Sitting of 20 November 1986

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

    Nuclear Attack (Casualties)
    Mr. Strangasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what discussion he has had with the British Medical Association about the likely number of casualties following a nuclear attack on Britain; and if he will make a statement.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Douglas Hogg): Discussions last took place in 1982 and 1983 in connection with the BMA inquiry into the medical effects of nuclear war.
    Mr. Strang: Does the Minister accept that the review of blast casualty rules applicable to United Kingdom houses, published by his Department a few weeks ago, fully vindicates the claims of the BMA and other organisations that the casualty rates used by the Home Office at the time of the publication of "Protect and Survive," which were repeatedly stated, were hopelessly unrealistic? Will he now admit to the House that in any likely level or pattern of nuclear attack on Britain the survivors will envy the dead?
    Mr. Hogg: The hon. Gentleman does not do himself credit. He knows perfectly well that it is not the practice of Governments to quantity potential casualties in precise terms. That is because actual casualties that may arise would depend entirely upon assumptions that are in the control of our enemies, not in the control of our friends.
    Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: Does my hon. Friend agree that radiation casualties in this country might result from nuclear explosions or accidents elsewhere in the world? Therefore, will he urge doctors to participate in civil defence planning and to drop the silly objection that this will somehow condone nuclear war?
    Mr. Hogg: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The point he made is important and adds force to the all-hazards approach now adopted by the Government.
    Mr. John Mark Taylor: Does my hon. Friend think that casualties would be any fewer in nuclear-free zones?
    Mr. Hogg: No. I think that the Labour party's policy in all these matters is nonsense.
    Mr. Heffer: Is it not clear that, in the event of a nuclear war, there will be no victors and that everybody will be
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    losers? Is it not high time that the Government faced that reality? Instead of the Prime Minister going to see President Reagan and telling him to retain nuclear weapons, should she not have gone to Washington and told the Americans to get them out this country?
    Mr. Hogg: The hon. Gentleman's remark is singularly foolish. We have managed to secure the peace for over 40 years by a policy of deterrence. The Labour party's policy will destroy the system of alliances that has kept the peace.
    Mr. Tony Banks: Has the Minister had an opportunity to read the book "London under Attack", which is a detailed study of the likely impact on London of a nuclear attack? If the Minister has read this book, he will realise that London will be completely destroyed in a nuclear war. When will the Government tell the people the truth, which is that there is no defence against nuclear attack?
    Mr. Hogg: This country expects Governments to give greatly improved civil protection. That is what they are getting from this Government, and that is precisely what they would not get from the Labour party.

    Civil Defence
    Mr. Gerald Bowdenasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what improvements he has introduced for co-ordinating arrangements for all civil defence planning in Government Departments.
    Mr. Douglas Hogg: Planning is now co-ordinated within the framework of a national integrated plan for improving civil defence preparedness.
    Mr. Bowden: I am encouraged by my hon. Friend's reply. When will the Civil Service committee report on coordination between Government Departments be published?
    Mr. Hogg: We are expecting an interim report to be received by Ministers in the fairly near future, but we have no plans to publish it at the moment.

