Sitting of 4 December 1985

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS
FRASERBURGH HARBOUR ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
FRASERBURGH HARBOUR (No. 2) ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
FRASERBURGH HARBOUR (No. 3) ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
Considered; to be read the Third time.

Oral Answers to Questions
  ENVIRONMENT

    Listed Buildings
    Mr. Chapmanasked the Secretary of State for the Environment what is his estimate of the numbers of buildings which have been listed as of architectural or historic interest.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Richard Tracey): A total of 360,590 buildings in England had been listed by the end of September this year.
    Mr. Chapman: I congratulate my hon. Friend on his appointment and wish him well. Will he confirm that the objective of listing buildings is to conserve architectural excellence rather than just to preserve architectural mediocrity? Does he agree that it would be wrong to increase the numbers just for the sake of it, for example, to the round figure of 500,000?
    Mr. Tracey: I am grateful for my hon. Friend's congratulation. I recognise his experience in these matters. My right hon. Friend is satisfied with the strict criteria adopted by the supervision of the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission and considers it a matter of some pride that, when completed, the resurvey of England will represent the most comprehensive record of buildings of architectural and historic importance in Europe.
    Mr. Dalyell: Does the commission have enough skilled staff to do the listing?
    Mr. Tracey: Yes, Sir.
    Mr. Heddle: Does my hon. Friend recall the case of Monkspath Hall in the west midlands, a listed building
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    which quite by chance was demolished one Sunday afternoon about four years ago by an Irish bulldozer driver to make way for an industrial estate? Does my hon. Friend agree that the penalties for accidentally demolishing listed buildings should be increased substantially to take account of replacement costs, and will he have discussions with the Home Secretary about the matter?
    Mr. Tracey: I accept what my hon. Friend says. He will be interested to know that 217 listed buildings were demolished in the year ending 31 March 1985, of which 214 were in grade 2. No grade 1 listed building was lost.

    Rate Support Grant
    Mr. Fisherasked the Secretary of State for the environment when he proposes announcing the final details of the 1981–87 rate support grant settlement.
    The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Kenneth Baker): I hope to make an announcement before Christmas.
    Mr. Fisher: The House hopes so, too. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this rate support grant, when it is announced —and it will surely be cut for the fifth consecutive year —will look even more inadequate in the light of his Department's survey of housing defects, which showed a need for £18·8 billion to be spent? What advice and help will the right hon. Gentleman give to councils which are trying to tackle their housing problems, considering that their rate support grant will inevitably be cut?
    Mr. Baker: I must ask the hon. Gentleman to await my announcement. The grant percentage for next year will work out at about the same as this year, after allowing for holdback. We have already announced the provisional GREs for the hon. Gentleman's city, and he will know that the GRE for Stoke has gone up by 17·5 per cent.
    Mr. Charles Morrison: While being fully aware of the needs of inner cities, which are emphasised time and again, may I ask my right hon. Friend, when he makes his announcement, please to take full account of the situation facing low-spending shire counties, and in particular Government commitments to them in the past about rate support grant?
    Mr. Baker: Yes. After the abolition of targets, penalties and holdbacks, we shall introduce a system of caps to ensure that the transition is smooth.
    Mr. Alton: When the Secretary of State or his officials discussed with Phillips and Drew the rate support grant settlement for 1986–87 for the city of Liverpool, what concessions did he make, or what concessions were made by the council, so that the books could be balanced for 1981–87?
    Mr. Baker: The rate support settlement was not discussed by Phillips and Drew or by the bankers. They approached my Department only to ascertain whether the deferred purchase agreement was legal. I answered this question yesterday. The Government have not given a penny more to Liverpool to balance the budget.
    Mr. Shersby: Is my right hon. Friend doing everything possible to ensure that adequate safety nets are being constructed so that prudent local authorities do not suffer excessive grant cuts?
    Mr. Baker: We are introducing a system of caps and safety nets to ensure that the progression from the existing system to the new system is phased.
    Mr. Benn: When the Government draw up their grants for the coming year, will they take account of the report that has just been published by the Church of England? It represents two or three years of serious work and appears to show that there has been a major failure by the Government to meet the pressing needs of some of the inner city areas.
    Mr. Baker: I refute completely the right hon. Gentleman's allegation of failure by central Government. During the lat six years we have provided substantial additional resources to the inner cities. I shall make this clear in the Government's response to this report and to other reports about the problems that face the inner cities. The rate support grant system and the grant related expenditure assessments recognise the needs of the inner cities. They recognise that they are areas of social deprivation and that grants should flow to them to deal with these problems.
    Mr. Beaumont-Dark: Does my right hon. Friend accept that many of his right hon. and hon. Friends welcome the appointment of a Secretary of State who has a sense of realism and compassion about the problems that face such cities as Birmingham? Will he use that goodwill to ensure that cities which face great problems in their inner areas get not just a fair crack of the whip but justice?
    Mr. Baker: When I was in Birmingham about 10 days ago I met Dick Knowles, the Labour leader. The leaders of the councils whom I meet at this time of the year always produce the most horrific stories about the likely rates increase: that it will be 40 per cent., 50 per cent., 70 per cent. or 80 per cent. Dick Knowles said 60 per cent. I do not believe that, after I have made my announcement, it will be necessary for Birmingham to levy a rate increase of that kind. Birmingham is a very good example of what the Government have done by means of inner city aid. I went round the houses in Handsworth and round Lozells road, where I saw the results of enveloping and of bringing back into use as a result of direct subsidy property that was built 50 or 60 years ago in the hon. Gentleman's constituency.
    Mr. Chris Smith: In view of the Prime Minister's constantly reiterated claim that the Government are spending more money on the inner cities, and in view also of the powerful evidence that has been produced by, among others, the Church of England, does the Secretary of State intend to provide additional money for the inner city areas in the forthcoming financial year through the rate support grant settlement? Does he intend to restore any of the major cuts that have been made in the last five years?
    Mr. Baker: The hon. Gentleman knows how the rate-capping system operates, because of the rate capping of his own borough of Islington. He knows, therefore, that one of the results of rate capping this year was a flow back of grant to Islington. As Islington will be rate capped next year, there will also be a flow back of grant to Islington next year. The hon. Gentleman's council leader, Mrs. Hodge, said a year ago that 1,000 jobs would be lost in Islington through rate capping. Not one job has been lost
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    in Islington. Since then the press relations officers have resigned from Islington because, they said, they were told to lie during the campaign.
    Mr. Maples: Is my right hon. Friend satisfied that the rate support grant settlement that he is to announce for London, when coupled with a revised London rate equalisation scheme, will ensure that no London boroughs' ratepayers are financially disadvantaged as a result of the GLC's abolition?
    Mr. Baker: The effect upon the ratepayers of London will depend decisively upon the decisions taken by the respective borough councils. That will be clear when I make the rate support grant settlement. Those who budget prudently and run their affairs efficiently will, I think, be pleased.
    Dr. Cunningham: Does the Secretary of State's original answer mean that he is confirming the statement by his predecessor in July of this year that next year the rate support grant will be at the same cash level as this year? If so, is he not announcing a real cut of about £700 million in resources for local authorities?
    In the face of the report "Faith in the City", the last in a long line of reports on the problems —the Duke of Edinburgh's inquiry, the Department's own investigation, the CBI's "Change to Succeed", an inquiry into British housing —is it not scandalous that this will be the sixth successive year in which the Government have cut the rate support grant and made the problems of all local authorities much worse?
    Mr. Baker: The hon. Gentleman will know, because he understands the complexity of the matter, that, as a result of abolishing targets, holdback and penalties, about £300 million to £400 million more in grant will be in the system next year. Local authorities already know that the provisional GREAs which were announced six weeks ago show a shift towards the towns and cities principally because the GREAs now recognise more fully the real demands for concessionary fares for the elderly and disabled and for social work.

    London Residuary Body
    Mr. Tony Banksasked the Secretary of State for the Environment when he last met the chairman of the London Residuary Body; and what was discussed.
    Mr. Tracey: My right hon. Friend met the chairman on 27 November to discuss matters relevant to the Residuary Body's functions under the Local Government Act 1985.
    Mr. Banks: I was hoping that the engine driver would answer my question.
    Is it true that the Secretary of State said that he wanted to see County Hall taken apart brick by brick? If so, is that not an insult to Londoners? When the hon. Gentleman next speaks to the chairman of the London Residuary Body, will he ensure that County Hall is not sold off as a hotel? If it is sold off as a hotel, will he guarantee the safety of the war memorial on the principal floor?
    Mr. Tracey: The hon. Gentleman has not changed his spots. He will presumably know that County Hall is a listed building. The London Residuary Body will be aiming to sell County Hall as soon as possible. In order to do that it will be necessary for ILEA to make alternative

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    arrangements for accommodation, and I understand that negotiations between the LRB and ILEA have already begun.
    Mr. Marlow: Can my hon. Friend confirm that any cash that is left over from the GLC will go to the London Residuary Body? What action is he taking to prevent Mr. Livingstone from buying himself a parliamentary seat in North London with bribes?
    Mr. Tracey: I can assure my hon. Friend that any balances which are left over —I understand that they will be considerable —will go to the London Residuary Body for distribution to the boroughs. I see that the Leader of the GLC has been named "Santa Ken" by some of our newspapers.
    Mr. John Fraser: Is the Minister aware of the recommendation in the report "Faith in the City" that there should be an expanded public housing programme of new building and improvement'? Instead of describing the report as negative, as the Secretary of State did, can the hon. Gentleman be positive and give an assurance that the pot of gold of around £30 million of capital receipts held by the GLC will be used for house building and improvement in London, that the GLC house improvement teams which have done such splendid work in London, particularly in rundown estates, will not be broken up, and that the housing research function for London will he preserved? Will he, unlike the Secretary of State, not attack the Church, but say something positive about what can be done for housing in London?
    Mr. Tracey: I had not noticed that my right hon. Friend had attacked the Church. I would ask that when such reports are written, some figures should be put on the assessments made by the critics. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that any of the balances that are left over will go to the Residuary Body and be distributed to the boroughs. The hon. Gentleman mentioned property, and I shall be looking into that.

    Local Authorities (Capital Receipts)
    Mr. Hayesasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will issue for consultation a Green Paper on the spending of capital receipts from council house sales; and if he will make a statement.
    The Minister of State for Housing, Urban Affairs and Construction (Mr. John Patten): My right hon. Friend announced in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, East (Mr. Moynihan) on 20 November, at column 246, that the prescribed proportion of capital receipts will remain unchanged next year. My right hon. Friend hopes to publish proposals for reform of the local authority capital control system in a Green Paper early in the new year.
    Mr. Hayes: Now that a wooden stake has been driven through sterling M3, will my hon. Friend assist in making a shallow grave for the policy that allows £6·3 billion of capital receipts from council house sales to lie idly in local authority bank accounts, earning interest that is used by profligate authorities in revenue spending?
    Mr. Patten: The money is not lying idle. A substantial proportion of the cash from receipts has already been spent on the repaying of debt and also on repairs and maintenance. Councils are committed to spending a
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    reasonable proportion of their capital receipts and, when they spend that money on housing, it must be replaced by further borrowing, which therefore drives up the local authority borrowing requirement, and that in turn drives up the public sector borrowing requirement, stake and all.
    Mr. Simon Hughes: Will the Minister confirm that the much vaunted so-called increase of £200 million achieved by the Secretary of State in his Cabinet discussions was, when examined, found to be a net decrease of money? It was only because of an increase in housing receipts that extra money was to be available from council house sales. The Department of the Environment's budget for next year shows a cut in money for local authority housing —not a success at all. The Secretary of State's first battle was a loss to housing, not a victory.
    Mr. Patten: That question is uncharacteristic of the hon. Gentleman. There is more money there, and more money will be spent. There is more money because of the allocations and the receipts plus the head room that is necessary to account for the considerable overspending —alas —that local councils are indulging in this year.
    Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Does my hon. Friend accept that his reply will be disappointing to some Conservative Members, particularly those who represent boroughs which have been highly responsible and prudent and have acquired those capital receipts in response to Government requests and Government policy? Will he therefore review the matter, bearing in mind that those councils have planned their expenditure for the future based on capital receipts, and not based on borrowing and upping the rates?
    Mr. Patten: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is doing exactly that. He is reviewing the system and will be bringing forward a Green Paper early in the new year. I pay tribute to the prudence of my hon. Friend's borough council and I remind him and all other right hon. and hon. Members that, for some reason, many councils seem to ignore the opportunities given to them to spend up to 100 per cent. of capital receipts on schemes to promote low-cost home ownership. That is a pity.
    Mr. Heffer: Has not the Government's housing policy been an absolute disaster? If the Minister wants proof of that, I suggest that he reads "Faith in the City". I have a copy, but I think that most Conservative Members have not been prepared to spend £7·50 to obtain a copy. I suggest that they read the serious points in the section on housing and recognise that the policy it puts forward, which is not entirely the policy of the Labour party, would begin to deal with the problems of housing —unlike the Government's policy, which does not.
    Mr. Patten: The Secretary of State has said that we are considering the report and will consider it further.
    Mr. Pawsey: Is my hon. Friend aware that his answer will cause some disquiet to smaller authorities whose council house sales are less than £1 million per annum? Will he therefore consider excluding those smaller authorities from that ceiling?
    Mr. Patten: I am aware of the problems for smaller authorities to which my hon. Friend refers. We are considering exactly that point in the Green Paper which is to be published early in the new year.
    Mr. Rooker: Will the Minister confirm that of the "extra" £220 million of cash made available, only £160

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    million will be used on revenue, and that some of that will be used, not on construction, but to pay loan charges because of higher interest rates than those forecast? Is it not the case that Ministers do not know how much of capital receipt money is spent on housing? They have no information about the amount that local authorities use for housing. People outside cannot understand why £6·3 billion is in the bank when it could be spent on improvement grants for owner-occupiers, as well as putting right public sector stock.
    Mr. Patten: Other adjustments are made to try to take care of the first point made by the hon. Gentleman. As to the second point, there is not £6·3 billion in the bank. A substantial amount of that cash has already been spent on repaying debt and on capitalisation of repairs and maintenance.

    Derelict Land
    Mr. Freemanasked the Secretary of State for the Environment what was the total amount of derelict land grants disbursed in the last 12 months for which statistics are available.
    Mr. Kenneth Baker: In the year to September 1985, £65 million was paid in derelict land grant to local authorities and other bodies. I have increased the resources available this year to £82 million. I shall shortly issue a circular on reclaiming derelict land —it is an essential tool for urban regeneration.
    Mr. Freeman: Will my right hon. Friend write today to the Archbishop of Canterbury and remind him that many Christians are also Conservatives who agree that the derelict land grant programme is a sensible way of helping inner cities, unlike the Archbishop's commission's proposals, which amount to worn-out Socialist dogma of spending an extra £4 billion of public money?
    Mr. Baker: I should be happy to meet the Archbishop of Canterbury to discuss the problems of the inner cities with him. I would draw to his attention —some parts of the report recognise it —the considerable resources that are applied to dealing with the inner city problems. The increase in derelict land grant has been from some £23 million when we came to office to £82 million this year —well in excess of the rate of inflation and a substantial increase in real terms. I think that the money is very well spent in dealing with many of the problems mentioned by the report —housing, enterprise workshops and regenerating our inner cities. I should like the country to recognise the enormous amount that we are doing.
    Mr. Litherland: With one quarter of the industrial sites in Manchester now lying vacant, what assistance will the Government give for demolition and the refurbishment of those sites in the north-east of Manchester?
    Mr. Baker: I am well aware of the problems of the decline of some of the industrial base of Manchester. We provide extra assistance through derelict land grant. I have seen several projects in the city, some of which are part of the urban programme, which are revitalising the centre, particularly the old central railway station, which I hope will become a magnet for exhibitions and so on. That programme will continue. This year I am concentrating the urban programme more on the cities and towns with the greatest need.
    Mr. Hickmet: Is my right hon. Friend aware of how important these grants are in my constituency? Is he aware that last year his Department gave a derelict land grant of £1·4 million to the Normanby park steelworks site, and that currently the local authorities have put in an application for more than £16 million? Will my right hon. Friend consider that application sympathetically?
    Mr. Baker: My hon. Friend has been to see me twice about those matters. I was glad to approve a grant of £1·4 million for private derelict land recovery of the old Normanby steelworks. My hon. Friend is right in saying that a substantial application is before me and my Department. It emphasises the importance of that spend. We have to bring that derelict land back into effective use.
    Mr. Foot: When the right hon. Gentleman meets the Archbishop of Canterbury, will he tender a collective apology on behalf of all Cabinet members, or on behalf of only a few of them? Will he pass on to the Archbishop the message from the chairman of the Conservative party that he is now praying for the Church of England?
    Mr. Baker: I speak for the Government in these matters. There was some talk that the report had been leaked before the weekend, when it had been intended for publication on Tuesday. However, I understand that it was on sale on Saturday morning in Dillon's bookshop.

    Voluntary Organisations
    Mr. Terry Lewisasked the Secretary of State for the Environment what representations he has received since his statement on 19 November, Official Report, column 148, about future grants for countrywide voluntary organisations currently funded by the metropolitan counties and the Greater London council.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Sir George Young): My noble Friend the Minister of State discussed this and other matters with representatives of the London voluntary sector last week, but there have been no written representations on the matter of countrywide organisations.
    Mr. Lewis: Is the Minister aware that there has been a disappointing response from his Department to the transitional bids made by local authorities, with only a low percentage of bids being accepted? In view of that, of what value are the promises made in this House and in another place last year during the debates on abolition?
    Sir George Young: The hon. Gentleman said that local authorities were disappointed with the allocations. However, we announced some time ago that we would help with £20 million worth of transitional projects. Indeed, a few weeks ago we announced allocations for projects of exactly that value. That is additional money to the rate support grant and other resources.
    I am encouraged by the progress being made on the transitional arrangements for voluntary sector projects in the areas affected by abolition.
    Mr. Dickens: Is my hon. Friend aware that many constituents are writing to Members of Parliament who represent areas within the metropolitan county councils that are covered by voluntary organisations? Those organisations wonder whether they will still receive the grants that they currently receive, and whether the money that is recycled by the metropolitan county councils will

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    still find its way to them. Can my hon. Friend clarify that? The Greater Manchester council is the authority involved in my area.
    Sir George Young: As a Member who represents just such an area, I am well aware of the correspondence to which my hon. Friend has referred.
    The Government have set up two schemes. One is the section 48 scheme for organisations that cover more than one district. Progress with that scheme is quite encouraging. The other scheme is the one referred to by the hon. Member for Worsley (Mr. Lewis). As I told him, an extra £20 million is being made available to help that scheme. In addition, all the rate support grant that currently goes to the metropolitan county councils will be available to the successor bodies, and that will provide additional help.
    Mr. Meadowcroft: Is the Minister aware that many excellent voluntary organisations in Yorkshire, currently in receipt of grant, are concerned about their future? Will the hon. Gentleman go beyond the block amount available and tell the House what process there is for evaluating projects to decide whether they are worth funding in future? That is the question to which most voluntary organisations want an answer.
    Sir George Young: That decision rests with the local authorities. My Department has indicated the provisional amount of money available to local authorities for transitional projects. It is for local authorities to decide which projects to fund with transitional help and which to take on board themselves.
    Mr. Boyes: The Minister's answers simply are not good enough. They reveal a lack of knowledge of the magnitude of the problems that will face voluntary organisations, which have told me that the transitional grants are not sufficient. The additional spending power of boroughs on a county-wide basis under section 48 is not good enough. Why did the Minister not consider the solution offered by a number of organisations—that the section 137 2p rate should be increased to 4p for borough councils?
    Sir George Young: I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his first intervention from the Dispatch Box. As he knows, we debated these matters at length when the abolition Bill passed through the House earlier this year. I am satisfied that the Government have done all they can to ensure that worthwhile voluntary projects are not out of pocket as a result of abolition.

    Derelict Land
    Mr. Thurnhamasked the Secretary of State for the Environment how many acres of derelict land owned by public bodies were sold during the last 12 months.
    Mr. John Patten: In the 12 months ended 31 October 1985, 6,300 acres of unused or underused land on the land registers have been sold. A further 3,500 acres have been removed from the registers because their owners have brought them back into use.
    Mr. Thurnham: I welcome pressure on councils to dispose of surplus derelict land, but may I ask my hon. Friend to assure the House that he does not expect councils willy-nilly to sell off public parks and open spaces, such as the amenity land in front of Eagley Bank infants school in my constituency?
    Mr. Patten: As it happens, I can reply to my hon. Friend with some degree of authority, for I have recently visited Bolton twice in his company. The issue to which he refers is twofold. First, there is a piece of vacant land, which has been vacant and unused for a long time, which needs to be disposed of. Secondly, the problems of the after-use of that land can be dealth with by the borough council through the normal planning process. It is the borough council's task and responsibility.
    Mr. Tony Banks: How much derelict land is owned by Government Departments? What pressure does the Minister put on his colleagues to dispose of surplus Government land? In particular, what pressure does he put on the Secretary of State for Defence to dispose of derelict land that is surplus to requirements?
    Mr. Patten: It is certainly true that Governemnt Departments own derelict land. I am not able to give the exact figure as I do not have it to hand, but I shall write and let the hon. Gentleman know the result. Just as Government Departments have surplus land —and we are making major efforts to get them to dispose of it as quickly as possible —so, too, besides local councils, do nationalised industries, and they need to get rid of it. My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young), who is to lead our disposal drive in 1986, will be after the nationalised industries.
    Mr. David Howell: My hon. Friend is absolutely right about nationalised industries hanging on to unnecessary land. A great deal has been done to squeeze out surplus land from public authorities and utilities, but a good deal of land that nationalised industries call operational is sometimes not operational at all. Will my hon. Friend assure us that he and his colleagues will press other Departments and public utilities to get this surplus land, which is often derelict, back into housing or green and leisure facilities?
    Mr. Patten: My right hon. Friend is, of course, absolutely right. Large public bodies, such as British Rail, or, for that matter, water authorities, sometimes own substantial amounts of land, which they should dispose of for re-use. We hear a great deal about the need for more investment in sewers. If water authorities got rid of more of their unused land, they could invest the proceeds in capital infrastructure.
    Dr. David Clark: The Minister mentioned that he was going to encourage water authorities to sell off unused land. On much of that land there is access for walkers. Will the Minister give the assurance that, de facto, not de jure, access will be enshrined in any deals to sell off such land?
    Mr. Patten: We recognise the important amenity value of land which is held by water authorities and of the water itself, which provides important amenities. Water authorities will be looking carefully at their legal duties to preserve access where that is appropriate.
    Mr. Robert Atkins: How much derelict land is there in inner city areas controlled by the Labour party? In view of the comments about inner cities made recently by those in another place and elsewhere, is my hon. Friend aware that about six members of the commission are also members of the Labour party? Is there any correlation between those two facts?
    Mr. Patten: I was aware of some of the facts to which my hon. Friend has referred. When I visit councils which complain about their housing —understandably —such as Hull, which has been under Labour party control for 38 of the last 40 years, and look at the land register, I find it hard to understand why they have just under 1,000 acres of unused, unsold land.

    Maryport Harbour
    Mr. Campbell-Savoursasked the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he will make a statement on the improvement, reclamation and development of Maryport harbour.
    Mr. Waldegrave: The Allerdale district council and English Estates are jointly preparing proposals to redevelop Maryport harbour. English Estates is to decide in the new year whether or not to go ahead with development. My Department has agreed in principle to provide derelict land grant for a good reclamation scheme leading to new investment and new jobs.
    Mr. Campbell-Savours: Will the Minister join me in expressing the view that a development of Maryport harbour is crucial to the development of Maryport as a whole? Does he recognise that the construction of a road bridge linking the town to the harbour's infrastructure developments would spark off all sorts of private sector involvement? Can we look to the Government to provide us with the money to secure those infrastructure works?
    Mr. Waldegrave: A good scheme would have the effect described by the hon. Gentleman, and I recognise the importance of a bridge to a good scheme. If a proposal is made to us, we shall consider it sympathetically.

    Urban Development Corporations
    Mr. Lathamasked the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he has any plans to make orders under section 134 of the Local Government, Planning and Land Act 1980 setting up any further urban development corporations.
    Mr. Kenneth Baker: None at the moment.
    Mr. Latham: Is my right hon. Friend aware that some of us believe that these corporations could bring speedy, effective and non-bureaucratic action to tackle inner city deprivation? Will he look at this matter again, because, apart from anything else, such corporations would attract substantial private sector money?
    Mr. Baker: I am examining this matter, because my hon. Friend is right. The London Docklands Development Corporation is conducting the most successful recovery of a derelict part of an inner city, and we have every right to be proud of it. So far it has attracted over £1 billion of private investment into the area. There is another development on Merseyside. This year I am providing resources of £95 million for the two corporations.
    Mr. Simon Hughes: Does the Secretary of State accept that while everything that the two development corporations have done is not all bad, their greatest flaw is that there is no democratic accountability? Will he confirm what he said on the "London Programme" on Friday —that where there is very little derelict land, the structure of urban development corporations would be
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    highly inappropriate? Surely what is needed is confirmation by the Government of faith in the inner city, and faith in local government. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that he needs to support local government in tackling the problems of other deprived areas rather than giving such problems to appointees of his Department, who are not accountable?
    Mr. Baker: Our faith in the inner cities is demonstrated by our commitment to them. Since we have been in office, we have put £1–5 billion into the inner cities through the urban programme, derelict land grants and urban development corporations. That is a substantial commitment, and there is no doubt that the development corporations have been a success. I reiterate what I said on the programme. The corporations have been particularly effective in the areas where there is much dereliction and where a great job has to be done. That job is now being done. Before the LDDC was set up in the east end of London, as the hon. Gentleman knows, the councils could not agree, the GLC could not agree and there was nothing. The record speaks for itself.
    Mr. Squire: Can my right hon. Friend confirm that the achievements of the LDDC, which he rightly extols, have been effected in the face of a persistent and consistent campaign by the Left in those areas against everything that the corporation is trying to do? Will he comment on that aspect, given the rather quiet attitude of the Labour party?
    Mr. Baker: One of the councils supportive of the LDDC has already come out in favour of the Canary wharf development. Some elements have constantly criticised, but such criticism is against the interests of the area. There is real regeneration in east London, and we should be proud of that.
    Mr. Spearing: Irrespective of the merits of any one development, does the Secretary of State agree that one of the so-called popularities of the development corporations is that they have the unique power of selling public land together with planning permission, in certain cases without the normal safeguards of a public inquiry? Does he now agree that, irrespective of its merits, the Canary wharf development in the West India docks could and probably would have an enormous strategic impact on Greater London in general, and east London in particular? Why will he not permit a public inquiry?
    Mr. Baker: I have already decided not to call in that development. In making that decision I had to consider all the various factors. We are talking about the creation of a new financial centre and mobile investment. If it is not to be built in the docklands area, it will not be built in another part of London. Instead, it will go to Frankfurt, Brussels, Amsterdam or elsewhere. The project is the largest civil investment programme for many years. It is a £1·5 billion programme that will provide 10 million sq ft of space and probably 40,000 to 50,000 jobs. I cannot take the risk of losing that sort of opportunity.
    Mr. Dorrell: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the lesson of London docklands is that the urban development corporations have put the emphasis on urban development, not on party politics? Is that not an example that we should repeat in other inner city areas throughout the country?
    Mr. Baker: My hon. Friend is right. The corporations have been extremely good instruments, and we are assessing their effectiveness. It may be that we can use

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    other forms of agency, such as private trusts, for the rehabilitation of certain derelict sites or areas in other parts of our cities. I am sure that the entire country and all political parties have a great deal to learn from the success that we are experiencing with the two corporations.
    Dr. John Cunningham: Whatever the successes or otherwise of the corporations, how does the Secretary of State expect focal authorities to tackle the problems in their areas when, for example, the Government have reduced housing investment by 69 per cent. since they came to office? How does he expect local authorities to tackle the problems that face them when there has been a persistent reduction in rate support grant, which cumulatively exceeds about £16 billion? Why have the Government been able to find more than £22 billion in tax reductions for higher rate taxpayers since they came to office, while persistently withdrawing resources from inner cities?
    Mr. Baker: If, as I believe, the hon. Gentleman is saying that the problems of the inner cities can be resolved by throwing more resources at them, I must ask him to consider the record of the 1960s and 1970s, when vast sums were literally thrown at the inner cities. It was during that period that the slums and the problems with which we are now dealing were built. That is generally agreed as an analysis. We must target moneys much more effectively, and that is the process in which I am engaged. We must find ways of introducing private sector money more effectively. That is another important element.

    Local Authority Housing
    Mr. Cartwrightasked the Secretary of State for the Environment how long he estimates it will take to complete all the repairs identified in the report of the inquiry into the condition of the local authority housing stock in England on the basis of existing public expenditure plans.
    Mr. Winnickasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement on the estimated amount of repair and modernisation work needed to council owned residential accommodation.
    Mr. John Patten: I refer the hon. Members to the replies given on 12 November by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Staffordshire (Mr. Heddle).
    Mr. Cartwright: Does the Minister accept the Audit Commission's assessment that an extra £900 million will have to be added to the outstanding repair bill for council housing every year? Does he deny that at the present rate of spending it will take about 90 years to clear the nearly £19 billion-worth of defects which were revealed in the Department's report, which was published only recently? What hope can he give to the hundreds of thousands of families who are condemned to live in cold, damp, condensation-ridden substandard council housing?
    Mr. Patten: I hope the hon. Gentleman recognises that the Government are the first Administration to go into this matter comprehensively and to publish a complete report. That was done as a result of the initiative of my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow). I take this opportunity of paying tribute to him for what he did as Minister for Housing and Construction.
    I hope the hon. Gentleman also recognises that the net sums available have been increased this year.
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    Furthermore, the net amount that is being spent on repairing the public sector housing stock is about £1·25 billion this year from the current account and about £1·25 billion from the capital account. That is, I think, a record level of expenditure, and substantially more than the £500 million from the capital account that was being spent in 1979, for example.
    Mr. Winnick: Does the Minister recognise that the vast amount of work that has to be done is largely the Government's responsibility because HIP allocations in the past few years have been entirely inadequate for local authorities either to repair or modernise on the scale required, and certainly inadequate to allow them to build? Is he aware that local authorities should have the financial means to allow them to carry out the work that is necessary so that they do not have to hand over estates to private property speculators and spivs?
    Mr. Patten: I recognise that the hon. Gentleman has some difficult estates in his constituency, such as the Rosehill estate. That is why we sent the urban housing renewal unit to visit it on 22 November. Councils have to make their own priorities in housing expenditure. Surely their first task is to rehabilitate houses which they have in their ownership. They should have been doing that for many years. It is because of underspending by councils for decades that many housing estates have got into such an awful condition. They are now being renovated with the help of private sector money, which should be welcomed in a non-ideological way by the hon. Gentleman.
    Mrs. Currie: Does my hon. Friend agree that some of the worst local authority housing was built in the 1960s, which was the last occasion on which we tried to build our way out of the problem? Does he further agree that the best thing to do now is to say never again to proposals to build large-scale, windswept council estates, in which we merely condemn people to misery, to sell off as many houses as we can and to make effective repairs to those that are left?
    Mr. Patten: Large-scale solutions do not seem to have helped in the past. The right to buy is certainly helping now. I wish that councils which complain the loudest, like Southwark, which has a reported £24 million of uncollected rents, would collect their rents so that they might spend the money on keeping their housing stock in the state in which it should be kept.
    Mr. Favell: Does not the abysmal state of so much local authority housing stock make a case for actively discouraging the building of any more local authority houses?
    Mr. Patten: It is the first duty of councils to manage properly and to repair and rehabilitate their stock so that tenants are properly treated. The forthcoming housing and planning Bill will contain provisions to make sure that the voice of tenants is better heard, as it was in Thamesmead, where the tenants voted to leave council control because they were dissatisfied with it. That is characteristic of the GLC.
    Mr. John Fraser: The Minister is talking absolute rubbish in accusing local authorities of underspending, when his Government have cut HIP allocations to local authorities by almost 70 per cent. over the last six years. We want to hear from the Minister within what time scale he will give permission for local authorities to raise money

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    or spend their own money to deal with the appalling backlog of housing which has been highlighted by the Association of Metropolitan Authorities and confirmed by his own Government's report. Why does he not allow them to go to the market to get money, if they want to, or to spend their own money on this essential purpose?
    Mr. Patten: There was widescale agreement by all the local authority associations represented at the housing consultative council meeting last week about the fact that more work needed to be done and about the priority to be accorded to work that should be carried out before proper timetabling could be organised. While we are talking about the AMA, which speaks loudly about the need for more money, I wonder why it is spending on plush new headquarters in central London the sum of £7 million raised from its own ratepayers.

    Ancient Monuments
    Mr. John Mark Taylorasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement on current levels of expenditure upon the upkeep of ancient monuments and list those voluntary bodies which receive support from the Government in that work.
    Mr. Tracey: In the current financial year the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission will spend £13 million on monuments in its care —an increase of 25 per cent. over the previous year —and over £7 million on grants to owners of other monuments. My Department will spend over £18 million on the upkeep of monuments in the Royal and Crown Estates. My right hon. Friend recognises the important contributions of voluntary bodies in this field and offered grants of over £250,000 towards their administrative expenses.
    Mr. Taylor: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. Can he reassure us that he considers that we are getting good value for money from voluntary organisations? Does he think that we are getting the balance right between access to and protection of historic sites?
    Mr. Tracey: I think that we are getting very good value for money. In this country we have some of the finest examples of ancient monuments. This is recognised throughout the world and is evidenced by the number of visitors to them. As to granting public access to monuments, the HBMC weighs all the necessary factors in determining the strategy for each monument.
    Mr. Nellist: Is the Minister aware that we have 20,000 ancient monuments in Coventry, 1,000 of them unfit for human habitation, 6,000 without hot and cold running water, baths, showers or inside toilets, and 14,000 requiring repairs of over £5,000 to make them fit for people to live in? How many more years under the Tory Government will working-class families in the centre of Coventry have to live in ancient monuments of houses over 100 years old that are unfit for human habitation?
    Mr. Tracey: I suspect that the hon. Gentleman has addressed that question to the wrong Minister. Our inspectorate would certainly find it difficult to agree with him.

    Local Authority Housing
    Mr. Heddleasked the Secretary of State for the Environment what steps he is taking to encourage co-operative housing associations and trusts in the regeneration of housing estates.
    Sir George Young: Tenant management co-operatives, housing associations and trusts have an important potential for the regeneration of rundown council estates, providing better management and giving tenants a bigger say in how their estates are run. The forthcoming housing and planning Bill will enable local authorities to delegate their housing management functions to a range of other bodies. The Department's urban housing renewal unit is encouraging local authorities to consider the scope for innovative solutions of this kind. The unit is also examining the best way to provide start-up and training resources for new tenant co-operatives.
    Mr. Heddle: Does my hon. Friend agree that the recent decision democratically reached by Thamesmead tenants shows that local authority tenants would rather be masters of their own destiny than servants of the GLC? Does he further agree that the forthcoming Building Societies Bill will enable responsible and prudent private sector capital to be made available through the building society movement, pension funds and other institutions to liberalise the situation and to ensure that estates are given a breath of fresh air and a new personality?
    Sir George Young: I applaud the decision of Thamesmead residents in October to reject the cosy solution of life with the local authority and to take the bold step of taking their future in their own hands. One reason for that decision was that it would give them access to private sector capital so that Thamesmead could be completed at a faster rate. My hon. Friend is quite right. There may be a message there for other parts of the country.
    Mr. Rooker: Does the Minister agree that it would be a good idea if in the forthcoming housing and planning Bill, instead of delegating authority to local authorities, the Government followed Labour party policy and gave local authority tenants the statutory right to decide whether they wish to run their own estates, rather than leave it to public landlords? Is he aware that giving tenants the right to organise their own estates is fully in line with Labour party policy and that we are happy to support that, but that we will not support a Government who give power to local authorities to kick tenants out so that the houses can be done up and sold off?
    Sir George Young: If the hon. Gentleman tables an amendment to that effect, it may well receive support from the Government. Anything which gives tenants greater rights is entirely in line with our tenants' charter, which seeks to give tenants greater independence from sometimes remote local authorities.

    National Parks
    Mr. Soamesasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement on his Department's policy towards the national parks.
    Mr. Waldegrave: Our policy is one of firm support, represented by the necessary financial and statutory backing.
    Mr. Soames: Is my hon. Friend aware that the splendour of our national parks is regularly spoilt by a selfish minority scattering litter wholesale? Will he give strong support to the Keep Britain Tidy campaign and encourage the national parks to provide more facilities for the disposal of litter?
    Mr. Waldegrave: I strongly support what my hon. Friend has said. The Department gives considerable support to the Keep Britain Tidy group, and we intend to continue that support. There has also been increased support in real terms for the Countryside Commission and in the national parks supplementary grant in recent years.
    Dr. David Clark: After Okehampton, the Minister's assurances about national parks have a somewhat hollow ring. As the Bill which effectively creates a national park in Norfolk has been declared hybrid, will the Government provide time for the introduction of that Bill, which will have the support of the House?
    Mr. Waldegrave: After Okehampton —in fact, that Bill is still being debated in another place —I draw entirely the opposite conclusion. The care that both Houses have taken over that matter shows that no decision affecting a national park can be taken lightly.
    With regard to the Broads Bill, the problem is not so much that the Bill has been declared hybrid, as that it has been found to contain too much public matter for a private Bill. Discussions about the future of that Bill continue.

    Falkland Islands
    Mr. Dalyellasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement on the conditions of the civilian workers on the Falkland Islands; and if he has any evidence that the excessive consumption of drugs and alcohol is affecting the efficiency with which they are carrying out work under Government contracts.
    Sir George Young: The civilian workers employed in the Falkland Islands on contracts let by my Department occupy good living accommodation close to the sites at which they work, where a wide range of sporting and other facilities are also provided. General allegations of drunkenness and drug abuse are without foundation. The work force regularly works a 70-hour, seven-day week and its efficiency can be judged by its excellent performance and productivity in maintaining the tight timetable for the construction of the major airport and associated Army facilities.
    Mr. Dalyell: If press reports about drugs and whacky-baccy parties are without foundation, should they not be challenged?
    Sir George Young: Although the hon. Gentleman and I attended the same school, that particular form of entertainment did not take place when I was there.

Anglo-Irish Agreement (Secretary of State's Speech)
3.30 pm
Mr. Peter Archer(Warley, West) (by private notice) asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to make a statement on his speech in Brussels yesterday and its effects on the implementation of the Anglo-Irish agreement.
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. Tom King): I spoke yesterday at a lunch given jointly by the Brussels Chamber of Commerce, the British Chamber of Commerce in Belgium and the Northern Ireland Industrial Development Board. After speaking first in support of the investment opportunities in Northern Ireland, I referred also to the Anglo-Irish agreement. I expressed my firm belief that, because the principle of consent had been accepted by both Governments so that there could be no change in the status of Northern Ireland without the consent of the majority, such a change would not occur. I recognise that the way that I expressed this indicated that I considered this also to be the view of Dr. FitzGerald. I of course accept that this is not the case, and I regret that my words should have given that impression. I am grateful for this opportunity to make the position clear.
In respect of the Anglo-Irish agreement, we stand fully by our commitment to its implementation.
Mr. Archer: I thank the Secretary of State for clarifying what he said, but will he clarify it a little further by confirming expressly that he stands by article 1(c) of the agreement, and that when he assented to that article it was not his view that it was wholly artificial and unrealistic? Does he appreciate that the Opposition supported the Government in giving the agreement a chance to work precisely because it did not commit anyone to any specific position on the ultimate destiny of Ireland, did not require anyone to accept or resile from any aspiration, and does not represent winning or losing for either side? We assume that both Governments meant what they said. Does the Secretary of State appreciate that, although the House is always sympathetic with someone who admits to a slip of the tongue, it is usually wiser to confess frankly that that is what it was than to put a gloss on it?
Mr. King: The right hon. and learned Gentleman will concede that I said that I regretted that the words I used gave that impression, and I wish to make that absolutely clear. I also wish to make it absolutely clear that we stand fully by the agreement in all its particulars. I gave my firm belief in my speech in Brussels, as I have elsewhere, that the principle of consent means that a change requires the consent of the majority, and that I believe that the majority will wish to remain part of the United Kingdom. It is my fervent wish that that should be so, and I make no apology for that. I hope and believe that through the agreement we shall develop relations in such a way that both the majority and the minority —it is part of our objective that the views of the minority can be properly considered —will wish to remain under the Government of the United Kingdom.
Mr. Julian Amery (Brighton,Pavilion): I congratulate my right hon. Friend on what he said in Brussels. Does he
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agree that, while it has been hard enough trying to govern the Province against the wishes of many of the minority, to attempt to govern it against the wishes of the majority and Sinn Fein would be to attempt the impossible? I hope that he will stick firmly to what he said in Brussels and in no way go back on it.
Mr. King: I thank my right hon. Friend. I stick firmly by my own beliefs —[Interruption.]—and I wish to make that absolutely clear. The regret that I expressed, I repeat, was that the phrases I used could have implied that others accepted them. Of course, we understand the ambitions and aspirations of the Government of the Republic, but my personal view is that the view of the majority will not change.
Mr. Stephen Ross: I, too, express my disappointment at the Secretary of State's choice of words, though I understand his explanation today. He well knows that interpretations will be put on his words on both sides of the border, so that he must be careful about what he says on these issues on all occasions. Is he aware that under the 1973 Act he can order a border poll at 10-year intervals? He might care to think about that in this case.
Mr. King: I am more than aware of what the hon. Gentleman said at the beginning of his question, and the events of the last 24 hours have brought that home to me clearly. I am aware of the provision to which the hon. Gentleman referred, but I see no requirement for it at the moment. I am not aware that that issue is in doubt as to what the will of the majority would be.
Mr. George Gardiner: Does my right hon. Friend accept that if his initial remarks had correctly represented the situation a great many of us would have found it much easier to support the agreement in the Division last week?
Mr. King: I am aware of my hon. Friend's view on that.
Mr. Tony Benn: Is not the real problem that to get the agreement the Government had to hint to Dr. FitzGerald that there might be a prospect of reunification, that they had to indicate that to Washington to win President Reagan's support and that they had to make statements at the same time designed to defuse loyalist opposition? Does not the real problem result from the Government having had to face two or three ways to get the agreement? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that an agreement founded on such duplicity cannot solve the problems of Northern Ireland?
Mr. King: I suppose one might have expected the right hon. Gentleman to seek to find such sinister implications in it. The agreement stands quite clearly. I was expressing my observations on Northern Ireland of what the outcome would be likely to be of the consent of the majority, and I hope that I have made that absolutely clear.
Mr. Kenneth Carlisle: Will my right hon. Friend accept that many of us feel that in his short time at the Northern Ireland Office he has been pursuing this agreement with great determination and vision, and we wish him well? Will he also accept that the principle which we have accepted —that the majority in Northern Ireland should choose —has been followed for some time by this Government?
Mr. King: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments. I was seeking, as I am seeking, to be understanding of the communities in Northern Ireland. Article 1 represents much more secure protection of their position than many of their political leaders are prepared to recognise. I stand by that. The acceptance by both Governments that any change in the status would come about only with the consent of the majority is a very important safeguard indeed.
Mr. David Winnick: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that in future it would be wiser to allow the Irish Government to speak for themselves, which they are certainly able to do without any assistance from him? Is he aware that we have the strong impression —whether or not it is fair to have that impression I do not know —that the person who occupies the position of Secretary of State for Northern Ireland usually has accepted the post with great reluctance and comes to the position with little understanding and knowledge of Irish problems or Irish history?
Mr. King: I have made my views clear. I was expressing my own believe in the matter. I accept entirely, as I made clear in my statement, that the way in which I expressed those remarks implied that the statement that I was making, as it were, expressed the Taoiseach's views as well, and I have made it clear that I do not speak for him.
Mr. Henry Bellingham: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the agreement will have the best chance of succeeding if he tells the truth, speaks in accordance with his conscience and is not hide-bound by public opinion in either the South or the North?
Mr. King: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. It is extraordinary that certain unionist leaders have criticised my belief that there will not be a change in the majority view about their wish to remain part of the United Kingdom. I have expressed that view strongly, and I am surprised that they feel unable to support it.
Mr. Roy Mason: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that he will have to learn that the spoken word is like a sped arrow —it cannot be recalled? The Taoiseach must be suffering from a succession of blows. The first was, "Out, out, out" by the Prime Minister. Now we have heard "Never a united Ireland" from the right hon. Gentleman. What does he have to say about co-operation now with the south? Is he aware that he has shattered the accord before the ink is dry on the agreement? What does he have to say about that to those who supported him last week in the Lobby?
Mr. King: I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman felt it necessary to make those remarks. I very much believe that they will not prove to be justified. We stand fully by the agreement and will seek to implement it, with the co-operation of the Government of the Republic of Ireland.
Mr. William Cash: Does my right hon. Friend accept that the agreement states that there will be no change in the position in Northern Ireland unless the majority wish it and that there is no expectation that such a change will take place in the immediate future?
Mr. King: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. That is absolutely correct. I was seeking to emphasise again the importance that I and, I believe, the majority of the community in Northern Ireland attach to article 1.
Mr. Merlyn Rees: As the words of article 1 are being questioned, may I bring to the notice of the Secretary of State that wise old Ulster adage which was put into a poem by Seamus Heaney: "Whatever you say, say nothing."
Mr. King: That has been repeated to me every day since I arrived in Northern Ireland. I am aware of that poem.
Sir Nicholas Bonsor: Will my right hon. Friend accept that those right hon. and hon. Members who take a different view from him about the likely long-term wishes of the people of Northern Ireland respect entirely his right to express his opinions, acknowledge that they are widely held and regret very much the damage that the action of the Opposition today is likely to do to the agreement?
Mr. King: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I have expressed sincerely my views about the significance of article 1. I stand by them and I think that they will prove to be well founded.
Mr. Eric S. Hefter: Does the Secretary of State recall that when the Prime Minister outlined the accord I asked her why the Irish Government signed it. Has not the right hon. Gentleman expressed in clear terms the position of Her Majesty's Government all the way through: that at no time has it been suggested that there will be a united Ireland? There will never be a long-term solution to the problems of Ireland until the border goes and there is a united Ireland.
Mr. King: One issue upon which the Taoiseach and I are in absolute agreement is that there is no question of the removal of the border against the consent of the people of Northern Ireland. The Taoiseach has made that clear on a number of occasions. The hon. Gentleman's solution would be singularly disastrous.
Mr. Ivor Stanbrook: Does not the incident illustrate the defective nature of the agreement in both law and in politics in that it is possible for one party to take one view of it whereas the other party takes a completely opposite view of it?
Mr. King: The agreement is clear. The question is what is the likely forecast of what will happen. I was making it clear in my speech that I believe that the consent of a majority for any change in the status will not be forthcoming. That is my forecast. I know that there are others who hold different views, but I believe that I am entitled, on behalf of the Government, to express that view.
Mr. Kevin McNamara: Nobody is objecting to the right hon. Gentleman expressing his view, which may or may not be the Government's view. The point that we are concerned about is not a mere slip of the tongue but his putting into the mouth of the Prime Minister of the Irish Republic words which would be politically damaging to any leader of any political party in the Republic. He has sought to act as a mouthpiece for the Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland. Would not it be an idea, with his problems, that when he makes statements in future he should say whether he is speaking for himself, the Government, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland, or just his own Back Benchers?
Mr. King: I sought to make it clear in my opening statement that I regretted the way in which I had phrased the remarks that I made which gave that impression.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Private notice questions are merely an extension of Question Time, and we have had 15 minutes on this one.
Mr. Archer: On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Since the Secretary of State expressed from the Government Front Bench a view which he said was his personal view, should not he make it clear to the House that it is a view which he shares with the Prime Minister?
Mr. Speaker: The Secretary of State has made his view clear.

Scottish Teachers (Pay Review)
3.46 pm
Mr. Dennis Canavan: I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 10, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely,
"the failure of the Secretary of State for Scotland to set up an independent pay review for Scottish teachers and the resultant crisis in Scottish education which will mean the closure of virtually all Scottish schools tomorrow."
It is now about 16 months since the Scottish teachers first put in a demand for an independent pay review, a legitimate demand which was backed by irrefutable evidence that the Scottish teachers would need an increase of about 40 per cent. to restore the place in the earnings table which they had following the major review of teachers' salaries by Houghton in 1974.
However, the Secretary of State's intransigent attitude has led to a prolonged dispute, a dispute which has gone on even longer than the recent miners' strike. Because of the Government's inaction, members of the Educational Insitute of Scotland, the largest Scottish teachers' union, have resorted to working to contract, which means that there is no curriculum development, no extra-curricular activities, non-co-operation with the examination board and other action.
There has also been selective strike action, which means that many pupils, including many from my constituency, have recently been put on a two-day school week rather than a five-day school week. Tomorrow the EIS is to be supported by other teachers' unions, which will mean that virtually all Scottish schools will be closed tomorrow, affecting almost 1 million school pupils in Scotland.
Therefore, I submit that the matter is important enough to deserve urgent consideration by the House. Practically every family in Scotland is affected by the deplorable failure of the Secretary of State for Scotland to ensure a fair deal for Scottish teachers, which in turn will help to safeguard the educational opportunities of young people in our schools.
The Secretary of State must bear responsibility for that situation, which is the gravest crisis in the history of Scottish education. In view of the inaction of the Secretary of State, it is up to us to apply parliamentary pressure on him. We owe it to the teachers, to the parents, and, above all, to the young people in our schools.
Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member has asked leave to move the Adjournment of the House for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that he believes should have urgent consideration, namely,
"the failure of the Secretary of State for Scotland to set up an independent pay review for Scottish teachers and the resultant crisis in Scottish education which will mean the closure of virtually all Scottish schools tomorrow."
I do not underestimate the importance of what the hon. Gentleman has said, but I do not consider that the matter he has raised is appropriate for discussion under Standing Order No. 10. Therefore, I cannot submit his application to the House.

Points of Order
Ms. Clare Short: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I should be grateful for advice on how I should deal with what I consider to be a serious abuse by a Minister. He has released to the press confidential correspondence between me and one of my constituents.
As you will know, Mr. Speaker, an argument has been going on for some time between the Minister of State, Home Office and several Opposition Members since he alleged, when he lost control of himself at Question Time, that Opposition Members had been abusing their powers as Members of Parliament to make representations in immigration cases. Since then, the Home Secretary has climbed down and called it only a misuse of power.
We have received a letter from the Minister requesting us to release our correspondence, saying that he simply wants examples of the problems that we face. We responded by saying that we would give permission for the correspondence to be released, without the names, only if we could debate the issue so that our side of the case could be put fairly.
Since that time, without communicating with me, the Minister has released one of those letters to the Daily Telegraph. It was referred to yesterday and part of it was printed. That must be wrong, Mr. Speaker, and I should like your help in making sure that the Minister is appropriately reprimanded.
Mr. Speaker: It is not my function to reprimand Ministers, or to advise the hon. Lady on parliamentary tactics, but there are opportunities to deal with the matter. She might try to obtain an Adjournment debate or raise the matter during business questions tomorrow.
Mr. Tony Marlow: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The main business for today is the Bill dealing with the accession of Spain and Portugal to the European Community. That arises out of the treaty of Rome. We understand that there were discussions in Luxembourg yesterday dealing with the treaty of Rome that suggested small or large amendments to the treaty. We have not had a statement from the Front Bench. There is no copy of the communiqué in the Library and no copy of it will be made available tomorrow. The treaty could change the relationship between Britain and the Community, or Spain and Portugal and the Community. How can we debate the issue of Spain and Portugal joining the Community unless we know what they are about to join?
I beseech you, Mr. Speaker, on behalf of democrats in the House, so that we can consider the subject properly, that today's business should be delayed until we have the fundamental and basic information that we need.
Mr. Speaker: I had expected a point of order from the hon. Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor) on this matter. Does he wish to say something about it?
Mr. Teddy Taylor: I wish to speak about it, Mr. Speaker, because it is directly related to today's business and I regard it as a serious matter.
We are aware that what appears to be an important agreement was made in Luxembourg last night, to make decisions on the extension of majority voting and to make changes in the treaty of Rome. We cannot discuss the
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merits of those proposals on a point of order, but I feel that the rights of Back Benchers are affected by the text of the agreement not being available to hon. Members, while members of the press have apparently been fully briefed on what is happening in Luxembourg.
When I telephoned the Foreign Office this morning, I was advised that it had only a text in French and was unwilling to take the responsibility of translating it. I also contacted the London office of the European Communities Commission and was told that it did not have a copy and did not know when one would arrive. The House of Commons Library, in its conscientious way, was in touch with the Government first thing this morning saying that it had been unable to secure any text. Surely we are entitled to at least the same information as representatives of the press on vital issues affecting the rights of the House of Commons. I ask you, Mr. Speaker, as protector of Back Benchers, to make inquiries and to ensure that information on such important agreements is made available.
Finally, is it proper and fair to Back Benchers that we should be asked to proceed with a Bill to extend the membership of the Common Market by two nations when we have no information on the agreement that has already been made to extend the rights of majority voting? Obviously, as we do not know the details, we cannot say to what extent it will affect the Bill or our consideration of it. Surely it is grossly improper for us not to have the text that is directly relevant to the Bill when the agreement has been made and when the text is available to others.
Mr. David Winnick: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. You said to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Ms. Short) that the matter that she raised could be dealt with in an Adjournment debate. With the greatest respect, will you give further thought to what she said? As I understand it, correspondence that we have with Ministers concerning constituents must be confidential. If such information is disclosed to the press without our permission, it must be a matter of concern to the House. The only way that we can raise it is with you, Mr. Speaker.
If the position stated by my hon. Friend is true, as it must be, surely the Minister should be asked to explain how he has disclosed information to the press concerning an hon. Member and her dealings with a constituent. I do not believe that it can be left purely and simply to my hon. Friend to raise the matter in an Adjournment debate; it is a House of Commons matter.
Mr. Speaker: I was seeking, perhaps unwisely, to be helpful to the hon. Lady by advising her on tactics. If the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) is alleging that it is a matter of privilege, he should draw it to my attention in the usual way.
Mr. Peter Shore: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. We cannot let the matter stand as it now is. This is a very grave incident indeed. I cannot recall any occasion when hon. Members' private correspondence has been released without their permission to members of the press. I should have thought that, as the Leader of the House was present throughout these exchanges, he would take on board the suggestion that the Minister of State should make a statement to the House tomorrow about his conduct.
Mr. Nicholas Budgen: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I suggest

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a compromise, which may attract you as defender of our rights? I suggest that you make private representations that the Prime Minister should address the House on the matter, because all of us wish to know whether it is her opinion that the addition of two members to the EEC will make for more efficient and more cohesive considerations in the EEC, and whether there has been a complete muddle over the past two days, with nothing but eyewash coming out at the end. If that is her view the House may not wish to agree to the treaty. I hope that you will have a private word, Mr. Speaker, and, when you have done so, will consider delaying the proceedings until we have heard the Prime Minister's view.
Mr. Speaker: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not misunderstand me when I say that I do not buy that helpful suggestion. I have sympathy with what the hon. Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor) said, but, of course, it is a matter for the Government whether papers and translations are made available. Perhaps the Minister will be able to say something about it in his speech.
Mr. Teddy Taylor rose—
Mr. Dennis Skinner rose—
Mr. Speaker: No. I shall take the point of order of the hon. Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor).
Mr. Taylor: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. In view of your sympathetic and kind reply, would it be in order for you to invite the Leader of the House to make a statement, as it is a matter of only 24 or 48 hours, postponing consideration of the European Communities (Spanish and Protuguese Accession) Bill for only a day or two so that we can get the text of the agreement, which fundamentally affects the Bill?
Mr. Marlow: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. There are certain areas of policy over which the Government and the Council of Ministers have a veto. We have power over Ministers as Parliament. According to today's press, the Government have considered doing away with the veto on certain areas of their responsibility. That means that Parliament possibly will lose some of its powers. If Parliament loses some of its powers, that is a matter for primary consideration before we look at the business before the House today. I must reinforce the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor). The Leader of the House should carry out his suggestion.
Mr. Speaker: The Leader of the House is present. It is not for me to comment on that.
Mr. Skinner: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It is rather strange that you, Mr. Speaker, have been tolerating points of order about a text from over the water. We are concerned about the texts of letters bandied about in the press, when hon. Members believed that the Minister would use them only in general terms.
The Leader of the House and you, Mr. Speaker, should discuss this matter with a view to finding an appropriate way of ensuring that justice is done. When my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore) said that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was perverting the course of justice, was turned out of the
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Chamber for doing so, within 10 days almost every man and his dog in the nation were saying, "Mr. Sedgemore got it right".
The complaint of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Ms. Short) has been dismissed as though it were of no importance. The matter is important and should be dealt with by you, Mr. Speaker, and the Leader of the House. The Minister must explain himself at the Dispatch Box.
Mr. Speaker: I did not suggest to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Ms. Short) that the matter was not important. That was not what she asked me. She asked whether I could give her some advice on the matter, and I did.
The Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John Biffen): I hope that it will be helpful to the House if I say a few words about the two issues raised in the points of order.
On the matter raised by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Ms. Short), I am not sure whether the implication is that there is a breach of privilege. If that is her view, the remedy available is well known. I take note of your comments, Mr. Speaker, that the subject might be raised on next week's business. I realise the feeling that is invested in the topic, and I shall treat it seriously.
Regarding the issue raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow), for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor) and for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen), I appreciate that it would be to the advantage of the House to have available the text relating to the recent European Council meeting. I am assured by my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs that it will be available shortly.
However, we live in a less than ideal world. Today we are to discuss but the Second Reading of the legislation and I would have thought that we could at least proceed with our present knowledge, and with the assurance that the document will be available for subsequent stages.
Mr. Peter Fry: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The reply of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House was unsatisfactory. On Second Reading we vote on the principle of the Bill. We are being asked to extend to the Governments of Spain and Portugal certain rights that affect Britain regarding the end of majority voting, but we do not know what they are. That fundamental point will not be met by the publication of the document after the debate.
Mr. Speaker: That is not a matter for me.

BILLS PRESENTED

  DISABLED PERSONS (SERVICES, CONSULTATION AND REPRESENTATION)
  Mr. Tom Clarke, supported by Mr. Gareth Wardell, Mr. John Hannam, Mr. Dafydd Wigley, Mr. Lewis Carter-Jones, Mr. Charles Kennedy, Mr. Alfred Morris, Mr. Albert McQuarrie, Mr. Dick Douglas, Mr. Jack Ashley, Ms Harriet Harman and Mr. Dennis Canavan, presented a Bill to provide for the improvement of the effectiveness of, and the co-ordination of resources in, the provision of services for people with mental or physical

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  handicap and for people with mental illness; to make further provision for the assessment of the needs of such people; to establish further consultative processes and representational rights for such people; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 17 January and to be printed. [Bill 20.]

