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, will accept this somewhat confused explanation.
Lord Mishcon: Obviously there are arguments both ways. I should like to read what the noble and learned Lord has said, digest it and see which way the balance appears to me to go; then I shall act accordingly. I am most grateful to the noble and learned Lord for what he has said. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
3.45 p.m.
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone moved Amendment No. 114:
Page 18, line 11 at end insert ("; and
(c) if the request is exercised in a manner which by reason of its frequency or nature is frivolous, abusive, vexatious or malicious.").
The noble Lord said: This amendment is designed to discourage persistent, abusive, vexatious or malicious requests for access. The use of the provision is subject to review by the courts under Clause 21(8). It seems to me that it would be wise to have something of this nature in the Bill. One can well imagine that some data subjects would have a perhaps distorted view of the importance of what they are after. This has happened in all kinds of circumstances. There should be some mechanism to provide a safeguard against those kinds of data subjects. I beg to move.
The Lord Chancellor: I now tilt my balancing pole on the opposite side and the tightrope, I hope, remains beneath my feet—if somewhat precariously. The

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noble Lord would curtail the right of access if a request is exercised in a manner which by reason of its frequency or nature is frivolous, abusive, vexatious or malicious. These are lovely words. I am not sure that in practice they would be easy to construe. A request which is abusive may nonetheless be a perfectly intelligible request, and what we require is a request in writing. That gives to the data user the absolute right to access to his personal data. I hope that the shade of APH is not listening to me and that no noble Lord will ask me whether, if the request in writing were to be written on the back of a cow it would be effective for the purpose. My noble friend will remember that somebody in Misleading Cases wrote a cheque on the back of a cow. The question was whether it could be endorsed and whether the holder in due course could recover on the cow.
These points can cause difficulty, but the straightforward view of the Government is that the convention requires that, provided the data subject makes an intelligible request in writing, he is entitled to access to the information contained in his personal data. The fact that he may be ill-disposed towards the data user is not necessarily relevant. That he may be frivolous, by which I can only assume is meant that he may not have any real need for access, is disposed of by the fact that he has to pay for it, up to a maximum. That it may be abusive is irrelevant. And I am not quite sure that it is necessarily relevant that the data user may be vexed.
In its present form the Bill seems to me to be clear and to protect both parties by demanding that the request should be in writing and that it should then give absolute access to the data. But in order even better to protect the data user, we have provided by Clause 21(8) that when it is applied the remedy of the data subject is in the discretion of the court. If, therefore, the court considers that the remedy should not be granted, the court could so order. It is provided expressly in Clause 21(8) that,
"a court shall not make an order under this subsection if it considers that it would in all the circumstances be unreasonable to do so."
I hope that with this explanation my noble friend will agree we have done our best to protect both sides.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: I confess that I sympathise with the motivation of this amendment, but the problem of definition is very difficult. One man's frivolity is another man's levity. I remember Dean Sydney Smith's famous observation that his successful brother, Bobus, had descended by gravity; he had descended by levity! The term "vexatious" is well known in the courts, as the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor knows. As Attorney-General, it fell to me more than once to have a litigant declared vexatious to the great benefit of the hapless defendant, who would otherwise have been at his mercy. It may well be that we should give power to the registrar to give a ruling if one was sought by the user, who might be constantly plagued by a vexatious demander. Perhaps the noble and learned Lord will be willing to look at this. The data user does not have a court that he can run to, and it may be a useful thought to give the registrar power to give advice in a situation such as this. I only put this forward for what it may be worth.
Lord Wigoder: I believe that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has inadvertently misled your Lordships by omitting to remind your Lordships that the gentleman who wrote the cheque on the back of a cow did make the whole matter entirely legitimate by also affixing a 2d stamp to one of its ears. May I venture to suggest that the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, has much to be said for it in principle. One can criticise the adjectives which have been chosen, in the way that the noble and learned Lord has criticised them; this I can understand. But will the noble and learned Lord not consider looking at the principle, to see whether suitable language could be devised in order to discourage applications which are, quite obviously on the face of them, totally unmeritorious?
Lord Campbell of Alloway: Does my noble and learned friend not agree that there is within this amendment at least one intrinsic point of value; that is, "frequency" and "vexatious"? This is quite apart from the other aspects with which my noble and learned friend has dealt, which were covered by the observations made. There still rests the residual point of "frequency" and "vexatious" which could perhaps warrant treatment along the lines suggested by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones.
The Lord Chancellor: The answer to that is, once one has given access and a copy of the information in writing, one has given access and therefore discharged one's duty. So I do not consider that that last point is a residual point of substance, although I will try to see whether between now and Report stage there is more to this than at first meets the eye. I will of course consider seriously that which has been put to me by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, about the functions of the registrar. However, the general philosophy of the Bill—which I tried to outline at our last meeting—is that the registrar is the user's friend, and is the "policeman" there to enforce the obligations, but the court is the authority under Part III—which is the part we are now discussing—which gives the remedy to the data subject.
I myself think that the discretion given by Clause 21(8) is probably the right answer to this question. But in the light of this discussion I shall ask any advisers who may be available to look at this aspect of the subject to see whether something more can be done. I must point out to the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, that the omission of the 2d stamp—although he is perfectly right in referring to it in Misleading Cases—is now obsolete or archaic because some benevolent Government (whether it was Labour or Conservative I cannot remember) abolished the need for stamps on cheques.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: I believe that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor inadvertently said that the registrar was the data user's friend. Unless that should remain on the record, I am sure that the noble and learned Lord meant that the registrar was the data subject's friend.
The Lord Chancellor: I am much obliged to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones.
Baroness Wootton of Abinger: Will the term "frequency" relate only to repeated applications for data referring to the same person; or might it not be that, having obtained data referring to one data subject, the inquirer might have his interest stimulated in certain others? This might go on for quite a long time, quite legitimately; he might find that six or seven people were involved in whatever it was that interested him, and that as he proceeded from one copy of the data to another, he would be quite justified in pursuing his case.
The Lord Chancellor: I think that, like St. John at the end of St. John's Gospel, what happens to Peter is nobody else's business except Peter's.
Baroness Wootton of Abinger: I would suggest, with respect, that that does not answer my question.
The Lord Chancellor: I think it does, if the noble Baroness will study her Holy Scripture, which I know entrances her at every moment, because the fact is that the data subject is only entitled to his own data.
Lord Mottistone: I thank my noble and learned friend and also other noble Lords, particularly the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, for their contributions. I would particularly ask that my noble and learned friend examines this point in the way suggested by my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway, because I too would make the point that out of all these words in my amendment "frequency" is the most important. I can think of some people with whom I have had to deal in a personnel role who have been very troublesome in just that sort of way. It is remarkable how ingenious people can be if they are frightfully clever but not very competent. This is a point which needs to be watched.
As to the cost, which is of course a restraint, this is really in the lap of the gods at the moment because my noble and learned friend did not accept my amendment that this should be the costs actually incurred, because there has to be a limitation—which I accepted under Principle 7(a). It could be that the costs are not enough to discourage the sort of person who might need to be discouraged. With that in mind, if my noble and learned friend will look at this matter, as he said he would, I shall be most grateful. I might also do so with the CBI, who proposed this amendment, and perhaps come back at another stage. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
3.57 p.m.
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone moved Amendment No. 115:
Page 18, line 22, leave out ("twenty-eight") and insert ("sixty").
The noble Lord said: This again is an amendment recommended by the CBI. It is somewhat technical. I do not know what the Government had in mind when they chose 28 days as being the number of days in which particulars should be supplied, but this amendment is intended to accommodate what are called "monthly run systems". The noble Viscount, Lord Craigavon, might, with his expert knowledge, be aware of this system. Under such systems, a request for
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copies of information might come at a point in the month after which they would not be extracted until a point in the following month, when the 28 day period would have elapsed.
A period of 60 days would cover systems completely, although I am advised that this is perhaps unnecessarily long and that a figure of around 40 days might be acceptable. Clearly, 28 days is too short a period for certain kinds of systems for the orderly production of information to come forward without upsetting the system badly. I beg to move.
The Lord Chancellor: In this case I can give my noble friend Lord Mottistone at least modified rapture. If he will withdraw his amendment, I will consider this matter again. I believe that a period of 28 days is probably too short but that 60 days is probably too long. I think that we may be able to do business on those lines.
Lord Renton: I hope that when my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor considers this matter further he will bear in mind that it would be wrong to keep the data user waiting longer than is reasonable. When one is trying to fix a period of this kind, it is partly a matter of guesswork—and one could call it judgment. My judgment is that 28 days is a reasonable period in which to assemble information and that the data user should not be kept waiting any longer.
The Lord Chancellor: I believe that my noble friend meant that the data subject should not be kept waiting any longer.
Lord Renton: I am most apologetic. Of course, I meant data subject.
Lord Swinfen: Where there is a monthly run system or something of that sort where a period of 28 days is possibly too short and a longer period is necessary, would it be possible to ensure that the data user has to inform the data subject that he will have the information by a particular date?
Lord Mottistone: That remark of my noble friend Lord Swinfen seems to me very reasonable. Perhaps my noble and learned friend, in the most accommodating way in which he has agreed to strike a balance, would take that suggestion into account. I would suggest to my noble friend Lord Renton that perhaps he did not understand fully the technicalities involved in this. Though 28 days might be all right for dealing with a quill pen, in the world of computers and data, systems get seriously upset if they are not run in an orderly fashion, and 28 days can create great difficulties and indeed much expense. I am delighted with what my noble and learned friend has said. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone moved Amendment No. 116:
Page 18, line 29, after ("amendment") insert ("or deletion").
The noble Lord said: With this amendment I would suggest we might take Amendment No. 118. I can very briefly say that the only purpose of this amendment is

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to make explicit that deletions of information are included in this subsection. I beg to move.
The Lord Chancellor: I have two speeches to make in reply to this amendment, one short and one long. The short one is, "I accept this amendment" and the long one is, "I accept this amendment with thanks to my noble friend for moving it". I have now made both.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Jacques): I should point out that if Amendment No. 117 were agreed to, I would not be able to call Amendment No. 118.
4.3 p.m.
Lord Elwyn-Jones Lord Elwyn-Jones moved Amendment No. 117:
Page 18, line 30, leave out from ("supplied") to end of line 33.
The noble and learned Lord said: This is a short point which I can put in an interrogative form. If the data have in fact been amended between the receipt of the request and the time when they are supplied, surely the amendments should be revealed regardless of the purpose for which they were made. That is what the amendment seeks to do.
The Lord Chancellor: As I am going to accept Amendment No. 118 I hope that the noble and learned Lord in his courtesy will not press this amendment, because otherwise I shall not be able to accept No. 118, which goes with No. 116. This is touching on a problem which we discussed a moment or two ago. The amendment applies to Clause 21, which gives the right of access. We were rather puzzled to know at first what the purpose of it was. In the interests of efficiency almost all data users plan very carefully the way in which their workload—that is the data to be processed—is matched to their human processing resources. One of the effects of this is that particular activities tend to be scheduled in daily, weekly, or monthly processing cycles, as my noble friend was telling us a moment ago.
For example, most organisations process payroll data in the middle of each month in order to enable pay to be distributed to staff at the end of each month. In these circumstances most users would be unable to respond to spontaneous requests for subject access. To do so would interrupt their scheduled procedures and so lead to operational difficulties. The preferred approach would normally be to schedule the process of subject access, perhaps by accumulating requests until some predetermined convenient point in the operational cycle when they can all be dealt with at the same time. The need to avoid interrupting the scheduled operations of data users has been addressed in the Bill by allowing a certain number of days—in the Bill as drafted, 28—in which to respond to a request for access.
However, it is recognised that this will create a situation in which data users will need to continue processing personal data during the period between receiving a request for access and responding to it, and that this could, on occasion, result in the data being amended before they are supplied to the subject. The qualification at the end of subsection (7) has therefore been introduced to prevent users from taking the
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opportunity in those circumstances to frustrate subject access by laundering the data, or as my brief says, sanitising them, before they are supplied. The qualification effectually restricts the amendments which the data user can make to those which he would make in the normal course of events. I hope that that covers the subject matter. The noble and learned Lord has noted that this is intended to explain what the qualification in subsection (7) is for, and this shows the purpose of the words proposed to be left out in the amendment.
Lord Elwyn-Jones:This is obviously a complex matter, as indeed is so much in this Bill. I would like to consider the complexity, try to understand it, and if necessary return to the matter again. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone moved Amendment No. 118:
Page 18, line 30, at end insert ("or deletion").
The noble Lord said: I would like at this point—I should have done it earlier—to thank my noble and learned friend very much for accepting Amendments Nos. 116 and 1 18, for which I am indeed grateful. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone moved Amendment No. 118A:
Page 18, line 33, at end insert—
("When giving a copy of the information under subsection (1) the data user shall also give the data subject a statement in writing of his rights under this Part of this Act.").
The noble Lord said: This amendment has been suggested to me by the National Consumer Council; they suggest that it would be reasonable to put in a subsection of this nature to ensure that data subjects are made aware of their rights of appeal. It is closely modelled on the Consumer Credit Act 1974, where a similar provision has worked very well over the past nine years or so. It is suggested that it would be very appropriate in this Bill, too. I beg to move.
The Lord Chancellor: My noble friend is like a barrister with numerous clients of somewhat incongruous and incompatible kinds. He reminds me rather of a cuckoo chick fed with a bundle of incompatible worms by two or three rival sets of meadow pippets. The Consumer Credit Act is not, I would respectfully say to him, a guide to the Data Protection Bill of this year; the analogies are not always good ones, as we have already had reason to see this afternoon and as I think we adverted to last time.
I had thought that my noble friend would move his amendment with his earlier group establishing a procedure for the correction of wrong information and that this amendment would have been seen as consequential upon that. It is, of course, in theory free standing, but it is now orphaned and as orphan I do not believe it will stand.
The obligation which it seeks to impose would apply only once access to data had been granted by a data user, so that it can hardly be about that particular aspect of the rights which Part III provides that the information would be given. The obligation on data

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users would amount, therefore, simply to informing data subjects of their entitlement to seek compensation under Clauses 22 and 23 and about the power of the courts to order correction or erasure under Clause 24.
I suggest that a data subject who has got as far as exercising his right of access under Clause 21 will scarcely need this additional information. I am bound to say that the person from whom I would seek it, if I had any special desire to know my rights, would not be the data user from whom the Bill is designed to protect me. This would probably give more trouble and provide more opportunities for argument than it would give information.
Informing the data subject of his Part III rights could have the effect—and this would be an additional disadvantage—of distracting him from the alternative assistance available through the officer of the registrar, whose powers might in certain circumstances be just as relevant to the data subject in question as the remedies for which Part III provides and to which the data subject would be confined under my noble friend's proposed amendment. I do not see why one should turn data users into a general information point regarding the provisions of the legislation and I am not sure that I would not say, in regard to them, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.
Lord Mottistone: I take all the points made by my noble and learned friend, including the fact that I have perhaps taken on rather more than I should. But, apart from that particular point, there is a side to this which my noble and learned friend has not touched upon. It is quite common in personnel departments to provide general information of the sort that I have been describing to all who are employed and it would seem reasonable when this Bill becomes an Act that the sort of information which is within Part III of the Bill should be the sort of information which would be automatically provided to new employees when they start work. But that, of course, might happen anyhow in a good company without the need of the law to give them a nudge to do so. I take the points made by my noble and learned friend and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Wigoder Lord Wigoder moved Amendment No 119:
Page 18, line 34, leave out ("a court") and insert ("the Registrar")
The noble Lord said: With this amendment perhaps I may speak to Amendments Nos. 120 and 121. I am anxious, where it is proper, to increase the authority of the registrar and to limit the number of occasions upon which the courts are required to intervene; first, because of the costs that inevitably are involved and, secondly, because of the delays that also inevitably are involved.
In a sense these amendments hark back to the discussion we had a few minutes ago on Amendment No. 114, where I believe the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, suggested that the registrar might have a role to play where frivolous and vexatious requests are made. The purpose of these amendments is to give the registrar the power in the first place,
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rather than the courts under subsection (8), to determine whether a data user has failed to comply with a request, so that the request should be complied with unless it is considered in all the circumstances to be unreasonable.
I think that the amendment may be defective in the sense that under the Bill the registrar at the moment would have no powers of enforcing any such order; but that is something that I have no doubt could be very easily written in if the principle of giving this power to the registrar rather than to the courts were to find favour with the noble and learned Lord, I beg to move.
The Lord Chancellor: I do not think that the amendment is defective in the particular way which the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, suggests because, in fact, the registrar already has power to do what this amendment would require him to do. If it had not been for Amendment No. 75, which was a Government amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Elton, there would have been some purpose in this amendment. Now that we have given the Committee Amendment No. 75, which was, I think, passed at our last Committee sitting, the only effect of this amendment would be to deprive the data subject of the right to go to the courts at all and compel him to go to the registrar, who already has, without the amendment, the power to do what the amendment proposes. It therefore restricts the rights of the data subject and does not add to them. For those reasons, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, will accept our view that the amendment does not add to the powers of the registrar nor give the data subject facilities which he would not otherwise have.
Lord Wigoder: I see that point and I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for making it so clear. I confess that I had not considered the effect of Amendment No. 75 in relation to my amendment. It might still be that there is no purpose to be gained by this subsection in giving the data subject the right of access to the courts if, in fact, the registrar is competent to deal with the whole matter himself, and it may be that that is a wholly unnecessary luxury that is being afforded to the data subject in these circumstances. I should like to reflect on that, and for the moment beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 120 and 121 not moved.]
On Question, Whether Clause 21, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Elton: I wonder whether I may take a second of your Lordships' time to put right a misconception which may have risen from an exchange earlier in our proceedings? At an earlier stage last week the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, made the point that legal entitlement to the receipt of information—subject access to information—only arose once the person in question had established that such data existed. Therefore, there was no means of discovering, by asking for information from a computer, whether or not one was a data subject because there would be no right to get the information if one was not a data subject. I merely wanted to put on record at this stage that, of course, the legal entitlement actually subsists

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in Clause 21(1) and that that relates to an individual, not to the data subject. Therefore, the difficulty which the noble Viscount pointed out does not exist, and it would be a pity to pursue it on Report, as I think he intended to do.
Clause 21, as amended, agreed to.
[Amendment No. 121A not moved.]
Clause 22 [Compensation for inaccuracy]:
4,19 p.m.
Viscount Craigavon Viscount Craigavon moved Amendment No. 122:
Page 19, line 1, after ("damage") insert ("or distress")
The noble Lord said: With leave of the Committee, I shall speak to Amendments Nos. 123, 128, 129, 132 and 133. These six amendments simply add to the word "damage", whenever it is mentioned in Clauses 22, 23 and 24, the words "or distress". The purpose of these amendments is to ascertain how far, if at all, these mentions of the word "damage" may already be held legally to contain the notion of "distress". The damage mentioned here provides the grounds on which the data subject is entitled to claim compensation from the data user for inaccuracy, for loss or for unauthorised disclosure.
The occurrence of the single word "damage" should be contrasted with the mention in Clause 10(2), Clause 11(2) and Clause 12(4) of the words, "damage or distress". In those cases the registrar must take into account whether contravention of the data protection principles has caused, or is likely to cause, any damage or distress. This is required to enable the registrar to decide whether to issue a notice for enforcement, for deregistration or for transfer prohibition.
Let us take the example of deregistration. Let us say that the registrar has successfully caused an offending data user to be deregistered and, as required, has given his reasons in writing that it was, say, because needless and serious distress was being caused to a particular data subject. It is to be hoped that under Clause 22 the suffering data subject would be able to claim compensation for that distress. If the findings of distress at the tribunal stage, when the offender is deregistered, can be admitted as prima facie evidence in civil proceedings under Clause 22, then is there not a danger that a conflict will arise over references in one case to "damage or distress" and in the other solely to "damage"?
As Clause 22 stands, reference is made to compensation only for damage. It is hoped that the Government can say clearly that every aspect of award for distress is covered by the word "damage". That is particularly important in this Bill concerning the misuse of data because of the nature of data itself. Unauthorised disclosure or culpable inaccuracy is particularly liable to cause intangible and ill-defined distress rather than any clearly quantifiable financial loss. The public must feel, and the data user must realise, that fair compensation is available for transgressions which cause only distress. I hope that the noble and learned Lord can give that reassurance. I beg to move.
Lord Wigoder: I should like to support this amendment moved by the noble Viscount, Lord Craigavon. When we discussed Clauses 10, 11, and 12 a little earlier, I endeavored to find out what, if any, was the meaning of the word "distress" when added to the word "damage". I received a somewhat ambiguous answer, but it was quite clear from the answer that the word "distress" does add something to the word "damage" and is not to be taken as being included in the word "damage", hence the use of the words "damage or distress' in Clauses 10, 11 and 12. It appears only consistent now in Clauses 22, 23 and 24, when one is considering the harm that may come to a data subject in various ways, that the same phrase should be used and the words "or distress" should be included.
The Lord Chancellor: The question of whether and when you turn subjective feelings of unhappiness into money is one which has puzzled lawyers for centuries. Indeed, those of us who had the privilege of practising at the common law Bar for donkeys years, know that we have often underlined or sought to minimise, according to which side we were on, the amount of distress and what its value in hard cash is likely to be. I myself have always viewed the right to compensation in money for distress on rather conservative lines, and I have also always associated it with conduct which is blameworthy. I want to emphasise that in what I am going to say.
This is a clause which gives a right to compensation for damage arising out of an act which is virtually—subject to a qualification which we shall be coming to shortly—an absolute liability. In other words, it is not based—subject as I say, to one qualification—on either intentional wrongdoing or negligent wrongdoing. It is an absolute liability which is being imposed upon a data user. I do not feel that this is a fair burden to place upon the data user.
I draw attention to the fact that on Second Reading I pointed out that these remedies given by Clauses 21, 22, 23 and, I think, 24 are additional to, and not in place of, the ordinary common law remedies for defamation, or the statutory remedy for racial or sexual discrimination which would give rise to a claim for damages against the wrongdoer—whether it was a data user or a third party—for these subjective feelings of distress. I do not feel that where there is strict liability one is entitled to more than the damage that has actually been lost. There is nothing I think in the eight principles to compel us to include that type of consideration in our definition of compensation for the purposes of this particular clause, Clause 22.
It would of course add very significantly to what used to be known, and probably still is in some reaches of the Bar, as speculative litigation. Once you can start proceedings where there is no financial loss at all but one can simply say, "I was very distressed to learn that somewhere on the data file" or, "in the information contained in the data there was something which caused me distress" it seems to me that with the use of legal aid there is an almost infinite field for speculative litigation in the broader sense of the word "speculative". I myself would not favour that. I would favour, of course—but the Bill, the common law, or statute law already provides for it—compensation from the wrongdoer in cases of moral fault.

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I think that this is going too far and for that reason I would invite the Committee not to go along with the noble Viscount or with the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder. I can remember a lot of litigation when I was much younger and before the days of legal aid, which I felt was not always reputable but in which I played a part on one side or the other, sometimes with success.
Lord Perry of Walton: Proving damage from the unauthorised disclosure of medical records would be extraordinarily difficult and stressful for the majority of patients and would effectively discredit the concept of data protection in this way. Would the noble and learned Lord consider the possibility of having a penalty imposed for unauthorised disclosure alone without recourse to asking for damages? That would not prevent an action for damages being taken in addition.
Lord Mishcon: I wonder whether the noble and learned Lord would bear with me for a moment if I put this to him because I think it may be of interest to other members of the Committee. Of course, if the inaccurate information constituted a defamatory statement, then the normal rules of libel would apply. There are a number of occasions, one would have thought, where inaccurate information is not defamatory and where it would be very difficult to prove actual damage but where the distress may be very great indeed.
Let me give just two examples, which may not be the best examples to take but they are the first two that occur to me. If it is on the record that the husband of a certain lady died of senile dementia, and it be in fact completely inaccurate that her husband died of that disease because he was in possession of his senses and faculties to the very day he left this world, it is a very harmful thing to be on the record. It would not be defamatory; she would not have been caused damage as such; she would have been caused distress.
Before I leave the examples, perhaps I could choose not so morbid a topic but a happy one for some people. Suppose it is on the record that, for example, the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, had won the football pools and, as a result, has become a millionaire. That may be completely inaccurate.
The Lord Chancellor: It would not cause him much distress.
Lord Mishcon: If the noble and learned Lord would allow me—and I think that the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, would agree with me—it would cause him the utmost distress, because he would be approached by all the charities that exist in the United Kingdom and by many individuals who would ask him to invest in their businesses, and so on. Knowing the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, as we do, such approaches would cause him the utmost distress.
As I have said, the examples that I have chosen may not be happy ones, but there is no doubt at all that there is an area where defamation is not there, where inaccuracy is not there, and where damage is not caused, but where infinite distress is caused.
The Lord Chancellor: I respond to all noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate. It is, of course, true that there is a kind of falsehood which can cause either damage or distress, but which is not defamatory. But at common law at any rate that is actionable only when it is malicious, and I had that very much in mind when I made my initial response to the amendment.
To be quite honest—and curiously, we had this argument in the last Session on, I think, the Administration of Justice Bill—having suffered a certain amount of distress in the course of a misspent life, I have never felt very much satisfaction in trying to turn it into money. I think that probably the common law has gone too far in turning human feelings—sometimes of a most sacred kind—into money. I think it leads to all sorts of impossible equations to work out, and in my own mind I am quite sure that I would give that right only where there had been some moral turpitude on the part of the person who had caused the distress. The cases of libel and slander are instances in which I feel quite confident that it is rightly given.
But there are other cases where it is done. I do not think that this is an appropriate field for damages for subjective pain for discovering that one's own personal data contain, in fact, an inaccuracy which has not caused damage but which nonetheless upsets one a good deal. There are many cases where it causes damage even though it is not defamatory, and it is with that sort of case that this clause is designed to deal. But it is very much a question of the way in which one approaches these matters. I do not think that one can argue about it very much. I have stated my position; I stick to it. I respect that of' others who do not agree with me.
Viscount Craigavon: I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for his remarks. While I should perhaps defer to the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, in this very legal field, possibly the noble and learned Lord can reassure us that there is no contradiction in the Bill when it refers to damage and distress at one point and simply to damage at another point, because I gave the example of the evidence at a tribunal where solely distress had been caused, and there was no way in which this could be compensated for in the courts. Would the noble and learned Lord like to answer that?
The Lord Chancellor: I must apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Perry, on the Back-Benches because I answered neither the point which he made nor the point which the noble Viscount made. To deal with the medical point first, the ultimate remedy for that must be deregistration and enforcement notice, and not compensation unless it causes damage. But I entirely agree with the sentiment that the noble Lord expressed.
As regards the more subtle point which I forgot to answer which the noble Viscount made in moving the amendment—and I apologise to him—as I understand it (maybe wrongly, but I think rightly) he suggested that there was an inconsistency between Part II and Part III of the Bill in that causes of action in Part III are limited to damage in the strict sense whereas the registrar, in considering whether to exercise his notice powers under Part III, is required to reflect upon the