    Birmingham Pub Bombings
    Ms. Clare Shortasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he first became aware that Dr. Frank Skuse's records were not sufficiently clear to establish the precise formula used in the Griess test he conducted on the six men convicted of the Birmingham pub bombings.
    The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. David Mellor): Following the "World in Action" programme on 28 October 1985 the Controller of the Forensic Science Service initiated a study to reassess the evidential value of the Griess test. When the relevant case notes were examined in November 1985 it was found that they were not sufficiently clear.
    Ms. Short: Does this in any way explain the inordinate delay in the Home Office in concluding whether there should be a further inquiry into this case? Does the hon. Gentleman know that there is growing concern throughout the country that six men who were not guilty of this offence have been locked up for 12 years? It seems to me that there is no conceivable explanation for the Home Office's delay. We do not want the Home Office to come to a conclusion on the case. We simply want it to conclude that there needs to be another inquiry, and for that inquiry to take place elsewhere.
    Mr. Mellor: I cannot agree with the hon. Lady. It is right that matters as serious as this should be the subject of thorough investigation and consideration. It may interest the hon. Lady to know that some further important points have emerged only this month, including a final letter from Mr. Mullin, the author of one of the books on this matter and, as recently as 10 November, a letter from the West Midlands constabulary dealing with these investigations. We shall announce the outcome of our considerations as soon as possible. It is astonishing that the hon. Lady, as a Birmingham Member, should state categorically that these men are not guilty. She is fully entitled to say that the matter should be looked at, but for her to rush to judgment in that way seems to show an amazingly one-sided view, which I am astonished she can get away with in her city.
    Mr. Cormack: Although my hon. Friend's remarks are entirely justified, and people recognise that, is he aware that there is concern in the west midlands lest the perpetrators of this horrific outrage were not all brought to justice? It is therefore important that the decision on the inquiry is made as soon as possible.
    Mr. Mellor: It is because the matter is so important that it is being considered with such care. Care takes time.
    Mr. Terry Davis: Is the Minister aware that it is not a case of rushing into judgment and deciding whether people are innocent or guilty, but a case of pressing for an inquiry? Why will the Minister not establish an inquiry to settle this matter, which is causing great concern to many people on all sides politically? Does he not care about such a basic matter of human rights?
    Mr. Mellor: Once again, the hon. Gentleman is not doing the subject justice by thinking matters through. There is no question of an inquiry. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is considering whether to use the power that Parliament has given him to refer the matter to the Court of Appeal under section 17. It is no good the hon. Gentleman waving his hands around. That requires fresh evidence. The question whether there is fresh evidence is being considered carefully. I should have thought that, as another Birmingham Member, the hon. Gentleman's constituents would want some balance in this consideration.
    Mr. Stanbrook: Has my hon. Friend any evidence to suggest that anyone was responsible for the Birmingham bombings other than those convicted of the offence?
    Mr. Mellor: It would probably be better to deal with those matters when my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary announces his final conclusion.
    Mr. Clay: Is it not extraordinary that the Minister should write to one of his hon. Friends saying that the formula for the Greiss test supplied to "World in Action" was wrong, but does not inform other hon. Members? The hon. Gentleman now says that the original case notes are not clear enough even to determine whether the formula used by Dr. Skuse on the six men was accurate. Is it not the case that the Minister has enough evidence now to come to a conclusion and to get this matter dealt with? Clearly, in view of the reaction so far, all the evidence that the Minister has, the incompetence at Chorely and the fact that Dr. Skuse is not even co-operating, there is enough evidence for the Minister to come to a conclusion now.
    Mr. Mellor: Once again assertion is mingled with what seems to be predjudice. The hon. Gentleman knows only too well that looking back through records and case notes of several years ago at what was or was not done will inevitably be a difficult process. The hon. Gentleman knows only too well, or should know, that in so far as the forensic evidence is material—it is certainly material in certain instances—it goes for only two of the six men, because in only two of the six cases did anything allegedly show that they might have been in contact with explosives found on their hands. The hon. Gentleman should not rush to judgment, but should allow these matters to proceed as they are doing towards my right hon. Friend being in a position to make a statement soon about these matters.
    Mr. Baldry: In considering both that case and the Maguire case, does my hon. Friend agree that we should not lose sight of the point that Robert Kee makes in his book, "Trial and Error", that in both cases the trials took place according to the proper forms of English law, the jury found the accused guilty, the proper procedures for reviewing those procedures, were applied, and as a result of those procedures it was decided that the convictions were sound?
    Mr. Mellor: That is precisely right, and that is why it is difficult to understand the impatience of Opposition Members. Home Secretaries in Labour Governments had to go through precisely the same investigations as we have had to go through. The plain fact is that a jury trial cannot be impugned in this country unless there is fresh evidence that casts doubt on whether the jury would have arrived at the same conclusion if it had been before it. That is, of course, the question that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is having to consider.
    Mr. Mallon: Although I recognise the serious legal and humanitarian issues at stake in that case, and in the Guildford and Maguire cases, is there not also a fundamental political dimension? Until these matters are satisfactorily resolved, and seen to be resolved in a just fashion, it will be all the more difficult to continue with the job of trying to bring about justice, peace and stability in Northern Ireland.
    Mr. Mellor: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman speaks with great sincerity. Perhaps he did not mean what he said, but I cannot help feeling that it is very damaging if there is a political aspect to all this. We are talking about a judicial matter, whether a decision of a criminal court, in a free society, can be overturned merely as a result of political pressure, or whether it requires fresh evidence. We are anxious to separate the question of political pressure, with people rushing to premature judgments based on one-sided and tendentious accounts of the evidence, from the question whether, objectively viewed, there is a proper basis for re-examining the case. That is what my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will do, whatever the pressures to the contrary.
    Mr. Kaufman: Is the Minister aware that if the men in prison for the Birmingham pub bombings, the Guildford pub bombings, and the murder of Carl Bridgewater carried out those crimes, it is right and proper that they should be where they are? If the Maguires carried out the crime for which they were convicted, it is right and proper that they should have served the sentences that were given

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    when they were convicted. However, if it turns out that those in prison for those offences, and the Maguires who have now been released, were not responsible for the crimes of which they were convicted, there must have been a gross miscarriage of justice, about which the Government should be as alarmed as my hon. Friends are, who have already asked questions. After all, miscarriages of justice have taken place before when juries have convicted people. The Government need to take a very different attitude. If those convictions are unsound, people will have been wrongly imprisoned and dangerous criminals are still at large.
    Mr. Mellor: I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman and I are in disagreement. It is not for the Government to say whether those people were innocent or guilty, and nor is it, with the greatest respect, for hon. Members to say so. The Government must consider carefully how my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary should exercise the powers that he has been given by Parliament to refer a case to the Court of Appeal. When my right hon. Friend has completed the proper consideration necessary in this case with the West Midlands police and Mr. Mullin, along with some reassessment of the forensic evidence, he will announce his decision. But he must do so bearing in mind considerations not of expediency or pressure, but of evidence. That is the way that things are done in Britain.