  OBSCENE PUBLICATIONS (PROTECTION OF CHILDREN, ETC) (AMENDMENT)
  Mr. Churchill, supported by Mr. Jack Ashley, Sir Nicholas Bonsor, Mrs Virginia Bottomley, Mr. Mark Carlisle, Mr. Michael Cocks, Mr. Mark Fisher, Mr. Douglas Hogg, Mr. Greville Janner, Mr. David Lambie, Sir Ian Percival and Mr. Cyril Smith, presented a Bill to amend section 1 of the Obscene Publications Act 1959 by removing the exemption of television and sound broadcasting and by making further provision with regard to the test of obscenity in the case of an article published in a place to which persons under eighteen years of age have access or an article disseminated through the medium of television or sound broadcasting; and to make a consequential provision: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 24 January and to be printed. [Bill 21.]
  CHILDREN AND YOUNG PERSONS (AMENDMENT)
  Mr. Dennis Walters, supported by Sir Edward Gardner, Mr. Eric S. Heffer, Mr. Charles Morrison, Mr. Robert Rhodes James, Mr. Nicholas Baker, Mr. Richard Livsey, Mr. John Cartwright, Mr. Ivan Lawrence, Mrs. Virginia Bottomley, Ms Clare Short and Mr. Douglas Hogg, presented a Bill to amend the law in relation to children and young persons in care and to proceedings connected therewith: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 31 January and to be printed. [Bill 22.]
  SAFETY AT SEA
  Mr. Albert McQuarrie, supported by Mr. Alexander Pollock, Mr. Gerald Malone, Sir Walter Clegg, Sir Hector Monro, Mr. Nicholas Fairbairn, Mr. David Harris, Mr. Donald Stewart, Mrs Anna McCurley, Mr. George Foulkes, Mr. James Wallace and Dr. Norman A. Godman, presented a Bill to promote the safety of fishing and other vessels at sea and the persons in them; and for related purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 7 February and to be printed. [Bill 23.]
  SURCHARGE AND DISQUALIFICATION OF COUNCILLORS (ABOLITION)
  Mr. Eddie Loyden, supported by Mr. Eric S. Heffer, Mr. Dennis Skinner, Mr. Tony Benn, Mr. Stuart Holland, Mr. Dennis Canavan, Mr. Bob Clay, Mr. Robert Parry, Mr. Brian Sedgemore, Miss Joan Maynard, Mr. Terry Fields and Mr. Jeremy Corbyn, presented a Bill to abolish the system of surcharge and disqualification as it applies to members of local authorities; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 14 February and to be printed. [Bill 24.]
  CIVIL PROTECTION IN PEACETIME
  Sir Nicholas Bonsor, supported by Mr. Neil Thorne, Dr. John Gilbert, Sir Antony Buck, Mr. Robert Banks, Mr. Stephen Ross, Mr. Gerald Bowden, Mr. Robert Maclennan, Mr. Charles Kennedy, Mr. Nicholas Soames and Mr. Richard Shepherd, presented a Bill to enable local authorities to use their civil defence resources in connection with emergencies and disasters unconnected with any form of hostile attack by a foreign power: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 21 February and to be printed. [Bill 25.]
  CRIMINAL RECORDS
  Mr. Patrick Cormack, supported by Mr. Robert C. Brown, Sir Bernard Braine, Mr. Joe Ashton, Mr. Charles Morrison, Mr. Charles Kennedy, Mr. Ray Powell, Sir Nicholas Bonsor, Mr. John Hunt, Mr. Michael Cocks, Mr. Bryan Gould and Mrs. Elizabeth Peacock, presented a Bill to protect children and vulnerable adults from physical, sexual or economic abuse by permitting local authorities to have access to the criminal records of any person who seeks employment with, or offers his services to, any person or organisation providing care: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 17 January arid to be printed. [Bill 26.]
  CROWN IMMUNITY
  Mr. Richard Shepherd, supported by Mr. Jack Ashley, Mr. William Cash, Mr. Andrew Bowden, Sir Nicholas Bonsor, Mr. Anthony Beaumont-Dark, Mr. Jonathan Aitken, Mr. Steve Norris, Mr. John Hannam, Mr Michael Meadowcroft and Mr. Teddy Taylor, presented a Bill to amend the law relating to Crown Immunity: And the same was read the First time; arid ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 7 February and to be printed. [Bill 27.]
  UNBORN CHILDREN (PROTECTION)
  Mr. Ken Hargreaves, supported by Mr. David Amess, Mr. A. J. Beith, Sir Bernard Braine, Mr. Peter Bruinvels, Mr. Ian Campbell, Mr. David Evennett, Mr. Michael Hancock, Mrs. Elaine Kellett-Bowman, Dame Jill Knight, Mr. James White and Mrs. Ann Winterton, presented a Bill to make provision relating to human embryos produced by in vitro fertilisation; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 24 January and to be printed. [Bill 28.]
  NEW TOWNS (ACCESS TO INFORMATION) (SCOTLAND)
  Mr. Robin Cook, supported by Mr. William McKelvey, Mr. Willie W. Hamilton, Mr. David Lambie, Dr. M. S. Miller, Sir Russell Johnston, Mr. Tom Clarke and Mr Robin Squire, presented a Bill to provide for greater public access to Scottish New Town Development Corporation meetings, reports and documents subject to specified confidentiality provisions: to give Scottish New Town Development Corporations duties to publish certain information; and for related purposes; And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 17 January and to be printed. [Bill 29.]
  PROTECTION OF MILITARY REMAINS
  Mr. Michael Mates, supported by Mr. Robert Atkins, Mr. Nicholas Soames, Mr. Neil Thorne, Mr. John Stokes and Sir Nicholas Bonsor, presented a Bill to secure the protection from unauthorised interference of the remains of military aircraft and vessels that have crashed, sunk or been stranded and of associated human remains: and for connected purposes; And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 31 January and to be printed. [Bill 30.]
  TOBACCO PRODUCTS (SALES RESTRICTION)
  Mr. John Home Robertson, supported by Mr. Roger Sims, Mr. Clement Freud, Mr. Dafydd Wigley, Mr. George Foulkes, Mrs. Anna McCurley, Dr. M. S. Miller, Mr. Laurie Pavitt, Mr. Colin Shepherd, Mr. Tony Lloyd, Mr. Frank Dobson and Mr. Jeremy Hanley, presented a Bill to amend the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 and the Children and Young Persons (Scotland) Act 1937 to make it an offence to sell any tobacco or tobacco product to persons under the age of sixteen; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 31 January and to be printed. [Bill 31.]
  REDUNDANCY PAYMENTS (RECIPROCITY WITH NORTHERN IRELAND) (AMENDMENT)
  Mr. J. Enoch Powell, supported by Mr. Roy Beggs, Sir John Biggs-Davison, Mr. Ron Lewis, Mr. James Molyneaux, Mr. Ivor Stanbrook and Rev. Martin Smyth, presented a Bill to amend the provisions governing redundancy payments so as to secure greater reciprocity between Great Britain and Northern Ireland in respect of qualifying service: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 7 February and to be printed. [Bill 32.]
  ROAD TRAFFIC REGULATION (PARKING)
  Mr. Kevin McNamara presented a Bill to amend the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 in relation to parking: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 24 January and to be printed. [Bill 33.]
  DRAINAGE RATES (DISABLED PERSONS)
  Sir Gerard Vaughan, supported by Mr. Alex Fletcher, Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson, Mr. Fred Silvester, Mr. Patrick Nicholls, Dr. Ian Twinn, Mr. Roger Sims, Mr. Peter Bruinvels, Mr. Andrew Bowden, Mr. Gerald Howarth, Mr. Kenneth Hind and Mr. John Heddle, presented a Bill to make provision for reducing drainage rates in respect of premises used by disabled persons and invalids: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 14 February and to be printed. [Bill 34.]
  HORTICULTURAL PRODUCE
  Sir John Wells, supported by Sir Geoffrey Johnson Smith, Mr. Mark Hughes, Mr. Richard Body, Sir David Price, Mr. Stephen Ross, Mr. Robert Atkins, Mr. Ken Weetch and Mr. David Crouch, presented a Bill to confer on authorised officers (within the meaning of Part III of the Agriculture and Horticulture Act 1964) powers in relation to the movement of horticultural produce; and for purposes connected therewith: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 24 January and to be printed. [Bill 35.]
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (ACCESS TO INFORMATION) ACT 1985 (EXTENSION)
  Dr. Brian Mawhinney, supported by Mr. Robin Squire, Mr. Frank Field and Mr. Simon Hughes, presented a Bill to extend the provisions of the Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985 to Joint Consultative Committees: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 31 January and to be printed. [Bill 36.]
  INDUSTRIAL TRAINING
  Sir William Clark, supported by Sir Edward du Cann, Sir Peter Hordern, Sir Philip Holland, Sir Walter Clegg, Mr. T. H. H. Skeet, Mr. Anthony Beaumont-Dark and Mr. Jonathan Aitken, presented a Bill to make provision with respect to the functions of industrial training boards: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 24 January and to be printed. [Bill 37.]
  CORNEAL TISSUE
  Mr. John Hannam, supported by Sir David Price, Mr. Jack Ashley, Mr. Tim Yeo, Mr. Clement Freud, Mr. Lewis Carter-Jones, Mr. Dafydd Wigley, and Mr. Jeremy Hanley, presented a Bill to permit the removal of eyes or parts of eyes for research for therapeutic purposes by certain specified persons who are not medically qualified subject to appropriate safeguards: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 17 January and to be printed. [Bill 38.]
  CONSUMER SAFETY (AMENDMENT)
  Mr. Conal Gregory, supported by Sir Bernard Braine, Miss Janet Fookes, Mr. Michael Meadowcroft, Mr. Allen McKay, Mr. Gordon A. T. Bagier, Mr. Kevin Barron, Mr. Tony Blair, Mr. Austin Mitchell, Dr. Keith Hampson, Mr. Graham Bright and Mr. David Sumberg, presented a Bill to make further provision with respect to the safety of consumers and others: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 7 February and to be printed. [Bill 39.]
Orders of the Day

  European Communities (Spanish and Portuguese Accession) Bill [Lords]
  Order for Second Reading read.
  4.7 pm
  The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Sir Geoffrey Howe): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
  I heard the observations of several of my hon. Friends about the timing of the Second Reading in relation to the conclusion early this morning of the European Council meeting, which I attended with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister over the past two days. My right hon. Friend will make a statement to the House tomorrow about the outcome of the meeting. I shall arrange for the conclusions of the Council to be placed in the Library in the usual way. If those conclusions require the presentation to the House of amendments to any of the existing treaties, there will be further opportunity for debate and consideration.
  This afternoon I shall address myself to the principle implicit in the Second Reading of the Bill. Six months ago I had the privilege of attending the ceremonies that took place on the same day in Lisbon and Madrid on 12 June for the purpose of signing the treaties that provided for accession to the European Community. All those present realised that we were taking part in an event of historic significance, not only for Spain and Portugal, but for Europe as a whole. That day was the culmination of eight long years of negotiation that began with the Portuguese application in March 1977 and the Spanish application in July 1977.
  The House will recall that following the restoration of democracy in both their countries, Spain and Portugal looked immediately to the Community as the best guardian of their new freedom. Accession, they felt, would end their isolation from the mainstream of European developments. That certainly was the message that came through with great clarity at the ceremonies on 12 June.
  Mario Soares, then the Prime Minister of Portugal, described it as
  "a coming in from the cold".
  Felipe Gonzalez, the Prime Minister of Spain, said it was
  "completing the unity of our old continent and overcoming the centuries-old isolation of Spain".
  For the United Kingdom and for Europe, that indeed was, and is, the principal significance of enlargement. That has long been recognised in all parts of the House. I acknowledge the interest of the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing), the Chairman of the Scrutiny Committee, which visited Madrid last month.
  The accession of Spain and Portugal will reinforce the Community, which stands internationally for progress, liberty and democracy. Twelve democracies —whose fortunes have been linked for centuries, sometimes in alliance, sometimes in conflict —are dedicating themselves to work in future in a new and enlarged partnership towards the common goals set out in the premable to the Treaty of Rome, which are to:
  "strengthen peace and liberty …ensure economic and social progress …lay the foundations of an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe".
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  Accession will serve, too, to enhance our bilateral relations with Spain and Portugal. Next year we shall celebrate the 600th anniversary of our unbroken alliance with Portugal —the Treaty of Windsor dates from 9 May 1386. [AN HON. MEMBER: "Was the right hon. and learned Gentleman there?"]—I claim no responsibility for the treaty. However, earlier this year I was privileged to attend Her Majesty the Queen and His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh on their memorably successful royal visit to Portugal.
  Our links with Spain date from the Confederation of Toledo in 1254, although they have been interrupted from time to time since then. This year, 1985, is the 10th anniversary of the enthronement of the King of Spain. I am sure that the whole House will share my pleasure at the fact that in 1986, the year of Spain's accession, we shall be receiving the King and Queen of Spain on a state visit to this country.
  Mr. Ivor Stanbrook: Does my right hon. and learned Friend think that it is compatible with the admission of Spain to the European Community that that country should retain restrictions on the use of Gibraltar airfield by British military aircraft? What purpose do those restrictions serve, when Spain is supposed to be a friend and an ally?
  Sir Geoffrey Howe: As my hon. Friend knows, those restrictions have been in place for some time. The discussion of the future of those restrictions was one of the things that flowed from the Brussels and Geneva agreements entered into earlier this year. Of course, the fact that both Spain and the United Kingdom are now members of the European Community will facilitate a discussion on differences of that nature.
  It is clear, of course, that the Community of Twelve will be very different from the original Community of Six. Enlargement has acted as a catalyst for reform. It has forced the Community to take a long, hard look at its aims, its international role, its procedures, the way decisions are taken and the way that it spends its resources. Much of the drive for yesterday's successful summit meeting in Luxembourg was inspired in that way.
  Once, it was only the United Kingdom that argued for reform. Now —and, indeed, yesterday —there is a general readiness to grapple with the Community's problems and a recognition of the need to do more to promote the right conditions for our industries, which will help create jobs. There is still a great deal to be done. but, largely at our instigation, work has been set in hand.
  We need to promote the right conditions for our industries, and we are doing just that. A programme is under way for the urgent completion of the Common Market. The bureaucratic obstacle to the movement of goods is being dismantled. Under the Fontainebleau agreement we have dealt with the problem of budget imbalances, so that the United Kingdom will pay only 7 per cent. net at most of any additional expenditure.
  In high technology, we have begun to build better prospects for the Community of tomorrow. Esprit, a five-year research programme in information technology, is under way. The Eureka concept, which will help us the better to compete with the United States and Japan, is developing quite well.
  With Europe, too, we are successfully contending for the future of the open trading system, which is crucial for

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  prosperity and jobs. Only last week, the Community, with our help, played a major role in bringing about agreement in Geneva on the launch of a new GATT round.
  Mr. Tam Dalyell: The right hon. and learned Gentleman said that the Eureka project was developing quite well. However, there have been numerous reports in the press of hitches, difficulties and snags. Are those reports without foundation?
  Sir Geoffrey Howe: I think that there is almost nothing in human existence that is not the subject of such reports. What I said is true. The project is working and developing increasingly well. However, like every other project or programme, differences are bound to arise from time to time.
  A different topic, which is not the scene of universal tranquillity, is that of agricultural surpluses. They are being brought under control, but it is a difficult process, not just in the Community or just in Britain, but in the United States and other countries as well. Milk production quotas have been put in place in the Community, and a reformed wine regime has been agreed. We shall continue to fight, as we must, for a restrictive price policy to bring Community prices more into line with those in the outside world.
  These are worthwhile achievements, and they must take their place alongside the striking Community success that we are marking today —the conclusion of the complex negotiations for the entry of Spain and Portugal.
  Mr. Eric Forth: Does my right hon. and learned Friend believe that the accession of two countries which are much more dependent upon agriculture than are the existing members of the Community will make the reform of the CAP easier, or more difficult, to achieve?
  Sir Geoffrey Howe: I suspect that it will make the management of the problem —which extends far beyond the frontiers of the Community —of the surplus generating capacity of an increasingly technological industry easier, rather than more difficult. I say that because many people speak as though the Community has created the problems, whereas its existence will help to solve them. The problems of surpluses affect agriculture in every country, with the exception of the Soviet Union. I do not believe that the enlargement of the Community will make the problems more difficult to solve.
  Mr. Nicholas Budgen rose—
  Sir Geoffrey Howe: I shall not give way. I shall listen to my hon. Friend's speech with great interest, as I always do when I have that opportunity.
  There is a long way to go if the enlarged Community is to make the most of its potential. Already the shape of the agenda for the enlarged Community is clear. It is designed to meet the needs of the people of the enlarged Community, not only for this decade, but to the end of the century. It concentrates on technology, on getting value for money, and on creating real prospects for jobs. Success in meeting those challenges will be the best welcome that we can give to Spain and Portugal and their peoples. That is the purpose of the Bill before the House.
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  The Bill will incorporate into the law of this country the terms of the accession treaty. When ratified, it will permit the entry into effect of the revised own resources decision.
  Mr. Alfred Morris: The right hon. and learned Gentleman spoke of the importance of this legislation for relations between this country and Spain. He said nothing about the important issue of the pensions that will be payable to Spaniards who worked in Gibraltar up to the time when the frontier was closed. He must know that it is an issue of the first importance to the Government of Gibraltar. It could cost them £7 million a year for the next 15 years. Can the right hon. and learned Gentleman give them any sort of assurance before he concludes his speech?
  Sir Geoffrey Howe: The right hon. Gentleman was right to raise that question. It is clear that the financing of those obligations is a matter of interest. The Government will make a significant contribution for the first year from the date of Spain's accession to assist Gibraltar to meet its obligations while negotiations continue about future years. I shall say something more about Gibraltar later.
  I come now to the central points of the Bill. Many members of the existing Community were worried about the difficulties which Spanish and Portuguese accession might cause for one or other sector of their economies, but we all recognised the political importance of success in the main negotiations and the political consequences of failure. Our common aim was to negotiate terms which gave time for the necessary adaptation. and which established a fair balance between the interests of the existing Community and those of the acceding member states. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister told the House, the terms
  "are very satisfactory for the United Kingdom".—[Official Report, 2 April 1985; Vol. 76, c. 1063.]
  I believe that they are also good for Spain and Portugal.
  There were, of course, special problems to be considered. Trade in industrial products is one example. For at least 200 years, and perhaps for even longer than that, there has been a history of problems of one kind or another in our trade with Spain. Successive attempts at treaties of commerce have not been able to solve the problem. The barriers have not been all one way. Now, with Spain a member of the Community, those barriers will at last come down. The high tariffs that were allowed under the 1970 agreement between the Community and Spain are to be cut by more than half after the end of only three years' transition, and phased out altogether by the end of seven years. Special arrangements have been made for car exports to Spain, and Portugal's tariffs, which are in any case lower, will be progressively reduced over the same seven-year period. Spain has already passed legislation to introduce value added tax from the date of accession. Portugal is properly allowed a derogation.
  The opening of this new market of 50 million domestic consumers offers major opportunities to our exporters. They claim that they should not wait until the end of the relatively short transitional period. If they do not act now, I have no doubt that their competitors will do so. I am sure that the whole House will wish to join me in urging our business community to make the most of this new opportunity.
  Mr. Forth: My right hon. and learned Friend mentioned VAT. He will be aware that the Greeks have

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  recently been allowed to postpone yet again their introduction of VAT, even though they entered the Community in 1981. Is my right hon. and learned Friend any more confident that Spain, and more particularly Portugal, will be able to hold to their programme and timetable better than the Greeks have done since 1981? Can he give us some expression of his confidence in this matter?
  Sir Geoffrey Howe: Spain has already agreed to do this from the date of accession and, indeed, has already passed legislation to that effect. Portugal has been allowed a derogation for three or four years from now. I think that my hon. Friend will know that derogations of that kind are not usual, and that in most cases the timetable set is fulfilled. I do not think that any country is innocent of having failed to hit such target dates from time to time.
  Agriculture was, of course, one of the most difficult parts of the negotiations. Spain is highly competitive in some sectors, and existing member states were worried about the effect of competition on their own producers. In the result, the transitional arrangements for the most sensitive products, such as fruit and vegetables, are to last for 10 years. That gives the fullest possible protecion to Community horticultural producers, including our own. On the other side of the account, both Spain and Portugal are deficit producers for milk, beef and cereals, so that should offer attractive opportunities to exporters in this country as tariffs are phased out.
  Mr. Anthony Nelson: My right hon. and learned Friend will be aware that many of us have strong constituency interests in horticulture. There are fears about the viability of some enterprises because of the import of tomatoes in particular. If, during the transition period, the problems of our tomato growers become increasingly apparent, given the unfair competition from the Dutch sector, can my right hon. and learned Friend assure us that the Government will consider providing further financial support to enable our growers to switch to other horticultural products and to compensate them for the much lower heating costs that obtain in the Iberian peninsula?
  Sir Geoffrey Howe: My hon. Friend raises a rather different and wider question, which has been considered from time to time by Governments in different contexts. At this stage, all I can say is that the additional transitional period of 10 years was chosen specifically to allow problems of this kind to be considered.
  I was dealing with the opportunities available to British agriculture exporters. Special arrangements have been made to help Portugal adjust to the common agricultural policy, and she will receive significant aid to help her develop the necessary agricultural infrastructure.
  I reported to the House on 28 November that the Foreign Affairs Council had agreed a mandate for negotiations to ensure that the agricultural trade flows of the Community's Mediterranean partners were maintained.
  We have been able to preserve the balance of fishing opportunities under the common fisheries policy. Spain and Portugal are incorporated into the common fisheries policy for its duration. With certain limited exceptions, Spanish and Portuguese access to Community waters is limited to those areas and species to which they currently have access. The number of Spanish and Portuguese
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  vessels fishing in Community waters will continue to be strictly controlled and subject to strict monitoring and reporting requirements. Effective fishing opportunities for United Kingdom fishermen remain undiminished.
  Spain and Portugal will build up agricultural receipts only gradually. To ensure that during the first few years of membership Spain should be in rough budgetary balance and Portugal a modest net beneficiary, the Community agreed that both countries should be refunded, at a rate diminishing progressively over the transitional period, a substantial percentage of their contributions —the same treatment as Greece received in the equivalent years after her accession.
  It was always the case that enlargement would entail at least some cost to the Community, including the United Kingdom. But, as the House knows, the arrangements negotiated at Fontainebleau by the Government ensure that the United Kingdom will pay only 7 per cent. net of any additional costs.
  The Commission estimates that at the end of transition the costs of enlargement may be about 0·1 per cent. of the Community's VAT base. On 1986 figures, this would be equivalent to 1,800 mecu, or about £1,080 million per annum. Under the Fontainebleau arrangement, this means that there will be a United Kingdom contribution of roughly £75 million a year at the end of transition.
  The right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) asked about one aspect of Gibraltar. I said earlier that that was one area in which Spanish accession would bring a new dimension to our relations with Spain. Indeed, a new era began a year ago when I announced the Brussels agreement to the House. On 5 February of this year the Lisbon agreement was finally implemented, and Spain opened the frontier with Gibraltar. Gibraltar and Spain both instituted in advance certain reciprocal Community arrangements. Since then, Gibraltar has been able to judge for herself what the impact of Spanish accession will be.
  The impact of the Franco era is not easily forgotten, but, happily, some of the old fears and hostility are receding before the policies of Senor Gonzalez' Government. Certainly the Gibraltar economy has received a major shot in the arm.
  Mr. J. F. Pawsey: I wish to return to the point raised by the right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) on the payment of pensions to those workers from Spain who formerly worked in Gibraltar. My understanding is that the Spanish Government, when they closed the border, effectively ensured that these people could no longer work. Despite that, Gibraltarians are expected to pay for the pensions of those people. As the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe said, it is some £7 million per annum over a period of about 15 years. That is a substantial sum—£105 million in total. For the 30,000 people of Gibraltar to zany that burden is clearly unfair. Although my right hon. and learned Friend said that a substantial portion of that sum would be made up by Her Majesty's Government, I think that the Gibraltarian Government are looking for a rather better deal than that from us.
  Sir Geoffrey Howe: This is a long and complicated story. It cannot be denied that over the years the Government and the people of Gibraltar have received

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  substantial help from this country, and rightly so, and the future pattern in that regard is always open to consideration.
  With regard to pensions, it must be remembered that the workers in question contributed to the Gibraltar pension scheme for a number of years and, like other workers who contributed in the same period, are entitled to benefits which match those payable to people who live in Gibraltar. That is the pattern with which we are dealing, and I have nothing to add to what I said earlier about this topic.
  Mr. David Young: Will the right hon. Gentleman clarify the matter?
  Sir Geoffrey Howe: I am afraid not at this stage. I do not want to get into a long debate about this aspect of Gibraltar in the context of the wider subject with which we are dealing.
  The Gibraltar Government have already completed all stages of their Bill to give effect to Spanish and Portuguese accession. I have no need, in this or any other context, to remind the House of our commitment to respect the wishes of the people of Gibraltar as enshrined in the preamble to the Gibraltar Constitution Order 1969. We look forward to continued fruitful collaboration between Gibraltar and her neighbours in the campo.
  Enlargement has helped the Community address its own future and to decide on the steps needed to enable us collectively to play our full role internationally, politically and economically. The enlarged Community will be the largest trading entity the world has known. It will therefore be well placed to defend the interests of the open trading system, on which our economic future depends, against the current wave of protectionist pressures.
  Enlargement marks the arrival of democratic Spain and democratic Portugal as our partners in Europe in the widest sense, in the Community and NATO as well, where we hope that Spain, like Portugal, will assume her full place. It represents a commitment by nations with a shared history, which have suffered from the devastation of successive wars, to build together a new Europe in which the conflicts of the past are no longer possible. It represents, in the words of the Treaty of Rome, a commitment to common action to eliminate the barriers that divide Europe and for the pooling of resources to strengthen peace and liberty. I have every confidence in commending the Bill to the House, and that I shall be able to tell Senor Ordonez, my Spanish colleague, when I see him in Madrid tomorrow, that the House joins me in giving a very warm welcome to Spain and Portugal.
  4.31 pm
  Mr. George Robertson: The official Opposition have always made clear our support for the accession of both Spain and Portugal to the European Community. Therefore, we are glad to support the Second Reading of the Bill. Accession of these two countries, bringing the Community's membership to 12, makes it more truly European and complete. It will also give reinforcement to the democratic systems in both nations, which have recently escaped the grip of Right-wing totalitarianism. Neither country has the maturity, economically or politically, that other members of the Community share, and we have an obligation as their
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  neighbours and friends, as well as those who encouraged the end of Fascism, to assist with their full integration into western European society.
  Both countries have, against substantial pressures, tightened the democratic grip, but we who preach the merits of political choice over dictatorship must also mean it when we have a chance to help those who need it in keeping to the democratic road. Rhetoric will not protect democracy, but a proper recognition of what we can do to assist these nations will be of inestimable value.
  Mr. Forth: I am following the hon. Gentleman's argument closely, and I am aware that one of the principal arguments in favour of the accession of Spain and Portugal is that of democracy. However, has the Labour party made any estimates of the cost in jobs, taxes or moneys lost to the British citizens of this protection of democracy? Will he be giving us a bill for the marvellous benefit that he is setting out?
  Mr. Robertson: I shall be coming to the hon. Gentleman's special interest —the cost of accession —and I shall be making my own criticism, but that does not negate the welcome that I and my hon. Friends give to the fact that Spain and Portugal will be joining the European Community. There is no price, whether it is measured in terms of money or cost, to be set against the fact that countries under the grip of totalitarianism are now in a pluralist democracy again.
  Accession will have profound implications for the European Community and direct effects on this country, and we would be wise to give careful thought and attention to that instead of generally welcoming the new members and the new trade that such a move might bring us. Accession is already having an effect on the routine but damaging prices in the Community budget. It will have a dramatic and so far uncalculated effect on the agricultural policy of the EEC, and it will increase the agricultural bias already too obvious within the Community.
  In bringing in two much poorer nations, accession will change the balance in priorities and will yet again move the Community's centre of gravity from the northern industrialised states to the agriculture-dominated Mediterranean south of Europe. The effects on the regional and social policies of the Community will, in many cases, directly affect this country for the worst, and the impact of accession on the budget will also have an effect on our domestic programme. All these issues have been insufficiently debated and discussed in the Community and have not been debated fully in the House.
  Those factors make it doubly unsatisfactory that we find that this important and indeed historic debate is squeezed into a three-hour period. It is an inadequate and contemptuous way in which to treat such a crucial and, for this country, far-reaching issue. The European Community may not be the most stimulating and exciting of the affairs debated in the House, and it may attract fewer hon. Members than most subjects, but we have a duty to examine, in adequate time, issues that will have such an important effect on us and on our trading relationships.
  The most important aspect of accession will be the effect on agricultural policy and, as this policy dominates the European Community, there is no doubt that this will have a most penetrating effect on the way in which the Community is run.
  The provisions for Spain and Portugal in the draft 1986 budget are clearly inadequate. The first draft from the

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  Council of Ministers had no provision for the accession of Spain and Portugal. The latest version still seems to be incapable of delivering on the assurances and guarantees given to Spain and Portugal during the negotiations, which regarded them as being net beneficiaries in their initial years. Either this is to be an additional commitment superimposed on the already overstrained budget, which may at the moment be being thrown out by the European Parliament in Strasbourg, or the commitments that have been made will be reneged on. If they are, the two poorest nations in the Community will find themselves net contributors. Although a merry-go-round of Treasury Ministers have represented us in the Community budget negotiations, not one, as they have paraded in and out of the European Community, has been able to shed any more light on the bizarre intricacies that the Budget Council imposes on the Community.
  On top of all this, the agricultural consequences of accession are still unresolved. In protocol 25 of the treaty, the 10 nations recognise that an increase in Portuguese agricultural activity and hence production will follow from accession, but they maintain that it will be accompanied by agricultural discipline. How can this be possible? Would the Minister of State care to explain the use of mirrors by the Foreign Secretary? He managed to say that he recognised the effect that increased production by Spain and Portugal would have on surpluses, but today he told us that the management of the surpluses would be made easier.
  Given that surpluses are one of the most challenging and daunting problems facing Britain and the Community as a whole, how on earth will increases in the production of citrus fruit and tomato juice by Spain and Portugal make management of the crisis easier? As we had no answer from the Foreign Secretary, perhaps the Minister of State, in his usual elegant fashion, will give us a demonstration of his skill at making speeches without his officials' notes in front of him.
  There is no explanation for the Secretary of State's use of mirrors, because the two items of increased production and managing the surpluses are incompatible. The already chronic problem of surpluses is bound to be exacerbated. This, taken with the existing shortages in the structural fund —the 1986 budget freezes them at the previously inadequate levels, which is a cut in real terms—puts a relentless and intolerable pressure on the difficulties that the Community has already with the common agricultural policy. We learn from this week's discussions that the cuts in the regional and social funds will have a direct effect upon the United Kingdom as a beneficiary of the funds.
  Three recent reports have underlined the crisis in the CAP which, in the absence of action, accession is bound to make worse. The first and most weighty report was that of the House of Lords Select Committee which said about the CAP:
  "Left unreformed it could break down. If this were to happen the Committee fear that the existence of the EEC itself would be in jeopardy."
  It continued:
  "if the reform of the CAP is delayed once again, its excessive demands on available resources will hinder the Communities' economic recovery."
  This report, by worthy Peers sympathetic to Europe, estimated the cost of the CAP to be as high as £20 billion. It predicted that cereal stocks would rise to more than 89 million tonnes by 1991 compared with the present 25 million tonnes, and that Spain and Portugal's accession
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  would cause further strains. It suggested that the CAP had not resulted in aid for poor farmers who needed it. The Committee recommended that the Community should move to a policy of restricting prices and establishing realistic thresholds combined with direct economic support for those farmers in difficulties. It concluded:
  "The chief obstacle to the success of a prices policy is a lack of political courage to enforce it."
  The House deserves to know, as we debate this historical milestone, whether the Government have the political courage to force changes in the CAP which alone, according to the Foreign Secretary, will make the accession of Spain and Portugal a guarantee for the future.
  The conclusions of the report by the Comptroller and Auditor General and the European Commission's Green Paper make it clear that the existing need for immediate discussion and action fundamentally to reform the CAP will be made more urgent by the accession of Spain and Portugal.
  We have heard little or nothing from the Foreign Secretary about the implications of accession on agricultural sectors and on manufacturing sectors relying on light industry and textiles, for example, which have been badly battered by far eastern competition. Surely that is worth a mention.
  Why have we heard nothing about the renewed need for a regional policy with bite, which will arise from accession? The hard financial facts are that an adequate social and regional policy with funding appropriate to provide the structural retraining, job creation and redistributive role intended, which is doubly necessary today, is nowhere matched by the resources made available. The payments this year will be cut as the demands on the regional and social funds increase. Added to this topsy-turvy contradiction is the financing of the integrated Mediterranean programmes. The Government's White Paper, Cmnd. 9627, tells us blandly that accession will not have an effect on existing structural funds, and much the same statement appears in the explanatory memorandum. After last week's Budget Council, how can that possibly be true? How can the new demands of the integrated Mediterranean programme be met without affecting existing structural funds? How will accession affect trading with Latin America? Will not Spain's and Portugal's inevitable shift to the Lome countries, as a result of accession, make the debt crisis of Latin America worse? What will happen about the free movement of migrant workers and other workers as a result of accession? Lack of time will prevent discussion of a series of other issues.
  The impact of accession on Britain will be of considerable importance, but on this we have heard least from the Foreign Secretary. The social and regional funds are of major importance to projects in Britain and it is not sufficient for Ministers to say that, because of the Fontainebleau arrangement and the rebate mechanism, the amount of money spent from the regional and social funds in Britain is of academic importance. Surely no one believes that it is a substitute for direct aid to our poorest areas for extra cash to be handed to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Any dissolution or diminution of the social and regional funds which affects Britain's poorest areas must be of consequence and must be considered by the House.
  We know that the changes in the guidelines for social fund availability will, at a time of high unemployment,

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  reduce the amount available to the United Kingdom from £350 million to £280 million, a real cut of 25 per cent. The new guidelines laid down by the Government for their own regional policy have led to a cut in the amount of money available in the social fund. We know that under the regional fund, the integrated Mediterranean programmes involved a £3·9 billion package for that region, of which £1·45 billion was to come out of existing structural funds in the Community. The Community budget cannot accommodate the cost of accession, so how can it conceivably accommodate the extra demand that is being imposed upon it?
  The start of this debate was marked by genuine and justified complaints that the House and the country were insufficiently aware of the details of the agreement reached last night in Luxembourg. If major changes have been made to the way in which the Community operates and how decisions are arrived at, we deserve to have the fullest details before us in a debate of such historic importance. It is unacceptable for the Foreign Secretary to promise that the details will be available tomorrow. The details are needed today.
  Sir Geoffrey Howe: They are now available in the Vote Office.
  Mr. Robertson: The generosity of the Foreign Secretary, appearing an hour into the debate like Santa Claus with the finally deciphered documents, hardly assists the ability of the House, and especially the Opposition —[Interruption.] It would be doubly difficult for me to get to the Vote Office and back while addressing the House. Hon. Members on both sides of the House deeply resent the way in which the debate has been handled.
  We welcome the accession of Spain and Portugal, and we wish them well. They will have their problems in adapting to the European Community, but these will be nothing as we all come to terms with a Community of 12. Like so many problems which the Community tackles, this has been embarked upon with inadequate preparation, incomplete financing and the already mighty burden of agriculture heavier on top of us all. We cannot turn our back on Spain and Portugal but at some time—
  Mr. David Young rose—
  Mr. Robertson: —the arithmetic of the European Community will have to be reserviced and the common agricultural policy subjected to surgery, or there will be precious little Community for Spain and Portugal —or the other 10—to be part of.
  4.50 pm
  Mr. Albert McQuarrie: I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for calling me to participate in the debate at such an early stage. I apologise to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to the occupants of both Front Benches for the fact that I shall have to leave the Chamber immediately after I have spoken to attend an important Back-Bench Members' Committee.
  I welcome the Bill because I believe that it is in the best interests of the European Community. It will bring considerable industrial and commercial trading oppor-tunities between Spain, Portugal and the United Kingdom. That will apply especially to fish processing and
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  agriculture products, which are two of the main sources of employment in my constituency. I hope that British support of Spain's entry into the Community will encourage that country to take its full part in working with NATO.
  The Bill received welcome approval from the other place. Several of their Lordships, including my right hon. and noble Friend the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office—
  Mr. George Robertson: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. You will have heard the Foreign Secretary say a short time ago that vital documents on the outcome of the summit which ended last night were available in the Vote Office. My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) has been to the Vote Office and it seems that the only documents available on this issue are glossy pamphlets which bear the date May 1985. The guarantee of the Foreign Secretary has not yet been delivered.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): I shall make arrangements for inquiries to be made.
  Mr. McQuarrie: I was saying that when the Bill passed through another place it received welcome approval. Several of their Lordships, including my right hon. and noble Friend the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, spoke about the dependent territory of Gibraltar. My noble Friend the Minister of State reiterated, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary was kind enough to do this afternoon, the Government's adherence to the preamble to the Gibraltar constitution on sovereignty. My right hon. and learned Friend's reiteration of the Government's adherence to the preamble will be welcomed greatly by the Government and people of Gibraltar.
  In this short debate I shall concentrate on a serious problem which has already been mentioned by my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary and the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson)—the payment of pensions to the former Spanish workers who were employed in Gibraltar until the closing of the Spanish frontier gates in July 1969. From information which I have received —this has been mentioned by the right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris)—the total cost of the payment of pensions to these Spanish workers will be £7 million per annum for 15 years. My right hon. and learned Friend has said that the Spanish workers contributed towards their pensions, but until July 1969 they were contributing only four shillings in old money per week while their employers were contributing five shillings. That does not relate to £7 million per annum for the next 15 years.
  The hon. Member for Bolton, South-East (Mr. Young) tabled a written question in which he asked the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who would be responsible ultimately for the payment to former Spanish workers in Gibraltar of pensions which were frozen as a result of the Spanish Government's action in closing the frontier. The Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield (Mr. Eggar), replied:
  "Under Gibraltar law and under EC regulations, responsibility for payments of pensions rests with the Gibraltar Government. We are having discussions with the Gibraltar Government about how this responsibility will be met.—[Official Report, 2 December 1985; Vol. 88, c. 38.]

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  A short time ago my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary told us that the Government are in consultation with the Gibraltar Government, who will make a substantial contribution to the payment of the Spanish workers' pensions. I shall quote from a press release which the Chief Minister of Gibraltar, Sir Joshua Hassan, issued yesterday. It states:
  "I have just been informed of the answer given by Mr. Tim Eggar to a parliamentary question by Mr. David Young regarding the ultimate responsibility for the payment of social security pensions to Spanish nationals working in Gibraltar before the closure of the frontier by the Spanish Government.
  Gibraltar Government Ministers have made it clear to the British Government that, while Gibraltar is prepared to meet its moral responsibility in full, and has accordingly offered to contribute the total amount paid into the social insurance fund by Spanish workers, plus accrued interest (a total of some £4,500,000), their view is that the ultimate responsibility lies with the British Government."
  If the Gibraltar Government are unable to pay that sum, which is equal to 12 per cent. of their budget, the Spanish workers could go to the European Court. However, it would be the British Government and not the Gibraltar Government who would be taken to the court. Therefore, the British Government should address themselves to the issue of ultimate responsibility.
  Sir Joshua Hassan added that the Spanish Government should have some responsibility. The press release states:
  "We reiterated previous oral suggestions that the Spanish Government might be asked to acknowledge some responsibility in this matter."
  The latest communication to London on this issue was dated 29 November.
  The press release continues:
  "Secondly, it has been recently alleged in Gibraltar that this matter has been left too late. In fact, it was raised by me"—
  that is, Sir Joshua—
  "with Sr. Oreja in Strasbourg in 1977 and …more particularly, it has been the subject of correspondence with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and of meetings with Southern European Department ODA officials, since August 1984 and throughout 1985."
  I think that I have said enough to show that it should not be the responsibility of 30,000 dependent territory citizens in Gibraltar, who have been acclaimed, rightly, as more British than the British —they fought for the right to remain British citizens, and they are prepared to accept a moral responsibility for contributing £4·5 million —to pay Spanish workers large sums in the face of the actions of Franco and the present regime in Spain, who are demanding that £7 million per annum should be paid for 15 years by people who saw some of their compatriots imprisoned by the Spanish for 16 years. Why should they be asked to do so? Why does not my right hon. and learned Friend go to the Spanish Government and say, "You have a moral responsibility to pay part of the £7 million. You were responsible for closing the border and not the British Government. The closing of the gates was not the responsibility of the Gibraltar Government. Our gates remained open for 16 years when these people were imprisoned." It is not good enough to say, "We shall give consideration to the payment of £7 million per annum and endeavour to help."
  My right hon. and learned Friend is well aware that the offer that he has made to Gibraltar is inadequate to meet the obligation. The Spanish Government should accept some form of liability. It should be realised that Gibraltar is not the sole beneficiary of the opening of the border. The town of La Linea was derelict when Franco closed the border and it has benefited greatly from the opening of the
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  frontier gates by the Spaniards. The town having enjoyed that benefit, the Spanish Government have a moral responsibility.
  It is not good enough for the Government to say that they are doing something to meet the problem of the payment of £7 million per annum. No one in Gibraltar can accept that approach. The British taxpayer should not he asked to subsidise £105 million over 15 years. When my hon. Friend the Minister of State replies, I ask him to tell us exactly what the Government propose to do to ensure that the Spanish Government honour their commitment.
  4.59 pm
  Mr. Michael Cocks: I should like to put at rest the mind of my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson). He is diligent in his preparations and unusually, because he has been so busy working on his speech, he has overlooked the fact that the Prime Minister has very considerately put on the Order Paper a motion to be moved at 10 o'clock to the effect that
  "the European Communities (Spanish and Portuguese Accession) Bill [Lords]…may be proceeded with, though opposed. until any hour."
  I am glad to be able to reassure any right hon. and hon. Members who wish to take part in the debate that they have plenty of time.
  Mr. Tony Marlow: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I apologise to the right hon. Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Cocks) for butting in on his speech, but this load of paper has just been deposited in the Library. It is scarcely legible and there are only three copies. It purports to be a representation of what went on in Luxembourg yesterday. Amongst other things, it says that various matters that have been subject to unanimity are now subject to a qualified majority vote. It says —if I understand it rightly and it is possible that I do not, not because of my lack of understanding but because of the way it is written —that we should harmonise our indirect taxes—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am not sure what point the hon. Gentleman is seeking to raise. Is he raising the question of the availability and legibility of the document, or the content of it? The content is more a matter for a speech in the debate, not an intervention.
  Mr. Marlow: I am deeply concerned, Mr. Deputy Speaker, about the availability and legibility of the document. I am also concerned about the fact that this document, which is hardly available and hardly legible, states within it, so far as I can understand, that we should-harmonise our excise duties, our currency, and our VAT with these two countries. We are having a debate, but no one in the Chamber realises that by 1992 we should have the same VAT rate as Spain and Portugal—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is seeking to make an intervention, If so, it is hardly relevant to the point that was being raised by the right hon. Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Cocks). If, on the other hand, the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) is raising a point of order, the matters to which he is referring are not for me to deal with.
  Mr. Cocks: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. While I continue my speech, the Government business managers might consider whether both points would be met by adjourning the House until

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  7 o'clock and then proceeding after 10 o'clock with the full debate, with the full text of the document available for as many people as may wish to have it.
  I have got the document to which I think the Foreign Secretary referred. I was hoping that it would be a lifebelt, but it is barely a pair of flabby water wings. I have looked through it, but I cannot find the matters in which I am interested.
  The Foreign Secretary was fulsome and euphoric in his introduction. I wondered how long the padding would go on. Eventually he mentioned jobs and the need to promote our industries and said that we were doing just that. I was glad that he came down to earth. This debate is about the principle of the Bill. It was said earlier in answer to the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Fry) that matters of detail could be debated on the remaining stages, but experience leads me to suggest that the remaining stages of the Bill will be emaciated. Therefore, if we want to raise points, we should do so on Second Reading.
  The matter on which I wish to spend a few minutes concerns a constituency interest which I have already referred to in the debate on the Queen's Speech —the takeover bid for Harvey's wine firm by Elders. A sort of Antipodean skinhead is mounting what is called a leveraged takeover —something new in this country. The Government reply at that time was that the matter would be taken seriously. I hope that it is still the case.
  There is a long tradition in my constituency and in other places in the United Kingdom of bottling wines that are imported in bulk. The quality is high, there is continuing investment and quite a few people are employed. In recent years there has been a move by producers to try to get the wine bottled in the country of origin. I warn the Government against that, particularly in regard to sherry and port from Spain and Portugal. Approximately 30 million litres of port and sherry were bottled in this country last year. If it were decided by either the Spanish or the Portuguese authorities that those products should be bottled only in the country of origin, it would mean a loss of 500 jobs in the bottling trade alone, of which 200 to 300 would be in Bristol, and of a similar number of jobs in the packaging trade. That is not a small matter; it is vital.
  Apart from the effects of that on our domestic economy, we must consider also another matter that has arisen recently, the production of polluted wine. It has been found that some continental wines have been tampered with. Anti-freeze has been added to tone them up and give them body. It is known that such wine is poisonous and I am glad that the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food was recently able to reassure me about the steps the Government are taking to ensure that that poisonous plonk does not come into this country.
  If wine is imported in bulk and bottled here, it is easier to detect by sampling whether there has been adulteration or pollution of the wine. That is another reason why the Government should be firm on the matter.
  Mr. Matthew Parris: Can the right hon. Gentleman confirm that there is no suggestion in what he is saying that wine imported from Spain has been or is likely to be polluted?
  Mr. Cocks: I am pleased to say that no cases have yet come to light.
  Mr. Parris: What is the right hon. Gentleman talking about then?
  Mr. Cocks: I do not think any cases involving Spain or Portugal have been recorded of wines which have been poisoned with anti-freeze, but I am anxious that the British public should be protected. If they want anti-freeze, they should get it from garages and not from off licences or supermarkets.
  Mr. Eric Deakins: Were not a large number of people in Spain poisoned recently because of the sale of adulterated olive oil?
  Mr. Cocks: I believe that that is so. I think that mineral oil was added to cooking oil with disastrous consequences that are still being felt.
  Mr. Marlow: By now the right hon. Gentleman will be aware that, whereas in the past we have been permitted to veto any change in certain internal European transactions, now changes will probably be made by majority vote. If he thinks that the health and safety regulations governing the production of food in Spain are not what we would find acceptable in this country, that must give him cause for concern when later this evening he is considering whether to vote for or against the measure.
  Mr. Cocks: The hon. Gentleman is tempting me. I am not known for my wide-ranging interest in foreign affairs. I do not believe that I have ever spoken on the matter in the House except during the five-day debate on the great decision that we had to make in 1971. On that occasion I spoke late at night. I have not taken much active interest in foreign affairs. I am not enamoured of the Common Market. I was one of the handful of Members who took part in every Division during the passage of the legislation.
  It is disturbing to hear what the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) has said about the veto and the change to a majority decision. I could develop that theme, but I do not want to delay the House unduly.
  I ask the Government to consider seriously what I have said about the bottling of wine. In a national context the number of jobs may be small, but they are important to the communities involved. I hope that in his reply, whether it is before 7 o'clock or after 10 o'clock, the Minister will be able to give an assurance that the Government will be robust in opposing any suggestion that wine should be bottled only in the country of origin.
  5.10 pm
  Mr. Andrew MacKay: I hope that the right hon. Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Cocks) will not mind if I do not pursue his ideas down the river of port and sherry that is vital to his constituency.
  The hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) came to an amazing conclusion in his speech. I was surprised to hear him say that he wished Spain and Portugal well in entering the EEC. Heaven help anybody who is wished ill by the hon. Gentleman if his speech was meant to wish those countries well. His was a strange and all-too-typical speech from the Opposition Front Bench.
  Ten years ago, Spain and Portugal were just leaving a black era of tyranny under a one-party state. At that time, all the fashionable pundits in the House and elsewhere told us that the chance of democracy surviving in those countries was slim. The pundits said that there was a threat of Communists taking over and of the military reasserting

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  its power. The Spanish and Portuguese people deserve great credit for consistently voting in elections —and, I think our Portuguese friends would agree, in too many elections in their case —for democratic, moderate, centralist politicians and Government.
  The West has an obligation to ensure that still-fragile democracies continue to flourish. There is no better way to assist them than to ensure that they are part of the European Economic Community.
  I voted in favour of continued membership of the Community in the 1975 referendum, principally because I believe in the strength of a politically united western Europe. The addition of Spain and Portugal to the EEC will considerably strengthen that position. I hope that our friends in Spain will remain members of NATO when they hold their referendum next spring. I believe that Spain's membership of the European Community can only strengthen the Western Alliance and lead to peaceful co-existence in Europe.
  Spain and Portugal have much to offer the Community. I do not believe that it would have been so easy for the Foreign Secretary to reach such a happy accord with the Spanish on the future of Gibraltar if Spain had not been joining the Community. I believe that Spain's accession will lead to economic regeneration both on the Rock and in the sad town of La Linea.
  Europe's important trading links with South America will be improved by the addition of Spain and Portugal and their special relationship with that continent. It saddens me that in a Second Reading debate, which I believe is a historic occasion, some of my hon. Friends and certain Opposition Members are looking too closely at the balance sheet and are not taking a wider historical perspective. It is vital that the Bill be given a Second Reading by an overwhelming majority, so that our friends in Spain and Portugal can see that we truly welcome them into the democratic club. Spain and Portugal will play a vital part in Western defence and a politically united Europe.
  5.15 pm
  Mr. J. Enoch Powell: The brief speech of the hon. Member for Berkshire, East (Mr. MacKay) has brought the debate back to the major realities of the Bill and the political act enshrined in it.
  At the beginning of the last decade, when membership of the European Economic Community was commended to Parliament and to the people of this country, it was the economic aspect that was almost exclusively stressed. It was conceded that to acquire a large free market combining the United Kingdom with the Community, there would necessarily have to be a compulsory, common framework of law. The fact that a comprehensive renunciation of the legislative and legal powers of the United Kingdom was effected passed without immediate criticism.
  It soon appeared, however, that the internal market we had entered, the market in which we were to prosper, which would bring regeneration to the British economy, the inward-looking market, was related to an economic structure of the other member states, particularly in respect of agriculture, which was very difficult to reconcile with the economic structure of the United Kingdom.
  That difference of structure has caused the perpetual difficulties which have dogged the questions of the European budget and the common agricultural policy —difficulties, which, within the existing framework of 10
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  member states, if they have not been papered over, are at any rate considered by some people to have been rendered tolerable and acceptable.
  Now, in 1985, comes the paradoxical proposition that we should add to the Community of Ten two new member states whose economic and agricultural characteristics will cause even more difficulties to combine with our own and those of the rest of the Community than anything faced in the past.
  Why should the Government take a step that is bound to exacerbate the difficulties which we already suffer in the Community? The hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) announced at the beginning and again at the end of his speech that the Opposition would support the Bill. It would have been impossible to guess that from the content of his speech, which mostly consisted of a scathing denunciation, a veritable Philippic against the additional difficulties that would be encountered by a Community which included Spain and Portugal.
  Mr. George Robertson rose—
  Mr. Powell: I see that the hon. Member for Hamilton would like to intervene. Perhaps he intends to explain why, after their electoral defeat in 1983, the Labour party has consistently been running away from its position on the EEC?
  Mr. Robertson: The right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell) is wrong again. The Labour party is not running away from the issues; it is the world that is changing. Unfortunately, for some hon. Members and some parties, the world never seems to change. The Labour party welcomes the accession of Spain and Portugal to the EEC. In my speech I reminded the House and the Government of the need for political courage in dealing with the economic and agricultural problems associated with accession. There is no inconsistency in that.
  Mr. Powell: I should like to remind the House of some of the difficulties to which the hon. Gentleman drew attention. He said that the accession would "affect this country for the worse". I am interested in the reasons why we should gaily take a step which in his view will "affect this country for the worse". The accession, he said, will cause the "already chronic problems of surplus to be accentuated". At one point in the hon. Gentleman's speech he even said that the problems would become "insoluble".
  Why, if all the difficulties are to be made more severe, and if one section after another of the United Kingdom is to suffer disadvantages from the accession, are we nevertheless accepting this action? Why are both Front Benches commending the action to the House?
  They gave the reason, although it was not in the forefront of their arguments. The reason is political, not economic. They say that in recent years those two countries have had the good fortune to have a change in their constitution. To use an American expression, they have become "democratic." It is argued that the way to safeguard their democracy is for them to become members of the European Economic Community. In that context, I hope that no Spaniards or Portuguese were listening when the hon. Member for Hamilton referred to their "political immaturity", which he felt would be much assisted by association with politically mature countries such as West Germany and other member states of the existing Community.

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  The proposition is, therefore, that the European Economic Community is an organisation for the protection of democracy. I resent the suggestion that it is any business of ours how the Spaniards or Portuguese decide to run their affairs. I resent the modern habit of criticising from a self-righteous pedestal the manner in which the affairs of other countries are regulated.
  Mr. George Foulkes: The right hon. Gentleman does it all the time.
  Mr. Powell: I assure the hon. Gentleman that I do not, but we have got into a bad habit in that respect, and we shall suffer retribution when the same medicine is ladled out to us. I state my objection to the very concept of entering into a community with Spain and Portugal with a view to securing or preventing certain developments in their internal forms of government. That is as much their business as our internal form of government is ours.
  Mr. Forth: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the preamble to the Treaty of Rome makes no reference to the word or the concept of democracy, and that there is no mechanism within the institutional arrangements of the EEC to expel any member state if its political institutions change during the period of membership?
  Mr. Powell: All those things would surely be implicit if it were indeed an organisation for the preservation of democracy and for the enforcement of certain supposedly democratic forms of behaviour on its members.
  The real intention is not quite so crude. In this context, "democracy" is used as a term of art to mean adherence to the Western Alliance. The whole business is about Spain's membership of NATO. Distinct advantages which lie within the gift of the European Community and which, as has been admitted in the debate, will have to be paid for in part by this country and the people of this country are being offered as a bribe to Spain to remain what is called "democratic", but really means being a member of NATO. It is all about the integrity, as the United States sees it, of the United States Alliance.
  At a critical stage of negotiations between Spain and the EC, the then Spanish Premier deployed in his campaign for membership of the EC the slogan, "No membership of the EC —no membership of NATO." The admission of Spain and Portugal to the EC, with all the economic advantages that they anticipate from it, is the quid pro quo for remaining in NATO, a question which remains open and on which a referendum is to be held in Spain in the near future. Like certain British politicians whom we remember, the present Spanish Prime Minister, in preparing for that referendum campaign, will be on the opposite side from that on which he sought office.
  An article in The Times of 3 October states that during the Spanish Minister's tour of Europe:
  "In Bonn Senor Gonzalez had to listen to Chancellor Kohl emphasising the link between EEC membership and Nato."
  This is a quid pro quo —a deal set up in economic terms between membership of the EC and a yes vote in the Spanish referendum on membership of the NATO Alliance. As they approach the referendum, the people of Spain will be told, "Don't you dare vote yourselves out of NATO. Think of all the economic disadvantages that you will incur if membership of the European Economic
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  Community, which is linked with this, is withdrawn." That is what this is all about. It is a politicisation at the highest level of the European Economic Community.
  When we receive the hastily and ill produced document to which reference has already been made, it may turn out to contain something foreshadowed earlier this week. I refer to
  "the proposed treaty on a common European foreign policy"
  which, according to The Times correspondent in Luxembourg,
  "should receive a smooth passage."
  The economic aspects of the EC have already demanded and obtained from this country a far-reaching renunciation of the powers of self-government and decision centred in the House of Commons, and thus in the electorate of this country; but the political dimension represents a much larger and more subtle withdrawal of power both from Parliament and from the electorate. The very fact that it will be embodied in understandings which lie outside the legal framework of the EC makes it very much more difficult for the people of this country to understand what it is of which they are being deprived.
  Mr. Marlow rose—
  Mr. Powell: I am about to conclude. The hon. Gentleman may be able to entertain the House with a speech of his own.
  We are reminded of those facts by the very nature of this accession which the Bill makes possible —a deal between members of the EEC on political grounds and a nation reluctant to belong to NATO but trembling on the verge of taking a decision about it. The Economic Community was in itself incompatible with the parliamentary self-government of the United Kingdom through this House of Commons. A political community, which is the direction in which we are now being steered by the same influences, is a far greater withdrawal of power and responsibility from the place where the electorate of this country have always reposed them —that is, in Parliament and in the House of Commons.
  I hope that there will be those who will oppose the Second Reading of the Bill. If so, I shall be happy, with my friends, to join them in the Lobby.
  5.28 pm
  Mr. Matthew Parris: The right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell), unlike many previous speakers, rose to the terms of the debate, although he reached a different conclusion from mine.
  I disagree with the right hon. Gentleman on two points. He reminded the House, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Forth), that there are no mechanisms in the EC for the enforcement of democracy or its continuation on member states, but those are not the terms in which the value to Spanish democracy of joining the EEC have been advanced. Democracy is relatively new in Spain and Portugal. I believe that one of the motives for their desire to become democratic countries is their great respect for older democratic institutions such as those in this country and elsewhere in Europe.
  I hope that it is not patronising to say that there is a good deal of respect and admiration in the Iberian peninsula for the democratic traditions in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. To exclude Spain and Portugal from an alliance and a community of which we are part would seem to be

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  a rebuff to the development of democratic institutions in their countries. To include them, and give them a warm and friendly welcome, is to encourage those democratic instincts. In that way we can encourage democracy in Spain and Portugal.
  The right hon. Member for South Down said that membership of the EC would be advanced in Spain as a quid pro quo for staying in NATO, and that Spaniards would be told that if they were to leave the Community they would forgo the benefits of EC membership. He is wrong. I do not believe that Spaniards will be told that. Indeed, there would be no point in telling them that because it would not be true. A country does not have to belong to NATO to join the EC. Spaniards know that well, and it will be made clear in the referendum campaign.
  The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Malcolm Rifkind): There is an additional consideration. By the time the referendum takes place, the act of accession is likely to have come into effect, and Spain will be a member of the Community and cannot be required to leave it, irrespective of the outcome of the referendum.
  Mr. Parris: I agree with my hon. and learned Friend.
  I listened to the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) and to the right hon. Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Cocks), who until recently was the Labour Chief Whip. Both belong to a great Socialist party. Spain is being led into the EC by Senor Gonzales, one of the greatest Socialist leaders of his time, with great courage because his party was originally opposed to membership of the EC. The debate is an opportunity for the Opposition to encourage Senor Gonzales and Socialists in Spain. [HON. MEMBERS: "We did."] If that was encouragement, they should provide discouragement. Senor Gonzales has also been brave in changing his mind about membership of NATO. He will advise Spaniards to vote for membership of NATO. As I understand it, the Labour party is in favour of membership of NATO and believes that the organisation has a useful and important role to play. The debate provides a useful opportunity for Labour party spokesmen to encourage the Spanish Socialist party in its new-found desire to join NATO.
  Mr. Budgen: My hon. Friend is usually sceptical about interference in the affairs of another nation state. What on earth has it to do with the British Labour party to offer its advice to Spaniards about the political view that they should hold on one issue or another?
  Mr. Parris: I make a distinction between offering advice and interfering, and I see no reason why one may not offer advice. If the purpose of belonging to NATO is to safeguard Western democracy and to buttress ourselves against the threat from the Soviet Union, and if it would help those purposes for Spain to join NATO, it would be right to advise Spaniards that the right decision is to join that organisation. The decision is for Spaniards, but my advice is clear, and I feel no hesitation in giving it.
  As many hon. Members wish to speak, I shall conclude my remarks. One of the sad inevitabilities of speaking in the House is that one gives a broad and, often, feeble welcome in general terms to a proposal, and then feels it necessary to complain at length about the details and to foresee appalling problems. I hoped that in a debate such as this we could simply say, "Welcome" to Spain and Portugal. On that note, I end my speech.
  5.33 pm
  Mr. Robert Maclennan: I agree with the hon. Member for Derbyshire, West (Mr. Parris) that this is an important occasion, which merits being so treated. The welcome that I give on behalf of Social Democratic and Liberal Members to the accession of Spain and Portugal to the European Community is unqualified and unreserved.
  The Foreign Secretary did not impart a sense of elan or great enthusiasm, but that may be more because of his style than his conviction. He is undoubtedly right to emphasise the importance to the United Kingdom, and the whole of Europe, of the Community's enlargement to 320 million people seeking through ever closer contacts to exercise a greater influence on the affairs of the world.
  The political importance to Europe of the two great continental countries of the Iberian peninsula joining the Community is immense. Their strategic importance to our fortunes this century is surely not beyond the recall of the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell), who seemed to think that the nature of the Governments in Spain and Portugal was a matter of indifference. The neutrality and covert hostility of Spain during the second world war was of great importance to many of our citizens. The right hon. Gentleman's memory is surprisingly short for a historian. His fairy tales about the motivation of Spanish politicians in bringing Spain to the unification of its political objectives with other European countries are matched only by the fantasising, to which we were subjected, about the Prime Minister's motivation in reaching an agreement with the Taoiseach. It is all part of the right hon. Gentleman's convoluted, twisted and self-deceiving imagination.
  It is a matter of huge satisfaction that Spain and Portugal, which have played such a notable part in the development of our European culture and history, and whose fortunes have been entwined with ours, sometimes for good and sometimes for ill, should now move in parallel with us. For many centuries the history of our literature, music and religion has been greatly influenced by them. It is a matter of pride that we can now share in a common destiny through common participation in common decision-making. The United Kingdom has sought that adhesion for a long time. It was the policy of the Labour party when it was in government, and it has taken seven long years of negotiation to bring about its consummation.
  It is of great importance to our future, as it is to the Iberian countries, that their democracies, now freely chosen and sustained by general elections, should be underpinned by belonging to a free association of democratic states. For their most important sectors of economy —agriculture and fishing —which have caused the greatest difficulty in negotiations, the negotiations mark a significant and important achievement.
  Although there will undoubtedly be difficulties for our own horticulture, in particular, in adapting, in the 10 years available to the industry, to the new competition from the fruit growing countries of the Mediterranean, 10 years is not an impossible time in which to achieve the necessary adaptations. I was disappointed that the Foreign Secretary did not respond more positively to the intervention from the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Nelson), who asked if the Government would be willing to give assistance to our domestic industry to make the necessary adaptations.