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probability or actuality of damage or distress. However, I would respectfully submit that there is no inconsistency here. The registrar's powers are discretionary and the requirement upon him, for example in Clause 10(2), is simply to consider the possibility of damage or distress for the purposes of that clause, which has nothing to do with compensation but which is in relation to his regulatory powers by means of an enforcement notice, which of course also bears very strongly on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Perry.
There is no obligation upon the registrar in such circumstances to take action or not to take action merely because the distress element is present or not. He will be able to consider whether the distress, which may have been caused to an individual, was of a kind which might have affected any reasonable person in the circumstances, or whether the distress was more personally related to the circumstances of the individual concerned. He will be able, moreover, to consider how much distress has been caused or is likely to be caused. In other words, he would be able to take a broad view of the likely effect on individuals of the data use in question.
I do not myself see that, in protecting the individual, there is any inconsistency in giving the registrar power to issue an enforcement notice or the ultimate sanction of deregistration in cases where distress has been caused, but not giving monetary compensation under Clause 22, which is the compensation for inaccuracy. I would therefore suggest, with an apology (which I repeat to the noble Viscount) for not having dealt with his perfectly reasonable point in my first reply by sheer inadvertence, that my argument stands.
Viscount Craigavon: I am grateful for that full reply. Perhaps between now and the Report stage we should all look at Hansard to decide what to do. Unless the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, wants to add anything, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 123 not moved.]
4.39 p.m.
Lord Mishcon Lord Mishcon moved Amendment No. 124:
Page 19, line 9, after ("misleading") insert ("or incomplete").
The noble Lord said: This is a short point. The amendment seeks to add the words "or incomplete" after the word "misleading" in this clause, and for the following reason. You can have perfectly accurate information so far as it goes, but you can cause very grave damage to someone because it is incomplete in some relevant respect. Perhaps I may give a quick example. Let us take the case of John Brown. You can say on your records that he was sued in court for failure to pay his instalments on a washing machine. However, if you do not go on to say, as was the case, that the case was dismissed in favour of John Brown because the washing machine was found to be defective, you are obviously saying something which is incomplete. Although the first fact—that he was sued—is perfectly right and is not misleading, it is incomplete and I should have thought therefore that this was a sensible amendment.
The Lord Chancellor: I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, except on one important particular. I agree that if the word had simply been "inaccurate" or "incorrect" in subsection (3) it would be open to Lord Mishcon to say, "There are plenty of things which may be accurate but which may none the less be incomplete". But the phrase used in the draft is "inaccurate or misleading" and our view is that any information which in a material particular is incomplete and is calculated to deceive—which would certainly be the case in the example he gave—is misleading because it leads to a false conclusion, and that is what I understand "misleading" to mean.
"Incomplete", on the other hand, is a word which is not, I think, capable of very precise definition because different views may be taken as to what should be included in any statement of fact. The test, which I suggest is an objective one, about whether it should give rise to compensation for inaccuracy under Clause 22 is whether the incompleteness is such as to lead a possible recipient of the information to a false conclusion, and that is capable of measurement and judgment by an objectively-minded tribunal. But in a sense no information is absolutely complete, least of all that which is contained on a computer.
I submit therefore that, so far as the point is a valid one—and I think it is a valid one in the sense that I have conceded it—it is already covered by the draftsmanship as it is. If the noble Lord feels any lack of ease about my reply, I shall certainly give the matter back to the draftsman and see what he says, but that is the view I personally take and the view which, at the moment, the Government take.
Lord Mishcon: If the noble and learned Lord would kindly consider possibly altering the words to,
"inaccurate or incomplete so as to be misleading",
then I should have thought we might have covered the point. However, I do not want to take it any further at this stage, and I ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave withdrawn.
4.43 p.m.
Lord Wigoder Lord Wigoder moved Amendment No. 125:
Page 19, line 11, leave out ("or a third party")
The noble Lord said: I accept what the noble and learned Lord said earlier about the problem throughout the Bill of trying to balance properly the interests of the data user and data subject, and it is bearing that principle very much in mind that I bring the amendment forward. Under the Bill as drafted the data user will not be liable for any inaccurate information that has been provided with by the data subject himself, and I assume we would agree with that without hesitation. However, the Bill goes on to say that, equally, the data user will not be liable for inaccurate information provided by a third party, and I suggest there is a point to be considered as to whether, if the information is provided by a third party, there should not be a duty on the data user to check its accuracy before using it, and that is the purpose of the amendment. I beg to move.
The Lord Chancellor: Again, we are dealing with the question of balance, and I think we have it right. The point is, however, worth discussing and I am grateful

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to the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, for tabling the amendment, the effect of which would be to increase considerably the range of circumstances in which the data would be subject to a strict test of accuracy. I fear that, if passed, the amendment would place a vast and wholly irredeemable burden on data users, would in most instances prove unworkable, and I doubt if it would add much, if anything, to the protection being provided for data subjects.
The purpose of Clause 22(3) is to apply the accuracy test strictly to matters of fact where the information comes from the data user himself, while recognising that in a great number of instances it would be quite impossible for the user to verify the accuracy of information coming into his possession. Sometimes it might be possible to check the accuracy of information received, but on most occasions that would not be possible. Take, for instance, something we have, if we are householders, as I suppose all noble Lords present today are, tilled up every year ourselves—the electoral register. The data user in that case will be the keeper of the register. He will act on our information and we shall be committing, for that purpose, a criminal offence if we deliberately deceive him. But he does not check the accuracy of what we tell him at all, and it would be quite unrealistic to expect the returning officer, let alone someone making use of the electoral register, to check the details submitted by each householder so that they were accurate in every respect.
In this, as in life in general, we must take a good deal on trust, and if we are—as my noble friend Lord Mottistone has consistently reminded us since Second Reading—to take the burden which is being placed on data users by the Bill as representing the limits on one side, and the rights of the data subject as the purpose of the Bill on the other, then that is why we have deliberately drawn the line at this point. The Bill abstains from placing an impossible responsibility on each data user, but it provides—and here is the protection for the data subject—that where the data accurately records information received or obtained by the data user from a third party, it should not be regarded as inaccurate for the purposes of the clause (notwithstanding that it may have been supplied in an inaccurate form) provided that the data are recorded as having been received in that particular way and as depending on information from a third party.
To qualify for the saving in subsection (3), data must accurately record the information which the user has obtained or received, but it must indicate that the data consists of such information. The real risk to data subjects from inaccurate data is where inaccurate statements, perhaps from some third party not in a position adequately to judge the case in hand, are placed on the computer and are thereafter treated as though they were Holy Writ. That is when they can lead to mischief.
The Bill therefore provides that such statements must be qualified in order to secure immunity by a note recording that the information obtained from a third party has passed into the possession of the data user from that source, and we think that the risk of harm will thereby be substantially minimised. I fully acknowledge that we are balancing one factor against another. I only submit to the Committee that we have
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the balance about right and that the alternative would be to impose an impossible burden on the data user.
Lord Avebury: May I ask the noble and learned Lord to explain what happens in a case of information collected by a subsidiary of a company and then fed into a computer used by the parent? If that counts as information coming from a third party, it would be an easy way for somebody to give himself an absolute safeguard against the provisions of Clause 22, because he could merely record that the information came to him from a subsidiary, so exempting himself from any claim for damages which an individual might otherwise be able to formulate.
The Lord Chancellor: I should like to consider that question at greater length, because instant law is almost always bad law, but I should have thought that there was a point to be made there. However, beyond any question of doubt, the subsidiary company would be liable for any defamatory material that the computer contained.
Lord Avebury: Does that mean that if the information had been collected in manual form and it did not go into the computer until it got to the parent company, there would be no right of action?
The Lord Chancellor: That I do not agree with. There would be a publication if it was published to the holding company in any form. But if the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, wants a longer and possibly more considered reply, perhaps he would forgive me for the moment. However, the last point I feel no doubt about.
Lord Perry of Walton: I should like to ask a connected question. It seems to me that the wording of the clause does not state specifically that the nature of the third party shall be disclosed. If it states simply that the data have been received from a third party, there will be no ability to go back to the original data supplier.
The Lord Chancellor: The point is that in Clause 22 we are dealing only with compensation against the data user. We are not dealing with other questions, such as damages for libel, and there are of course remedies for that. All that one can tell here is that, as regards the claim for compensation referred to in Clause 22(1), the data user has a defence if he uses in good faith material from a third party which turns out to be inaccurate. If the noble Lord thinks that there should be some further qualification to subsection (3), I should certainly be prepared to ask my advisers whether it is necessary to identify the source more particularly than is provided for in the subsection, and either I shall let the noble Lord know, or he can return to the matter on Report.
Lord Perry of Walton: I thank the noble and learned Lord very much.
Lord Wigoder: I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for his careful answer to this matter. I had been reflecting on the question of the electoral register a little earlier this afternoon. I am not sure that

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I can envisage circumstances in which one voter will suffer damage as the result of inaccurate information put upon the electoral register by another voter, but I suppose that it is conceivable that there are circumstances in which that might happen. I accept that the effect of the amendment might be to add a substantial burden for data users, and on reflection I would agree that in the Bill there are already enough burdens placed upon them, and it might not be desirable to seek to increase them in this way. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
4.53 p.m.
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone moved Amendment No. 126:
Page 19, line 11, leave out ("indicating") and insert ("disclosed only with an indication")
The noble Lord said: This is a somewhat technical amendment. It is not the normal practice to record on computer files the origin of the data, and the implication of Clause 22(3), in the area to which the amendment relates, is that that is so. For the purposes of the subsection it should therefore be sufficient protection for the data subject that the data will always have an accompanying indication that they consist of reported data when disclosed either to data subjects or to any other appropriate person. I beg to move.
The Lord Chancellor: I think that the fatal flaw in the amendment is that it would not include use by the dater user's own staff. Whereas under the Bill as drafted the inaccuracy leading to damage would render the user liable to pay compensation if the information was used by his own staff, under the proposed amendment the liability would arise only when it was disclosed, and that, I assume, means disclosed to a third party. That would, I think, enable the staff of the data user to use the information as if it were substantiated fact and cause all the damage that the data user might thereby cause without being liable to pay the data subject compensation. I think that this is a fatal flaw in the amendment.
Lord Mottistone: I had great difficulty in understanding the amendment itself, and I shall have to read with great care my noble and learned friend's reply to see whether there is anything more that can be pushed in this direction. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Mishcon Lord Mishcon had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 127:
Page 19, line 13, at end insert ("Provided that the data user has complied in all other respects with the data protection principles")
The noble Lord said: I find that there is a mistake in that the amendment should refer to line 7, not line 13. In the circumstances, and since I am to use the same argument on Amendment 130, relating to the next clause, I propose not to move Amendment No. 127, and reserve the argument (which is the same argument) for the later amendment.
[Amendment No. 127 not moved.]
On Question, Whether Clause 22 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Avebury: I should like to ask one brief question about Clause 22 before we leave it. Does the right which is conferred on a data subject under the clause depend on the access provisions of Clause 28? In other words, does the computer have to be other than a computer which is exempt from the subject access provisions there defined? I am thinking in particular of the Home Office computers which, as the noble and learned Lord may recall, have already figured in our discussions on one or two occasions during the Committee stage.
I should like to refer to an answer that I received yesterday from the noble Lord, Lord Elton. It alarmed me very considerably because it showed that in the Immigration Service Intelligence Unit computer it is intended to hold no fewer than 300,000 names. The names are not to be simply those of persons refused entry clearance, or in certain other cases, deported from the United Kingdom, but also the names of persons considered to be involved in abuse or attempted abuse of the immigration laws. Obviously those form by far the largest category within the 300,000 persons whose names are to be held in the computer, and it is a matter of opinion whether or not those persons have been engaged in abuse. But if they have not, and yet their names are recorded, clearly they may suffer very serious damage indeed. For instance, they might be members of the Civil Service and come up for promotion. If there was automatic access to the computer to see whether a particular name was held on it, it might be discovered that Mr. Shah, who works for the DHSS, is a person who is alleged to have been involved in abuse or attempted abuse of the immigration laws. I suppose that therefore he would become ineligible for promotion and would thus suffer very serious damage.
It may well be that he never discovers that his name is so recorded, but there are occasions when incorrect facts are held by the Home Office—at the moment in manual form, and no doubt in future they will be in machine readable form—in such a manner as to cause very serious damage indeed to the subject. I should like to mention just one example which springs to mind. It is the case of a Nigerian lady who is alleged to have been engaged in abuse or attempted abuse of the immigration laws. The reason given by the Minister for the allegation was that she claimed to have had a child at a time when it would have been impossible for her to have conceived it by her husband because she was not in Nigeria at the material time and her husband had not visited England at the material time. But in the end, on closer scrutiny of the lady's passport, the Minister had to agree that she had indeed visited Nigeria nine months before the birth of the child. The Minister was good enough to apologise most handsomely for the error that had been made and for the slur that had been cast on the lady's honesty. Fortunately, that was something that could be corrected because the facts came out in the course of correspondence with the Minister—as they may in future, in spite of the fact that the same information will be held on a computer instead of in manual form. Would it be possible in the circumstances that I have

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outlined, supposing that this lady had suffered damage—and there is no doubt in my mind that she had—for her to bring an action against the Home Office for that purpose? I think it extremely important that, if 300,000 names are to be recorded in this computer, they will not be used to the detriment of many innocent people.
The Lord Chancellor: This is a very highly technical question, but I will give the best answer I can on the draftsmanship of the Bill. The noble Lord asked me a question about Clause 28. I think that we shall probably be holding quite a long discussion on Clause 28 when we come to it. Whatever Clause 28 does, it provides only that the personal data therein prescribed in subsection 1 are exempt from subject access provisions. That is not Clause 22. Personal data are exempt from the non-disclosure provisions in two cases which are not the same as the cases prescribed in subsection (1) but they are exempt from the nondisclosure provisions. However, they, again, do not affect the right to compensation. Personal data are exempt from the provisions mentioned in subsection (4) of Clause 28 in any case in which the application of those provisions to the data would be likely to prejudice any of the matters mentioned in subsection (1). Subsection (4) provides that the provisions referred to in subsection (3) are the provisions in Part II of the Bill conferring powers on the registrar to the extent to which they are exercisable by reference to the first data-protection principle.
My reading of that clause, not having had previous notice of the question, is that there is nothing in Clause 28 which abrogates the right to compensation in Clause 22. I have said that quite categorically, not being 100 per cent. sure that I am right. If I turn out to be wrong, or am advised that I am wrong, I shall retract my words and eat humble pie.
Clause 22 agreed to.
Clause 23 [Compensation for loss or unauthorised disclosure]:
[Amendments Nos. 128 and 129 not moved.]
5.4 p.m.
Lord Mishcon Lord Mishcon moved Amendment No. 130:
Page 19, line 32, at end insert ("and that he had in all other respects complied with the data protection principles").
The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 127 was precisely the same amendment as this and was due to relate to Clause 22. This amendment relates to Clause 23 and I should be grateful if those who are kind enough to answer me will deem the argument to be the same. It is this. If there is any defence at all and the data user is to escape liability because of that defence, he must surely be bound to show equally that he has complied with all the data protection principles. That is the reason for this proviso. I beg to move.
The Lord Chancellor: I think I might best answer this argument by an example. Supposing all the data in a computer were destroyed, and therefore lost, by a devastating fire or a devastating flood, without any fault whatever on the part of the data user, it would surely turn proceedings for what is, under Clause 23, a breach of the eighth principle in the First Schedule
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(that is to say, appropriate security measures should be taken) into an inquisition as to whether the data destroyed had been fairly obtained or whether they had ever been inadequate or excessive, whether there was any inaccuracy in them or whether they had been kept longer than was necessary. In other words, a number of totally irrelevant considerations for the protection of the data subject in accordance with Principle 8 would have been introduced although the data had been lost simply by an act of God.
It seems to me that to make the data user a guarantor of all the principles when you are providing protection to the data subject in respect of a breach of one of them, is clearly unjust and, for the reason that I have given, although I can understand the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, to see that all the principles are kept in every case, I do not think it would be a just result in the case which I have posited. The reason which I have given applies to all other possible cases, I think, where the damage is not due to the breach of a principle other than No. 8, the relevant principle. In a case of unauthorised disclosure, that gives rise to compensation for damage. That is quite intelligible; but it does not necessarily mean that that you then have to enter into a complete inquisition as to whether the other seven principles have been kept or not—because they are, for that purpose, irrelevant. I am afraid that I am not putting this very well but the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, is so intelligent that I am sure he has got the point.
Lord Molloy: I wonder if the noble Lord, the Lord Chancellor can help me. Normally, one can follow the submissions of the noble and learned Lord in general debate and understand precisely what the noble and learned Lord has to say, one does not have to agree with the noble and learned Lord but at least one understands what he is saying. But there are exceptions to every rule. I listened to his submission just now. I can follow it as far as a lay person can, but when he says, "Let us suppose that all the data has gone by fire or flood"—or for some other reason has vanished, that, in my judgment would be a good thing, for it would have gone for good and for ever.
But there is another possibility. What happens when somebody is listed and entered in that data and that one person departs this earthly realm and then later somebody is hauled before the courts for some reason or other and part of the case against him submitted by the Crown would be a connection with someone in that data which the Home Office would reveal? The deceased, of course, would be in no position to say whether what was kept in the data was true or untrue. This is the converse argument to that submitted by the noble and learned Lord. I do not know whether it is particularly relevant. I should be grateful to have a more authoritative view of that point.
The Lord Chancellor: I will do my best. I do not think it is because it is difficult to understand; it must be because I put it badly that the point is not immediately apparent to the noble Lord. Clause 22, which was the last clause we discussed, gives compensation for inaccuracy. We are not concerned with that in the present amendment. Clause 24 gives a right to rectification and erasure. Again, we are not concerned

659
with that. We are concerned with Clause 23, which gives a right to compensation for loss or unauthorised disclosure. Of course, it is only the person who has suffered damage who is entitled to the compensation. That in principle gives rise to a right of damages.
Perhaps I ought to say by way of introduction that that is an absolute liability subject to the qualification contained in subsection (3). That is to say, it is not for the complainant to prove negligence or to prove wrong-doing, but the respondent to the complaint is entitled to set up a defence which is set out in subsection (3):
"In proceedings brought against any person by virtue of this section"—
that is the one that we are talking about—
"it shall be a defence to prove that he had taken such care as in all the circumstances was reasonably required to prevent the loss, destruction or disclosure in question."
The burden of proof is on the defendant.
The position is this, as I understand it. If somebody suffers damage by reason of unauthorised disclosure, loss or destruction of the data, he will get compensation unless his opponent, the data user, can prove that he was not negligent. I am using broad terms now. If he can prove that he was not negligent then he gets away with his defence. I think I have that more or less right.
The point at issue in this amendment—I think that to some extent I have answered the point that the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, raised—is that there are eight principles. We have called them the "eight commandments" after the Decalogue. They are contained in the first schedule to the Bill and they are very generally expressed. That is to say, they are in some ways much more like the Decalogue than like an act of Parliament. They say that personal data shall be obtained and processed fairly and lawfully. That is the first. Then one goes down through the eight of them.
The point at issue in this amendment is that the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, wants it to be said that if for any reason you would have a right to compensation for loss or destruction or unauthorised disclosure under Clause 23, in addition to proving no negligence, you have to prove that you have kept all the "eight commandments" and not simply the relevant one. I was trying to explain to the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, that I thought that went too far because it may be that the other seven were totally irrelevant and therefore ought not to be counted against the respondent in a claim for compensation under Clause 23. I hope that I have put it better this time.
Baroness Platt of Writtle: May I ask for clarification from my noble and learned friend? He says that if a data user proves that there is no negligence then that is his defence. But supposing an external person cracks the computer and gets in from outside? Can the data subject prove an offence against an illegal entry, as it were, to the data information?
The Lord Chancellor: That will depend upon the question of fact. The question of fact is appropriately set out in the "eighth commandment" of Schedule 1. In order to establish his defence in such circumstances, he would have to show that he had taken appropriate
660
security measures. If, without any fault of his own, he had been broken into, there would be no liability. But unless he could prove that there was no fault of his own, if he left the door unlocked or the window unlatched or had done any of the things the police tell us not to do, or left undone any of the things that they tell us to do, then he would not make out his defence. That is the general answer to my noble friend.
Baroness Platt of Writtle: I am sorry, but may I go one stage further? Would the data subject then be able to prove offence against the person who had broken into the computer?
The Lord Chancellor: Clearly if he suffered damage I would think en principe yes, but not under this Bill.
Lord Mishcon: The noble and learned Lord was kind enough to call me intelligent. Anybody who does that causes me to give in right away. Seriously, I only want to say this. The arguments that the noble and learned Lord advanced as well as the examples that he gave are of such weight that I obviously would want to consider this amendment. At this stage I should like to ask the Committee's leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
5.15 p.m.
On Question, Whether Clause 23 shall be agreed to?
Lord Wigoder: One small query on Clause 23(1)(b):
"the destruction of any such data without the authority of the data user".
One's first instinct on reading the Bill was to think that "data user" was a mistake for "data subject". I accept in the context of the clause as a whole it clearly is not and it ought to be "data user". May I ask the noble and learned Lord whether he can confirm, as a result of that, that the data user is free to destroy personal data without first of all obtaining the authority of the data subject under the Bill?
The Lord Chancellor: I am being submitted to cross-examination but I think that I have the answer, which again is in the "eighth commandment":
"Appropriate security measures shall be taken against unauthorised access to, or alteration, disclosure or destruction of, personal data and against accidental loss or destruction of personal data".
Lord Wigoder: That is unauthorised. If it is authorised by the data user, then the data subject has no complaint. Is that right?
The Lord Chancellor: I think he has. I will consider the matter again. I take it that in the "eighth commandment" the unauthorised access covers this position: if there is not a lawful authority to destroy, security measures must be taken and therefore it would follow that if the data subject said to the data user, "You may not destroy this valuable material about me" I suppose he could not do it. Perhaps I ought to think about that a little longer.
Lord Wigoder: May I therefore make the problem clear and leave it to the noble and learned Lord to reflect upon it? I refer to organisations that contain records of millions of people with hundreds of millions of items of information amounting to personal data, who frequently want to bring their records up to date and to dispose in one way or another of data which are for their purposes entirely obsolete. I am only anxious to make clear, if that is so, that such an organisation is not going to need to secure the authority of each and every data subject at each and every time before so disposing of it.
The Lord Chancellor: I apologise for what may have seemed denseness. The noble Lord is perfectly right in what he has just said.
Clause 23 agreed to.
Clause 24 [Rectification and erasure]:
Lord Wigoder Lord Wigoder moved Amendment No. 131:
Page 19, line 33, leave out ("a court") and insert ("the registrar").
The noble Lord said: With this amendment may I take Amendments Nos. 134, 135 and 136? I have a feeling that it may be that this matter was perhaps influenced by Amendment No. 75, which was dealt with earlier. I have not the record of that with me at the moment. The purpose of these amendments is simply to avoid the need for the data subject to obtain a court order for correction or erasure of the data as the registrar can use an enforcement order for that purpose. That would seem to be a cheaper and quicker method of procedure, and it would also serve to limit the functions of the courts in this Bill to claims for compensation, which I think is desirable. I beg to move.
The Lord Chancellor: For some reason—and I must apologise for it—I have this amendment grouped with No. 119. I thought it was the same point—that the Bill as drafted allows alternative lines of approach by the then subject either to the registrar or to the court, in the circumstances of Part III. The amendment, which I had originally thought of as grouped with No. 119, would deprive him of one of them and therefore would not be to his advantage. But if I have misunderstood the point, owing to the way in which my papers are arranged, I will come back to it.
Lord Wigoder: As the amendment is similar and as the answer appears to be similar, I think the course I should take ought to be similar. I therefore beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 132 to 136 not moved.]
Clause 24 agreed to.
Clause 25 [Jurisdiction]:
[Amendment No. 137 not moved.]
Lord Wigoder Lord Wigoder moved Amendment No. 138:
Page 20, line 7, at end insert—
("(2) Any data subject may request the assistance of the Registrar in bringing proceedings under sections 22 and 23 above.")
The noble Lord said: There may be something to be said for this very brief amendment, which simply gives the data subject the power to apply for the assistance of the registrar in bringing proceedings under Sections 22 and 23. I therefore beg leave to move.
The Lord Chancellor: The difficulty is, to my mind, that there are things in respect of which the data subject is undoubtedly entitled to go to the registrar in order to complete the material which he requires to be able to bring his proceedings under this part of the Bill. He can, of course, go to the registrar, as I explained in answer to the last amendment, to enforce the right of access and the various rights given, which the registrar can do either by an enforcement notice or ultimately by deregistration. In that sense he can get assistance.
What other assistance is required in order to complete his application to the court is not altogether clear. His application to the court presumably will be be for damages for inaccuracy. He will have been able to go to the registrar to get the data. He will have been able to go to the registrar for an enforcement notice to erase inaccuracies and he will then be able to go to the court for compensation. He will have had the assistance of the registrar in the relevant ways in which I should have thought assistance was required. For the purpose of an application to the court, he is also entitled to visit the registrar's office and get papers and advice of a general kind; but I think he would have to take his proceedings in court in the ordinary way, either with legal aid or without it if he is not entitled to it. Until the amendment defines what is meant by "assistance", I think I would rather be on the side of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, in a previous debate that we had, because the registrar would have to be told what he had to do before he had to do it.
Lord Wigoder: I am grateful for that explanation and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave withdrawn.
Clause 25 agreed to.
[Amendment No. 139 not moved.]
Clause 26 [Preliminary]:
Lord Elton Lord Elton moved Amendment No. 140:
Page 20, line 19, after ("to") insert ("paragraph (a) of").
The noble Lord said: I spoke to this amendment in connection with Amendment No. 75. I therefore beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
[Amendment No. 141 not moved.]
5.27 p.m.
Lord Mishcon Lord Mishcon moved Amendment No. 141A:
Page 20, line 30, at end insert—
("(5) Wherever this Part of this Act exempts any personal data from the subject access provisions or the non-disclosure provisions the Secretary of State shall by order prescribe additional safeguards in relation to those data to take the place (so far as may be) of the safeguards lost or diminished through the exemption.").
The noble Lord said: I wonder whether I might explain this amendment briefly but ask your Lordships to regard it as a very important amendment, at least to those who are responsible for proposing it. The objects of this Bill, obviously, are to safeguard in every proper way personal data. But you are bound to have exceptions to those provisions and one admits that there are certain exceptions which ought to take place. However, once you create an exception—and we are dealing now with the sections that create those exceptions—the safeguards for the data user are obviously going to be lost or diminished.
What we have said in this amendment is that you are quite justified in doing it but you have to replace the safeguards. I wonder whether I might give a quick example of that and then sit down. The quick example would be this. We cannot expect subjects to be given access to police intelligence systems. That would defeat the very purpose of those systems. But then it becomes even more important that what one does is to ensure that hearsay or unverified information in such systems cannot harm perfectly innocent people. Therefore, we ought to have regulations in the example that I have given (and there are many similar examples which other Members of the Committee could give much more readily than I) which would provide—and I give this again as a further supposition—how long such information should be kept if it is not confirmed by other data, what rank of police officer should have access to it, to whom it could be disclosed and so on. So if I might put it in one sentence: where we take away a safeguard, it ought to be mandatory that the Secretary of State looks at the position and strengthens the protection that ought to be given to the subject by reason of the fact that he has created an exception. In that spirit, I beg to move.
Lord Elton: I respond to this amendment looking over my shoulder at Amendment No. 141. I had half thought that No. 141 was the one that we would struggle with at great length, and that the noble Lord would then substitute "the Secretary of State" for "the registrar" in a swift and scarcely perceptible movement and I would fall exhausted into his arms. That, it seems, will not be the outcome.
This is another amendment, one of so many which the noble Lord has moved, with which one has substantial sympathy but which on closer examination does not appear to be necessary nor to achieve its desired object without also carrying substantial disadvantages. The noble Lord's basis was that, in the circumstances in which the Bill reduces the general safeguards available for data subjects, the Secretary of State ought to be required to put some compensating protection in their place; and that seems a most worthy aim. But I am not sure that it is necessary to spell this out on the face of the Bill.
First, data affected by the provisions to which this amendment relates will not be left without any form of protection at all, as I think is sometimes implied by the critics of this area of the Bill. Such data will still remain subject to the oversight of the registrar, and there will be nothing whatever to prevent him from looking with particular care at the data to which these exemptions relate, to ensure that such of the principles as still
664
apply in the circumstances of the case are being complied with.
It would be wrong for me to anticipate how the registrar will choose to exercise his discretion. He will be dealing face to face with problems at which I can only guess. But I can see no reason at all why he should not decide that where, for example, the element of "self-regulation" which subject access provides is absent, it might be appropriate for him to look with particular care at other aspects of the activities in question.
To go further, however, and to require the Secretary of State to prescribe additional safeguards in such areas would carry a number of disadvantages. It would mean, for one thing, that he was obliged to prescribe such safeguards—which must, in the nature of things, take the form of formal procedures to be followed—even in cases in which there appeared to him to be no such procedures which could materially affect the situation in question. He could impose them, too, where it was more appropriate to rely upon the normal exercise of the registrar's powers. Going down this road might actually inhibit the registrar from exercising the sort of particular care in regard to such data that I referred to earlier. And I would remind your Lordships that the requirement would apply even to the most innocuous of data.
Perhaps at this point I ought to remind your Lordships that the Secretary of State already has a power in Clause 2(3) to provide enhanced protection in the sensitive areas to which I think he is addressing himself, and I do not think that a further provision here would add anything to the general protection which the Bill provides. I think that I will leave it at that at this point, and see whether the noble Lord wants to respond now.
Lord Mishcon: Indeed, I do. I hope that the brevity of my remarks did not mask the importance that we ascribe to this amendment. We here are the guardians of the people who may be affected by exceptions to this Bill. Anybody who is responsible takes the view that there must be exceptions, for the sake of the detection of crime and so on. That is admitted. But if you grant those exceptions you cannot just leave it to the discretion of the Secretary of State as to whether or not he will apply further safeguards by virtue of having added to the exemptions.
I keep on hearing, as your Lordships do, about what this poor registrar is supposed to do and be. If I may declare it to your Lordships, I am not available for the position, if the noble Lord the Minister is calling for any nominations or volunteers. It is impossible. This registrar is supposed to have the qualities of a High Court judge, he is supposed to be the protector of the subjects of the realm, he is the drafter of regulations, the person who can think in terms of guidance on codes of practice, and he is knowledgeable in engineering and computers. He is a remarkable person and I hope that one day he will join your Lordships' House—
The Lord Chancellor: He quite certainly will.
Lord Mishcon: I ought to say that I hope he will be in a fit state, at the end of his term of office, to join your

665
Lordships' House. But this is an important amendment and I do not think it is answered by what the noble Lord the Minister has said. I hope the Committee will feel it is important enough that it should have the opinion of the Committee attached to it, and I trust that it will be a favourable opinion.
Lord Elton: I wonder whether the noble Lord will now permit me to come back, because what he said was that I had not sufficiently covered the ground; and I did not deploy all my distaste for his amendment on the basis that he had not deployed all his enthusiasm for it. The fact is that the provision which the noble Lord proposes would be likely to entail the Secretary of State prescribing very detailed requirements in regard to every possible set of circumstances. In other words, it would take us back into the realm of codes of practice, which, as I have already said, we believe cannot sensibly be imposed from above. Indeed, the sort of codes of practice being suggested here are, if anything, even less attractive than those postulated in the noble Lord's earlier amendments. He must recognise this, since there is no requirement for them to be devised in consultation, for instance, with the users who will be affected. We have heard considerable criticism during the debate in Committee up to now of the functions which the Bill gives to the Secretary of State. In theory, the Secretary of State would be able to use his power to impose sweeping additional checks on data which enjoyed the exemption provisions, and Parliament's intentions in providing for exemptions would be nullified. If the noble Lord reads the Bill, he will find that Parliament has power to nullify the order which the Secretary of State would bring, but he is required to bring it by the amendment, regardless of that process. So even if he is quite confident that Parliament will withhold the order which he is required to lay, he still has to bring it before Parliament. Maybe that is going too much into the detail of the amendment and I am prepared to argue it later. But the fact is that this is giving to the Secretary of State, who, the noble Lord has often said, has too many powers under this Bill, a whole sweeping area of new responsibility, and in this I see a certain inconsistency.
Lord Mishcon: I will not detain the Committee, save to say that the reason for Amendment No. 141A, as against No. 141, is that we were told before by the noble Lord the Minister, and quite correctly, that you should not give the registrar power to make orders by way of safeguards or anything else because they would not be subject to the will of Parliament. Then, if you alter that to the Secretary of State in order to meet that argument, you are told that it is a wrong power to give to the Secretary of State, because you are giving him too much power or because Parliament cannot negate. I think that the quickest and most effective course, on what I think is a necessary safeguard for the subject in these exemption clauses, is to ask the Committee kindly to divide.
5.37 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said Amendment (No. 141A) shall be agreed to?
Their, Lordships divided: Contents, 87; Not-Contents, 105.