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  I add my voice to that of the hon. Member in asking the Minister of State, who is to reply to the debate, to pay specific attention to that point.
  Dr. Norman A. Godman: Is the hon. Gentleman's party satisfied with the fisheries agreement negotiated between Spain and the European Community?
  Mr. Maclennan: I shall be dealing with fisheries when I have finished what I have to say on agriculture and horticulture.
  The major problems that will remain for the Community as a whole relate to wine and oil, and it will be necessary to seek to exert quantitative restrictions on the price support that is available for those two commodities. There has been an important achievement on fisheries. The transitional phase that has been offered is important, but more important is the strict control of fishing, which is a part of the agreement leading to the accession of the two countries.
  Spain has the largest fishing fleet in Europe and constitutes perhaps a third of the total fleet of the whole of the European Community. As such, whether within or without the Community, it would constitute a major threat to fishing stocks if it were not subjected to a fishing regime which sought to prevent the depredation of the stocks. By bringing Spain into the fisheries regime, and now applying to Spain the regulations on, for example, mesh sizes, we are exerting a control which would not have been possible if Spain had remained outside the Community.
  It is also right that there should be a limitation on the number of vessels allowed to fish at any time in the specified areas which have been agreed. It was a major negotiating achievement. It was very difficult to get, and I congratulate the Government on it.
  The geopolitical arguments are the most important reasons for welcoming Spain and Portugal into this family of nations. The decision has had a direct impact on the European Community and has undoubtedly played a part in concentrating the minds of the Heads of Government, who have just completed their summit discussions on the mechanisms for reaching decisions within the Community. In that sense, it is unfortunate that the Government timed the debate to take place before the outcome of the discussions could be made available to us and included in the wider debate.
  It is extremely difficult to reach a sensible decision in the interests of the 12 member countries of the Community without the modifications of the Community's decision-making machinery which have been under discussion, and which we shall certainly wish to consider on another occasion. Majority voting and a strengthening of the powers of the European Parliament are essential if the Community is to move forward, particularly in the light of the enlargement of its membership. To that extent, as that development was in any event necessary, I welcome the accession of the two countries.
  Mr. Marlow: With regard to majority voting, if circumstances should arise in which the Community, through majority voting, were to agree on a directive with which the hon. Gentleman and his party disagreed, would he be happy that this House would be forced to enact that legislation against his will and against the will of the House?
  Mr. Maclennan: The hon. Gentleman has been in the House long enough, and has heard me speak on this subject sufficiently frequently, not to be surprised when I remind him that my party and the Liberal party are firmly of the view that it will be necessary to retain in some form —although in more closely defined circumstances than hitherto —the use of the Luxembourg compromise to protect the vital national interests of this country. That has been repeated by me and by Members of both alliance parties on many occasions.
  I recognise that if we are to make progress towards a free market internally, and towards the development of the social and regional policies of the Community for the benefit of our unemployed and suffering citizenry, it will be necessary to make compromises on occasions, and some of them will clearly be less than desirable, but I believe that they will be more palatable than many of the measures which have been forced on this suffering country by Her Majesty's Government in the past six years.
  In the debate in earlier days about the enlargement of the Community, the fear of some hon. Members was that the adhesion of these two countries would in some way dilute the European Community and deprive it of the sort of impetus that would be necessary if it was to be an effective force in the world. I doubt whether that was a justified fear, for the Spanish and Portuguese have shown, in the past few years, a dynamism and capacity for self-renewal which are a model to many of the other nations which are rather smugly congratulating themselves on their advanced state of democracy.
  Spain and Portugal both have links with one of the parts of the world with which the rest of the European Community is sadly lacking contact —Latin America, one of the most unstable and threatened parts of the world. I hope that the enlargement of the Community by the adherence of Spain and Portugal will not only open up new trading contacts with the countries of Latin America and spread the influence of European thinking in that continent, but will enhance the political influence that we may have there.
  I do not shrink, as apparently the right hon. Member for South Down does, from overtly expressing where I believe the interests of Britain lie in relation to other countries' internal affairs. It is perfectly legitimate for us to recognise that in Latin America the prevalence of anti-democratic Governments is positively hostile to Britain's interests, and thoroughly destabilising. The adherence of the two Iberian countries, which have such strong links with Latin America historically, could be a force for stability and for the sort of change towards democracy that we would greatly welcome.
  5.50 pm
  Mr. Eric Forth: A debate should comprise two sides of the argument. Until now I have heard only one side. With the honourable exception of the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell), a variety of hon. Members have said in a variety of ways how much they welcome the Bill.
  It is clear as we debate this issue that this House has a complete lack of effective power or involvement in its determination. I say that because this matter, which is generally agreed to be vital to the EEC, has not been debated by the House since 1978, with the exception of an Adjournment debate that I initiated on 4 April of this year, when the Minister of State and I went round the course

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  together and rehearsed our speeches for today. At least, I rehearsed mine, although I am sure that his will contain much new material.
  How can the Government know the views of hon. Members if we have not been able to express them since 1978? I ask that question because the Foreign Secretary referred with some fondness to the signing ceremony in May 1985 when Foreign Ministers gathered to sign a number of treaties which put the stamp of approval on the entry of Spain and Portugal to the EEC. He said that those countries would become members in 1986.
  None of that apparently allows of any involvement or participation by this House in the process. What he said, what has gone before and what has led up to this debate has all been based on the assumption that we would give rubber-stamp approval not just to the principle of the entry of Spain and Portugal to the EEC but to all the details contained in the variety of agreements that underpin their accession. In other words, we can do nothing but give our general approval to what is proposed —or, as in my case, my disapproval or lack of support. That illustrates the way in which the House has no real involvement in the process other than giving its automatic approval.
  Another indication of the lack of gravity with which the British Houses of Parliament are dealing with the matter is that, when the Bill was in another place, only one hour and 16 minutes of their Lordships' time was devoted to considering the subject before the measure received its Second Reading and was passed to us. It cannot be claimed that the important principles involved in this grave matter have received detailed examination.
  We have a precedent to consider, and that is the entry of Greece to the EEC in 1981. That provides a model from which to judge the effect of a new country joining the Community, and Greece is in many ways similar, geographically and in other respects, to Spain and Portugal.
  The history of Greek entry to the Community cannot give us much encouragement because not only have the Greeks suffered severely in their economy since they entered the EEC, but they have held the Community to ransom in foreign policy. We recall their eccentric line on the shooting down of the Korean air liner. They have also blackmailed the EEC into giving them ever more money so that they may at least go through the semblance of behaving themselves.
  The latest news from Greece in this respect appeared in Hansard as recently as this week when, in answer to a written question, it was stated that the Greeks had had to take certain economic measures
  "to deal with balance of payments and other problems. The package contained a number of protective measures, including the introduction of an import deposit scheme, which required derogations from Greece's obligations under the EC treaty."—[Official Report, 2 December 1985; Vol. 88, c. 101.]
  That country came into the EEC on the basis of the promises and rhetoric that we have heard today, yet only four years later it finds itself forced into taking special measures which run contrary to all the principles which are offered to us in defence of the EEC, such as free trade.
  Greece has returned to the Community to say, "We require more money from you. By the way, we shall not be able to adhere to the rules of the Community that you said, when we came in, we should have to obey." I am beginning to suspect that the precedent of Greece, which has not been mentioned today, gives us cause for thought.
  Mr. Robert Jackson: Does my hon. Friend accept that the real parallel in the case he is describing is between Greece and the United Kingdom rather than between Greece and Spain and Portugal? The essential difference is that the negotiations for Greek entry took place under a Conservative Government, followed by the election of a Socialist Government opposed to Greek membership; and the same happened in this country, which is why Britain and Greece have had political difficulties in accommodating to Europe. The Iberian negotiations were conducted by Socialist Governments, which leads one to suppose that this may be a happier story.
  Mr. Forth: The irony of that agreement is that, while we continually refer to the glories of democracy in Spain and Portugal, presumably that democracy could lead to a change of Government in those countries, which could lead to precisely the effect that my hon. Friend denies could take place, so I am not utterly convinced by the logic of his argument.
  Let us set aside the Greek precedent —because it appears that the British Government have not given it much thought or are not convinced by it —and consider what we have been offered many times. We were offered it in a graphic sense by the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) and by my hon. Friends the Members for Berkshire, East (Mr. MacKay) and for Derbyshire, West (Mr. Parris). I refer to what go under the generic heading of the geo-political arguments. They take many forms, and they are the only real arguments that we have been offered as benefits resulting from the Bill.
  The first is the NATO argument. I accept what the right hon. Member for South Down said about the bribe to Spain to join NATO. I have always believed that we have all along been saying to the Spaniards that membership of the EEC was a reward for them entering NATO It is a straightforward and basic argument, though it ignores the fact that Ireland is in the EEC and is neutral and riot in NATO, while France is in the EEC and has always had a dubious and individual relationship with NATO.
  Meanwhile, the country which is arguably the more important member of NATO, Turkey, is not in the EEC and never will be so long as the Greeks are members. That returns us to the Greek dimension. Thus, I have never been convinced that the connection which is often made in the geo-political context between membership of NATO and the EEC has any validity, and I hope that the House will set it aside in considering the Bill.
  The second argument is that of democracy, as the right hon. Member for South Down pointed out. The preamble to the treaty of Rome, the basis of the EEC, makes no reference to democracy; there is no necessary connection between a so-called democratic form of government and membership of the Community. Nor is there any mechanism by which EEC members can judge whether one or other is democratic or, if they deem them not to be democratic, eject them from membership of the Community.
  With that in mind, I am at a loss to understand why we are being offered this rather magical but as yet undefined connection between the survival of democracy in Spain and Portugal and their membership of the EEC, apart from the fact that it is a patronising sort of argument to adduce.
  I had the honour when I was in the European Parliament of being a member of that Parliament's delegation to

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  Portugal. When I visited that great country, with which we have historic connections, I was impressed with the extent to which the Portuguese have a political tradition every bit as long as ours, and in many ways longer, and it ill behoves us to lecture the Portuguese on principles of politics or about the way in which they will benefit in some ill-defined way from joining the EEC, which is hardly a model of democracy or anything else. That is why I say that the value of the benefits is at the least of considerable doubt.
  The serious problem with what we are being asked to accept today is that, however doubtful the benefits, we have heard nothing about the costs. There may be arguments of a geo-political nature, our constituents may wish to support democracy in Spain and Portugal and they may wish to support the concept of the Western Alliance or even NATO. But we are being irresponsible and unfair if we expect our constituents to pick up a tab which is uncosted and unquantified in terms of jobs and many other respects.
  Mr. Edward Leigh: My hon. Friend is a former member of the European Assembly and he is an expert on matters relating to the treaty of Rome. Will he therefore enlighten the House about the Council of Europe communiquù that has just been deposited in the Library? It says:
  "The Community shall adopt measures intended progressively to establish the internal market."
  In particular, it says:
  "In article 28 the terms 'unanimously' or 'unanimity' shall be replaced by a qualified majority."
  Can my right hon. Friend enlighten the House about the ability of this country to stand up for its own interests?
  Mr. Forth: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point. It leads me to my next point about the institutions of the Community. We were told during the early stages of the argument that enlargement would speed up the reform of the European Community's institutions —a much needed and much overdue process. If Spain and Portugal enter the European Community, the Commission will be enlarged and will contain 17 commissioners instead of the existing 14. Those right hon. and hon. Members who have a passing knowledge of European Community affairs know that it has struggled for a long time to devise meaningful portfolios for 14 commissioners. What it will be able to devise for 17 commissioners is beyond my comprehension.
  When my hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office replies to the debate, I hope that he will refer to what the additional commissioners will do. I can anticipate what he will say. He will tell the House that Her Majesty's Government have argued for a long time that there should be one commissioner for each member state and that he is prepared to recommend that Spain and Portugal should enter the European Community on the existing institutional basis. There will therefore be 17 commissioners. When there are 17 commissioners, it will be difficult to obtain agreement, particularly the agreement of Spain and Portugal, to a reduction in the number of commissioners.
  It will also mean an enlargement of the membership of the European Parliament, over which we should perhaps
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  draw a discreet veil. Two additional languages will also have to be dealt with by the interpretation and translation facilities of the European Community, which will result in an exponential increase of the kind that always takes place in the cost of translation and interpretation.
  I referred earlier to cost. I shall refer to it under two headings: the cost to the European Community, and the cost to the United Kingdom. The main burden of the cost will come under the heading of "agriculture". Agriculture already accounts for three quarters of the European Community's budget. Spain is the most important, in terms of agriculture, of the two new member states. The accession of Spain will result in an increase of 30 per cent. in the Community's agricultural area, of 25 per cent. in the agricultural labour force, of 32 per cent. in the number of agricultural holdings, of 25 per cent. in the output of vegetables, of 48 per cent. in the output of fresh fruit, and of 59 per cent. in the output of olive oil. However, the number of consumers in the European Community will increase by only 14 per cent.
  These figures demonstrate graphically the potential for the exaggeration and exacerbation of the agricultural problem that already confronts the European Community. It is a measure of the extent to which the accession of Spain will add to the problems of agricultural production and cost. I leave out of account Spain's potential as soon as it has irrigation. Her productivity will be increased. With our help, advice and money the production of a wide range of agricultural products will be increased. We shall also have to grapple with two new products —olive oil and tomatoes —which will have a serious effect upon the Community's agricultural policy.
  That will be bad enough, but even worse —this is perhaps the most profound problem that will face the Community if it is enlarged to include Spain and Portugal —will be the shift in the political balance from north to south. That will be a permanent phenomenon. There will also be a shift in the political balance from right to left. I hope that that will be a temporary phenomenon. There will be a further shift in the political balance from the rich to the poor countries, a phenomenon that will last for as long as we can resist the redistribution of our national resources to the new southern member states of the Community.
  Mr. Maclennan: Has the hon. Gentleman noticed that this year Italy's gross domestic product has outstripped the gross domestic product of this country?
  Mr. Forth: That is an interesting thought, if it is true. I accept what the hon. Gentleman says.
  I ask both myself and the hon. Gentleman to consider what the effect will be upon our economy, our constituents and our electorate of the accession of Spain and Portugal. If Italy has advanced so much, I suspect that it has been largely at our expense. One only has to consider the extent to which Italian white goods are imported into this country. Furthermore, when I visit factories in my constituency, over and over again I find that Italian machinery is being used there. A great deal of Italy's prosperity is probably at our expense. If Spanish industries made similar progress, that would almost certainly be at our expense, too.
  In the countries of the south, which include Spain and Portugal, between 11 and 30 per cent. of their work force is still involved in agriculture and their per capita income

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  is between £1,000 and £3,000 per annum. Between 2 per cent. and 7 per cent. of the work force in the northern countries are involved in agriculture. The per capita incomes are between £4,000 and £7,000 per annum. There is a clear divide between the countries of the south and the north in terms of agricultural commitment and income. Most of the southern countries also have Socialist Governments.
  For the first time, therefore, there will be a line up in the European Community between Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland —when it suits her for agricultural purposes —and France, when it suits her for agricultural and other purposes. The new European Community will have the political power to draw the resources of the common agricultural policy and of the other policies from the north to the south. This is the kernel of the true redistribution for the first time of political power in the European Community.
  My charge against the Government is that we have not been told about the likely effect of enlargement upon our economy and upon our people because of the change in the political balance. Unless we are told what its effect will be, I fail to see how the House can reach a judgment about the effect of enlargement upon the European Community.
  As for the effect of enlargement upon the United Kingdom, it has been said over and over again that one of the benefits of membership of the European Community is access to the regional and social funds. This point was referred to by the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson). When two less wealthy countries enter the Community we shall slip further down the league of claimants on the regional and social funds. Enlargement means that we shall lose out in our claim upon Community resources. We shall be faced by increased competition in horticulture from such products as lettuces, cucumbers, strawberries, potatoes, tomatoes, cut flowers and apples. The Government may say that horticulture will be protected for 10 years, but horticulturists will want to know what will happen after that. We cannot reach a decision on such a matter, which is based upon protection for a certain period, without knowing in full what the effect will be after the 10-year period has expired.
  Furthermore, Spain's industrial productivity is about 60 per cent. of that of the United Kingdom. When Spanish industries have access to European Community markets, who can say what the effect will be upon industries such as drop forging in the west midlands and automobile manufacture? Why is it assumed that our industrialists will be able to export goods more successfully when they have access to the Spanish market? They will be faced with competition from West Germany, France, Denmark and Italy.
  Mr. Parris: I understood that my hon. Friend's complaint, and that of many of his hon. Friends, in the past was that membership of the European Community disbarred us from buying cheap food outside the European Community. My hon. Friend now appears to be complaining that we may be able to buy cheap food within the Community.
  Mr. Forth: I am complaining in the sense that I am concentrating upon the effect that enlargement will have upon the growers of food in the United Kingdom.
  The effects of EC membership on consumers since we joined have been a matter of some debate. It is not strictly
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  relevant to the debate today, although I take my hon. Friend's point. However, if we enjoy the benefits of cheap citrus fruits, horticultural products and the like from Spain and Portugal, I leave the effect of that on our indigenous growers of those products to my hon. Friend's imagination. I am worried about that on behalf of my constituency.
  Mr. Teddy Taylor: Why is my hon. Friend worried about the horticulturists? Is it not one of the basic rules of the Common Market that all the extra cucumbers, tomatoes, oranges and apples that we have we simply destroy? I thought that we had a policy of spending about £87 million a week on destroying food, so all the extra tomatoes, oranges and cauliflowers will be destroyed at the taxpayers' expense.
  Mr. Forth: I regret to say to my hon. Friend that that is almost certainly correct, arid I bow to his knowledge of such matters.
  Mr. Hugh Dykes: Why is it that my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor) never worried about £20 billion spent on dole money for the unemployed because we are not reducing the unemployment figures? Is not that far more important than small amounts of money spent on EC countries?
  Mr. Forth: I shall resist the temptation to discuss unemployment at greater length. One of our other concerns must be the effect on Britain's unemployment of Spain and Portugal coming into the EEC. I regret that my pessimistic view is that unemployment in Britain will increase as a result of the entry of Spain and Portugal into the Community.
  The case for the accession of Spain and Portugal to the Community has not been made in a convincing manner. Several arguments have been repeated with little substantiation and support. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will offer us more when he replies to the debate. However, much more worrying than that is the complete lack of any effort by the Government to tell us in detail and over a wide range what the costs will be for agriculture, horticulture and industry, and the Government's view of the effect of the shift of political balance in the Community from north to south and its effect on the institutions and policies of the Community. Until we are given that information in more detail, I am unable to support the measure.
  6.12 pm
  Mr. David Young: I should not be intervening in the debate if the Secretary of State had not seemed to dodge with some agility the effect on the people of Gibraltar of the accession of Spain and Portugal to the Community. Gibraltar is a small community, they are still British citizens, and their main work force is organised by a British trade union. Indeed, they gave Britain tremendous support over many years and more recently during the Falklands conflict. It will be recalled that the Falkland islanders got their British citizenship due to an Argentine invasion.
  Let me outline the problems about which Gibraltarians are worried. I am assured that from 1 January, with the Spanish accession, the problem of pensions will come to a head. We are assured that in the current negotiations Her Majesty's Government have allowed a position to arise where 12 per cent. of Gibraltar's GNP will now be given

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  over to the repayment of the pensions of former Spanish employees of the dockyard who were excluded from their occupations by the decision of Franco to close the gates. That amounts to £7 million a year.
  Mr. McQuarrie: I must make it clear to the hon. Gentleman that it is not only the dockyard which is affected. More than four thousand other workers went across the border in July 1969 and did not return because Franco closed the gates.
  Mr. Young: I accept that. I am saying that, in consultation with the Gibraltar Government, we are told that unless there is some urgent decision on the issue, Gibraltar's economy will be destroyed. That is the kernel of the problem.
  We should be aware that we cannot wait for negotiations until 1 January 1986. I am informed that Her Majesty's Government put responsibility for the payment of those pensions on to the Gibraltar Government. But the Gibraltar Government are not in a position to pay. As was said earlier, if the matter were taken to the European Court of Justice, Her Majesty's Government would be in the dock, as they were about birching in the Isle of Man. I hope that the Minister of State will deal with that essential point so that we know precisely the Government's point of view.
  Her Majesty's Government closed the dockyard, privatised it and made it commercial. We are now informed that the dockyard cannot obtain skilled labour from within Gibraltar. Therefore, British taxpayers will now be subsidising labour from Portugal to carry out the skilled work in Gibraltar. Will the Minister ask for a clear indication of how that will place us, knowing the strains on our dockyards in Britain and Gibraltar?
  In agreeing to the accession of Spain and Portugal, it is the duty of the House not to neglect the rights of 30,000 British citizens in Gibraltar who look to us as their one safeguard. I ask hon. Members to remember that it is Her Majesty's Government who have negotiated the accession treaty, not the Gibraltar Government. I hope that the Minister of State will not dodge those essential issues, as his right hon. and learned Friend did earlier.
  6.17 pm
  Mr. Michael Knowles: I have supported the Community over the years from a political standpoint. I have never really believed the economic arguments. In the long term, they could turn out either way. But I believe that the way forward for western Europe is through political unification. That intention is clear in the Treaty of Rome. The phrase used there is
  "to seek an ever closer union among their peoples."
  We put our signature to that treaty, and much of the pressure that Britain has been under over the past few years arose simply because we wanted to treat the Community as some form of free trade area while other members wanted to carry out the original intention and go forward.
  I favour the entry of Spain and Portugal. It will be a good thing in the long run, although the long run could be a lot longer than 10 or 15 years. For both countries on the Iberian peninsula, this marks the end of a long dark night, not only in the sense of coming out of the corporate state regime of the past few years but for the past century.
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  There will be economic difficulties, let no one mistake that. We are bringing into the Community economies which are fundamentally different from our own. The only comparison is with Greece. In my opinion, that is secondary because my support for the Community is from a political standpoint in the first place. It is not just a matter of balancing the books and asking about the price of half a pound of butter or whether we shall be better or worse off. That is the small change of the movement towards European unification. I hope that we shall see the day when the nations of eastern Europe come out of their long dark night able to join the European Community when they, too, are free.
  We are trying to create much more than just a "get rich quick" club. There will be problems, and one can see that the cost of accession has now been put back into the budget. When we last debated European affairs, I was critical of the European Council, because it had ignored the costs of the accession of Spain and Portugal and had taken out of the budget the cost of the burden of the past. At least it has now restored the cost of accession. One hopes that it will go further. If the burden of the past is not built back into the budget, hon. Members who said that we were likely to lose out on the distribution of funds in the next year are correct.
  Some hon. Members will cynically vote for the Bill in the hope that, with the addition of two more countries, the Community's structure will crack up. I do not believe that that will happen. We still do not have the details. Various hon. Members have been rushing in and out of the Library trying to discover exactly what was agreed at Luxembourg yesterday. No doubt that will become clearer. However, it is obvious that a start is being made to sort out the decision-making process in the Community, and it is about time. But I can be sure, even before I read the agreement, that it will not go far enough. We should have been a long way down the path to majority decision-making and enhancing the powers of the European Parliament. I think that the agreement will be the first hesitant step.
  Mr. Deakins: Federalism.
  Mr. Knowles: The hon. Gentleman is yelling "Federalism" as if it were a wild accusation. He will be speaking in a moment in favour of a federalist Government, the United States, and presenting their case, as he often does in the argument.
  Mr. William Cash: My hon. Friend and I disagree on this point, and he knows that perfectly well. I should like to refer him to the provisional text of the conclusions of the European Council that has just been placed in the Vote Office.
  Mr. Knowles: I have not had a chance to look at the agreement. Waving the agreement at me from 3 ft away will not help me at all. I am willing to admit that my view will probably be that it does not go far enough.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Forth) said that one of the problems was that the House did not get an early look at European legislation. A Bill has been presented by the Government today and we have had no information. Somehow, the blame for that is put on the Community. It is not the fault of the Community; it is the fault of the House for letting the Government get away with it. There is a Select Committee on European Legislation, with restrictive powers, by the decision of the House.
  Mr. Forth: The problem that I was highlighting is that the Foreign Secretary said that he had signed the agreement in May and that we were being presented with a fait accompli, not from the Community but from our own Government. The process that we are going through today gives the House no opportunity to express its view about what is going on.
  Mr. Knowles: On that matter, there is no difference between us. The fault lies with the House for letting the Government get away with what it does not like.
  Western Europe is now too small for old-fashioned Napoleonic imperialism. We shall have to draw closer together. The choice for us is not between an independent Britain and a Britain taken over by foreigners. If Europe tries to remain a medley of small and middle-rank countries, its future lies in being a series of small-time American and Japanese colonies. Britain's only choice lies in integration.
  6.24 pm
  Mr. Eric Deakins: I realise that this is an open-ended debate, but there is some desire to finish it early. However, I think that it is an important debate. I disagree with virtually everything that was said by the hon. Member for Nottingham, East (Mr. Knowles), except his conclusion.
  I welcome the accession of Spain and Portugal to the European Community, not because I think it will strengthen it, but because it will weaken it. I say that as an inveterate opponent over 25 years not only of British membership, but of the Common Market itself. On the federalist lines developed by the hon. Member for Nottingham, East, I think that the Common Market will develop into a superpower and will be a real threat to the peace of the world. It is already a threat to relations between north and south because of its economic imperialism, its network of client states and its trade policies, which discriminate against goods from the poorer countries.
  There are two reasons why I think that the accession of Spain and Portugal will weaken the Economic Community —first, cost, and, second, agriculture. Both those subjects have been alluded to by hon. Members in the debate.
  On the subject of cost, I draw the attention of the House to the fact that we passed a Bill at the end of the previous Session raising the VAT limits to 1·4 per cent. and 1·6 per cent. respectively over the next few years. A major justification for VAT increases in the EEC was the cost of the accession of Spain and Portugal. However, the explanatory memorandum to the Bill states:
  "Spain's contribution to, and receipts from the Communities' Budget should roughly balance".
  It also states:
  "Portugal should be a modest net beneficiary, After the end of the transitional arangements, Spain and Portugal may be expected to be net recipients from that Budget."
  If that is the case, what is the justification for the VAT increase to 1·4 per cent. with a further increase to 1·6 per cent.?
  The Foreign Secretary said in his opening remarks that the Commission had estimated that, in the seven years that it would take to complete the accession of Spain and Portugal after the transitional arrangements, the total cost would be no more than 0·1 per cent. of VAT. In other words, of the extra 1·4 per cent. that has just been put on
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  to VAT, only 1·1 per cent. is accounted for by the accession cost. That is not in line with earlier justification of the VAT increases.
  How can we believe the Commission's estimate over seven years ahead of what Spain and Portugal are likely to do, which is an unknown quantity? We know from experience that the Commission is incapable of assessing the cost of the common agricultural policy from one year to the next. How, therefore, is it possible for the Commission, with any hope of reasonable accuracy, to assess the cost of enlargement at 0·1 per cent.? That is a sheer guess on the part of the Commission, and it might be miles out, or it might be 2 per cent. or 3 per cent. on the VAT rather than 1·1 per cent.
  In his opening speech, the Foreign Secretary gave the impression of being complacent about the additional cost, which he admitted, of the accession of Spain and Portugal to the EEC. He said that it does not really matter because Britain's contribution to that extra cost will be only 7 per cent. Bully for Britain. What about the Community as a whole, when costs go up massively because of the accession of Spain and Portugal? We shall be getting not just the 1·4 per cent. on 1 January but we shall reach the 1·6 per cent. much quicker as a result of increased costs of enlargement. Thereafter, the Government —if they are still in power, and this could happen before a general election in 1987 or 1988—will return to the House with another patched-up agreement with the EEC to raise the 1·6 per cent. limit perhaps to 2 per cent. or even higher. There is no end to the cost implications.
  I refer to agriculture. There will be greater pressures for price increases from the producers of Mediterranean crops in Spain and Portugal, adding to the existing pressures from those in Greece, Italy and southern France. There will be greater surpluses of olive oil, horticultural products, citrus fruits and wine. We must not forget that the Community already has a vast wine surplus, and is building up a fairly substantial olive oil surplus, even with existing Mediterranean producers.
  Therefore, there will be more disruption of crops, and more wastage of taxpayers' money in storing crops that no one will buy and that will eventually have to be dumped on world markets or destroyed. Will we see the price reductions that the Government hope for? We shall not see them on Mediterranean products. It is doubtful whether we shall see them on the more temperate zone products, such as cereals, which are still in great surplus. When Spain and Portugal enter, they will bring with them a large number of small farmers, small producers, whose average size is probably below the average size in France and Germany. The Community average size is raised because Britain and Denmark have fairly large farms, on average, but when Spain and Portugal enter the average will go down once more and the voting power in Spain and Portugal and therefore indirectly in the Community, through the European Assembly and the Council of Ministers, will be enlarged once more in favour of price increases. I do not forget the cost of the integrated Mediterranean programme, which my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) mentioned in his opening speech, which was very good and clearly outlined the deleterious effect on the Community and on Britain of Spanish and Portuguese entry.
  While we are debating the matter, we are awaiting the report from Luxembourg. No doubt there will be a statement by the Prime Minister in the House tomorrow.

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  In view of the problems of Spanish and Portuguese accession, which I and other hon. Members have outlined —and which both Front Benches agree on —and in view of the existing problems of the Community on surpluses, agricultural policy, regional policy and so on, one would have thought that a meeting of Heads of Government in Luxembourg would address its mind to those problems. Far from it. Hardly a word has been said about those real problems facing the Community and people in western Europe. We now have an agreement on improved decision-making in the EEC. However, it just shows how out of touch with reality all the Heads of Government, including our Prime Minister, are if they think that improved decision-making is the key to putting right what is wrong in the EEC. Even those who agree with the EEC realise that some things are wrong with it.
  It is not speed of decision which is important in the Community, which is holding up the progress of the Community, or which is contributing to the vast costs, inefficiency and bureaucracy; it is the content of decisions that matters. It is the content of those decisions that has been so bad in recent years.
  The Heads of Government have said nothing about the common agricultural policy in their bulletin, nothing about budgetary costs, nothing about the cost-effectiveness of the CAP, and nothing about value for money in the Community. They have said nothing about any of the controls on public expenditure that we have and sometimes suffer from in this country, which are not applied in the Community, nor could they be unless, as the hon. Member for Nottingham, East wishes, there was a federalist Government in western Europe with a strengthened European Assembly with powers enhanced at the expense of the House of Commons.
  I welcome the accession of Spain and Portugal, which will give us a breathing space before other new members come in, when we can resolve, perhaps at the next general election, the contradictions in our attitudes towards the rest of the countries of western Europe. Thereafter there will be increasing progress towards federalism. I cannot believe that a majority of hon. Members would support that solution to the problem.
  6.34 pm
  Mr. Peter Fry: My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Forth) is not the only one in the Conservative party who has grave reservations about the treaty. His speech was the most impressive that we have had during the debate.
  I listened to the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) with growing incredulity. He seemed to be welcoming the accession of Spain and Portugal as well as finding every reason that he could for objecting to it. If the Spanish and Portuguese Governments were right of centre, I wonder whether his enthusiasm for the accession of the two countries would be as great. To a certain extent, the Labour party is in a bit of a dilemma on the matter.
  The right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell) said that, far from the economic Utopia that the EEC was supposed to have become, we have been going through an exceedingly difficult period, when there has been a great crisis of confidence in the future of the Community. As we have failed manifestly to solve the problem of the CAP and all the other problems related to the Community, to take
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  in Spain and Portugal is rather like saying to a man who is deeply in debt, "Go and borrow a lot more money and that will get you out of your difficulties." From an economic point of view, the entry of Spain and Portugal will add considerably to the Community's difficulties.
  I speak as one who, after much heart searching, originally voted against this country's accession to the EEC. Later I was persuaded that we should be better off inside it, but I have now come to the conclusion that first impulses are probably right. I think that my attitude is shared by many millions of people.
  I do not wish to talk at length about Gibraltar because it is a highly specialised subject, but if we are talking about a so-called friendly power, I wonder how we define "friendly" when we see the way in which the Spanish Government have treated Gibraltar until comparatively recently. There are still problems with the use of the landing strip at Gibraltar and, hitherto, the Spanish Government have been obdurate in allowing flights into other Spanish cities —hardly the action of a so-called friendly power.
  Furthermore, there is fear in Gibraltar that allowing Spain into the EEC is, in some people's minds, a roundabout way of getting rid of the Gibraltar problem and trying to help towards the absorption of the Rock and its people into Spain. I know that that is bitterly resented by the people of Gibraltar, who are very pro-British. I should not like the debate to conclude without putting that on record.
  The effect of the accession on British industry worries me very much. If the Spanish Government had shown themselves to be broad-minded and that they had a liberal attitude towards world trade, I would have had greater confidence. I speak as the chairman of the all-party footwear group, and my constituency is probably the centre of men's shoe production. For years I have had complaints about the way in which the Spaniards have protected their industry.
  It is interesting that only in March this year the Spanish Government passed an order saying that from 18 October all footwear must carry an incredibly detailed swing tag printed to unbelievably strict specifications, all in Spanish. Yet the Government were negotiating to join the EEC for the liberalisation of trade. Is it any wonder that footwear interests in this country concluded that that move can be interpreted only as a blatant attempt to obstruct the entry of footwear imports to the Community?
  Therefore, because I doubt the actions of the Spanish Government in relation to trade, and know that the Spanish will be able to compete behind still substantial barriers for many years to come, I believe that the Governments of the EEC have given away all their powers before seeing the true spirit in which the Spaniards intend to enter the Community. I fear for the jobs of footwear workers in Britain, and I suspect that many other hon. Members will come to fear for the jobs of workers in other industries. It is right that that point of view should be expressed.
  When the footwear industry representatives spoke to the British embassy in Madrid, the recommendation was to take the matter to Brussels through the British Footwear Manufacturers Federation. We know how long that path can be, and how empty the solutions when one eventually arrives. We must accept that there is a danger to many jobs in Britain. I am not satisfied that that aspect has been taken into account, so I cannot possibly agree to the treaty.
  6.41 pm
  Mr. George Foulkes: This has been one of the more lively debates on the European Community, even though the Opposition are not opposing the Government on this issue. The last time that I replied to a debate on the European Community, which was on the EC budget, the Minister made a robust speech from which I emerged somewhat scathed and bruised. I caution the Minister of State that that Minister was the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow), and that the following day he returned to the Back Benches. I do not imply that there was a direct connection between the two events —I do not have that influence. However, the Minister should beware of pushing his luck.
  At the start of the debate, some of my hon. Friends and some Conservative Members complained about the unavailability of a key document. We now have copies, but it is not easy to read such a large document during a debate. Hon. Members were not joking or raising an unimportant question. An increasing number of hon. Members are worried that Ministers at overseas or Community meetings are more and more acting in our name, and that the House is being contemptuously treated as a rubber stamp. A large majority is no reason for the Government to assume that they can act in that way. It is important that the House is treated properly, and that includes hon. Members being provided with the right documents.
  The only useful information that I can obtain from the glossy document is the speed in dismantling tariffs for tomato concentrate and peeled tomatoes, which does not appear to be relevant to the major issues before us. The important question that hon. Members want answered is which issues will be transferred from requiring unanimous decision to decision by a qualified majority. That is important, because we shall be relinquishing our veto on those issues.
  We are concerned about the movement towards conformity, led by Lord Cockfield and others. The Government have not fully appreciated the implications of conformity on such issues as banking, insurance and transport, especially in the light of Spain's and Portugal's accession.
  The main thrust of the debate is about the membership of Spain and Portugal. The hon. Member for Berkshire, East (Mr. MacKay) questioned the sincerity of the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson). I jump nobly to my hon. Friend's defence. We welcome wholeheartedly the accession of Spain and Portugal, which we believe will help to strengthen the democratic structures in those countries. That view is not paternalistic or patronising.
  Even in his speech today, the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell) was preaching to other people. It serves no purpose for him to tell us that we should not offer advice to other democratic countries. We welcome Spain as a Socialist country and Portugal as a long-term ally. I make no bones about the fact that we welcome the increase that their accession will represent in the Socialist group in the European Parliament after the direct elections in two years.
  However, the accession of Spain and Portugal is not without difficulties, and it would be a disservice to Britain, Spain and Portugal not to spell out and recognise those difficulties. There is no contradiction in welcoming them
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  for political reasons. We are all politicians, so why should we be ashamed of that? We welcome them for political and other reasons, but we accept that there are some economic difficulties. However, we can and must work together.
  I emphasise the difficulties expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton. One is the increased strength of the agriculture lobby. There is also the relative poverty of Spain, and Portugal especially, that will exacerbate the tendency towards economic divergence in the Community. We must also accept that there wilt be increased difficulties in decision making, which no doubt will be welcomed by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Deakins).
  Hon. Members were unconvinced by the Foreign Secretary's assurance that reform of the common agricultural policy would be easier following the accession of Spain and Portugal. That is manifest nonsense. Although I did not agree with the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Forth), he made an excellent speech. As he said, with the exception of Spain and Portugal, farm acreage is increasing by 30 per cent. and the number of consumers by 18 per cent. It is madness to believe that Spain and Portugal will not increase productivity and thereby take advantage of the CAP. Indeed, one reason for their entry to the EEC is to take advantage of it. Production will rise, and there is a danger that surpluses will increase. That is why the reform of the CAP is even more urgent. At every opportunity, we have asked, pushed, pressed and bullied the Government to try to get some real reform of the common agricultural policy. All we receive is the assertion that something is being done. No real reform is taking place.
  There may be problems with the accession of Spain and Portugal, but we should not deny that it will create opportunities. No reference has yet been made to the report of the Select Committee on Agriculture that considered the matter. The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. McQuarrie) will especially welcome recommendation No. 18, which states:
  "We look forward to seeing our Scotch Whisky trade expand considerably."
  The Spanish and Portuguese will be looking forward to the opportunity of drinking more of our Scotch whisky, and we shall be happy to provide them with it. We are concerned that the European Community budget has not been adjusted to take account of the accession and its effect on the CAP.
  I return to the political implications. We believe that there will be effects on political co-operation. One point that I have been able to glean from the voluminous document on the conclusions of the European Council is contained in article 1 of the draft treaty on foreign policy co-operation, which states: "The High Contracting Parties"—another Euro-jargon phrase—
  "being members of the European Communities, shall endeavour jointly to formulate and implement a European foreign policy."
  We have been at odds with our European partners on a number of issues —for example, on South Africa, where the EEC is anxious to impose more vigorous sanctions, but we are holding back for reasons that I do not have time to explain now. On UNESCO, from which we have given notice to withdraw, our EEC partners are attacking and criticising us. Indeed, at the United Nations we were isolated on the issue of the Falklands—
  Mrs. Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Not while the war was on.
  Mr. Foulkes: The Prime Minister may think that she can bully our EEC partners into line, in the same way as she can bully Cabinet members into line. That will be more difficult than she imagines. Indeed, there will be pressure on us to come into line with the majority in Europe.
  The Opposition welcome wholeheartedly the accession of Spain and Portugal on 1 January. We look forward to a move in the Community towards the Left —a move that, thankfully, will be continued with the return of a Labour Government in Britain.
  6.50 pm
  The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Malcolm Rifkind): The hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) rightly said that this has been a lively debate. I like to think that the Opposition's support of the Government on this matter has contributed, even if only indirectly, to that. However, I hope that the hon. Gentleman realises that if the Labour party enthusiastically welcomes Spain and Portugal into the Community, it is ludicrous that it should reserve the right of a future Labour Government to take Britain out of that same Community.
  A number of hon. Members spoke about the democratic identity of Spain and Portugal. The right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell) suggested that to raise that matter as being relevant to the question of Spanish and Portuguese membership represented interference in the internal affairs of those countries. There are circumstances in which the right hon. Gentleman's comment might be justified. If, for example, the existing members of the Community said to Spain and Portugal, "Please come and join the Community because of your democratic requirements and because it will strengthen your democratic institutions", that could rightly or wrongly be described as interference.
  However, that does not reflect the true position of the Community, which is that every democratic party in Spain and Portugal has said to its people and to the European Community, "We wish to be members of the Community because we believe that the democratic foundations of the new Spain and the new Portugal will be strengthened by membership." It cannot possibly be interference if the countries of the Community say, "We agree with you —that is a relevant consideration and one that should be taken into account."
  That was not the only criterion during the negotiations. Had it been it would not have required seven long years of negotiations for these matters to be resolved. The fact that it has taken those seven long years for the applications of Spain and Portugal to be approved by the Community and for a treaty to be formulated shows that the issues go far wider than the right hon. Gentleman suggested. The original date for Spanish and Portuguese membership of the Community was two years ago. That had to be deferred because of the impossibility at that time of reaching agreement on the essential conditions, relevant to the European Community, before membership could take place. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to reflect on his analysis of the background to Spanish and Portuguese membership. It does not stand up to examination.
  A number of my hon. Friends, especially my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. McQuarrie), referred to Gibraltar. My right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary clearly set out our position. No Spanish citizen will be entitled to a pension
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  from the Gibraltar Government unless he has contributed to the pension fund of that Government. His entitlement will be on exactly the same basis as that of any Gibraltarian who has made comparable contributions through employment in Gibraltar. My right hon. and learned Friend said that the Government had agreed to assist Gibraltar with a significant sum during the first year following Spain's accession. There will be further discussions with Gibraltar on the issue.
  The hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) referred to the implications of enlargement for the regional and social funds. He was right to suggest that we should take that into account. The final quota ranges in the regional fund to which Spain and Portugal will be entitled have not yet been determined. However, it is clear that they will be significant, because Spain and Portugal are relatively poor countries within the Community.
  That will not necessarily preclude substantial resources coming to the United Kingdom. That will, in part, depend on the total sum of the regional fund. Some time ago the European Council agreed that there should be real increases in the size of the fund, but I accept that our traditional position, where we have been a modest but significant beneficiary, may not continue when the wider entitlement of Spain and Portugal is taken into account. I have no doubt that we will continue to be a major beneficiary of the fund, but the precise amount will need to be determined.
  Mr. George Robertson: Why did a Minister representing the Government canvass in favour of a freeze of the regional and social funds at the last meeting of the Budget Council?
  Mr. Rifkind: The hon. Gentleman knows that the requirements of budgetary discipline include a reference framework. He is aware that these matters, which come under the non-obligatory side of Community expenditure, have their own constraints, which need to be observed. No quotas are laid down for the allocation of the social fund, so there is no predetermined basis on which we can assume the entitlement of various countries.
  The right hon. Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Cocks) spoke eloquently. He raised a constituency interest in asking whether bulk deliveries of wine and sherry would continue to be exported to the United Kingdom for bottling within the United Kingdom. We are not aware of any proposals that would interfere with that traditional practice. We hope that the employment prospects described by the right hon. Gentleman will continue to be available and that nothing will interfere with that.
  My hon. Friends the Members for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Forth) and for Wellingborough (Mr. Fry), in eloquent speeches, expressed their concern about the implications of Spanish and Portuguese membership. They clearly indicated their opposition to that. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire for, sometimes single-handedly, raising this issue over a number of years. There is no doubt of his sincerity on this matter.
  My hon. Friend asked about the costs that would arise from Spanish and Portuguese membership, and correctly said that the House must take that factor into account. We must consider the transitional arrangements. It is proposed that Spain should achieve broad financial neutrality over the period of transition, whereas Portugal should be a

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  modest net beneficiary. I am sure that most Members will accept that that is not unreasonable. The gross domestic product per head in Spain is 56 per cent. of the Community average, whereas for Portugal it is only 24 per cent. It is reasonable to take such factors into account.
  Mr. Marlow: There is another aspect of the costs that frightens many Conservative Members. My hon. and learned Friend will know that after yesterday's business in Luxembourg more measures will be decided by majority voting rather than unanimously. Within the Community, Spain and Portugal will be pro-Socialist. At times, with those countries in the Community, there will be pressure for more Socialist government. More measures will be presented with a Socialist bias, and that will have cost implications. Is my hon. Friend not concerned about that?
  Mr. Rifkind: I have more confidence than my hon. Friend about whether Spain and Portugal should be assumed to have Socialist Governments for all time. They are both democratic societies. Spain had a Conservative Centre-Right Government immediately before its present Administration. Spain and Portugal will no doubt enjoy the democratic pendulum in exactly the same way as it is enjoyed by other member states.
  Mr. Foulkes: That will depend upon their electorates.
  Mr. Rifkind: Indeed, and that is a sensible criterion to apply.
  On the long-term cost implications of enlargement, I agree that we cannot be sure of the exact figures, because many matters cannot possibly be resolved in advance. We do not know what decisions will be taken by the European Community on the details of expenditure. We do not know some of the implications within Spain and Portugal of membership of the Community. The Commission has estimated that, in the long term, the expenditure of the Community on enlargement will represent 1·1 per cent. of the VAT base. The most crucial point is that, thanks to the Fontainebleau agreement, 93 per cent. of any additional, continuing net costs of enlargement will be met by member states other than the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom's involvement is marginal. It is some 7 per cent. of the total, and that is an important consideration.
  Hon. Members on both sides of the House have shown by an overwhelming majority that they believe that Spanish and Portuguese membership of the Community is highly desirable. I believe that that view is represented by the vast majority of people in Britain as well as elsewhere in the Community. I commend the Bill to the House.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Bill accordingly read a Second time.
  Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Archie Hamilton.]
  Committee tomorrow.

Lothian Region (Edinburgh Western Relief Road) Order Confirmation Bill
Order for Second Reading read.
Mr. Speaker: Before the Second Reading debate begins, may I say that I have not selected the six-months amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Fletcher). His motion, That the Bill be committed to a Joint Committee of both Houses, is in order, and it may be convenient to the House to debate it together with the Second Reading motion.
7.1 pm
Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
For the last half of this century, the people of Edinburgh have been waiting for tonight's debate. The concept of a western relief road has featured in every plan for Edinburgh for some 50 years. Indeed, the line of the western relief road has been safeguarded by the Government, and in every statutory plan since the war its construction has been supported by the officials of Edinburgh corporation, on which I had the honour to serve as a councillor, and by the officials of Lothian regional council and Edinburgh district council. The relief road is not a motorway or a high-speed road. For almost its whole length it will be subject to a speed limit of 40 mph.
At the provisional order inquiry, evidence was given by the officials of Lothian regional council, including the director of public transport, and by the police in its favour. It is significant that not one official of Edinburgh district council was prepared to give evidence against it at the inquiry.
The purpose of the relief road is to provide a bypass to relieve the intolerable environmental pressure on communities in Gorgie, Dairy and Corstorphine. The construction of the outer city bypass is likely to relieve Corstorphine, but all estimates have shown that it will make traffic from the proposed M8 extension on to the Gorgie-Dalry road worse, much of the Gorgie road lying in my constituency. At present, almost all the traffic from the west goes along the A71 on the Gorgie-Dairy road or along the A8, the Corstorphine road. Both roads are narrow and have shopping centres and schools fronting on the road. There is a very high accident rate on both roads, particularly on the Gorgie-Dalry road. There are about 300 accidents in west Edinburgh every year. About 100 of them involve pedestrians, and in an average year there are about seven deaths.
That brings me to the case for the road and its moral justification. I think that the strongest single reason for the western relief road is that without question it will save lives and reduce personal injury accidents. The streets with the highest personal injury accident rates are those where there is a conflict between heavy volumes of traffic and concentrations of parked cars, service lorries and pedestrians. The relief road will attract a substantial amount of traffic from these streets and in consequence reduce traffic conflict and accidents. It was calculated that the contribution of the relief road would reduce the personal injury accidents by about 60 a year, and the traffic management measures would increase that reduction to about 120 a year. Therefore, the safety considerations are extremely important. In the past three years there have been 21 deaths. The Bill will reduce that grisly figure.

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Secondly, for the five sections of the western relief road there are significant employment opportunities. When one takes into account the work of the suppliers from the granite quarries, those making the cement, the binding of materials and the haulage contracting, the road would ensure the employment of 1,500 people for three to four years. Unemployment in my constituency over the last year has gone down by more than 5 per cent., but the issue of enhancing employment opportunities is very real, and there will undoubtedly be employment benefits to other constituencies if the project goes ahead.
Hon. Members who represent Scottish constituencies will have received from the Federation of Civil Engineering Contractors a letter making it clear that employment is of great concern to them and to the trade unions. I have received a message from the managing director of the Tarmac Group who confirms that the general secretaries of the Transport and General Workers Union and of the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians support the Bill. Indeed, it is mentioned in the letter of the federation that there was substantial trade union support for it.
The third reason in favour of the Bill is that the building of the relief road will make it possible to take further steps to reduce the volume, noise and fumes of traffic in Gorgie-Dalry and in Corstorphine, and it will improve conditions for public transport. Without the relief road, no such steps can be taken. The director of transport wants the relief road to be built because it will make it possible for him to run a better and more attractive public transport service. The relief road will allow much higher bus running speeds on existing roads, increasing the popularity of public transport.
In addition, the traffic restraint measures will increase the environmental gains. Beside the A8 and the A71 are 1,800 homes experiencing noise levels above the threshold required for double glazing. The road will cause over 1,000 houses to obtain an important improvement. Indeed, where it is proposed to build a bypass to relieve comparable environmental conditions, there is often a great deal of support for it beyond that in towns and villages. At present, bypasses are under construction to relieve Portobello, Musselburgh and Tranent. The hon. Member for Midlothian (Mr. Eadie), I understand, is supporting a bypass for Dalkeith also, and I wish him well.
I am glad to see the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Strang) present because, I understand, he is only too happy to have a bypass for Musselburgh giving relief to the constituents of Edinburgh, East. But I say to him with the greatest respect that he is seeking to condemn the constituents in the western sector of Edinburgh, particularly in Gorgie-Dairy, to living in increasingly intolerable conditions without relief. For this there is no cure other than the western relief road.
As I explained earlier, all estimates have shown that the outer city bypass with the M8 extension will make traffic on the Gorgie-Dairy road worse if the western relief road is not built.
Mr. Robin Cook (Livingstone): The whole point of the bypass is that it takes the traffic round the obstacle in its path. The whole point of the western relief road is that it will funnel all the traffic to which the hon. Gentleman is referring to a traffic light connection with Lothian road.
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Does he really believe that the traffic can be brought to that point with no additional traffic measures without resulting in intolerable traffic pressure in the centre of Edinburgh and eventually in a road through the centre of Edinburgh?
Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: I have explained why it will not add to congestion in the centre of Edinburgh, and how congestion in the centre of Edinburgh can be prevented. The Musselburgh bypass gives relief in the eastern sector of the city and, I understand, most of the traffic using it goes on to the centre of the city. That provides relief for the east of Edinburgh. I am asking for relief for the west also. I will deal later specifically with how congestion can be avoided.
Mr. John Home Robertson: What about Musselburgh?
Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: I am anxious that many hon. Members should be called to speak, and I wish to get through my speech as quickly as possible.
I am exercised by the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Fletcher) with the representations of the Cockburn Association and the National Trust for Scotland. For many years I have been a life member of the National Trust for Scotland and the Cockburn Association. If I believed for one moment that the Bill would damage their interests, I should not be proposing it. I sense that they fear what they imagine to be the unknown, but the methods used—
Mr. Ron Brown: Nevertheless, is it not a valid point that the outer city bypass makes more sense than this road? Let us make building the outer road our first priority. If it does not work, we can consider this road.
Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: While the outer city bypass will reduce congestion in Corstorphine, all the estimates, and the evidence in the inquiry, have been to the effect that it will increase congestion in Gorgie-Dalry. This is not an advantaged area of Edinburgh, and that is one of the fundamental reasons for the western relief road.
The methods used in prediction techniques in transport planning are standard world wide, and it is indisputable that the traffic witnesses for the objectors at the inquiry admitted that this relief road would not increase traffic in the city centre. Of the 300 accidents a year in the area affected by the relief road, more than half occur in the constituency of Edinburgh, Central which includes Edinburgh city. Most of the accident saving can come within that constituency, which is an important benefit of the Bill. I can give two examples.
Along the A8 going down West Coates into Shandwick place, about 50 injuries or fatal accidents occur each year. That is the heaviest concentration of accidents in the western sector. Hundreds of homes and businesses are also affected by congestion and pollution. The relief road will remove one third to two thirds of the traffic on this road. On the Dairy road, the A70 is a high-density, tenemental area on which occur about 40 accidents each year. The construction of the outer city bypass will increase traffic volumes and, in its turn, the risk of accidents. The relief road would reduce traffic on the Dairy road by about 20 per cent. and would make possible traffic management measures to remove the 80 per cent. of bypassable traffic to that road.
The Gorky road, which is in both the Edinburgh, Central constituency and mine, is also a high-density

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tenemental area, with problems of noise and environmental pollution. Even on the short section in Edinburgh, Central, 15 people are killed or injured each year. The outer city bypass increases traffic problems on this road which the relief road will alleviate.
Mr. Ron Brown: This is all academic.
Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: It is important for safety considerations, and is thus one of the fundamental points of the Bill.
It should not be forgotten that part of the western approach road has already been opened, from Lothian road in the city centre out to Balgreen, and it is significant that after its opening studies recorded a drop in peak hour traffic in Lothian road. In other words, opening half of the western approach road, far from doing harm, has done some good.
Basically, people come to the city centre only if they have the time and the money. If and when the relief road goes ahead, it will not radically affect the amount of time or money available to the traveller. In the absence of extra time and money, it is unlikely that there will be extra journeys. Traffic within the city centre can, should and must be controlled. The principle behind the Bill is that traffic in the western city area of Edinburgh should be redistributed from residential and shopping areas to the relief road. Even so, the distribution of access points to the city centre will remain the same—from Shandwick place, Queensferry street, the existing west approach road, Morison street and across Fountainbridge. In future, traffic will be able to fan out as it does now.
Because of the environmental improvement measures to Gorgie-Dairy, Stenhouse-Whitson and Corstorphine, the capacity of existing roads will be reduced, but the total road capacity from the west will remain the same. Additional measures will make certain that congestion in the city centre is avoided, thus helping to alleviate the concern of the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Brown). I can give five examples of how this can be done.
First, the present computer-controlled central area traffic light control system can and will distribute traffic between the Lothian road exit and that at Roseburn. Secondly, the council's parking control measures can and do discourage long-stay parking in the city centre. The effect has been to keep peak hour traffic at the same level since 1968.
Mr. Michael J. Martin: I was the chairman of the inquiry and thus had the opportunity of travelling through Corstorphine. I noticed that there was an absence of traffic management schemes, particularly at the peak hour. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, if there were traffic management at Corstorphine, there would be a truer figure of how fast traffic can move in that area and the extent to which the new road could alleviate people's problems?
Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: That is a fair question, although the hon. Gentleman has broken the thread of my speech. Corstorphine is a tremendous bottleneck in peak hours, and business men have complained because they want to travel more rapidly instead of being stuck in traffic jams on that road. I am more concerned with Gorgie-Dalry. I am explaining how congestion in the city centre can be prevented.
The third way to avoid congestion is the newly opened railway halts at South Gyle and Livingston, and other
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stations at Bathgate and West Lothian, which will soon be open, all of which will provide park-and-ride schemes. This will encourage commuters to leave their cars outside the city. In west Edinburgh, the South Gyle halt was the initiative of councillor Donald Gorge who got the measure through with the support of Conservatives.
The third item is the large multi-storey car park being promoted by the Lothian regional council at the end of the western relief road. The Edinburgh district council has now objected to it and the matter is on appeal to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland. The car park would provide places for 1,500 cars and would prevent congestion. If the district council is so concerned about traffic in the city centre, it should bear in mind the need for proper parking facilities. Not everyone wishes to travel by public transport, and appropriate provision should be made for parking.
A fifth way to prevent congestion in the city centre is to go ahead with the outer city bypass as a priority commitment. This will remove from the city centre all the bypassable traffic.
The conservationist objection represented by the Cockburn Association, which has concerned my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Fletcher), is a relatively new phenomenon. Until shortly before the inquiry, the Cockburn Association did not oppose the road in principle. It argued that it should be single carriageway rather than dual carriageway, and I can give evidence for that. In its newsletter of April 1984, it was confirmed that it held a special meeting and submitted detailed comments to Lothian regional district council. It reported:
"These accepted the principle of the road, subject to rigorous conditions."
The road is planned as a dual carriageway, principally for safety reasons. The police stated that they would be strongly opposed to a single carriageway for safety reasons —particularly in connection with access for ambulances and fire engines, if required. Every effort has been made to take account of amenity considerations. In particular, every effort was made to safeguard the industries and employment at Westfield, in my consitituency, by building a viaduct. Also, only one house is to be demolished and the lady concerned, whom I have seen, is already rehoused.
What is more, the Royal Fine Art Commission has discussed with the region at every stage the lay-out of the road and its landscaping, which will be extensive. No fewer than 300,000 trees and shrubs will be planted, and therefore the overall impression will be extremely attractive. A great deal of effort has gone into that.
The Cockburn Association stated in its petition that the procedure is constitutionally unsuitable. I reject the allegation that it was not satisfied that the majority of commissioners gave proper consideration to the effects of the road. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central still has doubts over the issue —indeed, he has tabled a motion, supported by my hon. Friends the Members for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) and for Fife, North-East (Mr. Henderson) to refer the matter to a Joint Committee of both Houses. That appears in both petitions. I am certain of the overwhelming justification for the road, and, in a desire to be helpful to my hon. Friend, I shall not oppose the motion. The people of Edinburgh have waited 50 years for the road, and if they have to wait a few more

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weeks so that justice is seen to be done, so be it. I hope that it will be for only a few weeks as the contractors are ready to start work.
Lothian regional council's reason for using the procedure of a parliamentary commission was that it would simplify overlapping statutory procedures. I could have been faced with three separate, lengthy public inquiries on, first, the planning aspects of the proposed road; secondly, the land acquisition, apart from the rail diversion; and, thirdly, the rail diversion and associated land acquisition. The public would have had to bear the cost of three major public inquiries.
The procedure of a parliamentary commission enables a public hearing to be held dealing with all the relevant facts leading to the provisional order and to the Bill. It is the only procedure which guaranteed a hearing for all the objectors to the proposal.
The witnesses from the smaller amenity bodies said that they had received a fair hearing and the parliamentary commission procedure has allowed a wider range of compensation than would have been available under the Land Compensation Act 1961. A planning inquiry would not have allowed any other issue to be aired. The two independent commissioners were entirely independent. I believe that the Cockburn Association's attack on the procedure and on the commissioners is wrong.
As I have said, I shall not oppose the motion to refer the Bill to a Joint Committee of both Houses. That is something for which the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East asked in The Scotsman on 28 February this year. He said:
"If Labour MPs could not defeat the Bill before or at Second Reading they would certainly want it referred to a Committee of both Houses because of the legal and procedural matters raised."
I will end with the words of a man whom the House of Commons remembers with warmth and affection, the late Frank McElhone. He replied as Minister to my Adjournment debate on this subject and on the outer city bypass on 6 February 1978. He said:
"Although I am a great lover of Edinburgh, it figures much smaller in my affection than does Glasgow. However, it is plain that over the years Edinburgh has, as the hon. Member for Ayr said, been plagued by indecision. Whether we talk about opera, sewerage or roads, Edinburgh seems to be plagued with that indecision. Perhaps those in Edinburgh are not gifted with the directness and desire to do things that we have in Glasgow."—[Official Report, 6 February 1978; Vol. 943, c. 1207.]
Tonight we have the opportunity to prove that Edinburgh is capable of the same greatness of character that Frank McElhone knew to exist in Glasgow.
The Bill is in the interests of Scotland because a capital city needs good communications. It is in the interests of Lothian region because it will provide employment for more than 1,550 people for several years. It is in the interests of Edinburgh because it will improve the amenities of thousands of house owners. Above all, it will save lives and reduce personal accidents. This is the moral justification for the Bill and why it deserves to succeed. The Bill is good for Scotland, Edinburgh and its citizens. It stands for progress, and that is why I commend it to the House.
7.24 pm
Mr. Alex Fletcher: I have had the privilege of voting for my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton) in all of
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the elections in which he has been a candidate, but I shall not be voting for him in any future election. He may know that that is because I have moved out of his constituency.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Malcolm Rifkind): And moved into his own.
Mr. Fletcher: My hon. and learned Friend is correct. I can now vote for an even better candidate.
I have always been impressed by the interest and hard work of my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West in local issues, and I respect his point of view in this instance. However, what is good for West Edinburgh is not necessarily good for Edinburgh as a whole. The proposed western relief road would benefit one ward of my hon. Friend's constituency, and I know that it could be stretched to cover some parts of my constituency.
I do not think that my hon. Friend would deny that the main traffic problem in West Edinburgh is in the Corstorphine area, which stretches from Drumbrae to Clermiston, a distance of less than half a mile. It is rather absurd that we should vote to spend £37 million on four miles of dual carriageway to overcome this short length of congestion, especially when it will only overcome the traffic problems in West Edinburgh and Corstorphine by transferring them to the centre of the city.
Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: Is my hon. Friend not aware that all the evidence at the inquiry was to the effect that the congestion in Gorgie road and Dairy road, much of which is in his constituency, will be far worse once the outer city bypass is constructed? Is he aware also that in Corstorphine there are least four wards and not one?
Mr. Fletcher: I do not think there are four wards between Drumbrae and Clermiston, which is the locality where most of the trouble is. The road is quite broad until it reaches Drumbrae, and it spreads out again immediately after the Clermiston road. My hon. Friend said that the western relief road had been planned for 50 years. I suggest that that is evidence in itself that the plans are out of date. Indeed, we are in the middle of constructing an outer ring road, which will relieve a little pocket in my hon. Friend's constituency and a great deal of traffic from the city as a whole.
Mr. Michael Hirst: In the course of my hon. Friend's research into this issue as a local constituency Member, has he read the transcript of the evidence that was laid before the commission? The evidence of the traffic analysis and projected traffic flows is that even after the ring road is built —it will take away some of the traffic that would otherwise go through Edinburgh —there will still be a substantial amount of traffic passing through the A8 and the Gorgie-Dalry road. It is to relieve these communities that the western relief road is so essential.
Mr. Fletcher: What my hon. Friend is suggesting is only one solution to the problems to which he referred. I and others take the view that the problems at Corstorphine and Gorgie-Dalry can be overcome at much less cost than that proposed by the construction of the western relief road.
I wish to make it clear to those who are not familiar with Edinburgh that the relief road is not an Edinburgh city bypass. That bypass is being built at enormous public expense and will be ready for opening by about 1990. It

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is of great significance to all traffic problems in Edinburgh, and that is why Edinburgh Members are most grateful that construction of the road is well in hand.
The relief road is not planned to decrease city centre traffic. On the contrary, it will increase the amount of traffic entering the middle of the city. It will invite vehicles into the city centre traffic jams and tend to make them worse. The relief road will be a story of misspent millions and misplaced party loyalty. It is not wanted by those whom I meet in the city centre and nor is it wanted by groups which take an interest in their local environment and local amenities. I can assure my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West that I do not accept that we must spend £40 million to ensure his return to the House after the next general election. I believe that we can confidently expect him to return here at much less public expenditure.
I have conceded already that Corstorphine has traffic problems between Drumbrae and Clermiston and Fermaston, a distance of half a mile. However, other remedies are available there and elsewhere. I contend that the relief road proposal is out of proportion to the size of the problem.
The issue of the relief road was raised during the 1983 general election campaign, and I was put under pressure. I did not always welcome those who tended to follow me round and ask, "Are you going to oppose the western relief road?" My reply was, "Frankly, I know little about it." That was the position. The hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) might confirm that the boundary changes that affected the two of us occurred at a late stage before the general election. That was mainly because there were two public inquiries into what should be the boundaries of what is now the Edinburgh, Central constituency.
I told those who were asking me whether I opposed the relief road that after the election I would consider the matter most carefully and then make my decision. That is what I did. I discussed the issue with my regional councillor, the late Ian Cramond, who spearheaded the proposal in the region. I had discussions also with consultants, council officials and others in the constituency, including members of my constituency association, before reaching the conclusion that the road as proposed was not welcome and would not be beneficial to my constituents. My position has been known now for almost two years.
Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: Why is it that every Conservative regional councillor supports the relief road, including those in my hon. Friend's constituency?
Mr. Fletcher: I am amazed that a former Whip should ask why Conservative councillors of a tightly balanced region should all take the same line on the proposal.
In October 1983, the region decided to construct the road and applied to the then Edinburgh district council for planning consent. The council gave its approval in February in 1984, subject to various but important detailed conditions being greed. Agreement on those conditions was never arrived at and, despite strong objections and requests for a public inquiry, which I supported, the region took the less helpful route of opting for further discussion. As the House knows, it promoted a provisional order. A parliamentary inquiry followed, which lasted for no fewer than 52 days. I understand that my hon. Friend the
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Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden (Mr. Hirst) feels rather sore about that, because he was one of the commissioners.
Mr. Hirst: Does my hon. Friend accept that the parliamentary inquiry was the only forum at which the details of the proposal, including the diversion of the railway, compulsory purchase orders and planning permission, could be discussed? Had the application to the district council for planning permission been approved without a public inquiry, the people of Edinburgh who allegedly object to the scheme would never have had the opportunity to make their views known. Does my hon. Friend accept that the parliamentary inquiry fulfilled the right to consultation?
Mr. Fletcher: I do not think that it is important whether I accept that. Most of the objectors who participated in the inquiry did not think that the inquiry met their requirements. They would have preferred a public inquiry. They felt that that procedure would have given them greater access and would have allowed them to make their case. I agree that the parliamentary inquiry allowed all these matters to be considered, including the railway diversion, but the railway issue could have been dealt with separately. Indeed, I understand that that issue has yet to be resolved. That could have been dealt with as a separate issue, and a public inquiry could have taken place in the normal way, which is what the objectors wanted.
Mr. Martin: Had it not been for the railway, a parliamentary inquiry could not have been conducted. That would not have been possible if the only issue had been the road.
Mr. Fletcher: Yes, I understand that. The parliamentary commissioners ruled that the objectors were entitled to two thirds of their costs. I understand that the region claims that that ruling is ultra vires and refuses to pay the costs. I respect the legal point that may exist, but I hope that the region will consider its position. It is extremely costly for members of the public to make representations when such important matters are being discussed. I have been an objector to a number of schemes, and I know the effort, time and costs involved.
No one will be surprised to learn that Edinburgh has a proud history of preserving its architectural heritage. not least against the road lobby. As the hon. Member who represents the old and the new towns in Edinburgh, I have a duty to foster that tradition, even against a Conservative council, which I do with reluctance. I do not believe that this should be a party political occasion.
I do not go lightly against the Lothian region or my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West, but my judgment of what is right for my constituents must take precedence over other considerations. I accept that conservationists are not always right, but in Edinburgh they have been right more often than not. I quote an article that appeared in The Scotsman in October 1983 on this issue. It reads:
"Edinburgh, the only British. City which has not been. a happy hunting ground for road planners over the past 20 years, owes its escape to broad based campaigns which in 1966, 1970, 1973, 1976 and 1979 told all the experts and most politicians they were wrong. As a result, there is no motorway under Charlotte Square, above Tollcross, over the Meadows, across the Royal Mile, round the bridges, through Calton Hill, and next to the New Town".
That is excellent for Edinburgh.

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Opposition to the relief road is broadly based. It stands alongside the campaigns to which the article in The Scotsman was referring. No fewer than 38 organisations believe that the proposals supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West represent a major threat to the city's environment. These include the National Trust for Scotland, the Cockburn Association, the Scottish Civic Trust, the Architectural Heritage Society, no fewer than 17 residents' associations, six community councils and 11 amenity groups. The views of these various organisations must be taken into account when we decide whether the Bill should receive a Second Reading.
Mr. Hirst rose—
Mr. Fletcher: I know that my hon. Friend wishes to participate in the debate, and I think that I should proceed with my speech so that I can leave time for him.
I have recited what I consider to be an impressive list of organisations in Edinburgh which are opposed to the relief road, and their objections deserve the closest consideration by the House.
The main reasons for the objections include increased traffic congestion in the city centre. The western relief road may relieve the western approach to Edinburgh, but that will be achieved at the expense of the city centre. The road will funnel traffic into the centre of Edinburgh. There are no intermediate junctions for traffic to leave or to join the proposed road between the periphery near Edinburgh airport and the central area. Like any other new road, it will attract more traffic, including heavy vehicles, to the city centre. There is no evidence from the consultants to support the contrary.
The road will be connected directly with the M8, making it, in effect, an extension of the motorway into the city centre. When the region first made the proposal, it was proud to talk of it as an extension of the motorway. It will be a dual carriageway and will be built on stilts. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West underlined that there will be a speed restriction of 40 mph. Now it is referred to only as safe dual carriagway leading into the city centre. Even that more modest presentation will encourage at least some of the traffic to continue through the city centre when the new ring road, which will be completed shortly, would be more appropriate.
Areas in my constituency such as Roseburn, Haymarket, Tollcross and the Meadows will be adversely affected. The Meadows are the southern boundary of my constituency and the northern boundary of the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, south (Mr. Ancram), who is not prepared to bat even an eyelid lest his neutrality is questioned. Congestion in that part of the town could lead to demands for widening of the road at the Meadows —a precious part of Edinburgh's green belt.
There are fears for the stability of many listed buildings in the old and new towns in the city. All of this is to save only an estimated two minutes on a typical journey from the western periphery to the city centre, a distance of four miles. On arriving at the city centre, drivers will find a bigger than ever traffic jam at Lothian road.
My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West claimed that the proposed road would reduce the number of accidents. With respect, that is misleading because the road and all that is claimed of it will not solve anything.
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It will shift problems elsewhere. The congestion caused in the central area of the city will be just as likely to create as many accidents as those that my hon. Friend claims are caused by congestion in Corstorphine and in Drumbrae Dalry. Shifting the problem from one part of the city to another will not solve anything.
Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: Is my hon. Friend aware that traffic management measures on the other roads which go through his constituency, such as Dalry road, can reduce the volume of traffic on those roads? What is proposed is merely a redistribution of existing traffic and not an increase of traffic into the city centre.
Mr. Fletcher: I am coming to what improvements might be made. I accept that improvements could be made to the western road system, but I do not think those have to be achieved by funnelling all the traffic on to one road with just one exit in the city centre. That is the basis of many complaints about the system. There could be better traffic management measures, such as junction improvements and road realignments, as well as improved parking facilities. Those could be carried out at a cost of a very few million pounds compared to the proposed expenditure of nearly £40 million.
I note what my hon. Friend said about the motion that I have on the Order Paper that the Bill should be committed to a Joint Committee of both Houses. I do not propose to enlarge upon that. If that were the decision of the House, it would allow further discussion on some of these matters.
Much discussion here and outside the House is concerned with inner city deprivation. I confess that Edinburgh has problems, but by no means can it be regarded as a deprived inner city area. Edinburgh ratepayers could think of better things to do with £40 million; for example, a cut in the rates would be much more warmly welcomed than the proposed road. My hon. Friends complain frequently about the extravagant plans of Edinburgh district council. How can they justify expenditure on a road that is largely unwanted? No doubt the region believes earnestly that the relief road would be good for Edinburgh, but Edinburgh thinks otherwise. Why not simply save the money and have the benefit of a cut in public expenditure on the one hand and being popular at the same time?
I repeat that the proposed road will not be a city bypass but will shift a traffic problem within the city. The House is being asked to decide on a matter where the majority of Edinburgh opinion is at best opposed to the road and is at worst evenly divided. In those circumstances, the House should follow the excellent traditions of the Chair; we should support the status quo by voting against the Bill.
7.45 pm
Mr. Michael J. Martin: My hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson) approached me while he was a Scottish Whip to ask if I would take part in an inquiry in Edinburgh. I asked the obvious question about how long it would take. He replied that the local authority, the promoter of the Bill, had said that it would take three or four weeks. That was a ridiculous assumption by the local authority. Some people who gave evidence were in the witness box for seven or eight days.
The hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton) mentioned landscaping. He will know

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that landscaping was not referred to in the proposal that was before the inquiry, yet we had a witness giving evidence for three days about how many trees would be planted along the proposed road. It was ridiculous that the promoters of the Bill gave an estimate of three or four weeks for the inquiry when they knew that it would take longer. In fact, it took three and half months.
Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: In clause 36, which deals with preservation of amenity, landscaping and tree planting have been mentioned, so they are taken into account.
Mr. Martin: If the hon. Gentleman reads the evidence, he will note that that clause was not in the original legislation.
In an intervention in the speech of the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Fletcher) I made it clear that had it not been for the railway there would not have been a parliamentary inquiry about the road. If we allow the legislation to go through, we will set a precedent. For the first time in the history of private legislation in Scotland a road was tied in with a railway. If it had been only the railway that was under consideration, the parliamentary commissioners would have taken only about three weeks for the inquiry.
Mr. Hirst rose—
Mr. Martin: I am not giving way. The hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity to make a speech.
As parliamentary commissioners, we received strong legal advice straight away from the clerks, who are also counsel to the Secretary of State for Scotland, that every statutory means should he used by the local authority before it sought a parliamentary inquiry.
The only reason for a parliamentary inquiry was the railway. There was nothing to stop the local authority from drafting another piece of private legislation when only the railway was under consideration. The other proposals in the Bill could have been covered adequately by ordinary planning permission or a planning inquiry.
It is nonsense to suggest, as officials of Lothian region suggested in their evidence, that the reason for a parliamentary inquiry was to provide a public forum for the good people of Edinburgh. Another argument for the parliamentary inquiry was that it would save money. It is difficult to accept talk of making savings on public inquiries when one is considering spending £40 million. The main consideration of a local authority on an issue such as this should be to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to express a point of view for or against the proposal.
As I understand it, a person wishing to object to this legislation would have to petition to become an opposer or an objector at the parliamentary inquiry. There is nothing to stop someone from appearing in person as an objector at a parliamentary inquiry, but that is rather like saying that there is nothing to stop a person accused of a serious crime from turning up at the High Court and appealing on his or her own behalf. Anyone with any sense would urge people to get proper legal counsel in such a situation and it was no accident that every body which petitioned for or against had a Queen's counsel and a junior present at the parliamentary inquiry.
I complained bitterly about the hearing lasting three and a half months, but it would have lasted a great deal longer
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if the Cockburn Association had not decided to be the umbrella organisation for all the petitioners against the proposal, apart from the railway and the district council. The hearing might have lasted many months if they had all chosen to appear as individuals rather than under the umbrella organisation.
I hope that hon. Members will bear in mind that our consideration of the legislation is not solely on the merits of the road. We are here to examine legislation and to ensure that the House is not abused. We must make sure that the legislation is properly drafted and worded. As parliamentary commissioners in Edinburgh, we had to consider what the wishes of the House would be and I know that hon. Members who are more experienced parliamentarians than I am are very particular about the wording of legislation.
If a railway is diverted by means of parliamentary legislation, someone 100 years hence must be able to identify where the railway was diverted to. That could not happen in this case. The legal advice was that the proposal was ambiguous as to the location of the new railway layout. Although I expressed my dissent and concern and voted in favour of the legal advice, I was overruled. The plans which the commissioners accepted by a majority decision are not the plans before us now. The plans have been changed since we left Edinburgh. Therefore, the decision taken in Edinburgh is not the one that we shall take tonight.
The officials of the regional council told us at the parliamentary inquiry that the road would be a dual carriageway. I said that there were dual carriageways and dual carriageways, and I asked them to describe a dual carriageway similar to that in the proposal. I was told that the nearest thing to the proposed plan was the Clydeside expressway in my native city of Glasgow.
There are dual carriageways in my constituency that are very quiet, and if someone were to describe a dual carriageway I would think of one of those which are in housing estates and therefore do not have much traffic. The Clydeside expressway is not a typical dual carriageway. It is sectioned off and the public cannot cross it. Workmen who were late for work were injured when they tried to cross the expressway with using the overhead bridges. It is more like a motorway without a hard shoulder. I do not think that the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West would like such a road in his back yard.
Many people believe that Glasgow has a terrific motorway system, and I grant that that is so, but, having lived in Glasgow all my life, I believe that the people who get most benefit from the motorway system in Glasgow are not the people living in Glasgow, but those living outside the city. The expressway is in the Anderston district where I was brought up. A whole community was destroyed and streets, schools, churches and places of historical interest disappeared from the face of the earth.
I later moved to Townhead. I first heard of the Townhead interchange when Lord Ross of Marnock pressed a detonator, blew up a wall and set the interchange on its way. There are areas in Townhead which no one would recognise. People have been pushed to the four winds because of the motorway system there. Everyone can say "Hear, hear" for the motorway system in Glasgow, except the majority of Glaswegians. In my own constituency of Springburn, where I live, many difficulties are caused by motorway proposals.
Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: Will the hon. Gentleman accept that there is a fundamental difference between the environment in which he was brought up, where whole communities were broken up by the wide-scale demolition of buildings, and this proposal, where only one house is to be demolished and where satisfactory settlement has been made for the occupant affected?
Mr. Martin: The plans for motorways in Glasgow were drawn up in 1964. Some of the plans which were still on the drawing board in 1964 have suddenly been resurrected now, and there is still motorway building in Glasgow. In fact, there have been several inquiries in my constituency.
I am trying to explain to hon. Members that the proposal could mean the beginning of a motorway system in Edinburgh. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, West, who knows Edinburgh better than I do, will realise that when this relief road reaches the approach road there will be heavy traffic going right to the foot of the castle, the most important tourist attraction in the country. He should think very carefully about what might happen.
I am glad the hon. Gentleman accepts that a Joint Committee of both Houses should consider this matter. I took the word of my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian, who had taken the word of the local authority, that the inquiry would last about three and a half weeks. In fact, I could not come to the House for three and a half months. If the House instructs a Member to do something in another part of the country, he must accept that duty, and I make no complaint about it. I object, however, to a Queen's counsel who has nothing to do with the House advising a client—I do not blame the regional council, because it had to take advice—to lump the road and the railway together to obtain a parliamentary inquiry.
Because the scheme was opposed, the House had to find two commissioners from this House and two from another place. As no one in the other place bothered to put any names forward, we had to have two people from outside the parliamentary system. I strongly object to the fact that for three and a half months I could not represent my constituents here. In a Parliament in which the Government had a very small majority, or no overall majority at all, as occurred under the Labour Government, it would be absurd to deprive the House of attendance by Members because of private legislation instigated by people outside. In my view, parliamentary commissions should not be set up until the petitioners have been through every other statutory procedure at their disposal.
Finally, I urge the House to consider seriously, not just the terms of the legislation, but the damage that could be done to a very beautiful city. In my three and a half months in Edinburgh, I came to know the Mound, the old town and the university area well. To me, it is a lovely thing to see people living in the centre of one of our cities. It reminded me of the Glasgow of my childhood, when people lived in the city centre. I believe that if we allow a road system of this kind to go through the city of Edinburgh we shall risk losing something that other major cities in the United Kingdom are striving very hard to retain.
8.3 pm
The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Michael Ancram): It may be for the convenience of the House if I intervene briefly at this stage to explain the
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position of the Government and of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State under the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act 1936 in relation to this confirmation Bill.
Where a provisional order made under the provisions of the 1936 Act is opposed, arrangements are made for an inquiry to be held before parliamentary commissioners. Counsel for the promoters of the order and objectors to it appear before the commissioners and lead evidence. Following the hearing, the commissioners submit a report to the Secretary of State in which they recommend that the order should be issued, or should be rejected, or should be issued with modifications. That was the procedure adopted in this instance. In the case of the Western Relief road order, following an inquiry which sat on no fewer than 52 days over a period of three months, the commissioners found in favour of the council, but with such qualifications as to require the deposit of a modified order under the private legislation procedure. The plans for the road also had to be cleared by the Department of Transport railways inspectorate because of the close proximity of the proposed road to the Edinburgh to Glasgow and Dundee railway.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was not, therefore, in a position to introduce the Bill in the House until the end of June. He took the view that introduction at that stage of the Session would not be for the convenience of the House as it seemed unlikely that there would be adequate time for the important issues at stake to be fully discussed. The Government have presented the Bill in the new Session so that it can be fully and properly discussed.
It would, in theory, have been open to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to refuse to accept the recommendations of the parliamentary commissioners, but successive Secretaries of State have honoured the undertaking given during the passage of the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act 1933, which was consolidated in the 1936 Act, that the Secretary of State would treat such recommendations with the fullest respect and would not set them aside other than in exceptional circumstances. Accordingly, my right hon. Friend has submitted the order to Parliament in the form of the confirmation Bill which is now before the House.
The role of the Secretary of State in introducing the Bill is essentially formal. In particular, my right hon. Friend's decision to introduce the Bill is not to be taken as implying any view on his part on the merits of the order, but merely as enabling the appropriate parliamentary procedure to take place. I therefore see my role today as that of a catalyst, and I do not propose to utter any view for or against the provisions of the Bill.
Mr. Home Robertson: The Minister sets great store by the authority, standing and status of the parliamentary commissioners. For the record, will he tell the House who the commissioners were and who appointed those who were not members of either House?
Mr. Ancram: The commissioners are appointed by the House authorities, and that is what happened in this case.
Mr. Home Robertson: They were appointed by the Secretary of State.
Mr. Ancram: I have listened with care and attention to the comments that have been made about the way in

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which the procedure was followed in this instance, and I suspect that there will be more comments to come. I have taken careful note of the the points made today. Extensive consultation, especially with the Chairman of Ways and Means, would be necessary if any review of the procedure were to take place, but I believe —I think that there is support from historical precedent for this —that the circumstances surrounding this provisional order were exceptional. A wide range of business has been conducted under these procedures in the past 49 years, but so far as I am aware those other instances did not reveal anything particularly defective about the procedures themselves.
Mr. Martin: On previous occasions the petitioners were careful to restrict this type of legislation to bridges and railways. In no circumstances were roads involved, except in the case of approach roads —for instance, the approach road to the Kingston bridge. I agree that in more than 40 years no difficulties have arisen, but no previous legislation has involved a major stretch of road going through an urban area.
Mr. Ancram: I listened to the hon. Gentleman. He is as aware as I am that the regional council would have required parliamentary powers to divert the Edinburgh-Glasgow railway if the road were to be built. The regional council was entitled to decide to promote a wider provisional order. When the order was deposited, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was obliged under the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act 1936 to make appropriate arrangements for the order to be considered. The provisional order may have been wider than is sometimes the case, but in the circumstances the procedures were carried out properly.
All hon. Members involved in Edinburgh welcome the construction of the outer city bypass, which should improve traffic conditions in Edinburgh and provide a fast and convenient route for traffic wishing to avoid the city centre. I take full account of the planned works on the bypass in determining Lothian region's capital allocation each year, and our arrangements to give grant assistance for the remaining sections of the bypass will also have the benefit of significantly relieving the burden on Lothian ratepayers.
Where, as in this case, a petition against an order comprised in the confirmation Bill is presented timeously, there is also, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton) correctly pointed out, provision under section 9 of the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act 1936 for the matter to be referred to a Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament. The motion before the House, which we shall consider together with the main motion, is clearly competent. The House must decide whether a sufficient case has been made for it. The Government's position on that, as on the question of the principle of the Bill, is neutral. I trust that the House will accept that the Government have fulfilled the responsibilities expected of them regarding the provisional order.
8.11 pm
Mr. John Maxton: As the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Fletcher) said, the Minister, the hon. Member for Edinburgh, South (Mr. Ancram), will not bat an eyelid that may suggest that he is anything other than neutral. My hon. Friend the Member
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for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) and I, representing the Labour Front Bench, believe that we should not express an opinion. However, unlike the Minister, at the end of my remarks I shall say how I intend to vote on a personal basis. It might have been for the convenience of the House if the Minister, as an Edinburgh Member, had told the House how he intended to vote as the Bill affects his constituency. Some of his hon. Friends will watch with interest to see how he casts his vote, if he votes.
The hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton) will agree that even among his hon. Friends he comes from a privileged background. It appears that he is a highly privileged. hon. Member because twice within seven days the House has debated Bills designed to protect his small 500 majority. Last week, when we debated the Housing (Scotland) Bill, some hon. Members said that it was designed to protect him, and his hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central said the same this evening.
Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that people living in Gorgie and Etalry are in no way from an advantaged or privileged background, and that the Bill will alleviate the intolerable circumstances in which they live, which can only get worse when the outer city bypass is built? [HoN. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."]
Mr. Maxton: The hon. Gentleman received a great deal of support for his intervention, but his hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central did not take part in it. Clearly, the House cannot be divided along party lines on this matter. There are divisions within the Conservative party, and, without going into last week's politics, that is not wholly uncommon in the Scottish Conservative party.
Mr. Home Robertson: The hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton) is one of my constituents, and I should have mixed feelings if he lost his job. The hon. Gentleman lives in my constituency and, presumably, goes to his constituency occasionally. If the western relief road were built, he would probably go straight through the centre of Edinburgh to get from his home in East Lothian to his constituency in west Edinburgh, whereas it would be much more appropriate for him to go round the city on a completed outer city bypass.
Mr. Maxton: I shall not become involved with my hon. Friend's constituents, as I am sure that he looks after their interests, and perhaps even those of the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West.
Conservative Members are divided on the matter, and their party's two House of Commons parliamentary commissioners also take opposite sides. There are no divisions in the Labour party's ranks on this issue. Although the alliance parties hold the balance of power on Lothian regional council, which is promoting the Bill, none is present to say where the alliance stands on the issue.
As a Glaswegian, I am loth to take too large a part in the controversy. As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Springburn (Mr. Martin) investigated the matter for three months, he is entitled to intervene, although he is a Glaswegian too. Although all Glaswegians reluctantly must go to Edinburgh on occasions, we do not know the geography of the city as well as Edinburgh Members.

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Obviously, there are traffic congestion problems. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, West argued cogently why the congestion in his constituency should be relieved. However, his hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central argued equally cogently why the relief road should not be built until we see whether Edinburgh traffic is relieved by the bypasses around Edinburgh. Each of my hon. Friends must decide how to vote, and they will have received a great deal of advice. They must pay attention to what the majority of the parliamentary commissioners recommended, but equally they should pay careful attention to the valid points of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Springburn, the chairman of that commission. My hon. Friends have listened to the arguments of their friends within Edinburgh and Lothian region, and all Labour Members pay high regard to the views of those in Edinburgh whom they know best.
I intend to vote against the Bill. However, if the Bill is passed, I warmly welcome the disclosure that the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West is prepared to accept the procedure of a Joint Committee of both Houses because at least that will allow the matter to be considered in more detail before the proposal is passed. Therefore, I ask my hon. Friends to weigh their decision carefully before they cast their votes.
8.18 pm
Mr. Michael Hirst: I was amused to hear my colleague, the hon. Member for Glasgow, Springburn (Mr. Martin), say that his Whip approached him smiling and asked him to go to Edinburgh as a parliamentary commissioner, and that his Whip believed that the inquiry would last about three and a half weeks. That was not my experience. My Whip did not smile, but merely said, "There is a job to be done in Edinburgh. It may take three weeks or it may take slightly longer, but you should be back well and truly before Christmas."
I sympathise with some of the hon. Gentleman's views, because, like him, I always find it frustrating to be away from Parliament for a long time. I do not complain about that, because I recognise that it is a duty which from time to time falls on hon. Members. I hope that I can honestly look all hon. Members straight in the eye when I say that I endeavoured to do my duty as a commissioner to the best of my ability.
It has not been easy to cope with all the demands of one's constituents, and my colleagues on the commission recognised and readily acknowledged that I had a substantial amount of work to do, but I do not believe that any of my constituents suffered because I had to be away from the House for three and a half months. That should be borne in mind by any other hon. Member who finds himself similarly dispatched to a parliamentary commission in future.
Having kept fairly silent on the matter for the nine months in which the commission was completing its work, I must say now that it sat for an unnecessarily long time, and criticism that is made of the procedure and the time in which two Members of Parliament were involved must be tempered by the fact that there were ways in which the proceedings could have been truncated. There need not have been such lengthy bouts of evidence as we received. I think that the chairman of the commission will
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acknowledge that some of the objectors indulged in flights of fancy. I remind him of the Cowgate boulevard, a preposterous suggestion which wasted two and a half days of evidence.
While I am sensitive to what the hon. Member for Springburn has said about the cumbersome nature of a parliamentary commission, I believe that, if the commission had been run in a much more businesslike way, it would have been possible to sit for a much shorter period and still to give all the objectors and the promoters adequate opportunity to put their points of view.
Mr. Martin: Surely the hon. Member will recall that the proposers took longer in giving evidence than the objectors. A witness gave evidence that the Cowgate was to be extended into a dual carriageway, and we, the commissioners, asked for more evidence. Therefore, it was to satisfy the commissioners that the matter of the Cowgate was considered for an extra two and a half days.
Mr. Hirst: I am sure that it would be to the amusement and edification of the House if we indulged in a re-run of some of our spirited discussions, but it is fair to say that the promoters, who are putting forward such a major scheme, must inevitably spend time in justifying their proposal. The function of the commissioners was to examine and take a decision on the merits of the scheme, and that necessarily involved an exhaustive examination of the merits of the case.
There was indeed an exhaustive and painstaking examination of the merits of the scheme. Having approached my duties initially in an entirely neutral way, I found myself, as the scheme unfolded, attracted to the logic and merits of the scheme. I believe that the case was conclusively proved. The significant point is not that I found it conclusively proved but that a majority of the commissioners came to that conclusion.
As some hon. Members may know, the other two commissioners were people with no party affiliation and with no preconceived notion about the matter. They were entirely independent in regard to their appointment and the way in which they made their decision. It is significant that, after 53 days of painstaking consideration, the two independent lay commissioners and myself found the merits of the scheme conclusively proved. Not only were the merits of the scheme conclusively proved, but every available opportunity was afforded to objectors to come before the commission to state their case and to have it tested under the most rigorous cross-examination. The two lay commissioners and myself came to the conclusion that the objectors' contentions and fears could not be established in evidence and under cross-examination.
Mr. Martin: The hon. Member will surely recall that a motion was moved by me, the wording of which was not disputed, that in view of the strong legal advice being given by Queen's counsel, the commissioners should reject the legislation. Therefore, the hon. Member is not telling the full story, because he knows full well that there was strong legal advice in favour of rejecting the legislation.
Mr. Hirst: I do not mind the hon. Member doing me an injustice, but in making that statement he does a significant injustice to the non-parliamentary commissioners, who exercised their duties as commissioners with great diligence and pondered all the points put to them with a great deal of care and principle.

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We have heard this evening a reiteration of many of the fears that were expressed by objectors who came before the commission. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Fletcher) has reiterated many of the fears in his speech. I accept that for the past five and a half years my hon. Friend has been trammelled with ministerial duties, and that in addition, as a result of changes in his boundary, he suddenly found that his constituency included an area that he previously had not known. But I have to say to him, with all the kindness in my heart, that clearly he has not examined carefully the evidence that was laid before the commission, and which is available to him to inspect in the Library if he is so minded this evening. Many of the points that he has made were made in the course of the commission's proceedings. They were repeated by objectors and subjected to careful cross-examination so that the facts could be established. If the fears that he has expressed this evening had been substantiated at the commission, the commissioners might very well have taken a different view.
Mr. Fletcher: My hon. Friend has an advantage over me as to much of the detail, because he spent 52 days in listening to it. He did his job as a commissioner and I did mine as a Member of Parliament. While he was sitting on the commission, I was taking advice and sounding opinion in my constituency. I did that not just for 52 days but for about 5,052 days before reaching my conclusions, which I have expressed in the debate.
Mr. Hirst: I greatly respect my hon. Friend, and I respect his right to come to a view based on his perception of the facts and on the views expressed to him by his constituents. But the points that he made in his speech received the most rigorous examination in the course of the commission's proceedings, and a full transcript of the evidence is available for all to see in the Library of the House of Commons. That transcript is helpful to any hon. Member who is genuinely confused by the claims and counter-claims and wishes to see what the professional witnesses and the objectors said about the matter, and the conclusions expressed by counsel appearing at the commission.
Mr. Fletcher: I am marginally older than my hon. Friend and I have read and listened to expert advice. I think that I am able to judge as well as anybody else the views of professional experts and their ability to forecast what traffic congestion may be.
Mr. Hirst: I understand that point of view, but I doubt whether my hon. Friend could find more esteemed or distinguished witnesses anywhere else in Britain. When the objectors brought forward similar professional witnesses to argue against the points that had been made, their evidence could not be sustained under the rigorous cross-examination which ensued.
My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central referred to the number of bodies associated with the objections to the proposals, in particular the National Trust for Scotland and the Scottish Civic Trust, to which both bodies I belong in one or other capacity. Neither of those bodies invited their members, in Edinburgh or more widely in Scotland, to express an opinion on those points. I do not presume to say, as a result, that their association with the objections should be disregarded, but one tends to get a knee-jerk reaction when a proposal is made which
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has not been exhaustively examined in public. Frankly, I wonder whether those involved in the National Trust for Scotland now would, if they studied the proposal and the safeguards imported into it, reach the view today which they reached when they associated themselves with the objections.
Various points have been made about the character of the road. It is not my function, nor do I want, to get down to the nitty-gritty points of the proposal, but I must remind my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central that his contention that the road would be a motorway is not the case. The analogy with the Clydeside expressway is nearer the mark, although if the hon. Member for Springburn recalls the plans over which we pored for many days, he will remember that there was a hard shoulder element, so that the Clydeside expressway is a comparator, if not a strict one.
The road is not a motorway, nor does it have a direct link with the M8. There is a grade separated junction, and that is of vital importance. My hon. Friend and I travel extensively throughout central Scotland and frequently move from motorways to dual carriageways by means of grade separated junctions.
Indeed, recently I risked my life travelling with my hon. Friend, though I risked it without fear. He is a regular motorist and will know that drivers adjust to the speeds which can reasonably and safely be done on roads. It is clear from the design of the proposed road that it would not be driven on under motorway conditions.
Mr. Gerald Malone: I travel with my hon. Friend frequently, and I refuse to set a price on my life when I am a passenger in his vehicle. Will he comment on the safety aspect of this road? Hon. Members on both sides will have received representations from organisations about the safety aspect. It has been represented that if the development goes ahead, there will be a substantial increase in safety, with a probable reduction in road injuries.
Mr. Hirst: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. Expert witnesses who gave evidence on road design, as well as the assistant chief constable, were categoric in their professional opinion that the road would enhance safety standards not just on the road but in the areas which would be relieved by having lower levels of traffic. There would, therefore, be less risk to pedestrians and other road users. The assistant chief constable of Lothians and Borders police was emphatic in his belief that the design would give the road a level of safety that could not exist on the roads that the project would relieve.
My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh. Central asked whether the development would lead to other road schemes—whether, for example, there would be further developments in other parts of Edinburgh which might arouse the fears of local inhabitants. I remind him that officials of Lothian regional council who gave evidence were emphatic that their plans for the city of Edinburgh included no project that would lead to further developments in Edinburgh.
My hon. Friend can consult the structure plan for Lothian regional council, in which he will see set out clearly the priorities for the region's roads development programme for the next 10 years. His fear that this development could lead to further road developments is unfounded.

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I regret that it is necessary for me to chide my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central on these points. I do so because he repeated some of the fears to which I listened for many days. Because I was satisfied at the end of the day that such fears had been laid to rest as a result of the evidence, it is only fair that I should bring such matters to the attention of the House.
I have made it clear that the police were firm in their evidence about the safety of the road. Evidence was also led by the director of passenger transport in Lothian making it clear that the creation of the road would help the smoother flow of traffic, in particular buses, in the city, with consequential benefits throughout the city.
As one who comes from the west and enjoys the transport system run by the Strathclyde passenger executive, I am envious of the record of Lothian Regional Transport, which is virtually unrivalled in the rest of Britain for punctuality and quality of service. I am entitled, therefore, to attach considerable importance to the evidence that was led by the director of Lothian Regional Transport.
My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central should remember that residents appeared before the commission for the promoters and the objectors. Those who appeared for the promoters were prepared to talk of the noise and pollution and environmental disturbance as a result of the traffic volumes in their areas. They were residents not simply of Corstorphine and the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton). They also came from GorgieDalry, where the proximity of the houses to the road makes matters of environmental pollution all the more nauseating for them.
The professional witnesses who appeared before the commission were of extremely high calibre, and the fact that they succeeded in convincing not just me but the other two lay commissioners speaks volumes for the quality of their advice and the opinions that we received and respected.
For the benefit of the House, I can do no better than quote from a recent letter from Professor Donald MacKay, who wears many hats. He has been an adviser to Labour and Conservative Secretaries of State and his professional expertise is widely respected throughout the country. In other words, his views on this matter must be taken on board.
The letter from which I quote was written not in the spirit of someone writing to his MP but rather in the spirit of a professional witness succinctly summarising the aspects of the project that appealed to him. As time in the debate is not pressing —there is not a plethora of speakers anxious to address the House —I trust that hon. Members will grant me the indulgence of quoting from the letter because it fairly summarises the position. Professor MacKay says that the western relief road is essentially a bypass for the residents of Corstorphine and GorgieDalry. He continues:
"All the studies indicate that the construction of the WRR would take a large volume of traffic out of existing residential and shopping areas and transfer that traffic to a purpose built road, saving lives and accidents, reducing traffic noise and improving the quality of life. All the expert evidence, including the traffic experts called for the opposition at the Parliamentary
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Commission, accepted that the WRR would not increase the volume of traffic travelling along the radial routes in the western sector."
That is vital to all those who assert that this road will bring massive quantities of traffic into the centre of Edinburgh. He also states:
"The exits from the WRR at the city end were deliberately designed to redistribute traffic at the western end of the route. All the expert evidence, including the traffic experts called for the opposition at the Parliamentary Commission, accepted the WRR would not increase the volume of traffic on Lothian road."
Professor MacKay ends his letter by saying:
"In all my experience of dealing with road schemes"—
he is an acknowledged road expert—
"I have not seen a more clear-cut case for construction than that for the WRR. The expert evidence was agreed on the main facts and it is a matter of everyday experience that existing traffic has substantial adverse effects on Corstorphine and Gorgie—Dalry. If the WRR was constructed it would not adversely affect Alex Fletcher's constituents. It would, however, be an appreciable benefit to thousands of households along the existing radial routes."
Professor MacKay has made that point far more eloquently than I could have made it.
May I deal now with Opposition criticisms about certain aspects of the scheme. It is important to recognise that the stated sum of money does not cover just the construction of the road. It covers a substantial upgrading of the entire environment from Lothian road to the roundabout where it would join the outer city bypass. One of the happy byproducts of the project is that it would enable various measures to be undertaken on the existing radial routes which would make them much safer. That would be in the interests of pedestrians. These measures would reduce the volume of traffic, ease the flow of bus services and be of benefit to those who live close to the roads. The House ought to recognise that the project includes various traffic management and environmental improvement measures which can reasonably be associated with the scheme.
Those right hon. and hon. Members who have criticised the scheme tonight have said that the western relief road should not be built until the outer city bypass has been completed. That, however, flies in the face of the professional evidence which predicts, as has happened in virtually every other city in the United Kingdom, with reasonable certainty what the volume of traffic is expected to be.
Mr. Malone: My hon. Friend and I have great experience of what happened in Glasgow. There was a comprehensive scheme to route traffic through and round the city. That scheme went ahead, despite enormous local opposition. It has proved to be a success. It has relieved traffic congestion and has increased road safety. Although there may always be local opposition to schemes of that kind, does my hon. Friend agree that eventually they are seen to be exceptionally worthwhile?
Mr. Hirst: Yes, my hon. Friend is right. Furthermore, improved communications, as we have found in the west of Scotland, attract potential investors. The flow of traffic is speeded up. I freely acknowledge that Labour councillors in Glasgow had the foresight to recognise that their city would die if it did not have proper communications. It is very much to the credit of Tom Fulton and others in Glasgow that they had the wisdom and foresight to create in Glasgow a road system that enables one to get from one side of Glasgow to the other in a very short time.

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I entertained recently a group of important American visitors to the west of Scotland. They were fulsome in their praise of Glasgow's excellent communications. After their visit to Edinburgh, they said that the city is beautiful but they wondered why the city fathers had not done anything about providing a road system that would enable travellers to get to Edinburgh in the same way as they are able to get to Glasgow. But relief is coming. There is to be an outer city bypass.
However, it would be fatal to imagine, based on the professional evidence that was laid before the commission, that the outer city bypass will divert traffic that needs to enter Edinburgh. The outer city bypass will enable traffic to flow quickly around the city of Edinburgh. It will not have to travel through the western sector or the city centre. However, that does not provide an answer to the volume of traffic that will still flow through the western sector after the outer city bypass has been constructed. The professional evidence suggested that Corstorphine would receive a measure of relief but that Gorgie-Dairy would not: the traffic volume there would be increased.
The Opposition say that no relief road should be constructed before the outer city bypass has been completed. However, the result would be that traffic would feed in through Gorgie-Dalry and would also go further round the ring road and start coming in via Bruntsfield. Although he is not in the Chamber, my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland would quickly find that his constituents were very concerned about traffic that was seeking to get to the centre of Edinburgh passing unnecessarily through his constituency. That is the established pattern of traffic movement after similar bypass developments have been completed. The professional experts were able to satisfy the commission that the traffic volumes were of such a nature that relief had to be provided in the western sector.
The critics also say that the road will pile traffic into the city centre. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central was at pains to refer to the extra traffic that would be generated. I sat and listened for 52 days, expecting to hear where the extra traffic would come from. If traffic has to reach the centre of Edinburgh, it must be going there for a purpose. That applies to the traffic which passes along Queensferry road, or along the main roads through Corstorphine or Gorgie-Dalry. It may be using those roads for work, shopping, leisure or tourism. Can my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central tell me where the extra traffic will come from? The professional witnesses for both the promoters and objectors were united in acknowledging that experience shows that a new road does not generate additional traffic. I hope that my hon. Friend can tell me where the vast amounts of extra traffic that will pile into the centre of Edinburgh will come from.
Mr. Fletcher: Experience shows that new roads attract additional traffic. Those who visit the city of Edinburgh snake their way through its streets. If a new road like this were to be created, people would use it. However, the people of Edinburgh would be unable to use it. There are no means of entry to or exit from it other than at the extreme ends of the road. I am not surprised that an hon. Member who represents a Glasgow constituency applauds the building of this new road. Those who reach the centre of the city of Edinburgh faster than anybody else will be those who come to it from the west, not those who live in Edinburgh.
Mr. Hirst: I can do no more than refer my hon. Friend to the evidence that was presented to the commission. It was tested under the most rigorous cross-examination and finally it convinced the commissioners. No traffic expert could be produced who was able to satisfy the commissioners that the construction of a new road would generate vast amounts of extra traffic coming to Edinburgh. It is the rat runs which cause such distress and environmental disturbance to my hon. Friend's constituents. It must be desirable that motor cars which currently use minor roads, where children are crossing to school and elderly people are going to the shops —necessary, non-local traffic —should be removed from the roads.
The commissioners were well aware of the regional council's intention to proceed with the construction of a multi-storey car park at the far end of the western relief road which would provide a place for people visiting Edinburgh for shopping, tourist or leisure purposes to park. That car park is an important element in what I perceive to be the whole scheme.
I could understand more readily my hon. Friend's fears if there were not to be such a car park. There is to be a car park, and I find it slightly strange, perverse and particularly saddening that the district council is not prepared to give it planning permission. However, I am confident that the justification for that will be established at the public inquiry into it.
Evidence was laid about the amount of green time, that vital element in any computer-controlled traffic management scheme, which allows the motor vehicles to leave the road and move into Lothian road, either northwards or southwards. The point about green time is that people simply will not use the road if they are not able to obtain egress at the far end. Voluminous evidence was laid on the green time issue, and I am happy to say that the majority of commissioners were satisfied on that point. I accept that it is a concept that may be difficult to understand. Indeed, one of my colleagues on the commission asked for the road expert to return to explain it to him again. That was important and necessary, because the fear was constantly expressed. It is sufficient for me to be able to reassure my hon. Friend that, in the light of the traffic expert's assurances and explanations, my fellow commissioner was prepared to agree to the scheme.
Edinburgh is singularly badly endowed with parking spaces. People will simply not use the motor car to travel if they cannot find a parking space. My hon. Friend will know that the issue of parking spaces is carefully considered in the structure plan and the modifications to it. He can be assured that the number of parking spaces will not rise so dramatically that it will encourage people to come into the centre of Edinburgh unnecessarily.
Frankly, it is a function of the black propaganda that has surrounded the proposal to make people feel that traffic will pour out of the western relief road into Lothian road and saturate the old arid new towns. Funnily enough, I share my hon. Friend's concern for the preservation of Edinburgh's historic buildings. My record on a civic trust involved in the preservation of old buildings testifies to my concern to protect our architectural heritage. But architectural heritage is not something that one cocoons in cotton wool. It is nothing if it cannot live with the contemporary world, providing that there are adequate safeguards to proect it, and there are adequate safeguards

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to protect both the new and old towns of Edinburgh. I for one, having listened to all the black propaganda, am not minded to swallow it.
Finally, let me deal with the point made by the critics that the parliamentary inquiry was an inappropriate method of considering the scheme. The hon. Member for Springburn was at pains to point out that there was no precedent for a road scheme that involved a railway diversion. That matter occupied the commissioners' attention for the major part of one afternoon. I am surprised that he has overlooked the precedent of the Ross and Cromarty legislation under which a road was built which necessitated the diversion of a railway. Parliament then found it convenient to take the road construction scheme and the railway diversion in one measure. It was subject to the same investigative processes as the western relief road in Edinburgh by the parliamentary commission. I was at pains to ask the promoters' counsel to describe that precedent so that it was firmly on the record that there was a precedent which the commissioners could properly follow.
As the project aroused many fears and suspicions in Edinburgh, notwithstanding the extensive consultation embarked on by Lothian regional council in order to explain the process and the project to people and to allay their fears or answer them, and, indeed, at a formative stage in the project to take on board the worries that were being expressed, the regional council found itself in a position where the district council had given outline planning permission and there would have been no public inquiry because the Secretary of State was not prepared to call the matter in.
In view of all that, I cannot accept that it was inappropriate to have a parliamentary commission at which all the merits of the scheme were discussed at one time. There would have been a parliamentary commission for diverting the railway. There could certainly have been other inquiries about the compulsory purchase or the planning for the road. In fact, the district council was prepared to give planning permission and the Secretary of State was not prepared to call it in.
In those circumstances —I am sure the point will not be lost on the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East —the people would have had no opportunity to have had the merits of the scheme examined and tested under cross-examination. The fact that the commission lasted as long as it did is a testimony to the ability of the objectors to come before the commission to argue their case and to be heard. In the latter stages of the commission I asked objectors whether they felt that they had received a proper and fair hearing for the simple reason that, having gone to all the elaborate arrangements to provide a forum for examining the merits of the scheme, I did not want anyone to go away and say that the commissioners did not give them every opportunity to be heard and to have their point of view properly expressed.
As someone who has visited a number of cities, I believe that Edinburgh has a serious problem with its communications, but that problem has been recognised and it must surely be a tribute to the foresight of past Secretaries of State for Scotland that they have protected a route that would provide reasonable access from the western sector to the west end of Edinburgh. Usually, to put forward a scheme such as this would entail substantial
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demolition and distress, the dislocation of small businesses, environmental pollution and many other things during the construction period. Amazingly, the scheme entails the destruction of one derelict bungalow and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West has said, the occupant of that house has already been rehoused.
I believe that the project is a major advance. It will confer on a wide area in the western and south-western section of Edinburgh substantial environmental benefits. Members of the golf course will have it substantially upgraded, and the derelict land beside the railway line between Glasgow and Edinburgh, which is currently a casual recreation area, will have facilities for children and young people that it does not have at the moment. The other people who will be displaced have adequate alternative arrangements.
I am certain that in years to come people in Edinburgh will welcome the road, and I am equally certain that they will ask what all the hoo-ha was about and say how much they value and are grateful for such a road. The trouble with change is that some people will welcome it and some will instinctively fear it. Those who fear it —there are many people who do so for perfectly honest reasons —will fall prey to those who, for one reason or another, are prepared to exaggerate the fears and excite suspicion about the scheme. In the course of 52 days of the commission, I heard a lobby articulate fears and complaints that were found not to have substance. The lobby was a curious coalition of people whose political philosophy made them antagonistic to car ownership and, therefore, the construction of roads, and conservationists who felt that the new town of Edinburgh, which is some distance from the western relief road, should be cocooned and preserved, and not made available to other people.
I believe that this is a worthwhile project. Having listened to the merits of the scheme being exhaustively examined during the commission's inquiry, I have no hesitation in recommending it to the House, and I hope that it will receive the vote of confidence that it deserves.
9.1 pm
Mr. Gavin Strang: I have listened with interest to the remarks of the hon. Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden (Mr. Hirst). I do not accept that the parliamentary commission was the appropriate way to handle the matter. It is essentially a planning issue, and in my opinion there should have been a full blown public inquiry to deal with the planning aspects of the road.
I cannot accept the strange argument of the hon. Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden that all the opposition is based on fear of the unknown and that somehow it is a gut opposition to change regardless of the nature of the measure. One only has to look at what is currently happening in Edinburgh, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Fletcher) reminded us. We are in the middle of the construction of the Edinburgh outer city bypass. That road has not evoked enormous opposition. Therefore, it is not a matter of opposition to change for the sake of change. There is massive opposition to the road. One cannot run away from that. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central is opposing it in response to the views of his constituents. He made that clear.
Mr. Hirst: I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving way. As I had ample time to speak, I do not intend to interrupt him again. As a democrat, he must respect the

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fact that the true opinions of people can be obtained when the democratic process is exercised. Does he not find it significant that in a by-election in Edinburgh, in the seat formerly held by Ian Cramond —an area that is substantially affected by the western relief road —the one candidate whose political philosphy makes him opposed to the road raised 7 per cent. of the votes? Is it not a reasonable corollary to say that if that was the issue, 93 per cent. of the people supported the road?
Mr. Strang: The hon. Gentleman should study the history of the voting pattern of that area and look at some of the other issues in the election.
I was not going to be drawn on this issue, but there is a widespread view in Edinburgh that one of the factors that led Labour to take control of that council, for the first time ever, was opposition to the road. I do not wish to make too much of that because there is no way of knowing what particular issues determine how people vote in an election. I say to the hon. Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden that it will not wash to pretend that there is not substantial opposition to the road. There is opposition to the whole protracted process. Can anyone recall another road that has been built in Scotland in the past 20 years that has evoked so much public opposition, so much time of distinguished professional people and so much controversy? The nature of tonight's debate is, in itself, a reflection of just how controversial the road is. One has to face up to the fact that hundreds of roads are being built all the time throughout the country, and very few have evoked the controversy that this one has.
This is not a party issue. Indeed, hon. Members on both sides of the House are opposing the road. Although I am the only Labour Member representing the Lothian region who is speaking in the debate, all my hon. Friends who represent Lothian constituencies are opposed to the road. Both my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Brown) and my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) would have liked to participate in the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Leith has an important interest in the issue, and his constituents oppose the road. He is also concerned about the future of the centre of Edinburgh. My hon. Friend the Member for Livingston has a particular knowledge of the area because he represented the constituency there. It is interesting that the previous Labour Member and the sitting Conservative Member in the central area of Edinburgh are united in their opposition to the road.
The starting point for the debate is that Edinburgh is a beautiful city. It is one of the most beautiful capitals in Europe. It could have been destroyed if we had allowed some of the roads to be built that were advocated by various groups in the past. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Springburn (Mr. Martin) made that point effectively. It is not for me to comment on Glasgow. It is a much bigger industrial city and the need for roads is different.
We are talking about the central area of Edinburgh. We know that some housing schemes on the outskirts need improvement and investment, but the centre of Edinburgh is beautiful. Many people can walk to work and to the shops. We should cherish and protect the nature of the area. Among other things, that means seeking to allow car owners and other people to come into the centre, but we should minimise pollution, congestion and the amount of unnecessary traffic coming into the centre.
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I remember a great controversy in Edinburgh about an inner motorway. It is great that that motorway was never built. I remember all the arguments and the advocates of the motorway, many of them Labour and some Conservative councillors, who wanted to build a major inner circular motorway system in Edinburgh. Thank goodness we defeated that. That was at a time when the idea of building more roads was seen as progress per se. We have moved a long way forward, just as we have moved beyond the idea of knocking down all the houses in the central area. We now realise that the best thing to do is to try to retain the housing stock if we can get another 20 or 30 years out of it.
We have also learnt that the last thing that we want to do is to allow the motor car to dominate our lives. I am all for people owning motor cars. I want more people to own them, but it does not mean that we should allow them to rule our lives or that we should build roads in the centre of beautiful cities such as Edinburgh just to cater for the needs of some people who want to bring their cars into the centre.
There is a powerful case to be made about protecting the beauty of Edinburgh's central area and reducing the traffic damage there, not building a major road that comes right into the centre. That cannot be disputed. It comes into Lothian road only a few yards from the west end.
The hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central eloquently talked about the environmental damage. There is real opposition to the road in the area where it will be built. The hon. Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden knows where many of the local objectors come from. Those people know what they want. They are opposed to the road because it will mean environmental damage and loss of open space. Open spaces are precious in Edinburgh and London —they make them beautiful cities. The huge parks and open spaces are some of the great strengths of Edinburgh. We want more open space in my constituency.
Mr. Malone: I do not like to participate too much in a debate that has little to do with my constituency. However, I have considered the evidence with some care, and I believe that the road. will destroy precious little of the open space referred to by the hon. Gentleman. He is talking nonsense when he says that the road will destroy the open space in Edinburgh.
Mr. Strang: The hon. Gentleman should consider both sides of the argument, the evidence that has been given to the inquiry and some of the arguments put forward by the Edinburgh district council. Anyone who tries to persuade me that everyone wants the road is obviously unaware of the nature of this debate.
Mr. Hirst: I am sorry that it is necessary for me to intervene. I should be grateful if the hon. Gentleman would tell me precisely what open space and parkland w ill be destroyed. I referred earlier to the protected route, much of which comprises derelict land. I also said that other pieces of land were being made available in compensation. Will the hon. Gentleman tell the House which areas of green parkland will be lost?
Mr. Strang: I will not be drawn into arguments about the relocation of the railway and the changes to the golf course. I make the simple point that if a major new road is constructed, it will take up land.
Mr. Hirst: Derelict land.
Mr. Strang: The road will last for 100 years. The land will not stay derelict for 100 years. It is no argument to say that the land is derelict.
Many years ago the Lothian region Labour party had a great debate about a road pattern for Edinburgh. Many people wished to build roads here and there, but the overwhelming consensus was for an outer Edinburgh city bypass. We have waited generations for that bypass. It is now going ahead and it will be an important road.
I do not dispute that the bulk of the traffic approaching Edinburgh wants to enter the city. The bypass will help to secure industrial development in my constituency. The only other road to which that Labour party agreed was one about which I did not feel as strongly as some of my colleagues. I accept that, on balance, it was right. It is a matter of whether the investment can be justified. That road is very different from the proposed road. It basically serves industrial traffic to Leith docks, to the freightliner depot, and takes the heavy traffic away from Portobello.
The proposed relief road is not a bypass in the usual sense. It is incredible that Professor MacKay seriously argued that he had never before come across a road that would bring so much benefit. That is an insult to our intelligence. Proper bypasses, in the usual sense, are the only roads that bring benefit. Real benefit is gained where roads bypass small towns and villages and relieve them of heavy traffic congestion. It is nonsense to compare the western relief road with those bypasses.
Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: What parts of green land will be used for the road? Is the hon. Gentleman aware that it is estimated that the Al from Musselburgh will have its traffic reduced from 25,000 vehicles to 11,000 vehicles a day when the relief road is opened? That will bring very great benefits. Is the hon. Gentleman further aware that the traffic using that road will be going to the centre of the city?
Mr. Strang: I have already discussed that point and I can see no benefit in going over it again.
My case is based not on west Edinburgh alone, but on the city of Edinburgh as a whole. I am opposed to the road for a number of reasons. Surely the prudent course would have been to have waited until the complete outer city bypass was completed so that its effect on the Edinburgh area could be evaluated. It is not good enough to claim that we can predict that effect. That outer city bypass will be an important distributor of traffic. Hon. Members must consider the issue from a more sensible base.
Let us take the volume of traffic going into central Edinburgh. The building of another road merely distributes some of the congestion from the other routes going into the centre. Of course, I accept that that road will have an effect on the traffic going through Corstorphine. However, there is a certain volume of traffic going into Edinburgh in the rush hour, and there are already three or four routes that it can take. All that the building of the proposed road will do is provide an additional route. For example, traffic coming from the airport to east or central Edinburgh can use three or four different routes in an attempt to avoid being delayed by traffic congestion. The building of an additional road will merely redistribute traffic between existing roads and the new road. The new road cannot be justified in terms of its impact on central Edinburgh, and it certainly cannot be justified in terms of cost.
Mr. Home Robertson: Is it not nonsense for the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton) to compare the so-called western relief road with the Tranent-Musselburgh bypass, with which my hon. Friend and I are familiar? That bypass is part of the outer city bypass and takes traffic out of Edinburgh, whereas the western relief road will actually bring traffic into Edinburgh.
Mr. Strang: I agree with my hon. Friend. Indeed, that is such a basic point that I cannot understand why we have to argue it. I accept that there may be an argument for relieving the traffic congestion in Corstorphine, but there is no way in which the proposed road can be compared with a road that bypasses a whole community, such as the Tranent or Musselburgh bypasses.
We will have to wait to evaluate the effects of the outer city bypass in reducing the flow of traffic to Edinburgh. It depends on the extent to which some traffic chooses to go down Ferry road, although we hope that that will not happen. The vast bulk of the traffic, whether from Musselburgh or the west, will want to go into Edinburgh.
It has been argued that the western relief road will reduce accidents. That is a very strange argument. The same number of cars will be going into the city, so there will still be the same risk of accidents on those roads. I do not know how anyone can try to quantify the effect of that road on the number of accidents in that part of Edinburgh.
Another argument has been the possibility of job creation. If ever there was a pathetic argument, it must be that we should build a road simply for the sake of creating jobs. I am in favour of a massive expansion of investment in our infrastructure. I want a complete reversal of the Government's massive cuts in the public sector and in investment in housing, because that would benefit the construction industry. I should like to see the speeding up of the outer city bypass.
As to the argument that building the road can be justified on the ground that it will create jobs, to take it to its most absurd, one might as well argue that we should demolish Edinburgh castle and build flats there because it will create jobs. One cannot make a case for the road on the basis of jobs. We want jobs and we want more investment, but this is a planning issue and we have to consider the effect of the road on the communities, on Edinburgh and on the people who use the centre of Edinburgh.
With regard to the cost of the road, it is not enough to say that the arguments are evenly balanced. If they are evenly balanced those proposing the road have to make a case for the investment of £37 million. At this time, that is a colossal investment. It is an infrastructure which will bring no significant benefit. It will not benefit industry. Is somebody suggesting that it will attract more manufacturing industry to Edinburgh? Of course not. Is somebody suggesting that there are no other infrastructure investments to be made which would have a greater effect on economic growth? It is ridiculous to suggest that this is a particularly desirable infrastructure investment in terms of encouraging industrial expansion and promoting industrial efficiency. I do not think that any of the letters which we have received have sought to argue such a case.
Our position in the Labour party is that this money should be used for other purposes. We can think of a whole range of more desirable projects which would benefit from such investment. We support public transport, and I was

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grateful to note the remarks made from the Conservative Benches about the public transport system. It was the Lothian regional council, then controlled by Labour, which brought about the major improvement in our public transport system. If we take control of the regional council again in May, we want to be in a position to put more money into public transport and to improve the public transport system in Edinburgh.
Why is Lothian regional council proceeding with such haste that it has even invited tenders and is going further down the road on the basis of a decision that it took last week in advance of Parliament's decision? It is because there is such a narrow base of support for the road. All shades of opinion in Edinburgh are against the road, but this narrow group on Lothian regional council is determined to force it through. Any objective planning official in Edinburgh would say that at this time at the very least we should wait to see the outcome of the elections to Lothian regional council. Maybe the Conservatives will take control and, if they do, fair enough. It is a scandal that they have invited tenders and are forcing it through to make sure that, if Labour later controls the region, it will have difficulty in stopping the road without incurring financial penalties.
The project is irresponsible on the most objective grounds, and I remind the House of the widespread nature of the opposition to the road. Is somebody telling me that the Cockburn Association does not have a splendid record in the defence of Edinburgh's beauty? It has made a tremendous contribution over the years to protecting the quality of life in central Edinburgh. Is somebody telling me that the National Trust for Scotland is an organisation whose views should not be given great weight and consideration? It will not wash to try to pretend that this is a small group of people who do not know what is good for them, people who are opposed to motor cars—
Mr. Robert Key rose—
Mr. Strang: I shall not give way because I am winding up.
It is nonsense to suggest such things. These people are not fuddy-duddy conservationists. This road is being foisted on Edinburgh by a small group which happens to be in a dominating position on the council. The support tends to come from people outside the city rather than in the city. Opposition to the road is all-party, comes from all walks of life and in particular from the people who want to protect and develop the centre of Edinburgh as one of the most beautiful capitals of Europe.
Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time:—
The House divided: Ayes 138, Noes 82.

Division No. 17]

[9.25 pm

AYES

Arnold, Tom

Boyson, Dr Rhodes

Ashby, David

Braine, Rt Hon Sir Bernard

Ashdown, Paddy

Brandon-Bravo, Martin

Aspinwall, Jack

Bright, Graham

Batiste, Spencer

Browne, John

Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

Bruinvels, Peter

Bellingham, Henry

Bryan, Sir Paul

Best, Keith

Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon A.

Bevan, David Gilroy

Carlile, Alexander (Montg'y)

Biggs-Davison, Sir John

Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter

Chapman, Sydney

Boscawen, Hon Robert

Churchill, W. S.

Bottomley, Mrs Virginia

Clegg, Sir Walter

386

Coombs, Simon

Mates, Michael

Cope, John

Maude, Hon Francis

Couchman, James

Mawhinney, Dr Brian

Currie, Mrs Edwina

Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

Dover, Den

Mayhew, Sir Patrick

Dunn, Robert

Mills, lain (Meriden)

Durant, Tony

Monro, Sir Hector

Eyre, Sir Reginald

Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)

Fairbairn, Nicholas

Moynihan, Hon C.

Farr, Sir John

Neale, Gerrard

Favell, Anthony

Nicholls, Patrick

Fenner, Mrs Peggy

Oppenheim, Phillip

Fookes, Miss Janet

Parris, Matthew

Fox, Marcus

Pawsey, James

Freeman, Roger

Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

Galley, Roy

Penhaligon, David

Garel-Jones, Tristan

Powell, William (Corby)

Griffiths, Peter (Portsm'th N)

Powley, John

Ground, Patrick

Pym, Rt Hon Francis

Grylls, Michael

Raffan, Keith

Hanley, Jeremy

Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

Haselhurst, Alan

Ridsdale, Sir Julian

Hawkins, C. (High Peak)

Rifkind, Malcolm

Hayes, J.

Roe, Mrs Marion

Heathcoat-Amory, David

Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)

Heddle, John

Sackville, Hon Thomas

Henderson, Barry

Sainsbury, Hon Timothy

Hicks, Robert

Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)

Holt, Richard

Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

Howarth, Alan (Stratf'd-on-A)

Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

Howells, Geraint

Silvester, Fred

Hubbard-Miles, Peter

Sims, Roger

Jackson, Robert

Skeet, T. H. H.

Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick

Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

Jessel, Toby

Soames, Hon Nicholas

Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

Spence, John

Jones, Robert (Herts W)

Stern, Michael

Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)

Kennedy, Charles

Stewart, Ian (Hertf'dshire N)

Key, Robert

Stradling Thomas, Sir John

King, Roger (B'ham N'field)

Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

Kirkwood, Archy

Thurnham, Peter

Knox, David

Vaughan, Sir Gerard

Lang, Ian

Viggers, Peter

Lawrence, Ivan

Walker, Rt Hon P. (Wcester)

Lightbown, David

Wallace, James

Livsey, Richard

Waller, Gary

Lloyd, Peter, (Fareham)

Ward, John

Lord, Michael

Watson, John

McCurley, Mrs Anna

Wells, Sir John (Maidstone)

MacKay, Andrew (Berkshire)

Wiggin, Jerry

MacKay, John (Argyll & Bute)

Winterton, Mrs Ann

Maclean, David John

Winterton, Nicholas

McNair-Wilson, M. (N'bury)

Younger, Rt Hon George

McQuarrie, Albert

Madel, David

Tellers for the Ayes:

Malins, Humfrey

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton

Malone, Gerald

and Mr. Michael Hirst.

NOES

Bagier, Gordon A. T.

Cook, Robin F. (Livingston)

Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

Corbyn, Jeremy

Barnett, Guy

Davies, Ronald (Caerphilly)

Beckett, Mrs Margaret

Davis, Terry (B'ham, H'ge H'l)

Bell, Stuart

Deakins, Eric

Benn, Rt Hon Tony

Dewar, Donald

Bennett, A. (Dent'n & Red'sh)

Douglas, Dick

Bermingham, Gerald

Dunwoody, Hon Mrs G.

Boyes, Roland

Eastham, Ken

Bray, Dr Jeremy

Ewing, Harry

Brown, Gordon (D'f'mline E)

Fatchett, Derek

Brown, M. (Brigg & Cl'thpes)

Fisher, Mark

Brown, Ron (E'burgh, Leith)

Fletcher, Alexander

Buchan, Norman

Foot, Rt Hon Michael

Callaghan, Jim (Heyw'd & M)

Foster, Derek

Campbell-Savours, Dale

Foulkes, George

Carter-Jones, Lewis

Godman, Dr Norman

Clarke, Thomas

Golding, John

Clwyd, Mrs Ann

Hamilton, James (M'well N)

Cocks, Rt Hon M. (Bristol S.)

Haynes, Frank

387

Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

Nellist, David

Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

Neubert, Michael

Janner, Hon Greville

Park, George

John, Brynmor

Pavitt, Laurie

Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside)

Pike, Peter

Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald

Radice, Giles

Lamond, James

Redmond, M.

Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)

Richardson, Ms Jo

Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

Robertson, George

McCartney, Hugh

Ross, Ernest (Dundee W)

McDonald, Dr Oonagh

Rowlands, Ted

McKay, Allen (Penistone)

Skinner, Dennis

McKelvey, William

Soley, Clive

McNamara, Kevin

Spearing, Nigel

McTaggart, Robert

Stott, Roger

McWilliam, John

Strang, Gavin

Madden, Max

Tinn, James

Marek, Dr John

Warden, Gareth (Gower)

Martin, Michael

Young, David (Bolton SE)

Maxton, John

Maynard, Miss Joan

Tellers for the Noes:

Michie, William

Mr. John Home Robertson and

Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)

Mr. Richard Page.

Question accordingly agreed to.
Bill read a Second time.
Bill committed to a Joint Committee of both Houses.—[Mr. Fletcher.]

Northern Ireland (Loans) Bill
Considered in Committee.
[SIR PAUL DEAN in the Chair]

Clause 1

  INCREASE OF LIMIT
  9.39 pm
  Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
  Mr. J. Enoch Powell: The clause as drafted is, indeed, the Bill. I take it that observations which relate to the Bill are pertinent to the Question which you have proposed to the Committee, Sir Paul.
  Any hon. Members who are accidentally remaining in the Chamber, washed up after the Division of a few moments ago like flotsam upon the beach, might be surprised to learn that these proceedings, if they pause for a moment to listen to them, are of no practical effect to the House. If the Bill had not been introduced, or if the Bill failed to pass through the House, not one penny less, not one penny more, whether for capital or current purposes, would be expended in Northern Ireland. Such an atrocious misuse of the time of the House might well excite their curiousity. Lest they should go away unsatisfied, I might explain, perhaps briefly on the Question that you have proposed, Sir Paul, how it comes about. It is not without its historical interest and its current importance.
  Once upon a time —now quite a long time ago —there was a Parliament and a Government in Northern Ireland established under the Government of Ireland Act 1920. That home rule Government of Northern Ireland, thus established, was fitted up with all the appurtenances and furniture of a Parliament and Government to which we are accustomed, including the pieces of furniture relative to the conduct and control of financial affairs.
  Accordingly, there was a Consolidated Fund for Northern Ireland and a loans fund for Northern Ireland. The purpose of the loans fund for Northern Ireland was analogous to that of the public works loans fund in Great Britain, which subsequently became the national loans fund, namely, to borrow money on public credit and re-lend it to certain bodies for purposes which would be self-financing in the sense that when the capital works in question were carried out they might be expected to yield revenue or a rent which would in due course go towards the satisfaction of the interest and the repayment of the capital which had been advanced out of the Consolidated Fund after it had been received from the Loans Fund.
  Things went on in that way in Northern Ireland until in 1972 the constitution was suspended and in 1973 abolished. Since that time, responsibility for the Government of Northern Ireland and for the financing of the Government of Northern Ireland, and of all matters pertaining thereto, has fallen upon the House and is discharged through the financial mechanisms of the House. Therefore, it may be inquired why this venerable relic not only has been preserved by the Northern Ireland (Loans) Act 1975, renewed by an Order in Council in the meantime, but is to be warmed up again to a renewed lease of life by the Bill which is at present in Committee of the whole House.

  389
  Before I answer that question, perhaps I might draw attention to a curious consequence of its survival after the demise of the Government and Parliament established under the Government of Ireland Act. I have already explained to the Committee that the concept was that only capital purposes which were self-financing would be the recipients of onward loans from the loans fund, it being the general notion that a loans fund might be able to borrow at more advantageous rates of interest and conditions than those at which individual undertakings might borrow.
  Of course, when everything was dealt with by Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom that distinction ceased to hold good. Consequently, the purposes to which the proceeds from the Northern Ireland loans fund are now devoted are those
  "of any expenditure which, in the opinion of the Secretary of State, is of a capital nature."
  Those are the material words.
  9.45 pm
  The Minister of State has, as he did before Second Reading, refreshed his memory of the debate that took place on 28 November 1984. He will know that a question was asked then to which an answer is still outstanding, as answers usually are to unanswerable questions, namely, how the Secretary of State determines, for this purpose, expenditure which is of a capital nature.
  In a sense, all Government expenditure is current expenditure. It is a transfer of resources from within the economy for current use. For different purposes we find it convenient, by way of analogy with non-Government expenditure, to treat certain matters as capital —such as housebuilding or the erection of factories, which would be capital expenditure if it were privately commenced.
  There is no longer a distinction in Northern Ireland between enterprises which are, in the sense that I previously defined, self-financing, and other enterprises. The margin of expenditure in Northern Ireland is not deemed to be met out of taxation, which of necessity must be met by borrowing out of the public sector. That forms part of the public sector borrowing of the United Kingdom.
  The consequence is that the notion of issues out of the fund going to expenditure which, in the opinion of the Secretary of State, is of a capital nature is sheer nonsense which has had to be maintained in order to justify the continued existence of the fund. The initial and practical purposes of the fund have no relationship whatsoever with the present financing of public expenditure in Northern Ireland.
  The Minister has been candid about the reasons for preserving the antiquity which is the fund. Indeed, some of the Minister's predecessors were equally as candid when the corresponding question was put to them, usually at a much later hour of night than this. The Minister says that the fund is kept hanging around because one day, one never knows, there might once again be a devolved Government in Northern Ireland. It would then be splendid if, besides all the other legislation which would be necessary to bring that regime into existence, there was already a Consolidated Fund and a Loans Fund. That is an untenable explanation.
  It would be a considerable legislative achievement if such a regime ever came about, and it is not likely to come about in the circumstances that I can at present envisage. To reinstate and re-elect a devolved Administration for
  390
  Northern Ireland would be a fairly large legislative undertaking, which I do not expect or hope to live to see. It would be such a large achievement that merely to insert in it the creation of a Consolidated Fund and a Loans Fund would be a negligible addition to the bulk of such an Act.
  The Minister is trifling with the Committee when he says that such things are kept in existence because it would be highly convenient, in an extremely improbable contingency, not to have to put an additional clause or subsection of a clause into a hypothetical Bill.
  The fund is maintained as a declaration of intent by the Government to keep up the pretence that they still look forward to a time when there can be an effective Government in Northern Ireland. That would be a Government, not on the lines of the Government of Ireland Act 1920, but on lines on which no Government could possibly carry on, namely, that the minority and majority in their Parliament have exactly the same political effect and bear exactly the same responsibility.
  The House is being put to all this trouble to maintain erect a mere totem which no longer brings any satisfaction or cause for comfort to anyone in Northern Ireland and has no practical effect whatever. It is an affront to the intelligence of the House and to those who believe that the time of the House should be spent as rationally as possible.
  My final observation relates to the Second Reading debate on 27 November, and I put it before the Committee as an illustration of the unwisdom of intervening in a debate to make critical remarks about other Members when one is ill acquainted with the subject at large. 11 had assumed that the hon. Member for Grantham (Mr. Hogg), who participated in the Second Reading debate, would have continued his interest to the Committee stage. I had also hoped that the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist), who made such a distinguished contribution to that debate, might have been persuaded to continue in the Committee. However, that was not to be. The hon. Member for Grantham will therefore forgive my being obliged to refer in his absence to the intervention that he made on that occasion.
  The Minister had referred, as I have, to the fact that there had been a national loans fund under the Northern Ireland Act 1920. The hon. Member for Grantham intervened as follows:
  "Does not the fact that a separate fund has existed since 1921 show conclusively that the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell) is wholly wrong when he says that its purpose is to enable the Government to hive off the Province."—[Official Report, 27 November 1985; Vol. 87, c. 990.]
  Having delivered himself of that, the hon. Member for Grantham sat down with the self-satisfaction that one can almost hear exuding from the words that I have just quoted. In fact, of course, it shows that the right hon. Member for South Down was wholly right. Anyone who takes the trouble to peruse the Government of Ireland Act 1920 will discover that that legislation was specially devised to further the creation of an all-Ireland state, providing for a Council of Ireland and a built-in mechanism whereby the two home rule Irelands —Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland —could coalesce without further action on the part of this House.
  It was for that very reason that the Northern Ireland devolved Administration was set up. It was part of the operation which has been going on between the Government and Dublin in the past few months, a part of the process —as abortive as all subsequent parts have

  391
  proved to be —of hiving off Northern Ireland to a place to which its inhabitants have no intention of going. In his way, the hon. Member for Grantham did the House a service by reminding those who care to be reminded that the British state has been working away since the end of the first world war at the thankless and self-destructive task of attempting to disembarrass the United Kingdom of an integral part, namely, Northern Ireland.
  We shall not contribute to that end —malevolent or otherwise, ill fated or otherwise —by wasting the time of the House with measures of this kind. I hope that I have not wasted the time of the Committee by pointing out to it that it is wasting its time.
  Sir John Biggs Davison: The right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell) spoke of wasting time. On Second Reading he described the Northern Ireland Loans Fund and the Northern Ireland Consolidated Fund as fictional and suggested that legislation in respect thereof was unnecessary. He reiterated that point today.
  When my hon. Friend the Minister of State replied to the Second Reading debate he founded the need for this legislation on the wearisome assumption, if I may so describe it, of successive Governments that
  "Northern Ireland's special needs and problems can best be met by a devolved system of Government."
  He kindly added:
  "I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Sir J. Biggs-Davison) does not agree".—[Official Report, 27 November 1985; Vol. 87, c. 990.]
  The hon. Member for Epping Forest certainly does not agree. I wonder whether my hon. Friend the Minister, who is intelligent and down to earth, who understands Catholic and Protestant Ulster people, and who gives them his affection and service, agrees either.
  My hon. Friend said that there had been a separate consolidated fund in Northern Ireland since 1921, and that it was established with a view to devolution. The right hon. Member for South Down referred to the history of that time, and the Government of Ireland Act 1920, but it was then that the fundamental mistake was made. There was some excuse for it because the new authority in southern Ireland was under the Crown and was part of the empire. Perhaps it was understandable that there should be a wish to establish a devolved system of government in the north, and to bring the north and the south together through parliamentary representatives sitting in a Council of Ireland, to which Northern Ireland appointed represen-tatives, but Dublin did not. It may have been excusable, but it was a fundamental mistake, from which Northern Ireland has suffered ever since. It denied the minority the protection of this Parliament.
  In 1972 that subordinate Government and Parliament were abolished, and it seems to have been the purpose of every Government since then to restore Stormont. They have perversely and vainly pursued a form of devolved Government which, to satisfy them, must reconcile the insistence of the majority on majority rule with the
  392
  insistence of the minority on a devolved Government. That is despite the evident popularity in Northern Ireland of government from Westminster.
  Mr. Stuart Bell: Will the hon. Gentleman be more precise in his definition of Stormont? It was self-government in Northern Ireland. The devolution that is now being sought is completely different. Stormont had its own Cabinet, Prime Minister and Upper Assembly, and was entirely set apart from this Chamber. In 60 years not one question was asked in this Chamber by a Northern Ireland Member. Does he accept that we are discussing not that sort of Stormont, but devolved Government?
  The Second Deputy Chairman: Order. Discussions about how the clause came about are in order, but we cannot have a general debate.
  Mr. John David Taylor: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Sir John Biggs-Davison: I am not sure if I may give way. Perhaps if I utter a few more words, I shall then be permitted to give way to the right hon. Gentleman.
  I thought that I had pointed out that that was what was wrong. This Parliament did not concern itself with the problems of the minority of Northern Ireland. That is the tragedy, and that was the great mistake. However, I must not be drawn too far along that track.
  Mr. Taylor: The hon. Gentleman made a tremendously important point, which is beginning to dawn on all the people of Northern Ireland. During the period to which he referred, we had majority rule in Northern Ireland, as the term is generally understood throughout the free nations in western Europe. From 1972 onwards we then had what was called direct rule. Since last week we now have minority rule, and the majority is ignored.
  The Second Deputy Chairman: Order. We must not stray from the clause which we are discussing.
  Sir John Biggs-Davison: The right hon. Member for Strangford (Mr. Taylor) has made an important point —that we are now reaching a position in which part of the United Kingdom is being governed without the consent of the governed. For that reason, I agree with the right hon. Member for South Down that it would do something to help in a very difficult situation if we were to do away with this method of legislating for and financing Northern Ireland.
  As my hon. Friend the Minister of State said when he opened the Second Reading debate, it is a technical financial measure, but whether it be a question of borrowing from the National Loans Fund, which Northern Ireland repays with interest—
  It being Ten o'clock, THE CHAIRMAN left the Chair to report Progress and ask leave to sit again.
  Committee report Progress.

  BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
  Ordered,
  That, at this day's sitting the Northern Ireland (Loans) Bill may be proceeded with, though opposed, until any hour.—[Mr. Peter Lloyd.]