DIVISION NO. 1

CONTENTS

Ailesbury, M.

Kinloss, Ly.

Airedale, L.

Kirkhill, L.

Ardwick, L.

Lawrence, L.

Avebury, L.

Lee of Newton, L.

Aylestone, L.

Listowel, E.

Bacon, B.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, B.

Banks, L.

Lloyd of Kilgerran, L.

Barrington, V.

Lovell-Davis, L.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

McGregor of Durris, L.

Blease, L.

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Blyton, L.

Mackie of Benshie, L.

Boston of Faversham, L.

MacLeod of Fuinary, L.

Bowden, L.

McNair, L.

Briginshaw, L.

Mishcon, L.

Brockway, L.

Molloy, L.

Brooks of Tremorfa, L.

Mountevans, L.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Nicol, B.

Caradon, L.

Northfield, L.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Ogmore, L.

Collison, L.

Oram, L.

Cooper of Stockton Heath, L.

Peart, L.

Craigavon, V.

Perry of Walton, L.

David, B.

Phillips, B.

Davies of Penrhys, L.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L. [Teller.]

Diamond, L.

Elwyn-Jones, L.

Rochester, L.

Ewart-Biggs, B.

Serota, B.

Foot, L.

Shaughnessy, L.

Fulton, L.

Shinwell, L.

Gardiner, L.

Somers, L.

Gladwyn, L.

Stedman, B.

Gormley, L.

Stewart of Alvechurch, B.

Hall, V.

Stewart of Fulham, L.

Halsbury, E.

Strabolgi, L.

Hampton, L.

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

Hanworth, V.

Tordoff, L.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Wallace of Coslany, L. [Teller.]

Hatch of Lusby, L.

Walston, L.

Houghton of Sowerby, L.

Wells-Pestell, L.

Hunter of Newington, L.

White, B.

Jacques, L.

Wigoder, L.

Jeger, B.

Willis, L.

John-Mackie, L.

Winstanley, L.

Kaldor, L.

Wootton of Abinger, B.

NOT-CONTENTS

Airey of Abingdon, B.

Elliot of Harwood, B.

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Elphinstone, L.

Allerton, L.

Elton, L.

Atholl, D.

Enniskillen, E.

Auckland, L.

Faithfull, B.

Avon, E.

Ferrers, E.

Bancroft, L.

Ferrier, L.

Bellwin, L.

Fortescue, E.

Beloff, L.

Gainford, L.

Belstead, L.

Geoffrey-Lloyd, L.

Bledisloe, V.

Gibson-Watt, L.

Bolton, L.

Glanusk, L.

Boyd of Merton, V.

Glasgow, E.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Glenarthur, L.

Cathcart, E.

Greenway, L.

Cawley, L.

Gridley, L.

Clifford of Chudleigh, L.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

Cork and Orrery, E.

Craigmyle, L.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

Cranbrook, E.

Henley, L.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Hives, L.

De La Warr, E.

Holderness, L.

Denham, L. [Teller.]

Home of the Hirsel, L.

Digby, L.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Dilhorne, V.

Inglewood, L.

Donegall, M.

Ingrow, L.

Drumalbyn, L.

Killearn, L.

667

Kilmany, L.

Pender, L.

Kimberley, E.

Platt of Writtle, B.

Kintore, E.

Plummer of St. Marylebone, L.

Kitchener, E.

Rochdale, V.

Lane-Fox, B.

Romney, E.

Lauderdale, E.

St. Aldwyn, E.

Lindsey and Abingdon, E.

Salisbury, M.

Long, V.

Sandford, L.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Sandys, L.

Lyell, L.

Selkirk, E.

McAlpine of Moffat, L.

Sharples, B.

Mackintosh of Halifax, V.

Skelmersdale, L.

Mancroft, L.

Spens, L.

Margadale, L.

Swinfen, L.

Marley, L.

Swinton, E. [Teller.]

Marshall of Leeds, L.

Taylor of Hadfield, L.

Merrivale, L.

Teviot, L.

Mersey, V.

Thomas of Swynnerton, L.

Mills, V.

Trefgarne, L.

Molson, L.

Trenchard, V.

Newall, L.

Tryon, L.

Norfolk, D.

Ullswater, V.

Northchurch, B.

Vaux of Harrowden, L.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Vivian, L.

Onslow, E.

Westbury, L.

Orkney, E.

Young, B.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
Clause 26 agreed to.
Clause 27 [National Security]:
5.46 p.m.
Lord Elwyn-Jones Lord Elwyn-Jones moved Amendment No. 142:
Page 20, line 33, leave out ("a Minister of the Crown") and insert ("the Secretary of State")
The noble and learned Lord said: We now come to a very important series of amendments to this Bill to provisions which have been almost universally condemned by every voluntary and public body that is interested in this field. Amendment No. 142, as your Lordships will see, relates to the provisions of Clause 27 dealing with national security. Subsection (1) provides:
"Personal data held by a government department are exempt from the provisions of Parts II and III of this Act if a Minister of the Crown certifies that the exemption is required for the purpose of safeguarding national security".
The bodies which perhaps have the greatest amount of personal data relevant for the purposes of the Bill are Government and Government departments. The amendment that I now move is that the responsibility in the field for certification that exemption is required for the purpose of safeguarding national security should be that of the Home Secretary or perhaps the Secretary of State for Defence. In the case of telephone tapping the necessary certificates do require that personal attention.
This certification is of equal importance from the point of view of the subject. In our submission, there is no reason why this important power of certification should be conferred on all Ministers, let alone—and this is the rub—why it should be granted to officials signing on their behalf, because that is the effect of the clause. It may be convenient for us to discuss together Amendments Nos. 142, 143, 144, 145 and 146 in relation to these provisions of Clause 27. What I have just stated is relevant to Amendment No. 142
We then come to subsection (2), the purpose of which is not very clear. It says:
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"Personal data held otherwise than by a government department are exempt from those provisions if held for the purpose of safeguarding national security".
Surely information for the purpose of safeguarding national security should be held only by the public service, not by the private sector. So what is intended by the subsection is not clear. If it is designed to cover police forces, and possibly their special branches, the provision should say so in terms. That may be its purpose—we do not know—but, as drawn,it is in our submission far too wide. In order, therefore, to discover the purpose of the subsection the amendment proposes to leave it out.
Amendment No. 144 is to leave Out subsection (3). If subsection (3) were to remain in the Bill, its effect would, we submit, be quite revolutionary. It would enable the security services to obtain computerised data from almost everybody in the country—banks, insurance companies, medical records, local authority records and others—without any restraint and without public knowledge that this kind of procedure is possible. If the keepers of those records are willing in proper cases to give such information to the security services, there is no reason in the world why they should not say so in their entries on the data protection register. We attach very great importance, therefore, to the omission of that subsection.
Amendment No. 145 again leaves out words with which I have already dealt—"or on behalf of a Minister of the Crown"—and substitutes the words "the Secretary of State". One sees in subsection (4) that this certificate is to be signed by or on behalf of a Minister of the Crown. I know not of what standing in the Home Office he is to be, or at what level in that vast organisation he is to hold office. In our view, this is intolerable and the amendment is abundantly justified, therefore, in the interests of the liberty of the subject.
Amendment No. 146 is to leave out of line 7 on page 21 the words "or disclosed".
"For the purposes of subsections (2) and (3) above, a certificate signed by or on behalf of a Minister of the Crown and certifying that personal data are or have been held …".
There are then added the words "or disclosed", for reasons which again are not clear to us. In this amendment we are moving that those words should be left out.
This is the crux of the opposition to the Bill, coupled with what will follow concerning the most condemned of all the clauses of the Bill. We reach a situation here where the purported purpose of the Bill—to be the protector of the data subject—disappears through the window. This is something which we must avoid. I beg to move.
Lord Mottistone: It might be for the convenience of the Committee if I not only commented on what the noble and learned Lord has just said, but invited the Committee to consider at the same time my Amendment No. 144A. Although I have much sympathy with the underlying reason behind the noble and learned Lord's approach to the problem, I do not find myself in agreement with the bulk of his amendments. My own solution to the problem is Amendment No. 160, which takes a somewhat different line.

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I am sure the noble and learned Lord is aware that in the case of national security there must be provisions which are not dissimilar from those contained in Clause 27. Whether or not the safeguards are sufficient, the safeguard of national security is of prime importance. However, I agree with the noble and learned Lord so far as the small point covered by my Amendment No. 144A is concerned. It is somewhat distasteful that an unspecified official who may or may not be—we are not told—of particularly high rank in the Civil Service can sign certificates on behalf of a Minister of the Crown. If for the purposes of subsections (2) and (3) a certificate is to be provided, the Minister ought to sign it himself. That is the one point in the noble and learned Lord's argument with which I entirely agree. Whatever the Government may think about the other points—I have given my own views—I hope that they will accept, at least for serious consideration, the principle which underlies Amendment No. 144A.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The objection which I and a number of others have to this clause, and why I rise to support my noble and learned friend's amendment, is because of the definition of the words "national security". If they meant what all Members of this House have by oath or affirmation solemnly sworn to adhere to and support, there would be no problem. The difficulty arises from the fact that over the years national security has increasingly come to mean internal surveillance. For example, it means surveillance of political and trade union activists. It means a great deal more than the words in the Bill. This gives rise to very severe problems about the liberty of the subject in this Kingdom, which are put right only to some extent by my noble and learned friend's amendments. I believe that the issue goes even further.
Secondly, I take issue with this clause because of the inclusion of an exemption from the obligation to register. In genuine cases of national security it may be necessary for the data subject not to have access to the contents of a data file, but the case for registration is even stronger when there is a file which concerns national security. Surely it is the right of all citizens to know that a file is being kept for national security purposes. Indeed, it is in the interests of those keeping such files that people as a whole should know they exist.
Lord Avebury: Nobody would disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, that the requirements of national security are paramount. In this Bill, as in the rest of our legislation, we have to take good care that what we do upholds the powers of the Government to ensure that national security is properly taken care of. At the same time we should be jealous of arguments which are deployed in favour of secrecy and in favour of an extension of the powers of Government under the guise of national security, when in fact the records to which they refer may embrace a far larger category of subjects. And we can see from the files which are kept by Government on other matters, apart from national security, that they may extend into areas which are connected with the main purpose of the operation but are not directly germane to it. Therefore
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we may have persons whose names are recorded in these files which have to do with national security but who themselves are not a risk to national security or in any way involved in violations of national security.
Therefore I agree with the noble Lord who has just spoken that we need to know what these files are. It is quite wrong for the exemption to extend so far as the registration provisions of Clause 9, which would at least enable the public to know what these files were, even though we accept that in some cases there should not be access to them.
Another feature of this clause which needs to be looked at carefully falls in subsection (1) where it states that there shall be exemption if
"… a Minister of the Crown certifies that the exemption is required for the purpose of safeguarding national security."
This is in the case of personal data held by a Government department, but no such requirement is found in subsections (2) or (3). There, exemption in respect of data held otherwise than by a Government department, and in respect of data held otherwise than for the purpose of safeguarding national security which are disclosed for that purpose, can operate in the absence of a ministerial certificate certifying the exempt status of such data, although it is provided in subsection (4) that,
"… a certificate signed by or on behalf of a Minister of the Crown and certifying that personal data are or have been held or disclosed for the purpose of safeguarding national security shall be conclusive evidence of that fact."
This does not mean that subsection (4) makes it obligatory for such a file to be covered by a ministerial certificate, and I think that it should be, just as the files which are covered by subsection (1) should be covered by a ministerial certificate, and that the clause should say so.
Subsection (3) relates to the exemption from non-disclosure provisions, and I question why it is put into this clause rather than into Clause 28(3), where all the other non-disclosure provisions are found. It would seem more appropriate and easier for people to follow if all the non-disclosure provisions were held in the same clause so that they can be evaluated together.
Lord Somers: This is purely incidental, but I cannot find anywhere in this Bill where it is defined who the Secretary of State is. We all assume that it is the Home Secretary, but as I have not discovered where this is defined in the Bill, perhaps the noble Lord will be kind enough to tell me.
Lord Gibson-Watt: I support the amendment of my noble friend Lord Mottistone, and I very much hope that my noble friend the Minister can meet this amendment. As I read the Bill, it is the case that civil servants in the office of the Secretary of State can make these decisions without the Minister. If that is so, I cannot go along with it very easily and I support this particular amendment.
Baroness Macleod of Borve: I too should like to support this amendment because it is, perhaps, more important than some of us in this Chamber may realise. It might have very wide repercussions.
Lord Elton: When I first rose to disappoint your Lordships by appearing instead of my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, whom noble Lords expected, and neglected to endorse his opinion that the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, would be an ideal candidate, in view of the qualifications required, for registrar, the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, disarmed me by cleverly associating Amendments Nos. 141 and 141A together when I had expected them to be separate. I left all my rhetoric behind in Amendment No. 141 and had to stumble through my notes on Amendment No. 141A.
Pleased with the obvious success of that manoeuvre, the noble Lord has moved smartly onto the opposite tack and his noble and learned friend has put together so many amendments that I am afraid your Lordships will find my reply in this case conversely unsatisfactory; not thin and short but thick and long. But I will do my best.
I will start by saying that Clause 27(1) is, I quite agree, a very important provision. It enables personal data held by a Government department to be exempt from the provisions of Parts II and III of the Bill if a Minister is satisfied that an exemption is required for the purpose of safeguarding national security. The Government recognise the heavy responsibility which this provision will place on those who must determine whether the risk to national security from not applying an exemption justifies the removal of the data from the Bill. It is clear that the only people in a position to weigh the various considerations are senior Government Ministers. Moving this amendment, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, has implicitly accepted this approach but, as we have heard, he and others want to ensure that the responsibility for certification of exempt data is exercised only at the highest level, by Secretaries of State only rather than by any Minister of the Crown.
To the noble Lord, Lord Somers, I will say that it is quite customary to leave the actual identity of the Secretary of State unfixed in legislation; that is a convention. It is usually implicit in the Bill, and in this Bill it will normally be the Home Secretary, although in certain areas—where one is talking about exemption, for instance, for data held in the Ministry of Defence—it would be expected to be the Secretary of State for Defence, and that is to be read from the Bill.
I understand the desire to see that this authority is at the highest level and at the highest level of answerability. As I have said, the act of certification is a heavy responsibility and that is where it should be, but the adoption of this amendment will present very real difficulties. Personal data which may need to be exempt might be held in Government departments which are not controlled by Secretaries of State. Thereby is the relevance of the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Somers.
Your Lordships will understand if I do not go into too much detail, but let me say that certain data are held by departments such as the Treasury, which is not under a Secretary of State; by the Attorney General, who is not a Secretary of State; and under the Prime Minister, who is not a Secretary of State. In all these cases, on rare occasions data might need to be made exempt, and it would be absurd for a Secretary of State
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in another department to have to take responsibility for certifying exemptions in those circumstances. It is for that reason that the Bill places responsibility on Ministers of the Crown rather than on Secretaries of State.
I am aware, however, that by enabling all Ministers of the Crown to sign certificates, the Bill allows all members of the Government, including junior Ministers, to certify an exemption. I appreciate the concern which many will have about this and I hope to dispel that concern by giving a firm assurance that the intention is that certificates will be signed only at the highest available level. Where a department is headed by a Secretary of State, any certificate under this subsection will normally be signed by the Secretary of State. Another Minister will normally sign certificates only where there is no Secretary of State exercising departmental responsibility. In the light of that assurance, I hope that the noble and learned Lord will be prepared to let us move on to the next amendment in the group which he moved.
I believe I can be confident that all your Lordships acknowledge the importance of safeguarding national security and wish to be assured that all possible steps are taken to that end. Yet we also must recognise that the more that is said about what those steps are, the less effective they will be. It is clear that the responsibility here must rest with Ministers accountable, at the end of the day, to Parliament. I have already given an assurance that it will only be Ministers at the most senior level who will discharge this duty.
When we come to subsection (2), there the test for exemption is slightly different. Subsection (2) is of application only to data held by users who are not Government departments, but who may nevertheless hold certain data for the purpose of safeguarding national security. That aspect caused the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, some concern and it may concern other noble Lords. But it is not surprising that, for example, defence contractors, or in certain circumstances—as has been suggested—the police, may be included in that category. Where that is the purpose for which the data are held, the data are exempt, supported if necessary by ministerial certificate, if one should be needed, to put beyond doubt the purpose for which they are held.
We have taken this approach with non-governmental users because with them it is only the purpose for which the data are held that is the test that needs to be applied to obtain exemption. Under Clause 27(1) it is the certificate itself that creates the exemption. Under 27(2) it is the purpose of holding the data that exempts the data and the certificate is only needed as confirmation of that purpose. That is why we took the two-pronged approach which your Lordships find in the first two subsections of Clause 27.
In view of what your Lordships have said, I wonder whether we have been over-subtle in our approach. I should like to reflect on that. Are we labouring after a distinction without a sufficient difference? Certain things are clear. We must have an exemption for national security purposes. It must be an exemption from the requirements of the Bill as a whole and it must be backed by ministerial certificates. It would be

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wrong for me to suggest that there is room for movement in any of those criteria, but I do feel that I should offer to look again at the different approach we have taken to those two subsections in case what we have gained in precision we have lost in clarity.
I will now leap on, if I may, to Amendment No. 144. On the previous amendment I did undertake to think further on points that had been raised. I am afraid I cannot but harden my heart—my head and my brief are hard enough already—against this amendment. Subsection (3) of Clause 27 is a vital provision if national security is to be fully protected. I believe this is the subsection that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, expected to find elsewhere. It is, of course, this part of the Bill that deals with national security, and I think it proper that exemptions for national security should be put together with national security and not with exemptions. The authorities for safeguarding national security, like any law enforcement agency, rely on information. Some comes to them, some they must seek from others. On occasions, an increasing number of occasions nowadays, the information they seek is held on a computer. They may need to know about the international movement of a certain person, the name of someone who has hired a particular car. I need not give exhaustive examples, but those two are sufficient. The kind and range of cases are self-evident.
The holder of the information will be a registered user, but I should have thought that quite obviously he will not have registered those responsible for national security as prospective recipients of the data. Almost everybody would have to do that at some stage, otherwise. Faced with a request for information needed for the purpose of safeguarding national security, he would be in a dilemma. He might wish to disclose the information, but he would know that to do so would be an offence. That is where subsection (3) comes in. It allows data to be disclosed in those circumstances without the user running the risk of prosecution or a notice from the registrar. To complete the reassurance to the user, a certificate may be issued under subsection (4) providing conclusive evidence of the fact that the disclosure was for the purpose of safeguarding national security. I must stress that the provision places no obligation on the user. It merely frees him from constraints that the Bill would otherwise exercise.
Then we are clear on this. Those responsible for safeguarding national security must be free to go out and seek information without hindrance. Where a data user is willing to give information, it would be a dangerous misordering of priorities to prevent him from doing so where national security may be at stake. There is recognition in the European Convention of the need to derogate from the principles where national security is concerned. There is recognition of its supreme importance in all European laws. It is no good talking of secret transfers as if national security can be looked after in a blaze of publicity before an invited audience. Information must be freely and discreetly available in this area, and we are determined to ensure that that continues to be the case.
My noble friend Lord Mottistone directed our attention in this great group to Amendment No. 144A. We have already considered the need for the signature of a Minister of the Crown rather than a
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Secretary of State to appear on certificates under Clause 27(1). Of course precisely the same considerations apply to Clause 27(4), so I will not go over that ground again. Instead I will address the second point raised by the amendment, and the principal one to which my noble friend spoke. That is whether a certificate should be signed personally by a Minister or should be capable of being signed on his behalf. I recognise the perfectly understandable concern right round the Committee on this matter. May I concentrate here on two interlinked points? First is the reason why slightly different arrangements are envisaged for the signing of the two different kinds of certificate provided for in Clause 27; and, second is the reason why the certificates available to non-governmental users can be signed on behalf of a Minister unlike those in the first leg. I have explained the difference between the tests under the two subsections. Under subsection (1) it will be whether the exemption is required to safeguard national security. In those circumstances it can be expected that the necessity to avoid endangering national security, for example by a data user registering data, will be clearly visible in advance. There will be time for the certificate to be signed personally by a Minister, and, once the certificate exists, and indeed only then, so too does the exemption.
The situation in which the certificate may be signed in the case of users who are not Government departments may be rather different. The signed certificate will not be the precondition of the exemption. As long as data are held for the purpose of safeguarding national security the exemption applies. But it may be that the purpose for which the data are held is challenged, and a certificate is needed rapidly to put the purpose beyond doubt. It has, therefore, been thought right that, when a Minister cannot himself physically sign the certificate at the precise time that it is required, he can authorise its signing by somebody on his behalf. I stress that his personal authority has to be given even though his is not necessarily the hand that holds the pen.
There lies the reason for the difference between the provisions for signing the certificates, and also the reason for the words "on behalf or appearing in Clause 27(4) only. It is a question of practicalities. If certificates are needed rapidly, we must not set up a procedure which could slow down the necessary signature being obtained. But, having said that, I have said that I am willing to consider further the dual approach to Government departments and other users in subsections (1) and (2), and it seems to me natural and proper, particularly in view of the considerable anxiety your Lordships have expressed, to include within that consideration the distinction that exists in Clause 27 between the ways the different certificates are signed. I hope noble Lords will find that a satisfactory position for the time being.
This is turning into a long speech, but your Lordships put forward many separate points. I have two more amendments to which to address myself, Nos. 146 and 147. Amendment No. 146 is relatively short, I am glad to see. In our discussion of the previous amendments I have emphasised that the free flow of information is vital to the task of safeguarding national security. I will not, therefore, dilate on that,

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and it will not be necessary, therefore, to take too much time explaining why we cannot accept this amendment. Clause 27(3) exempts data from the non-disclosure provisions where the data are disclosed for the purpose of safeguarding national security. I have explained why that is necessary. Clause 27(4) allows a Ministerial certificate to confirm either that data are held for that purpose, thus supplementing subsection (2), or that they are disclosed for that purpose, thus supplementing subsection (3). The amendment is aimed at denying us that latter provision. Yet we must be able to reassure users willing to provide data for this purpose that they will be free from challenge, and that is what the certificate does. It can be issued to confirm that a disclosure did take place for the specified purpose and that therefore the exemption applies. The knowledge that such a certificate is available in the event of challenge will be a valuable reassurance to users with information needed for national security purposes that they can disclose it safely. We cannot, therefore, offer to do anything on that amendment.
Would it be to your Lordships' advantage if I held my horses on Amendment No. 147, because I do not doubt that your Lordships will get as confused as I will if I go on responding to all the major points put to me in the group?
Lord Strabolgi: The amendment—
Lord Elwyn-Jones: I did not speak to Amendment No. 147.
Lord Elton: I think that both the noble and learned Lord and the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, simultaneously, but not in unison, are saying that Amendment No. 147 is not in the group, and I am vastly relieved to hear it.
6.21 p.m.
Lord Strabolgi: Would it help the noble Lord to consider giving an interpretation of "a Minister of the Crown"? As far as I can see there is no interpretation of this office in the interpretation clause. The noble Lord talks about taking decisions at the highest level. This, of course, means very little. All Ministers, all Members of the Government, work at the highest level. There are about 100 of them. In this House, at Question Time, Questions may be answered by the Leader of the House, a member of the Cabinet, or may be answered by a Lord in Waiting, but we all refer to whoever is answering the Question as "the Minister". I think it would help if we could have some interpretation of "a Minister of the Crown". I am talking about putting this in the Bill, perhaps at a later stage.
The noble Lord talked about practicalities. Here, of course, I come to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, with which I have great sympathy. First of all, one has very little definition about who a Minister of the Crown is and then one has very little definition about whoever can sign this certificate on his behalf. It could be anybody. Does a Minister of the Ctrown include a civil servant, or an official of some kind? Who is to sign it on the Minister's behalf? Nothing is clear.
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I can remember—and I do not want to remind your Lordships of an unhappy period—that during the Cyprus crisis in the mid-1950s when there were a great many internment orders being signed and a great many Cypriots being interned for long periods without trial (it may have been necessary at the time, I do not know) in theory all the internment orders had to be signed by the Governor and the Commander-in-Chief. In fact, those of us who took an interest in these matters and visited the island discovered that many of these internment orders, for purposes of practicality as the noble Lord, Lord Elton, said, were being signed by officials, some of them quite junior, because the Governor himself was too busy.
That is the sort of thing that happens if one does not define who is responsible for these matters. Therefore, there is a further erosion of the liberty of the subject. For that reason, I hope that the Government will pay attention to the amendments of both my noble and learned friend and the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, because I believe that they are important from that point of view.
Lord Avebury: May I raise a further point which I hope can be dealt with by the noble Lord at the same time? It relates to the disclosure of personal data held otherwise than for the purpose of safeguarding national security. I take the example that he postulated of how this might operate in practice. In pursuing an alleged breach of national security it might be necessary to find out the name of a person who has hired a car—perhaps a terrorist who has hired a car for the purpose of committing an act of terrorism. The noble Lord explained that the person who holds this data would need to be sure that he was not liable to proceedings for a breach of the Act if, when someone asks him to disclose the name of this person for the purpose of national security, he accesses the computer and gives out that information.
I want to ask the noble Lord whether at that stage the data user would normally demand the production of a certificate such as is mentioned in subsection (4). I ask that because the noble Lord did not quite deal with the point I made in my earlier contribution that neither in subsections (2) nor (3) does it say that a certificate from a Minister of the Crown is required. Only later on in subsection (4) does it say that a certificate will provide conclusive evidence if it is produced. Therefore, if a police officer approaches the rent-a-car firm and asks for such information and the owner says, am not sure that I can do that because, after all, under the Data Protection Act I might be liable to proceedings for disclosure of information", what if the police officer then says to him that the information is required for the purpose of national security and that he could get a certificate from a Minister of the Crown but does the owner of the firm wish him to take so much trouble? Would the owner then feel obliged to make him do so?
I know that the noble Lord says that even with these provisions there is no obligation on the data user, only that he will feel free from prosecution, but I suggest to the Committee that, under the circumstances I have described, the owner might well feel that it was a national obligation on him to give this information to a police officer. Unless the certificate signed by a