  Northern Ireland (Loans) Bill
  Again considered in Committee.
  Question again proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
  Sir John Biggs-Davison: I was making the point that the borrowings are repaid with interest. People who are critical of the amount that is spent on Northern Ireland should note that. Whether we are debating this technical measure or any other aspect of Northern Ireland affairs, we debate under the shadow of resentment, menace and foreboding which is felt not just by Loyalist militants but by the most sober elements, not all Protestant, in Northern Ireland. The Republican terrorists have not been overcome by the sheer goodness of the Hillsborough agreement, and the paramilitaries, dubbed Loyalists, have not evaporated.
  Northern Ireland, as I have said, is now not being governed with the consent of the people. Therefore, I submit that it might do a little to assuage the anguish and restrain the lurking forces of violence if the Government were to pluck up their courage, forgo this sort of separate legislation, close that precious separate statute book, and administer and finance Northern Ireland as though it was what the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland thought and said it was until he was told differently by the Taoiseach and the Prime Minister —acting, I suppose, in the spirit of the intergovernmental conference —namely, truly a part of the United Kingdom under this one Parliament.
  Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson: Any piece of legislation which is described as a technical financial measure is one that usually does not attract my attention, but, because money has been lent in Northern Ireland over the past decade without much accountability to the House of Commons, I hope that I shall not stray out of order if I ask my hon. Friend the Minister of State if he could answer a few questions about the Bill and about clause 1, in which the principle of the Bill lies.
  As I understand it, the Bill increases the ability of loans to be made by a further £700 million over the £1 billion which is currently available. I think my hon. Friend made it clear to the House on Second Reading that that would mean about £150 million a year extra available in loans. He also told us that the full rate of interest would be paid on those loans, but what I do not know is the rate of interest that is currently being levied on those loans, and over what period they are expected to be repaid.
  I have sought some information about the current situation, but in the Library I can find only the annual report for 1981–84 of the Northern Ireland civil contingencies fund account and that lists loans and advances given by that body to a total of £329,335,641. However, there is a note at the bottom of the appendix which says:
  "These figures differ slightly from those on page 11 as certain receipts were not brought to account until 1981–85, an amount of £502,156 being in transit."
  Even if that is the case, I find it difficult to discover why we are having to increase the loan limit if that figure is the sum total of loans and advances. If it is not, will the Minister say how much has currently been lent and why he is seeking this further ability to lend another £700 million?
  How many of the loans listed in the appendix have been paid back by the various local authorities and statutory
  394
  bodies named? When are some of them due to be paid back? I again ask how much of the £1 billion originally provided for loans under the 1975 Act have been lent and when some of the money will be paid back? Does the new total imply that the Government are setting about a fresh programme of capital expenditure by the statutory bodies to which they intend to lend this money?
  I notice that one of the beneficiaries of loans was the Northern Ireland Department of Finance and Personnel. It, in turn, up to 1982 made advances of capital to the Northern Ireland Development Agency. That agency ceased to exist in 1982. What happened to the money that was lent to it? Over £5 million is quoted. What body has taken over its responsibilities?
  The Minister will be aware that my questions about the Northern Ireland Development Agency bring me to the subject of De Lorean and Learfan, not because I wish to debate those unhappy subjects but because money was lent by the Northern Ireland Development Agency to both organisations and all that money has been lost.
  Did that money originally come from the loans fund? I think I see the Minister shaking his head in dissent, indicating that it was not. How can he be so categoric, for apparently the £5 million to which I referred was outstanding up to 1982? Presumably it was passed on to whichever statutory body took over from the Northern Ireland Development Agency.
  I hope that the Minister will answer those questions and agree that they are pertinent to the debate.
  Mr. Bell: I congratulate you, Sir Paul, on having permitted the debate to weave in and out of the complexities of the Hillsborough summit in relation to the Bill, and I am sure that hon. Members on both sides enjoyed the contributions of the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell) and the hon. Members for Epping Forest (Sir J. Biggs-Davison) and for Newbury (Mr. McNair-Wilson).
  I mean no disrespect to the hon. Member for Epping Forest when I say that he slipped in a Mickey Finn when he said that there was no longer government by the consent of the majority. I do not know how that can be tied into the Northern Ireland (Loans) Bill on clause stand part, but it is not the Opposition's view that that is the case. Arrangements of a limited nature have been made. They allow for consultation and consensus.
  Sir John Biggs-Davison: I have made the point that since the Hillsborough agreement there has been an atmosphere and a feeling of resentment in Northern Ireland. It amounts to the withdrawal of willing consent to being governed as the people of Northern Ireland are being governed now. Will the hon. Gentleman, who disputes that, agree that there should be a referendum on the Hillsborough agreement?
  The Second Deputy Chairman: Order. We must return to the clause.
  Mr. Bell: I shall gladly return to the clause, but may I point out that I have not said that there is not a feeling of unease in Northern Ireland. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warley, West (Mr. Archer) and I have said that there is a feeling of unease in Northern Ireland.
  Mr. John David Taylor: The hon. Gentleman said that there is consultation. With whom is there consultation in Northern Ireland? There is certainly no consultation with the majority of the people in Northern Ireland.
  The Second Deputy Chairman: Order. I hope that the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bell) will resist the temptation to reply to that question. I know that he is anxious to discuss the clause that is in front of the Committee.
  Mr. Bell: To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, I can resist everything except temptation. However, on this occasion I shall resist the temptation to involve the right hon. Member for Strangford (Mr. Taylor) who, on his own behalf and on behalf of his constituents, feels very strongly about these issues.
  Clause 1 has been described as the operative clause. It amends the limit upon the amount of lending that the Secretary of State may make from the national loans fund to the Northern Ireland consolidated fund. The limit is contained in the Northern Ireland (Loans) Act 1975. The right hon. Member for South Down reminded us last week that he was in the Chamber when the 1975 Act was discussed. The Northern Ireland (Loans) Act 1975 was amended by the Northern Ireland (Increase of Limit) Order 1984. The clause relates to the total indebtedness of the Northern Ireland Consolidated Fund to the National Loans Fund. The Opposition understand the reasons for clause 1. It is the operative clause and we support it.
  The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Dr. Boyson): I shall confine my remarks to clause 1. As the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell) said, it contains the guts of the Bill. I do not disagree with the right hon. Gentleman about the history of this fund. It was created by the Government of Ireland Act 1920. In 1921 it became the consolidated fund. In 1950 there was another Act. After devolution in 1972 it was withdrawn from devolved control. However, it was kept in being not as a relic but like a suit that one has not worn for some time but which one keeps in the wardrobe in case it should be needed. I think that the right hon. Gentleman has been influenced by Professor Hayek: that it is accident to which one reacts.
  One cannot say that something will never happen. I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman, for whose speeches and writings I have great respect, believes that one can say that something will never happen. I do not believe this. The hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bell) made a similar point. His party supports devolution if it can be applied in Northern Ireland. The Government's policy is similarly to support devolution. I know that the right hon. Members for South Down and for Strangford (Mr. Taylor)—
  Mr. John David Taylor: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Dr. Boyson: No, not until I have finished this sentence.
  Mr. Taylor: Will the hon. Gentleman give way now?
  Dr. Boyson: No, the right hon. Gentleman will have to wait for the full stop. I do not expect the right hon. Gentleman to run away, but we in England do not run away, either. We have respect for Northern Ireland Members and we in England do not run away. I shall continue until I reach my full stop.
  Mr. Taylor rose—
  10.15 pm
  Dr. Boyson: Let me finish my sentence and then I shall give way. The right hon. Gentleman must contain himself. We do not want any heart attacks in the Chamber. We can all get excited from time to time.
  I was saying that I do not believe that any right hon. or hon. Member can say that a thing will never happen. I shall give way willingly now.
  Mr. Taylor: As the Minister has mentioned devolution, will he tell the people of Northern Ireland honestly, because it is in Northern Ireland and nowhere else that the final decision will be taken, what powers will remain outside the devolved system of government and within the Anglo-Irish conference if we agree to devolution?
  The Second Deputy Chairman: Order. I hope that in answering that point, the Minister will be able to relate it to clause 1.
  Dr. Boyson: I shall follow your guidance, Sir Paul, despite my desire to follow the hon. Gentleman's line.
  Mr. Taylor: Running away.
  Dr. Boyson: I follow the guidance of the Chair. That is what democracy is about when all is said and done. I have great respect for Sir Paul and the way in which he guides in this Committee.
  Mr. Taylor: Very weak.
  Dr. Boyson: The right hon. Gentleman can throw all kinds of adjectives across the Chamber, but they will not help. Let us return to the point.
  Mr. Taylor: Answer the question.
  Dr. Boyson: If the right hon. Gentleman listens, he might learn something. I have listened to other speeches too—
  Mr. Taylor: Answer the question.
  Dr. Boyson: I am not answering any more questions from the right hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Gentleman has no intention of listening so why should I tell him?
  The consolidated fund does not exist for something that may never happen. It may never happen, but it is possible that it will. It exists for the return of devolution in Northern Ireland and that is all that the Bill is about. I rest the case for clause 1 there.
  I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Sir J. Biggs-Davison) feels strongly about the issue. The disagreement is again on the question of devolution. My hon. Friend prefers no devolution but integration in the United Kingdom which is not the policy of the two major parties in the House, nor indeed of other parties in the House.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. McNair-Wilson) raised points of detail which I cannot answer now but I shall write to him. The Bill has been brought forward because the £1,000 million which was allowed under the Northern Ireland (Loans) Act 1975 will run out in the middle of next year. We could not continue transferring money from the Treasury here to Northern Ireland without the Bill. This transfer is not the only income going into the consolidated fund. Savings certificates, surplus cash balances of other Departments and money from the European Investment bank have also gone into it.
  Mr. Taylor rose—
  Dr. Boyson: I shall not give way. I am answering the questions of my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury. I have no intention of giving way.
  Mr. Taylor: The hon. Gentleman is afraid.
  Dr. Boyson: I do not spend my life saying that people are afraid. I am answering the questions of my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury and I shall continue to do so. He has asked serious questions without repeating himself.
  Mr. Taylor rose—
  The Second Deputy Chairman: Order. May I suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that we are in Committee and it might be much easier if he were to listen to the Minister and then try to catch my eye?
  Dr. Boyson: I shall continue trying to answer the questions asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury. He asked serious questions instead of speaking to the wind.
  At present, £1,502 million has gone out of the consolidated fund. Some of that comes from other funds on the technical side and some from what is borrowed and transferred. I must put the mind of my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury at rest. To my knowledge, none of the Lear Fan money or the De Lorean money came from that. It came directly out of the Northern Ireland block from the Department of Economic Development. None of that money ran away. I will write to my hon. Friend about the details that he raised.
  I know that many right hon. and hon. Members would like to extend the debate so that we have the Anglo-Irish debate all over again, but this is a one-clause Bill and I am speaking to clause 1 stand part.
  Mr. John David Taylor: The Minister has given a despicable performance. It is a performance that will underline the withdrawal of consent within the majority community of Northern Ireland from the present imposed Dublin-London system of government in Belfast and throughout Northern Ireland. He is an absolute disgrace to the people in Northern Ireland. In 1986, the people of Northern Ireland will so express their opinion through the democratic process.
  The Minister referred to two systems that reflect democracy throughout the United Kingdom. One is democracy itself and the second is the financial implications. In a rather flimsy manner, he referred to the transfer of finances from the central Exchequer to the Stormont Exchequer in Northern Ireland.
  I shall deal with the first aspect —democracy. I speak as one who has been a Member of Parliament for some 20 years. Democracy depends upon the people, not upon Parliament or the Government. At the end of the day, it depends upon the man in the street. Democracy also depends upon consultation. In what respect in recent months have the people of Northern Ireland had consultation? The Whip tonight, the hon. Member for Warwickshire, North (Mr. Maude), who voted against the people of Northern Ireland, even with a small majority, knows that there has been no consultation in Northern Ireland.
  The second pillar of democracy is consent. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, so-called of Great Britain and Northern Ireland —so she says —states that we shall not seek the consent of the people of Northern Ireland. The
  398
  two great pillars of democracy, consultation and consent, have been thrown to the side. Since it was the Minister who raised the question of the Anglo-Irish agreement, I say that there is one remaining pillar of democracy —the voice of the people. The Government will ignore the voice of the people in Northern Ireland in 1986 at their great risk. If the majority of people in Northern Ireland go to the poll and express their view of what the Government have done without consultation or consent, saying, "So what", the Government will be answerable for what takes place in Northern Ireland thereafter.
  The second issue raised in the debate is transfers from one Exchequer to another. It has been a dishonest debate, showing that the United Kingdom is not governed under a system of economics where all people within the United Kingdom are treated equally.
  In the United Kingdom there are two Exchequers —not three or four. There is the Exchequer at Stormont and the Exchequer here in the capital of the United Kingdom. Therefore, it is easy for Ministers to refer to the transfers from London to Stormont. We have not heard what the transfers are from here to Scotland, Wales or the south-west of England. The Government run away from that. They pillory the people of Northern Ireland. They speak in terms of the transfers from London to Northern Ireland, but there are transfers from London to many other regions in the United Kingdom. It is dishonourable for the Minister to say that in some way Northern Ireland is exceptional and depends on support from the rest of the United Kingdom.
  Many of the regions depend upon support from the central Exchequer. All that we in Northern Ireland ask is that the Government —last week they failed to recognise the fact —recognise that we in Northern Ireland, as with England, Scotland and Wales, are part of the United Kingdom, and like all other citizens we wish to carry the same burdens and accept the same privileges. When the Government face up to that, we shall support them, but at the moment we are on the road to confrontation with them.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Clause I ordered to stand part of the Bill.
  Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
  Bill reported, without amendment.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read the Third time.—[Mr. Maude.]
  10.27 pm
  Mr. Bell: I am glad to see the House move so rapidly from Second Reading, to Committee, to Third Reading. That comes from the heart, because I sat through 67 sittings of the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill in Committee and, in the same year, 195 hours of the Finance Bill, so I am encouraged to now note that the House can make rapid progress when it wishes.
  As we have seen, the Bill is essentially technical arid provides merely a piece of financial machinery. It does not itself authorise any expenditure, nor does it affect policies behind the programmes that it will help to finance. It merely ensures that when certain programmes of capital expenditure have been approved by the normal procedures, the money for them can be made available. All expenditure on transferred matters in Northern Ireland is financed out of the Northern Ireland consolidated fund. It obtains most of its funds from revenues. The Northern Ireland consolidated fund also obtains smaller sums by

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  borrowing from various sources, of which the national loans fund is by far the most important. The Bill is concerned solely with loans to the Northern Ireland Consolidated Fund from the national loans fund.
  On Second Reading there were interesting interventions by my hon. Friends the Members for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist) and for Liverpool, Riverside (Mr. Parry). They were concerned that the Northern Ireland (Loans) Bill touches upon housing and, of course, the Divis flats were mentioned. Although I do not wish to go beyond the scope of Third Reading, reports have reached me that Mr. Frank Gillem, chairman of the Divis flats residents association, his wife Lillian, the secretary of the association Mr. Francis McCann, and his partner Jeanette Lackey were arrested by the Royal Ulster Constabulary, under section 12 powers, in a raid on the flats at 6 o'clock this morning.
  The Bill relates to housing, and housing relates to the Divis flats, which in turn raises a question about social conditions. I do not wish to labour that point, but simply to place it on record for the benefit of the House.
  We have followed these proceedings with great care. They are identical to the proceedings on 28 November 1975, when that Northern Ireland (Loans) Bill was read a Second and Third time. The proceedings have been enlivened —if that is the right word —by the intervention of the Anglo-Irish Agreement and by hon. Members occasionally wandering off into the broader issues of that agreement rather than sticking to the narrow issue of the Bill.
  I welcome that widening of the debate, because hon. Members representing constituencies in Northern Ireland take their duties seriously. They have expressed their view to the Government and to the Opposition across the Floor of the House. No doubt in future we will hear more about the Anglo-Irish Agreement than we will about the Bill.
  10.31 pm
  Dr. Boyson: Obviously, I support the Third Reading of the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. McNair-Wilson) raised a point in Committee about the interest rate, to which I did not reply. It is exactly the same as the rate fixed by the Treasury every Thursday.
  I commend the Third Reading of the Bill to the House so that, when the existing loans money runs out in the middle of next year, it will be replenished so that allocations for housing and for the Northern Ireland electricity authority — especially for the transfer of Kilroot to coal—can go ahead.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Bill read the Third time, and passed.

STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS, &c

  CONSUMER PROTECTION
  Motion made and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 79(5) (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.)
  That the draft Nightwear (Safety) Regulations 1985, which were laid before this House on 15th November, be approved.—[Mr. Mather.]
  Question agreed to.

Heating Bills
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Mather.]
10.32 pm
Mr. Gordon Wilson: The subject of the debate is the effect of poor summer weather on the elderly and the very young. Before coming to that, I must say that the debate on the Northern Ireland (Loans) Bill evoked memories of 1975 and devolution. It is one of the paradoxes of this place that Northern Ireland is to be offered devolution when it does not want it, while Scotland, which wants it, cannot get it.
I want to turn the attention of the Minister and the House to the problem facing many elderly and very young people because of the poor weather during the summer —if summer be the right description. In recent years a considerable amount of attention has been drawn to the instances of fuel poverty, but most of the concern was about the effects of winter weather on the frail, elderly and the families living on the margins of income.
Those on supplementary benefit and heating allowances hope that during the summer they can save to pay their winter electricity, gas and coal bills. Many hon. Members will have experience of constituents approaching them at the end of winter with high bills that they have great difficulty in paying under the current supplementary benefit rates. Indeed, they have been faced with the prospect of disconnection.
Some of those people were able to cut their arrears during the summer months when they could turn off their heating systems, or perhaps put something aside towards the bills for the winter months. We must recognise that this is not an academic matter, nor is it purely a case of the discomfort that many families experience because they cannot afford sufficient fuel. It can be one of life and death.
Age Concern has looked into the matter. It has said, based upon a survey done as far back as 1972, that some 70,000 Scots pensioners are at risk from hypothermia. If, however, one scales it up to the present population aged over 65 years, I am informed that the figure is now nearer 130,000.
The problem medically for the elderly, although it applies also to children in their first year of life, is that they sometimes have difficulty in being able to sense changes in temperature. The young have no control over their clothing or the way in which they react. The elderly frequently do not notice changes in temperature up to something like 5 degrees Centigrade. That is why they can be at risk and, before they know it, they can be in danger.
There are between 3,000 and 5,000 deaths per year in Scotland from cold-related illnesses. Some 20 per cent. of all Scottish houses —and that may be an underestimate —have a problem with dampness. In 1972 the Wicks report when it came out made it clear that pensioners spend over twice as much of their budget on fuel as the average of all households. Indeed, that same report demonstrated that 88 per cent. of people who would have liked more heating cited expense as the reason for not having it. They deliberately economised on fuel because they felt they did not have the resources with which to pay for it. We are now dealing with the problem of the population becoming progressively older so that at present some 17 per cent. of the Scottish population is over pensionable age.

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I do not pretend that this is a purely Scottish problem. Other areas of the United Kingdom suffer from climatic variations, but I trust that it is stating the obvious to point out that the Scottish climate, because of our northerly location, suffers from harsher weather conditions. It is a matter of indisputable scientific proof that it is 20 per cent. more expensive to heat a house in Glasgow than it is to heat a similar house in Bristol. In Aberdeen the comparable figure is 30 per cent., while there are many more upland and exposed households where the weather is windier and colder. Nor is it just the case that cold weather is more severe. People also have to cope with a longer winter, lack of sunshine, shorter days, greater wind velocity and a higher rainfall, all part and parcel of living further to the north in winter. It is not surprising, therefore, that electricity consumption is 25 per cent. and 50 per cent. higher in the south and north board areas respectively compared with consumption in England.
If any further proof were needed, a glance at a recent written answer given to the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) shows not only that official hypothermia death returns are running in the first half of 1985 at record levels but that Scotland accounts for some 33 per cent. of all the deaths where mention is made of hypothermia on the death certificate. As we know, the official returns on the death certificate, because of the difficulty of diagnosis, represent only a small proportion of those who die from cold-related illness.
All this has been compounded by the 1985 summer. Apart from the month of October, it was simply appalling. Cumulative Scottish weather conditions were found to be the worst for a century. From July to September rainfall was 200 per cent. to 300 per cent. above normal. Sunshine was less that 75 per cent. of the usual. This has had a direct impact on heating. People had to heat their homes right through the summer. During the summer quarter, fuel consumption rose dramatically. Compared with 1984 gas consumption went up by 20 per cent. and electricity in the south of Scotland electricity board area by 12 per cent. Figures have not been made available for the hydro-board area, but might be greater because it covers the more northern latitudes. Increases in coal were also sustained in different areas, to upwards of 20 per cent.
It is not surprising that during the summer fuel arrears have arisen. Many people have used up the savings that they had kept for fuel consumption during the winter. This is serious, because the graphs show that deaths among the elderly rose by 20 per cent. and among the very young by 40 per cent. in winter, as compared to summer. This phenomenon does not occur in similar age groupings in Scandinavia. Part of the blame lies in the poorer quality of housing. With lack of insulation, a disproportionate amount warms the external environment, and there is no real programme of upgrading, and what there is seems to be under attack. It is one of the stupidities of Government policy that in 1981 –83 they paid out something under £15,000 million of fuel benefits, actual or reputed, but provided only some £18 million for basic insulation.
The whole point is about ability to pay. on 28 November, the Government acknowledged the exceptionally bad weather conditions, when the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food gave a subsidy to farmers, for fodder for their cattle. What about the people who also had to put up with the cold, wet and windy summer? So
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far, there has been no announcement, although winter has struck early and most bitterly. The benefit system is inadequate, unfair and unjust.
The House knows that I have before called for a cold climate allowance. Instead, there is the severe weather allowance, which I prefer to call a warm climate allowance because it favours payment in the south rather than in the north. Last year, 170,000 payments were made in England, but none in Scotland, although lower temperatures were prevailing in our country.
No one in Scotland will miss the severe weather allowance when it is abolished. It does not give us any help —a case of cold comfort for the Scots, and southern comfort for the English. In any event, the system has been declared illegal by the Social Security Conunissioner, but the Government are silent, and I hope that the Minister will say something to clear up the position, and about the guidelines. Will the scheme last, and will any back-money be paid to all those people who applied last year, but failed to get a bean out of the system?
In plain language, the scheme is daft. It is unfair to those living in normally cold areas. It is confusing for benefit officers, and if it is confusing for them, how much more confusing must it have been for the general public? The elderly could not predict whether the cold temperatures would last long enough to bring clown the average and so trigger off the payments. Old folk had no way of knowing whether they could afford the extra heat. The winter has struck early, and the fear of the size of the fuel bills is the greatest disincentive to the elderly in keeping warm. After the summer, many could have difficulty in paying for fuel, and be in a more difficult and harsh position than last year.
The Government cannot be complacent about the trend in deaths. It is immoral to give extra cash to keep animals alive when people either die or face the misery of being trapped in cold and draughty homes. It is necessary to give help to the farmers, in view of the bad summer, but, if the Government are willing to give it to the farmers, they should also be prepared to help other people. The Government cannot abolish fuel allowances. Adequate allowances are the only guarantee for aged and low-income families that they will have any chance of keeping themselves warm in this and future winters. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond sympathetically to my case.
10.45 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. John Major): The hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. Wilson) has pursued the issue of heating in all its aspects for some time, and I congratulate him on his persistence. I hope that he will understand if I cannot congratulate him wholeheartedly on everything that he said. It is not so much what the hon. Gentleman said as what he did not say.
An acknowledgement of what the Government have done to help with heating bills would have been welcome. By any yardstick, the Government's contribution has been substantial, whether in terms of summer or winter bills. It is appropriate to put that on the record.
The hon. Gentleman did not mention that the Government have committed many billions of pounds to social security and have kept major benefit rates ahead of rising prices since 1979. This includes considerable help to the least well off for day-to-day expenses, including

403
heating, through substantial increases in supplementary benefit rates. These rates rose by 6 per cent. over and above the rise in prices between 1979 and 1984, and they were raised again a few days ago. More specifically, there was no acknowledgement of the substantial sum of £400 million spent last year on heating additions. The money was directed primarily to pensioners on supplementary benefit, to the sick, to the disabled and to some other special groups. That is a substantial record. The hon. Gentleman did not acknowledge that that substantial amount was £140 million more in real terms than had been spent by any previous Government on heating additions. This substantial Government record is not inclusive of all that has been achieved. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman, when presenting his case, was not able to make specific acknowledgement of this record.
Mr. Wilson: I do not wish to deter the hon. Gentleman from answering the principal case, but does he think that the Government have done enough, considering the rising trend of deaths from hypothermia and the misery that many elderly people face in their homes?
Mr. Major: I shall deal with that issue in the course of my speech.
The principle of weekly help with all living expenses, plus extra weekly help for those with special needs, is one that we plan to retain under the proposed reforms that will see the light of day in the White Paper shortly. I stress this because the hon. Gentleman clearly feels that, by changing the present complex system of heating additions, we are ending assistance with heating costs. That is not the position.
The income support scheme which we propose in our Green Paper in June will provide a better basis for regular weekly help for claimants. There will be basic personal allowances for normal living expenses, including fuel costs. There will be weekly premium payments for families, pensioners, the sick, the disabled and for lone parents. The premiums will be given in recognition of the fact that these groups face special pressures, not least with the cost of extra heating.
The fact that we shall not call the premiums "heating additions" does not mean that they do not exist, that the cash is not in the claimants' pockets and that it cannot be used towards fuel costs. We expect that these resources will be used to go towards fuel costs and that income support, for a variety of reasons, will be a simpler and more effective means of help than the present complex system which has many defects, some of which the hon. Gentleman honestly outlined.
I do not disparage the substantial help given through heating additions, though their structure results in an uneasy alliance between automatic entitlement for pensioners on supplementary benefit and others and the complex rules about details of claimants' health problems. The present regulations are quite mind-boggling in their complexity. The advantages which we believe will accrue from the income support scheme include the fact that we will avoid complexity and most important, the intrusive questioning that takes place before an entitlement can be determined. I believe that the hon. Gentleman will concede that that will be a substantial improvement on the
404
present position. I emphasise strongly that help will continue to be given to these groups through the special premia that we propose.
The hon. Gentleman spoke about high summer fuel bills, and I recognise that there are particular difficulties when bills are higher than usual. However, the problem must be put in context. Social security collectively costs many billions of pounds. It helps millions with their living expenses, and our aim is to ensure that that happens as effectively and simply as possible. Surely no one can dispute that over the years the system has become far too complicated and that that is not in the interests of claimants who receive assistance or those who run the system. It is clear that it is of no help to anyone. However, we shall make no progress in producing the right sort of rational, modern and helpful system that directs and targets help to where it is most needed if we try to tailor the weekly income that is provided for millions by introducing variations that are based on weather conditions, time of year or locality, for example.
Most people plan on the basis that they will spend less one week and more the next, and we should give social security claimants the credit of recognising that they do likewise. We shall continue to provide a level of weekly income that takes account of the recurring extra pressures that are faced by groups such as pensioners. That must be a more sensible and efficient way of providing help than increasing heating additions in the winter, decreasing them in the summer and increasing them again in the summer if the weather proves to be especially bad, as the hon. Gentleman has said it was during this summer.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the length of the heating season, and I understand the arguments that he has advanced. I have already explained that the help that we provide is geared to people's needs year in and year out and not to providing higher levels of help at certain times of year. He implied that the heating season is generally longer in the colder parts of Great Britain than elsewhere. That followed on to a matter which he has raised before and on which he has some depth of knowledge, which is his idea of a cold climate allowance. That means, effectively, variable rates of weekly benefit depending on which part of the country someone lives.
I recognise the hon. Gentleman's interest in this subject, and he knows that my colleagues have discussed it with him in the past. There are real difficulties. Ministers in previous Governments have seen strong arguments against any deviation from the principle of national benefit levels and I am bound to say that we can see the same arguments against them. Apart from heating, there are many regional price variations. It would be possible to make a similar case based on variations in transport or food costs, for example. There is a variety of other variable prices in different parts of the country and I have no doubt that others could point to variations that have an acute effect on the persons with whom they are concerned.
If we were in the business of trying to take a detailed and comprehensive account of all the variations, the task of setting and changing all the benefit rates each year would become impossibly complicated. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will acknowledge that that is so when he has time for reflection. There is evidence that there is little variation between the amount spent on average on fuel by those who live in different parts of Britain. That remains true at all income levels throughout the United Kingdom.

405
I share the hon. Gentleman's concern about hypothermia. Each winter we hear distressing accounts of old people —perhaps proud and independent people who are entitled to help but who for various reasons do not seek it, or who face difficulties in obtaining it —who suffer from the cold. I understand the problems and care about it as much as the hon. Gentleman. However, it is not reasonable to portray the Government —I think that the hon. Gentleman began to move in this direction when he remarked about help for farmers and not for those in need of heating additions —as uncaring and aloof from the problem of hypothermia.
Mr. Wilson: They are.
Mr. Donald Stewart: That is right.
Mr. Major: I reject that charge absolutely. They would do well to recall, before they make it, that it was a Conservative Administration in 1979 that introduced automatic heating additions for the first time for older supplementary pensioner householders.
Mr. Wilson: It is not enough.
Mr. Major: If he thinks that that initial move was not enough, the hon. Gentleman may recall that subsequently we extended the number automatically entitled to heating additions so that as of today about 1·5 million supplementary pensioners over 65 get extra help with their heating of between £2·20 and £1–45 per week. When he makes remarks about help for cattle and not for people, he overlooks that substantial amount of assistance that was introduced, and is being given, by this Government. He might also bear in mind that nine out of every 10 supplementary pensioners now get heating additions, compared with only six or seven out of every 10 in 1978.
The hon. Gentleman also dealt with the exceptionally severe weather payments and some of the difficulties they cause. That payment is often confused with the cold climate allowance, but there is an important difference which may be understood in the House but not outside. Those payments are one-off payments to claimants in any part of the country if they have used more fuel than planned because of a period of exceptionally severe weather. The payments have always been a tiny part of the overall help with heating costs for the least well off.
The winter before last the chief adjudication officer, who advises local adjudication officers on the interpretation of the law, introduced a new system for determining when the regulation was satisfied. That system was based on temperature data provided by the Meteorological Office, collected from 17 weather stations throughout the country. The system was first fully tested earlier this year. As the hon. Gentleman will recall, there were some criticisms of the way in which it worked. I put that in the mildest form that is appropriate.
In the first place there were complaints from Scotland and from some parts of England and Wales where payments were not made. Secondly, the system was very complicated to understand. I recall that my hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security himself described it as a pretty weird and wonderful construction. Thirdly, the amount of help delivered under the system was relatively modest, about £10 on average. We now know that the administrative cost of the scheme was very high indeed in proportion to the help given. We estimate that last winter it cost over £1 million administratively to pay out £1·7
406
million in benefit. Clearly that was not satisfactory. In view of the difficulties we undertook to review the provision.
In the meantime, the chief adjudication officer arranged for a test case to be heard by the social security commissioners to clarify whether his guidance properly reflected existing law. Their decision, which was issued recently, was that the system used last winter was not a satisfactory method for deciding claims. They held in effect that local adjudication officers should use their own judgement in deciding, on the facts of each individual case presented to them, whether there had been a period of exceptionally severe weather and how much extra the claimant had spent as a result.
The chief adjudication officer is now issuing new guidance to local adjudication officers in the light of the commissioners' decision, so we shall no longer have the system of trigger points and degree day percentages which caused so much bewilderment last winter. None the less, local adjudication officers may still have to face substantial difficulty in determining whether exceptionally severe weather payments should be made. For example, they will have to decide whether the weather is exceptionally or abnormally severe. Interpretation of those terms is difficult. They will have to decide whether there has been a period of exceptionally severe weather, although there is no set definition of "period" and it may in theory be as little as a single day.
The local adjudication officers will also have to establish both what the claimants' normal fuel expenditure is and how much extra is spent as a result.
Mr. Wilson: Is the Minister saying that in departing from the previous system of trigger points and so forth the temperature to be used as a criterion in each area will be a local one rather than a national one? In other words, will it still be possible for people in the south to get benefits under the severe weather scheme while people further north will not get them if their average temperature is much colder?
Mr. Major: I was about to make that point, though we shall have to wait for the guidance of the chief adjudication officer, which we shall have very shortly. There is a substantial probability that payments may still 'vary between different parts of Britain in an unacceptable fashion. I stress that point because some hon. Members may have overlooked it. The commissioners, in their recent decision, held that the weather must be exceptional for the place in question.
A number of other factors will need to be considered, one of which is the commissioners' ruling that "exceptionally severe" also means exceptional for the time of year. I have no wish to belittle the difficulties outlined by the hon. Member for Dundee, East, that high summer heating bills can cause. The issue is whether ad hoc, finely calculated payments towards specific bills are the best 'way to help. I wonder if the social security budget and social security staff are best employed making adjustment for exceptionally rainy summers, exceptionally chilly springs, exceptionally misty autumns, and so on. Surely it is better to concentrate on delivering the correct level of weekly income efficiently to those in need.
We are therefore continuing to consider this provision very carefully in the light of the commissioners' decision and the chief adjudication officer's impending guidance.

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We shall be looking at the effects of that guidance, both in terms of the way in which it seeks to provide extra help with fuel bills and its practical implications. In the meantime, the guidance is being issued so that staff will be able to handle any claims being made.
I hope —though my expectations are not high —that I may have persuaded the hon. Member for Dundee, East that the Government are anxious to help the least well off
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with their heating problems. The Government are genuinely concerned about the matter and, regardless of whether I have convinced the hon. Gentleman, we shall continue to offer substantial assistance, although it may not be in the ways that the hon. Gentleman suggested in his remarks today.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at two minutes past Eleven o'clock.

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  Straw and Stubble Burning
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  Austrian Wine (Adulteration)
  Austrian Wine (Adulteration)
  Hill Livestock Compensatory Allowance
  Hill Livestock Compensatory Allowance
  Research and Development
  Research and Development
  Agricultural Development and Advisory Service
  Agricultural Development and Advisory Service
SOCIAL SERVICES
  No Smoking Campaign
  No Smoking Campaign
  Housing Benefit
  Housing Benefit
  NHS (Racial Discrimination)
  NHS (Racial Discrimination)
  Nursing Manpower
  Nursing Manpower
  Benefit Payments (Staff Levels)
  Benefit Payments (Staff Levels)
  Benefits (Overpayments)
  Benefits (Overpayments)
  Departmental Staff
  Departmental Staff
  Child Benefit
  Child Benefit
  Supplementary Benefit
  Supplementary Benefit
  Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme
  Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme
  Surgeons
  Surgeons
  Family Practitioners
  Family Practitioners
  Supplementary Benefit (Religious Closed Orders)
  Supplementary Benefit (Religious Closed Orders)
  Pharmaceutical Investment
  Pharmaceutical Investment
  Mid-Downs Health Authority
  Mid-Downs Health Authority
  Child Abuse
  Child Abuse
  Child Care Law
  Child Care Law
  Repatriation Assistance
  Repatriation Assistance
  NHS (Annual Report)
  NHS (Annual Report)
  Married Women's Pensions
  Married Women's Pensions
DEFENCE
  Footpath 43, Menwith with Darley
  Footpath 43, Menwith with Darley
  9 and 14 Signals Regiments
  9 and 14 Signals Regiments
  BARPLAN
  BARPLAN
  RAF Houses (Maidenhead)
  RAF Houses (Maidenhead)
  Meteorological Office
  Meteorological Office
  Enriched Uranium (Capenhurst)
  Enriched Uranium (Capenhurst)
  Defence Contracts
  Defence Contracts

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Birmingham.
The Lord Cromwell—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.

Inner City Poverty
Lord Beaumont of Whitley: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what additional steps they are proposing to take to remedy the incidence of poverty in the inner cities.
The Minister of State, Department of the Environment (Lord Elton): My Lords, we shall engage the resources of both the public and the private sectors. The effect will be to encourage private investors to provide jobs. In addition to the successful urban development and derelict land grant schemes we shall further increase the enterprise allowance scheme and, next April, we shall introduce a new local enterprise agency scheme. We shall improve the ability of the young to take these jobs by a new two-year youth training scheme, also starting in April.
Lord Beaumont of Whitley: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that statement. May I ask him how much of what he has said will happen is new and how much of it requires new money which would not otherwise be forthcoming? Would he not agree that, in view of the report which has just been produced by the Church of England on the state of the inner cities, something rather more thoroughgoing is called for?
Lord Elton: My Lords, unfortunately I lost the very last syllable of the noble Lord's question. I think he said something after "rather more thoroughgoing".
Lord Beaumont of Whitley: My Lords, I asked whether something more thoroughgoing was "called for".
Lord Elton: I am sorry, my Lords, but I have now forgotten the first half of the question. I think I shall just say to the noble Lord that the Government's response to the report is not something to be given at once. It is a weighty matter to be considered. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment has said as much, and it has been acknowledged by the most reverend Primate.
As to the quantification of what is to be done, what I have described is continuing Government policy with emphases shifting in favour of the places where we see the need to be greatest. As our perception sharpens, no doubt our policies will also change.
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, will my noble friend agree that it is misleading to describe this report as being a Church of England report, as it has not yet been accepted by the Synod? Would he also agree that the measures which he has outlined are really summed up by the development corporation approach, as is very well illustrated in the Docklands Development Corporation?
Lord Elton: My Lords, the report is a report to the Archbishop of Canterbury. I think it is right to point out that rather more of the recommendations were directed to the Church than were directed to the state. I think it is for us to look carefully at what is said about the state, and no doubt the Church will look carefully at what is said about the Church. As to the development corporation, that is indeed a success story, but I think it is probably another question.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the report which has been referred to is the last of a series of reports by various non-politically motivated bodies which all point to the same problem? May I say to the noble Lord that the increase he mentioned, if it is such in financial terms, is of course welcome but it is totally insufficient. Is the Minister aware that the inner cities are in fact dying at an accelerating rate despite the measures that he has announced and that it is becoming a matter of extreme urgency that a rescue operation should be mounted before our city centres become total deserts?
Lord Elton: My Lords, in response to the noble Lord's first supplementary question, it would be better not to leap to any conclusions about this report, particularly that it is the last in a series. As to the question of diminishing resources or the increase being inadequate, I think I ought to ask your Lordships to note that since 1979, in real terms, support for housing associations has gone up by 9 per cent., the value of the urban programme has doubled, the derelict land programme value has doubled, Home Office support for local government posts dealing with the special needs of Commonwealth immigrants has doubled, and the cost of employment and training measures has doubled. What is more, we plan a further substantial increase in 1986–87 by the expansion of the YTS, the Community Programme and the Enterprise Allowance Scheme. Moreover, support for all programmes in the voluntary sector has trebled since 1979. We are not standing still. The question is how fast we run and in what direction. I believe that we are making very considerable efforts in the right direction.
Baroness David: My Lords, is it not the case—
Noble Lords: The Bishop!
The Lord Bishop of Birmingham: My Lords, with reference to the recommendations of the report that has been mentioned, will the noble Lord the Minister consider arranging for a debate on inner cities in this House after noble Lords have had the opportunity to read the report's close-packed and well-documented pages? Does not the noble Lord think that this would provide a better occasion for discussion than hasty

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utterances that deeply wound those of us who yearn for better relations between the Church and the Government of the day?
Lord Elton: My Lords, the convention demands that I reply to the right reverend Prelate's first question in the precise formula. That is a matter for the usual channels. As to the second, I have no wish to distance myself in any way from the Church of which I am a member. I have been careful to say nothing that might appear hasty. I have merely stated the development of Government policy since 1979 in directions of which I believe the Church can approve.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, in view of the Minister's welcome statement that in future important reports will be read carefully before comments are made upon them and indeed, if I may quote, before "rubbishing them" prior to their publication to the public, how does he reconcile what he has now said with the fact that all the media have told us that the Government's response was one of deep criticism, even before we had got the report, with allegations of Marxist influence, and so on?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I am not precisely aware of what the noble Lord is referring to—
Noble Lords: Oh!
Lord Elton: My Lords, I am not precisely aware of what the noble Lord is referring to. I am aware that a number of Members of another place, some of whom are connected with the Government, have made comments immediately upon seeing the report. If comments of that nature are to be elevated into statements of Government policy, then, of course, the noble Lord is saying that no one should ever comment on anything until a very long time has elapsed since publication.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the report was embargoed? No Member of the other place connected with the Government was entitled to break the embargo, breach a confidence and say the things that were said unless he wanted to make an absolute fool of himself, which he succeeded in doing.
Lord Elton: My Lords, the publication in question was available in Dillon's bookshop on Saturday last week.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that no one with any sense of decency would disagree with the aims set out in the report? If, however, it gets to the point of being debated in this House, will he see to it that proper costings and the financial commitments that would be involved are attached to it so that we can truly evaluate what we can afford in regard to the speed with which we move towards its recommendations?
Lord Elton: My Lords, it is always incumbent on the Government and writers of reports with recommendations to consider not only what it is desirable to
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spend money on but also what other programmes must lose the money in order to make that possible.
Lord Wells-Pestell: My Lords, is the Minister aware that his reply that the Government have done so much by doubling so much is meaningless unless we know what the figures are? After all, twopence doubles a penny.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I am not certain that I follow the noble Lord's question. It is, I believe, an admonition to me that if I make statements they should be backed by figures. If we have the debate that I am sure the right reverend Prelate is going to press for, they will be.
Baroness David: My Lords, may I make the point that I was hoping to make earlier?
Noble Lords: Question!
Baroness David: My Lords, may I ask whether the Minister, having listed the number of things the Government are doing, will also state the amount of rate support grant that has been lost by inner cities in the last six years since the Government took over?
Lord Elton: My Lords, the question asks what we are doing about poverty in the inner cities. Although I have an answer prepared to the noble Baroness, I do not think that it fits into that context.
Lord Paget of Northampton: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the figure in the report that astonished me was that 1 per cent. of those in the inner cities go to church? That would make it very nearly equal with football. I had no idea that the Church was as attractive as that.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, is the Minister aware that it is regarded as deplorable that Ministers of the Crown should react instantaneously to reports of this kind—for example, a report of the Select Committee of this House and the report from the Church of England that has recently been published—without reading them in the first place? Is he aware that we welcome his assurance today that in future Ministers will study reports before they come out with statements about them? Will he be good enough to respond rather more sympathetically to the appeal of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham for a debate? The Church is not the usual channels. It speaks with far more authority than the usual channels. Would the Minister be good enough to be rather more helpful?
Lord Elton: My Lords, the noble Lord invites me to ask my colleagues to refrain from instant comment on one set of matters and to give an instant comment on the other. In the first case, my friends are well experienced in how to conduct themselves. I said before that I am not familiar with the minutiae but, in principle, I defend them and their right to say what they wish when they wish. As to the debate, the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition must be familiar with the convention of the House that forbids me to say anything other than that this is a matter for the normal channels.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, is the Minister aware that today over 20 of their Lordships have visited Millwall docks and have there seen for themselves the regeneration of something of London's docklands? Their Lordships have seen an area where, when docklands were at their peak, there were 1,700 jobs, and today there are over 5,000. Would the noble Lord like to comment on that?
Lord Elton: My Lords, the noble Lord has pointed out a very good example of how to generate jobs and therefore wealth in inner cities and eliminate poverty therein. That is within the terms of the Question.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: My Lords in the inner cities there is a larger proportion of young people than in any other parts of the country. Can the noble Lord give us some details as to how these young people in the inner cities can be helped where there is a shortage of employer-led provision in the YTS schemes? If there is no employer-led provision for these young people in inner cities their chances of getting on to a YTS scheme are almost nil.
Lord Elton: My Lords, young people will benefit from the general economic approach which I have illustrated and which is reflected in the London Dock Development Scheme which has been spoken of. They will also be helped by the expansion of training which I mentioned in the substantive Answer, which will make them qualify for the vacant places that sometimes exist already in Government programmes.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: My Lords, I think that perhaps the noble Lord—
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, we have had 13 minutes on this Question. The coincidence of it being on the Order Paper the day after the report has been produced has, I am sure, led to this. I know that it is obviously a very important Question, but 13 minutes on one Question when the House is meant to spend 20 minutes in total is perhaps long enough. I suggest that we move on to the next Question.

Historic Buildings: Renovation
2.53 p.m.
Baroness Lane-Fox: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what action they have taken to improve the attractiveness, as tourist destinations, of historic buildings in England for which they are responsible.
Lord Elton: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government are responsible for a number of such historic buildings, including this one. Your Lordships will already be aware of the work being done in this Chamber, the cleaning of the exterior of the Palace and the very successful renovation of the Clock Tower. Other projects include the opening of the Wall Walk at the
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Tower of London in 1983, of the Cabinet War Rooms and the Court Dress Collection at Kensington Palace in 1984 and of the Privy Council Chamber and the Queen's Withdrawing Room at Osborne House this September. We have also produced more attractive guidebooks for Kew Palace and the Banqueting House, Whitehall, as well as for Kensington Palace and Osborne House.
Baroness Lane-Fox: My Lords, in thanking my noble friend the Minister for that very enlightening reply, may I ask whether the success of the opening of the Cabinet War Rooms might lead to the refurbishing of, for instance, the Banqueting Hall in Whitehall, and even to the expanding of the shop at the Tower, all of which I understand would be very welcome to tourists?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I think that on reflection it will be recognised that the Banqueting Hall is not in bad order, having been extensively refurbished early in the last decade. As to the shop facility, that is something which interests me very much. I hope that we shall be able to improve on the facilities available to the public to buy souvenirs and so on at the Tower, but there is intense pressure on the available space and it will take some time to organise this.
Lord Shinwell: My Lords, although we are all anxious to encourage the noble Baroness in this very desirable objective to boost what we can show them, why do we not also at the same time direct tourists who are coming here and who want to see what is happening in our great country to the thousands of houses no longer capable even of being "disrepaired?" Thousands of them are falling into decay. If the tourists want to see the best side of the picture they might also see the other side at the same time.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I think that tourists on the whole do not come to this country so much for social and historical research as for enjoyment. My noble friend asked what we were doing to show to them the plum pieces of the national heritage which are in the care of central government. That is a worthy cause and one to which I address myself in this answer.
The noble Lord suggests that they should then go elsewhere. I do not think it is our business to give them a Cook's tour of the whole country to give them sociological lessons which would be regarded as political whoever organised them.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the cleaning up of the Palace of Westminster is a great joy to anyone who comes into Parliament Square and looks at it, but that it is rather spoilt by the fact that progress on the Abbey is extremely slow and that nothing appears to be being done to clean up St. Margaret's? Would the Government not consider helping the church perhaps with a grant? It would be worth it for the tourist industry to speed up the work on this great monument, would it not?
Lord Elton: My Lords, your Lordships seem to be bent on spending the entire afternoon bringing me into collision with the Church of England, and I shall not allow it.
Baroness David: My Lords, while I thank the Minister for what he said, and we are all delighted with what is going on, may I ask for some information? Are there adequate numbers of craftsmen to do the work which we have seen going on above the Throne here, and indeed of stonemasons who must be repairing the stonework of the Palace and other buildings? Is there an adequate supply and will the supply continue?
Lord Elton: My Lords, the supply at present is adequate to the rate of progress that the noble Baroness can see. As to the future intentions of the people working on this project, I cannot say how long they wish to do so, but I am not aware of any danger that the work will come to a halt through lack of suitable skills.
Lord Henley: My Lords, will my noble friend bear in mind that there are some places—I was thinking particularly of Hadrian's Wall, parts of which the department looks after—which are getting far too many visitors and which are suffering as a result? Possibly the department ought to be discouraging this.
Lord Elton: My Lords, care for a huge spectrum of buildings such as Hadrian's Wall—which is an ancient monument rather than a building—is in the hands of the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission, otherwise known as English Heritage, to which, if the noble Lord is really anxious, he should address his queries.
Lord Glenamara: My Lords, further to what the noble Lord said, is he aware that many of us believe that far too much has been spent on this building in recent years, a great deal of it on decorations and furnishings which are, to say the least, in dubious taste? Indeed, far too much is being spent on buildings in London. Does the noble Lord not think that a good deal more ought to be spent on historic buildings and sites such as the one mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Henley, in the rest of the country?
Lord Elton: My Lords, the balance of expenditure on buildings in the care of the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission is a matter primarily for the commission. As to expenditure on this House, I think that, given the enormous number of people who see this, it is a good investment. I doubt whether the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell—whose place was assaulted by a descending piece of ceiling—would agree that the money spent on seeing that it did not happen again was wasted.
Lord Maude of Stratford-upon-Avon: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that, in addition to the great buildings which have been discussed, his department and the Welsh Office are responsible for an enormous number of old castles and abbeys throughout the country and that their care has been exemplary? Everything is done to attract tourists and to see that they are well informed with literature and so forth when they get there. The care and restoration devoted to these buildings are a credit to both departments.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for what he has said. A great deal of the credit reflects on the commission, but I shall see that his compliments are passed on where they are due.

Jurors: Right of Peremptory Challenge
2.58 p.m.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what action they propose to take to prevent abuse of the right of peremptory challenge of jurors by defendants in criminal cases.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Glenarthur): My Lords, we are aware of recent concern and are keeping the matter under review. My right honourable friend the Attorney-General is arranging for a survey on the use of peremptory challenge to be conducted by the new Crown Prosecution Service when it is in place.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, is it not true that the new Crown Prosecution Service will not be in place until October next year? If an inquiry is set up thereafter it cannot report until 1987, and if legislation is necessary as a result that will not come about until 1988. Is it not necessary to do something in the meantime to make sure that juries are more representative of all the people in this country and not of one area and one age group? Perhaps my noble friend could consider reminding prosecutors of their right, which they very seldom use, to exercise the use of the challenge under the procedure "Stand by for the Crown". This, at least in the interim, would make both sides able to challenge the composition of a jury.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I am sure that my right honourable friend will note my noble friend's last suggestion, but he is right when he says that the Crown Prosecution Service will not be in place nationally until October 1986. However, in weighing up a matter such as this we must consider such questions as what would take the place of peremptory challenge if it were abolished or further restricted, and the possibility that, for example, increases in challenge for cause might take up more time of the courts. Therefore, we must examine the survey very carefully. Perhaps I may explain to my noble friend that the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions will shortly start monitoring the use of jury challenge in those cases for which it is responsible.
Lord Denning: My Lords, can the noble Lord say whether the right of peremptory challenge serves any useful purpose today, and is it not high time that we considered abolishing it altogether?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I am sure that that is a matter which can best be taken into account in the light of the survey which I have described.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, has not the challenging of jurors been an important part of the jury system throughout the centuries, and must we not be extremely careful not to interfere with it because the challenge is an important part of the role of the jury in maintaining the rights of the subject? Therefore, although the matter can certainly be looked at, would that overriding consideration not remain? As to peremptory challenge, is it not the case that the Crown makes the call, "Stand by for the Crown"? I have done it more than once myself, and no doubt so has the noble and learned Lord. That practice will continue. Personally, I find myself wholly in disagreement, not for the first time, with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning,
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I can assure the noble and learned Lord that the Government fully recognise the significance of the jury system and the important role that it plays in this country's tradition of criminal justice. However, as I think the noble and learned Lord knows, there have already been alterations to the number of challenges that can be made.
Lord Hooson: My Lords, will the noble Lord the Minister not agree that throughout history there has always been a tendency in some quarters to blame juries when there has been a verdict that does not perhaps please the Establishment? As it was the recent spy trial that gave rise to this Question, is it not correct that each juror on that panel was positively vetted? Although I was one of the defending counsel in the case, I took no part in peremptory challenges myself; nor did I attend a meeting where they were discussed. However, were counsel in that trial not exercising a right conferred by Parliament and reaffirmed only five years ago when the whole matter was debated at length?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, referred to the question of "Stand by for the Crown", which is the other side of the coin. I cannot go into much detail on the question of the trial, which the noble Lord knows was held in camera.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, the Minister referred to the fact that this matter will be surveyed by the Crown Prosecution Service when it is established in 1986. Is the noble Lord aware of the very serious tasks, one of which is the task to which he has referred, which will fall to the lot of that service? Is the noble Lord further aware that that service is most unhappy about the terms and conditions being offered by the Government, which may result in a calibre of service which will be unable to carry out a survey of the kind which he would wish?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, with respect, the noble Lord's question goes rather wider than the Question on peremptory challenge, but I note his remarks.
Lord Wigoder: My Lords, when the survey is carried out will the Government bear in mind the extreme importance of being even-handed as between the prosecution and the defence? Will they also bear in mind that at the moment the prosecution has, first, the
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right to vet in some cases, which the defence do not have; and, secondly, that what is equivalent to the right of peremptory challenge so far as the prosecution is concerned is without any restriction in number, whereas so far as the defence is concerned it is limited to three?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, all these considerations will be taken into account.
Lord Elystan-Morgan: My Lords, as the noble Lord has already alluded to this matter, will he also kindly bear in mind that it was only by the Juries Act 1974 that the right of peremptory challenge in respect of seven jurors was reduced to three?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I think I have already referred to that.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, when considering representations from all parts will my noble friend bear in mind that there may be a very long wait until there is a revision of this matter? It seems to many people in this country that it is no good strengthening the forces of law and order and spending vastly greater sums of money on them if in the end no successful prosecutions can be brought.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I assured the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, that the whole question of right to trial by jury was an important part of this country's tradition of criminal justice. As regards the general balance of advantage and disadvantage, all these matters wil be taken into account.

Rape: Preventive Measures
3.6 p.m.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what they are doing to reduce the incidence of rape in Britain.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, rapists must be caught and punished. We fully support police efforts to solve these crimes, and in 1984 68 per cent. of reported offences in England and Wales were cleared up. We are encouraging the Metropolitan Police initiative which aims to overcome victims' reluctance to report offences. We support police initiatives offering advice on prevention to women. We support firm action in the courts against offenders; and my right honourable friend would consider granting parole to a rapist serving over five years' imprisonment only in wholly exceptional circumstances.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord the Minister for that helpful reply, but is he aware that millions of women up and down the country are terrified, both inside and outside their houses, that they may be raped? Will the Government

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or the Judiciary consider that castration be a punishment for proven cases of rape? Would this not be fair, and also a useful deterrent?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, it would certainly be a permanent deterrent. However, I believe that the noble Baroness is quite right when she says that many women are legitimately terrified of this sort of thing. That is why it is important to note that stiffer sentencing is available and why every effort should be made to support the police in all they do to try to prevent this crime.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, is the noble Lord the Minister aware that we all sympathise with him in his answer to the last question? Does he not think that at least an appreciable number of the incidents of rape have something to do with the advertisement of violence, which all of us deplore? Is he not grateful, as many of us are, that the guidelines of the BBC in regard to violence are now being reviewed, and is it not about time that that was so?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, of course pornography and violence are naturally very likely to be the cause of some of this sort of thing. I note the noble Lord's view as regards the guidelines of the BBC. I think the whole question of violence might be helped (certainly this applies to cases of pornography—reports on the most recent case were published in the papers yesterday) by the introduction of the Bill in another place to amend the Obscene Publications Act, which, if it comes to this House, your Lordships will be able to discuss.
Lord Hutchinson of Lullington: My Lords, will the noble Lord agree that it is important not to get hysterical about this matter of rape? By definition, rape is having sexual intercourse without consent, and, therefore, the incidence of rape varies between the most horrible and violent offences and those cases where ladies withdraw their consent at the 59th minute of the 23rd hour.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, all these considerations are taken into account when the court considers a case, but I still believe that it is the general feeling that rape is such a thoroughly vile crime that every possible step should be taken to prevent it.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether he can tell the House in how many schools serious courses in methods of self-protection are given to girls? Would he not agree that if this instruction is given to even very small girls as to how to deal with being accosted in a street, this might bring down the heart-breaking number of cases where small girls and bigger girls are accosted by men?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I cannot give the answer in relation to schools, but I can say that local police crime prevention officers are always ready to offer such advice, and forces willingly supply speakers to talk to women's groups on how best to reduce their chance of being attacked. So far as concerns schools, I shall draw that to the attention of those concerned.
Lord Wigoder: My Lords, would the noble Lord look again at the law, whereby a man accused of rape is entitled to anonymity, in order to see whether that is operating in the public interest?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, despite a recommendation of the Heilbron Committee in 1975 that defendants should not enjoy anonymity, Parliament nevertheless introduced anonymity in the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1976. Last year the Criminal Law Revision Committee recommended that defendant's anonymity should be abolished, and my right honourable friend is still considering that recommendation.
Lord Elystan-Morgan: My Lords, would the Minister agree that it seems that one important part of the problem is that only a small minority of the victims of rape make complaint? Some responsible authorities put it as low as 20 per cent. Will he give the House an assurance that at divisional, and indeed sub-divisional, level there are always officers who are trained to take statements from complainants sympathetically, and indeed that there should be women police officers if that should be the choice of the individual complainant?
Lord Glenarthur: Yes, my Lords. The noble Lord is quite right, the interviewing of rape victims should be carried out by an experienced officer in these cases. That person will often be a woman police officer. The metropolitan police have special training schemes for women officers in taking statements, and also for male detectives. They have a course in sexual offences investigation technique, and that is proving successful.
Viscount Ingleby: My Lords, in view of the massive research being carried out in the United States which estimates that 75 per cent. of sex crime is pornography-related, as in the appalling Pocock case yesterday, would it not be helpful to carry out a similar survey in this country as a matter of urgency?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I think in answer to an earlier supplementary I said that a Bill had been introduced in another place, and that might be an appropriate time to consider that if it comes to your Lordships' House.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, with great respect to the Minister, the question was different. It was whether there should be any form of independent research on this question. Is that going to be undertaken, or not?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I know of no plans, but no doubt the noble Lord's point of view will be considered.
Baronesss Phillips: My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether he would, at some stage, make a direction to judges to see that the maximum penalty is awarded against those who perpetrate this violent crime?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, as the noble Baroness is aware, life imprisonment is available both for rape

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and attempted rape. I am sure that my noble and learned friend will note the noble Baroness's remarks.

Gaming (Amendment) Bill [H.L.]
3.14 p.m.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to amend Section 16 of the Gaming Act 1968 to make provision for the redemption of cheques, and to amend Section 22 of that Act as to the records to be kept with respect to cheques. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(Lord Harris of Greenwich.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Care of the Mentally Ill
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone rose to call attention to the needs of mentally ill and mentally handicapped persons, with special reference to community care; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I am indeed most honoured to move the Motion standing in my name. I am also deeply grateful for the fact that there is not going to be a Statement so that we can get on with the business, but a lot of the advantage thereby gained has surely been lost by the rumbling on of Questions a good deal more than they normally do. Therefore, I hope that perhaps we can get on with it quickly.
This debate is a stage in a succession of activities both in this House and another place to ensure that proper care continues to be available for mental patients of all sorts at all times. In general there is agreement among all the public and private bodies concerned about that somewhat obvious main aim. However, there are many differences of opinion about whether the actions being taken, or proposed, or indeed some of the actions that are not being proposed, are always the best to achieve that aim.
There has been much useful contribution from the other place, especially from its Select Committee on Social Services, in studying community care, and indeed in the Government's response to that report which recently appeared. But in order, in part at any rate, to make sure that the debate does not range too widely so that we keep within compass, I propose to concentrate on the work that has been done in this House, and hope that perhaps other Members might think that an advisable line of attack.
My knowledge stems mainly from being advised over the years since the passage of the Mental Health (Amendment) Act 1982 by the National Schizophrenic Foundation. This is a body of close relatives of schizophrenic patients formed in response to an article in The Times 15 years ago by the late Mr. Pringle. The NSF has now grown to have members all over the country.
It is thus truly a grass roots organisation of people with real practical knowledge of the impact of a particular sort of mental illness on families. My emphasis will thus be mainly on the problems of the mentally ill, though I have some knowledge of mental
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handicap through being the patron of the Isle of Wight Branch of Mencap. I should add that I have also had many helpful letters from a wide range of people too numerous to mention whose views I shall, in part, reflect.
I am most grateful to the many distinguished persons, who know far more about the problems of mental patients than I do, who are taking part in this debate. I am particularly grateful to my noble friend the Minister Lady Trumpington for sharing with me the introduction of this Motion, and I fully understand why she will not be able to remain throughout the debate. I am particularly pleased that my noble friend Lady Hooper will be winding up for the Government, and I am sure that with her past experience in another other place she will do it extremely well.
I should particularly like to thank my noble friend Lord Renton, the past President of Mencap, and the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, the present president of that body, for contributing. They will be able to fill any gaps of knowledge of the problems of the mentally handicapped that I shall necessarily omit. I should also like especially to thank my noble friend Lord Colville of Culross, the Chairman of the Mental Health Act Commission, for joining in the debate. The first biennial report of that body was recently published and is most encouraging. Your Lordships will have seen that I have arranged for copies of that report to be available in the Printed Paper Office.
I am also most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, the President of MIND, for taking part. I hope that he will be able to clarify for us the attitude of MIND to certain activities of doubtful helpfulness. In particular I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Longford, for contributing to this debate. His Unstarred Question in March 1981 led to the excellent Richmond Fellowship Inquiry, copies of which I have also arranged to have available in the Printed Paper Office.
The noble Earl, Lord Longford, was joined in that inquiry by my noble friend Lady Faithfull who is taking part in this debate and will be contributing from the point of view of social services on which she is so expert. Another member of the inquiry team, I am delighted to say, is my noble friend the Minister Lady Trumpington. Accordingly, I hope we can look forward to a very helpful contribution and indeed commitment from the Government.
The third paper in the Printed Paper Office is a pamphlet entitled Cart Before the Horse? which is a reprint of correspondence between the National Schizophrenia Fellowship and the Minister of Health more or less continuously between Lord Beswick's debate on the Richmond Fellowship inquiry almost two years ago and this year's summer recess. It is my purpose in this debate to impress on the Government the vital importance of correcting what still appear to be errors in the implementation of their policy.
Before doing so, I should like to turn briefly to the problem of schizophrenics. The Richmond Fellowship inquiry tells us that the mental illnesses most likely to lead to prolonged residence in hospital are schizophrenia and paranoid psychoses of which schizophrenia is much the most prevalent. About one person in a hundred can be expected to suffer from

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such a condition at some time during their lifetime. At any given moment three people in every thousand are receiving treatment or care for schizophrenia: that is 165,000 people in the population of the United Kingdom. Schizophrenics are also most prone to suicide and to destitution if not properly cared for. Their close relatives are therefore particularly concerned that suitable care at appropriate levels continues to be available for them all the time. I suggest to your Lordships that as such a large proportion of our fellow citizens are likely to be involved in that illness, it behoves us all to support that aim of the families.
In recent years, especially since the foundation of the NSF in 1970, close relatives have come to see that their problems are better handled if shared with others. From this has come a greater understanding of the need to persuade the public that all mental illness is a sickness which does not deserve its social stigma but requires sympathy. Sadly, though, the social stigma remains; and it remains not only in the attitude of those of us who are fortunately spared such an ailment, but also in the families themselves who are all too often shy about admitting that they have relatives who have a mental illness of any sort. Therefore it is important for us all to try to work together to get a general understanding of this illness, and of the others, so that we can overcome this very unfortunate attitude of social stigma.
With that point in mind, a schizophrenia campaign to educate the public is shortly being initiated both in the press and on television—-the latter being a two-part programme each of which will start at 10.30 p.m. on Tuesday, 21st and Tuesday, 28th January. In the meantime, your Lordships will see very well informed articles in most of the major elements of the press during the coming month or so.
In addition, there is a need to know more about the origins of the illness. In recent years it has become more commonly accepted that schizophrenia has at least a partial organic base—that is, physical, biological or chemical—linked with a genetic predisposition. There is thus a need for more research. One body with which I have been acquainted is the Schizophrenia Association of Great Britain which is conducting investigations into the probable biochemical cause of the illness. I have been in correspondence with the Minister about that and perhaps she may have a word to say; but if not, I shall look forward to further correspondence.
I come now to the main points which I want to make to the Government. These can be summarised under four headings. First, there is great concern whether protective care in mental hospitals, or in special wings of general hospitals, will always be sufficient for those mentally-ill patients who at any one time really need such care, either voluntarily or compulsorily. The awful warning of the Italian Psychiatric Care Act 1978—which, if your Lordships are not familiar with it, is mentioned in the Richmond Fellowship inquiry—must ever be present in our minds when considering this factor.
Secondly, there is great concern that where it is agreed that the number of hospital beds for the
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mentally ill in a particular National Health Service district can be reduced, the necessary community care is not being provided in advance (I repeat "in advance") of any such reductions. A recent statement by the Minister for Health talked about complementary action. That is really not good enough because it is no good having the number of beds reduced before there is full care facility to take the patients the moment the number of beds are reduced. I should therefore be grateful for a reassurance from my noble friend the Minister that her department truly understands the need for advanced community care preparation, and that such care has to be of satisfactory quality.
The third matter for concern relates to families The families are, with the National Health Service, the social services and the voluntary organisations, the fourth caring arm for all mental patients. Their contribution is all too readily taken for granted. In the Isle of Wight, where your Lordships know I come from, I have discussed the matter fully. I am reasonably satisfied that the 10-year plan of the district health authority and the social services department of the county council will meet the first two matters of concern to which I have referred. Furthermore, the local members of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship seem happy with the arrangements so far as they have gone. What the local members are concerned about is the lack of understanding of mental sickness by some general practitioners, the lack of sympathy for the families and their sometimes desperate problems by some psychiatrists and the apparent failure of all concerned to appreciate that parents also grow older and become less able to cope. Thus there is concern that the problems of the families are neither adequately understood nor satisfactorily catered for in the longer term.
The fourth matter for concern is that so-called patient power may develop as strongly in this country as it seems to be doing in the United States and certain European countries such as Holland. In this connection, the support apparently being given to this totally erroneous movement by MIND much concerns me. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, will be able to reassure me on this point. I apologise to the noble Lord that I have been so frightfully busy this morning with two other appointments that I never got round to warning him of it in a letter, which I fully intended to. If he cannot answer it here and now, perhaps he can do so in writing later on.
The problem is that mentally ill people can sometimes be incapable of deciding on the best treatment for themselves. There have to be arrangements for their care in the hands of people professionally qualified so to do. If such arrangements are not made, the persons concerned may well be driven to suicide or destitution, and their families will suffer much hardship in the process. Bodies like the Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression are not only misguided: they are evil.
To conclude, I trust the Minister will reassure me about the Government commitment to keep sufficient hospital care for all kinds of mental patients, as well as developing efficient and sufficient community care in advance of any closures. I trust also that the Minister will convince me that future plans are not too heavily

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based on extrapolated statistics of doubtful origin. In addition, I hope that my noble friend will convince me that general practitioners are being encouraged to learn more about mental illness and that psychiatrists are being encouraged to learn more about the sympathetic treatment of families. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.32 p.m.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, may I firstly say how very much I appreciate the decision of the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, to choose this subject, and the manner in which he has introduced it. As he has said, it is a very wide subject. Bearing in mind that the noble Lord, Lord Renton, and the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, will be speaking mainly on mental handicap, I, like the noble Lord, will probably say more about mental illness, bearing in mind, as he said, that I am chairman of MIND. However, I shall comment on what I suspect he may have meant by "the strange allegations". We shall deal with that a little later. I am most grateful to him.
The subject for debate could not have been more timely, coming as it does just after the Government's (I fear) very negative response to the report of the House of Commons Select Committee on community care, with special reference to the mentally ill and the mentally handicapped. I make no apology for dealing quite considerably with the Select Committee's report, because it took them a year to produce it. It was a major study, with some major recommendations. Though it was produced in another place, I think it is an absolutely basic document which should be considered.
This debate is also timely because it comes the day after the publication of the report of the working party of the right reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury on the inner cities. The latter is an authoritative report from what I think is a distinguished, independent and balance committee. Without touching on the recommendations except to say, "We cannot afford it", the chairman of the Conservative Party, Mr. Norman Tebbit, has concentrated his attention on personal denigration of its membership. I think this is extremely unfortunate. I suppose it is a terrible allegation to say that until 10 years ago the chairman was a member of the Labour Party. What a terrible thing to have been! What a sin! Of course, it could also have been said that he was appointed by the same Mr. Norman Tebbit as chairman of the Manpower Services Commission—and a very distinguished chairman he was—and we all know how high one can rise if one becomes chairman of the Manpower Services Commission.
One may ask: what has this report to do with community care? It has a great deal to do with it. The misery, neglect and degradation of the inner cities is the same misery, neglect and degradation as that of our system of care in the community, but written large. We are not dealing, in the inner cities, with something that does not apply to other parts of our society, but it applies more to the inner cities. In my view community care has become a misnomer. It has become almost a myth, a delusion. I am afraid it is community neglect in far too many cases. Community
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care is facing a deep crisis of underfunding, as the House of Commons Select Committee very clearly recognised.
The chair of the Association of Metropolitan Authorities social services committee recently strongly criticised the Government's response to the Select Committee's report and to its recommendations, particularly the part in relation to funding. I was interested to receive today a letter from the Association of County Councils, which is of a different political balance, which referred to their general disappointment. It said:
"the Government's response to the Social Services Committee is obviously disappointing. It has to be said that there appears to be very little in it to recognise the problems identified by this Association"—
that is the ACC—
"and others, and the response appears to be unduly complacent in dealing with what are very real needs".
I shall not take it further, but it is a very condemnatory letter of the Government's response to a very important document.
The Social Services Select Committee faced up to the crisis with a package of 101 recommendations. Yes, of course many of them would cost money. "Crisis? What crisis?" seems to be the Government's response in the document that they published a few days ago. They are talking about tax cuts a little nearer the election, tax cuts which presumably would affect people who can afford to pay it. However, they are really saying that there are no additional resources available for the mentally ill, the mentally handicapped, or the elderly with senile dementia. Certainly there are not many votes there. I think these are people who, almost above all in our society, need care and sympathy, and, more than anything, the finance to enable that care and sympathy to become a reality.
The difference between the view of the Government and that of the Labour Opposition is on the matter of the degree of urgency as to the failure to provide effective care in the community. In replying to correspondence from the chairman of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship, referred to by the noble Lord and referred to in the document that he has also very thoughtfully arranged to be in the Printed Paper Office, Kenneth Clarke, in May 1984, when he was then the Minister of State for Health, repeated and gave his support to the objectives of the 1975 White Paper, Better Services for the Mentally Ill. I shall read the section which he cited in his letter:
"We welcome this oppportunity to stress that our aim is not the closure or rundown of mental illness hospitals as such; but rather to replace them with a local and better range of facilities. It will not normally be possible for a mental hospital to be closed until the full range of facilities described in chapter 4 has been provided throughout its catchment area and has shown itself capable of providing for newly arising patients a comprehensive service independent of the mental hospital. Moreover, even then, it will not be possible to close the hospital until it is no longer required for the long-stay patients admitted to its care before the local services came into operation".
That was 10 years ago. I must say that as we look at what progress has been made in the last 10 years I think more and more of us are convinced that we want to see real progress made in closing old psychiatric hospitals provided, as the noble Lord rightly said, services are available in the community. No patients

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should be discharged from these old hospitals until a plan has been carefully worked out, with the psychiatrists, the social workers, the patients themselves and all the professions involved, to ensure that there is a proper provision for their welfare. There is no use dumping people into a society which does not have the provision to look after them.
I believe that the Government have been very long in words and very short in actions and resources. To quote from the report commissioned by the BMA, the Royal College of Nursing and the Institute of Health Service Management:
"In services for the mentally ill the local authority role remained relatively small accounting for only 3½6 per cent. of the total spending in 1983–84. Within the NHS the pattern of increased spending which was evident from 1978 to 1982 was not present in later years. Total NHS spending was £963½3 million in 1981–82, £962½7 million in 1982–83 and £965½1 million in 1983–84".
Going down each year in real terms.
"This must be seen as a matter of concern in a service where there is a clear requirement for major new programmes to replace the hospitals".
The mental illness percentage of local NHS expenditure is also marginally declining although mental handicap is on a very slight upward trend.
The second report from the Social Services Committee of the House of Commons, which was published in January 1985—and I shall quote two sentences from it—says:
"We are at the moment providing a mental disability service which is under-financed and under-staffed both in its health and social aspects."
Joint finance, they said, as a means of transferring further responsibilities from the HNS to local authorities is now virtually played out. They said that the pace of removal of hospital facilities for mental illness has far outrun the provision of services in the community ro replace them. This is a very serious charge with very serious problems created for those who have been discharged from hospitals and who may not have found their place in the community.
The Social Services Select Committee, as I have said, made 101 recommendations. Your Lordships will be pleased to know that I am not going to go through all of them. I want to pick out just five which, I think, are fundamental. Mental illness hospital provision must not be reduced without the establishment in advance of demonstrably adequate alternative services; secondly, community care must not be done on the cheap; thirdly, genuine community care policies are only achievable in the context of a real increase over a period of years of expenditure on mental health services; fourthly, the DHSS should create a central bridging fund to assist the development of community mental health services. I shall repeat that: a central bridging fund. I think that is essential; fifthly, any growth in staff numbers directly attributable to the policy of community care should be exempt from manpower targets.
I am afraid that the Government in response had very little to say. On the central bridging fund, they said that the recognised need for transitional financing in some form and the resource implications are being borne in mind. Being borne in mind nine months after the Select Committee made its report does not suggest any sense of urgency, let alone any sense of a bridging
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fund. On manpower targets, they said the Government take account of community care needs in looking at changes in total local authority and health service manpower statistics. They take account of it. On greater parliamentary consideration of mental health policies, the Government will welcome informed debate. That is good. But there really is no sort of promise of any new steps to be taken to deal with what I think most of us here will see as a very urgent problem. The response published, I think, is depressing almost beyond belief.
The crisis is not just due to the fact that the social service departments are screwed down in terms of expenditure, cuts in the rate support grant, grant penalties and the rest which have been put before your Lordships' House on so many occasions; there has been the collapse in the housing programme and the dramatic increase in single homeless people, many of whom have a history of psychiatric problems and many of whom are being driven towards the brink. I believe that there are several factors which we should note in looking at this worsening situation.
Perhaps I may give one or two examples. I referred to the housing programme. The housing investment programme has been slashed by over 50 per cent. in real terms since 1979. Housing subsidy has declined seven-fold, yet housing, decent ordinary housing in hostels, is a major component of community care. Housing is a right everyone should have but the most disadvantaged are being denied this basic right. If we look around, we know that there is a steady and frightening increase in homeless people, many of whom have had a record and a background of mental illness or of mental handicap. It is very distressing. If I may say so, the new DHSS board-and-lodgings regulations which compel young people to move from area to area and push existing claimants into still more sub-standard accommodation can exacerbate mental illness or delay recovery, especially as many ex-patients may get trapped in board-and-lodging establishments because of the difficulty of obtaining furniture grants or other single payments once they are offered council accommodation.
The lack of government money to fund alternatives to the huge institutions is leading to a rundown in beds in those institutions without appropriate alternative care being provided. Here, I am very much talking about accommodation, places where people may live; and although local councils should accept homeless people vulnerable through mental illness as in priority needs under the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977, many fail to do so. Even if they provide accommodation, it is often housing of limited quality and no support is really provided.
There are two other points that I want to make in my remaining few minutes. First, with inadequate professional support and cuts in domiciliary services such as home helps, meals on wheels and care assistance, an increasing burden is falling on the carers. We have to ask whether society is caring for the carers. The vast majority of people who have suffered a mental illness or are suffering a mental handicap live within the community; and they are often much more likely to live in the home than in any sort of institution.

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Just over 1¼ million people in our society are caring for a relative or a friend who is severely or very severely disabled, mentally or physically. As many as 5½ million people are supporting a person who could not live safely or comfortably without their help because of age or illness—and 100,000 carers have been doing this for 10 years or more. Some have been doing it for more than 30 years. We have to recognise that those who have been caring for the carers—and the noble Lord, Lord Renton, knows very well about this—carry a very heavy burden. Often they carry it alone and often their lives are hampered by the fact that their first responsibility has to be for the person for whom they are caring.
More women now care for an elderly sick or disabled relative than care for a child under 16, and most of the carers—four out of five of them—are women. So we have an enormous problem of our community lacking in organised community services where the family is having to bear a very heavy responsibility. And not only a very heavy responsibility; they are of course carrying the financial burden. If just 1 per cent. of those caring for an elderly relative gave up, the health and social services budget would have to increase by 20 per cent. overnight. So we see that they are the basis of care in the community, and we have to ask whether we are supporting them enough. I look at their financial problems: for some of them there should be cash payments to compensate for extra costs and the loss of earnings. Carers save the state enormous sums of money. The invalid care allowance—the only benefit available for carers—is not payable to any married woman, no matter what her relationship is to the disabled dependant. It is payable currently only to married men of any marital status, and to single women. I do not think this is any longer acceptable. Perhaps it made sense when it was introduced—it was at least a step forward—but the time has now come to put this injustice right. I believe this is one of the essential tasks we have to do.
My last point was dealt with in a two-day national conference organised last week by MIND, under the heading "Patients become People". Whether somehow or other that is linked with the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, no doubt in his brief wind-up he will tell me. I know nothing about "patient power" but most patients have no power at all and those whose only residence is a mental hospital do not even have a vote, let alone political power or any other sort of power. This is quite different from patient power, or whatever the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, has heard. I believe that people who are patients must be consulted about their own future. They are people as well as patients. Let me say there is nothing more demoralising than to suffer mental illness. It can be humiliating and destabilising. It can undermine a person's self-confidence and can devalue that person as an individual.
People become patients, and all sense of responsibility can be undermined. There is little joy in being a patient in a mental hospital. There is little joy in being in the community if the facilities are not there. I think the feelings, the hopes and fears—and I say this of mentally handicapped people as well as of the
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mentally ill—should never be ignored.Sometimes they are ignored or inadequate attention is paid to them. As patients are treated and cared for and go through the process of rehabilitation and resettlement too often they feel that others are programming their future or ignoring their problems. Often, they say, we do not even listen to them. There is no question of patient power. It is saying that patients are people. They should be consulted about their own future. Often of course they are in no position to decide their own future, but they should be consulted about it. I say this with a depth of feeling which I want to convey to your Lordships' House.
I should like now just to finish with 10 quick one-sentence points as a programme. I notice the noble Baroness shaking her head; perhaps she was not, perhaps she was nodding off to sleep—no, she was not nodding off to sleep. Quite often it is said that from this Bench people do not put forward practical alternatives or positive programmes, and so I should like to give now, for the benefit of the noble Baroness, 10 points which I think should be borne in mind:
First, Government must recognise that inadequate community care is no substitute for inadequate institutional care. Secondly, the Government must make money available to fund the transition from hospital care to a local comprehensive mental health service with a central bridging fund or other earmarked funding. Thirdly, regional health authorities must guarantee that the proceeds from all sales of psychiatric and mental handicap hospital land will be retained within mental health and handicap service budgets.
Fourthly, a substantial increase in the housing investment programme must be made specifically to provide ordinary housing in the community for mentally ill and homeless people. Fifthly, disincentives such as rate capping and manpower targets on local government and health authorities to provide comprehensive local mental health services should be removed. Sixthly, an agreed vision for a new service must be formulated by all professionals, consumers, informed carers and volunteers involved in service provision. Seventhly, models of good practice must be developed and disseminated to demonstrate to staff and consumers the feasibility and value of community mental health services.
Eighthly, partnership between health authorities, local government and the voluntary sector and multi-disciplinary collaboration must be the keynotes in developing local community services tailored to individual needs. Ninthly, full consumer particu-pation in service planning and delivery should take place as of right. Tenthly, the invalid care allowance should now be extended to married and cohabiting women, at a cost of £85 million, which is what it would cost the nation.
I believe that that is the sort of programme—very similar to that which was outlined by the Select Committee after its year of deliberation—that the Government ought to take on board if they are to face the challenge of community care which is really utterly failing the mentally handicapped and the mentally ill in our society.
3.56 p.m.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, I must hasten to join the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, for giving us an opportunity to debate a matter which really is of the utmost public importance. The noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, has shown a close interest in this matter over many years. It was a great pleasure to me personally, as a vice-chairman of the Parliamentary Mental Health Group, to welcome him to our meeting last week. It was also a pleasure to note that he came to that meeting not to tell all the professional workers who were gathered together how they should be running their affairs; he came to listen—and the fact that he listened very carefully was evident in the speech he has made to us in introducing this debate.
Like other noble Lords who have expressed an interest in this subject over the years, or those whom it was known were to speak, I have received a great many reasoned and lengthy papers from a great many organisations—professional organisations, voluntary bodies of one kind or another which do such immensely important work in this field. I think that most of your Lordships will have received the papers and documents which have been prepared for us. Obviously it would serve no useful purpose for me to go through all of them, but I think it would probably be useful if I said to all those people who have taken the trouble to compile these various papers that they really have been studied and read very carefully by us all, and the points made in them will not be forgotten and, indeed, will be brought to the notice of those concerned.
I was particularly interested to note that many of the papers, documents, pamphlets and letters that I received came from organisations in Scotland. They said substantially the same thing as the others, but it occurred to me that the administrative structure of the National Health Service and of local government in Scotland was perhaps more suited to making the kind of community arrangements about which we are now talking. In Scotland there is not the same division between hospital and domiciliary medical services as there is in England and Wales, with a total separation of the family practitioner committee services.
For example, it ought to be possible to do as the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, suggested. Let us suppose that an old mental health hospital is sold or, as is more important, some of the very valuable land around the building is sold, raising a great deal of money. Of course that is one of the attractions of the closure programme to the present Government. It is an attraction that I understand and I do not in any way quarrel with it. In such circumstances we want to see the money raised by the sale of those assets transferred to the community services, which are so important in terms of making the closure programme work. I would have thought that could have happened more readily in Scotland, where the regional health boards and the local authorities are much more contiguous and where the relationship is closer than is the case in England.
I want to mention in particular one of these papers to which the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, referred; namely, Cart before the Horse, which has been produced by the National Schizophrenia Fellowship. It seems to me to summarise most of the anxieties
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which we have in this field—there are certain things which must be done before other things are done, and I do not think we are satisfied that that is actually happening.
In addition—and again saying that I was much impressed by the unanimity of the comments of all these various bodies, professional organisations and voluntary bodies—it seemed to me that nowhere is the case more clearly summarised than at the very opening of the paper we have all received from the Royal College of Psychiatrists, which is a highly influential and very important body indeed. It merely states this at the outset:
"The Royal College of Psychiatrists is enthusiastic about the current philosophy of care for psychiatric patients which shifts the focus away from the large psychiatric hospitals. We particularly welcome the concept of treatment and rehabilitation close to the patient's own home".
It goes on:
"We are concerned, however, that psychiatric hospitals are being closed in various parts of the country without prior establishment of alternative facilities".
That is the absolute crux of the whole problem and it is to that that we must address our attention, as indeed the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, did.
Let me just from my own professional experience mention three cases which have come to my personal knowledge and with which I have been professionally and personally involved. They are cases which I think illustrate some of the difficulties with which we have to contend. The first of these cases concerns a young man who was a patient, and had indeed been a patient for, I think, 15 years, in Winnick Hospital up in the northwest and that young man was scheduled, if that is the right word, for discharge into the community. I talked to him, and others talked to him, and it appeared that he was satisfied that in the end this was probably for his benefit; that it would be better for him to cease to be institutionalised and to become accustomed again to life in the community.
But he was very worried about the arrangements which were being made. Inquiries were made into those arrangements and proper residential accommodation had been found. There was no doubt that people had been laid on to care for him when he went home. But the anxiety expressed was: how would he manage in a rather frightening world when he had been living in an institution, somewhat protected, for a very long time? The unhappy fact is that before that young man was actually discharged, which was due only a week or two later, he hanged himself. That case illustrates as much as any that we are concerned here with some very vulnerable people indeed.
We all know that in our urban areas there are many frightened people—frightened with good reason—but there are no people who are more frightened, and who perhaps have more reason for fear, than mentally ill patients who suddenly find themselves in a community and in an environment to which they have become totally unaccustomed. If we realise how vulnerable those people are, I think we will make sure that the proper care and services are provided to look after them.
I am sure that we are all looking forward to hearing the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Saint Albans. He may very well refer to these matters. I do not always follow all the advice that

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is given to me by the Churches, but on this matter we would be very unwise indeed if we did not listen very carefully to what the Church has to say to us.
I move on to the second of these three cases. This is a case with which the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, is familiar, because she has already dealt with it in Answer to a parliamentary Question of mine some little time ago. This case concerns a social worker in a mental hospital, a girl by the name of Isobel Schwartz, whose father, a professor at the University of Manchester and a microbiologist, is a friend of mine. This unfortunate girl working in a hospital had established a very close relationship with a schizophrenic patient who was subsequently discharged, rather against her will, into the community and into accommodation which proved to be rather unsatisfactory.
The social worker, who had established such a good relationship with this patient, was sent later to move the patient to another place to which the patient did not wish to go. Understandably, in a patient who has come to depend upon and trust a social worker and finds that the social worker is doing something which the patient does not particularly like, that patient developed a resentment of a very deep and pathological nature. Subsequently, as the noble Baroness knows, the patient, who had had no community care at all, in the sense that she had not been seen by a psychiatrist and had not been visited by social workers, although she had been out in the community for many months, marched into the hospital where Isobel Schwartz worked and stabbed her to death. That shows that the workers in this field are people who are also very vulnerable indeed and are people who need protection.
Finally, I would refer to a family to whom I was the general practitioner for some years, and a member of that family—a schizophrenic youth—I sent into hospital. More recently, since I finished active medical practice, that youth was discharged back into the family and I can say from my personal knowledge of the case, which was in Salford, that the family would have been glad to have him back and were welcoming him back, provided that they had the necessary help and support with which to cope with him. In that case that necessary help and support was not available.
The consequences were catastrophic. The young man quarrelled with his siblings, his brother and his sister, and with his sister's husband, who was living with the family because of housing problems. They were all assembled together. The family broke up. He attacked his brother, who left home, the parents quarrelled, the mother became ill and had to go into hospital and, in the end, the young man had to be returned to hospital. That is a case, which was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Ennals today, in which we had not given enough thought for the carers, the unpaid people in the community, mostly women—perhaps it should not be so, but it is—who do an immense amount of work. But that work can be done only if they receive the professional support and help which they need. That family has virtually been broken up, because the necessary steps were not taken in advance of the discharge of that patient, and the
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necessary steps were not taken on a continuing basis once the patient had been discharged.
I do not wish to go on longer than is necessary, because I know that noble Lords in all parts of your Lordships' House will be saying the same things. We are going to say that we welcome the general policy of community care. We recognise that it is not a cheap option. It may well be a much better option for the patients, but it can be a very expensive option, and it is an option of which we should avail ourselves only if we are prepared to pay the price in terms of laying on the necessary services and resources within the community.
I should like to see set in the community targets each of which has to be reached before the next step in relation to the discharge of patients is taken. There is a difficulty here. It is that the large mental hospitals and institutions, to which we are referring in this debate, do not recruit from one locality. One hospital does not take all its patients from the nearest town. It takes patients from all over England and Wales or all over the United Kingdom. Therefore, when you are closing a hospital, those patients are not all going into one town. They are going into communities up and down the United Kingdom, which makes it very difficult indeed to harmonise this targeting process, because you cannot merely focus on the nearest town to the hospital which is scheduled for closure.
But what are these targets? First, there is the establishment of adequate hostel accommodation with care and proper supervision, of the kind so admirably provided by the Richmond Fellowship, to which the noble Lord referred, as well as by MIND, many other voluntary bodies and many local authorities, but not all. We need to be sure that there are adequate home helps. That may seem to be a simple thing, but in the community community work of that kind is necessary. When an invalid comes home—and a mentally ill person is an invalid—we need to be sure that the community nursing situtation is adequate in terms of recruitment in the different localities.
We also need to make sure that there are effective links maintained between the community services and the hospital services so that there is a full exchange of information between those responsible for the patient in hospital, and those who later take over the responsibility when that patient is discharged from hospital into the community. The patient should not be moving suddenly from care by one group of experts to care by another group, who have never set eyes on the first group. There must be some kind of communication and some kind of continuing contact between the two.
Finally, I underline once again that we need to ensure that there is effective support for the carers before we lay these additional burdens on them by closing down these institutions.
4.10 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Baroness Trumpington): My Lords, I should like to begin with thanks and with an apology. The thanks are to my noble friend Lord Mottistone for providing us with the opportunity to debate this important issue at a particu-

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larly opportune time. I refer of course to the publication on 20th November of our response to the Social Services Committee Report on Community Care for Mentally Ill and Mentally Handicapped People. I thank my noble friend for his kind remarks with regard to the Richmond Fellowship Inquiry. I must say with all honesty, and much to my regret, that I was more of a sleeping partner than an active participant in any of the decisions. I greatly admire the work done by the Richmond Fellowship.
The apology is that, as I have explained to my noble friend, I have to leave before the end of the debate. I am most grateful to my noble friend Lady Hooper for agreeing to reply in my absence, and I shall read with great interest those speeches that I miss this afternoon. I look forward very much to listening to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Saint Albans when he makes his maiden speech.
Care in the Community as a philosophy is now widely accepted. We have tried in our evidence to the Social Services Committee, and in our response to its report, to say what we mean when we speak of care in the community and why we support it. It is not an exercise in cutting costs, either in theory or in practice. What we are concerned to do is to redirect resources currently concentrated in large outmoded hospitals towards a better quality of life for mentally ill and mentally handicapped people in more appropriate forms of care. I was astonished by the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Ennals; and perhaps I may remind your Lordships of the support given by the Social Services Committee and by the overwhelming majority of those who gave evidence as to community care as a philosophy and as a practical proposition.
In the words of our response, community care is,
"a matter of marshalling resources, sharing responsibilities and combining skills to achieve good quality modern services to meet the actual needs of people, in ways those people find acceptable and in places which encourage rather than prevent normal living".
In meeting "the actual needs of people" we must recognise that there is no one package for community care that is equally appropriate in all circumstances. If we are moving individuals out of hospitals, it must be to appropriate alternative facilities that already exist. For those who still need to be in hospital we need appropriate hospital care. The means have to be willed as well as the ends. Meeting the actual needs of people also means that those who are actually involved—the consumers and their families—must whenever possible have their views and wishes taken into full consideration as part of the planning process. This Government's emphasis on management reflects our firm view that we need imagination, dedication, and effective management if aspirations are to become realities. The changeover is not easy, and we cannot afford to get it wrong by leaving gaps and inconsistencies. It is only too simple to tackle the easy problems and the easy cases, and ignore special needs and minority groups. Special needs are just as real as ordinary basic needs, and we are paying particular attention to these. We want services to fit people, not services that fit only theories.
One job my department can do is help disseminate good practice. I should like to mention one or two examples. I would commend to your Lordships the initiative of the City and Hackney Health Authority in
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providing a comprehensive range of psychiatric services, in association with local authority and housing associations, without in this case any reliance on large mental hospital services.
As regards mental handicap services, going north this time, there is the work being done in Bolton, funded by the DHSS as a Care in the Community pilot project. Eighty mentally handicapped people are being transferred from hospital to a variety of community settings. The moves are related to their degree of disability, with accommodation comprising a staffed group house, sheltered living accommodation, family placements, and independent living. The support of the local neighbourhood is being encouraged and developed—and that is enormously important if we are to have real integration in the community
Let me illustrate. In Devon and in Norwich there are different forms of locality planning which seek to relate services to natural communities and build on the strengths and resources of those communities. In some urban areas there may not be a great deal of community identity; but I was encourged recently to hear that two local residents who initially campaigned against a unit for mentally handicapped people being established in their neighbourhood subsequently changed their views so much that they are both now pillars of the management committee. That is the kind of thing we really want to see. I have myself visited a number of schemes that make a deep impression—from homes for mentally handicapped children to flats for former regional secure unit patients. Such schemes involve very ordinary places in many ways, but provide something special for special people.
Throughout the country exciting innovative and beneficial schemes are underway with the aim of supporting people in the least restrictive setting possible. These schemes are devised and run by thoughtful and dedicated people with a concern for improving the quality of life for those in their care. Governments carry the responsibility for providing the means. I dealt with the funding aspect to some extent on 20th November in your Lordships' House when I spoke about the significance of the Chancellor's Autumn Statement. Then there are the mechanisms of co-operation between various statutory bodies which we have developed; and the guidance and dissemination of ideas which we can and do promote. By these means local enterprises can go ahead as part of a co-ordinated and planned network consistent with national policies.
Living as ordinary a life as possible in the community involves some risks, but I was concerned to learn, when I visited the Spastics Society last week, that in one of the recent riots some severely disabled spastic children had been living in the midst of the violence and were at risk from it. We must encourage the community to help handicapped people to live ordinary lives, and I hope that we and the rising generation will respect the most vulnerable people among us and give special help to meet ordinary needs.
Real progress can be achieved only if there is wholehearted collaboration and co-operation between the different statutory agencies and the voluntary sector. An individual may require health and social

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service support, access to education, training and leisure activities, housing and income support. Service providers tend to think within their own boundaries and responsibilities. The person they are helping sees things rather differently, and does not want—may not be able—to knock at seven doors to get the sum total of what he needs. As one exasperated physically handicapped "client" put it: being disabled is a full-time job.
Access to services and movement between services must be carefully managed so that individuals or their families are not left in the gap where a service ought to be. I feel I must spell this out yet again—people leaving places where their lives have been organised for them need help in coping with unfamiliar situations. For instance, there is the board and lodging situation, to which the noble Lord, Lord Ennals referred. He knows very well that people returning to the community will not be subject to time limits. This House has discussed the supplementary benefit regulations more than once and I do not propose to go over them in detail now. I will just emphasise that, in line with our policy of support for the voluntary sector, supplementary benefit can be paid to support people in homes up to a limit. It is of course right that there should be a limit to protect the interests of the taxpayer. However, from 25th November the limit for those in residential care is £130 in the case of mentally ill people or £150 per week for mentally handicapped people.
I am encouraged that quite a lot of the central initiative funding or local resources have been used to establish community teams of link workers, which make genuine co-operation possible and help to secure an access point for those needing help. Thus key workers have been found helpful in putting a human face to the comprehensive service—giving people a particular person they can trust and to whom they can relate.
Central Government have, as the Social Services Committee report remarks, a responsibility for seeking consistency across departments in their own planning and in the messages they issue. We shall continue to impress upon statutory authorities their responsibilities for joint planning and the joint use of resources. Nobody argues about that principle—the practice is not always what it might be. We have switched from confidential to open reports from the Health Advisory Service and the National Development Team for Mentally Handicapped People, and have completely reshaped the role of our own social work service, to make it a social services inspectorate, to encourage and disseminate good practice, including joint working and planning. Where the statutory authorities are concerned we do not accept the notion of a single body providing a "total service"—for all its seeming attractions.
I find that concept unattractive. Such a service would be subject to the criticisms directed at the old all-embracing institution concept. Co-ordination and co-operation are feasible, and there are places where, with goodwill and sound organisation, they are being secured. I am always encouraged, for example, by initiatives such as that of the North Western Regional Health Authority in sponsoring a community care
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conference jointly with the Central Council for the Education and Training of Social Workers.
My noble friend Lord Mottistone spoke from his great knowledge of the Schizophrenia Association of Great Britain. To take up one of his points, I and my colleagues agree entirely with the association in the desire to expand research on mental illness, including schizophrenia. However, the sort of grant which the department is able to make to certain voluntary bodies cannot be given for research purposes. The grants are given under Section 64 of the Health Services and Public Health Act 1968, and are given to voluntary bodies which are primarily engaged in providing services to patients or clients in the field of health and personal social services. What we and the Medical Research Council do is to fund actual research studies, and we have funded a number of research studies in the field of schizophrenia. It is undoubtedly a problem of the greatest importance, and it is exciting that some information relevant to its origins is now being revealed by research.
My noble friend asked for an assurance that we mean to keep sufficient hospital care for all types of mental patients—I take that as meaning mentally ill people—as well as developing community care. I readily give him that assurance. Indeed, I think he and the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, will find such an assurance contained in the correspondence the fellowship had with my right honourable friend the then Minister for Health which has been published in the Royal College of Psychiatrists bulletin.
I know of the Schizophrenia Fellowship's worries about statistics being used to justify an unreasonably low number of beds. As noble Lords will know, we are pressing health authorities to see that every district has its own comprehensive psychiatric service, instead of the previous pattern where patients often travelled to a distant hospital. In our policy paper we stress that districts should make their own estimate of local needs, but we provide some information about current good practice in meeting the in-patient needs of different groups. Very broadly, it suggests a need for rather more than 200 beds for the average district, or, adding in the few specialised units such as the regional secure units, rather more than 50,000 for the country as a whole. Well over half of those are for elderly people.
Current statistics show that numbers of beds occupied by most groups of patients are remaining about the same, but the "old long stay" patients, left from an earlier pattern of care, are growing steadily older and reducing mainly through death. We think that from this cause the present in-patient figure—66,000 at the end of 1984—is likely to fall over the next 10 years by more than 5,000, and we also believe that current initiatives towards care in the community for long-stay patients will reduce numbers by something under 5,000. These are extrapolations, but they are pretty straightforward ones, and again they suggest a need for more than 50,000 beds. I share a dislike of calculations which assume that, because there has been a trend in the past, we necessarily want that trend to continue in the future. But noble Lords will see that in this case an approach based purely on good practice gives much the same result.
I must add, too, that there is a very general hope that we shall find when we have provided such local

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community-oriented services that they in fact reduce the need for in-patient care. If experience justifies the claims made, I hope—as we must all hope—that the need for in-patient care will fall lower. But I stress that we shall not lower our good practice advice unless and until that becomes not merely a hope, but a fact.
I want to say a word about that difficult subject—money. The spending on mental health services (mental handicap and mental illness) was £1,657 million in 1983–84—the latest year available—for health and social services; an increase of about 18 per cent. in real terms over 1978–79. That does not cover social security, housing, general social services not attributed to particular groups, etc. Financial management strategies are being designed at regional and district level to allocate resources in line with service priorities; for example, from some large hospitals to services provided in the community. The department has encouraged health authority treasurers to share their views and experience. Central finance has provided extra support for mental health services. For example, for the elderly there has been £6 million to encourage development of comprehensive local services.
We recognise that property represents one of the National Health Service's most valuable assets and that efficient management will maximise the resources available to health authorities for improving services to patients. Earlier this year, therefore, we lifted the restrictions on the sale of NHS surplus land and property, so that redundant mental hospitals can be sold on the open market, thus releasing the maximum amount of money to develop better community-based services for mentally ill and mentally handicapped people. So, for example, Rotherham Health Authority has released resources through the closure of Aughton Court Hospital, and North-East Essex Health Authority through the closure of Essex Hall. Both hospitals are of course small. The closures and sale of those hospitals have released money for the more effective implementation of community care. I gladly repeat that which I have already told the Schizophrenia Society—that money raised from the sale of land and buildings will be used for care in the community and will not go into the compartments of other purses of the National Health Service.
The Social Services Committee has expressed a lack of confidence in the effectiveness of joint finance arrangements to facilitate and encourage the discharge of long-stay patients and to bring about the establishment of matching services in the community. I would answer the committee by underlining the many considerable achievements so far under joint finance arrangements, which have enabled authorities to launch jointly planned schemes which would not otherwise have got off the ground.
One hundred and five million pounds has been allocated to health authorities for spending in this way in 1985–86 and, judging from past experience, about 40 per cent. of this money will be spent on mental handicap and mental illness services. The takeup rate for money available under joint finance mechanisms has been 98 per cent. over a nine-year period, and in the most recent year was at the same high level. The money is available and it is being used.
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Transfer of funds within the RHAs and from the RHAs is providing bridging funds for the Care in the Community initiative, and helping to provide, for example, staff and capital investment for adult training centres. These arrangements are both flexible and long-term. Nearly all regions now have explicit strategies for funding community care, including inter-district transfers of resources with responsibilities, and the build-up of bridging funds.
We have, through Care in the Community funding, also made available £16 million for pilot projects. In terms of central funding £10 million has been made available to help relocate children into appropriate settings with appropriate services away from large mental handicap hospitals. This has had considerable success, with the number of children in NHS hospitals and units falling from 7,100 in 1969 to 1,070 at the end of 1984. Some of the children have simply grown up, but the money has secured good quality homely units for many others. Children need to grow up in a place where they can be cared for as children. We are chasing health authorities to achieve this as quickly as possible—by using ordinary houses and families to the maximum extent.
I turn briefly to social security. We have said in our response to the Social Services Committee that we recognise the importance of social security for mentally ill or mentally handicapped people living outside hospital, with either no earned income or with some income but with special needs. The payments for residential care places, for example, have been set with this in mind; and in our review of social security we have taken into account their other needs. The Green Paper proposes that those disabled by mental handicap or mental illness will be covered by the new higher income support rates proposed. One small but significant example of our concern is the proposal contained in the Green Paper to increase the supplementary benefit earnings disregard for people receiving the disablement premium from £4 per week to £15 per week, giving increased scope for incentive payments in adult training centres. We are also concerned to provide clear information about benefit rights, and ready access to those rights both in hospitals and in the community.
There is, as the Government response acknowledges, a price to be paid for the new pattern of services. The cash price is reflected in the increasing mental health service expenditure in recent years, to which I have already referred. Quality and flexibility cannot be bought cheaply. The big gain is that we shall be paying for services that we do want instead of ancient buildings that we do not want. We are not closing hospitals without alternatives being provided. I cannot repeat too often that not a single large mental hospital has yet been closed and that many of those for which there is now a closure timetable are already half empty. If we wanted to go for simple relocation of patients we could close a substantial number of hospitals without discharging a single patient. That is not what people need.
The other obvious price of change is the need for an enormous adjustment in training, attitudes and responsibilities. Community care is about consumers, and that was not always true of the old service. Change is not easy to handle, and we all owe a great debt to the

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pioneers—not least the nurse pioneers—who led the way out of a hospital-dominated service into a radically new way of doing things; a way which recognises that in many places 95 per cent. of the consumers are outside the hospitals and 95 per cent. of the resources within them. We also owe a great debt to the many dedicated people working within the older institutions, often under less than ideal circumstances, discharging a very high standard of care to those whom they look after.
We cannot afford to be complacent about what is still to be achieved. We must continually review the services we provide and ask ourselves at all times whether what we are providing is appropriate for the people who are receiving it. We do not yet have all the answers. Some of the questions are not yet entirely clear. We shall certainly study most carefully the various points which arise from today's debate. We are always ready to accept new ideas. Progress sometimes seems painfully slow, but it must not be rushed; and I say that deliberately in response to the accusation sometimes made that we are rushing. Seeking commitment to firm timetables is not the same as rushing. What we are seeing is planned and responsible progress. The encouragement lies in people living fuller lives in the community, in some cases after very many years away from the community—people who would not ever want to go back into the great institution that was their home for so long. There are out in the community people who need a good deal of support but who now have the confidence that they will not have to go into hospital to get it.
I think it would be a great pity if this subject in any way turns into a vulgar political brawl. We all have the same end in view. We know that Care in the Community can work. It is the business of all of us to make quite sure that it continues to do so in the very best way possible for consumers, families and all those involved in caring for both those groups.
4.37 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Saint Albans: My Lords, this is my maiden speech and I wonder at my temerity in making it so soon after my introduction into your Lordships' House just six weeks ago today; but I am given to understand that there is a tradition of tolerance, even of indulgence, to maiden speakers and I am relying on that to sustain me.
Before I became a Bishop and discovered that I was joining the ranks of Marxist theologians, I had spent virtually all my ministry on the London Underground. I began in a parish on the Northern Line. I proceeded from there to the Piccadilly Line and then eventually to a living on the Central Line; and I finished up as Archdeacon of West Ham. I confess that just occasionally I prayed to the good Lord that he would move me a little out of range of the North Circular Road. When I received, five years ago, a most gracious letter from the Prime Minister inviting me to become the Bishop of St. Albans I almost heard the Lord say, "I did hear you, but only just"; for instead of the North Circular Road I now have the M.25, which represents not just an excellent modern ring road (which will be even better when my bit has been completed) but also marks out the ring of mental institutions built by our
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Victorian forefathers some decent 10 to 20 miles away from their respective catchment areas.
No less than six of these are found within five miles of St. Albans. That is why the temptation to speak in this debate initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, has proved irresistible. Of these six major hospitals, three are for the mentally ill and three for the mentally handicapped. They all deserve good publicity and I cannot praise them too highly for the heroic work they do.
I should like to restrict my remarks this afternoon to the latter group, represented by Cell Barnes Hospital in St. Albans, by Harperbury and by Leavesden. Between them they cater for nearly 3,000 mentally handicapped patients, ranging from those who probably never needed to be sent there in the first place but have now become chronically institutionalised, a high proportion of them being geriatrics, to highly disturbed adolescents who have to be protected from the consequences of their own strength and occasional violent outbursts, and embracing patients who combine physical and mental handicap to such a degree that they need total round-the-clock care.
The avowed strategy of the North-West Thames Regional Health Authority in pursuance of the policy dictated by national Government is that:
"All Districts should over the next decade develop increasingly comprehensive local services for mentally handicapped people … with the aim of ending the provision of residential services in hospitals.".
Two priorities are outlined: first, the establishment of new homes in the community for children and young people wherever possible, and secondly, the running down and closure of one of those hospitals—Leavesden—within the next 10 years. I am not here to bore your Lordships with arguing a particular case, or describing a particular location, but I have spent some time visiting these institutions and perhaps I may be permitted to make some general observations arising from my visits.
First of all, let me say on behalf of the Church of England that of course' we wholeheartedly welcome and support the Government's policy of restoring the mentally handicapped to community care. This reversal in the 1980s of what was done in the 1890s by a body described as the National Association for the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded, whose aim was the lifetime segregation of defectives, is much to be applauded. The policy is right in principle and the Church wants to play its part in ensuring that it comes out right in practice.
In a very moving debate in the General Synod in July last year, a report of the Board for Social Responsibility was received on The Local Church and Mentally Handicapped People and resolutions were passed welcoming the development of policies aimed at enabling a greater number of mentally handicapped people to live in the community; noting that fresh resources need to be made available if these aims are to be realised; and commending the consideration of the subject to dioceses for study and action.
In the Churches we are slowly waking up to the needs of the mentally handicapped. I guess that throughout the dioceses of the country at present this is firmly on the agenda and I have already received responses in a similar supportive vein from as far afield

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as Portsmouth, Devon and Manchester and from other parts of the Church.
But what can the Churches do to help? First, they can play a significant role in joining with what has to be a quite massive educational campaign to help ordinary people in our communities not to be afraid of the mentally handicapped but to treat them as human beings and welcome them as neighbours. Such education is still sorely needed. Far too few people have ever met, let alone related to, those with either mild or severe abnormalities. I can still vividly remember as a child walking in the local park with my family and seeing a crocodile of mentally handicapped men and women stumbling along on an organised walk, grunting, waving and grinning at all and sundry. I remember being told sharply, "Look the other way, John". I am sure my mother was more concerned to prevent me standing and staring in the roadway; but looking the other way has been the conditioned reflex of generations of Englishmen, and I sometimes reflect on that episode and wonder which was the greater handicap—the handicap of their brain damage or the handicap of those of us who, for all our health and strength, did not have the resources to look into their eyes and give them back a friendly wave.
Secondly, the Churches can enlist the support of volunteers who can help in the hundred and one neighbourly acts which such homes for the mentally handicapped will require, offering transport, companionship, acceptance and social life for those who come to live in the community. This we shall try to do, but I hope that such voluntary service will never be regarded as a substitute for, but only as a supplement to, the statutory care to which the mentally handicapped are entitled. As all those who are engaged in voluntary work know only too well, if too heavy burdens are laid on voluntary shoulders the supply of help sometimes dries up.
Thirdly, the Churches are already developing meeting places with the mentally handicapped through such organisations as the L'Arche communities or their satellite Faith and Light communities, which owe their inspiration to the Roman Catholic church. I hardly need to tell your Lordships that L'Arche is French for "the Ark". These "arks of acceptance", which are becoming increasingly ecumenical, are built on the principle that "We are all handicapped. For some the handicap is external. For others it is the handicap of selfishness and pride". Their charter goes on to say that, "each person, handicapped or not, has a unique and mysterious value". The L'Arche community brings together the mentally handicapped and those who care for them in a residential setting for living, working and praying together. Faith and Light communities invite the mentally handicapped, their families and friends, to a regular monthly meeting for sharing, celebration, social activities and prayer. As their founder, Jean Vanier, put it:
"The important thing is to meet, to listen to the man, woman or child who is mentally handicapped, to get to know him or her so that real bonds are created between us. In this way … nobody feels left out. We try to carry one another's burdens and to encourage each other on our journey to Jesus".
In these and in other ways, the Churches will continue to do what they can to support these mentally handicapped treasures of our society in the changes
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that are properly taking place, thanks to Government initiative. But there are anxieties and I should not be honest if I did not voice them and ask for appropriate reassurances, while at the same time thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, for all that she has already given.
Others before me have voiced the need for greater resources if care in the community is to be a success and not a nightmare. I shall not labour the point, but on Sunday afternoon I visited a ward at Leavesden Hospital where 23 pathetically incapable, mentally handicapped adults were being nursed by only two members of staff. It is a ward which, for 24-hour care, seven days a week, has a total staff complement of only six full-time and one part-time nurse and I know that no community care for that number of patients in that kind of condition would be possible without at least double that staffing ratio.
So let me simply plead that the pace of change from hospital to community is never allowed to outstrip the provision of adequate resources. Furthermore, if dispersal is to take place, it must be done with an eye to the needs of the patients. What is their community? Most of them come from London boroughs but their London borough of origin may mean nothing to them after 25 years in an institution. There are no family or friends in Ealing or Hillingdon to take an interest in them. Their community is the hospital. That is where their friends are—the staff, the social club, all their security. If they move out of the building, may they never by wrenched away from the only relationships that currently mean something to them.
For some of them, their community may be in Watford, where they will probably be placed. Yet, how sad it is that Watford Borough Council, which will need to give planning permission for the establishment of group homes, and the local community health council have both complained that they were not fully consulted about the proposal to close the hospital and so have pledged to fight the health authority's closure plans. How important it is, therefore, without taking any sides in the matter, to ensure full and widespread consultation if these plans are to succeed.
Finally, I have been asked by those who are devoting their lives to this work to make a plea that Her Majesty's Government combine with their enlightened policy of community care a determined, long-term programme of research through the Medical Research Council into the factors that produce mental handicap. I was quite astonished to be told—whether on good authority or bad—that only about 15 per cent. of all mental handicap could be identified as to its cause and origins. I may be wrong. But, if this is indeed so, community care must be regarded as only an interim solution on the much longer road of research that leads to greater success in the prevention of any handicap that can possibly be prevented.
4.52 p.m.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the right reverend Prelate and to congratulate him on his very moving and very well-informed maiden speech. The noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, who is himself well qualified in this field, said that we did well to listen with special interest to anything that the Church had to say. I agree. The speech of the right reverend Prelate will perhaps send us back once again

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to the Gospels, where we shall read the story of the miracles. The right reverend Prelate will be able to tell us offhand what proportion of those miracles were miracles of mental healing and what were of physical healing. Some may be considered to be on the borderline. At any rate, in the Gospels mental illness and handicap and physical handicaps of all kinds are placed on an equal footing. That has never been so in society. Everything that the right reverend Prelate has said will help us in that direction.
I should also like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, for initiating this most timely debate and for the kind things that he said about the Richmond Fellowship and their report which emanated from a committee of which I was chairman. I shall concentrate on those aspects of this subject which I believe are usually assigned to a Back-Bencher, rather than cover the whole field. I am glad to think that I shall be followed by the president of Mencap, whose name will always be honourably associated with mental handicap. I was once chairman of the National Society for the Mentally Handicapped. I am glad to think that he will be dealing with that subject, as no doubt will the noble Lord, Lord Allen, when he rejoins us.
As the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, said, I initiated a debate nearly five years ago. I am sorry that we have lost the services of the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington. Did she have to leave us?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, yes.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, I was going to say one or two things in reply to her, but the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, in her debut in winding up a debate, will no doubt dispose very effectively of anything that I say about the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington. Nearly five years ago, I initiated a debate on this subject in this House, and that led on to the Richmond Fellowship Committee. That, in turn, led on to the debate started by my noble friend Lord Beswick, who has made such a notable contribution to the work of the Richmond Fellowship Committee.
It is interesting, glancing through the report and looking at the names of members, to find—not only the name of the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, of the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, who will be speaking, and of the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, but also that of the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington. Although she has said that she did not play a large part, she was a most valued member. Apart from anything else it was important to have two leading Conservatives as strong and unchallengeable as the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, and the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington. It is impossible for Mr. Norman Tebbit to say, in view of their memberships of our committee, that we were just a lot of Marxists. Perhaps he did not say that. He may have said something worse. I forget exactly. At any rate, it is impossible for him to criticise the composition.
I was going to say, had the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, been present (but I feel bound nevertheless to say it in her absence) that there is a sentence in the report which, although it is true that it was written by myself, is something for which she must be thought to share responsibility. I said:
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"We all share"—
that is the whole committee—
"a profound conviction that this sphere of social need has been hitherto scandalously neglected".
If it was scandalously neglected in 1983, no-one can pretend that it is anything else but scandalously neglected now. So when the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, says that she hopes there will not to a vulgar political brawl, I must make plain that many people outside the Government circle consider that the present provision for the mentally ill and the mentally handicapped is grossly inadequate. That is just a conviction. It does not involve any comment on the sensitivity or lack of it among those who are responsible for Government policy.
It stems, I suppose, from the Government's peculiar economic policy. Mr. Lawson, the Chancellor, has said that we are having a boom and that the whole country is going ahead fast economically: yet at the same time we are undergoing a period of such extreme stringency that we are unable to provide very much to help the mentally ill. It is true that Mr. Lawson was once my pupil at Oxford. He may have picked up this sort of double talk from me. If so, I apologise.
Lord Ennals: Shame on you!
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, it is no doubt all my fault. Wherever it came from, this is what we are told by our rulers. They are making a great success of the economy, but nothing much can be done to improve the lot of the mentally ill. I do not wish, however, to speak in a controversial spirit. I wish to deal with a few points that arise from the Richmond Fellowship report.
The House must not be frightened if I say that I shall allude to seven points. I shall only have about a sentence to say on each. I shall therefore remain within reasonable limits. Our first suggestion was a designated Minister with special responsibilities for mental health. I do not want to quibble over this. One can argue as to whether or not we have one at the moment. The noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, did a very good job in his time. He certainly took a special interest in mental health. The appointment of the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, is very welcome, not only because she is so popular but also because she is very forceful. I feel that if anyone in her particular situation will be able to make an impact it will be her. But it remains unclear at this moment whether the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, can be what I called in 1983 the designated champion of the cause of the mentally ill and the mentally handicapped. I do not think that at the moment that point has been clarified. I hope that as time goes on she will establish the same kind of influence as, shall we say, Mr. Alf Morris had when he was Minister for the Disabled. That is what I have in mind.
Secondly, the establishment of a development fund for care in the community initiatives was proposed. The development fund has not yet been established, but the Government have indicated that they may put extra resources towards providing for people who are moving from hospital into the community. Let us be hopeful—perhaps not too hopeful—about that.

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Thirdly, we suggested a DHSS planning board on which the voluntary sector was represented. As far as I can see there has been no move to establish a planning board with a voluntary sector representation. This is most unfortunate because of the immense contribution which the voluntary sector can make. One or two nice and very well-justified things have been said about the Richmond Fellowship, which has done such great work in the voluntary sector over all these years under the auspices of that amazing woman, Elli Janssen.
Fourthly, it was proposed that co-ordinating mechanism should be established in every district with representation from local, statutory and voluntary interests. I understand that there has been a little movement here but the overall picture is still very unsatisfactory.
Fifthly, it was proposed that a monitoring mechanism along the lines of the schools inspectorate should be established. Again, there has been a little progress here. Plans are afoot to extend the work of the social services inspectorate under the Registered Homes Act. The Richmond Fellowship, despite some criticisms of that Act, welcomes the Registered Homes Act as a positive move. Therefore, I do not want to be churlish; I would say that one should be grateful.
Sixthly, there was the recommendation that coordinated care should be available at grass-roots level for all identified as being in need by reason of severe mental illness or disability. In a sense, that is the core of the whole discussion and I cannot do better than endorse what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, who has a unique, double-barrelled kind of experience in this field.
Lastly, the inquiry asked that in-service training schemes and specialist training courses should be set up in centres of excellence. I shall give one example before I close. The Richmond Fellowship College has been developing staff training in this field for 25 years. It should be actively involved with the statutory agencies in planning for the training needs of staff during the next decade. I would hope that the Government would accept that submission and act accordingly.
Much could be achieved by administrative changes, some of which I have outlined. The temptation must be resisted to believe that the switch from institutional to community care automatically solves the problem. It could do more harm than good. I do not say that it is doing more harm than good but that it could, as explained by the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, and other speakers.
I said earlier that the Government refused to provide larger resources because of their sincere economic beliefs. Because of that particular kind of economic doctrine they are refusing to do what is necessary to provide an adequate service in this country for the mentally ill. Much could be done, as I say, by a more intelligent use of the resources. But in the long run we must be prepared for a much greater provision of resources and in that clear sense, therefore, to sacrifice ourselves, to tax ourselves much more boldly than we have done hitherto, if we want to
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provide a service for the mentally ill and the mentally handicapped that is worthy of a Christian country.
5.4 p.m.
Lord Renton: My Lords, first, I should like to join with the noble Earl in congratulating the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Saint Albans. I am sure that all of us were extremely impressed by the depth of knowledge that he has already acquired of the mental hospitals and other places in his diocese.
I should like to endorse what he expressed as a mere hope, but which seems to me already to be fact; namely, the work done by the Church in improving public understanding of the character, the personalities and the needs of mentally handicapped people. My own experience of it was in his own cathedral because I was once invited to open an exhibition there of art by mentally handicapped people, some of whom could not even speak. I can only say that I wish that I had been able to do as good paintings as they did.
Perhaps I may say on a personal note that I have always had a great affection for St. Albans because, from about 1938 onwards, it was for family reasons my home from home. My sister-in-law lived close by and I got to know the place so well. I wish the right reverend Pelate well in his new diocese. I am sure that he will have a most fruitful time of service there
It is always a pleasure for me to hear the noble Earl and a privilege to follow him. I think that your Lordships should be warned that you have a kind of Mencap hat trick on your hands this afternoon. Your Lordships have heard the noble Earl who is a past chairman; I am a past chairman and president: my noble friend Lord Allen of Abbeydale is now chairman. We are all speaking in I hope fairly quick succession.
I am glad that my noble friend Lord Mottistone chose this subject today. If I may let the cat out of the bag, this was the day on which a Conservative Back-Bencher was entitled to choose the subject and I am glad that the noble Lord chose this subject of the problems related to mental illness and mental handicap because it is further evidence that Conservatives care just as much as other people about these problems.
We welcome the activities of MIND, of which the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, is the distinguished President, of the Richmond Fellowship, and so on. One must always allow the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, a little political licence; but I felt that the somewhat critical speech the noble Lord made of the Government's performance was well answered by the very impressive facts and figures about government action already taken and to be taken in this field given by my noble friend Lady Trumpington.
We genuinely welcome the support of associated pressure groups, but I think that we can claim that in Mencap we have used the resources available to considerable effect, as I shall show in a moment. Of course, as the Richmond Fellowship report mentions—and as the right reverend Prelate mentioned—it was with the best intentions that our Victorian predecessors built these vast institutions;

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spacious buildings in spacious grounds with farms and gardens and some opportunities of doing work.
I have been in four of these places myself—as a visitor, I hasten to add—and they were in a kind of way most imaginative. But they involved what the right reverend Prelate correctly called segregation from the rest of life; and that was the objective. It was intended to give protective surroundings and a protective existence for people who, it was assumed, could not lead ordinary lives. I am afraid that has to continue for many of them for some years. Those who went in when they should not have done, when they were young, become completely institutionalised. For those adults who could go into the wider world, of course, it is a tremendous leap in the dark; for those who have for many years, or even a few years, lived in an institution suddenly to try to lead an ordindary life. Goodness, we who call ourselves ordinary people have problems enough in managing our lives! The difficulties of transition for these people are very great. Therefore, those noble Lords who have referred to the need for improved arrangements to secure that transition does not take place too hastily or without proper advance preparation are, I suggest, dealing with the crucial point that arises in this debate.
It was not until the Royal Commission report in 1957 recommended that there should be a complete change from the institutional practice of having people in large mental hospitals that a move started. That was less then 30 years ago. Seeing my noble friend Lord Broxbourne in the Chamber—and I am very glad that he is speaking in the debate—reminds me that the first legislation to reverse the process was his Mental Health Act 1959. It is interesting that Part III of that Act used the then existing law. Residential homes for ordinary people run by local authorities and nursing homes, whether run by local authorities or privately, could under that Act be used for those who were "mentally disordered"—that was the phrase used—but the Act said that the numbers should be limited by the authorities. Under the 1959 Act it became a criminal offence for anyone to take more people than the number allowed into any one of these nursing or residential homes. At the time we felt that that was right and I was one of the junior Ministers who had to help my noble friend with regard to that Act, and I was proud to do so. If the scheme were thoroughly thought out again, we would probably not make that a crime.
However, that was the start of this new system which so many of us have been discussing today. As my noble friend Lady Trumpington pointed out, it is a system in which the health service, the local authorities, and above all the voluntary bodies which provide services, have an important part to play. The noble Earl, Lord Longford, and I are both patrons of the Ravenswood Foundation which has done wonderful work establishing a home for about 140 people, but they are not herded together in one building. It is a very open plan, with separate chalets and a number of separate buildings for training; it has a magnificent heated swimming pool, and so on. That has mostly been built without government funds. Public funds are used to support people when they are there, but the capital was generously raised by the
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Jewish community. Several million pounds were required to provide the home for those 140 people.
I come now to deal with the contribution made by Mencap. After the White Paper of 1971, which was an attempt to deal with the situation, it was found that the position was not quite satisfactory and the kind of complaints about which we have heard today were already being made—namely, that people were being discharged from mental hospitals without proper alternative provision being made. That worried us a great deal at Mencap. In 1980—and I am necessarily jumping the years because of time—my right honourable friend Mr. Patrick Jenkin was Secretary of State for Health and Social Security. He attended a Mencap conference and said that he wanted to encourage the voluntary bodies to provide further accommodation. He offered us £1 million, spread over four years, on a pound-to-pound basis. In other words, for every pound that we contributed towards this development, he would contribute a pound up to £1 million spread over a period of four years. It sounded splendid and we rejoiced, but we found that conditions were attached which made the money unacceptable.
However, we were not daunted by that because we already had our own housing association. By the time Mr. Patrick Jenkin became Secretary of State for the Environment we found that we were able to get large sums for our housing association to develop these small residential homes and hostels for the mentally handicapped who were being discharged from large institutions. We have already provided 40 small homes at considerable expense to ourselves as well as to the public purse. Each of these places holds between five and eight mentally handicapped people, all of whom are adults. To provide 40 such homes in the past four years is not a bad start.
I am pleased to be able to tell your Lordships that we have 78 more projects under way which we shall get built with housing association grants amounting to £5 million from the Department of the Environment. We do not keep this a dark secret, and I mention it in the debate in case other voluntary bodies can jump on that rather valuable bandwagon. So it goes on.
However, from the figures I have given of 78 places with an average of seven people in each, your Lordships, by quick mental arithmetic, will see that a very large amount of money is needed just to start these homes going. We in Mencap furnish them and then we have to staff them. So far we have succeeded in doing so despite the problems to which people have referred about staffing. We have found the staff, and I hope that we shall continue to do so.
Other voluntary bodies are making similar progress. It is progress mainly with regard to adults. I was greatly heartened to hear my noble friend Lady Longford—I apologise, I mean Lady Trumpington; I hope that both my noble friend and the noble Earl will feel complimented by the confusion in my mind—point out (and this is very fundamental) that in the past four years the number of children in mental handicap hospitals who did not need medical attention but who were just there because there was nowhere else for them to go at the time, has been reduced from over 7,000 to just over 1,000. That shows that this process is moving in the right direction.

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One could go on and say much more, but I just want to conclude on this note: I think that my noble friend Lady Trumpington was quite right in saying that we do not want to make this into a vulgar party squabble. Indeed, the fact that so many Members of your Lordships' House take a deep and caring interest in this matter is further evidence of the proposition that a civilised society can be, and should be, judged partly by the way in which it treats those of its citizens who have the misfortune to be mentally ill or mentally handicapped.
5.21 p.m.
Lord Allen of Abbeydale: My Lords, it seems to be no secret that I am currently chairman of Mencap, but I suppose I ought also to say that I have the special interest of being president of the League of Friends of Broadmoor. Although these are interests, I may hasten to add that they are by no means financial interests.
Like previous speakers I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, for choosing this important subject for debate today. It is a subject which is difficult and, as he said, wide-ranging; so wide-ranging, indeed, that in the time available I myself propose to pick out just three salient points. I do so the more readily as the major issues have already been well covered earlier in the debate. We are particularly fortunate in that the debate has been illuminated by so notable a maiden speech as that delivered by the right reverend Prelate.
I have just one preliminary point. I notice that the House of Commons Select Committee, about which we have heard so much, said that it was a mockery of community care if mentally disabled people were dumped on the prisons simply because there was nowhere else for them to go. I was greatly tempted to go back to the long-running and rather deplorable story of the regional secure units, safe in the knowledge that if I did so I would at any rate have the sympathetic support of the noble Earl, Lord Longford. But I decided to resist that temptation and simply to express the hope that this is a topic to which we shall revert in another debate at a fairly early date.
Instead, this evening I should like to begin with a hard, practical issue, that of mobility allowance; an allowance which is payable to those who either are unable to walk or are virtually unable to do so, however "walking" may be defined. I do so in particular on behalf of those mentally handicapped people whose walking abilities are erratic and unpredictable and who cannot move towards a desired destination.
In a debate in another place just over a year ago—the reference is to col. 925 of Commons Hansard for 16th November last year—Mr. Tony Newton, the Minister for Social Security, said that a good deal turned upon a forthcoming judgment of the House of Lords Judicial Committee on an appeal by a blind person who had directional problems, but that the Government were conscious of the difficulties and that when the result of the appeal was known they would consider whether any further guidance was needed, and whether the regulations should be amended—and the relevant regulation-making power is most astonishingly wide.
In the event the House of Lords dismissed the appeal, I think last March, and it is not difficult to see
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why this conclusion was reached on the terms of the regulations as they now exist. But when the Select Committee asked that sympathetic consideration be given to extending mobility allowance to those mentally disabled people who were in practice unable to walk unaided, the Government's recent and rather belated reply was silent about further guidance or about new regulations, but said that the committee's proposal would be "kept in mind", with the inevitable accompanying murmurings about difficulties of finance and principle.
I wonder whether the noble Baroness, when she winds up, could elaborate a little on what being "kept in mind" means in this context. Are the Government still brooding about further action? Are we likely to see amending regulations? Or is this a formula designed to conceal a resolve to do nothing? The answers to these questions are of great practical significance to a number of families facing real difficulties.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, would the noble Lord give way? Just to show that there is no party controversy whatsoever, the term "will be kept in mind", in my experience, from whichever side of the House or whichever party is in power, means that it is not at the moment planning to do anything at all.
Lord Allen of Abbeydale: My Lords, I understand, on a technical point, that the phrase to which the noble Lord referred earlier was "borne in mind". Whether there is some subtle distinction, I do not know.
My second topic concerns the care of the elderly. I am not at all sure that, as a nation, we have yet come to grips with the increasing problems of the care of the elderly in general, but I am in no doubt that we have a long way to go before we can claim that sufficient help is being made available to enable ageing mentally disabled people to achieve as satisfactory a quality of life as the rest of the ageing population.
Medical skills have led to a most remarkable increase in the longevity of the mentally handicapped, but specialised facilities in the community simply have not kept up. Many of the elderly mentally handicapped have an increasing need for help and support, for advice, and for opportunities to be active; and for them any adjustment they may have to make late in life to new surroundings and new people around them is especially traumatic.
All I seek to do today is to emphasise that this is an increasingly important issue which I hope the Government will take very seriously indeed. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, referred to a specific grant to help the elderly, but it did not seem to be on a scale to go very far, and certainly this was not a topic on which the Government chose to spread themselves at any great length in their reply to the Select Committee.
My third point inevitably brings me back to the one word which underlies so much of what has been said already, and that is money. Let me say straightaway that at Mencap we are grateful for the grant towards our administrative expenses—although we could certainly do with some more. But the point I want to make—and here I am only repeating what has been said by several speakers already—is that it is really no good going in for community care unless adequate plans have been made in advance, and I am afraid that

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I, for one, have not been totally reassured by what has been said about preparations of this kind.
I know that Mr. Kenneth Clarke, when Minister for Health, told the Select Committee that he believed that going in for care in the community was cost-neutral and that cost was therefore not a major consideration, but I fear that the findings of the York University study, and our own calculations, confirm the suggestion that to carry through the policy of community care on a worthwhile scale is indeed going to need more resources.
I think only a limited dependence can be put on the local authorities for a major effort if, for all practical purposes, they are limited to their present resources and to future uncertainties. If some sort of bridging finance could be provided from the centre—this is a point which the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, touched on—there is at least the prospect of recovering some of the money in the end from the disposal of sites of unused hospitals. I gathered from the noble Baroness that there was a guarantee that the money raised in this way would be reserved for these purposes.
We awaited with some eagerness the Government's reply to the Select Committee on this crucial issue of resources so that we could get a clear impression of whether additional resources were to be made available. Alas, to put it kindly, that reply did not remove all doubt. I should like to read to your Lordships a short extract from it. After explaining that for some individuals community care would be cheaper and for others more expensive, the paragraph goes on:
"Authorities are jointly assessing individuals; costing care options … and, where further resources are thought necessary, determining the effective priority for these developments, taking account of national policies and local circumstances. Specific central initiatives have been and are being undertaken, and can be further considered as appropriate. The Government is keeping the situation under review, and ensuring that community care needs are reflected in public expenditure discussions, and that the use of resources by health authorities and the match between their resources and their plans is monitored closely in accountability reviews and in the scrutiny of plans."
As a former civil servant I can speak of that passage only with admiration. One can just picture the scene: the loving care with which a proviso was suggested here and a qualification put in there, and the result a beautiful bit of prose. But I wonder what it actually means? I think I am not overstating it if I say that the conclusion does not emerge with crystal clarity.
I looked for a much more detailed explanation from the noble Baroness this evening, but the fact is (I say this with great regret) that she went too fast for me. I shall read Hansard with great interest to see what she said. Whether she was saying we are to get more money, I do not know. We had a list, a cornucopia of goodies, but what they amount to will require further study.
There is one point which the noble Baroness will be able to make when she winds up, and that is to explain (perhaps at a pace which I, at any rate, can take in) what the present thinking of the Government is about bridging finance from the centre.
In the light of what the right reverend Prelate said there is just one other point I should like to touch on which underlies so much of what we are discussing,
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and that is the attitude of the community. As he said, there is a great deal of ignorance about the mentally disabled and too ready a tendency to assume that they must all, without distinction, be behaviourally disturbed and must of necessity be bad neighbours. Experience suggests that once a move has taken place, public resistance tends to die away. I cannot help thinking that if it were now proposed for the first time to site Broadmoor in the middle of Crowthorne there would be a most enormous howl of objection, whereas in practice this long-established hospital is well accepted in the town and the local residents do a simply marvellous job in supporting the hospital and the patients. The problem—and it is admittedly not an easy one—is how to break down initial prejudice and get a more informed public opinion. Some of this can be done by the voluntary organisations, but there is scope for the Government to do much more to try to get their policies understood. I know that could be said of other things they do, but I shall let that pass.
The issues we are discussing this evening are of great significance to a considerable number of the less fortunate members of society. It has been said that one must never forget the burdens falling on families as well as the wellbeing of the mentally disabled themselves. At times one's predominant feeling is simply one of humility. It is an area where greater public awareness and rather greater public resources can result in real help for some of our fellow citizens who deserve our sympathy and our compassion.
5.36 p.m.
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, inevitably in a debate such as this there is repetition. I make no apology for I propose to repeat a good deal of what has been said before, but perhaps in different ways simply to underline the importance.
My first point is to refer to children, as have my noble friends Lady Trumpington and Lord Renton. Everything starts in childhood and it is a great sorrow to many of us and to the organisation called Exodus that we have so many handicapped children living in large, long-term mental hospitals and big wards. I pay tribute to Her Majesty's Government for the partnership which the Government have taken on with voluntary organisations. The noble Lord, Lord Renton, has mentioned one at Ravenswood, and the noble Viscount, Lord Tonypandy, will know of others in his capacity as president of the National Children's Homes. From the point of view of Barnardo's, of which I am a council member, in concert with Her Majesty's Government Barnado's are slowly helping to find alternative accommodation in the community for mentally handicapped children.
Last year residential care was found for 299 children in small group homes in the areas where the children lived so that they could be near their families. At the same time 426 children received what is called "respite care": that is care at the weekend or perhaps during a holiday giving parents a rest; and 70 children were placed in foster homes. We look forward to having further co-operation with the Department of Health and Social Security so that ultimately we and other voluntary organisations will be able to remove children from hospitals for the mentally handicapped.
I now come to points which have been touched on by many noble Lords, especially the process of moving

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a person from a hospital into the community. First, I should say that I hope that we will not adhere slavishly to the principle of community care because some patients do better with hospital care. There must be choice. I should refer to the right reverend Prelate, who said that every person, however handicapped, is valuable. They have to some extent a choice and if not a choice, at any rate, as other noble Lords have said, consultation. I have dealt with many such cases. The transference does not only lie in the preparation of the patient: it lies in the preparation of the family; it lies in the preparation of the community.
Perhaps I may just say that last Christmas I visited a patient who now lives in a three-room-up and a two-room-down house with four other patients. I took him my Christmas presents on Christmas morning. While I was there, the front doorbell rang, and I heard my friend (who is now a man of 30, and for whom I have been responsible since he was six) go to the door and then slam it. He returned with a big box of chocolates. I said, "Where has that come from?" He said, "The lady next door brought it in". So I said, "Well, didn't you say 'thank-you'? Didn't you ask her in? Couldn't we give her coffee?" He said, "Why should we? We have been here for two years and that is the first time she has ever been near us!" So I flew to the woman next door, brought her in and we all had coffee. Now she is a great friend. But she should have been prepared before that home in the community was ever opened.
That brings me to another point, which is the position in relation to the people who do the work: the hospital staff, the doctors and the social workers. I, like many others, as has been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, have also had a letter from the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Dr. Bewley writes:
"The Royal College of Psychiatrists is very concerned that the run-down of the mental hospitals is happening up and down the country already without adequate alternative provision being made by the local authorities.".
If one is to make adequate provisions, there are the bricks and mortar but there are also the people. The people about whom I mainly wish to speak this afternoon are the social workers. I wonder whether your Lordships will bear with me if I just go into a little bit of history. Before the 1970 Local Authority Social Services Act, the medical officer of health had two departments: he had a department for mental health and a. department for those people caring for the elderly and the handicapped. Those two departments came under the aegis of the then Department of Health. At the Department of Health there was a most remarkable social worker called Dame Geraldine Aves, who was responsible for setting up a two-year training programme for mental health officers and those working with the elderly. It was two years' training simply in the fields of mental health and the elderly. Running alongside that, in the local authorities, were children's departments, and the children's departments were at that time the responsibility of the Home Office.
The Home Office set up a training unit within the Home Office and there was a two-year training programme for children and families only: nothing else. Furthermore, there were refresher courses after
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training and there was retraining for anyone who wished to take it up. Then, there was the probation department. The Home Office was responsible for probation. The probation officers had their training. Then, in 1969, the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act was passed. Of course, up to that date, there had been no training for the physically handicapped under the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act.
With the passing of the Local Authority Social Services Act in 1970, the Council for Education and Training in Social Work was set up. This is a kind of independent quango body. It was their responsibility to lead training for the new social services department throughout the country. The Council was made up of no fewer than 64 people. My Lords, can you imagine it? It was big, it was unwieldy and an enormous number of people serving on that council really knew nothing, if I may suggest it, about the professional training of social workers.
Can your Lordships believe this? It was then arranged that there should be one training programme for all social workers, and, believe it or not, for two years. By my reckoning, it should have been for six years. I see the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, shaking his head and I am sure he has experienced difficulties in this area. How could that council have set up a training programme for social workers in the fields of the mentally ill, the mentally handicapped children, the chronically sick and disabled and the elderly and expect to train them in two years? It was not possible. It should never have been thought of, and it should never have been carried out.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, will the noble Baroness agree that some of the so-called "scandals" in connection with social work, which are doing no good at all to the profession of social work, probably derive from this unfortunate change in training?
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness. Of course, coming from the London School of Economics, she well knows what I am talking about. In fairness to the trainees, to my fellow social workers, I say that society has served them ill. To carry out the kind of work that we have to carry out, with a training of only two years, is an absolute impossibility.
I mention this because of course it was recommended in the Mental Health Act of 1981 that there should be approved social workers for dealing with the mentally ill and mentally handicapped. They were to have a special training within their departments and a special assessment before they could receive their warrants. As your Lordships will know, under Section 4 of the Mental Health Act, for which my noble friends Lord Broxbourne and Lord Renton were responsible, compulsory admission to a mental hospital was not dealt with under that Act except as a kind of helping hand by the social workers. However, under a later Act, the social workers were there at the admission, together with the doctors, to decide whether patients should or should not be admitted. If it were at all possible to prevent a patient being admitted statutorily, it was the social worker's business to know and help, and to work with the doctor. But that needs training.