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Minister of the Crown is proffered to him at that stage, he might be at a disadvantage, so why do we not say so on the face of the Bill instead of merely making it possible for a Minister of the Crown to certify that the information is required ex post facto?
Lord Swinfen: Has my noble friend any idea how many exemptions will be required in a typical year?
Lord Mishcon: I do not know whether the noble Lord the Minister wishes to answer that question and get it out of the way.
Lord Elton: I thought that I would first address myself to the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, who asked for a definition of "a Minister of the Crown". I am told that it is to be found in other statutes. Certainly our intention is that it should be of some significance. The noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, said that many Ministers were in this House and that the term meant little. I can agree that, if it means such as I, then it means very little. On the other hand, if it means such as the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, then it means a great deal.
That links with his next question which I think illustrates the dangers of lumping too many amendments together. I have already undertaken to consider the point that he raised as being important in response to my noble friend's amendment, so I do not think it is necessary to respond again in those terms.
I think that the difficulty that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, sees, and I quite understand it, is this: how is a data user to know that the information being required is genuinely needed for reasons of protecting national security? It would, I think, be in the first instance up to the police to make a statement to that effect and to say that a certificate would follow. The Bill allows for that. Of course, if the data user is not satisfied that the police are genuinely in search of this information for that reason, he is perfectly entitled to withhold the information. The point that I hope I emphasised sufficiently the first time round is that the Bill does not create a new obligation, it merely protects against the disincentive which could be damaging to the public interest. Those are the matters I wanted to pick up at this point and perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, now wishes to, not return, but join the charge.
Lord Mottistone: Perhaps I may clear my amendment out of the way first before the noble lord on the Front Bench opposite comments on this. I am most grateful to my noble friend for accepting the principle of my Amendment No. 144A. I trust that perhaps he will be able to make some sort of amendment to subsection (4) to incorporate it.
I did notice that when he replied he said that a Minister of the Crown would always authorise a signature. The Bill does not actually say at the moment that he will. I am not quite certain that that is quite good enough and, quite frankly, I should much prefer that he go the whole hog and amend it on the lines I suggest in Amendment No. 144A. For all that, I accept his offer.
Lord Elton: Before my noble friend sits down, I must make clear that there are great difficulties and what I am undertaking is to look at them. The noble Lord should not count on my being able to resolve those difficulties. It is quite clear that neither I nor my noble friend would wish junior officials to be happily rubber-stamping illegible signatures on documents which perhaps expose people to influences which might make them very worried. That is what I am trying to avoid.
6.30 p.m.
Viscount Bledisloe: Before the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, speaks, I should like to seek some enlightenment about Amendment No. 142. I had understood that, because it referred to "the Secretary of State", it provided that all exemption certificates would be given by the specific Secretary of State in charge of all these functions—namely, I imagine, the Home Secretary. When the noble Lord, Lord Elton, spoke to the amendment, he assumed that, even if these words were included, the particular Secretary of State in the department concerned would give the exemption certificates and pointed out that there were some departments which did not have a Secretary of State. I must confess that I was attracted to this amendment by the theory that all certificates of exemption would be given by one person, and that therefore the practices of the varying departments would be standardised and one would not have, for example, one department that claimed that everything was national security and another department that took a more realistic view, but there would be a central and informed view addressed to the matter. I would like to know from the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, and from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, which of these they intended.
Lord Mishcon: Sometimes one endeavours to help the Committee and one finds in the end that it may not be of very great assistance. One tries to help the Committee very often by addressing the Committee on several amendments which relate to one clause, thereby saving the Committee various speeches. It can be confusing at times if one does that and I would rather like to make it clear, as I thought my noble and learned friend did, that although he was speaking to various amendments, they are in fact separate amendments and will be taken separately.
I would like to refer the Committee back to Amendment No. 142. I beg of the Committee to regard their duties—and I hope that this does not sound pompous—under this clause as very serious duties indeed. What they are doing is considering a clause which grants to certain data users, and to Government departments in particular, complete and absolute exemption from the whole effective body of this Bill—Part II of which relates to the:
"Registration and Supervision of Data Users and Computer Bureaux".
and Part III relating to the:
"Right of Data Subjects".
Before we take people out, before we take Government departments out of the whole real body of protection in the Bill, I hope that your Lordships will not think I am putting it too high when I say we must remember that

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a great onus of responsibility rests upon the Committee.
As at present worded one can see precisely the position of the Bill. It is that under Clause 27 a Minister of the Crown can certify that something is of national security and, as soon as he does so, away goes Part II and away goes Part III of the Bill. I hope that I am not being offensive at all when I say that so far little consideration has been paid to the seriousness of subsection (1) and the use of the phrase "a Minister of the Crown". My noble friend Lord Strabolgi asked, "Please can you tell us who is a Minister of the Crown for the purposes of this Act? There is no definition". One would have thought that so much consideration had been given to this matter that the answer would come terribly readily from the Minister that, "'A Minister of the Crown' in this Bill means something which is defined in the interpretation clause or somebody, by a given Act that I can at once refer you to, who is a very senior Minister indeed". But the only answer given—and therefore one must assume that very little consideration has been given to this important matter—is that in certain Acts a Minister of the Crown is defined. Your Lordships' Committee at this moment remains uncertain about which are the Acts, what the definition is and whether they vary or whether they do not. Moreover, nothing has been put in the Bill at all to define it.
Even if that were not so, and even if this Bill carried a definition or a reference to another Act which says (if I may smile for a moment) "All Ministers except Lords in Waiting in your Lordships' House", I repeat that before this Committee discharges its duty to exempt from Part II and Part III—I repeat again, the whole body of protection in this Bill—surely there must be the protection of a certification by the Secretary of State. There is nobody in your Lordships' Committee on these Benches or any other Benches who would pretend for one moment that national security is not dear to all of us, and it has to be looked after by every single one of us—but with responsibility, not by opening doors that none of your Lordships intends to open; none of it by certification at a lower level.
The Minister says, "Oh, please do not worry, it is the intention that it should be by a Minister at a high level". He went on to say—and I quote his words—"It normally would be by somebody at high level". What the Minister says in this House is always regarded with great respect. But his utterances are not so monumental that they are remembered for years to come put in every Government department as a warning and plastered either outside County Hall or anywhere else for all those who pass over the Thames to see them. It is not written in this Bill, and I repeat for the last time—and I do not gain any force for my argument by repeating it again—that our onus is heavy; we must secure that before this certificate is granted for exemption from Part II and Part III (and that is all that my noble and learned friend and I are speaking about at this moment) it must be a Secretary of State or the Secretary of State. In answer to the noble Viscount who put a perfectly proper question to me, of course it can be the Secretary of State for Home Affairs. I cannot see the Secretary of State in charge of defence worrying that there should be—and putting to
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the Secretary of State for Home Affairs—this obligation. I cannot envisage the Treasury, that has not got a Secretary of State, being offended at that being done; and the same might be said of any other department. It must be the Secretary of State, otherwise we are not fulfilling our duty.
Lord Elton: The noble Lord has moved into his customary eloquence and put before your Lordships the gravity of what we are dealing with, and I do not seek to detract from that. We need to recall that this is creating new safeguards which do not at present exist because of the different way in which information which is already held may be held in the light of technological advance. The noble Lord addressed himself to the very great importance of defending the national interest in the matter of security, and we are at one with him as regards that. He then tackled me, and quite justifiably, on my inabilty to define at my finger-tips the meaning of the term, "a Minister of the Crown"; and I take the point. As it happens I took the point some minutes ago when I last addressed your Lordships from this Box.
But what he has not taken is the purpose for which we use that term. It was the only term which appeared to us to embrace the very highest authorities in the departments in question. For instance, where the Prime Minister is involved, the Prime Minister is not a Secretary of State. I realise that the noble Lord has to consider what he is about to say, but perhaps he could consider what I am saying. The use of the term was deliberate in order to embrace the highest officers of Her Majesty's Government; that is to say, for instance, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and I say only "for instance", because had we used the term "Secretary of State", they would have been excluded, and I think that that would be quite improper.
Then, at the invitation of the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, the noble Lord said that, in fact, he would be content if this responsibility should be discharged on behalf of every department of Government by one Secretary of State. That is a new principle which I find a little disturbing, because I think it must be accepted that Secretaries of State are more closely aware of what goes on in their departments and what is needful for their departments than are other Secretaries of State. The intention is that it should be another Secretary of State who should, in the noble Lord's amendments, be the one who authorises the exemption.
The third matter about which I should remind your Lordships is that we are, indeed, now considering only subsection (1)—that is, Amendment No. 142—which is for a permanent standing exemption for parts of the information held by departments—not for everything held, but for the appropriate parts of information held by a department of state. That is not something done in haste and there is no question of it being handed down to someone to sign on behalf of the Secretary of State.
I hope that I have made that clear because I may have confused your Lordships by following the noble and learned Lord down the path of grouping these amendments together. Here we are talking of the personal data held by a Government department which are exempt from the provisions, as the noble

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and learned Lord rightly says, of Parts II and III of the Bill on the certificate of, as we have put it, "a Minister of the Crown". Those are our motives; those are the consequences that will flow from it. I think that they are proper.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: In following the advice of the Table about the grouping of amendments and for the convenience of the Committee, I endeavoured to speak to a number of amendments together. I doubt whether I really rendered service to the Committee by doing so and, indeed, I may have weakened the force of the individual amendments to which we attach great importance by so doing. But if by zeal to assist the Committee and further business I have been in error, I regret it very much.
We now come to make a decision on Amendment No. 142. The terms of the amendment are to:
"leave out ("a Minister of the Crown") and insert ("the Secretary of State")."
As I understand it in regard to the control of telephone intercepts, there is a similar kind of language that can be used, under the authority usually of the Home Secretary, the Secretary of State for Defence, or the head of the particular department which may be directly concerned. If there was a language which was sought to include the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General, certainly I would be willing to extend it as far as that.
I think that there was merit in the suggestion of my noble friend Lord Mishcon that the authority should be concentrated in the Home Secretary, but, knowing a little about inter-departmental problems, I can see difficulties about that. What we want to ensure is that the head of the department concerned in the particular matter should be responsible. Usually it will be the Secretary of State. Most of the cases arise from the Home Office or possibly the Ministry of Defence for that is where the important field of maintaining the security of the realm is to be found.
Therefore, as it stands, "the Secretary of State" means what it says. It does not identify one particular Secretary of State, but I am content that those words should remain. It may well be that, on further thought, we should add and possibly identify, if need be, the exceptional Prime Minister and the exceptional Attorney-General, for the reasons that they have responsibility and are not so easily classified. But because of the importance of, at any rate, dropping "a Minister of the Crown", which is what we are after, and ensuring that the top man—the top responsible person—has the responsibility, I now move the amendment and invite the Committee to come to a decision upon it.
6.45 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 142) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 72; Not-Contents, 94.

DIVISION NO. 2

CONTENTS

Airedale, L.

Bacon, B.

Ardwick, L.

Barrington, V.

Avebury, L.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

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Beswick, L.

Lloyd of Kilgerran, L.

Blease, L.

Lockwood, B.

Bledisloe, V.

Longford, E.

Boston of Faversham, L.

Lovell-Davis, L.

Bowden, L.

McGregor of Durris, L.

Brockway, L.

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Brooks of Tremorfa, L.

Mackie of Benshie, L.

Bruce of Donington, L.

McLeod of Fuinary, L.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

McNair, L.

Clifford of Chudleigh, L.

Mishcon, L.

Collison, L.

Molloy, L.

Craigavon, V.

Nicol, B.

David, B.

Ogmore, L.

Diamond, L.

Perry of Walton, L.

Elwyn-Jones, L.

Phillips, B.

Ewart-Biggs, B.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L. [Teller.]

Fulton, L.

Gardiner, L.

Rochester, L.

Gladwyn, L.

Seear, B.

Hampton, L.

Serota, B.

Hatch of Lusby, L.

Stedman, B.

Houghton of Sowerby, L.

Stewart of Alvechurch, B.

Howie of Troon, L.

Stewart of Fulham, L.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Strabolgi, L.

Jacques, L.

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

Jeger, B.

Tordoff, L.

John-Mackie, L. [Teller.]

Wallace of Coslany, L.

Kagan, L.

Whaddon, L.

Kaldor, L.

White, B.

Kilmarnock, L.

Wigoder, L.

Kinloss, Ly.

Willis, L.

Kirkhill, L.

Winterbottom, L.

Lawrence, L.

Wootton of Abinger, B.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, B.

NOT-CONTENTS

Airey of Abingdon, B.

Hunter of Newington, L.

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Inglewood, L.

Allerton, L.

Ingrow, L.

Auckland, L.

Kilmany, L.

Avon, E.

Kimberley, E.

Bancroft, L.

Kintore, E.

Bellwin, L.

Kitchener, E.

Beloff, L.

Lane-Fox, B.

Belstead, L.

Lauderdale, E.

Boyd of Merton, V.

Lindsey and Abingdon, E.

Caccia, L.

Long, V.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Carrington, L.

Lyell, L.

Cathcart, E.

Mackintosh of Halifax, V.

Coleraine, L.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Colwyn, L.

Mancroft, L.

Cork and Orrery, E.

Margadale, L.

Craigmyle, L.

Marley, L.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Merrivale, L.

De La Warr, E.

Mersey, V.

Denham. L. [Teller.]

Molson, L.

Digby, L.

Montagu of Beaulieu, L.

Donegall, M.

Mottistone, L.

Drumalbyn, L.

Mountgarret, V.

Ellenborough, L.

Murton of Lindisfarne, L.

Elliot of Harwood, B.

Norfolk, D.

Elton, L.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Enniskillen, E.

Onslow, E.

Fairfax of Cameron, L.

Orkney, E.

Ferrers, E.

Platt of Writtle, B.

Ferrier, L.

Plummer of St. Marylebone, L.

Fortescue, E.

Rochdale, V.

Gibson-Watt, L.

St. Aldwyn, E.

Glanusk, L.

St. Davids, V.

Glasgow, E.

Salisbury, M.

Glenarthur, L.

Sandford, L.

Greenway, L.

Sandys, L.

Gridley, L.

Sharples, B.

Grimston of Westbury, L.

Shaughnessy, L.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

Skelmersdale, L.

Somers, L.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

Swansea, L.

Henley, L.

Swinfen, L.

Hives, L.

Swinton, E. [Teller.]

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Teviot, L.

Vaux of Harrowden, L.

Thomas of Swynnerton, L.

Vivian, L.

Trefgarne, L.

Young, B.

Tryon, L.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
6.53 p.m.
Lord Elwyn-Jones Lord Elwyn-Jones had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 143:
Page 20, line 35, leave out subsection (2).
The noble and learned Lord said: We reserve our position on this amendment at this stage and shall return to it at a later time. Accordingly, I shall not move the amendment.
[Amendment No. 143 not moved.]
Lord Elwyn-Jones Lord Elwyn-Jones had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 144:
Page 21, line 1, leave out subsection (3).
The noble and learned Lord said: A similar principle applies to this as applied to the last amendment. We will consider what was said by the Minister in relation to subsection (3) and return to the matter at a later stage.
[Amendment No. 144 not moved.]
[Amendment No. 144A not moved.]
Lord Elwyn-Jones Lord Elwyn-Jones had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 145:
Page 21, line 6, leave out ("or on behalf of a Minister of the Crown") and insert ("the Secretary of State").
The noble and learned Lord said: This relates to the proposal that a subordinate civil servant should have this power. The Minister gave certain strong undertakings about this, and in the light of that we reserve our position until we see what emerges in due course from the thinking of the Minister on the subject.
[Amendment No. 145 not moved.]
Lord Elwyn-Jones Lord Elwyn-Jones had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 146:
Page 21, line 7, leave out ("or disclosed").
The noble and learned Lord said: A similar principle applies to this as applied to the previous amendments which we have not moved.
[Amendment No. 146 not moved.]
Clause 27 agreed to.
Clause 28 [Crime, taxation and immigration control]:
6.56 p.m.
Lord Elwyn-Jones Lord Elwyn-Jones moved Amendment No. 147:
Page 21, line 17, leave out paragraph (c).
The noble and learned Lord said: Now we come to what I submit is by far the most controversial clause in the entire Bill. It is strongly opposed by a wide range of interests—interests in the best sense of the term—being public-spirited and responsible bodies, not least the medical and other health professions; the British Medical Council, the National Consumer
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Council, and in the most strong and determined terms the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux have registered their grave concern about the provisions of the clause.
Our submission is that if it were enacted in its present form, it would mean that highly confidential and sensitive information could be secretly disclosed to the police, Inland Revenue, Customs and Excise and immigration authorities without any indication on the data protection register that anything of that kind was even possible. The Lindop Committee, in a memorandum submitted to the Home Office in June 1982, described this as "a palpable fraud on the public".
The Bill's purpose is to protect the confidentiality of the personal information held on computers. But by allowing the disclosure of confidential, medical, employment and other records to police and immigration officers, tax inspectors and so on, the Bill not only fails to guarantee confidentiality but may actually encourage more frequent breaches of confidentiality than exist at present. These matters are, therefore, of very great importance indeed.
For example, anyone in charge of a medical data bank will be entitled under the Bill to give information on a patient to a police or immigration officer, tax inspector or Customs and Excise official. Similarly, personnel managers operating computerised personnel records, DHSS officials operating computerised files on unemployment benefit claimants, banks holding confidential details of clients and insurance companies holding detailed medical and other information on policyholders will all be entitled under the Bill to breach the confidentiality of the information for which they are responsible. For instance, tax inspectors, whose files on taxpayers are supposedly confidential to the Inland Revenue, will be able to transfer data to police and immigration officers. In many cases it will not even be possible to find out that such a transfer of confidential data has taken place. There is no requirement in the Bill to include in an individual's personal record the fact that information has been transferred to a police or immigration officer; nor is there any requirement on the recipient to note the source of the new information.
It is quite true, as has been said, that the Bill does not compel or require doctors, health administrators, employers, bank managers, et cetera, to disclose such records to the police, tax officials, immigration officers, but there can be little doubt that the effect of the Bill will be positively to encourage, and indeed in certain instances to require, such disclosures. At the moment someone holding confidential information may feel restrained by the law on breach of confidentiality. We fear that if he discloses such information to police or other officials, the effect of the Bill will be to remove any residual restraint which the breach of confidence law may, and now does, provide.
The importance of this matter has been acknowledged and recognised by the bodies and interests that I have mentioned. Clause 28(2) confers a blanket exemption from the non-disclosure provisions for all disclosures of information to third parties that are made for the purposes that are set out in Clause 21(1) of the Bill. The purposes are:
" … the prevention or detection of crime;

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… the apprehension or prosecution of offenders;
… the assessment or collection of any tax or duty; or
… the control of immigration".
It may be convenient for us to consider Amendments Nos. 147, 148, 149, 150 and 151, and I hope that in suggesting that course I have not created problems for the Committee in considering the Bill—
Lord Elton: Can the noble and learned Lord tell the Committee whether in fact he will be returning to speak to each of those subsequent amendments separately and to move them separately, or do they all fall together with the present amendment?
Lord Elwyn-Jones: If I may do so, I propose to follow the same course as I adopted in regard to the earlier group of amendments. It may well be that when we come to the later amendments I shall be as brief as I was on the earlier occasion, and I shall indicate what in our opinion are the matters upon which we shall invite the Committee to divide.
As I was saying, the clause provides a blanket exemption from the non-disclosure provisions for all disclosures of information to third parties, relating to all the four categories to which I have referred. The exemptions are blanket exemptions. There is here no element of the judicial control which exists in the proposals of the Home Office in regard to the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill, which is now in another place. That adopts a totally different policy for exactly the same problem. Under Clause 10 of that Bill the police are also given power to obtain access to confidential records, but only on the order of a circuit judge, to be made only if he is satisfied
"that a serious arrestable offence has been committed"
and that evidence about it cannot be obtained in any other way. Amendment No. 149 is intended to deal with that very situation, and to provide that the disclosure must be made under compulsion of law. The question of whether it be through the authority of a circuit judge or some other judicial authority remains for further consideration.
As I say, the provisions that are set out in the Bill amount to blanket exemptions, and there is no element of judicial control over a matter which is of very great importance to almost each man in the land from the point of view of the security of his privacy, and indeed of his liberty.
The matters that are identified in subsection (1) cover not only
… the prevention or detection of crime"—
and that means crime over the whole field, not just serious crime—but also
… the apprehension or prosecution of offenders;
… the assessment or collection of any tax or duty; or
… the control of immigration".
We fear that the Bill will have a particularly severe impact on the ethnic minority communities. That is the particular mischief and danger of the inclusion of "the control of immigration" in the categories of blanket cover in the Bill.
The reference to immigration control is of course particularly and principally directed at the ethnic minority. An immigration officer is unlikely to have
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any reason to try to obtain information from doctors, employers, social workers, or others about a white person born or settled in this country. That would arise only in a minority of cases. However, a black person may well be singled out for suspicion as an overstayer or illegal entrant, and inquiries may be made even though he or she may have been settled in this country since childhood.
This is a matter of very grave concern to the immigrants in this country and to the ethnic minorities. We believe that there is no justification for the present exemptions in the Bill from the non-disclosure provisions—certainly not in relation to the matters referred to in paragraphs (c) and (d) of Clause 28(1). I should have thought that only in the most exceptional circumstances, such as the investigation of a murder, kidnap, or rape, the police may require the power to obtain confidential information on any particular individual subjects. We believe that if the enlargement of the field to cover the assessment or collection of taxes and the control of immigration is included when the Bill becomes an Act, it may result in a non-compliance with the terms of the convention. We do not accept that reliance may be placed on Article 9 of the European Convention. That article allows only derogations which constitute
"a necessary measure in a democratic society in the interests of protecting State security, public safety, the monetary interests of the State, or the suppression of criminal offences".
Those exemptions do not include, or bring within their embrace, immigration control. In our opinion they plainly do not, and certainly at the very least it is doubtful whether they include taxes or duties, either.
During the Second Reading I ventured to say that the European Court of Human Rights has always construed the word "necessary" in a very narrow sense. It would be difficult to argue that in a democratic society such as ours it is necessary for the police, let alone the Inland Revenue, the Customs and Excise, or the immigration authorities, to have secret access to all computerised personal information systems in the country. We consider that the clause is not only a very grave encroachment upon the privacy of the subject—the man in the street—in this country, but also threatens his liberty. I beg to move.
Lord Elton: Perhaps I may intervene at this stage, because I propose to avoid the difficulties into which I fell on the last amendment by addressing myself to the amendment on the Table before us at the moment. When the noble and learned Lord comes to subsequent amendments, he may feel that he can move them formally and rely on what he has already said. I can then bring forward my arguments against them without confusing myself and everyone else as well.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: They may well come on consideration of clause stand part also, in view of the observations that I have made generally. That will not surprise the noble Lord.
Lord Elton: I rather thought the noble and learned Lord had already delivered that speech and, therefore, that we were not to have it again. The noble and learned Lord concluded by suggesting that the exemption in Clause 28(1)(c) is incompatible with the

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European Convention. Article 9 of the convention allows derogation from the principles in the interests of the monetary interests of the state. I know that the term "monetary" has certain emotive overtones for noble Lords opposite, but I am confident that the official commentary on the convention explains specifically that that term refers in particular to tax collection requirements and it is in that sense that it is here used.
As I understand the view of the noble and learned Lord, he accepts the need for an exemption from subject access data held for the purposes specified in paragraphs (a) and (b) of Clause 28(1). But he and his noble friends take exception to extending the exemption in this case to tax collection. They want to restrict the use of exemptions by the revenue departments to that which is available under paragraphs (a) and (b). In other words, the exemption would apply only in respect of data held about people suspected of committing criminal offences. But the practical consequences of the amendment would go much further and would create an impossible position for those who are responsible for administering tax collection.
I should like to explain. In many cases, failure to comply with tax obligations is not a criminal matter but is settled on a civil basis between the taxpayer and the revenue department concerned. The appropriate treatment in these circumstances will depend among other things on the gravity of the offence involved. Where a possible irregularity in a person's tax affairs comes to light, the revenue departments have to carry out an investigation to establish the position. In cases of serious fraud, it may be clear from the outset that the eventual outcome will be a criminal prosecution of the taxpayer (or the tax non-payer, as perhaps I should say) in which case the exemptions under paragraphs (a) and (b) would apply and" there would be no problem.
But in other cases, including many where a substantial loss of tax may be involved, criminal proceedings will not be competent or appropriate and the eventual settlement will be on the basis of the tax authorities seeking civil penalties against the person concerned. If paragraph (c) were omitted, the revenue departments would be obliged to give access to the data which they might use as a basis for an investigation in these cases. As a result the person involved could well be forewarned about the department's suspicions and take steps which would effectively thwart the investigation.
This amendment would, therefore, risk giving assistance to those who seek to dodge their tax obligations; and I cannot believe that that is what noble Lords opposite have in mind. Your Lordships may feel that there is a balancing need for safeguards for data subjects and, first, I would remind the noble and learned Lord that all the information would be registered and controlled by the registrar. We are not giving—to use his term—"blanket exemption". The vast majority of personal records on the revenue department's computer files will be fully open for taxpayers themselves to inspect the data which is held about them. Exemption from subject access would apply only where disclosure would prejudice the
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assessment or collection of tax or duty. Moreover, the registrar can test the data to ensure that they comply with the other principles that apply.
It is just not true to suggest that exemption from subject access leaves the data wholly unprotected. The registrar can see them and can exercise his powers in relation to them by reference to the other principles. Secondly, I draw your Lordships' attention to the fact that even when subjects cannot obtain access, the provisions of the tax code would enable them to appeal against any assessment of tax which might be based on the data. Thirdly, the revenue departments apply very strict rules of confidentiality which, with a very few statutory exceptions, prevent the disclosure of data without the taxpayer's consent.
If I may say so, the question here is whether or not our revenue departments should be properly equipped to prevent evasion and fraud. Every taxpayer has a certain secret sympathy with those who share his wish to pay less to the state than perhaps he otherwise would, but we are talking about money which is rightly due to the state and money which pays for things which are as dear to the heart of the noble and learned Lord as they are to my own. Paragraph (c) is necessary to ensure that the money comes to hand. In our view, this amendment would impair the ability of the revenue departments to collect tax which is properly due, and would, therefore, add to the burden placed on the honest taxpayer such as the noble and learned Lord.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: I thank the noble Lord for that compliment but there is no mention at all of fraud in the subsection.
Lord Elton: As I tried to explain, fraud is a crime and crime is otherwise caught.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: May I raise a short point on Clause 28(1)(a)?
Lord Elton: With respect, that would come on clause stand part. There is no amendment on Clause 28(1)(a). The first amendment on Clause 28 is to subsection (1)(c), which we are now debating.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: I apologise to the Committee.
Lord Avebury: Strictly on the point of Clause 28(1)(c), the assessment and collection of tax and duty, may I draw the noble Lord's attention to the report of the Royal Commission on Standards of Conduct in Public Life which was published in July 1976 and which went into a great deal of detail in considering the use that might be made of information obtained in confidence by the Inland Revenue and also by other agencies; but that was one on which the Royal Commission concentrated. The evidence that was given to the Royal Commission was that, since the early 19th century, the information collected by the Inland Revenue was not to be divulged to any other authority for any purpose whatsoever with the exception that, in the case of homicide or treason, by custom and practice the Board of Inland Revenue was prepared to disclose its confidential information to the police.