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Perhaps your Lordships will bear with me while I read the relevant comment of the Mental Health Act Commission in their first annual report. The report reads:
"The provision and training of sufficient Approved Social Workers … have been particular difficulties during the period in question, mainly due to industrial action"—
and I shall come on to this—
"This matter has been consistently pursued by Commissioners, in view of its significance for the admission of detained patients. Fewer than 1,000 social workers passed the necessary examinations for [Approved Social Workers] and at least some English counties have no fully qualified [Approved Social Workers] at all".
Therefore, the Act of 1983 is not being carried out. It cannot be carried out because the training is not yet adequate. There are other problems, I am bound to say this. I am a member of NALGO. I have been a member of it all my working life, except for when I was in the Civil Service and then belonged to the Civil Service Union. I am still a member of NALGO. However, I should suggest that NALGO has prevented people from training, by laying down certain conditions which I consider to be professional conditions and I do not think it was right of NALGO to scupper, if I may use such a word for it, the training of the social workers. I make a plea to NALGO to re-think its role in social work, to re-think what is its social duty in social work. It is to help those who are members of NALGO, but I should suggest that it is not to interefere with professional practice in a profession. I beg NALGO to re-think what it is doing, and to realise that if it proceeds with its present action, there will be more patients admitted to mental hospitals than there should be, and then we shall have more difficulties in getting patients out of hospital.
I would just say this. To put extra bits of training on to basic training is expensive. I need hardly say that your Lordships will have read in yesterday's newspapers the report of Mr. Blom-Cooper on the investigation on behalf of Brent Council into the Jasmine Beckford case, where the child died. In his report he recommended a three-year training course for social workers, instead of two. Personally, I think that three years is not enough; but then I think it would be possible to train social workers, on the initial course, to do mental health and not need to have extra bits added all the time—a bit for mental health, a bit for child care. This is not sensible.
I suggest that there should be a three-year course, at least, for social workers. I suggest that the first 18 months of the course should be generic; and I believe that it is necessary for social workers to be taught philosophy—the reasons why they are doing what they are doing. Very few courses that I know of have philosophy in their curriculum. In the course that I did, way back in the 1930s, we had a philosophy lecture every week for the duration of our course. Until social workers know and think about what they are doing, they will not get their work in perspective.
Secondly, it is quite shocking that social workers are taught so little law. You cannot do social work unless you are working within the confines of the law. I hardly dare tell your Lordships that there are some courses where the social workers have one lecture on law in two years. This may be rare, it may not happen in every case—I am sure that it does not—and I know
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that the Council for Training and Education in Social Work is repairing this. Here, again, when I trained I had a lecture in law from an eminent QC every week for the duration of my training. This is not happening at the moment. I believe also that it is impossible in the first 18 months of generic training to learn economics and the social background of the country.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, would the noble Baroness who speaks with such authority on these matters agree that where students, potential social workers, have actually taken a university degree in some of these subjects that should shorten the course?
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, if you have a degree you can take a social work course in one year. It is not enough. You cannot learn all that you need to learn of social work in one year.
I have two last points to make. First, I must touch on the Council for Training and Education in Social Work. This independent body, as I said earlier, was set up in 1970 with 60 council members. I think we must congratulate Her Majesty's Government for reconstituting this body. I think it was reconstituted a year ago under the very able chairmanship of Miss Joan Cooper, and it now has 26 people on the council. I still think that that is too many.
My last point is this. I think that the tutors and the people who run courses are in very great difficulty because the Council for Training and Education in Social Work is asking now for a three-year course—but, I regret to have to say, not until, I think, 1999. I would think that it ought to come much sooner. But what is the rub? The rub is that the universities say that they have not got the money to put on three-year courses, and so we have an impasse. What are Her Majesty's Government going to do about this? I ask this very seriously and would like to pursue it at a later date.
Finally, a great responsibility lies on universities and on the tutors and lecturers. I say with very great regret that some of the courses offered, short as they are, have such a party political bias and concentrate so much on politics that they get away from the central professional points and training which should be given. Also, I would say that all the training in the world, all the laws in the world, will not make a ha'p'orth of difference unless only people of character, integrity and quality are accepted for training as social workers.
5.54 p.m.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, most people, I am sure, would agree with the concept that mentally ill and mentally handicapped persons should be treated and rehabilitated as close to their homes as possible. But the move from the large institutions to smaller units or care in the community is no cheap option. I am sure that this message has truly gone out from this House today. It is a mammoth task needing the greatest co-operation and organisation between health and social services departments with the help of the voluntary agencies as well as education and training departments.
It was good to hear from the Minister's speech of some of the progress which is being made. It sounded hopeful. There have been some excellent voluntary

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initiatives for mentally handicapped people recently. Horticulture, for one, and dance and drama and art as well. These are encouraging signs. The maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Saint Albans was also a message of hope, because attitudes are so vitally important. I should like to congratulate him on his most moving speech.
Before a decision is taken to close a large psychiatric hospital and to sell off the surrounding land, plans for the patients should be made. We should look at the quality of life of the patients, what they have now and what they may have in the future. The large psychiatric hospital can be frightening and daunting for people who are not used to them, but over the last few years their interiors have greatly improved.
In some hospitals the quality of nursing care is superb. Patients are taken for outings by the staff, and there are recreational and occupational facilities. There are often social clubs, and some of these have bars. In one Birmingham hospital I visited patients who had moved out into the community preferred to come back to the hospital for these social activities which they enjoyed among their friends and people who understood them. They had not found this sort of community life outside the hospital. There is a real fear by many people that psychiatric patients of many different handicaps could become isolated and very lonely in a society where they are not understood or wanted.
If the move to the community is to be successful, then the services must also be decanted. There must be occupational therapy support, sheltered workshops and social activities. The big stumbling block is the cash. There will have to be a reallocation of resources. More people with expertise in mental illness and handicap will be needed to be spread throughout the district. The increase in numbers of trained psychiatric community nurses working in health districts over the past two years has been a great step forward. They not only understand the needs of patients, but they also support and advise the families.
I should like to ask the Minister how the fostering schemes for the mentally ill and handicapped persons are developing. The idea is excellent, but in practice are these schemes working? The replacing of specialised social workers by generic social workers has not helped in the care given to mentally ill and handicapped persons. In fact, is this not one of the tragedies of our present child abuse problem? Perhaps, as the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, and the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, have mentioned this, it could be looked at very urgently. The world has become a place for specialisation. Doctors work in very specialised fields, as do scientists; yet the social worker is expected to understand a multitude of very complicated problems. No wonder vital signs are missed or that many social workers themselves have breakdowns.
There is another problem with regard to social workers when there are regional secure units, because these units deal with some of the most disturbed and difficult patients. Although the units cover the whole region or even supra-regions, the social workers belong to the local social service departments, which do not see why they should support patients from outside their area. Therefore there is sometimes a shortage of
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social support in this much needed specialised field. I worry when some of the small hospitals are sold off throughout the country because when the large psychiatric hospitals are disposed of there will still be a need for hospital care for some patients. That must not be forgotten. Planning permission for new units is sometimes very difficult to obtain. Small, institutional units will be needed for the severe organic braindamaged patients; for instance, those with severe head injuries, and some stroke patients.
I have just been dealing with a tragic case where the husband had a stroke which changed his whole personality. At times he got very aggressive. His elderly wife could no longer cope. She was herself twice admitted to a general hospital with exhaustion and breakdown through stress and strain. The daughter had her own family to bring up and her own husband to look after; she found it very difficult to help and was desperately worried. When at last this man was admitted to hospital the terrible pressure was taken off these people. The man was visited regularly by his family in hospital, and I had a letter from the daughter full of admiration for the hospital staff who could manage him and understand his ways when his wife just could not cope.
Many people were shocked when recently a deaf mute person who had committed minor crimes was sent to prison. If we do not have adequate specialised units, more psychiatric patients will be sent to prisons, which are not the correct place for them, and of course it increases the overcrowding of prisons and means that they are bursting at the seams.
We have a large and growing population of elderly people, some of whom develop Alzheimer's disease and senile dementia. Many of these patients outlive their families, their mental faculties decline and they have to be looked after. We must look ahead and ensure that this problem is not shoved under the carpet. With many unemployed young people we should be training some of them to care for these unfortunate people in the future. I have written to the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, about this and I hope he will include this need in his youth training scheme.
In regard to a recent Question in this House on lifting Crown immunities on hospital kitchens, the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, said this would not be practicable, as some of the kitchens might have to be closed immediately since they would not pass the test by the inspectors. My Lords, some very frail and vulnerable patients reside in hospitals with such kitchens. I was surprised when I read the noble Baroness's defeatist Answer in Hansard. This is not her usual style; she is one to stand up and be counted. I come from Yorkshire, from a county where, sadly, many patients died last year in a psychiatric hospital from an outbreak of salmonella poisoning. Would it not be possible, while the kitchens were upgraded and modified to reach the required standard, to bring in a mobile kitchen? When troops were fed in the Falklands or when they are fed elsewhere, are not mobile kitchens used? I am sure that where there is a wish there is a way. I feel that the overall provision of good and adequate health facilities throughout the country is the wish of the majority of people.
6.5 p.m.
Lord Broxbourne: My Lords, after two such admirable consecutive speeches from noble Baronesses it now falls to me, however inadequately, to implement the principle of non-sex-discrimination. I feel privileged to take part in this debate, which has been characterised by so many interesting and informative speeches. I should like to start by congratulating my noble friend Lord Mottistone on his initiative in bringing this matter before the House in such an interesting way. I should like to thank him also for the speech in which he propounded it.
The Motion makes special reference to community care, a concept which I have long advocated. It is now rather over a quarter of a century since I introduced what became the Mental Health Act 1959 into the House of Commons. My noble friend Lord Renton made a very kind reference to that, and I should like to thank him for it and to repeat also my thanks for the great help and invaluable support that I received during the passage of that Act from my noble friend, as a Home Office Minister. That was a mammoth Act, drawing inspiration from the Royal Commission which preceded it and replacing what The Times of the day called,
"the jungle of existing mental health law,"
with a new pattern, simpler to understand and apply, and in line with contemporary thinking and medical advance.
Nearly 20 years passed before it was reviewed in the White Paper of 1978. Then, with certain amendments in the Acts of 1982 and 1983, it has stood up well to the test of time. I am glad to see my noble friend Lord Renton back again in the Chamber. Perhaps he would be good enough to read in tomorrow's Hansard what I said of him with great appreciation a few moments ago.
I am of course now referring to the Mental Health Act 1959, to which he made such a kind reference. Mr. Sorenson—and I am sure that the noble Viscount, Lord Tonypandy, remembers him well as an amiable and respected Member on the opposite side of the House from me but on the same side as the noble Viscount—said that the Act would no doubt become known as the "Walker-Smith Act". It is no surprise to your Lordships that it never has been known by that name. In fact, the naming of Acts after the Ministers initiating them went out. I believe the "Butler Act" was the last example—and when one reflects on the content of some of the intervening legislation perhaps it is just as well for Ministers that the practice has fallen into desuetude.
The underlying philosophy of that new approach in 1959 was the desirability of shifting, so far as possible, the emphasis in mental health from institutional care to care within the community. This involved, of course, an appropriate role for local authorities with a supporting base of professional skill and popular understanding.
That philosophy is now generally—perhaps universally—accepted, and in the words of the most recent White Paper,
"The practice is now visibly beginning to catch up with the preaching.".
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The same White Paper observes, however, that,
"a great deal of effort, skill and imagination",
will be required to achieve the best possible results in the future.
There are, of course, many problems, as your Lordships have heard, evidenced by over 100 specific recommendations in the report of the House of Commons Select Committee and by the weight of testimony, oral and written, submitted to that committee by many who are expert and active in this field.
I propose to refer to only very few of these matters. Having regard to the amount of parliamentary time I took up in putting the Mental Health Bill on the statute book, the least I can do by way of amends is to try to economise on your Lordships' time today. That desirable objective is easier to achieve by reason of the excellent speeches which we have heard and in particular, if I may so make reference, to the speeches of my noble friend Lord Renton and the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, who are distinguished representatives of Mencap, cugus minima pars sum.
I refer, first, to the aspect known as the "cart before the horse" aspect, which is, of course, a phrase taken from paragraph 30 of the House of Commons Committee's report. That has been, I think, referred to by your Lordships, but perhaps I may just remind your Lordships of what it says:
"Everybody must be aware of the need for appropriate community services to be in place before the process of hospital run-down races ahead yet further.".
That is a concept which has attracted considerable support among your Lordships this afternoon, and it indeed must be the logic of the matter and the key requirement. The run-down of hospital treatment for mental disability is not an end in itself, but an ancillary to its replacement by suitable care within the community.
There will always be a need for some mental health care and treatment in hospitals. There will always be some for whom, unfortunately, the outside world is not suited and for which they are not equipped—sufferers from what in the Mental Health Act we called severe subnormality; that is, people in the statutory definition,
"incapable of living an independent life".
The Select Committee's report acknowledges this and states:
"We must face the fact that some people need asylum",
and it recommends the department to,
"draw on the experience of existing hospitals with a view to producing practical guidance for future provision of asylum care".
I support that view.
Increasingly, however, for those not in this category alternative provision will and should be made in the community. That depends not only on having the right climate of opinion, but on having the right facilities and opportunities. I wish particularly to mention opportunities for work and employment. This, again, is stressed in the recommendations of the Commons Select Committee, in Recommendation 52, which deals with this matter and states:
"We recommend that the DHSS, together with the Department of Employment and respresentatives of employers and trade unions, now explore the practical possibilities for expanding the narrow base of sheltered employment".

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The Government have good news as to this at paragraph 59 of the White Paper which refers to the sheltered employment scheme.
Of particular interest is the Mencap Pathway Employment Service, designed to place persons with a mental handicap who could benefit by it into open employment. That is a scheme which I commended to the Secretary of State for Employment last Wednesday and I trust that, with his characteristic energy and drive, he has already taken my words to heart and given effect to them. I see the noble Baroness looks around, whether in acquiescence, in inquiry or simply in doubt, I am not sure. So I say to her just this. If by unhappy chance that is not so, she must jog his elbow and it would be an obdurate and insensitive colleague, indeed, who was not responsive to having his elbow jogged by so charming a person.
My third and last point is money. There is nothing surprising in this. One cannot be a Social Service Minister for long, without getting the impression that you could solve most, or perhaps all, of your problems but for the money. I am not preaching the bottomless purse heresy. Before being a Social Service Minister, I was for a time a Treasury Minister and a Trade Minister and there is something to be said for interchanging these roles, which is beneficial in both respects. Nevertheless, I think that mental health is perhaps a special case when it comes to claims on the public purse. Certainly, it has a strong case.
May I remind your Lordships of what the Select Committee said at paragraph 21 of its report. It stated:
"We are at the moment providing a mental disability service which is under-financed and under-staffed in both its health and social aspects".
That is a judgment, coming as it does with the authority of an all-party committee, which Ministers can hardly be expected to welcome. But it is also a judgment which they can hardly ignore or brush aside. The Government's response is somewhat muted. I need not read it, because it has already been read in a charmingly teasing fashion by the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale. The Government's reponse is that they are "keeping the matter under review." Those are cautious words, indeed, bearing, one would think, the unmistakable stamp of Treasury Chambers.
In conclusion, I would just say this to Ministers. There are many Members in both Houses, and many thinking and responsible people outside, who, while not subscribing to the economic heresies of the bottomless purse, nevertheless consider that mental health and its problems have by their nature particular facets which give it a special claim on the nation's resources. Provided that such resources are properly directed and prudently applied, the dividend in terms of social progress and human happiness could be great indeed.
6.19 p.m.
Viscount Colville of Culross: My Lords, I was grateful to my noble friend Lord Mottistone for giving me a character reference in his speech, which makes my entry into the arena on this subject a little more respectable than might have been supposed. It is now nearly four years since this House helped to set up the
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Mental Health Act Commission, although it has been operating for only two years. I may say that my chairmanship of it is not only an honour but a matter of pleasure and very great interest at the same time. The subjects that have been discussed this afternoon are really the daily fare of my colleagues, our staff and myself, because they are at the forefront of so many of the problems that we have to deal with. I shall say a few words about Care in the Community but I believe that the subject matter of the debate is wide enough to go a little further, and that is the way in which my noble friend has framed it.
First, I was very pleased indeed to hear my noble friend Lady Trumpington talking about the least restrictive setting possible for the treatment of a mentally disordered person. That is certainly the philosophy that we understand to underlie what is now the 1983 Act. There is in the discussion of Care in the Community a double aspect, with only one of which, I am a little surprised to find, most speakers have dealt. I think it is equally important. My noble friend Lady Faithfull did deal with it and she dealt with the whole system whereby the caring services in the community may adequately deal with a mentally disordered person's problems so that the whole question of going into hospital never arises in the first place. For that, of course, the necessary training and the necessary resources are all too essential.
The other aspect which has been widely discussed this afternoon is that of the proper ability to take those who are and have been in hospital back into the community again. In the biennial report of the commission, to which two noble Lords referred, we have at the end set out a collection of priorities for our work over the forthcoming year or years. The first of these is an examination of the care services in the community both, so far as we can, in relation to admissions and in relation to discharge and aftercare. We do not perceive it as being in any way indicative of Parliament's interest in the whole question of aftercare that the whole subject is dealt with in only 16 lines in Section 117 of what is now the 1983 Act. We believe it has been very much reflected this afternoon that Parliament recognises it as being a major subject.
Nevertheless, in the course of our work over our initial two years, the emphasis has not been so much on finding out what is going on in social service departments, because there has not been time for that yet. We now propose to set about this in earnest without, I hope, detracting from the work that is being done in visiting patients and hospitals and seeing what is going on on that side of it. We believe that, for both the period before anybody is being considered for admission and indeed afterwards, after they have been in there and are being rehabilitated so as to go out into the community again, we need to study very carefully the whole way in which the social services are doing their job and the way in which—this was one of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Ennals—they are working in collaboration with the health authorities. It may be comparatively easy in the Isle of Wight, because I imagine that the social services department and the district health authority cover exactly the same area, but that does not always happen elsewhere in the country. That is the kind of thing that needs to be looked into. I do not in any way disparage—very far

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from it—the aspect of the voluntary services in this respect, although perhaps they do not so much come into our remit.
We have been concerned about a corollary of the whole exercise of trying to get as many patients as possible back into the community. It is one that has been mentioned this afternoon, first by the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, and again just now by my noble friend Lord Broxbourne, It is quite evident that however much the policy may stand to try to get people out into the community, there will be patients who will not be able so to be discharged, and they will have to remain in hospital. We have focused to some extent upon those in that category who are mentally handicapped, the exact point of my noble friend Lord Broxbourne.
It was, I think, largely the responsibility, or at any rate at the urging, of Mencap, whose trinity of speakers this afternoon has so enlightened us, that in 1982 the whole area of detention for persons suffering from mental handicap was very greatly reduced. This was a matter of policy and it was done among other things in order to avoid stigma. But there are at the same time very considerable disadvantages—at least I think there are—for people in that category. I do not wish to overblow the trumpet of the commission but certainly in the same Act we were given some very strenuous duties to look after patients who are detained. At the same time we are not allowed to interfere in any way with those who are in hospital on an informal basis. Given the rights of the detained patient to information, to talk to visiting commissioners, to complain, to go before mental health review tribunals on a regular basis—those are only some of them—we have a feeling that the powerlessness—to take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Ennals—of some of the informal mentally handicapped patients who may have been in hospital for a very long time is something that may not have been fully considered when Parliament was reviewing the 1959 Act as it did three years ago.
My commission has therefore decided—this is possible without primary legislation—to ask the Secretary of State to extend the powers of the commission to do what it does now in relation to detained patients so that it may also look after informal patients who are, although not technically detained, physically in detention. It is a very strange thing that commissioners go to a ward in a hospital for the mentally handicapped where there are perhaps one or two detained patients and 28 or 30 informal patients, all living in identical circumstances, but that we can take into account only those who are detained. It seems a strange paradox that these new protections in the interests of the patient and his family should have been introduced into legislation while at the same time they are denied to some of the very people who perhaps most earnestly need the attention of people who could come and see them and take an impartial interest in their condition.
Lord Renton: My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend for giving way. He has raised a very important point. He has said that he has asked the Secretary of State if something can be done about it. Does he consider that it would be unnecessary to have
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legislation to do this and also to do the things which his commission wisely recommended on page 10 of the report with regard to the mentally handicapped?
Viscount Colville of Culross: My Lords, it would certainly be unnecessary to have primary legislation to do what I have just said, because there is a power in Section 121(4) which would enable the Secretary of State to do it. There is rather a lot on page 10. Perhaps I may tell my noble friend afterwards which parts of that could be achieved without further legislation and which might not.
There are two other things which seem to us to be desirable which certainly would need legislation, and I cannot remember whether or not they come on page 10. The first relates to the new system that has been brought in to provide for second opinions for either ECT or long-term medication. It is probably in relation to the mentally handicapped long-term medication that this is most important. What has been provided is a system whereby, after three months of medication, if a patient either cannot or will not consent to the medication that his doctor wishes to give him, that doctor cannot administer any further medication at all without obtaining a second opinion from a doctor appointed by my commission. I should say that that is not a second opinion in the recognised technical or medical sense, because we do not wish the doctor who comes to advise to substitute his own opinion for that of the consultant who is directly responsible, but merely to say whether or not he thinks that, in the condition the patient is in, the line of medication proposed and the plan of treatment as a whole are in accordance with good medical practice. I believe that we have managed to get a consensus among the medical profession that such is a respectable thing to do. It was not immediately apparent that that was going to happen but it so emerged.
There are many mentally handicapped patients who are quite incapable of giving consent to medication. The introduction of a whole system of second opinions for detained patients has tended to throw doubt in the minds of doctors and other staff about the extent to which, by common law, they can continue to administer medication to the incapable but informal patient. A certain amount of confusion is beginning to emerge as a result. We believe that Parliament may like to consider an extension of the second opinion system into the circumstances which I have just described and similarly, for people of that character, an extension of the ability to go before a mental health tribunal for an independent but well-advised report and decision as to whether or not they should stay in hospital. Sometimes it is very difficult for such people to have their case brought before the managers in a way that will enable the managers to take a decision to discharge them.
Those two latter proposals would require legislation, and I do not of course envisage that that will come out of our debate today. Nevertheless, I put them before the House as being two matters worthy of consideration for people who I believe are very much in the minds of those who are here this afternoon and taking part in this debate. I say in parenthesis that I hope it will not be thought that we are trying to

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empire-build. That is very far from being the case. We believe that we could deal with the, as it were, reception within our ambit of the informal patients in the comparatively narrow category which I have described without any undue extension of staff, personnel or resources. I daresay that the two other proposals would have resource implications and might therefore have to be judged accordingly.
The commission has in addition to producing its biennial report, which I hope some interested people may read and comment upon—for it is not an anaemic document but is intended to provoke response from those concerned—written a draft code of practice. It is due for imminent publication by the department for consultation. It contains a very large amount about Care in the Community at the stage where admission to hospital is being considered; the very area that was being discussed by my noble friend Lady Faithfull. We have paid a great deal of attention to that aspect because in the code of practice we are not confined to detained patients. Therefore we have put all our energies in our multi-disciplinary exercise into describing what we believe to be a suitable method of setting about that very difficult exercise, the philosophy at the back of one's mind all the time favouring the least restrictive method of treatment possible.
We have also adopted some new targets for next year. As I said before, the first of them is community care. I wish to mention only one of our other new targets at this stage because there is so little time in a debate of this kind. It concerns a matter that was touched upon by the noble Lord, Lord Allen; that is, the mentally disordered offender. I will only mention it this afternoon because I realise that it is a much larger subject and one which, as the noble Lord rightly said, needs a larger debate of its own. However, there is one aspect of it that is worth mentioning now. It is one on which everybody needs some help and ideas.
There is a vague feeling of disquiet abroad—it may be more than vague and may be rather acute disquiet—that there are people who come before the courts and who are in prisons who ought not to be there but who should instead be in hospitals for the mentally ill. The difficulty is that nobody really knows how many such cases there are, whether the people concerned really ought to be in hospital, and if they should be, why they did not get into hospital. In other words: what was it that went wrong? In the case of the prison service, the Home Office has been doing a great deal under the powers that it has to transfer into hospitals prisoners who have become mentally disordered. I know that that is a priority for the prison medical service and indeed for Ministers. My noble friend Lord Glenarthur is as anxious as anybody to carry on with that process.
The question which it is much more difficult to deal with is whether or not anything goes wrong in the courts. There are powers for both magistrates and Crown Courts to make hospital orders with or without restrictions. They can do so if they can find a hospital bed to which the offender can be sent. Nobody knows over the length and breadth of England and Wales—and I do not deal with Scotland in this capacity—whether or not that system is working. We
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are starting an exercise with the senior judiciary and with the magistrates which I hope will meet with the approval of the House, to try to obtain some basic statistics. That exercise will produce only a partial response but I hope that it will at any rate begin to produce something in the way of hard facts for the first time.
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, I apologise for interrupting my noble friend, but in dealing with such cases my difficulty has been that the court would have liked to send an offender to hospital but that the superintendent there is entitled to refuse a patient. That is where the difficulty lies.
Viscount Colville of Culross: My Lords, if I thought the problem was as simple as that then I should not have embarked upon a fairly elaborate exercise. If one examines the problem in detail one finds that it is usually a good deal more complicated than the simple point to which my noble friend has referred. Certainly it is sometimes the case that the reason is that which my noble friend has mentioned, but there are many other reasons too. We have compiled a questionnaire that might help to identify what is the impediment.
There is a footnote that is worth mentioning. One has to be extremely careful that in the course of one's enthusiasm to see the mentally disordered offender sent to hospital rather than to prison, one does not deal in that way with someone who will turn out to be medically untreatable. One will then be faced with a dilemma which is probably infinitely worse than any other dilemma; someone who can neither be detained in hospital nor has been sentenced to prison—particularly if the offence is a very serious one. Therefore we are playing with a subject—and I do not use the word "playing" in any jocular sense—and dealing with a subject that can be very sensitive We need to be sure that we have got it right.
I mention the matter today partly in the hope that it may receive a little encouragement, if not from my noble friend on the Front Bench then at any rate from others who are interested. I also do so in order to invite anyone who has ideas about how that project may proceed to contact the commission in order to help us with it. I believe that both the judiciary and the magistracy really are interested in the subject. We certainly are. I believe that our colleagues from all the various professions represented on the commission are only too anxious to collaborate and that there might be some movement forward in a very difficult area in this respect.
Those are two courses of action which we propose for the future. I am sorry that they are not entirely on the main line of our debate but perhaps that main line has been fully covered. I will leave it at that for the moment. I hope that noble Lords will read our report. If it provokes any response or reaction of any kind, then I hope that noble Lords will contact the commission at the address shown in the report, because we are trying to fulfil the remit that was given to us by Parliament when the commission was estabished by the Act of 1983.
6.39 p.m.
Lord Rea: My Lords, I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, for introducing the

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Motion. It is very gratifying when a Motion dealing with the needs of a very disabled group of people comes from the Government side. It helps us to move the Front Bench more when some pressure comes from behind it as well as from this side of the House.
Many of us will have made some critical remarks about what is going on. I hope that none of those who is undertaking the devoted and excellent work in hospitals and in the community throughout the country will feel that those remarks are directed at him. The noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, described some of the good that is going on; some of the imaginative and encouraging things happening in many different places throughout the country. Some regions have gone ahead faster than others—Devon and Cornwall, for example—but they do not have some of the intractable problems of other regions. There is no lack of willingness on the ground to make the ideal of Care in the Community a reality, given the means, but as almost everyone who has spoken said, the means are too often lacking.
I should like to centre my comments around six points. First—and this speaks for itself—we want progress, not regress. As the Social Services Committee says, we must ensure that people receive care which is at least as good as that which they at present receive in hospital, and preferably better. The fact that the committee felt the need to even record that statement says something in itself.
Secondly—again, many other speakers have said this—funds must be adequate, reliable and related to need. The earmarking of funds, or its equivalent, is in my view a vital part of this. I was pleased that the noble Baroness reiterated that funds from the sales of National Health Service property which is used for mental illness care will be retained within the mental health service.
Thirdly, innovation and experiment should be encouraged and supported. As the noble Baroness said, there is no single answer, no universally applicable blueprint, to solve the problem. Another point is that most mentally disabled people cannot be cured. They will continue to need long-term support. Again—I think the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, pointed out this—most of the mentally ill are already in the community and better services need to be provided for them as well as those who are to be discharged from long-stay hospitals.
Finally in the provision of care, as the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, pointed out very clearly, people are more important than buildings. This has cost implications because of course people imply a revenue cost rather than a capital cost.
Before discussing these points in more detail, I should like to comment briefly on the Social Services Committee report. I found it a most valuable and helpful document. It should be pointed out that its composition reflected the proportion of the parties in another place. That is a point that should perhaps be borne in mind by the noble Baroness who is to reply. The official Government response to the report—as I think a number of speakers pointed out, particularly my noble friend Lord Ennals—was cautious, defensive and complacent in comparison with the calls for action and many recommendations in the report.
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Once again the chairperson, Mrs. Renée Short—I notice in the report that she has been given the male gender—has assembled a complex body of evidence into a document which is worthy of one of our biggest social issues. The evidence was collected from a very wide range of organisations and people. It makes fascinating reading, although I have been able only to dip into it. I was delighted to see that one source of evidence was Professor Tom Arie, the psychogeriatrician from Nottingham, who once had the brilliant idea of citing your Lordships' House as an ideal model for a psychogeriatric day centre.
The single issue which most concerns us all of course is the provision of finance for the exercise. Many people have spoken about this and I do not want to get involved in the details; but what seems clear is that additional money is required not only for the transitional period but also to upgrade the service. Several noble Lords have quoted the Social Services Committee's statement that we are at present providing a service which is under-financed and under-staffed.
A figure for the sum that might be required was quoted by the Association of County Councils' booklet Strategy for Community Care: a sum of £500 million needs to be transferred to local authorities for mentally handicapped people alone, not including the mentally ill. MIND suggests the same sum for expanding services to priority groups. The actual figure is of course very difficult to calculate but it might well amount to an increase of about 5 per cent. in the total overall costs of the Department of Health and Social Security. Some of this money will go to health, although much of that can be redistributed. Most of the extra money needs to go to local authorities to be used by their social service departments and housing departments. Some of it will need to go to voluntary organisations. A great deal will also have to go to social security to pay for the people now living in hospital but who will be entitled to benefit while living in the community.
All this may seem very difficult with the current financial stingencies which seem to be so necessary to provide the tax cuts which are supposed to be coming in March. However, it should be remembered that we spend only 6 per cent. of our gross domestic product on health, which is much less than nearly all other industrialised countries with the same age structure as ours.
I now turn to "earmarking" which I presume was originally an agricultural term. It is something which must be considered. It is only too easy for local authorities, regions or health districts to absorb funds into other areas with more immediate priority. I gather that is one reason why we have so few regional secure units. One crude possibility perhaps would be to tag each patient. I do not mean actually putting a clip on the ear, but an £11,000 credit representing the share of hospital costs to be spent in the provision of housing, subsistence, and care in the community.
Some interesting proposals for financing community care are put forward by the Association of County Councils in the booklet I mentioned. The Social Services Committee report says:
"The Government should now accept that genuine community care policies are achievable only in the context of some real increase … in expenditure".

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In response, the Government say—and here I quote a slightly different part of the report from the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, and the noble Lord, Lord Allen:
"The Government is keeping the situation under review and ensuring …that the use of resources … is monitored closely."
I very much hope that the noble Baroness will be perhaps a little more positive in her reply, although I doubt that she will be allowed to be.
Leaving aside the provisions of finance, it is important that we get good value for money—whatever money we spend—and that the community care it buys is appropriate and helpful. A large range of services is required. There are few districts where what is provided now even approaches the ideal. I work in Camden, which has well above average provision for an inner city, but I find that a number of my mentally disabled patients are not adequately or appropriately provided for. Most of them are not discharged patients from long-stay hospitals. Some of them may require intermittent, inpatient treatment at times of crisis. However, these disabled people do not receive adequate support despite the existence of a day hospital in the area, day centres, good social work coverage and better than average provision of, and collaboration with, community psychiatric nurses. Admittedly, some of these people are very difficult personalities, but that is the challenge. They do not much care for what is at present on offer. We still rely—perhaps too much—on drugs, particularly the major tranquillisers which some would say are a substitute for the caring, therapeutic community which might enable the drug bill to be cut and readmissions to hospital to be reduced.
Many of my chronically ill patients live in isolated flats and are only just coping. Some of them are still living with their families who, as the noble Baroness and other speakers have mentioned, bear a heavy burden. Some patients are so disabled that they need help not only from nine to five o'clock when day centres are open but also in the evenings and at weekends. In the best situations, there are group homes consisting of compatible patients who provide self-help and help for each other and thus a small therapeutic community develops. I feel that we should be moving more rapidly along these lines and the Richmond Fellowship has shown us one way in which this can be done. We need the provision of more community mental health centres, more sheltered employment with workshops and more adult training centres. We need more social centres that are open all day and at weekends. As many noble Lords have said, we cannot expect all patients to be integrated fully into the community.
In answer to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, about general practitioners being adequately trained for mental health work, I may say that now all general practitioners must have a mandatory vocational training period, six months of which consists of residence as a senior house officer in a mental hospital, and that training in general practice itself is now much more orientated toward care of the mentally ill section of the practice.
As a possible source of ideas for future developments, I think that the Social Services
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Committee saw a rather one-sided picture of the situation in Italy. Certainly in 1978 the sudden closure to admissions there of large, old mental hospitals caused many problems, but equally very encouraging new developments have taken place, particularly in Trieste, where local, 24-hour staffed mental health centres are handling all the mental health problems of the city in a very caring and yet confronting approach, which has led to a dramatic fall in the need for medication and of course the drugs bill. Some noble Lords will have seen the very interesting television documentary which looked at the Italian experience.
In conclusion and to summarise, it is clear, both from my own experience when working in the community and from the evidence in the Social Services report, that there is much enthusiasm to do the job well and plenty of ideas, but the Government need to do more than make encouraging noises. Rather than thrust mentally disabled people out of hospital and into a community which is ill-prepared for them, it might be kinder to leave them in the institutions, with their water towers, tending their extensive gardens and taking part in occupational therapy—and this is not just making baskets; occupational therapy in mental hospitals is now often extremely effective and involves the patients in a range of activities.
To move forward will need new money, and I am not sure that the Government fully realise it.
6.55 p.m.
Lady Kinloss: My Lords, today's debate quite rightly centres on the needs of the mentally ill and the mentally handicapped. An aspect which is frequently overlooked is that both mental illness and mental handicap not only cause suffering to the sick or handicapped person but place a great burden on their families. So far, though professionals have long been aware of the pain, guilt and stress in families where one or more members become mentally ill, yet the health care services still concentrate wholly on the patient. The need for appropriate help for relatives who are looking after a mentally ill member of the family is vital if they are to help that person make a full recovery. The love, commitment and stamina of the relatives are pegs on which the patient's survival and recovery depend.
In one case which was reported to a voluntary organisation, the Richmond Fellowship, a wife was told by her husband's psychiatrist simply that he had a personality problem and that she had to live with it. No suggestions were made as to where she could go for support or how she could make their lives more bearable. This could have resulted in two people becoming ill had not a friend told her of the Richmond Fellowship. If both had become ill the state would have had two people to care for. Adequate advice and support for the healthy partner are needed to make life more bearable for both.
I am sure that everyone is aware of the worries and the concern felt by ageing parents who have adult sons and daughters suffering from chronic mental illness or handicap, as to how best they can arrange for their future. The Richmond Fellowship, realising this, advertised offering help in a national newspaper.

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Within three weeks two hundred replies were received, often with long, heart-rending stories of people who felt that they had no one to whom they could turn. Helping the families of the mentally ill or the mentally handicapped has two primary aims: prevention of mental and emotional deterioration and support in the management of daily life, both of which are vital to care in the community. They cannot be achieved on a sufficiently large scale without a radical re-thinking of priorities in the services that can be offered by GPs and the training of health service professionals, who are often the first to be consulted when families are under strain.
When parents are under stress they will often consult their GP, and though he realises the strain and stress suffered by his patients he often does not have the facilities to refer the patient and his family appropriately. If each GP had a psychologist, trained social worker or trained counsellor available to the practice, families under stress could be helped without feeling stigmatised and labelled. Parents looking after their sick children can feel very isolated in our modern society where extended families have been split up. The psychological battering of children and adolescent breakdown can so often result from this situation. Support at the right time for young parents in difficulties is the most important contribution which can be made to the mental health of future generations.
The second aim in family work is the support of families who care for chronically ill relatives. Paradoxically, this may consist of helping families let go of the sick person. Families need to be able to see their involvement with the sick person in the generalised context of others who are undergoing similar experiences. They need to be helped not to overprotect the sick person or to prevent that person from taking more responsibility for his or her life. In the past, when parents became unable to cope with a sick person that sick person became a permanent patient in a mental hospital. This option is rapidly disappearing.
There are schemes which offer families both psychological support and practical help in finding a realistic and homely alternative to the family home as a permanent residence for their chronically ill sons and daughters. Voluntary organisations in the mental health field and the major children's charities, though they are doing all they can, cannot be said to be doing more than scratch the surface of the problems at the present time. It is the proper function of Government to support such initiatives with finance as well as encouragement. The planning and strategy needed to deal with the problem as a whole can only come from central direction. It seems to me that the social worker or welfare officer is crucial in helping families with their problems.
In the case of some parents they feel that they should look after their sick children because it is their problem. A widowed mother, especially, can feel that her husband wanted their child looked after at home, and, therefore, though she is getting older, she feels that she must continue to do this, even when there is suitable residential care available. Perhaps the noble Baroness who is to reply will give special attention to this problem and to the guidance of social workers and
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welfare officers when visiting families where there is a suspected problem of this sort. It would be helpful if there was an informative leaflet in post offices and sub-post offices explaining where parents might obtain advice. This could be of great help, especially in rural areas. And this is, after all, a well recognised way of passing on Government information
As the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, said in his opening speech about Care in the Community, the National Schizophrenia Fellowship, in its pamphlet on its corespondence with the Minister of Health, called it "cart before the horse". I hope that this will not happen and that the horse will be put firmly in front.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords—
Noble Lords: Order!
7.1 p.m.
Baroness Macleod of Borve: My Lords, I am trying to slim, but I did not know that I was invisible. Like other noble Lords, I should like to thank my noble friend Lord Mottistone for raising this very important issue at this time. I say that it is very important not only from the point of view of the patient but also from the point of view of people on the ground. As we know, the Government are quite rightly urging hospitals to encourage their patients to live in the community. That is right. I agree entirely with it. But, as we also know—I hope that this is the reason for the noble Lord bringing it to our attention—the people in whose community the patients are likely to live are full of concern, full of anxiety and are being thoroughly tiresome and obnoxious. I hope that this debate, if it is given enough publicity, will go some way to quench their fears.
I thought that the right reverend Prelate was going to steal completely my tiny speech. He talked about some hospitals in an area to which I wish specifically to refer. Luckily, my hospital was the one that he left out, and so I am all right. I intervene in this debate because, for many years, I have been a member of the National Association of Leagues of Hospital Friends and for the last 11 years its national chairman. In that capacity I have travelled the length and breadth of the country visiting all sorts of hospitals to see what the voluntary workers are doing. The hospital to which I wish to draw your Lordships' attention especially is Napsbury, in the Barnet health authority area. This vast hospital was built in 1905 for 1,000 patients. In the 1940s-1950s it had 2,300 patients. In 1975 the number was down to 1,000 patients. Now, luckily, we have fewer than 800 patients, principally as a resutl of the introduction of new drugs. The only reason that I single out this one hospital from all those in the country that I have visited is that it has what I consider to be the best on-going plans that I have encountered anywhere in the country for helping patients to go out into the community. I should like briefly to give your Lordships what I hope is a pen picture of what it does. It is, I believe, a pioneer in community care.
Although a big push was started in 1960 to get patients into the community, it was in 1974 that the people at Napsbury really started to get things going. They realised that it would take time. The work still requires time. But so long as adequate training is given

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it is felt that the patients can live almost a full life out in society. Naturally, one agrees with those noble lords who say that some patients will always be too ill to be on their own in society. I intend, however, to talk about those who can go out and who are encouraged to go out by the medical and nursing staff at Napsbury.
We have flats where certain patients are taken and helped to live by themselves, not in wards but in their own rooms. They are helped to take care of themselves and are gradually being trained for outside life. All these facilities are located in the grounds of Napsbury Hospital, near St. Albans. Out of a figure of just under 800 patients, 500 work daily at occupation and industrial therapy training, so that their lives are busy. I had the privilege of opening what is called a horizon centre the other day. This is a big house in the grounds of the hospital where 24 patients are being trained to do the laundry, to cook, to look after themselves, to do the cleaning and to do their shopping—all the social skills that are needed outside. There is, in addition, a training house where six live in quite ordinary, almost boarding house, and one might even say, home conditions. It is a charming house, beautifully furnished. Everyone is very happy there.
In both cases the hope is that patients will stay there for only six months before they are found somewhere else to live outside the hospital. At another house near the church patients are entirely on their own without any supervision unless it becomes necessary. As president of the housing association that has made it possible, I am particularly proud of eight group homes in various boroughs within the catchment area. In these homes about six people of both sexes live. They are entirely self-supporting. They go out to work. They do not work within the hospital. They have their own latch keys. They are ordinary members of society. Obviously, people keep a watchful eye in case there is need for those involved to go back into hospital for a short time.
I was told by telephone this morning that there is another house that is going to be run by the Institute of Social Psychiatry which will take 20 ex-patients. This is within the hospital grounds. It is hoped that there will be a sheltered workshop, probably in Barnet, where ex-patients who are not able to do ordinary everyday work, which most of us think we are privileged to do, can go. The most important step taken since 1974, under the aegis of the Barnet health authority, is the introduction of what is called crisis intervention. This consists of two teams permanently on call for 24 hours, seven days a week, consisting of a doctor, a nurse and a social worker. They go out at a moment's notice to any home where there is a problem to assist those who might be helped by someone from the psychiatric hospital. This prevents, in many cases, a patient whom they have seen having to go into hospital. It seems to me a brilliant method of trying to cope with those who may temporarily have a mental illness before there is any question of admission to hospital. Those teams are not always busy, but they are always on call.
Although discharged patients are often very vulnerable and have to be dependent on someone in the world outside, one of their problems is I believe,
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the social stigma. That needs education among the public. But it also needs the goodwill of people who perhaps are not themselves in the medical or nursing profession.
I am very much concerned, and spend a good deal of my time, with voluntary organisations, as other noble Lords do. I should like to close with a tribute, which I feel they so richly deserve, to the medical profession, the nursing profession, and the voluntary organisations, mostly, if I may say so, MIND and the leagues of hospital friends for all that they do to help people not only in hospital but outside as well. Without them I think that we might still have vast hospitals full of people, who, as other noble Lords have said, need not be there and who could lead ordinary lives. There is a big part for everybody to play in this sphere and I should like to hope that the quality of life for discharged patients is as happy and as fulfilled as possible.
7.10 p.m.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, may I begin by apologising to the noble Baroness, Lady Macleod of Borve? I should like to assure her that I was not intending to steal her thunder. There was a confusing exchange of messages as to who had cancelled. It was the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, and not herself. Could I also say to the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, in congratulating her on her first appearence in a winding-up speech, that if she cannot hear me—as happened when I spoke from this place in the last health debate—will she please let me know and I shall move up higher? There is a gap between the microphones here.
Before going any further I must express my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, for giving us the opportunity to hold this extremely important and I think very illuminating debate. One of the things that I have found most striking is the sheer scale of the problem of mental illness and, I fear, the inadequacy of the response. The noble Earl, Lord Longford, said that it was grossly inadequate—those were his words. At a time when the number of hospital beds has declined from almost 100,000 in 1972 to around 69,000 today, the throughput of patients with mental illness has risen from 175,000 to 183,000. As the Social Services Committee report of another place tells us "Mental illness is certainly not diminishing".
With a reduction in the number of hospital beds, there has been some rise in the number of day-care places provided by local authorities, voluntary bodies and the private sector, but the increase has been much less than the fall in the number of beds. The local authority role has been particularly slow in getting going. As Table D of the recent York Centre of Health Economics report shows in its appendix, all local authority gross expenditure on residential mental illness places has risen merely from £16.6 million to £20.2 million over the last six years, which means that it is declining in real terms, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, said.
Local authorities are not complacent about their performance. The Association of County Councils

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has, I believe, written to a number of your Lordships. The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, also quoted from them. They say:
"The Government's response to the Social Services Committee is obviously disappointing. It has to be said that there appears to be very little in it to recognise the problems identified by this Association and others, and the response appears to be unduly complacent in dealing with what are very real needs".
I am not sure whether that is the exact passage that the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, quoted, but it can certainly bear repetition.
When we turn to mental handicap, the picture is rather different. There has been much more response from local government, and the overrall share of spending going on these services is rising, albeit not spectacularly. However, these statutory and other services do not complete the picture, as we also have to build in the very large number of people with severe mental handicap who are already being cared for in the most genuine sense of all in the community, that is, by their families. I think the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, called this the fourth caring arm, but I think I am right in saying that numerically it is the first. It is estimated that 200,000 of these have parents who are ageing and who will not be able to continue full-time caring much longer. This has very important implications for social security and, indeed, for the burden falling on Government if these people are forced to give up.
This is an area in which Government can do a great deal. How well are we and the Government responding to a scene that is more characterised by clouds than sunshine? The Social Security Committee of another place does not give the Government very high marks. It points out in paragaph 21:
"The proposition that community care could be cost neutral is untenable".
This has already been mentioned, but I think that it is worth repeating. It goes on to say:
"We are at the moment providing a mental disability service which is under-financed and under-staffed both in the health and the social aspects. Proceeding with a policy of community care on a cost neutral assumption is not simply naïve: it is positively inhumane".
I think that the noble Lord, Lord Broxbourne, quoted some of that, and I think that that, too, bears repeating.
This is fully confirmed by the report published by the York Centre of Health Economics, Public Expenditure on the NHS: Recent Trends and the Outlook, from which I quoted on 20th November. The Government, in their response to the Social Security Committee in another place, say that they are "costing care options". I think that came in the studiously impenetrable paragraph that was read out by the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale. The Government go on to refer to work being done at York, precisely on this. Since they appear to pay serious attention to the York Centre of Health Economics—and rightly, I think—can the noble Baroness say whether they accept the centre's recommendation in that report that national health expenditure as a whole must be increased by 2 per cent. per annum in real terms if the Government's own objectives are to be met? That is important "if the Government's own objectives are to be met", not additional ones. It is not the Government's objectives
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that are wrong. I think the right reverend Prelate said that they were to be applauded. The trouble is that the resources are not there to meet them.
The centre also said:
"It may be that in the long run community care will prove a cheaper option but in the initial stage costs are likely to be higher as the investments are made in the new system at a time when much of the old is in being".
Have the Government finally come to accept that this now has the backing and authority not only of the Social Services Committee but also of the York Centre of Health Economics, a widely respected body?
Other speakers have covered most of the areas in which there are serious shortfalls and shortcomings and I do not want to be repetitive, but there are a few specific points that I want to raise. I have given the noble Baroness advance notice of them; I hope she received my note. First, the Social Services Committee in another place recommended that the Government analyse the likely effects of the social security reviews—that is to say, the Fowler reviews—on the benefit entitlements of mentally handicapped and mentally ill people. Can we have an assurance that that will be done, and that something dealing with that will be included in the White Paper? They also recommend the extension of mobility allowance—this was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Allen—to those mentally disabled people who are in practice unable to walk unaided; and the extension of invalid care allowance to married women as soon as the resources are available—a proviso that I would not have added.
What do the Government say? They simply say that they will keep the former proposal in mind—a phrase of which the noble Lord, Lord Allen, was suspicious. On invalid care allowance, they seem to be prepared to allow the European Court once again to rule against us for unequal treatment of men and women in a social security scheme. Do they want to invite that humiliation and find themselves forced to take the action that they could take voluntarily now? The estimated cost is £85 million. It is a large sum, but it is not huge, especially if a large number of carers become unable to cope with their present charges. It would be an enormous help to those caring for mentally handicapped relatives.
We would go further. The SDP has formulated a "carers' charter", which has been widely acclaimed. The main proposal is to establish a specific carers' benefit to which the extension of invalid care allowance to married women would be a first step. If the Government would only take that step, which would be widely popular, we would be only too happy for them to take the credit. We would do the rest in due course, but this is urgent. It requires action now.
I turn to homelessness. A terrible situation is developing here. The Royal College of Psychiatrists is extremely worried about the growing population of homeless psychotics who,
"shuttle between short admissions to psychiatric hospitals, prison sentences for minor offences and doss houses".
On the subject of doss houses, which I have raised before in your Lordships' House, I want to ask the noble Baroness about the progress of the review of the resettlement units, to which many of these unfortunate people not unnaturally gravitate. There is supposed to

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be a replacement programme for Victorian facilities, such as the Camberwell Resettlement Unit, but what is the current state of play? Are voluntary bodies in a position to take over, even if funds are provided for that purpose?
At paragraph 165 the Commons Select Committee suggests that there may be up to 8,000 fewer bed spaces of this type in London alone in five years' time. Is this not alarming? These facilities are not marvellous, but in the current chronic state of the housing stock they are better than nothing. The Government claim that the Camberwell closure has been accompanied by an increase of places. Can the noble Baroness say where these are and what will be the net effect after other closures have taken place? Do the Government accept the Social Services Committee's recommendation that the replacement scheme be accompanied by a published evaluation of its results?
On the important question of training of social workers I shall say very little. It appears to me that the Government's response sidesteps the Social Services Committee's concern about insufficient training to enable social workers to meet their new responsibilities under the Mental Health Act and other legislation. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, has covered this field so authoritatively that I shall not pursue it any further. I shall simply go on to my next point, which is the sale of mental hospitals and their grounds.
On Wednesday, 20th November the noble Baroness's noble friend Lady Trumpington said at col. 569 of the Official Report that:
"money received from the sale of mental hospitals would be used for care in the community purposes and would not disappear into other NHS pockets".
At col. 573 I asked the noble Baroness to confirm that at the end of the debate. Indeed, at col. 643 she acknowledged that:
"in some areas community care may become more expensive, particularly where the standard of the service needs to be improved. The resources we are making available, authorities' own improvement programmes, and income from the sale of old mental hospitals will help to do that".
It seems to me that the noble Baroness's second assurance that day was slightly less explicit than her first, and neither of them, nor her further assurance today, which I listened to carefully, make any mention of the sites on which the buildings stand. The Royal College of Psychiatrists have expressed fears of asset stripping. They say:
"We are convinced that in some parts of the country asset stripping is occurring. No directives have been given to ensure that the sale of (often valuable) land that surrounds mental hospitals is ploughed back into the mental health services. There is sometimes an unseemly haste to close (large) mental hospitals with considerable savings on the substantial running costs before arrangements have been made by a local authority to provide for the care of the inhabitants".
The Social Services Committee makes the point in paragraphs 207 to 208 that these sites, which were provided by earlier generations for a specific purpose, do not belong to an authority but are entrusted to that authority for the benefit of mentally disabled people. They recommend that no mental hospital site should
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be disposed of without explicit consideration being given to the possible redevelopment of suitable parts for mental disability services, perhaps as part of a housing redevelopment. At paragraph 209 they also say that if a site is sold,
"it should be a binding obligation on the authority to show that the proceeds are devoted to mental disability services for those who would otherwise have been inpatients. At present there is a general understanding that this would be the case. There is, however, no mechanism for ensuring that the money is retained in these services. Although it may involve no more than a one-off capital gain, mental disability services have had to endure being Cinderella services long enough to be entitled to the proceeds when surpluses accrue. We recommend a clear ministerial directive to health authorities to retain the proceeds of any sale of mental illness or mental handicap hospital sites within these services".
The Government reply at paragraphs 88 and 89 goes some way to accepting the inclusion of community mental health services in suitable redevelopments. At paragraph 89 they also confirm their view,
"that since the hospitals were established in the first place for the benefit of mentally disordered people, this must be the primary consideration in disposing of them".
But "primary" implies other considerations as well, and frankly the line on sites as opposed to hospitals themselves is equivocal. Can we please have a clear statement of the Government's position in regard to this important source of funds? The Social Sen ices Committee say that there is no mechanism for their automatic switching into community care for the mentally ill and mentally handicapped. Will the Government create that mechanism and, if so, what will it be and when will it begin to operate?
Finally, I return to where I started. As the Social Services Committee remind us, it is no good imagining that community care will save money. They go on to say that the pace of removal of hospital facilities has far outrun—that is the phrase—the provision of services in the community to replace them. The stage has now been reached when the rhetoric of community care has to be matched by action. In the Government's response there is far too much about keeping things under review, with which the noble Lord, Lord Broxbourne, had some fun, or keeping them in mind, which the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, subjected to his wry humour. What is needed is action now, and I am sure that that is the overwhelming message to emerge from this debate.
7.28 p.m.
Lord Prys-Davies: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, for introducing today's debate and for initiating the debate on this complex area of policy. It has given the House an opportunity to acknowledge advancement, where there has been advancement, and also to give expression to troubled reflections or, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Saint Albans said, to give expression to our anxieties. I should also like to thank the right reverend Prelate for a contribution which showed his understanding of the human problems which are faced by the citizen in accommodating himself to a progressive policy for the mentally ill and the mentally handicapped.
We have been told that the debate has taken place against the background of this authoritative report

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from the Social Services Committee and the Government's very recent response thereto—a response which has not been warmly endorsed or received because, where we are able to understand the prose, it says very little that is reassuring.
Of course there have been other reports in recent years. We have heard about the 1983 report of the Richmond Fellowship, under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Longford. There is the important exchange of letters between the chairman of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship, supported by the Richmond Association, the Salvation Army and others, and the then Minister of Health between February 1984 and July last. Let it be remembered that the Schizophrenia Fellowship has a special interest in the second largest group of patients in mental illness hospitals. Therefore, its comments deserve careful consideration by the Government.
The noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, was a member of the Richmond Fellowship Inquiry, so she has evinced an interest in the services for the mentally ill and the mentally handicapped for many years. Our hope must be that her voice will not be drowned within the department.
Since the Mental Health Act 1958, of which the noble Lord, Lord Broxbourne, can be truly proud, there have been advances and there have been achievements in implementing the policy of community care. What is rather interesting about the criticism we hear today is that this criticism has been around the place for 17 years, and it shows how difficult it is to take awkward decisions which have to be taken if we are to implement the policy.
Let me briefly note the achievements. If we look at the statistics of hospital care we see at work a policy of discharging patients from hospitals as soon as feasible, but allowing an easy return where necessary, and that the number of people resident in hospitals at the year end has been falling every year since about 1970. In our travels we come across this evidence.
In my own area there is the Hensol hospital for the mentally handicapped which accommodated 800 patients in 1970. By last year that had been reduced to 434. By 1988 it will be reduced to 334, and in about seven years' time it will be reduced from between 150 to 200. But this particular hospital requires heavy investment in additional staff, skills, and the upgrading of the building if it is to be a substitute home for those patients who cannot live an independent life in the community.
We welcome the development of the Community Psychiatric Nurse service—my noble friend Lord Rea has referred to the CPN—although its future role needs to be reconsidered. The noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, with her immense knowledge of her subject, has described the task and the challenge which faces the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work. But, as the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, emphasised time after time, this council is facing a task and a challenge which should not be underestimated.
Then up and down the country we have heard of local initiatives which are exciting and which are promising. The Minister drew our attention to three or
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four such initiatives. The noble Baroness, Lady Macleod, referred to such an initiative. Then the noble Lord, Lord Renton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, described the progress made by the voluntary organisations, and no doubt my noble friend Lord Ennals could also have drawn the attention of your Lordships' House to many such initiatives undertaken by MIND.
These developments, all over about 20 years, represent the gains, the achievements; but I should like to emphasise that the mere statistics of a decreasing number of hospital beds cannot be allowed to be the complacent, sole measure of achievement. Those statistics have to be seen in their true context.
We must know whether the alternative model of Care in the Community has improved the quality of life for the discharge of patients. My Lords, has it? Where the necessary groundwork and facilities have been prepared, the evidence clearly indicates that the patient has gained. On the other hand, where the patient has been pitchforked into the community without the necessary groundwork, without the necessary supporting facilities, there is ample evidence that he has lost out.
This kind of evidence, which shows that the patient has lost out, is damaging to the policy of community care. It is also ammunition to those who, for various reasons, oppose the policy of transferring the main burden of care to the community.
The authoritative committee of the House of Commons concluded that,
"the pace of removal of hospital facilities for mental illness has far outrun the provision of services in the community to replace them."
In speech after speech the attention of the House has been drawn to this major finding, or recommendation, of the committee. I think therefore that I am entitled to dwell on this main recommendation.
The recommendation is supported by the testimony of a large number of organisations which are not outside observers of the scene, and their testimony is not based on ignorance; it is based on the experience of their own eyes and of their own ears. The BMA, who know a thing or two about primary care, question whether the people who at present find themselves discharged from hospital into the community will, in the future, be properly looked after. Likewise, the Royal College of Psychiatrists are concerned that hospitals have been closed without alternative facilities.
The Association of County Councils conclude that there are many patients within the community often without adequate support services. The directors of social service, who have taken the lead in providing community services, were scathingly critical of the inadequate community facilities. In their own evidence the general practitioners drew attention to what they described as the reality of the situation; namely, that there had been no shift of resources to match the shift of patients.
In a joint statement the National Schizophrenia Fellowship and the Richmond Fellowship clearly warned that care in the community usually means that many patients without families, or whose families are reaching breaking point, get no care at all, and end up