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Giving evidence to the Royal Commission, the Inland Revenue underlined the importance of these provisions in ensuring that people were completely frank in their dealings with inspectors of taxes because they knew that, whatever information they gave which might possibly have other implications, it would not be revealed for purposes other than the simple collection of taxes. This has resulted, they believed, in the collection of taxes being much easier than it would have been if people had not had faith in confidentiality.
In a way, I am supporting the noble Lord the Minister in saying that everything that Parliament can do to ensure that the state receives the revenue to which it is entitled it ought to do. Therefore, the inclusion of the assessment and collection of tax or duty in subsection (1) of this clause has to be looked at carefully because it leads then to exemption from non-disclosure provisions in subsection (2). Therefore, as I read it, the Inland Revenue would have the power to disclose information collected for the purposes of taxation for any of the other purposes mentioned in subsection (1);
"the prevention or detection of crime";—
and not simply crime against the Revenue—
"the apprehension or prosecution of offenders … or the control of immigration …".
It would be possible therefore, for example, for the Inland Revenue's tax records to be accessed for the purposes of immigration control.
That is something which would be a complete departure from the practice of the Inland Revenue and from the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Standards of Conduct in Public Life. They were considering the question of corruption in local authorities and whether or not the tax records should be disclosed to the police with a view to aiding in the apprehension of, for example, local authority officials and councillors who took bribes. They came to the conclusion that disclosure should be subject to very powerful safeguards, and they said that there should be a power available only on application by the Director of Public Prosecutions to a judge of the High Court, and on the corresponding procedure in Scotland, on proof of reasonable grounds for suspecting a corrupt act, for the police to inspect the financial records of persons or organisations before criminal proceedings are started. If we let this provision go through as it stands no such safeguards would be built in.
Although the Minister said in response to the previous amendment that there would be no obligation to hand over information as a result of this clause, is it not likely that once the Act comes into operation the Government will give instructions to civil servants that, whenever information was required for any of those purposes mentioned in subsection (1), it would be handed over by the Government department which owns that particular file.
Therefore people will no longer be able to have any confidence in the security of the tax records because they will know that for any of the other purposes mentioned here the information could be disclosed. I believe that this is dangerous and that if we were to take the advice of the people in the Inland Revenue they would strongly recommend that that provision
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should be deleted. I should like to know from the Minister whether any consultations have been held on this matter, whether in drafting these clauses regard was paid to the recommendations of the Royal Commission that I have mentioned, and whether or not the advice of the staff of the Inland Revenue was taken in the drafting of this clause.
Lord Elton: If I may deal with this straightaway, as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has pointed out, this paragraph of this subsection is linked to the next, and that is and important consideration because in the next subsection there are two paragraphs and not one. This clause provides exemptions from subject access—that is, from people inquiring after information held about them—to data held for purposes among which is that stated in paragraph (c), the assessment or collection of any tax or duty.
The noble Lord has said, first, that there is an ancient and honourable convention in the Revenue that there should be strict confidentiality. I can tell him that the Bill does not affect the strict confidentiality rules of the Revenue departments which preclude the disclosure of information to a third party, except where this is specifically authorised by statute. Clause 28(2)—the linked subsection—only disapplies the provisions in the Bill. It does not create any new right to disclose. That is the important point. Needless to say, the Inland Revenue advice was sought and considered very carefully in the drafting of this part of the Bill.
The noble Lord will also notice—although I think that what I have already said is stronger than this consideration—that where the exemption in clause 28(1) (c) is actually applied to the collection of tax or duty information, as it is caught elsewhere in this Bill, it is not only in the light of subsection (2)(a) that the disclosure is for any of the purposes mentioned in subsection (1)—that is, the collection of tax or duty—but also the person so disclosing has to be satisfied that the disclosure would be likely to prejudice that. They would have, what is more, to prove reasonable grounds for that belief if the issue was ever tested in the courts.
So there are two echelons of defence here: the existing echelon in which the noble Lord already places his confidence, the confidentiality rules, and, beyond that, the echelon of likely to prejudice and reasonable grounds provided where this exemption is provided to the provisions within the Bill itself. I hope that reassures him.
Lord Mishcon: I wonder whether I may deal very quickly with what seems to me to be the essential matter that we are considering. It is, as the Committee knows, Clause 28(1)(c) and Clause 28(1)(c) alone. That relates to the assessment or collection of any tax or duty. Subsection (1) exempts from the subject access provisions matters related to the assessment or collection of any tax or duty when there is likely to be a prejudicial consideration in regard to the assessment or collection of any tax or duty.
The noble Lord the Minister has pointed out, as have others, that there is a link, too, with subsection (2) because that deals also with non-disclosure protection. In other words, you can disclose and you are

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protected if any of these matters is likely to prejudice the assessment or collection of taxes. The last thing any Member of the Front Benches, or the Cross-Benches wants to do is to try to set up barriers against the Revenue discovering fraud in regard to Revenue matters. We are not dealing with that, and, with respect, the Minister confused the issue completely in his opening remarks by talking about tax fraud. Tax fraud is covered under paragraph (a). My noble and learned friend has not asked for that subsection to come out. That subsection deals with the prevention or detection of crime. It is a crime, quite obviously, if one attempts fraudulently to deceive the Revenue or fraudulently to deprive the Revenue of what they ought to have.
We are dealing with the ordinary assessment and collection of taxes. There are existing laws in regard to that matter. Why have we to bring it into this Bill? Are the Revenue saying that they are not content with the disclosures that they can now get? If so, would the Minister kindly inform us of any representations made by the Revenue as to what they propose to do under this clause which gives them any additional powers? If they have no additional powers under this clause, why is it in the Bill? Why is it necessary?
Lord Elton: If I can answer that question now, whereas records kept in manual form are subject to the normal law and conventions, we have been pressed by the public, Europe and noble Lords opposite to legislate for information which is turned into data and is kept on computer records. It is quite clear that if there is an absolute right to access to all that material which there is not when it is written, then certain things will have to be revealed by the Revenue which would not be revealed if they were kept manually. Certain things have to be kept confidential if there is a question of people not paying their taxes.
The noble Lord has rightly said that it is not only a question of fraud. What the noble Lord proposes is that the only means of proceeding for the Revenue should be by means of criminality. The only exemption remaining that the Revenue could use in these circumstances would be that in Section 28(1)(a) or (b). We are anxious that the Revenue shall continue to be able to deal with a large range of really substantial amounts by means of civil proceedings, which this amendment would make impossible.
Lord Mishcon: I take the point of the noble Lord the Minister but I am afraid that he has not followed through his own argument which relates to subsection (2) and subsection (1). This amendment goes to the root of subsection (1) by virtue of the fact that it is connected with (2). At the present moment, if the Inland Revenue go for collection or assessment purposes, be it to banks, to accountants or to anybody else who has information on computers, the answer is: "Please go away; we do not do things like that; we do not tell the Revenue the confidential information we have got even if it would help, as might be thought, in the collection or assessment of taxes."
If this provision were put into the Bill linked to No. (2), the Inland Revenue would be able to point to a provision in an Act of Parliament which says:"You are
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completely protected in regard to non-disclosure and therefore Parliament has inferred that you have a duty to help us on this." There has been no such duty implied under any Act of Parliament except in regard to some very difficult Finance Act provisions where disclosures are made, and professional people have come within those provisions. This is a general blanket, which will be completely misunderstood. In my view and in the view of my noble friends, there is a vast difference when you are dealing with crime, including fraud on the Revenue, and dealing with the mere assessment and collection of taxes. I hope, in those circumstances, that the Committee will agree that this subsection should come out, and I am referring only to (c).
Lord Elton: The noble Lord seems to be shooting a couple of hounds when he only wants to get rid of one. Subsection (1) deals with subject access and subsection (2) with non-disclosure. All the concerns he is now voicing refer to non-disclosure. He has returned to that theme again and again. Surely what his amendment ought to do is to destroy the link between the two subsections, because otherwise what he will do will be to deny what I think on reflection he might regard as being something we cannot do without—and that is the exemption from subject access in matters which are not criminal. That would be the effect of the amendment. It may well be that we should test the mood of the Committee in any case at this stage.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: With that observation I agree. I beg to move.
7.33 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 147) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 48; Not-Contents, 79.

DIVISION NO. 3

CONTENTS

Airedale, L.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, B.

Avebury, L.

Lovell-Davis, L.

Bacon, B.

McGregor of Durris, L.

Barrington, V.

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Mackie of Benshie, L.

Beswick, L.

McNair, L.

Blease, L.

Mishcon, L.

Boston of Faversham, L.

Molloy, L.

Bowden, L.

Nicol, B.

Broadbridge, L.

Ogmore, L.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Oram, L.

Collison, L.

Peart, L.

Craigavon, V.

Perry of Walton, L.

David, B.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L. [Teller.]

Diamond, L.

Elwyn-Jones, L.

Serota, B.

Gardiner, L.

Stone, L.

Glenamara, L.

Strabolgi, L. [Teller.]

Hampton, L.

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

Hatch of Lusby, L.

Tordoff, L.

Howie of Troon, L.

Wallace of Coslany, L.

Kaldor, L.

White, B.

Kilmarnock, L.

Wigoder, L.

Kirkhill, L.

Willis, L.

Lee of Newton, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Ampthill, L.

Bellwin, L.

Auckland, L.

Beloff, L.

Avon, E.

Belstead, L.

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Bledisloe, V.

Kintore, E.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Kitchener, E.

Caccia, L.

Lane-Fox, B.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Lauderdale, E.

Cathcart, E.

Long, V.

Coleraine, L.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Colwyn, L.

Lyell, L.

Cork and Orrery, E.

Mackintosh of Halifax, V.

Craigmyle, L.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Mancroft, L.

Denham, L. [Teller.]

Margadale, L.

Digby, L.

Marley, L.

Donegall, M.

Mersey, V.

Drumalbyn, L.

Molson, L.

Ellenborough, L.

Mottistone, L.

Elliot of Harwood, B.

Mountgarret, V.

Elton, L.

Murton of Lindisfarne, L.

Enniskillen, E.

Onslow, E.

Fairfax of Cameron, L.

Orkney, E.

Ferrers, E.

Platt of Writtle, B.

Ferrier, L.

Plummer of St. Marylebone, L.

Fortescue, E.

Rochdale, V.

Gibson-Watt, L.

St. Aldwyn, E.

Glanusk, L.

Salisbury, M.

Glasgow, E.

Sandford, L.

Glenarthur, L.

Sandys, L.

Greenway, L.

Sharples, B.

Gridley, L.

Skelmersdale, L.

Grimston of Westbury, L.

Swinfen, L.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

Swinton, E. [Teller.]

Teviot, L.

Henley, L.

Thomas of Swynnerton, L.

Hives, L.

Trefgarne, L.

Hunter of Newington, L.

Ullswater, V.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Vaux of Harrowden, L.

Inglewood, L.

Vivian, L.

Ingram, L.

Young, B.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
Lord Glenarthur: I think perhaps now might be a convenient moment to break for dinner until 8.30. I beg to move that the House do now resume.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.

Dentists Bill [H.L.]
7.40 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Lord Trefgarne): My Lords, I rise to move that this Bill be now read a third time. When your Lordships first discussed this Bill as a whole on Second Reading, those of your Lordships who spoke in that debate gave the Bill a general welcome. That welcome was, I believe, well deserved for the Bill contains a number of important provisions. For example, it gives the public added guarantees of the quality of training of dentists, by confirming and extending the General Dental Council's powers in relation to post-graduate education. The Bill also gives the public better protection against those few dentists whose fitness to practise has been severely affected by physical or mental ill-health.
I am sure that the whole House would wish to join me in paying tribute to the role which has been played in the consideration of the Bill by my noble friends Lady Gardner and Lord Colwyn. Their expertise and experience as eminent practitioners in the dental field
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has been invaluable to your Lordships. I should also like to repeat the appreciation of both myself and my colleagues for the spirit in which the Bill has been approached by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Coslany, on the Bench opposite.
It may be that one or other of my noble friends, or perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, is disappointed that it has not been possible to incorporate all their wishes into the text of this Bill. But I ask them to take heart, because this Bill succeeds the last one in 1957, and there may therefore be another one as early as 2009. I cannot guarantee that I shall be the Minister to propose that measure to your Lordships when it comes forward, but if I am I shall seek to do so in the same spirit that I have proposed this one. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a third time.—(Lord Trefgarne.)
7.43 p.m.
Lord Colwyn: My Lords, if I may, I should like very briefly to offer my thanks to the Government for finding time in this Session to deal with this Bill. Also I join my noble friend Lady Gardner—who I know cannot be here this evening because she is abroad—in thanking the Minister for the way in which he has dealt with the Bill in the House and also at other meetings which we have had in other places.
The profession has been waiting many years for some of these important aspects of the Bill, particularly the suspension on health grounds, and it brings us into line with the similar grounds that the medical profession has. Obviously the translation of this legislation to the practical working of it is slightly difficult; but I understand that information from courts of law where they know that defendants are actually dentists, from other members of the profession, from the public or even from the family of dentists, can bring serious health problems to the attention of the Health Committee of the General Dental Council, which can then lead to suspension for a limited period in an attempt to provide treatment.
It is not only the discouragement of sick dentists that is the aim of the Bill; it is the balance that must be maintained between the protection of the public and the support of the dentist himself. Now that the Dental Council very nearly has the powers that it requires from this proposed legislation, I should be grateful if the Minister could confirm that the appropriate legislation will be included in the right Bill, to ensure that where the powers of suspension are used there will be adequate safeguards for contractual arrangements and continuity of income in relevant cases.
I should like to say a very brief word about the subject of titles, because we have dealt with it very fully. I am happy with the Minister's explanation about the use of the courtesy title "Doctor". The discussions will continue within the profession. They have been aired over many years, for as long as I can remember, and no doubt they will continue until the next Dentists Bill in 2009. Apart from a letter from the metropolitan branch of the British Dental Association, I have received no letters at all on the subject and I feel sure that those who favour the use of this courtesy title are probably in the minority.

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I have been in close touch with the British Dental Association and they are happy with the outcome. I must admit that I am slightly surprised to have heard nothing on this subject, or indeed on any other part of the Bill, from the General Dental Practitioners' Association, who are normally very active in dental politics and have written many powerful editorials in their magazine. My amendment at the Committee stage, which would have allowed dentists to use qualifications which they in fact possess, was rejected, despite hints earlier on that it might be accepted. This would certainly have paved the way for a loosening of restrictions, and perhaps for the eventual use of the title "Doctor".
I suspect that that amendment was possibly rejected as a result of the resolution that was passed by the GDC in 1979, when it agreed,
"not to withdraw support for an amendment to the Dental Act, which would enable permitted use of the title 'Doctor'".
At the same time, they also agreed,
"that if the Dental Act is amended it"—
that is, the council—
"will not take action to prevent the use by dentists of the title 'Doctor' ".
I can assure members of the profession who may read the report of this debate that I have had long discussions with the President of the General Dental Council, Sir Frank Lawton, the Registrar, Mr. Norman Davis, and their legislative committee and they all supported my amendment. Regrettably I feel that it was probably the passing of those resolutions in 1979 which worried the Government and may have actually put back the cause of the use of the courtesy title "Doctor", rather than promoting it. I support the Third Reading. I hope that the Bill passes through the other place with the same speed and efficiency as it has done here.
7.48 p.m.
Lord Wallace of Coslany: My Lords, very briefly, I too have welcomed the Bill at all its stages and I would agree with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, about the valuable contributions made by the two dental experts. I am sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, is not here tonight, because on one occasion, if I remember correctly, we had an extraordinary insight into the social habits of Australian old-age pensioners and I was hoping that more secrets would be revealed tonight. However, from this side we have never objected to the Bill. It is an agreed and a welcome measure, and I hope that the other place will give it a speedy passage.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I am grateful to both noble Lords for their response to this Bill. My noble friend Lord Colwyn asked me a specific question. That matter is under consideration, and indeed I am on the point of writing to my noble friend about it. With that assurance. I hope that your Lordships will give this Bill a Third Reading.
On Question, Bill read a third time, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
Lord Lyell: My Lords, I beg to move that this House do now adjourn during pleasure until half-past eight.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
[The Silting was suspended from 7.49 until 8.30 p.m.]

Data Protection Bill [H.L.]
House again in Committee on Clause 28.
Lord Elwyn-Jones Lord Elwyn-Jones moved Amendment No. 148:
Page 21, line 18, leave out paragraph (d).
The noble and learned Lord said: We now return to the consideration of Clause 28 of the Bill, and in the course of my perhaps not extremely helpful attempt to endeavour to deal with Amendments Nos. 147, 148 and 149 at an earlier stage, it may well be that I did not sufficiently identify the separate amendments. But we are now facing an important amendment which raises a subject which has caused a great deal of anxiety and concern in different parts of our country, not only in the community of those who include a large number of immigrants. I endeavoured in my speech to deal with immigration, the inclusion of the control of immigration among the subjects which were to be exempt from the subject access provisions of the Bill. I think the best course I can take now is to repeat the intent and the spirit of what I said.
This provision is calculated to cause, or at least will have the result of causing, deep concern among the people who have come to live among us and are living among us, and they will be the particular objects and subjects of the proposals in Clause 28(1). Accordingly, I greatly hope that in due course the Committee, or perhaps, at a later stage, the House, will come to grips with what I describe as this extremely offensive provision in this complex Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Avebury: The noble and learned Lord reminded us on a previous amendment that the convention permitted derogation from the general principles which are set out now in Schedule 1 for certain purposes. These were, as he reminded us, the protection of state security, public safety, the monetary interests of the state or the suppression of criminal offences. On the previous amendment the noble Lord pointed out that the assessment and the collection of tax came squarely within the phrase "the monetary interests of the state". For that reason it was properly to be found within Clause 28. Will the noble Lord tell us which of these purposes includes immigration control? As I see it this is something which has crept into the Bill after the White Paper and has no place in the legislation. Indeed, it may be likely to bring us into conflict with the provisions of the convention.
I wonder whether the noble Lord can explain at what stage the question of immigration control was brought within the terms of the Bill, and whether the Government already had it in mind at the time the White Paper was published in April 1982. It certainly did not appear from the discussions that were held at the time, and most people think that if we are to grant exemptions of the type we have in Clause 28, they should be limited to the barest possible minimum if

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people are to have confidence in the way the Bill will be applied and, in particular, to the powers which the Government are proposing to confer on themselves to exempt themselves from both the subject access provisions and the non-disclosure provisions that apply to everyone else. Although we are discussing the subject access provisions in subsection (1), it is very difficult, as we found on the previous amendment, to separate them from the non-disclosure provisions which rely on subsection (1) and apply only to the four purposes which are set out there.
The reason why people are anxious about the control of immigration provisions in the Bill is not so much the subject access—although, there again, it is worth pointing out that because of the provisions in subsection (1)(a) personal data held for the prevention or detection of crime is exempt from subject access provisions—but, if we are talking about people who have broken the law in immigration (the illegal immigrants, for example, or the over-stayers) they would already be dealt with under subsection (1)(a) and there is no reason to have a separate heading for the control of immigration.
One has to ask what kinds of record will be kept that do not relate to the commission of criminal offences, but have some bearing on control of immigration. If I may return to the question which I asked the noble Lord, Lord Elton, yesterday, on which he was good enough to give me a Written Answer in time for this debate, I had asked him about the Prime 550 computer which has been installed at Harmondsworth for the purposes of the Immigration Service Intelligence Unit. I asked about the criteria to be followed in deciding to include in the computer somebody's name and other details; what precautions were taken to ensure that persons who were not suspected of any breach of the immigration laws or rules were recorded there; how many names were to be stored in the computer, and so on?
The noble Lord was good enough to tell me that not only were they going to record the names and other details of persons falling into certain clearly-defined categories—those were the persons refused leave to enter the United Kingdom, refused entry clearance for the purposes of entering the United Kingdom and, in certain cases, persons who had been deported from the United Kingdom—but also they may be included there because they are considered to be involved in abuse or attempted abuse of the immigration laws.
That raises a whole host of questions. First, who considers those persons to have been involved in abuse or attempted abuse of the immigration laws? Is it that persons' names will be included there simply on the unsupported word of an immigration officer, an entry certificate officer or a police officer? What checks are there to be on the reliability of the information so recorded? We have already discussed on Clause 22 the question of second-hand information getting into a computer and the responsibility of the data user for making checks on that information, his liability to proceedings for damages in cases where such information was incorrect. It emerged very clearly that wrong information may get into a computer and that the person who is damaged by it may not have any cause for proceedings because the information was taken in good faith by the data user from a third party.
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So here we have information about persons considered to be involved in abuse, or attempted abuse, of the immigration laws coming into the Immigration Service Intelligence Unit from third parties, and, very likely, inaccurate information. But where the subject does succeed in discovering that the information recorded about him is wrong he will have no right of recompense through the courts.
It is inevitable that a great deal of incorrect information will get into the computer. As the noble Lord is aware from correspondence which honourable Members and noble Lords have had with the Minister who deals with immigration, letters to which he sometimes has the task of replying in the absence of his honourable friend, there are mistakes. These mistakes can be of a very serious nature, such as to affect the rights of the individual concerned. In the case of this file we are dealing, according to the Minister, with no fewer than 300,000 names. This is a very large number of persons. Only a tiny fraction can be those suspected of contravening the law. As we have already discovered, they are dealt with in subseciton (1)(a). The vast majority of those 300,000 persons must be people who are alleged to be involved in abuse, or attempted abuse, as the Minister described it, of the immigration laws.
It seems to me that we have very little safeguard against people being included in the file for reasons which the public, if they could know of them, would consider to be grossly unsatisfactory. As one example, I mention the possibility that people's names will be included in this file if they have been swept up in one of the so-called passport raids which have been conducted by the Immigration Service Intelligence Unit and the police, acting jointly over the last few years—cases in which, acting on information received, the police and the immigration officers descend on a place of employment, sweep up every single person who is found on the premises and take them into custody, on the basis that a number of them (maybe a small fraction, maybe a larger number) are alleged to be either illegal entrants or overstayers. If subsequently the police find that the majority of those persons are either settled in the United Kingdom or are patrial citizens of the United Kingdom, how will they be sure that their names are not put on the computer?
How can a person who has been taken into custody and found to be completely blameless, and that the only way in which he is connected with illegal immigration or overstaying is that he happened to be a workmate of someone who was an alleged illegal entrant or overstayer, be certain that his name is not recorded on the computer and that he will not suffer damage in consequence? Because the subject access provisions apply to these records there will be no way, other than through the intervention of his Member of Parliament or of a noble Lord, by which he can seek assurances from the Home Office that wrong information is not recorded against him or that his name has not been included in a file which may prejudice him in other respects.
So it is not surprising to find that organisations concerned with civil liberties, such as, for example, the National Council for Civil Liberties and the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, have protested vigorously about those parts of Clause 28 which apply

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to the control of immigration. Unless we make amendments of the kind which have been proposed, we are going to sow grave alarm not only among legitimate immigrants to this country but also among the vast majority of people belonging to ethnic minorities who live here, who were actually born in this country or who have been settled here for many years. The kinds or people who will fall under suspicion, to be recorded among the 300,000 names on the computer, are, let us face it, members of the ethnic minorities: the black people living among us. Although they may be perfectly blameless, they will be subject to suspicion and will not even know that their names are there recorded. So I beg the Minister and the Government to have second thoughts about this obnoxious provision and to delete control of immigration from Clause 28.
8.45 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: In view of the debate we are having tonight, I intend to follow the lead of my noble and learned friend Lord Elwyn-Jones in holding back the main thrust of the argument on this amendment until the House resumes. However. I should like to probe the mind of the Government and of the Minister who is to reply so that, before we come to the Report stage, we may be more clear as to where the Government stand on this crucial issue.
I should like to do two other things. First, I should like to appeal directly to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. During his opening speech in the Second Reading debate the noble and learned Lord very properly, and at times quite movingly, stressed the importance of the principles which lie behind the Bill, which can be read in Part I of Schedule 1 on page 28 of the Bill. I pick out one principle only upon which to base my appeal for further thought to be given to the clause which we are discussing. Principle 3 states:
"Personal data held for any purpose or purposes shall not be used or disclosed in any manner incompatible with that purpose or those purposes".
May I suggest that it would be of value to the Committee, and at a later stage to the House, if the noble and learned Lord could say how he equates that principle with Clause 28(1)(d), upon which this amendment is based.
Secondly, I should like to ask noble Lords opposite and those on the Cross-Benches to give serious attention between now and the Report stage to the social character of the legislation which we wish to be embodied in the law of this country. The inclusion of the control of immigration with the offences of prevention or detection of crime, the apprehension or prosecution of offenders and, as we have heard tonight from the noble Lord the Minister, tax fraud, not only seems to be unnecessary, but is surely at least in danger of being gratuitously offensive to a large section of the British people—that section which is commonly known as the ethnic minorities: the blacks, the browns and the yellows. I would appeal to noble Lords opposite—indeed, to noble Lords on all sides of the House—to ask themselves, between now and Report stage, whether we wish to risk causing that kind of offence, of suggesting that the control of immigration is in the same category as the offences I have just listed. I hope, and indeed I believe, that there are many noble
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Lords of all parties and of more in this Committee who would regret that type of impression being given by the Committee.
When he comes to reply to this amendment, perhaps the noble Lord the Minister can give us some details—as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has asked—of the information that is to be collected at the illegal immigrants unit at Harmondsworth where a computer has been installed. In what way is that data relevant to what the Bill calls,
"the control of immigration"?
I think everybody will agree that the phrase,
"the control of immigration".
is a very loose phrase. Without professing to speak as a lawyer, I would have thought that the lawyers in this Committee would have at least been concerned that the phrase itself as it stands was too loose to be allowed to go into law. What is meant by,
"the control of immigration"?
How does it relate to the collection of personal data, and how is it related to the exemption clause here? How is it related to the necessity to prevent the individuals concerned in this vague phrase,
"the control of immigration",
from seeing their own data? Why is it that this phrase should be applied in such a way that it is to be used in order to remove the protection which this Bill purports to give, and is intended to give, to the people of this country so far as the keeping of their personal information is concerned?
My noble and learned friend Lord Elwyn-Jones has already pointed out that the Lindop Committee has described the conception of including this issue as a palpable fraud on the public. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, stated that it was not included in the White Paper. Again, my noble and learned friend pointed out that it is in this Bill in a totally different and contrary form to that in which it is included in the Bill before another place, the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill. Where, then, does it come from? Who has thought up the phrase,
"the control of immigration"?
Who has decided that this phrase should go into the Bill as one of the exceptions from the protection that the Bill gives to other British citizens? Why are we risking identifying in this peculiarly special way a section of the British public which certainly most people will see to be mainly composed of people from the ethnic minorities?
If the Minister can enlighten us on these issues, and if the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor can apply his mind to the relationship between the principles which he stressed in his Second Reading speech and the phrase in this clause, and if noble Lords on all sides of the Committee will think seriously about the social effects of this phrase before we reach Report stage, I believe that we can have a better and better-informed discussion when the House resumes and the Report stage of this Bill is reached.
8.57 p.m.
Lord Elton: It is not long since we were discussing the issues of immigration across this very table. Only

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last night we had an extended and interesting debate in which I advanced the Government's position and almost everybody else assailed it. As a sort of reprise of that, I have to remind your Lordships that there is general agreement among all of us that there has to be control of immigration into this country. The noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, implied by his speech that this was not necessary; perhaps he intended to imply only that it was not necessary to introduce that concept into this Bill. In either case, I believe we are agreed that in order to preserve the character of this country so that it can evolve as a multi-racial country, it is necessary to limit the number of people who come here from other countries.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: Does the Minister wish me to answer that question now?
Lord Elton: It was not a question and it does not require an answer, unless the noble Lord believes there should be no control of immigration into this country. I am happy to give way to hear him say that, because it will make his position very clear.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: No, the noble Lord the Minister assumed that I believe there should be no control of immigration into this country. I have never assumed that. What concerns me is that the whole question of immigration into this country—and I know that the Minister is not responsible for this—and the phrase,
"the control of immigration",
has come to be associated with the immigration of people who, for want of a better term, are termed members of the New Commonwealth. That is what I regret.
The noble Lord was going on to suggest that the control of immigration was necessary for race relations. That shows he assumes that immigration has something to do with race. I believe that immigration needs to be controlled irrespective of colour, race or creed, only because these islands can sustain only so many people. That has nothing whatsoever to do with the colour of the immigrants' skins.
Lord Elton: I am obliged to the noble Lord for clarifying the position. He has certainly made clear the fact that he accepts that there should be control of immigration and that it should apply equally to people of all colours. My mother, as it happens, was a Norwegian immigrant and I am very happy to agree with the noble Lord in this respect.
Within the present context, a primary objective of immigration control since it was introduced into this country has been to protect the domestic labour market, and hence the jobs of those in that market. It is in the interests of persons in the domestic labour market that control should be effective, regardless of what ethnic origin they may have. It is also an important objective of immigration control—certainly over the past 20 years or so—to control the rate of entry of persons into the United Kingdom having regard to the strains on our multi-racial society and the continuing pressure to come here. I make no bones about that. Ours is a multi-racial society and it is foolish to say that there are not strains within that
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community which result from its racial composition. A real strain can result from uncontrolled immigration on all sorts of resources to which people already in this country—whatever their ethnic description may be—have an existing right. That includes almost all the services one cares to name. I believe that answers the question which the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, asked me, as to how this Bill sits with the provisions of the convention.
Article 9.2.b. specifically provides for derogation from the convention's provisions where necessary in the interests of protecting the rights and freedoms of others. I submit to your Lordships that that applies to the rights and freedoms of those of every colour, in every community in this country, who are already settled here, and it is in their interests that we should control immigration. An ineffective control arouses fears which can be played on by unscrupulous people.
Having cleared that, I should now like to look at what this subsection and this paragraph do. What they do not do is to affect how immigration is controlled, nor does it have any racist undertones, as the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, has suggested. I think we need to be quite clear that the immigration rules specifically state that,
"immigration officers will carry out their duties without regard to the race, colour or religion of people seeking to enter the United Kingdom".
and that, with regard to control after entry,
"the powers conferred by the Act are to be exercised without regard to a person's race, colour or religion".
Paragraph (d) simply recognises that immigration control does operate, that Parliament is clear in its view that it should operate, and that in those circumstances the provisions of this Bill should not reduce the efficiency with which it operates. That is why paragraph (d) is there—to ensure that subject access to immigration data held on computer does not impair the effective control of immigration as it has been approved by Parliament. That does not exclude all information on the computer; it only excludes that which cannot be revealed without impeding effective control.
The noble Lord, Lord Hatch, asked how all this sat with data protection principle No. 3 on page 28. Here I think is the answer. If your Lordships will hear with me, I will quote:
"Personal data held for any purpose or purposes shall not be used or disclosed in any manner incompatible with that purpose of those purposes".
The purpose here is the control of immigration, and the only purpose of paragraph (d) is to see that where disclosure would be incompatible with that purpose it should not take place. So it sits squarely with that principle and is not in breach of it.
It will not surprise your Lordships that the vast majority of the information held by the immigration authorities is factual and routine. It is everyday straightforward information about everyday straightforward things such as names, nationalities, sex, date of birth, dates of arrival, lengths and conditions of stay of persons subject to immigration control. All this is essential raw material for the purposes of immigration control. We see no difficulty at all in making data of this kind when held on computer available to data subjects when they request access to it.

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On the other hand, there is a limited amount of information held for quite different purposes; those are to prevent or detect crime or to apprehend or prosecute offenders. This may relate to international criminals, to drug smugglers or to those suspected of committing offences under the immigration legislation. Some of this is held on computer because it is important for the immigration authorities to have speedy access to it. It is certainly true, and I readily agree, that, where subject access to such data would prejudice any of those purposes I have referred to, exemption can already be claimed under paragraphs (a) or (b). But that is not what we are here concerned about. What we are concerned about are those data held on computer which are neither what I have described, the straightforward everyday sort, but which do not fall into the category of crime either.
These data relate to people who may not qualify for leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom under the immigration rules approved by Parliament but who are not necessarily committing an actual criminal offence. That category has been considerably enlarged by the case of Borg, which the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, will recall, which made overstaying not a criminal offence except in the 24 hours when it first occurs. So this information will not qualify for exemption under paragraphs (a) or (b); yet, access to it by the subject could prejudice immigration control by helping the subject to evade those controls. In those circumstances, and they will be very limited, paragraph (d) permits exemption from access.
Perhaps it would help if I said a little more about what this category of information actually consists of. Perhaps I may give an example. Many countries do not follow our rigid Christian/surname formula and anybody travelling in the East for the first time will know exactly what I mean. For many foreign nationals it is therefore a fairly easy matter to obtain documentation in another name. Where someone in this position has been refused leave to enter or to remain, he may try to enter by using one of these other names. This fact is obviously recorded when it comes to attention. But, as your Lordships will be aware, there is no criminal offence in question, so we cannot apply the prevention and detection of crime exemption. Yet, clearly, an exemption from access is needed because access could allow that person to discover whether we knew of his alias. If the person found that we did have that information he would be able simply to use yet another name to avoid controls, and if we did not have that information he would have found a means of illicit entry.
That is the facility which this amendment would extend to people who wish to settle in this country and have no right to do so. We do need mechanisms to achieve the immigration control in the interests of all citizens of this country wherever they come from. For that reason we cannot accept this amendment. There are one or two points outstanding but I do not doubt that noble Lords will want to come back on those, and perhaps I may marshall them in the interim.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: As has been indicated by my noble friend Lord Hatch, the importance of this matter and this provision in Clause 28, which touches
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the raw nerve of race relations, is such that we think it is better that it should be discussed and considered and divided upon at the Report stage by a fuller House than we have tonight. I confess it is a little disappointing that the noble Lord the Minister has not reflected or even begun to understand the degree of concern, indignation and anxiety that the provisions of Clause 28 have created. I hope that when he was referring to "fears played on by unscrupulous people" he was not referring to any of the members of the great organisations whose names I mentioned earlier which had expressed their anxiety or, least of all, that he should be referring to any noble Lords who have expressed their anxiety in the House tonight. I gather from his anxious expression that he was not wishing to do so.
Lord Elton: I was debating within myself whether to say that I was not conscious of having used the phrase that he says he was certain I was going to use, and this reference may reveal more about what the noble Lord thinks about me than what I think about the amendment.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: I have had a little experience in court of taking down what people said and it is always a wise precaution. We shall look at the official Record and the reference to "fears played on by unscrupulous people", which is what I dictated. Of course, if the noble Lord did not say that I naturally withdraw the implication of what I said.
We think, therefore, that this is not an appropriate moment to go into these matters in further detail, but we assure the noble Lord the Minister and his colleagues that we shall return to this matter in full awarenes of the gravity of the issues involved. In the circumstances, I shall withdraw Amendment No. 148 and it would be better if I did not anticipate Amendment No. 149.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
9.10 p.m.
Lord Elwyn-Jones Lord Elwyn-Jones had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 149:
Page 21, leave out lines 25 to 34 and insert ("the disclosure is made under compulsion of law").
The noble and learned Lord said: By the same token, I have spoken to Amendment No. 149 and this touches upon the most disgraceful features of the exercise of this power as it shuts out the courts and it shuts out any recourse to control over executive power. It is quite intolerable. There ought to be some compulsion of law exercised over this power and we shall return to it in full strength in due course, I do assure the noble Lord.
Lord Wigoder: Before we return to it at a later stage, would it be possible for some of us who are interested in this matter to make the odd observation this evening?
The Lord Chancellor: Not unless the amendment is moved.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: I beg to move.
Lord Wigoder: Might I support what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, said about this being one of the most important amendments in the Bill. It seems to me to be important on two grounds. First, it deals to a very large extent, although not exclusively, with the extremely difficult and sensitive area of medical records and health information. Secondly, unless an amendment of this nature is written into the Bill there will be the most extraordinary dichotomy between the Bill and the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill which is at the moment going through another place.
The position about medical information and medical records appears to be this—and I shall be happy to be corrected if I am wrong. Doctors' records are confidential and there is a complete confidentiality between a doctor and his patients. This is accepted in principle, and can indeed be protected and enforced by the civil law in the sense that if a doctor discloses, in breach of that confidence, information about his patient which in turn leads to the detriment of the patient, that is a wrongful act by the doctor and he would be liable for that at common law. I know that there are some exceptions to that. First, there are exceptions by statute, such as those in parts of the Public Health Act. Secondly, there are exceptions in that where it is necessary for the proper administration of justice a judge may—I repeat, may—during a trial order a medical practitioner to disclose what is prima facie confidential information. It is hardly surprising to note that judges are reluctant to take that course unless it is absolutely essential in the interests of the administration of justice. It is therefore clear that in the law as it stands at the moment the relationship between a doctor and his patient is accepted as being one where there is an obligation of confidence which will be enforced by the law.
Curiously, and rather confusingly, once the doctor completes his medical record and hands it over in the National Health Service to the hospital administrator it at once loses the whole of that confidentiality, because it then becomes the property in law of the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of State is not bound by any such obligation of confidentiality and that obligation could not be enforced by the law. That is a curious discrepancy although it is right to say that it is not suggested that the Secretary of State or the administrators who work in the National Health Service in fact ignore altogether the obligations that are upon them, even though they are not strictly legal obligations.
Against that general background there are now two Bills before Parliament. In the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill which is in another place, under Clause 10, as the noble and learned Lord reminded us some little time ago there is provision whereby on the order of a circuit judge and provided it is necessary for the detection of a serious arrestable offence, a doctor can be ordered to breach that obligation of confidence. That of course can be done not simply during a trial, as is the present position, but under Clause 10 before a trial if the judge decides that that is necessary in the interests of justice. I think it is possible that that Clause 10, perhaps with certain additional safeguards, might provide a reasonable solution to the very difficult problem of a medical practitioner's position where the
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information which he has might, in the public interest, have to be disclosed to the authorities. That is the position under that Bill. Under this Bill as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, again has pointed out, the situation is totally different.
Under this Bill doctors who have medical records or in particular health authorities who have medical records, would register them under the terms of the Bill as being information which might be disclosed, for example, to their colleagues in the medical profession, or might be disclosed to insurers, or might be disclosed for statistical purposes, or might be disclosed for research purposes. That registration might well be done in accordance with this Bill. But what could then happen under this clause, as I understand it, is that medical men or health authorities would be totally free to disclose the whole of their information in secret to any of the authorities named in subsection (1): the police, the tax authorities and the immigration authorities. That will be done entirely in secret. Nobody would know that it was being done.
It would bring the whole question of the confidentiality of medical records totally into disrepute. No longer would anyone have any faith in it at all, and it will lead to the most extraordinary distinctions between this Bill and the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill. Under this Bill there would be no judicial control, which is desirable. Under this Bill there is not the limitation of a serious arrestable offence—it could be absolutely anything, entirely at the whim of the person handing the information over. And under this Bill it would not be the police authorities for the detection of crime, it would be for a variety of other purposes as well.
I regard it as absolutely essential that we should take steps in the course of the passage of the Bill to see that the confidentiality of medical records is preserved and is respected and is known by patients to be going to be respected. It is also important for the sake of our legislation that we should bring this Bill and the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill into a far greater degree of harmony than exists at the moment.
Although Amendment No. 149 was moved in a general way by the noble and learned Lord in connection with Amendments Nos. 147 and 148, it is really a totally separate matter. It deals with totally different issues. I very respectfully ask the noble Lord the Minister to look at what has been said in the course of this debate with the greatest of care before the next stage to see whether he might not think it proper that steps should be taken to try and reconcile these two Bills to the benefit of the confidentiality of medical records.
Lord Avebury: My noble friend has advanced the very important case of medical records. But there are other records, of not perhaps quite the same sensitivity, which are equally affected by these provisions. The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, earlier on mentioned the representations which we have received from the National Association of Citizens' Advice Bureaux, which relate to the possibility that in the future, as new technology advances—and they are in the process of studying the ways in which microcomputers can be used in the operations of the Citizens' Advice Bureaux—they would have sensitive

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personal information relating to their clientele held on these computers which would be affected by the provisions of Clause 28(2). For when those personal data were required for cases where the disclosure was for any of the purposes mentioned in subsection (1), then they would be freed of the obligation of confidentiality.
I know that the noble Lord the Minister will say that they are not obliged then to provide information under these headings, but I suggest that, once the Bill is on the statute book, they will be under enormous pressure to do so. When the police come along and tell them that a particular item of information is required for the detection of some dreadful offence, they will be in a serious dilemma. As the director of the national association, Elizabeth Filkin, has said in her letter on the subject:
"The interests of the detection of crime may on rare occasions be in opposition to the duty of confidentiality … but the problem is that confidentiality cannot be observed selectively.".
Once the Citizens' Advice Bureaux or any other agency of this kind which deals with sensitive, personal information, concedes that the detection of a particular crime is of such overriding importance that confidentiality must be breached, the public can no longer have faith in the way in which this information will be treated when they have given it in confidence to one of the counsellors employed by that organisation.
It is really an all or nothing matter. The doctor has an absolute prohibition on giving information, and every patient who comes to discuss sensitive, personal matters with his doctor knows that he can do so in absolute security and that the doctor will not divulge that information to a police officer or to anybody else who might possibly be interested in it. The same applies pari passu to Citizens' Advice Bureaux and to many other personal agencies that give advice on sensitive matters. Therefore, I think that the existence of a clause such as this on the statute book will undermine the confidence of the public in the doctors and in the agencies to whom they would otherwise be quite happy to give this information.
Another point arises on this clause, which follows the discussion we were having on the Inland Revenue. I was very happy to hear the assurances of the noble Lord the Minister that there was nothing in the Bill which undermined the principle which has been applied, certainly from the beginning of the 19th century onwards, that any information that a person gave to an inspector of taxes would not be divulged to another Government agency for any other purpose. But it is a particular case of a general principle that Governments collect information for a variety of purposes and, unless it is otherwise provided by the statute, it is assumed by the person who gives that information that it will only be used for the purposes for which it has been collected.
There are only seven exceptions to the general rule of non-disclosure of this kind which were identified in the work of the Royal Commission on Standards of Conduct in Public Life to which I referred earlier. I shall not go through those provisions individually, but, if the noble Lord cares to refer to them, they are mentioned on page 256 of the report. Therefore, anybody who had provided information under those
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Acts would know for what purposes it might have been disclosed to a third party.
But, when we come to look at Clause 28(2), we see that at any rate a general power is given for the transfer of information collected by a Government and put on to one of its computers, to another computer for a totally different purpose. The noble Lord the Minister will have to assure the Committee—or I hope he will, if he is to satisfy the Committee that this clause should be allowed to pass—that there will not be any general instruction to civil servants that information which they collect—for example, for social security purposes—will be treated as freely available to other arms of the Government for any of the four reasons that are given in subsection (1).
If no assurance of that kind is given, the Government will find that people generally will not be frank and disclose information to Government which is essentially required for everyday purposes. They will simply not trust any civil servant with confidential personal information as they have been able to in the past. The whole of the trust between the people and government, which we have enjoyed in this country for so long, will have been gravely undermined by this one clause in a single Bill—that is, if the Minister has not been prepared to listen to the argument we have been advancing today—and while I do not suppose we shall arrive at a conclusion about this matter now, the Government would be foolish not to listen to the many criticisms that have already been voiced about the clause.
Lord Elton: I wonder whether all the anxiety that has been so eloquently expressed is entirely well founded? The noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, argues that Clause 28(2) is inconsistent with Clauses 9 and 10 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill, now being considered in another place. We are in an interesting situation, with the two Bills in opposite Houses. Shortly we shall have the Changing of the Guard as our Bill marches down there and theirs marches up here, and I suppose they will salute each other on the way. The noble Lord suggested that in doing so, and in catching each other's eye, they will recognise a sort of incompatibility about each other in the area of the ninth or tenth waistcoat button.
Clauses 9 and 10 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill and Clause 28(2) of this Bill address two different situations. The Police and Criminal Evidence Bill deals with cases where police suspect that evidence in connection with an offence is being held by someone who is refusing or is unwilling to give it to them. That evidence may be a document or an item of clothing, but where the person in possession of it does not wish to yield it, the police cannot get it unless they have a power in law to do so, and that is what the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill gives them.
Subsection (2) of the clause in this Bill which we are discussing now faces a quite different set of circumstances. It comes into operation only where a user of data is perfectly willing to disclose information to the police—say, to help them with investigations into a crime—and in those circumstances Clause 28(2) provides that the user may disclose the information at his own discretion, notwithstanding the prohibitions that exist elsewhere on disclosure.

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The important point to seize is that the prohibitions elsewhere referred to are elsewhere in this Bill. What it is setting aside is only the prohibitions in this Bill, and everything else is left the same. The doctors' code is in no way affected by what is said in this provision. In other words, it preserves the present situation where holders of information decide for themselves whether the public interest in disclosing the information for the purposes of crime prevention and associated matters should outweigh any obligation of confidence that the holder owes to the individual subject, and that is as it has always been.
There is no intention to open up a network of communications—of computers' chattering to each other in Government departments like Triffids overnight exchanging data in forms unintelligible to man so that it emerges elsewhere, to pop up and do damage to the unsuspecting data subject. That is not a bad analogy of what noble Lords opposite collectively fear. That is not the purpose at all and this Bill does not in any way affect the confidentiality that already exists in all the fields about which noble Lords opposite are concerned.
To suggest therefore that the same approach must be taken to the quite different situations dealt with in the two Bills is to miss the vital distinction that must be made. It would be wrong to introduce into a Bill protecting individual privacy a police power to get vital evidence in a murder inquiry as a principal object of the Bill. That belongs in the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill, with which we shall be dealing later. Clause 28(2) of this measure neither needs nor seeks to impose any new obligation on holders of information, but it allows them to make their own decision, within the confines of this Bill, as to whether or not to disclose it for important purposes, such as the prevention of crime.
I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, has listened to and will read what I have said as carefully as I have listened to and will read what he and the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, have said. I recognise the anxieties of noble Lords, but I believe that in this instance they may well prove to be ill-founded.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: I hope that in reviewing the position the noble Lord will do me, too, the honour of reading what I ventured to say in introducing this combination of amendments, since my remarks reflected communications that have been addressed to me. I may say that the mailbag on Clause 28 has been almost as great as I was accustomed to receiving in another place on highly controversial issues. There is great concern about this matter in not only the medical profession, but other occupations as well—
Lord Elton: Perhaps I may intervene at this point to give the noble and learned Lord the assurance that he seeks. Of course I did not intend him any discourtesy. He had already shot his bolt earlier. I shall be looking at all the bolts that he shot at that stage as they apply to each individual amendment that is moved.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: There are many bolts left in whatever part of the anatomy one keeps bolts. I assure the noble Lord that we shall return to the attack upon this matter at the Report stage. It is a serious matter,
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and I regret to say that I do not think that the Minister has yet seized, and become aware of, its gravity, but we shall improve his knowledge of it at the next stage. In the circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment No. 149.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
9.32 p.m.
Lord Wigoder Lord Wigoder moved Amendment No. 149ZA:
Page 21, line 28, after ("likely") insert ("substantially").
The noble Lord said: This is a further shot at the same target. It raises the issue of whether, if a person has disclosed personal data in relation, for example, to the prevention or detection of crime—I am thinking, for instance, of a doctor who has chosen to do that voluntarily under the terms of the clause—it should be sufficient for him afterwards to be able to say, "Oh, well, I am exempt from the non-disclosure provisions of this Bill because I had reasonable grounds for believing that failure to make a disclosure would have been likely to prejudice any of those matters", leaving the degree of prejudice to be totally negligible, trivial, almost non-existent, so far as the clause is concerned.
Would it not strengthen the clause, and strengthen also the protection of the individual to whom it relates, if, before a person could claim the protection of the non-disclosure provisions, he had to show that he had reasonable grounds for believing that the failure to make the disclosure would have been likely substantially to prejudice any of the matters set out in Clause 28(1)? That is, I believe, a slight, but significant, strengthening. I beg to move.
Lord Elton: The paragraph which the noble Lord seeks to amend is designed to secure the exemption of data from the non-disclosure provisions where, for instance, the prevention of crime, or the apprehension of offenders, or their prosecution, et cetera would be likely to be prejudiced; and as I read the noble Lord's amendment, he would therefore be content for that process to be prejudiced, provided that the prejudice was not substantial. It seems to me that instantly we get on to very dangerous ground indeed, because there is no definition that I can see of the word "substantially", and one is then going to argue till the cows come home about how much prejudice should be accepted in the apprehension of criminals, the prosecution of offenders, the detection of crime, and so on.
There would of course, be important practical implications that would flow from the amendment as well. How would the "prejudice test" be satisfied? Under Clause 28(1), where the exemption is from subject access, it would be a relatively straightforward question. Will giving a person access be likely to forewarn him of suspicions about him and impede, say, police inquiries, or will the information to which the subject would have access reveal to the subject the precise source of the information, thus leaving informants open to reprisals and discouraging them from providing information? It is clearly vital to avoid helping suspects to thwart inquiries, and discouraging informants from giving information to the police, and either would undoubtedly be likely to prejudice crime prevention or detection and so justify subject access exemption.

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But where exemption from the non-disclosure provisions is concerned (and that is what the noble Lord's amendment applies to) it may not be possible quite so clearly to see the extent of the prejudice in advance. For when the police, say, seek information from a user, they obviously will expect it to be of some value to them, otherwise they would not ask for it; but they may not know how valuable it is until they have actually been given it. It may be of substantial value in identifying a culprit; or it may be only marginal in eliminating a suspect from their inquiries. And, of course, the extent of the prejudice that would be caused by not getting that information would be in direct proportion to the extent of the value if they did get it. I hope that I have shown enough of the pitfalls that I see in this amendment to invite the noble Lord to think about it again.
Lord Wigoder: Of course, I shall do so. There is no definition of the word "substantially" or of the word "prejudice". I venture to think that the use of the word "prejudice" by itself, and the proviso that it is sufficient to claim exemption from the non-disclosure provisions on the most marginal and trivial degree of prejudice, is going to give rise to just as much difficulty as, if not more than, the inclusion of the word "substantially". It might be that the best solution is to drop the whole of subsection (2) and substitute the words which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, moved in Amendment No. 149. But that is another argument. For the moment I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
9.37 p.m.
Lord Wigoder Lord Wigoder moved Amendment No. 149A:
Page 21, line 34, at end insert—
("Provided that in the event of personal data having been disclosed under this subsection for any of the purposes mentioned in subsection (1) above—

(i) the person disclosing such information shall within four weeks of such disclosure notify the Registrar in a prescribed form of the extent and nature of such disclosure and the purpose thereof;

(ii) the Registrar shall within twenty-two weeks of the receipt by him of such notification in the prescribed form make available for inspection by the public the name of the person disclosing, the general nature of the information disclosed, and the purpose for which under subsection (1) it was disclosed;

(iii) any person satisfying the Registrar that he is or may be a data subject in relation to such disclosure shall be entitled in accordance with regulations to be supplied with a copy in writing of that part of the information so disclosed which relates to him.").

The noble Lord said: I apologise for wearying the Committee. This is a further shot again at very much the same target. This is an amendment—and I think that it is the only one to which I have put my name that has been drafted by an outside body, that is, the British Medical Association—which I have been asked to put this to your Lordships. I agree with the substance of it and have said that I will do so. This again concerns the confidential relationship of a doctor and his patient and the desire that it should not be unduly impaired by the operation of this Bill.
Under this Bill—and we are not now discussing the Police Bill—as the noble Lord the Minister made
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perfectly clear a minute or two ago (and I entirely agree with him) it is for the medical practitioner to decide whether he wants to disclose confidential information or not. The anxiety felt by the BMA, among other people, is that where the doctor has the freedom to do that, he should nevertheless only disclose, in breach of his obligation of confidence, in the very rare case where the information is so important that the principle of confidentiality might, in the doctor's view, properly be breached. In other words, it endeavours to set up a situation in which it is recognised by the medical profession that there may be cases in which the public interest in the doctor's disclosing confidential information is so strong that it totally outweighs the possible damage to the doctor-patient relationship that will happen if disclosures are made with any great frequency.
Therefore, it is suggested by this amendment that where there is a disclosure, for example, by a medical man, for the purposes of any of those matters set out in Clause 28(1), the disclosures should come to light rather than remain secret; and they should come to light in the form set out in Amendment No. 149A—in other words, the person disclosing must in due course notify the registrar that he has made a disclosure, the registrar should then take the steps set out in paragraph (ii) of the amendment and, in due course, the person who is the subject of the disclosure may be entitled to be supplied with a copy of the part of the information relating to him.
The purpose of this amendment is to monitor the extent to which such disclosures are to be made by medical practitioners where the obligation of confidentiality prima facie exists. So if it appears that there is an excessive number of such disclosures and that it is weakening fundamentally the doctor-patient relationship, it may be possible to take countermeasures. Under the clause as it stands there could be an unlimited number of such disclosures in total secrecy. That is felt to be quite undesirable. I beg to move.
Lord Swinfen: Surely this could negate the prevention and detection of some crimes. The noble Lord's amendment means that the information disclosed should be made public after a period of six months. Some crimes take longer than six months to solve and to consider. It would allow some criminals to get completely away because they would be warned that the police or someone else was looking out for them. It is not a purely medical matter. It refers to the whole of this clause and not just to the medical aspects. Looked at again it would probably occur to the noble Lord that it is not just medical but is to do with the detection of crime and prevention of crime.
Lord Elton: I am obliged to my noble friend, who has said several of the things that I intended to say much quicker than I would—but not all of them. I understand that the noble Lord is seeking to require users making what we might call exempt disclosures to notify such disclosures to the registrar. He would then be required to publish them in general terms, and by that I understand is meant that no names would be revealed. Finally, an entitlement to subject access to such data may be established on application to the registrar.

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I do not think that the noble Lord has wasted the Committee's time at all. It is an interesting and important area. But I have to say that on the last point alone the amendment must be unacceptable. It would enable subjects to gain access to data disclosed, for example, to the police in the investigation of crime, and my noble friend has put his finger squarely on the fact that it could both prejudice police inquiries by forewarning suspects, and leave users who have disclosed information open to reprisals; and my noble friend did not pick up the latter point.
But the principle behind the amendment does deserve some consideration. Should disclosures that benefit from the exemption in Clause 28(2) have to be notified to the registrar and subsequently published by him? I am in no doubt that we must be very careful here. We must not protect the work of investigating crime with one provision, only to impede it with another. I think that to require all disclosures for these purposes to be published—even in a general form—may be going a great deal too far, certainly if the user who made the disclosure is identified, as the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, suggests. I have to ask, also, whether to publish every disclosure made when a policeman is told some necessary but possibly routine piece of information, perhaps in the course of eliminating a person from inquiries, may be going to undue lengths. We do no want to set up new and considerable bureaucratic procedures here unless we are convinced of the value of them.
But having said that, I should like to give further thought to the possibility of the registrar being alerted to exempt disclosures of a potentially sensitive nature, so that he can ensure that subjects' rights are being protected so far as is consistent with effective law enforcement. This is an area that bristles with practical difficulties. I certainly cannot give a commitment at this stage. But I can go so far as to say that, although we cannot accept the amendment, we will think further about the points that have been made in this discussion.
Lord Wigoder: I am most grateful to both the noble Lords who have spoken on this matter. It was not the intention of those who drafted the amendment to drive a coach and horses through this part of the Bill. I am sure that will be generally accepted. But it was the intention to try to see whether machinery could be found which would ensure that such disclosures as took place in accordance with Clause 28 could, if possible, be monitored to ensure that the provisions were not being abused.
I am particularly grateful for what the noble Lord the Minister said about the fact that he would look at the point in principle at any rate. I am sure that, if the body which asked me to raise this matter can be of any assistance, they will be very happy to co-operate in doing so. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Mishcon Lord Mishcon moved Amendments Nos. 150 and 151:
Page 21, line 35, leave out subsection (3).
Page 21, line 39, leave out subsection (4).
The noble Lord said: With the Committee's permission, may I take No. 151 with No. 150? I will be brief. First, may I say that Amendment No. 150 is rather in the nature of a probing amendment. I am not quite sure—this is a minor point—why, from a drafting point of view, subsections (3) and (4) are not merged instead referring to each other in a rather ugly way. If the noble Lord, Lord Renton, were here I can just see him nod as I make these, I hope, not senseless observations on the draftsmanship.
The substantial point I cannot understand is this, and perhaps the noble Lord the Minister will be able to help me. The two subsections mean, as I understand them, that where you have a case where there is the likelihood of prejudice to the matters which we now know by heart that are listed in subsection (1), then personal data are exempt from those provisions, as I understand it, in Part II of the Bill, which confer powers on the registar relating to what the noble and learned Lord calls "Commandment No. 1"—that is:
"the information to be contained in personal data shall be obtained and personal data shall be processed fairly and lawfully".
The simple question I ask is—and of course it may be an over-simplification because I may have missed something—why should information about any of these matters not be obtained fairly and lawfully?
Lord Elton: I wonder whether the noble Lord spent some time construing these subsections together, as I did. I think that my answer must be simply a paraphrase of what lies within the sections. I understand that the distillation of the meaning of the two subsections is, to the extent to which they are exercisable by reference to the first data protection principle, that
"the provisions conferring powers on the Registrar in Part II of this Act shall not apply to personal data in any case where, if such provisions were not supplied, such application would be likely to prejudice any of the matters mentioned in subsection (1) above".
I wonder whether the noble Lord would read that tomorrow morning and see whether it elucidates his question.
Lord Mishcon: I can well picture the noble Lord the Minister writing this out with great care last night, having, as he said, studied every line of it. The least I can do in courtesy, since he has taken so much trouble—I am sure personally writing out those words—is to say that certainly I will look at it. In the circumstances, I ask leave to withdraw Amendments Nos. 150 and 151.
Amendments, by leave, withdrawn.
9.49 p.m.
On Question, Whether Clause 28 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Campbell of Alloway: May I raise a short point on Clause 28? I shall be very brief. It is apparent from the debates in your Lordships' House during the passage of the Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, which is now on its way to another place—the Juries (Amendment) Bill—that a system must be devised which will involve the use of computers to enable those responsible for empanelling juries to know about previous convictions of jurors