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in prison or mental hospitals as vagrants, or commitsuicide. That is strong testimony. They are strong words.
I should like to refer to one other piece of supporting evidence which has not been touched upon this afternoon. A significant symptom of the situation is that parents of some mentally-handicapped children have recently been moved to petition the Social Services Secretary to halt the hospital closure programme until there has been an independent review of the community care available for patients.
Parents wish the best for their children. The needs of their children are at the heart of the lives of most parents. Accordingly, the call by the parents for the retention of the large hospitals for the mentally handicapped is a revealing example of a change of attitude on the part of parents. They are not prepared to accept community care as at present delivered.
In the light of this kind of testimony, I suggest that in the official response the department has shown an inadequate understanding of the practical problems in implementing the policy, a policy which we consider to be basically sound. Should not the Government be responding to this major finding and to the parents' petition by setting up an inquiry to study the relevant evidence, to consider the practical problems which are being encountered when transferring patients from hospitals to the community and then to form a judgment and, where appropriate, to make recommendations? If the Government are not prepared to concede this much, should not the department instruct every health authority in the land where there is a lack of community facilities to set up such an inquiry? It is simply not good enough to say that the closures are not being rushed, that the closures are planned. The planned run-down of the hospital must be rephased if the community facilities are inadequate. If the Government continue to ignore the volume of criticism, their conduct in this respect will come to be seen as complacent and will give ammunition to those who oppose the policy.
There are two questions that I want to ask the Minister as they have not been asked by any other Member of your Lordships' House. The first is that the main accountability within health authorities for implementing community care programmes will, from now on, be with the newly-appointed unit general managers of the mental health units. I understand however that the jobs have not been easy to fill, as has for long been the case. The general manager applicants have been attracted to the more glamorous sections of the NHS. Do the Government recognise this as a problem, let alone have a plan to resolve it?
Secondly, the Health and Social Service Journal commented adversely on the exclusion from the Government's response of any reference to the NHS management board or the supervisory board. Will the Minister tell the House to what extent are these bodies at the centre of the NHS aware of and addressing themselves to the 101 problems identified by the social services committee? I agree entirely with Members of your Lordships' House who have called for adequate finance to be made available and on a recurring basis.
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I agree entirely with the need to ensure public understanding and co-operation. We were immensely grateful for the message from the right reverend Prelate that the Church is interesting itself in this challenge. But I have concentrated on what I consider to be the major findings of the committee.
To conclude, central Government need to demonstrate that they are satisfied with the quality of community care schemes. Until it is demonstrated that the authorities are satisfied with the quality of community care programmes, then those who appeal for a period of stability before more hospitals are closed have a strong case which needs careful consideration. I trust that the Minister can inform the House that the Government will give such consideration to the problem.
7.45 p.m.
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, I should like to add my thanks to my noble friend Lord Mottistone for presenting us with this timely opportunity for sharing views on this important subject. These are views which must be taken seriously, coming as they do from so many experts and people who dedicate time and effort to the voluntary sector in this important area of mental health and care. I am encouraged that, time and time again, the view is expressed that we are moving in the right direction with community care. It is not an easy, cheap or convenient option. We feel it is simply the best way of offering a group of disadvantaged people the chance of living the best kind of independent life they can. Of course, there are difficulties to obscure the objectives themselves.
Noble Lords have expressed concern with the way in which community care is seen to be working, but many of the concerns expressed have been as much for the shortcomings of the existing service as for the expected or actual shortcomings of those which we are in the course of developing.
I was glad that the good things that are happening in the field have not been forgotten this afternoon and this evening. We can cite many good examples of good community care in action. The danger is that in citing just a few we may appear to overlook many other local schemes run by pioneering and dedicated people who will say that community care can work and that when it does it benefits both the carers and the cared-for.
My noble friend Lady Trumpington dealt fully with, and I think anticipated very well, the many anxieties and apprehensions which have been expressed in the course of this debate. She dealt with specific points raised by my noble friend Lord Mottistone and the noble Lords, Lord Ennals and Lord Winstanley, in their opening statements. My task therefore is to endeavour to cover any specific questions which were raised subsequent to her response or which may not have been covered by her.
Turning to the opening speech made by my noble friend Lord Mottistone with his knowledgeable references to schizophrenia, I was interested and pleased to hear about the forthcoming publicity campaign which will aim at educating the public about schizophrenia and what it really is. This should be a constructive and helpful step forward and I hope that the television programmes next January will reach a

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wide audience. We are aware that as more people are cared for in the community a greater part of their care will be undertaken by the primary health care team, and in particular, by general practitioners. My noble friend expressed a particular concern about this. We are conscious that there needs to be more training for GPs in recognising the early symptoms and signs of disorder; how and when to refer people to specialist care and how to support those families caring for someone who suffers from schizophrenia. Understanding, by both the public and the professionals, is crucial to a sympathetic response to the problems of the sufferer and his or her family which we ardently seek, and we must look to improved professional training. It is fortunate that the Royal College of General Practitioners is alert to this need and we hope to work with it, and, in particular, to increase the share of the substantial post-graduate education available to general practitioners which goes to psychiatric subjects.
The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, raised a 10-point plan. Since many of his preoccupations were covered by my noble friend's speech and I can reassure him that certain other points in the first nine are being taken care of, I need only add, in relation to the tenth point, which concerned the invalid care allowance extension, that, yes, it does cost £85 million and that was also a price that the Labour Government did not feel able to pay when they introduced the benefit.
Lord Ennals: But that was 10 years ago, my Lords.
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, referred also particularly to the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the treatment of unprepared discharges. We well understand the point, but I feel it is worth saying that we are glad that the Royal College recognise the difficulties because they themselves accept a crucial role in ensuring that appropriate facilities and care are available for patients before they discharge those patients from hospital. This individual case planning is absolutely essential.
Perhaps I may now turn to the remarks made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Saint Albans. I know it is not customary in this House for more than one person to congratulate a maiden speaker, but as one who is fresh from that experience myself, perhaps I may welcome his helpful and well-informed contribution. I should also take the opportunity to pay a tribute to the part already played by Churches and church people inside and outside the hospitals. Chapels in hospitals are often sanctuaries in the best sense. In the community, acceptance by a local congregation can be almost the biggest single contribution to real community integration. I think this is an important contribution that local churches, as well as the larger churches, can make in this area.
The right reverend Prelate would also no doubt wish to be reassured on the topic of the avoidance of separating friends. Preserving relationships between friends is increasingly recognised as good practice—indeed, best practice—not least because of the research funded by the Department of Health and Social Security with the co-operation of the management and staff of Darenth Park Hospital.
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The noble Earl, Lord Longford, challenged me to dispose of him effectively. I trust he will forgive me if I do not take him literally! However, I can dispose of the first of his seven points, which questioned the appointment of a designated Minister, because we do indeed have a designated Minister for mental health in the shape of our very own Lady Trumpington.
Turning to the references the noble Earl made from his considerable knowledge of the Richmond Fellowship inquiry, as we said when we met the noble Earl and the fellowship in 1983, we welcomed the report generally and took its thinking into our own policy thinking. I think I can say that we accept all the policy points it made and have been actively seeking to bring about services to match. However, I grant that we have not followed the fellowship's advice on the other side of their recommendations; i.e., the changes in management and finance, which they suggested as a means of a more rapid pursuit of the policy points. Here, we have thought our own judgment better and have made major changes of our own in the management of the health service over the last two or three years. For example, we have not set up the proposed departmental planning board, but we have set up a general management board for the health service.
We are not seeking a separate development fund for a mental illness service. Indeed, I think to do so would be divisive. I can imagine some cottage hospital for elderly people where those under the geriatrician were funded one way and their friends under the psycho-geriatrician were funded from an entirely separate pocket. However, we have clear statistics which unmistakably show that spending on mental illness, both by health Ministers and by social services, has risen in real terms, and further rises are planned. Thus I can confidently reply to the noble Earl, and indeed to other noble Lords who have been preoccupied with this point, that we do indeed value his initiative and the report of the Richmond Fellowship. We are working hard and, hopefully, successfully towards achieving its objectives.
My noble friend Lord Renton reminded us of the need for careful preparation for change. Indeed, this was a point which was also raised by other noble Lords. I agree that it is necessary to prepare facilities in advance and to prepare the individuals for radical change in their lives. This is being done. There are many examples, including the work at Ravenswood Village Settlement. I should also wish, in this context, to commend the work of Mencap, which has been enormously valuable in respect of both policy and practice. I am delighted that the Department of the Environment, as well as the DHSS, has been able to help, and I am glad to say that the DHSS pound-for-pound scheme has successfully supported some very valuable voluntary body initiatives for mentally handicapped children.
The noble Lord, Lord Allen, has given us the benefit of his expertise as a civil servant, as well as chairman of Mencap, this afternoon, particularly in relation to the mobility allowance extension. As the noble Lord says, these rules were considered by the Appellate Committee of your Lordships' House earlier this year in connection with a claimant who needs to be

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accompanied when out of doors. How their judgment is applied in other cases is of course a matter for the adjudicating authorities. In January next a tribunal of social security commissioners is to consider cases of a similar nature involving mentally handicapped children. When they have given their decision we shall certainly consider whether the qualifying conditions for the allowance are in need of further clarification. We are certainly not shelving this one.
The noble Lord, Lord Allen, also referred to elderly mentally handicapped people, as indeed did other noble Lords and the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, in particular. We recognise that mentally handicapped people are growing older and the needs of ageing people need to be understood in a special way. We are commissioning research at the Hester Adrian Research Centre, which should provide information useful to those providing services. The department's report on helping mentally handicapped people with special problems, published last year, referred to the needs of mentally handicapped people who are elderly.
My noble friend Lady Faithfull is, as so many noble Lords have acknowledged this evening, a great expert in this field. She quite rightly raised the subject of social work training in relation to the Mental Health Act. We do need specialist training for a core group of social workers who specialise in dealing with detention and the alternatives. This is a development from specialist training, under the old legislation, for mental welfare officers.
On social work training more generally, I am not going to venture to challenge my noble friend on her own territory. I shall take away what she says to share with my ministerial colleagues. I know that in doing so the question of funding will be seriously considered.
My noble friend Lady Faithfull made a number of points (and I think I can also select one other) which related to children in hospital, and expressed a general welcome and tribute to Government efforts here in partnership with voluntary bodies. I should like to acknowledge, in particular, the pioneer work of Barnardo's in the community care of profoundly handicapped children, not least in Liverpool, using a special support unit and ordinary families with necessary back-up.
The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, also raised a number of important points. I have already referred to her special concern for the elderly. I hope the noble Baroness will forgive me if we reply to her other questions in writing. However, concerning the question of brain damage, we are aware that brain damage through strokes and accidents presents a considerable problem. We look forward to considering what is said about this in reports on rehabilitation at present being prepared by the Royal College of Physicians and at a conference at one of our rehabilitation demonstration centres which is due to take place next April. We have this year introduced a grant for three years to Headaway, the voluntary organisation representing head injury sufferers. I hope this gives the noble Baroness some comfort.
My noble friend Lord Broxbourne also gave us the benefit of his considerable experience in this field.
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Indeed, I must say that some in your Lordships' House have long memories and long experiences; and my noble friend took us back to the Mental Health Act 1959, the forerunner of the current 1983 Act. The 1959 Act was indeed important as a landmark in many of the developments of policy and practice that we are now discussing. It played a significant part in ending excessive hospitalisation but we hope that we have learned from the mistakes as well as from the wisdom of our predecessors.
As far as the Mencap Pathway scheme is concerned, to which my noble friend referred, I shall make sure that my noble friend the Minister is reminded suitably. My noble friend Lord Colville of Culross reflected in his speech the concerns and insights of the Mental Health Commission. Perhaps I may take the opportunity of paying tribute to the commission's labours over the past two years and to assure him that my noble friend the Minister hopes to discuss with him shortly the various comments raised in his commission's recently published bi-annual report.
The noble Lord, Lord Rea, also raised a number of points. Perhaps I may tackle the question he raised in particular about earmarked funds to enable local authorities to provide care for people transferred from hospitals. This was a preoccupation raised by a number of noble Lords. The earmarking of funds is not considered necessary or appropriate in terms of central allocations. Parliament has not given the Secretary of State for Social Services power to give earmarked money to local authorities and they do not want earmarked money from the Government. The Secretary of State has enabled health authorities to transfer funds to them from their own allocations for as long as necessary for people coming out of long-stay hospitals.
The noble Lady, Lady Kinloss, commended the work of the Richmond Fellowship which was commended by many other noble Lords. I should like to volunteer an additional comfort to her about working with voluntary bodies by saying that the Government also support this, as evidenced by the Section 64 grants which amount to above £2 million a year for mental handicap and mental illness in cooperation with the voluntary sector.
My noble friend Lady Macleod, after her years of good work with the League of Hospital Friends, was able to cite as an example the Napsbury Hospital. This is clearly an excellent plan; and the experience there will provide very useful experience for the future. The noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, kindly forewarned me of the line of his misgivings. I hope that he will forgive me if I do not do more than pick out one or two points that he made, and I hope that he will be assured that we will deal with the other points separately; in particular in relation to the social security White Paper. I regret that it is not possible to predict the wording of the White Paper, but I can guarantee that, in preparing the White Paper, community care has been borne very much in mind. Perhaps I may take one specific case to which he referred. The Camberwell Resettlement Unit, which closed on 27th September this year, has been replaced by smaller units which are taking significant numbers of mentally

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ill men and women and providing hospital care of various sorts. In fact, the new places exceed the old places.
The noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, in summing up for the Opposition, was a little pessimistic. I am sorry that the noble Lord was not reassured about the cognisance that the Government take of the various reports that he quoted. But he noted the achievements as well as the criticisms and acknowledged the difficulty of taking the right decisions in order to bring in change most effectively. He may be assured that my noble friend Lady Trumpington will study carefully his comments together with those of all noble Lords. If there is any desire for further detailed responses, we shall be happy to give them in writing. I have no doubt that I may not have dealt adequately with all the points that have been raised, but, in concluding, I commend community care to your Lordships as being simply the best use of resources to provide the highest quality of life for mentally ill and mentally handicapped people. This Government are wholly committed to developing care in the community in a careful and sensitive fashion, so that the individual's needs are met fully. We are dealing with the real needs of people, whose needs will be best met by an individually tailored package of services provided by a range of statutory bodies and voluntary organisations. In seeking to bring about beneficial change, we cannot emphasise enough how much we owe to the dedicated families and carers of mentally handicapped and mentally ill people, to whom much tribute has been paid by many noble Lords, and we should ensure that they receive all the support they need. While we would not wish to deny the very real rewards that looking after even severely handicapped or disturbed people can bring, we should not underestimate the burden borne by relatives and other carers, even though it may be gladly borne.
I would underline again the increasing emphasis which is being given to the provision of outreach services in the home, providing support and advice to families looking after mentally handicapped and mentally ill people and respite care where needed. This is also an area, as has been said, where the voluntary sector can play a very valuable role. Again, I think that appropriate tribute has been paid to the numerous organisations which provide this very valuable service to the community. I think it is fully recognised—and, as a result of the debate this evening, even more so—that we cannot transfer people from institutions into the community overnight or without regard to the special needs of the individual. We must make sure that they as individuals are given the care they need to enable them to lead a worthwhile life. We are proceeding perhaps too slowly for some and perhaps too fast for others; but we are proceeding step by step and each step takes us further. The successes achieved so far, the people released from institutions and leading a full life in the community will remind us that we should never lose sight of the goals of community care.
My noble friend Lady Trumpington in replying earlier quoted our response and defined the aims of community care as seeking to achieve good quality and modern services to meet the actual needs of people in ways those people find acceptable and in places which encourage rather than prevent normal living. We must never lose sight of those aims.
Lord Mottistone: My Lords, I, too, should like to congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Saint Albans upon what I though was not only a humorously introduced maiden speech which showed great quality but also a moving description of the problems of the mentally handicapped. I take issue with the suggestion of my noble friend the Minister that only one person may congratulate a maiden speaker. I think that as many people as may like to may do that. I should also like to congratulate my noble friend Lady Hooper: I think that, for a newcomer, she summed up this debate of ours better than I have ever heard it done before, covering just the right amount of what we had all said and doing it all in barely over 20 minutes—quite remarkable. I hope that all Front-Bench speakers old and new will take example from this in the future. If I may, I should like to take up what one might almost call a dissident point with the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, who invited me to comment further on the matter that I raised with him. I apologise for not having wrtten to him, but I have here the programme of the conference that he chaired last week. I must confess that the titles of the subjects spoken about frighten me. It seemed to be a conference more on the politics of civil liberties than on care for the mentally disabled. Perhaps we may leave it at that at this stage.
There is no need for me to do any summing up at all. I have to apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Rea—I have already done so in a note—for the fact that I had to rush away and change (and thanks to the superb job done by my noble friend the Minister, I shall get off in time.) What I should like to do in conclusion is to thank everyone who contributed to this debate, for so splendidly producing what can be described as "properly matching speeches", covering the ground so fully and so knowledgeably, and really making this a debate in which it was a pleasure to take part and, indeed, to have the privilege of moving. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Uganda
8.11 p.m.
Viscount Buckmaster Viscount Buckmaster rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will define their attitude towards the present political and economic situation in Uganda, with particular reference to human rights.
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Unstarred Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. I am indeed deeply honoured and most grateful for this opportunity of raising the problems of Uganda, which have never been adequately ventilated in your Lordships' House. Perhaps I might say at the outset that I served in Uganda as a First Secretary at the British High Commission from 1969 to 1971. While I was there I met a large number of Ugandans, and I have kept in touch with several of them. I am now principally concerned with Ugandan refugees both in this country and abroad, and in fact I have taken several of them under my wing.
At this stage I should like to express my very warm thanks to the other noble Lords who are taking part in this debate. The noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition always supports me so gallantly on these occasions and it is splendid to have him at my side once more. May I also say how delighted I am to see the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon here because, as I shall show, both the Anglican and the Roman Catholic Churches have played a very prominent part, and continue to do so, in the evolution of Uganda. The noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, is probably the only Member of your Lordships' House who can give us an up-to-date, first-hand picture of conditions in Uganda. Finally, may I say that the noble Lord, Lord Bauer, and I have spoken in several debates on Africa, and I am sure your Lordships will agree that he is an authority on that continent. Perhaps I may also say how delighted I am that the noble Baroness the Minister of State has found time to come and answer this Question, because I know how deeply she is concerned with human rights problems.
This debate is about the policy of Her Majesty's Government towards Uganda. One might perhaps ask: why should we concern ourselves with Uganda? It is after all a sovereign state and we have no right to intervene in its internal affairs. People might well say: if blacks want to kill each other, let them do so.
As I see it, there are two very good reasons why we should concern ourselves deeply with Uganda and its problems. The first is that it was we, the British, who made Uganda great, as Ugandans freely admit. British expertise and dedication, coupled with substantial Ugandan participation, raised Uganda in the days of the Protectorate and in the early days of independence to a level of excellence which was probably unsurpassed in black Africa. Institutions like Makerere University and Mulago Hospital were the envy of most of the continent. What would they say now, those great administrators of the past—those doctors, judges and schoolmasters—if they were to return to Uganda today, to see their hopes largely in tatters, their achievements shrunken and shrivelled, stunted and blighted, if not wholly withered away?
The second reason why I consider we should concern ourselves with Uganda is that, whatever one may say about it, it is after all a member of the Commonwealth—our cosy Commonwealth club—of which Her Majesty the Queen is the head. No other country in the Commonwealth has suffered such grievous violations of human rights as Uganda; no other country in the Commonwealth, once so great, has sunk so low; no other member of the Commonwealth more greatly deserves Her Majesty's Government's enlightened concern.
The problems of Uganda of course stem mainly from tribalism, and I shall deal with that shortly; but I think first of all that it is important to consider the two conflicting elements, which represent in fact the two poles of human behaviour—the two conflicting elements which have been noticeable throughout the country's history. I shall call them the supra-human and the sub-bestial.
As the right reverend Prelate would tell us, Christianity took early root in the 19th century and we
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are now just about to celebrate the centenary of the martyrdom of 48 Ugandans, most of them pages, who willingly went to their deaths. They were given five days in order to collect firewood, and they died on their pyres glorifying God. It was in fact one of the most glorious martyrdoms of all time. But the point I want to make is that the spirit of those martyrs lives on today, as I have seen myself. It lives on in people like the late Archbishop Luwum and in a great many other wonderful Ugandans, so many of whom—I sorrow to say it—are now dead. Christianity is surging ahead in a most remarkable way. I do not want to pre-empt the right reverend Prelate here, but the proportion of those who now attend church is something like 60 per cent., I am told. I have a friend who used to worship with me in Kampala. He has now read for the ministry and he tells me that the congregations at All Saints' Church are bursting at the doors. They cannot be accommodated.
The second element is the sub-bestial, and before I get on to that—which of course will be much more widely known to your Lordships—I must emphasise that violence is not new to Uganda. Indeed, in the days of the Kabakas it was quite common for a page to have his head cut off just for shutting the wrong door—in the spirit of the White Queen in Alice in Wonderland. More recently when I was there in 1970 the chief of police told me that there were 9,000 homicides a year which were known to the police—and I would stress that that is only the number known to the police. There were a great many others in remote regions which were never reported. I can remember only too well that my gardener came to me one day in great distress because four men had been executed in the house next to his. That was quite a normal occurrence: they had been killed by the villagers because they had been found with stolen property and the police came along. No charges were preferred. It was a normal event.
The sub-bestial of course is most clearly demonstrated by the performance of the Ugandan Army in the past 14 years since Amin came to power on the 25th January 1971. There have been reports of this in the press and on television, but I wonder whether your Lordships and Her Majesty's Government fully appreciate the appalling extent of these barbarities. Indeed I can say, probably without contradition, that the Ugandan Army has been and may still be—we hope it is not—the most evil in the world. Its barbarities have included looting, arson, robbery with violence, executions without trial, tortures of the most violent kind, the widespread raping of children, often in front of their parents, and other abominations too terrible to mention in your Lordships' House. The sum total of those killed, according to reliable witnesses—I am thinking particularly of journalists and others who know the country well—may be in the region of 700,000 in those 14 years under Amin and Obote. It is probably not less than 500,000.
One of the most telling pieces of evidence that I have received is from a British doctor who was serving in Kampala from 1983 to 1984. He said:
"I visited Kampala many times during my two years in the country. The residents lived in continual fear of the soldiers. I often stayed with an expatriate who owned a small engineering works.

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During my visits I got to know all his Ugandan staff. Nearly all of them had lost relatives killed by the soldiers, often in a horrible manner. One of these workers was picked up by the army and later starved to death in an army barracks. Another had his house raided by the soldiers who stole everything and raped his daughter in front of him. Another was severely beaten up at home by soldiers. These cases are by no means exceptions, as I heard of so many other cases of killings, torture, rapings and robbery by the army in Kampala.".
Those people who were attacked in that way were not guerrillas. They were not involved in any political activity, so far as I know. They were simple engineering workers.
I now turn to tribalism. This is an immensely complicated problem, but one can say that the essence of this problem is the clash between the pacific south and the militant north. By that I mean, first, the Bantu-speaking tribes, the Buganda, who inhabit the region near Kampala, and the inhabitants of the other three former kingdoms, Bunyoro, Ankole and Toro. These are kind, gentle peace-loving people to whom violence is totally abhorrent. By contrast, the northern tribes—the Acholi, the Langi, the Kakwe, the Lugbara and others, who formed the bulk of Amin's army—are basically militant. I do not say for a moment that all the northerners are lions and all the southerners are lambs, but there is this basic polarity.
It is these four elements, and a few others, which have produced the present situation in Uganda. This is extremely difficult to assess. I know that I am treading on very delicate ground. So delicate is it that I may well be in danger of putting my foot in a nasty hole. Your Lordships are, of course, aware of the coup of 27th July this year, which overthrew Obote. The new head of the military government, Tito Okello, seems fairly humane. He seems to want to end bloodshed and the new government have stated that they are working to achieve peace, stability and national reconciliation, which has been demonstrated by the talks taking place in Nairobi.
We must also give the new government credit for the release of prisoners from civil gaols, but, unfortunately, there is no evidence of similar releases from military prisons. One understands that the head of the army, Basilio Okello, who is no relation of the head of state, is cruel and ruthless, and I am sorry to say that there is no evidence at all that the army has reformed. Indeed, there have been recent reports from Reuters of terrible attacks on schools and Roman Catholic missions. Another recent report from Reuters spoke of soldiers capturing 200 women, raping them and maltreating them in a thoroughly horrible way.
The government have said that they are taking action against the army commanders responsible. Indeed, they have stated that they have been dismissed. But what has happened to the soldiers? One does not know. It seems that the former soldiers of Amin, who have joined forces with the Ugandan army, have been largely responsible for these activities.
There are, in fact, two armies opposing the guerrillas, with whom I shall deal in a minute. One is the Uganda National Liberation Army, which is the original army of Amin and Obote, and then there is this group which I mentioned earlier called FUNA, who are Amin's supporters and mainly northerners.
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There are also two other groups which I need not mention in detail, apart from the Uganda Restoration Front. Its memorandum reached me only half-an-hour ago and therefore I cannot analyse its position. But according to this memorandum, it wants to unite Uganda through decentralisation, which can be achieved only through a federal system. So much for the government's position.
It is extremely important to assess the influence of the so-called guerrillas, but I shall not call them guerrillas because they like to be called the National Resistance Army. They are led by a man called Yoweri Museveni and it appears that they are now controlling about one-third of the country. Indeed, in terms of population they may be controlling half the country. According to reliable reports from journalists and others, they have set up an administration in the areas which they occupy which seems to be functioning quite well. They are the only military group in the country which is united and they seem to have the support of most of the people in the area.
On the other hand, Museveni—as it has been reported in the press—has been largely responsible for the breakdown of the Nairobi talks. He has been very difficult and very obstructive. Furthermore, it appears that the NRA have been guilty of stealing from banks and, according to the government, they have mined roads and killed those who refused to co-operate with them.
One of the most serious aspects of all in this situation is that it has been reported that arms are reaching both sides from foreign countries. Museveni has alleged that Egypt, Belgium and the Netherlands have been sending arms to the government forces, and the government have alleged that Museveni has been receiving arms from Gaddafi in Libya. If that is true, it will produce the most appalling situation. I cannot emphasise too strongly the innate dangers of such unrestricted supply lines. One has seen it in Lebanon—a country I know well—with arms pouring in, and that has bedevilled all attempts at peace.
I now come to the core of my speech, which is Her Majesty's Government's policy towards Uganda. I feel—and I must confess that many Britons and a good many Ugandans said the same thing to me—that Her Majesty's Government have not been (how shall I put it?) as realistic, positive and constructive as they might have been. I raised the matter of Uganda in a Starred Question in your Lordships' House on 16th October last year, and the reply I received indicated to me that the Government were not fully aware of the extent of the barbarities. Certain visitors to the British High Commission in Kampala have indicated, so it appears to them, that the staff do not seem fully informed about what is going on.
But the most important criticism that I should like to make—and so many people have said this to me—is about our involvement with the UNLA. There were originally five Commonwealth training teams. We still have a training team, but the other Commonwealth powers have all pulled out. Why? It was because they felt that the Ugandan army was so irredeemably evil that nothing could be gained by staying on. We, in our wisdom, have stayed on and I wonder very much what we have achieved.
According to the doctor—and I shall not quote again from him, because time does not permit me to do so—he met members of our training team at Jinja and they told him that they were achieving nothing at all. Museveni has alleged that our training team contains elements from the SAS. I wonder whether the noble Baroness can tell us anything about that. Can she tell us, too, whether the training team is to be reinforced? May I ask her also, while I am on the subject of Her Majesty's Government's policy, what is our aid programme? Is it effective? One does not know, but one has heard stories of much of the aid going to the wrong quarters. How should Her Majesty's Government act? Clearly we must support the Government of Tito Okello. We should also work for reunification of the country after arms have been laid down. That is essential. We should consider our relations with the army and our aid programme.
Finally, one must somehow or other work towards a solution of this terrible problem. Indeed, it is a situation which one has seen in Lebanon and possibly elsewhere, a situation where fear breeds fear, hatred breeds hatred, and, most terrible of all, antagonisms become frozen in concrete. I can only hope and pray, and indeed all my Ugandan friends will too, that in time reason will prevail, that a new Uganda will arise phoenix-like from the ashes of the old. Her Majesty's Government can and must play an important role in this resurrection.
8.31 p.m.
The Viscount of Falkland: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, for giving us the opportunity of putting on record tonight some of our thoughts about Uganda. I am sure that your Lordships will have been impressed by the moving way in which the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, has painted the picture—the sad picture—of Uganda over the past 20 or so years.
I am sure the noble Viscount will forgive me if I differ on some of the points which he has made but I am sure we shall have long discussions after we have left this Chamber and there will be no basic disagreement between us. The tone of my remarks tonight will not be critical of Her Majesty's Government because, within the constraints of the terribly chaotic situation which has prevailed in Uganda over the past few years, in particular since the removal of President Amin, the British Government have been quite constructive. Many high-ranking people in Uganda, or at least those who were there before the last coup whom I knew well, were quite favourably impressed by the attitude of the British Government not only in mediating between the Uganda Government and other powers but also in the very constructive way in which they offered help towards training the police and the army—it was not altogether successful but was done I think in the best possible spirit.
My connections with Uganda go back nearly 20 years in a business sense. I worked as the chief executive of a large British group which had wholly owned subsidiaries in East Africa. They had their operations in Kampala in Uganda, also in Tanzania and also in Kenya. In recent years, since I formed my own company, which is an export consultancy with
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special emphasis on central Africa, I have still been closely involved in Uganda because one of the clients of my company—sadly, not a British company—has been involved in two communications projects, one of which has been completed: the other is unfortunately in abeyance due to the present situation.
The other connections which I have with this country, or at least with the area of East Africa, go back a long way. My grandfather was seconded in 1904 from the Grenadier Guards to the King's African Rifles. The reason for this secondment was that he disobeyed his commanding officer who had told him he should not get married so young. Having a streak of disrespect for authority which I have perhaps inherited, he decided to go there nevertheless, and as a result of that disobedience my father was born the following year in Kenya. I have to thank my grandfather for that act of disobedience for my presence and for the honour of being in your Lordships' Chamber tonight.
I knew my grandfather well and I listened often when I was a child to his remarks about his experiences in East Africa. He had a great love, affection and admiration for the African peoples of this part of the world, as I think did a lot of people who served with the King's African Rifles. I like to think that I share some of my grandfather's admiration for these people, and in particular, in the intervening years in this particular country, for the people of Uganda, for the trials and tribulations which they have suffered.
Human rights are a serious problem but one that is always misunderstood. What do we mean by human rights? Human rights to African people mean something different from the human rights which we consider here. An absence of human rights prevailed at the time when the first missionaries went out to Uganda. The influence of the Church, as the right reverend Prelate will I am sure confirm, was very strong in the late 19th century. There started Britain's very good record in improving human rights in Africa. One of the first horrors which was faced by those early missionaries was the scourge of slavery. Slavery was very evident in the kingdom of Buganda, which, after all, was the core of what later became Uganda. The local leaders traded with the Arab slavers and, when the missionaries came—not only the British missionaries but those from other countries—they did a great deal to remove slavery from this part of the world and also to bring Christianity and a new, more hopeful view of life which has continued throughout all the troubles in East Africa to this day.
No noble Lord who has been to that part of Africa can have failed to be impressed by the huge congregations that one sees in all religious denominations. Going to church in central Africa is not just a duty as it sometimes is in our country and in civilised Europe as some people like to think of it. It is an occasion when people who have next to nothing scratch together their best clothes and take their relatives. It is a kind of celebration of being part of a family.
It is one of the tragedies of recent times that the Church has of necessity involved itself in politics. I do not want to get on to sensitive ground here but I do not see how any Church in any country today can avoid involving itself in politics, because politics are people

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and the same applies in our country as in any other. The Church has of necessity involved itself in politics and has as a result brought down on its head the wrath of successive leaders, with the unpleasant results, assassinations and so on, with which your Lordships are familiar.
Uganda is a beautiful country although many blemishes have appeared on its lovely surface. It is a very fertile country—in fact, it is one of the most fertile in East Africa. The Buganda region is one of the greatest coffee producing areas of the world. One needs no fertilizers. Things grow in that climate and in the agriculturally rich soil. That is perhaps one of the reasons why, despite all the killings and horrors of recent years, people still manage to eke out a living. It is basically a fertile country except for the small Karamoja region, which has been a desert region all these years. Compared with other countries, it is basically fertile and very rich. On that base we can help Uganda to build when the political situation is stable enough for it to do so.
Over the period when the British Protectorate was in existence, the British Army was there. During that period, Uganda was perhaps the jewel of colonial education, as was represented by Makerere University. Uganda was possibly the prime example in that part of the world of an attempt by a colonial power to produce high-class education in a country under its jurisdiction. That continued through into independence. Unfortunately, at the time of Amin many of the intellectuals in Uganda were persecuted and that great university and its great value declined—hopefully to rise again in the future.
After the coming to independence of the countries in that part of the world we saw the ill-fated East African Community. The great problem with that community was that it was dominated by Kenya. That was perhaps due to the very strong personality of President Kenyatta and also to the abilities of the dominant Kikuyu tribal people in Kenya. There is no doubt that one of the reasons—apart from all the others of tribalism and so on, which were really subsidiary—why the East African Community broke up was Kenya's domination over it. In some way, Kenya is to blame for not allowing her neighbours, Tanzania and Uganda, to develop in a satisfactory way. After all, Uganda was the most fertile of all those countries. It could have exported and built up its agriculture in a much more satisfactory way if it had been allowed to do so.
We also saw the assassination of the Kabaka. That was a terrible thing that happened under President Obote, and he has never been forgiven for his connection with it. It alienated President Obote and his people from the Ugandan people, perhaps for all time. That is rather like other situations closer to home. It created a cultural and blood feud which will be very hard to resolve.
President Obote was not favoured by the British and when President Amin came into power the reality is that he was welcomed by the British Government. I well remember the headlines in the newspapers at the time. He was the ex-boxing champion of the British Army in that area who was to be the great genial saviour of that part of the world. It did not take long,
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mainly due to his Muslim origins and because of the Muslim connections of his people in the north of Uganda, before he turned against his Israeli helpers at that time. He then made the great error of a very hurried and sudden expulsion of the Asians in his country.
As we all know, Amin subsequently became a host to all manner of movements which were unacceptable to us and to our allies. I well remember that, when I was in Uganda in the 1970s during the Amin period, I stayed at what was then called the Kampala International Hotel. I found myself there with Palestinians, with IRA terrorists, and with all manner of people who were training and being offered the hospitality of President Amin. It had the atmosphere of a Hollywood film; a kind of "Casablanca"—a place under siege.
It was inevitable that Amin would somehow or other be toppled in the end. I do not imagine that his military regime committed more excesses than any other military regime in East Africa. Amin's regime was a solid military regime. It had no education, although there were some well-trained military men. I well remember having dealings with the Vice-President of Uganda at that time, Mr. Mustapha Adrisi. He was responsible for the internal business of Uganda. He spoke hardly any English and he spoke no Swahili, which is the common language of that part of the world. He had instead a very frightened interpreter to deal with matters of business and state. So during Amin's time, there were people in charge who were culturally, tribally and racially alien to the really quite cultured and developed people of the Kampala region; the Ugandan people.
President Amin had to go in the end, but another misrepresentation by the. press concerned corruption during his regime, which was not evident to any great degree—unless one considers all consumer goods entering the country going to the army to be corruption. I do not call that corruption. It happens with every military regime in every third world country. Actual corruption in terms of kickbacks for contracts—and I was very close to that area of activity—hardly existed.
When Amin went, the whole situation changed. The corruption that has existed in Uganda since that time has been quite extraordinary. The brutalities have of course continued unabated because there is a basic political instability which has its foundations in the poverty of the country and in the basic tribal problems.
If I have any criticism it is not of this Government but of the naïvety of previous governments. The way in which the West encouraged the neighbouring country of Tanzania to invade Uganda was a very sad affair. Not only did it create the confusion which followed Amin's regime, with its many rivalries for power, but it also bankrupted neighbouring Tanzania and caused further instability in the area. I believe that Amin would have gone in the natural order of things. His regime was creaking at the time. However, it is no use speculating about the past.
The situation we have now is the same, so far as human rights are concerned. People are still being brutalised by the so-called army. Here I would part

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company with the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster. There is in Uganda no army such as we would recognise. What one has there is a kind of mediaeval confederation of bandit gangs. That exists because there is no training. The British have offered training to the Ugandan Army. That is a very kind gesture, but in fact the British Army are sending advisers to advise advisers. The advisers are out of touch with the army because the army has not been paid and lives off the land.
The army goes around in bands, intimidating villagers and raping and looting at will. Without taking up too much of your Lordships' time, perhaps I may repeat one anecdote that I heard from a minister just before the last coup. Trains travelling to the north of Kampala were being regularly halted out in the bush by bands of so-called soldiers. All the passengers were told to get out and to place themselves at the side of the track, where they were expected to give something to the soldiers—if they were lucky enough to have anything to give. If they had nothing to give, then they were left behind while the train continued its journey. That was the way in which this particular band of soldiers enriched itself. What happened to the unfortunates who were left behind at the side of track history does not relate; we can only use our imaginations.
That state of affairs came to the attention of certain expatriates and news of it leaked out to other countries. The government therefore asked the so-called army commander—I prefer to call him a bandit leader—to refrain from such activities on condition that they would compensate him by adding to the price of the railway tickets. They would deduct from the ticket price his share and then give it to him. Of course he did not find that arrangement at all acceptable. Anybody who is familiar with mediaeval history will know that the financial reward is not the point of the matter. He was perfectly content to get his rewards in the way that he did because he was also showing his power and strength. I relate that anecdote just to illustrate the kind of mediaeval conduct of what we call the army in Uganda. There is no army.
When the recent coup took place, it was engineered because President Obote had become unacceptable to his own people. Those concerned came to an agreement with General Okello to help them because he had the arms to do so. They came to an agreement also with the Masseveni, the liberation army, so that they were aware of the coup. Thus President Obote was expelled from the country, but, as always happens in an African country when there is such a coup and general agreements are reached, the people concerned never keep to them afterwards. So we have the situation where the Masseveni, who had been promised things and not given them, immediately went back to an aggressive posture which we have today, where they are still fighting over shares of seats in the cabinet. As a result, conditions have worsened and the present so-called military regime, which is mainly the people who were there before though with some changes, has had to bring in some of Amin's old people to support itself.
All these factions have been armed from outside. I know that there are many armaments coming from
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Egypt to the revolutionary army. Nobody is short of arms in Uganda. The only trouble is that many are not trained to use them and therefore it is extremely dangerous if one is held up on a road or a train. Unless you know how to behave and have something to give to the people holding you up, you are more than likely to be caught in an unfortunate crossfire.
That is the situation. I apologise for going through my speech so quickly but I have been trying to paint a picture of the circumstances which exist in Uganda today. Bearing in mind what I have said, your Lordships can see that the position is difficult for any outside power, whether it is America, ourselves, France or anyone else, and that is why everyone is standing off to see what happens. I cannot be optimistic about what will happen, because there are endemic problems in a country which in colonial times was created on a totally irrational basis. Uganda is a country which was given borders which really do not exist. There are people of different cultures, different habits, and so on, within what we call Uganda, and these are difficult to resolve. That is not the case to such a degree in other neighbouring countries.
In conclusion, if the Government can do anything, they should encourage and support the voluntary agencies which are helping education in Uganda. I have spoken in debates in your Lordships' House on aid to Africa and I have been critical of the Government with their aid programmes. Food is always important to those countries, but Uganda is capable of growing its own food. Above all, what Africans want is education. It is only through education that we will break through the cultural barriers and get people to change their attitude to human rights, to justice, and so on. The Africans are hungry for education.
I know many Africans who have children who are clever enough to be educated abroad. They watch with intense interest the academic progress of their offspring—much more than do friends of mine. I still have children at school, and it is embarrassing to see the efforts by African children at school and the pressure put on them by the parents because, above all, they want to be educated and pull themselves out of the situation in which they find themselves. We can help by giving agricultural assistance and by education. The one way we shall not help them is by supplying them with arms to balance power struggles in the third world. I believe that this is a subject which we shall be debating in your Lordships' House over a long period because the way we callously provide arms for one reason or another, for greater theories of world domination is one of the evils of the world today. The African states need education and they need agricultural help. If the Government can assist in that way, I am quite sure that some improvement will take place in Uganda and other similar countries.
8.54 p.m.
Lord Bauer: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, for his Question and his compassionate eloquence. He certainly did not overstate the conditions in Uganda. The repercussions extend beyond that country because civil wars there have cut the supply routes to Rwanda and Burundi.

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I am also grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, because for the first time in this House I have heard a description of what actually goes on in a third world country. I disagree with his interpretation of the causes, but it is the first time in the two-and-a-half years I have been here that I have heard a truthful account of what goes on in a third world country.
On three grounds Britain must bear some responsibility for the misery in Uganda, although I differ from the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, on what those grounds are. First, in the closing years of colonial rule extensive and close economic controls were introduced in Uganda and these much exacerbated inter-tribal and inter-racial conflict. These controls included state monopoly over the major exports—notably cotton and coffee—state licensing of transport, trading activity and cotton ginning; and extensive privileges to so-called cooperatives—in reality, government agencies.
Some of these controls conferred large windfalls on favoured people. Far more important, people's livelihood came to depend on political and administrative decisions which set up conflict and centrifugal forces in that multitribal and multiracial country. The controls were handed over to the incoming government of Dr. Obote.
Second, it was British help, including the supply of tanks and other hardware, which enabled Dr. Obote to destroy the Kabaka and his supporters in a coup early in 1966. The coup set off a major civil war in which hundreds, if not thousands, were killed. The coup was to forestall the elections announced for May 1966 which almost certainly would have been won by the Kabaka's party; a large and genuinely multiracial party including many Asians and which promised interracial co-operation and a more liberal economy. Dr. Obote's victory put paid to these hopes. He extended and intensified the controls and paved the way for Amin's bloodless coup of 1971.
Third, after the overthrow of Amin in 1979, Tanzanian troops stayed in Uganda for over two years. Their Government was unable or unwilling to bring them back. Not surprisingly, throughout this period the Tanzanian troops engaged in looting and killings which helped to destroy what was left of cohesion and order in that country.
Britain has had considerable leverage over both Dr. Nyerere and Dr. Obote. They received much Western aid, including British aid. Western aid was, and still is, very large relative to government revenues which, indeed, it often substantially exceeds. It is Western aid which has kept Dr. Nyerere afloat. It is distressing that our leverage is either not used at all or is used in ways which aggravate the misery rather than alleviate it. Overseas aid will continue for many years. The leverage it yields should be exercised to promote rather than obstruct the declared objectives of our policy of helping the poorest.
Before I sit down I wish to draw attention to some observations of the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland. He said that the frontiers of Uganda, like those of many other African countries, were completely arbitrary. This is true in the sense that they are multi-ethnic and multitribal societies. But the West, and Britain in
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particular, has been ceaselessly assailed for the past 40 years for balkanising Africa; that is, creating too many small units. Do your Lordships think we ought to have had the six or eight major tribes in Uganda form separate countries? Should we have encouraged the 240-odd tribes in Zaire to form separate countries, or the 60 tribes in Nigeria—there are many more, but at least 60—to form separate countries? Have your Lordships read Dr. Nkrumah's Africa Must Unite—because we Europeans have balkanised it?
Having said that, I should like once again to thank the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, for his Question and his eloquence.
9 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Ripon: My Lords, I share with other noble Lords the sense of gratitude which they have already expressed to the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, for bringing this Question before your Lordships' House this evening. The noble Viscounts, Lord Buckmaster and Lord Falkland, have both already stressed the place of the Christian churches in the history and affairs of Uganda. Church and nation have grown together in this country. It therefore seems right that a member of the Episcopal Bench in your Lordships' House should make a contribution to this debate.
The size of the churches in Uganda in numerical terms gives an indication of their contemporary significance. Of the 15 million people of the country, just over 12 million, or 85 per cent. of the population, are Christian. In every part of the national life, Christians have been prominent and have held influential positions. But perhaps even more important than this, the churches have been evident throughout the history of Uganda.
Noble Lords have already made reference to the 19th century founding of the churches and the martyrs upon whose blood the churches were built, and because of their history prior to a colonial administration, the churches in Uganda are not regarded as foreign institutions. Elsewhere in Africa and Asia that is sometimes the case; but in Uganda it is not so. They belong to the country. There is no conflict between being Christian and being Ugandan.
The churches are therefore able to act and speak in Uganda as part of that country on behalf of the vast majority of its inhabitants, but in doing so they are handicapped by one fact—the fact of their disunity. The two major churches—Roman Catholic, with 50 per cent. of the population, and the Anglican Church of Uganda, with 35 per cent. of the population—do not speak with a common voice. This is not only because of difference of ecclesiastical tradition but also because of difference of political allegiance. Before the coup of July 1985 the Roman Catholic church broadly supported the democratic party in opposition, while the Church of Uganda broadly supported President Obote, who was himself of course an Anglican. One result of the coup was the virtual disintegration of President Obote's party.
The flux in the present situation provides an opportunity for Roman Catholic and Anglican leaders and people to move closer to one another and to overcome the suspicion—political as well as ecclesiastical—which has kept them apart. The

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machinery exists in the Joint Christian Council. What is now needed is one voice from the churches calling not for support of particular political parties but for a lowering of the level of violence and for a settled order in Uganda.
There is a division of potentially greater significant damage to Uganda than this ecclesiastical disunity. The present de facto division of the country into those parts which are controlled by the National Resistance Army and those which are under the authority of the ruling Military Council is a new version of the ancient division into the Bantu tribes of the south and the Nilotic tribes of the north. The churches have strong membership in both these groups. In days when we are asking what will hold Uganda together—noble Lords have already made reference to the perhaps somewhat arbitrary boundaries which originally designated it—one possible answer is the churches. People from every tribal background in Uganda meet regularly within the committees, councils and colleges of these churches. There they are able to know one another in depth. The House of Bishops and the theological colleges of the Church of Uganda are places where people from across the whole of the country are able to come together to live and to pray with one another.
The churches are potentially a great force for the unity of Uganda. They are the proclaimers, and indeed on occasion the practitioners, of a love and forgiveness which transcends tribal, regional and ecclesiastical loyalties, and which will be needed as Uganda seeks to find a way of common purpose in the future.
The present flux and uncertainty of Uganda's political life makes comment from outside the country difficult. There are a number of possible scenarios for the future and those of us who do not know the scene well would be advised not to comment in detail upon any of them. Maybe there will be an agreement and the setting up of a coalition in the light of the present discussions; maybe there will be the calling of a round-table conference for all political parties or maybe the collapse of the present interim administration and its replacement by one in which the national resistance movement will play a central part.
However, it is not for us in this country to look for particular political solutions for Uganda. That is something which the people of Uganda will find for themselves. Our role is to stand by them as they do so, to continue our support, our concern and our help. The future is impossible to foresee at this moment but the past and the present are all too easy to describe, and noble Lords have already spoken of the high level of violence which Uganda has known in past years. Uganda has been seared in every level of its society by this violence.
I took note of the comments on education made by the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, but I remember a former neighbour of mine and a member of your Lordships' House, the former Lord Hemingford, who in the days before his membership of this House was the Principal of King's School Budo. He told me that as far as he knew every member of that school who had passed through his hands was either dead or in exile. Education therefore has been part of what this country and other countries have provided for Uganda, but such education has not been able to survive the
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experience of violence which Uganda now knows. Every family has lived with the experience of robbery, beating, wounding and death. The churches have not been spared in this history of violence. Archbishop Janani Luwum and Bishop John Wasikye were killed during the years of Amin's rule; Namugongo Theological College was occupied by Government troops in May 1984 when all the students, women included, were beaten, and the Principal and the estate manager of the college were killed. It is entirely in keeping with this record that the Chapel of the 20th Century Martyrs at Canterbury Cathedral should include not only the name of Archbishop Janani Luwum but also a painting by a Ugandan artist of Jesus being carried from the Cross—a symbol not so much of violent death as of the loving forgiveness which, in the end, is more powerful than any violence.
It might be expected that with this experience the Churches in Uganda would be in the forefront of protest to the government of the day about the violations of those rights which most people take for granted. However, such is not the case. The Baganda bishops whose people have suffered most at the hands of the military since 1981 have been outstanding in their courageous protests during the period of Obote's government. But their fellow bishops in the Church of Uganda have not stood with them. Tribal loyalty and close links between Church and state have fragmented what should have been a united voice. That is why many from outside the country have felt moved to remind the Church in Uganda of its obligation. In a consultation with the Church held in February 1984 the issue of human rights dominated the minds and spirits of those from outside Uganda. They reminded the Church of Uganda that it is bound by its constitution to do all in its power to defend these rights. We believe it to be an essential task of the Church to speak with a prophetic voice on this issue.
The restrained vehemence of that entreaty sprang not only from the knowledge of many violent incidents but also from a particular incident earlier in this particular consultation. A visiting English rural dean from the diocese of Bristol was being entertained at a village meal to which he had been invited. An armed gang in military dress burst into the event, shots were fired, two people were wounded and all present, the Englishman included, were beaten with clubs and then robbed. Such violence is a commonplace experience in Uganda. What seems so disturbing in this case is the setting—an act of hospitality such as any of us might be offered if we visited the country, ending in a brutal and utterly unprovoked assault.
Almost anyone in Uganda will describe similar incidents that have happened to themselves or their families. One of the Anglican bishops returned from this country a fortnight ago. He was met by various members of his diocese, each of whom related to him an incident involving robbery, violence or death that had happened to a member of his own family or to one of his friends. Yesterday, a young Ugandan student who is at the moment my immediate neighbour in Cambridge said to me, "It is the gun that rules now in Uganda".
Since the July coup, the situation has deteriorated. The UNLA, which may indeed be a series of bandit gangs, as the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, has so

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vividly related, have become more ill-disciplined, engaging in robbery, shooting and raping. There is little or no supervision or accountability. It might be thought that this was endemic somehow to Ugandan society; yet I believe that the accounts of life now emerging from south-west Uganda give a different kind of description.
The stark accounts of violence invading daily life stand in sharp contrast to the account of affairs in the territories which the National Resistance Army now control, where life apparently is somewhat different. I quote from a report of a missionary society secretary from this country who returned from south-west Uganda on 19th November, just over a fortnight ago:
"In all NRA territory the scene is remarkably peaceful. NRA guerrillas have set up administrative centres in towns and villages and most Uganda Government officers are working with them. The guerrillas are friendly, open and helpful. There is no shortage of basic foodstuffs in NRA territory and shops and markets are busy".
He goes on to describe some of the difficulties, particularly shortage of petrol and problems of transport. But this witness to the discipline and friendly disposition of troops under the command of Yoweri Museveni does go back a very long way and contrasts strongly with the repeated reports of ill-discipline and violence elsewhere in the country.
Such a high level of violence so frequently associated with the military and in such contrast to the behaviour of the NRA troops must raise questions about the British military training team at Jinja. Local reports suggest that the presence of the team, small though it is, is much appreciated by the local residents who, I guess, find some form of protection in their presence. It is also appreciated by those who hold positions of any kind of command. But against this must be set the behaviour of the so-called army, the continuing high level of ill-discipline and violence. This must raise questions about the presence of the team. Cannot the British Government require some evidence of their effectiveness before continuing to supply this help to an army whose record is such an abysmal one?
We long for peace in the troubled country of Uganda. We long for its people to know once again a settled order and freedom from the horrors they have endured for so long. Individuals, churches, business enterprises, government—all together form part of the support we offer from this country to Uganda as its people search for a framework of government and administration that will allow them to flourish, to exercise their gifts, and to follow their way of life in peace.
9.15 p.m.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, I join with other noble Lords in thanking the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, for initiating this debate and for his knowledgeable and important speech. The noble Lord's interest in the subject of human rights is well known and his knowledge of Uganda and other parts of the African continent enable him to speak with authority.
When I first visited Uganda over 20 years ago, it was a peaceful and relatively prosperous country. There was of course complex tribal divison; and, as the noble Viscount has said, there was an element of violence in the community. But it seemed then that
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Uganda could look forward to a decent future. I spoke to Africans and to British and Indian residents and they were on the whole optimistic about the future. How wrong we all were. The decline to chaos and anarchy has been tragic and the once potentially prosperous country is an economic shambles.
The noble Viscount has described the scene and we feel sorrow and sympathy for the people of Uganda in their terrible suffering. We, of course, bear in mind the different customs and habits in Uganda, to which the noble Viscount has referred. But the suffering of the Ugandan people is not diminished by these factors. For suffering there has been and of a kind to make one turn away in horror.
The report prepared for Amnesty International by two British doctors—Miss Elizabeth Gordon, a consultant surgeon, and Professor Bernard Knight, a forensic pathologist—has been described as,
"the most terrifying document the human rights organisation has ever handled".
It was published last summer and perhaps we can be told the reaction to it of the department of the noble Baroness. For the record, as this is a debate on human rights, perhaps I may be allowed to read the less painful parts of the document:
"New prisoners in Makindye were beaten with iron bars, cable, pieces of wood with nails driven through them, rifle butts and machetes. Some prisoners' heads were beaten to the exent that brain tissue 'leaked out' and many died.
"Cells were so crowded that prisoners were unable to lie down, the floors littered with corpses and soaked with blood, urine and faeces.
"Food consisted of thin maize meal porridge, with maggots, thrown directly on the excreta-covered floor, and watery bean soup poured directly into inmates' hands and often too hot to hold.
"Women had their breasts… sliced off and were constantly raped and sexually abused. Some pregnant women had their stomachs jumped upon by soldiers in boots, causing miscarriage.
"Toenails and fingernails of prisoners were forcibly removed and prisoners were made to walk barefoot over broken bottles. Soldiers beat and raped hospital patients 'even those on intravenous drips'.
"An old woman of 70 was seen 'sitting with the bleeding stump of her wrist which was red and raw, the hand having been recently cut off. It was without dressing, the old woman crying and still being beaten' ".
And so I could go on reading from that report even more terrifying evidence.
This is what the debate after all is about. At that time Mr. Obote was still President and these grim offences were attributed to his undisciplined, ill-led and ill-paid, so-called army. That is the view of Amnesty. It is also the view of churchmen, as the right reverend Prelate has indicated in his thoughtful speech. The noble Viscount said that since 1971 some 700,000 people have died in Uganda. Without any doubt at all, I believe that Idi Amin's dictatorship will go down in history as one of the worst reigns of terror suffered by any country. This savage megalomaniac destroyed his country and its people without mercy. It is when we look at him and his works that we begin to appreciate men like President Kaunda and President Banda.
When Mr. Obote returned as President in 1979, there was a sigh of relief throughout the civilized world—I recall being relieved myself—although it became apparent that success would not come easily. As we have already heard, part of the failure lay with him personally. The Amin inheritance called for leadership of the highest quality, but his election itself was unsatisfactory and it created great bitterness. Then

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there was his previous record in the tribal context and his terrible attack on the Kabakas. He tried to introduce economic reform, which was long overdue, and he had the backing of the IMF. But he did not, or he could not, deal with problems arising from tribal divisions, and the record of human rights during his second presidency of six years was also, we are bound to admit, appalling. Commenting on Mr. Obote's economic record, the Economist said:
"The economy, once catastrophic, is now merely awful."
As to human rights during this period, the Government's reactions have been somewhat confused, as the noble Viscount has said. We do not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, but we are fully entitled to comment upon them; as I see it, they are only too ready to comment upon our internal affairs. In addition, as the noble Viscount said, we have historic links with Uganda and we give them aid. I believe that it amounts to £7 million a year, and I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Young, will deal with that aspect.
Perhaps even more significantly, we have a small British Army contingent to which the noble Viscount and others have referred. I am quite sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and her colleagues share our view, namely, that Britain's sole desire is that Uganda should return to peace and stability under a decently organised government. If we can help in any way to that end, then we should do so positively.
There is no doubt that the presence of our army units there is a sensitive factor. As noble Lords have said, Britain had participated in the 36-man Commonwealth team up to March last year. The Commonwealth element departed, but we signed a new memorandum in August 1984 agreeing to send a 13-man training team. North Korea interestingly enough had a much bigger team. I am bound to say that it was a curious decision, but there must have been a good reason for it. We now have seven advisers there, but Britain's tiny presence has enabled some critics to argue that we are somehow associated with the abuse of human rights. However, I understand that the Government have argued that our presence there has helped to restrain atrocities. I am quite certain that the Government would not leave an army unit there if, for one moment, they thought that it would add to the abuse of human rights. However, perhaps it is a point about which the noble Baroness, Lady Young, will inform us. I acknowledge immediately that this is not an easy situation for the Government and I appreciate the Government's difficulty in this matter.
We now have General Okello in charge of affairs. I am sure he will forgive me if I say that the presence of generals in charge of a country's affairs does not fill me with confidence, but we must hope for the best. Presidents and Prime Ministers in uniforms covered with medals from heaven knows where always fill me with foreboding. He might just about make a mark if he brings economic and financial advisers of quality and international reputation into the country and then begins to put their advice into practice. He might also talk to the National Resistance Army, the NRA, and Mr. Museveni, if this is practicable, on the possibility of an independent multi-tribal council. I think that the right reverend Prelate was thinking along those lines.
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The tragedies of the past 20 years have exacerbated tribal bitterness and rivalry to the point where it has become the biggest stumbling block to peace. The general view is that it is very doubtful whether partition is a practical solution in Uganda, although it has been mentioned by some.
It is to General Okello's credit that he tried to initiate talks with Mr. Museveni in Nairobi last August shortly after he came to power, but as the noble Viscount said, these foundered. It is said that Mr. Museveni feels strong enough to resist the new government and is gaining in public esteem. I have read several recent reports in newspapers which refer to the "Robin Hood" reputation of the NRA's guerrilla forces. I am not sure that things of this kind took place in Sherwood Forest even 700 years ago, or whenever it was. It was depressing to read a report in The Times in October that there continue to be extensive human rights violations by the military because of the civil war and the lawlessness of the army which threaten, and I quote from The Times,
"to perpetuate the country's reputation for lawlessness and bloodshed".
It goes on:
"There is no sign that the soldiers who ousted Dr. Milton Obote in July can reconcile the political, religious and tribal factions that divide the nation".
It is said that Ugandans themselves have detected little change since General Okello took over, and that one sinister factor is that many of the Government's troops are Amin's soldiers who returned from Zaire and the Sudan after the July coup. Save for the hope given by the Christian Churches, described so well by the right reverend Prelate and other noble Lords, on the face of it at least it seems that there is no immediate hope in Uganda.
On reading all the evidence available to me, I feel extremely depressed about the immediate future. What is essential, and what would change things, is a major revitalisation of the economy so as to give Ugandans of all tribes the real feeling that the country has a future in which all the tribes have a part to play and have a stake in its progress. One suggestion is that the Commonwealth should send a force to supervise the formation of a new army, and this seems to me to be a reasonable suggestion, given the state of the country at this time. But I am told that this proposal has received a mixed reception thus far, and perhaps the noble Baroness can comment on this prospect. Perhaps she can also say a word about the kind of aid we are providing to Uganda and which we propose to give over the next few months.
As the right reverend Prelate has advised, we should stand ready to take part in any reasonable enterprise to bring the cruelty and carnage to an end and to help in establishing and supporting a government who will set a new course for this unhappy country.
9.27 p.m.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Young): My Lords, I am sure that all those who have taken part in this debate this evening will be grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, for asking this Unstarred Question. It has been deeply moving to hear from so many noble Lords who have spoken from great personal experience,

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including the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, and the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, and we were particularly interested in the interesting contribution from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon.
The continuing conflict in Uganda is tragic. It has effectively split the country into two opposing factions. The economy and administration of this country, which could be one of the most prosperous in the region, have been brought very nearly to a standstill. Uganda's present predicament follows years of internal strife and suffering. One section of the community has frequently been pitted against another with all the loss of life and human misery that that entails.
The 1970s saw the Idi Amin era. None of us needs reminding of the horrors of his rule, or of the scars it left on Ugandan society. This was a point which was well drawn to our attention by the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster. Amin's period of office also saw a dramatic run-down of the economy, together with the expulsion of thousands of Ugandan Asians, many of whom found refuge in Britain.
Three short-lived governments followed his overthrow before elections were held and Dr. Obote was made President in 1980. We all hoped that the return to democracy would bring with it the necessary peace and stability to allow economic development and that, after the years of Amin and war, the Ugandan people could live without fear.
As all noble Lords who have spoken in this short debate had said, Britain's ties with Uganda are many and close. In recent years we have worked to make a real contribution towards Uganda's recovery. We commissioned a report to make recommendations about reform of the administration. We provided manpower support for Uganda's leading institutions and government departments. We helped train hundreds of Ugandans in this country and in theirs. We supported plans to rebuild Uganda's agricultural and industrial base. And we tried to assist the Ugandan authorities in providing greater discipline in the Ugandan army, through training assistance. We first contributed to a Commonwealth training effort (referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn) but from June 1984 onwards we provided our own Military Assistance Training Team (BMATT) with 13 people based at Jinja.
I have been asked a number of questions about this team and so perhaps I may say a few words about it. There are seven members of BMATT still in Uganda. Training has been suspended since the coup took place. We have made it clear that we are ready to restart military training if there is a satisfactory political settlement and the new government requests our assistance and BMATT is available to make an early contribution. Some noble Lords have asked how long BMATT will remain in Uganda. We are still considering the team's future. What will happen if a political settlement is reached is that BMATT's role will be reviewed in the light of any settlement.
The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, and the right reverend Prelate also asked me about arms sales to Uganda. I can confirm that the Government are not providing arms to either side in Uganda. I cannot answer the questions that have been raised particularly
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by the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, about arms which may have come from other governments, but our own view about military sales to Uganda is that we believe that nothing should be done to jeopardise the peace talks which are now taking place in Nairobi or to inflame the internal conflict in Uganda.
As I have just said, we have provided our own military assistance training team and our efforts in that regard were not in vain. Uganda enjoyed something of an economic revival in the early 1980s, and BMATT's presence was beginning to bear fruit in terms of improved discipline in those army units exposed to its moderating influence. But as was revealed in full by Amnesty International's shocking report of June this year, and confirmed by that harrowing passage that the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, read out, serious human rights abuses continued, particularly in the unsettled areas to the north and west of Kampala.
The Government have repeatedly deplored these abuses. I make it absolutely plain that we have, at both Ministerial and official level, urged successive governments to ensure respect for human rights. Following publication of the Amnesty International report, my right honourable friend Mr. Rifkind summoned the Ugandan High Commissioner and reiterated the need for an impartial investigation of the allegations in the report and asked the authorities to initiate appropriate legal action against anyone found responsible. The Government of President Obote subsequently stepped up arrests of soldiers accused of human rights offences and began discussions with Amnesty International about the terms of a factfinding mission. Then the coup of 27th July took place.
Since the coup we have issued a statement on 8th October expressing grave concern about the reports of fresh violations and calling on the authorities to punish those responsible. This message has been reinforced by representations by our High Commissioner in Kampala, who is taking a close interest in reports of human rights abuses.
The new military administration which took control after the coup of 27th July made it clear that it wished to make a fresh start. It released some 1,400 of those detained without trial under the previous Government and began to demonstrate that government soldiers involved in human rights abuses would be disciplined. It is essential that these policies are maintained and seen to be applied.
The noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, asked me one or two specific questions about the role of our High Commission in Kampala. I can confirm to him that following the Amnesty International report our High Commission did send reports on those incidents of human rights abuses which were known to them, and on the strength of those reports we made representations to former President Obote on several occasions. However, there are practical problems in the scope of contact that it is possible to make and which are available to a small mission, as I am sure the noble Viscount will understand.
We have also made it clear to the present Government, both at ministerial and at official level, our hope that they will take steps to put an end to human rights abuses. On 8th October we publicly

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voiced our concern following reports of an increase of human rights abuses in the Luwero area. The noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, mentioned a figure of 700,000 and asked whether we could confirm that that number have died in Uganda as a result of the atrocities. I am not in a position to confirm that number; but however many there are I think we should all agree that there have been far too many, and that is the tragedy—one of the many tragedies.
The Military Council has also entered into negotiations with the National Resistance Movement, whose leader is Museveni, to bring to an end the guerrilla war which is threatening to tear Uganda apart. These negotiations have been held in Nairobi and most ably chaired by President Moi of Kenya. It is to be hoped that the present round of talks will lead to an agreement on a ceasefire and the formation of a government of national unit. We believe that the prospects for a stable and prosperous Uganda depend on a reconciliation between the parties to the Nairobi talks. Uganda needs peace and stability to allow a return to normal life, and, above all, it needs a strong and fair administration to ensure that human rights are respected. We therefore wholeheartedly support President Moi's efforts and wish them every success. If a settlement is not reached between the military administration and the National Resistance Movement, there can only be more fighting and more misery for the people of Uganda.
In the hope that a settlement will be reached, and in order to do what we can to further the peace process, we have, with the agreement of President Moi, attached Major-General Pollard to our High Commission in Nairobi. His role is to liaise with the negotiators and to advise on what military assistance we might offer to Uganda after a settlement. The assistance could include advice on the organisation, structure and training requirements of the new national army, and some training. I can say to the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, that in these circumstances we should of course welcome any Commonwealth contribution in this field. However, I should like to make it quite clear that there can be no question of Britain becoming involved in peacekeeping or enforcement of a settlement.
We are also considering with other donors what form of economic assistance we might provide to help a new Government put Uganda back on the road to economic recovery. I have of course noted the interesting and detailed observations of my noble friend Lord Bauer, and I hope that anything we might do in the future will make a positive contribution.
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There is much that needs to be done. Uganda's already weak economy has been badly affected by the uncertainty and insecurity that has prevailed since the coup. Exports of coffee, the main source of foreign exchange, have fallen off considerably. Imports, too, have been reduced to a minimum, with petrol and other essentials in short supply. Fortunately, Uganda's reliance on subsistance farming has prevented any large-scale suffering. Important elements in any programme of reconstruction and rehabilitation will be the loan of skilled personnel to key ministries in order to help get the administration working again and schemes for the resettlement of former soldiers who are not found a place in the new army.
In the longer term we would wish to resume our aid programme in full. In 1984–85 the United Kingdom spent £5.7 million on aid to Uganda and we had plans to spend £7.5 million in 1985–86; but the bulk of our aid programme in Uganda has been suspended pending an improvement in security conditions. The noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, asked about the type of aid and, in particular, made the point of the importance of education in Uganda. When President Obote was in Government our aid to Uganda could be broken down into five main types. There was provision of materials such as drugs and spare parts, for example, for the electricity authority, the railways or the cotton industry; the provisions of key manpower support for the administration; and part-finance of non-governmental organisation projects, including, for example, help to the Red Cross societies and organisations such as Oxfam. We provided scholarships for training in the United Kingdom and we provided training in the country; that is to say, an English lecturer, two science teachers, a four-man police team, and so on, to help short-term training teams in public administration and in training others for the administration of the country.
In conclusion, I think the short debate we have had this evening has shown the interest and I believe the concern of every noble Lord who has taken part in it. We all want to see a political settlement in Uganda. Without a political settlement leading to internal security and respect for human rights nothing would be possible in the use of our aid programme and the prospects for lasting stability in Uganda would be bleak indeed. It therefore remains our hope that the Nairobi peace talks will succeed and that all parties in Uganda will work together to ensure that a settlement can be implemented.
House adjourned at seventeen minutes before ten o'clock.

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