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before they are empanelled. In submission, as drafted, Clause 28 does not purport to deal, and indeed does not deal, with this situation. I wonder, with respect, whether consideration could be given perhaps to including in Clause 28(1) a sub-category (e) to read something like this:
"the empanelling of jurors in implementation of any statutory requirement".
I only rise at this late hour because all your Lordships feel, as I do, that this question of the empanelling of jurors is a very important point. We shall need to have resort to the computers. It is a matter which I feel your Lordships would not wish to be overlooked.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I, too, shall be very brief. I confess that the noble Lord the Minister lost me in his construing of subsections (3) and (4), and therefore my remarks are genuinely directed at the whole of Clause 28. My question about the whole of Clause 28 is one which I confess does not appear in the wording at the moment. I can quite see the reasons why information relating to a criminal investigation should not be made generally available, in such a way as to damage the course of that criminal investigation. But I suggest that a large number of the queries which may arise about criminal records will not be about criminal investigations which are in the course of being pursued, but will come from those who may find themselves on criminal records and will be about the accuracy of those records.
My question is this. Is it in any way possible when we come back to this at a later stage for the rather draconian exemptions which we find in this clause at the moment to be limited in such a way that those who have reason to suspect that their names may be found on criminal records, and that information about them may be found on criminal records, have the right of access and the opportunity to correct any inaccuracies?
Lord Elton: I am obliged to both noble Lords for putting in my mind considerations which I think should be there before we reach the Report stage. I noticed the smile, but not the intervention, of the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, as his favourite progeny
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was mentioned as another companion of this Bill. The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, asked us to address our minds to what he calls the draconian nature of the exemptions which are at present in the Bill, and, in particular, to the effect which they may have of excluding from knowledge of what is on criminal records the people to whom they relate, who would be concerned if they were inaccurate. I have taken the point on board.
I have to remind the noble Lord that there is not a general freedom of access to criminal records at present, and if there were the system would dissolve into chaos. If one could detect which were the inaccurate records and release those, so that they could be corrected and returned, that would doubtless be very useful. But I see difficulties in opening the whole mass of information, whether it is on paper or on computer, for examination by what, in large part, will prove to be the criminal fraternity, who would be most grateful to the noble Lord for his giving them access to it, but I do not think anybody else would.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The noble Lord the Minister used the word "general", and he defined that word earlier in this Committee's consideration as being available to other people. I did not say that. What I said was that the person who suspects that there may be an entry on a criminal record about himself or herself should have the right of access to that record, in order to check whether or not it is inaccurate. That is not access to the criminal fraternity in general.
Lord Elton: I am sorry. The generality was applied to the criminal fraternity. Each person is able to inquire about himself. The noble Lord is suggesting that Burglar Bill, the rapist, the arsonist and so on should be as free as anyone else, presumably, to inquire whether his misdeeds are accurately recorded, and whether the suspicions that are held against him can be confirmed or denied. It is a proposition which, at first blush, I do not find attractive. But, of course, as always, I will consider between now and Report what he has said.
Clause 28 agreed to.
Clause 29 [Health and Social Work]:
9.55 p.m.
Lord Wigoder Lord Wigoder moved Amendment No. 152:
Page 22, line 1, leave out ("may") and insert ("shall").
The noble Lord said: This is the last matter related to medical records that I desire to raise this evening. It concerns the right of access of a patient to medical records which are held, perhaps by his doctor, perhaps by the National Health Service, perhaps by his insurance company. It is quite clear that it is a matter of much concern in the interests of the patient, and it is equally clear that total frankness in medical and mental reports is obviously desirable in the interests of the patient, to such an extent that there may well be circumstances in which it is not in the patient's interests that the patient should have access to those documents.
The only purpose of this very modest amendment, to substitute for the word "may" the word "shall", is to ask the noble Lord the Minister to recognise, as I am sure he will, that the Secretary of State accepts that he has the obligation to continue the discussions which I believe he is having with the medical profession at the moment, and that he will in due course make orders under this subsection. I beg to move.
Lord Elton: I do recognise, as your Lordships all will, that the application of data protection legislation to the health field raises difficult and delicate questions which can only be resolved through informed comment and debate. In considering this amendment, I would say one thing before addressing the particular question of how data about health should be treated. The amendment seeks to place the Secretary of State under an obligation to exempt certain data by order. On that ground alone the amendment would be objectionable. Under Clause 36(4) all such orders are subject to the discretion of Parliament. It is not the Secretary of State but Parliament which is in control of whether the order is made or not, and noble Lords will accept that the Bill must not force the registrar to do what elsewhere it empowers Parliament to prevent him from doing.
Your Lordships will wish me to give some indication of how we see the order-making power being exercised, and I am happy to do that. Medical and health data can be particularly sensitive when it comes to subject access. Is it right for a mentally unstable person to have access to all psychiatric reports on him? What would be the effect on a patient who thinks himself perfectly healthy suddenly to discover that his doctor has diagnosed a disease? What if that disease is described as incurable or terminal? These are questions that cannot be brushed aside on the basis that subject access is a sacred principle. In considering these issues the Government are consulting closely with doctors and other professionals in the health field about what arrangements for subject access should be made.
We do not want to disallow subject access altogether unless that proves really necessary. What we are investigating is the possibility of placing some controls on subject access so that harm to the subjects themselves can be avoided, while at the same time
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giving access freely where there is no danger of harm to the subject. I do not want to say more and risk prejudging the outcome of the careful consideration that is now being given to these matters, but I hope I have said enough to indicate the general approach that we have in mind.
Lord Avebury: I hope that when the noble Lord is consulting with the doctors he will consider a particular case of difficulty which has arisen, which, although it does not relate to information held on computers, may well do so in the future; that is, the reports which are made by doctors in relation to a person's mental state when he comes before a court of law.
At the time, the reports are obviously made available to the court and to the person's solicitors. But when requests have been made by the person, who has subsequently been convicted, for copies of the reports, which he may require in connection with an assessment of his suitability for a transfer to a special psychiatric hospital under Section 72 of the Mental Health Act, the individual doctors who have made the psychiatric reports for the purposes of the court proceedings may subsequently decline to give the patient a copy, even though it is within his knowledge and has been presented in evidence during the course of his trial.
I consulted the British Medical Association on this and it took the view that no question of medical ethics was involved, and that the individual doctor ought to disclose the contents of such a report if it could be useful to the patient in the course of his attempts to clarify his position under Section 72. But the individual doctors were not influenced by the advice that they received from the British Medical Association. During the course of the discussions which he has with the profession on the subject access provisions of the Bill, I wonder whether the noble Lord would take the opportunity to clarify what may be a very important point.
Lord Elton: I am obliged to the noble Lord for bringing us back to ground which we nearly trod on during consideration of the Mental Health (Amendment) Bill, as it then was. Certainly I am seized of the anxieties expressed and I shall see that they are part of our consultation.
Lord Wigoder: This was in the nature of a probing amendment. I am content with the response which has been given to it by the noble Lord the Minister. I beg leave to withdraw.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Whether Clause 29 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Digby: I welcome this clause. It is of great importance that records required for social work should be completely confidential. In the Bill we are particularly concerned with the rights of the individual as against the data user. However, in social work the rights of children are paramount. There is a great public outcry when children are harmed by parents who, with hindsight, are patently quite unfit to look after them. But any evidence which the social workers have acted upon is very often subjective, or hearsay. It

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is most important that the compilers of these reports should be able to give their opinions freely without the worry that the parents would have access to their remarks. These are cases which would quite patently come under the heading of social work and be covered by the clause. However, there are some cases where educational and social work may overlap. I should be most grateful if my noble friend the Minister could tell me whether the following cases would come under the heading of social work in this subsection.
First, there are the special education records under the Education Act 1981. Your Lordships will remember that this Act changed the law on special education following the Warnock Report, which took a wider view of special educational needs and encouraged them to be met in an integrated setting. The rights of parents are fully protected under this Act and the statements of special educational needs, together with the professional advice on which it is based, must be made available to parents. However, there are likely to be other details on record whose communication might give rise to problems of confidentiality. In my opinion, these special education records are of a social work nature. I should be grateful if my noble friend could confirm that they would be covered by the clause.
My second point relates to the education welfare officers whose duties today extend far beyond those of the Education Act 1944 which originally set them up and are now much closer to conventional social work.
It may be that both of the cases I have cited are academic because at present their records are not normally computerised, but things are moving so fast in this direction that it would be of great help to local authorities if the Government would give an assurance that they consider that both special education and education welfare records could be covered by the exemptions in the existing Bill. If not, I should have to consider whether an amendment ought to be put down at a later stage.
Lord Elton: The term "social work" is not used in the Bill in a technical sense. We are, as we have said, in the process of consulting interested parties and representative groups in the social work field as to what particular data will need to be covered by order under Clause 29(2). At this stage I do not wish to prejudge the outcome of those consultations, so I hope my noble friend will understand that I cannot give a firm assurance as to whether these particular data will be covered. But in principle we accept that education welfare officers do sometimes perform functions which involve the carrying out of social work and that their records contain similar data to those contained in those of social workers and that to that extent their records may well, for the purposes of Clause 29(2), need to be treated in the same way as those of social workers.
I might add that, in general terms, the Government take the same view in relation to those aspects of probation records which are concerned with the performance and functions which can be regarded as falling under the head of social work. My noble friend's second question concerned subject access to special educational records. To the extent that such
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records do contain personal data as to the physical or mental health of the subject, they may well benefit from the provisions of Clause 29(1)—but I should point out that disclosure of statements of special educational needs prepared under the Education Act 1981 is restricted under the Education (Special Educational Needs) Regulations 1983. In effect, the child may have access only with the parents' consent.
In general, such restrictions will, by virtue of Clause 26(4) of the present Bill, be overridden by the right of subject access. However, Clause 32(1) allows the Secretary of State to preserve specified restrictions by exempting personal data covered by them from subject access. We are examining the question of access to statements of special educational needs to determine whether they should be covered by a Clause 32(1) exemption on the ground that the 1983 regulations' restrictions on disclosure should prevail over the subject access provisions of the Bill. I hope that I have gone far enough to reassure my noble friend on these points.
Clause 29 agreed to.
Clause 30 agreed to.
10.7 p.m.
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone moved Amendment No. 152A:
After Clause 30, insert the following new clause:
("Personal data al a routine nature in business.
.Personal data held by a data user solely for the purposes of his own business or profession and in respect of which the data subjects are his employees or former employees or other individuals with whom he deals in the course of such business or profession are exempt from the provisions of Parts II and III of this Act.").
The noble Lord said: This amendment was inspired mainly by my noble friend Lord Colville of Culross, who sadly cannot be with us because he is on Government duty overseas. Your Lordships may remember that on Second Reading (Official Report, Vol. 437, col. 1562), my noble friend made quite a point about the fact that there would probably be a great deal of information which might be registered which was of a routine nature in businesses and would not really justify that sort of treatment. The point of this amendment is to allow of the possibility of that sort of information being excluded from the provisions of Parts II and III of this Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Elton: We are now embarking on a series of amendments with a common theme; that certain data are of a kind that have no potential for harm or misuse and that therefore they do not need to be brought within the scope of this Bill. A happy thought, but one we may not be able to seize upon. My noble friend has ably indicated the attractions of this approach. They are, first, the fear that if every single data user is caught by the Bill, the size of the register will be quite unmanageable; secondly, that it is just plain unnecessary for certain users to come under the registrar's supervision at all.
As to the question of the size of the register, we believe that with the aid of modern technology, which has given rise after all to the need for the Bill itself, the compilation and use of a large register will not pose

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insuperable problems. On the second point, we do have some sympathy. Indeed, I will go further. If we can identify a category of data which everybody can agree will pose no possible threat if unregulated, and in respect of which nobody would be concerned about lacking the rights that the Bill provides for subjects, then in principle we shall be ready to be persuaded. But those are not easy tests to satisfy, and many of those people who have studied this subject over the years have been forced to conclude that there is no such thing as wholly harmless data.
Let us consider the category that my noble friend has sought to isolate and has described as "routine" in his amendment. It would exempt for a start all staff records held by a commercial or professional concern—although, oddly enough, not by a noncommercial concern, and there seems no logic in that, although I will not pursue the matter. Therefore, whatever an employee of a commercial firm might fear, and however much he might suspect that inaccurate or misleading data were the reason for a particular attitude throughout the company towards him, or towards his promotion, he would have no right of access to the data, no recourse to the registrar to help him, no remedies.
Then there are data about persons with whom the user deals in business. There may be records of a person as a bad debtor or as being dishonest. It could be extremely damaging, as the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, will readily realise—all we are doing now is looking at the innocent trader with a company, as he was looking at the possibly innocent person with a criminal record—to such a person if a large corporate user makes this information available through its computerised records to all its staff in all its branches, especially if the information is mistaken. Yet under the amendment no rights for the data subject would exist.
I hope my noble friend will not think that I am concentrating on the minor blemishes in the amendment to the exclusion of the validity of the central principle. The difficulty is—and it is a genuine difficulty, because we have thought long and hard on the matter—that, however we define the category of data to be exempted, the blemishes reappear. There invariably seem to be real circumstances where leaving the data unregulated could damage both the data subject and the credibility of the overall scheme. I want to emphasise that I accept and understand the basis on which my noble friend has founded his amendment, and the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, has adopted a not dissimilar approach in an amendment tabled in his name. If a workable, readily identifiable area of data could be excluded safely without arousing concern among subjects, and if the terms of categorisation could be precisely and satisfactorily drawn in statutory terms we would not be ill-disposed to it, but we are not at all convinced that such a category exists. Like the unicorn, it is immensely attractive, but I have never seen one.
Lord Mottistone: I am deeply grateful to my noble friend for giving such a clear answer to this rather difficult problem. I fully understand the points that he made, and I hope that my noble friend Lord Colville
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will do so when he comes to read the account of the debate. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 31 [Domestic or other limited purposes]:
10.12 p.m.
Lord Teviot Lord Teviot moved Amendment No. 153:
Page 22, line 28, leave out subsection (1).
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 153, which is probing and is one of which I have given my noble friend prior notice. As the Bill stands in Clause 31(1), personal data held by an individual concerned only with the management of his personal family or household affairs are exempt from registration. Your Lordships will appreciate that this is an entirely different point from what we have been discussing, and I hope you will appreciate the diversion. Your Lordships will be aware that there are many private individuals and family historians who store data on small computers which can now be purchased at a very modest price. The information they keep is not only in relation to themselves and their immediate families but even to remoter members of their families and even to people of the same name. In addition to private individuals, there are one-name family history societies who equally store information on the same name. They rightly question whether they are allowed to do so unless they go to the considerable expense of registering. I should like my noble friend to comment on that point.
The Bill allows exemptions to unincorporated members of clubs relating only to members of the clubs. My amendment deals with Clause 31(1) and perhaps I should be dealing with this on the Question, That the clause stand part, but as there are quite a few other amendments on this clause which are some way from the subject I hope your Lordships will forgive me for dealing with it here. I should like to ask my noble friend the position of incorporated societies like the Society of Genealogists, whose amendment this is, and other learned societies. If they hold computer information about their members, do they have to register, because I think in regard to that they would feel considerable hardship? Also on that point, perhaps my noble friend can tell me why he has chosen "unincorporated" as against "corporated"? I have been brief, but I hope I have said enough. I beg to move.
Lord Avebury: May I take this opportunity of asking the Minister what is the position of personal records kept by Members of Parliament for the purposes of their work? I ask this—
Lord Elton: I am sorry, but I lost the beginning of what the noble Lord said and I think it is crucial to the end.
Lord Avebury: I am taking the opportunity of this amendment to ask the Minister: what is the position regarding exemption of personal data records kept by Members of Parliament in the course of their duties? As the noble Lord will probably appreciate, I have a personal interest in his answer because I keep my immigration case records on a computer which I have

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in my office. It would be obviously taking an enormous sledgehammer to crack a nut if the registration provisions of the Bill were to extend to the kind of records that I keep in my office or that other noble Lords or Members in another place may keep to assist them in the course of their duties. Although I do not see that they would be exempted by subsection (1) as it stands, I take this opportunity of asking the Minister whether he does not think that, with the increasing adoption of computer technologies by Members of both Houses of Parliament, it will be necessary to have some kind of exemption in the Bill of the kind that I suggest.
Lord Elton: I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Teviot for the notice he gave me of the reasons for this amendment, which enabled me to reply rather more intelligibly than I could otherwise have done. I was not aware of his interest in the pursuit of genealogy on the small scale, for which I apologise to him.
My noble friend has queried the extent of the exemption which Clause 31(1) provides, and he has instanced the problem faced by genealogists and family historians wishing to conduct their research with the assistance of home computers, but who need a little information about living persons in order to provide the necessary link with earlier generations.
I am sorry to have to inform my noble friend that it is our understanding that the sort of activity which he has in mind would not qualify for exemption under the terms of Clause 31(1). Certainly the dictionary tells us that the term "family" is capable of wide interpretation. There are some who would tell us that the whole human race is one family by common descent from Adam. But I fear that the scope of the provision is substantially narrowed by the terms "management" and "affairs". It is not just any personal data related to one's family for which Clause 31(1) provides, but personal data "concerned only with the management" of one's family "affairs". These terms carry with them the very definite sense of administering or controlling functions relevant to the person concerned. This may be something intangible, like preserving the cohesion of the family unit, or a more practical task of maintaining the accounts, or sending out birthday cards on time, but the sense of performing a function in relation to those individuals is very firmly there in the clause as drafted. I am afraid that the activities of concern to my noble friend, where those elements will not be present, or will be only accidentally present, will not fall within the formulation of Clause 32(1).
I realise that this answer will be something of a disappointment to my noble friend and to those on whose behalf he has raised this issue. I am afraid that it is inevitable with any exemption scheme—I have to echo what I said on the last debate—that some activities will be covered by it, while others, not apparently significantly different, will fail to meet the test for exemption. If we went on indefinitely attempting to deal with the hard cases we should find that we had no Bill left at the end of it.
I have to look at the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, with a mixture of sorrow and amusement because I
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have to tell him that, if the Bill reaches the statute book in the form that I hope it will, the first subject access application that anyone will be receiving will be mine to the noble Lord to see what he has on me, because I have a volume of correspondence with him which suggests that there will be a good deal. I have to say, if he does not like it, that I find that there is a great deal that we have in common, because we do a lot with prisons too. I find that everybody wants data protection to apply to everybody but themself, and everybody wants more prisons in the United Kingdom except next door to them. There is a remarkable similarity there.
Registration, as I have said on a number of occasions, will not be an onerous requirement, but I realise that it will still leave the necessity for the payment of a fee. I would not want my noble friend to conclude that the Government are unsympathetic to the problem that he has highlighted. I cannot give a guarantee that we shall be able to find a way of exempting the apparently innocuous activities to which he has drawn our attention (I like the word "apparently" here; I wonder what deep suspicion lay behind the advice of the possibility on non-innocuous genealogical research). I cannot do that without at the same time creating possible loopholes in the general scheme. I do not underestimate the difficulty of finding some workable formula, and I do not wish to raise false hopes. But, with that proviso, I am prepared to say that the Government will look again at the position of those engaged in this sort of research, and to see whether there is any way in which the impact of the Bill's provisions upon them might be modified.
Lord Teviot: I must say that I almost take umbrage at the word "innocuous". We have had plenty of arguments about "vexatious", but "innocuous" sounds worse than "vexatious". However, I shall not take umbrage on this occasion. I shall read every word that my noble friend has said. He has been kind enough to say that he will look into the matter again and I shall be in touch with him between now and the next stage. With those comments, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
10.23 p.m.
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone moved Amendment No. 153A:
Page 22, line 34, leave out second ("and").
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 153A and, with the permission of the Committee, I would like to take also Amendment No. 153B for which Amendment No. 153A is a paving amendment. The purpose of this amendment is to ensure that when electronic mailing systems and word processors are used for the purpose of preparation and transmission of correspondence, they shall be exempt from the registration and subject access provisions of the Bill. If your Lordships will bear with me I think that I had better expand on that because it is quite a serious point.
Electronic mailing systems are the modern analogues of the familiar labour-intensive manual postal system. Correspondence is carried via telecommunication links, quickly and efficiently to the

725
point of use. The information handled, which may incidentally fall into the personal category, is stored and forwarded. Although such systems are currently confined to business use, it is likely that they will eventually become available to the general public for private use. The principles of confidentiality and inviolability of the traditional mail now require updating to take account of such developments.
The word processor is the modern successor to the typewriter and indeed is fast becoming as widely used throughout business and Government service. At present several tens of thousands are in use and the number is likely to reach seven figures by 1986. Word processors enable users to compose correspondence, reports and other documents significantly faster, more conveniently and accurately than the earlier devices. Such correspondence, exactly like that produced on typewriters, may be of a private and confidential nature and could well include information concerning identified individuals. Under certain circumstances some word processors may communicate with each other—that is, they may combine letter writing with a mailing facility.
To bring the use of these devices for correspondence within the scope of registration might place an entirely unnecessary extra burden on both users and the registrar alike. If the subject access provisions were to apply, users might be driven to reverting to the original methods despite their lower productivity which in business of course costs more money. Business cannot go on without correspondence mentioning individuals, nor can it proceed in the goldfish howl of subject access. However, in considering this matter in relation to word processors it has to be borne in mind that some word processors can be used to process data as defined in Clause 1(7), and one accepts that such use should be registrable and open to subject access.
I suggest that this is one of the special subjects which will expand very rapidly in the future. If my noble friend cannot accept the amendment as it stands, perhaps he can give thought to this matter with a view to finding some way in which this new electronic machinery can be handled without putting an unreasonable or an unfair burden on his new system. I beg to move.
Lord Elton: Perhaps my noble friend will forgive me if I am brief because he has so narrowed his definition that I can discard much of what I had planned to say. The nub of it is that his amendment does not have the effect of excluding electronic mail, Personal data carried by electronic mail, as described by my noble friend, are not in the normal course of events covered by the definition of "processing" in Clause 1. My noble friend may find himself reassured by that, but I shall further consider what he said in the interim period between now and Report in case I have not understood him correctly.
Lord Mottistone: I thank my noble friend. Perhaps my noble friend will appreciate that there are aspects of this which bridge the gap. What is so difficult is to find some sort of phraseology which excludes what he has told me he thinks is now excluded. But some of this equipment will do processing within the terms of the Bill. So if he cares to study that aspect of it, it would be helpful.
Lord Elton: I am sorry to delay the Committee, but it will help me if I can take this on board. My noble friend is talking about machines which are not simply word processors which work as addressing machines in correlation with correspondence produced on them, but they also update the addresses and move them around. I take it that he is asking whether that is processing and, if it is caught by Clause 1, what about word processors?
Lord Mottistone: Yes. And how do we identify the two types of equipment? With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 153B not moved.]
10.28 p.m.
Lord Elwyn-Jones Lord Elwyn-Jones moved Amendment No. 154:
Page 22, line 43, after ("paragraph") insert ("and being disclosed to others").
The noble and learned Lord said: This amendment relates to Clause 31 and the exemption of,
"personal data held only for the purpose of distributing, or recording the distribution of, articles to the data subjects and consisting only of their names and addresses".
That provision is presumably intended to exempt mail order lists. There is no reason why they should not have some exemption, but we submit only while they continue to be used by the original supplier. The sale of these things is becoming something of a pest and a nuisance. If the person concerned wishes to sell or rent his list to others, we submit that this should be possible only if the data subjects do not object. It is not enough for them to be content that he should hold their data. If he is to be entirely exempted from the ambit of the present Bill, he would then become entitled to disclose the lists as well. We submit that before that can happen the data subjects should have an opportunity of objecting not only to the mere holding, but also to the disclosure.
I think that the public are getting fed up with the shower of invitations to obtain a motor car by rubbing a pen on a piece of paper or something; and they flood one's house with a mass of junk that one is asked to buy at cheap rates. It is all a very big nuisance and I hope that the Committee will approve this amendment. I beg to move.
Lord Elton: There are devices which allow one to immerse these things in water for a time, compress them and use them as solid fuel, but that is not within the scope of this Bill. Subsection (2) of this clause refers in particular to personal data held by unincorporated members' clubs and by those who use names and addresses for the purpose of distributing articles. The example in this area may help specialised clubs and societies who use micro-computers to record their membership lists and circulate their regular newsletter, and bodies such as churches who may not be unincorporated clubs but who also may use a micro-computer, for example to circulate the parish magazine; some parishes are very go-ahead.
The Government think it very unlikely indeed that holding data in these situations could result in harm

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being caused to data subjects. However, we thought it was necessary to qualify the exemption to avoid all possibility of harm. This qualification is set out in subsection (3) and it takes the form of a requirement on users to ask subjects if they object to the data being held. Clearly, if the subject objects, the exemption cannot be claimed and the data will have to be registered. I should stress at this point that failure to object is not a once-and-for-all matter; the effect of subsection (3) is that a subject may object at any time. And if a subject does object, the user cannot maintain a claim to exemption in respect of that subject's data. In these circumstances, the user would either have to apply for registration or delete the data relating to the individual who objected. I think that is what the noble and learned Lord is after.
I have listened with interest to the case he made for the amendment, and I have come to the view that we should look further at the exemption as it is drafted. The amendment has drawn my attention to the fact that exempt data, to which a subject has not objected, can be disclosed to another user who can also claim the exemption. I can quite understand that there is a case for giving the subject some control over these disclosures, for the reasons the noble and learned Lord gave. I would therefore like to give an assurance that the Government will take another look at this point. I do not think the amendment quite meets the point; it does not allow the subject to agree in the holding of the data and yet to object to the disclosure. It also requires subjects to be asked to consent to disclosure even where the user has no wish to disclose. But I see what the noble and learned Lord is after and I hope he will be content for me to pursue it.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: I am very content with that and, in the circumstances and with that assurance, I ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone moved Amendment No. 154A:
Page 22, line 43, at end insert ("or unless, in the case of personal data of the kind referred to in subsection (2)(b) above, it is readily available to members of the public in a published register or directory").
The noble Lord said: There is a vast amount of material consisting of names and addresses of individuals contained in readily available published registers and directories—that is, telephone directories—of which valuable use is made by traders for the purpose of mailing lists and so on. At present the Bill appears to exempt personal data of that kind from the control requirements of Parts II and III and Clause 31(2)(b), but only where the data subject has been asked whether he objects to the data relating to him being held, and has not objected. Clearly, it would be impracticable for a trader to ask permission of every data subject to make use of information contained in a telephone directory, and there seems no reason why he should be required to do so in the case of data which is so publicly available. The purpose of the amendment is to correct the position. I beg to move.
Lord Elton: First let me indicate how we see the very limited exemption in Clause 31(2)(b) being of use to
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data users. We do not see it as being of great benefit to commercial mailing companies, because very few such companies hold only names and addresses: they usually hold other data as well, such as the subject's socio-economic grouping or his interest in particular goods. Rather, the exemption is aimed to be of much more limited application: for example, as I said earlier, for local churches who use a micro-computer to list the recipients of the parish magazine.
Secondly, I cannot accept the basic principle of the amendment. In effect, it would totally remove the safeguard provided for the subject in subsection (3), for virtually every subject's name and address are recorded in a register or directory—the electoral register or a street or telephone directory, and so on. Thus, virtually every subject would be deprived by the amendment of the ability to refuse to consent to his name and address being held on a user's computer. Yet the data would, under the amendment, be exempt; and even though they might be inaccurate—or unfairly collected, or being transferred to others for the distribution of quite inappropriate articles—they would not be supervised by the registrar. On both those grounds, I cannot commend the amendment.
Lord Mottistone: I understand what my noble friend has said, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Wigoder Lord Wigoder moved Amendment No. 155:
Page 22, line 43, at end insert?—
("(4) Personal data are exempt from the provisions of Parts II and III of this Act if they do not include any of the information specified in section 2(3) above and if they have been obtained only from the data subject or from published reference material and if they are not disclosed to any third party.")
The noble Lord said: May I say how much I agree with what the noble Lord the Minister said a little earlier; namely, that we cannot go through this part of the Bill dealing in hard cases. I am sure that that is right, and I should like to take an obvious example of it. If one looks at Clause 31(1), where the Government are proposing to exempt certain classes of personal data, one will see that those who drafted the noble Lord's brief could, if they wanted, within the space of a few minutes discover enough hard cases to make one have second thoughts about that provision.
One must take a robust view about this matter, and I am much encouraged by what the noble Lord the Minister has said about his desire, if possible, to help in particular industry to see that the burden on it is minimised, if that can be done without any possible danger to the data subject. This amendment attempts to do that by avoiding the need for the registration of material such as large numbers of sales ledgers, lists of names and addresses and telephone numbers, and so on, much of which comes from published reference material, or from the data subject himself. It contains two safeguards. First, it excludes sensitive information, as defined in Clause 2(3) of the Bill, and, secondly, it has the proviso that it must not be disclosed to a third party.
The amendment links up with what the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, has been raising on various occasions during the consideration of the Bill. I do not for one minute suppose that it is satisfactory in its present form. I should be perfectly satisfied for the

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moment if the noble Lord the Minister would say that he approves in principle of the attempt to find an exemption of this nature, and then leave it perhaps to the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, and myself and others who are interested to see whether we can evolve a satisfactory and acceptable amendment by the time of the next stage of the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Mottistone: I should like, briefly, to say that I should be very happy to join with the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, and try to thrash out something which combines the best of what he has here as well as my original amendment, No. 52 (which we took on the first day) and the other points raised on the same subject. Perhaps at the Report stage we shall be able to come back with something which the Government might even like the look of.
Lord Elton: I never object to people hunting unicorns and I always hope that they will eventually succeed. Since the hour is late, I am almost tempted to leave it at that, but I think I should go on to say that the noble Lord is seeking to categorise data as harmless, and to exempt them from the Bill, if they have three characteristics: that they are not sensitive as itemised in Clause 2(3); that they have come from the subject himself, or from published reference material; and that they are not disclosed to anyone. On the surface of it, what could be more innocuous? Unfortunately, however, we cannot rely on the surface alone. We have to go a little deeper; and what do we then find?
Well, I am sorry to have to say, just as I had to say about the category proposed by my noble friend Lord Mottistone (with whom the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, is to enter into alliance between now and the Report stage), that we find that the data may not be quite as incapable of misuse as we thought. For example, data subjects may happily give information for one purpose, but is it right that there should be no control over its use for a quite different purpose, and no ability by the subject to check what that purpose may be? A person may happily provide his name and address to a record club distributing classical music, but if he then finds that the data he supplied are being used to send him prurient literature, he may take a dim view that the Bill does not cover the data user concerned; and of course vice versa. That example illustrates two other points. First, what happens if the subject changes his mind and decides that he does not want data held about him, and what happens if his circumstances have changed and the data have been rendered inaccurate? He has no rights and no recourse to the registrar. Secondly, published reference material may appear innocuous because of its general availability, but there is enough of it about in different forms for a comprehensive picture to be drawn upon a computer that could be used for a number of purposes. Is it really right, I have to ask myself, that a user of such collated data, just because all the sources are published reference material, should be beyond reach of the Bill and the registrar?
I do not want to go on. I have indicated some areas of difficulty. These are the blemishes that I spoke of earlier which keep on emerging whatever definition we produce. I may have to repeat myself later in the Bill,
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in which case I shall simply remind your Lordships of this little diatribe and hope to get away with not repeating it.
Lord Wigoder: As the noble Lord has said, we must not deal in hard cases. I propose in the circumstances to ask leave to withdraw this amendment but to come back to it, beyond any question, at a later stage.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 31 agreed to.
Clause 32 [Other exemptions]:
10.41 p.m.
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone moved Amendment No. 155A:
Page 23, line 1, after ("exempt") insert ("or modify")
The noble Lord said: With leave, I should like to take Amendments Nos. 155B and 156A with this amendment. These three amendments, I am persuaded, will widen subsection (1) of Clause 32 in areas where it can be said that it is unnecessarily narrow. It might be thought by my noble friend that it would be reasonable in the first line to have "or modify" as well as "exempt"; and that he might like to cover in head (a) "or any rule of law"; and that he might like to specify the nature in the first line of head (b). It seems to me that these are reasonable amendments of a small nature, not ones that one would go to the stake on, even if it were not so late. My noble friend might think they were reasonable to include in the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, in moving his amendment said that his intention was to widen the scope of subsection (1) of this clause. I should have thought that that was the reverse of what was needed. My question to the noble Lord the Minister is this. In what way could the scope of this subsection he any wider? Specifically, I am asking him about subsection (1)(a) where it speaks of information,
"the disclosure of which is prohibited or restricted by or under any enactment".
If we look at Government-held data, is it not the case that all Government-held data is, in fact, restricted by the Official Secrets Act and, therefore, all Government data is already excluded from the scope of this clause? When one looks at subsection (1)(b), the wording of that (as will be seen from the next amendment to be considered) is so wide that one could drive many coaches and horses through it. Is there any way in which this clause could be any wider or in which it could do more damage to the Bill than the way in which it is drafted at the moment?
Lord Elton: After that spirited intervention, I will deal first, if I may, with My noble friend. I hope I can explain quickly why Clause 32(1) needs only to refer to exempting data from the subject-access provisions even though Clause 29(1) refers also to modifying those provisions. The purpose of Clause 32(1) is simply to allow for certain existing statutory restrictions to be preserved so that they are not overridden by this Bill's subject access provisions. We shall consider in a moment the circumstances under which this may be necessary. Only total exemption

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from those provisions will achieve the necessary aims: mere modification would not. Under Clause 29(1), as I indicated in the context of Amendment No. 152, it may prove desirable to allow access under certain considerations; and therefore it is necessary to have the power to modify the subject access provisions in that instance. I hope those few words will be sufficient to reassure my noble friend and his advisors that there is no need for any reference to "modify" in Clause 32(1).
My noble friend spoke also to Amendment No. 155B and suggested that the order-making power in Clause 32(1) should be capable of extending to existing common law restrictions or prohibitions on disclosure of information—as well as to those of a statutory nature. If he did not suggest it in words, it was there on the Marshalled List. He clearly has in mind information to which an obligation of confidence attaches at common law.
That is not our intention here, nor should it be. If we were to exempt from subject access all data held under a common law obligation of confidence, we would be down-grading very sharply the entitlement to subject access. Subjects would be prevented from gaining access to a vast area of personal data held about them. Indeed, any user seeking information about a subject from a third party could very simply arrange matters so that it was given in confidence, and he would thereby avoid having to grant subject access. We do not wish or intend to use Clause 32(1) orders to exempt data to which common law restrictions apply. They will only be used where Parliament has expressly decided that access should be restricted or prohibited; and where there is good reason for that restriction or prohibition to take precedence over the Bill's subject access provisions.
The noble Lord then spoke on Amendment No. 156A. I did not think that my noble friend would go to the stake at any time of day or night for this amendment. No great harm would be done by it, so far as we can see. If I have understood my noble friend correctly, his amendment appears to me to be unnecessary to his purpose. Clause 32(1)(a) gives the Secretary of State power to exempt from subject access all personal data consisting of information of which disclosure is prohibited or restricted by statute. That is a very general power. Paragraph (b) is the paragraph which restricts it. It does so by saying that an order can only apply to information appearing to the Secretary of State to be of such a nature that existing statutory restrictions on its disclosure should be preserved—for example, the Adoption Act—or possibly to prevent the data subject gaining access to information given by a third party under some statutory procedure, as under the Race Relations Act.
It is our view that in these circumstances it will be sufficient for the Secretary of State to consider the nature of the information in determining whether it should be covered by an order. We do not think that either the source or the use of the information could persuade the Secretary of State to include it in an order, where he would not be so persuaded by virtue of its nature. As I said, therefore, we do not see the additional words providing any help, and I wonder, perhaps, whether that brief explanation will persuade
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my noble friend not to pursue any of those three amendments.
Lord Wigoder: May I ask the Minister whether I am correct in understanding that the Secretary of State is not seeking two separate powers, one under paragraph (a) and one under paragraph (b), but one power in relation to which both (a) and (b) have to be complied with? That is what has been giving rise to some confusion, particularly about the existence of paragraph (b). If that is right, as I believe it is, the cause of the trouble—and it sounds an absurdly small matter to raise at this hour of the night—is in fact the semicolon between the word "enactment" and the word "and".
Lord Elton: The word "and" is usually used to conjoin two separate pieces where both have to be taken into consideration. I think that answers the noble Lord's question, whether there is a semi-colon there or not. The noble Lord is looking baffled. They do stand together.
Lord Wigoder: The trouble is that the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, and I, as we both read this, assumed that under paragraph (b) the Secretary of State was taking an entirely unlimited power to do whatever he liked within the terms of this Bill.
Lord Elton: No.
Lord Mottistone: Perhaps the wording should be changed; but I am not going to press for my re-wording. I accept what my noble friend has said, and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 155B not moved.]
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Murton of Lindisfarne): I have to point out, before calling Amendment No. 156, that if it is agreed to I cannot call No. 156A.
10.50 p.m.
Viscount Craigavon Viscount Craigavon moved Amendment No. 156:
Page 23, line 5, leave out from ("enactment") to end of line 10.
The noble Lord said: I was going to ask the Government what their criteria were for Clause 32(1)(b) and having just heard the discussion about the word "and" I am inclined to lie low on this matter. I was going to mention an example which may not be applicable under this clause at all—the matter of examinations and the problems of various societies and GCE boards, for example, having to produce all the backing which went to make up the results which the candidates receive. Would these in any way be screened from those candidates by some method of appeal to the Secretary of State? But if, as I said, the discussion on the last amendment about the word "and" means that this applies only to statutory situations, then my original inquiry falls. Perhaps the noble Lord can tell me whether this has anything to do with examinations. I am just using that as an example. I beg to move.
Lord Elton: It might clarify things if I said that data to be covered by an order under Clause 32(1), which is very narrow in application, contrary to what the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, feared, would have to satisfy two tests. They will have to consist of information of which the disclosure is prohibited or restricted by some statute other than this one. That is the first test. And it will have to appear to the registrar that, for one reason or another, the confidentiality afforded by that other statute ought to take precedence over the accessibility afforded by this one. If it does not so appear then the exemption will not take effect and all will be revealed, whether it be an examination or not, if it is touched by statute—which I would doubt.
It is this second test that the noble Viscount's amendment is designed to remove. It would be sufficient under what he proposes that disclosures should be prohibited or restricted by another statute. Once that is established, the registrar would be bound to accept the exemption. Indeed, the registrar would probably not come into it at all, as he would not be called on to consider the expediency of setting the exemption aside. That applies whether the subject is a dog licence, an examination or a Cromwell tank.
Viscount Craigavon: I am grateful for what the noble Lord has said. I will study what has been said and, in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 156A not moved.]
Lord Mishcon Lord Mishcon moved Amendments Nos. 157 to 159:
Page 23, line 17, after ("out") insert ("bona fide historical or scientific")
line 20, leave out ("identifies") and insert ("enables")
line 20, at end insert ("to be identified")
The noble Lord said: I propose to set myself and, I hope, other noble Lords an example. In the first place, I am going to deal with three amendments and, secondly, I am going to move them in one sentence. Research without qualification is, your Lordships may think, far too wide; it could include research into the buying habits of individuals, their political opinions or indeed almost anything else. I beg to move.
Lord Elton: The noble Lord has set himself a famous example and me a very difficult task! I am prepared with all sorts of answers to all sorts of points that he has not raised. I shall be interested in the punctuation in the Official Report, to discover whether it was indeed one sentence that he used, but I will forgive him three! I am not quite certain how much reply the noble Lord wants, because we are actually addressing ourselves to a fairly wide principle. I will try just to pick out what he wants. The amendment has two aspects—
Lord Mishcon: I wonder whether I can help the noble Lord. The point is a simple one that I tried to make. It is that one ought to define the nature of the research; otherwise so many things can come under this umbrella. The noble Lord will, presumably, either agree or disagree with that.
Lord Elton: I agree that there are all sorts of research. The noble Lord has required them to be "bona fide historical or scientific". I merely cast a fly, as it were. What he said is that research ought to be more accurately defined. I think I could more readily undertake to look at that further, if he would undertake just to give me a little inkling of the sort of definition he would want, if it is other than what he has here. If it is what he has here, I have a number of reasons for suggesting that that is not sufficient, because it excludes, for instance, the whole range. There is musical, topographical, geological, otological, palaeontological, and so on, research, of which only the latter falls into either definition. Once you start defining, you start excluding, and I think that the noble Lord would need to take very careful thought before inserting the words after "bona fide" in his first, substantive amendment.
Lord Mishcon: What the noble Lord the Minister has said has convinced me that possibly I have the wrong wording here. Therefore, I shall beg leave to withdraw the amendment. But would he consider the main point, which is the broad nature of the word "research"? It would be a great privilege for me if we could correspond between now and the Report stage, and if we could come up with an agreed amendment I am sure that everyone would be happy.
Lord Swinfen: May I suggest that it would be easier, rather than trying to define kinds of research that may be carried out, to define the kinds of research that should not be included, such as race, religion, political ideas and matters of that kind? That might be easier.
Lord Elton: I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, would be as ready as I am for religions to be researched into. It would be a very great handicap to theologians, who already suffer from an absolutely staggeringly large subject, to cope with if they did not receive the benefits of this amendment.
Amendments, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone moved Amendment No. 159A:
Page 23, line 26, at end insert—
("( ) Personal data are exempt from the subject access and non-disclosure provisions if the data consist of information obtained by a barrister, advocate or solicitor in the ordinary course of his practice as such.")
The noble Lord said: I shall be very brief. In one sentence, this amendment is to give point to the confidentiality normally expressed by the legal gentlemen concerned. I beg to move.
Lord Elton: I am always delighted to go faster. But sometimes I think that we go too fast for elderly and muddled Ministers such as myself. The Bill, in Clause 32, already does for the legal profession much of what my noble friend wishes it to do. It identifies a category of data—those to which legal professional privilege applies—and recognises that subject access to such data would offend against the principle that lies behind that privilege, by allowing third parties to gain access to data that lawyers hold about them provided by the lawyers' clients. I submit that, to a very large extent, that provision meets my noble friend's point.

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As for other personal data, in so far as they are processed automatically by reference to a particular data subject—and, of course, other data are not caught by the Bill—I think that a case for an exemption for lawyers is no stronger than that for many other groups. Certainly I think it would be considered odd by data subjects that they were prevented from gaining access to personal data held about them—subject, of course, to the legal professional privilege point that I have already mentioned. And I also think it odd to provide that lawyers can disclose data with impunity to anybody they choose—regardless of what they have said in their registered particulars—when nobody else can.
Even the exemptions from the non-disclosure provisions in Clause 28(2) are available only when disclosures are for clearly specified purposes. I think a general exemption for the lawyers, as appears to be proposed, would be considered anomalous. I believe that they already have the special treatment that they require under Clause 32(2). I hope that that reassures my noble friend.
Lord Mottistone: I thank my noble friend and accept what he has to say. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 32 agreed to.
11 p.m.
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone: moved Amendment No. 160:
After Clause 32, insert the following new clause:
("Special investigation of exemptions.
.—(1) If a person has reason to suspect that his name is recorded and retained as a data subject contrary to one or more of the data principles listed in Part 1 of Schedule 1 to this Act under any exempted circumstances described in this Part of this Act (except section 31), he may apply to the Registrar for a special investigation.
(2) When a special investigation is requested, the Registrar must satisfy himself that the application is made in good faith for reasons which meet the requirements of Part III of this Act and that one or more of the data principles have been contravened.
(3) Subject to subsection (2) above, the Registrar is empowered to obtain such information as is necessary to satisfy himself either—

(a) that there is no relevant data held, or

(b) that the personal data held under the terms of this Part of this Act (except section 31) conforms to the data principles and is unlikely to be unreasonably harmful to the applicant for the special investigation, or

(c) that it is in the public interest that no specific information be released.

(4) Subject to the agreement of the Government Department or other relevant authority holding the relevant data, the Registrar may inform the applicant for a special investigation that he has satisfied himself as in either subsection (3)(a) or subsection 3(b) above.
(5) If the Registrar's finding is as in subsection 3(c) above or if agreement to inform the applicant as in subsection (4) above is not forthcoming, the Registrar is to inform the applicant that enquiries have been unproductive.")
The noble Lord said: This is my most important personal amendment. I believe strongly that there ought to be some sort of independent checking of the data held in accordance with Part IV of the Bill and I do not find such a safeguard. I think there needs to be
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some sort of ultimate long-stop provision, because these days, however well meaning they are, Government departments and other such bodies are vulnerable to the accusation that they hide unnecessarily behind protective legislation, and that for convenience, not necessity, they tend to keep more particulars of people than are required.
The object of my amendment is to provide some protection for the Government from such accusations while making provision for special cases of vital security. It will also give opportunities for persons to have some way of allaying fears, which may well be unfounded, of unreasonable overgovernment by computer. Perhaps also, if I may venture to say it, it will serve to discourage some officials from retaining unnecessary personal data records just because no one can challenge their right to do it. I beg to move.
Lord Elton: I am grateful to my noble friend for that explanation, which bears out the motives that I thought lay behind this amendment—namely, in making the amendment, he wishes to ensure that data covered by the Part IV exemptions can still be subject to the registrar's general supervision.
I hope I can reassure him there, because, with the exception of national security data, that is already the case. Certain data may be exempt from subject access but they are still registered under the registrar's supervision and liable to his powers. Just because the subject may not have access to those data does not mean that the registrar cannot check them out and apply to them the principles concerning accuracy, adequacy and the rest. The same applies to data covered by exemption from the non-disclosure provisions or by the exemption provided for in Clauses 28(3) and 28(4). Therefore the investigations that my noble friend proposes the registrar should be able to make can be made into all the data, other than national security data, under the Bill as it is drafted. I hope that is a matter of considerable reassurance to him.
Lord Mottistone: Yes, indeed. It is a matter of considerable reassurance, but I should like to see it applied to national security areas as well within the very carefully worked out safeguards I have devised in my amendment. I hope that my noble friend will perhaps see whether there is not some way in which he can do that. If not, perhaps I may have to come back on Report with a modified amendment to cover that particular point. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clauses 33 and 34 agreed to.
Clause 35 [Application to government departments and police]:
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone moved Amendments Nos. 160A, 160B and 160C:
Page 24, line 18, leave out ("Except as provided in subsection (2) below.")
line 24, leave out ("not")
line 25, leave out ("but") and insert ("and")
The noble Lord said: With leave of the Committee, I will speak to Amendments Nos. 160B and 160C as well. The purpose of these amendments is to ensure

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that Government departments are liable to prosecution in the same way as other data users—and why on earth not? I beg to move.
Lord Glenarthur: I understand the point that my noble friend makes with this change in the batting now. It does not mean, however, that the Crown is under no kind of obligation as a result of the Bill. Clause 35(2) deliberately excuses Government departments from the liability to prosecution under Part II of the Bill, but it excuses departments from nothing else. Departments will still remain under the obligation to register, so it will be an offence not to register and they will still be liable to the exercise of the registrar's notice powers.
A Government department which handled data in a manner inconsistent with its registered particulars, or which contravened a notice of the registrar, would be failing to comply with the legal obligation placed on it. I frankly do not believe that a department would continue in that position once the situation had been pointed out to it by the registrar, but it would be open to him, if it did, to seek a declaration from the courts to the effect that it was thus acting in breach of a legal obligation placed upon it. I hope that, with that explanation and part of what I could say in addition, my noble friend will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Mottistone: I accept what my noble friend says and am greatly relieved by it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendments.
Amendments, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Glenarthur Lord Glenarthur moved Amendment No. 160D:
Page 25, line 3, at end insert—
("( ) In the application of subsection (3) above to Scotland, for the reference to a chief officer of police there shall be substituted a reference to a chief constable.").
The noble Lord said: This is a purely technical amendment which is designed to ensure that the terms of Clause 35(3) are appropriate in Scotland. As the Bill stands, Clause 35(3)(a) reflects the position in England and Wales where it is necessary to use the words "chief officer of police". In Scotland the appropriate term is "chief constable". I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 35, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 36 [Regulations, rules and orders]:
11.6 p.m.
Lord Elwyn-Jones Lord Elwyn-Jones moved Amendment No. 161:
Page 25, line 18, at end insert ("and the Advisory Committee").
The noble and learned Lord said: Clause 36 refers to the making of regulations, rules and orders and states that they may be made by statutory instrument. Before making any order under any of the provisions of the Act the Secretary of State shall consult the registrar. This amendment proposes that he should also consult the advisory committee. That, unfortunately, has rather drifted out of the context of the Bill. I mentioned at Second Reading that the advisory committee, should it emerge out of the mist of uncertainty which shrouded it in the Government's thinking on the matter, is an excellent example of the
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useful service that an advisory committee could exercise in this highly technical field. I beg to move.
Lord Elton: I had rather supposed that this amendment on the advisory committee had fallen at the end of the line of dominoes. As there is no advisory committee as a result of earlier amendments having been withdrawn, it does not seem to me to be appropriate to refer to it here as if it did exist. Unless the noble and learned Lord wishes me to address myself again to the general principle of the advisory committee, which we did when we considered all these amendments together, I am not sure that I can add greatly this evening to our common wisdom.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: I am content to rub a tearful eye at the absence of the advisory committee from the provisions of the Bill, although I hope that we may return later to resurrect it. In the circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 161A not moved.]
Lord Elwyn-Jones Lord Elwyn-Jones moved Amendment No. 162:
Page 25, line 19, leave out ("or 29") and insert ("29 or 32(1)")
The noble and learned Lord said: This is a short but important point. Clause 32(1) gives the Secretary of State power to make wide exemptions from the subject access provisions on very generally defined grounds, and it is our view that the exercise of that power should clearly require the affirmative approval of Parliament which it is the purpose of the amendment to achieve. I beg to move.
Lord Glenarthur: Since the publication of the Bill, it has become apparent that there are even more devious minds, dare I say it? than those possessed by some members of the Home Office. Prior to publication of the Bill it had not become apparent to us that anyone should interpret Clause 32 as applicable to the provisions of the Official Secrets Act. I should like to assure the Committee categorically that there has been no intention in the Government's mind of using this provision for the kind of blanket exemption which some claim that it could provide. In the Government's view, to use this provision in such a way would so nullify the provisions applying the Bill to the Crown that it would come close indeed to an abuse of the powers conferred by the subsection. In order therefore to reassure the Committee of the Government's good faith in this regard, we are very ready to give to this provision the added guarantee which would be provided by making it subject to the approval of each House. Therefore, I am happy to accept the noble and learned Lord's amendment.
Lord Elton: I hope that the noble and learned Lord will not be disappointed by what I am about to say but, by a slip of the tongue, my noble friend was disapplying the whole of Clause 32; in fact the reference should be to Clause 32(1) and that is embraced by the amendment, but I should not want the record to be misleading.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: I do not know whether to cheer or not. Is the noble Lord accepting the amendment without qualification?
The Lord Chancellor: He has accepted it!
Lord Elwyn-Jones: Eureka! Hooray! Thank you very much.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Elwyn-Jones Lord Elwyn-Jones moved Amendment No. 163:
Page 25, line 23, leave out (", 32(1)")
The noble and learned Lord said: This amendment is consequential upon Amendment No. 162, I am told. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
[Amendment No. 163A not moved.]
Clause 36, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 37 agreed to.
Clause 38 [Commencement and transitional provisions]:
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone moved Amendment No. 164:
Page 26, line 34, after ("day") insert ("or days")
The noble Lord said: The object of Amendments Nos. 164 and 165 is to make it possible for the Secretary of State to phase the introduction of registration according to class of user. I beg to move.
Lord Glenarthur: Clause 38 of the Bill is fairly complicated and establishes transitional arrangements to enable the provisions of the Bill to come progressively into force, and it has been designed so as to allow sufficient time for both the registrar and those who will be affected by the legislation to complete the various tasks that will be required of them.
Very briefly, the scheme provides for a day to be appointed by the Secretary of State, during the six months following which there will still be no requirement to register but there will be the opportunity to submit applications for registration. There will then be another 18 months, during which users and bureaux will be required to register but during which period the registrar will not be able to serve a notice which requires compliance earlier than the second anniversary of the appointed day. My noble friend's amendments substantially change that procedure, by allowing for more than one day to be appointed.
The effect is to bring the provisions of the legislation into force progressively so far as different types or categories of data use are concerned, rather than requiring every sort of activity to come into conformity with the legislation at the same time. Such an approach takes us back into the realms of codes of practice, where the approach would, as I understand it, be to apply the legislation sector by sector once appropriate codes for each sector had been worked out. If we were going down the road of codes of practice, then I could understand why it might be necessary to apply the legislation in stages, as is being
740
suggested, to allow the registrar time to work his way round each individual area.
I would also point out that, quite apart from the question of whether we should approach data protection across the board, as the Government have done, or sector by sector, as these amendments imply a desire to do, these amendments simply will not stand up on their own. As the Bill is drafted, the appointing of a day by the Secretary of State is tantamount to saying that the offence of being an unregistered data user or computer bureau will come into force six months thereafter.
What would happen, however, if more than one day were appointed—given that the amendments do not provide a mechanism for distinguishing between days appointed in regard to one category of data and another? The same problem would apply to subsection (2), which relates the second part of the initial two-year period to the six months, and to the remainder of Clause 38, all of which is founded upon the assumption of a single starting day. I hope that my noble friend will at least be able to read and understand what I have said, and that he will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Mottistone: I will certainly read that explanation with great care and may come back at Report stage. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 165 not moved.]
Lord Mishcon Lord Mishcon moved Amendment No. 166:
11.15 p.m.
Page 26, line 36, at end insert—
("( ) After the end of the period mentioned in subsection (1) above, no application for registration shall be made by data users of any category holding personal data for any purpose until the end of a further period of six months after the Registrar shall by order have specified that category or that purpose (or both) as requiring registration.")
The noble Lord said: Mercy has been shown to everyone, the data user and so on, but not to the poor registrar. The purpose of this amendment is to ask the Committee to imagine what the situation will be for the registrar and his little department, who will be swamped and quite unable to perform the supervising duty if there is no phasing of registration so that the registrar can deal with the most sensitive systems first. There could be mans' thousands of automated payroll systems whose potential for harm must be minimal. Is there any point in registering all these from the beginning? Surely the registrar should have power to leave them until a much later stage.
Lord Glenarthur: I am afraid we do not believe that the Bill is in need of elaborate phasing-in provisions. Why do we need to place on the registrar the burden of deciding who should register first, who later? What yardsticks is he to use, what limit should the time-scale have, how does he deal with multiple users? The main objective must surely be to establish the register at the earliest opportunity, enabling us to move as rapidly as possible to ratification of the Convention. That is why we have gone for the approach in the Bill of an

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appointed day which ushers in a six-month period during which all registration particulars must be lodged. Of course, there will be a great mass of these. And without special provision the registrar might get bogged down. But the special provision is there, in Clause 7(5). And we fully expect the registrar at the outset to make generous use of the ability that Clause 7(5) gives him to allow users to operate pending his processing of their application.
We believe that this is a practicable means of establishing the register with the minimum of delay, reassuring opinion both at home and abroad that the scheme will be fully operational as rapidly as possible and avoiding the utter confusion that would befall both the registrar and data users if the amendment proposed by the noble Lords opposite were accepted. I hope the noble Lord will agree to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Mishcon: The attempt was to be merciful. The noble Lord thinks there is no need for mercy and that it is far more merciful to leave the registrar deciding which should go into what phase by way of applications. In view of the expression of opinion by the Minister, who I suppose has taken advice, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Mishcon Lord Mishcon moved Amendment No. 167:
Page 26, line 37, leave out ("two years") and insert ("six months").
The noble Lord said: May I take Amendment No. 168 with Amendment No. 167, and deal with them briefly? There must be some transitional period for data users to get their house in order, and the noble Lord the Minister has said so. Would not the Committee think that two years is too long? In the way this provision is drawn, the registrar will not even have power during the whole of that period to insist on any changes being made in any one system, no matter how scandalous the state of affairs he might find. There is surely no reason why false or misleading data held before Section 22 comes into force should enjoy total immunity from correction for all time. Once this Bill comes into force there should surely be some incentive for data users to bring their records up to the standard of accuracy which it requires. I would have thought that could be done by this amendment. I beg to move.
Lord Glenarthur: To place users in the position where the registrar could insist upon full compliance with the requirements of the legislation only six months after the day to be appointed by the Secretary of State under Clause 38(1) could be to place some users under substantial economic and administrative burdens. I make no apology for resisting that proposal on this ground alone. The Government are as anxious as anyone to see the early implementation of data protection legislation, in order at the earliest possible date to be able to ratify the Council of Europe Convention and to provide the protection which it is the intention of this Bill to provide.
But we have made it a clear element of policy that doing so should not impose an undue burden on either the private or the public sectors. We have argued throughout that public sector costs must be kept
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within existing planned totals and we have made equally clear our determination not to place excessive burdens on the private sector, either. To provide two years from the appointed day (with discretion for the registrar to permit longer in individual cases if cost considerations demand) seems to us the appropriate means of allowing users to co-ordinate making whatever changes to their systems may be necessary with the planned replacement of equipment. To shorten that period by 18 months (albeit while still allowing the registrar discretion to permit longer if he wishes) would, we think, make life substantially more difficult and expensive for the private and public sectors. We must maintain a sense of proportion in all of this, and, while in no way reneging from the importance of data protection, introduce that protection in ways that cause the least disruption to all involved. I hope that in view of what I have said the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Mishcon: I shall certainly study what the noble Lord said. Obviously there is much force in the argument he uses, and at this stage I ask the Committee's leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 167A not moved.]
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Ampthill): Before calling Amendment No. 168, I have to point out to the Committee that if it is agreed to I cannot call any of the other amendments on the Marshalled List.
Lord Mishcon Lord Mishcon had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 168:
Page 27, line 10, leave out from ("above") to end of line 17.
The noble Lord said: I did say that I was speaking to Amendment No. 168 when speaking to Amendment No. 167. The invitation for me to proceed with Amendment No. 168 has been made in such warm terms that I am tempted to do so, but I must in good faith now say that it is not moved.
[Amendment No. 168 not moved.]
[Amendment Nos. 169, 170 and 170A not moved,]
Lord Wigoder Lord Wigoder had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 171:
Page 27, line 16, leave out ("thereafter")
The noble Lord said: Before not moving the last two amendments may I say, speaking personally and, I am sure, for noble Lords in all parts of the Committee, how much we appreciate the way that the noble Lord, Lord Elton, and his colleagues on the Front Bench opposite have dealt with a whole series of complicated amendments in a very complex Bill? They have dealt with them with courtesy, tolerance and patience and have on occasion even yielded. We cannot ask for more.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: May I be permitted not entirely out of professional loyalty to add our gratitude to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for his participation in this endless long vigil to which we shall return again?
Lord Elton: Before the noble Lord does not move his amendment, may I on behalf of my colleagues, both learned and otherwise, respond to the kind words that have been said and respond in kind. Your Lordships have for the most part been most patient, pretty lucid and fairly forgiving. Moreover, it has also been possible for me to resist your Lordships when it has been necessary. We are all grateful for that and for the good spirit in which your Lordships have taken our success.
Lord Mottistone: As the enfant terrible of this affair, may I apologise to your Lordships and say how very charming your Lordships have been in accepting the difficulties that I have created for you?
Lord Wigoder: May I make it clear that I had of course included the noble and learned Lord as one of those who were, for this purpose, on the Front Bench opposite?
[Amendments Nos. 171 and 172 not moved.]
Clause 38 agreed to.
Remaining Clause agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported with the amendments.

British Railways (Liverpool Street Station) Bill
Reported from the Select Committee without amendment, and recommitted to an Unopposed Bill Committee.
House adjourned at twenty-five minutes past eleven o'clock.

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