    Crimes of Violence (Sentencing Policy)
    Mr. Simsasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what representations he has received proposing legislation to require judges to consult lay people before passing sentence in respect of crimes involving violence.
    Mr. Mellor: None, Sir, though I am aware of the suggestion made by Lord McCluskey in his recent Reith lecture.
    Mr. Sims: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his reply. Does he recall the report earlier this week of a case where a man of 25, with 100 convictions behind him, was found guilty of beating up in her bed an old lady to such an extent that she was unrecognisable, for which he received four years' imprisonment, which will, of course, attract remission? Is this not an example of the sort of case of which we have had too many recently, which is undermining confidence in the judicial system? If it is considered appropriate for lay people to be involved in magistrates courts in deciding both guilt and sentence, and if lay people serve as jurors in higher courts and decide guilt, should not lay people be involved also in the sentencing process?
    Mr. Mellor: I appreciate my hon. Friend's ingenious formulation of a supplementary question, and I note his experience as a Member of this place and as a justice of the peace. He will understand that I am constrained in commenting from the Dispatch Box on the merit or otherwise of individual sentences. I say exactly what I said when the other place defeated a proposal to allow these sentences to be considered by the Court of Appeal. I said that the problem will not go away, and it has not. That is why we have reintroduced a constitutional and sensible proposal whereby my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General, on a matter of public interest, will be
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    able to refer an allegedly lenient sentence to the Court of Appeal. I hope that that sensible proposal will commend itself to both the House and the country.
    Mr. Cockeram: Will my hon. Friend recognise that lay people are involved in sentencing in the magistrates courts, which account for 98 per cent. of the criminal prosecutions, and that there is still much criticism of the sentences that are imposed in those courts?
    Mr. Mellor: And so there is, Sir. I think, however, that the magistrates courts system is one of the ornaments of our criminal justice system. I pay tribute to its role in dealing with over 90 per cent. of the criminal cases in Britain.
    Mr. Meadowcroft: Is the Minister aware of recent experiments in confronting the perpetrators of crimes of violence with their victims in certain circumstances—something which appears to be having some success in changing the perception of these appalling crimes on the part of the perpetrators? Is this not something which at least endeavours to get away from the idea that we can deal with these crimes by suppression?
    Mr. Mellor: I am not sure from the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question whether he thinks that he is telling me something new. He will know that these reparation—
    Mr. Kaufman: The Minister is being offensive.
    Mr. Mellor: If the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) says that I am being offensive, that is a compliment coming from that source.
    Reparation schemes have been supported by the Government and we are awaiting anxiously a final evaluation of them to ascertain whether some of the Initial rather promising reports can be substantiated.

    Civil Defence
    Dr. Blackburnasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what civil defence publications he hopes to produce for the general public in the near future.
    The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Douglas Hurd): We shall be producing a film with supporting printed material, including a booklet, leaflet and a new quarterly periodical, in a few weeks' time.
    Dr. Blackburn: Will my right hon. Friend inform the House of any other publication which the Home Office will issue to the public, especially on protection, which is something which applies in war and in peace-time?
    Mr. Hurd: Yes, of course. The link is made much clearer by the Civil Protection in Peacetime Act 1985. In addition to updating and introducing new printed material, we are producing a programme that is designed to induce local authorities to face their obligations under the 1983 regulations.
    Mr. Heffer: When the material is produced, will the Home Secretary take into account the fact that the local authority that has responsibility for Hertford, where I was born, has said that it will cost £8 million to build bombproof shelters to protect the people of that small town? Will the right hon. Gentleman take that into consideration? Is he prepared to agree to some scheme being

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    implemented throughout the country that might save some people if the Government are not to get rid of nuclear weapons?
    Mr. Hurd: When the material is produced, it will become clear all over again that civil defence is not confined to nuclear attack. Even in the event of nuclear attack, the survival of substantial numbers could depend on whether elementary precautions have been taken, without the massive shelter-building programme that the hon. Gentleman has mentioned.
    Mr. Neil Thorne: Can my right hon. Friend assure me that when the material is produced it will pay due regard to the fact that the Soviet Union still has 300,000 tonnes of chemical weapons, which could be fired at us? The material that is to be produced should pay due attention to anything that we could suffer on that account. Our unilateral action has accounted for nothing and puts the perspective of unilateral nuclear disarmament into true perspective.
    Mr. Hurd: That is why our representatives have been active in trying to negotiate a chemical weapons agreement in Geneva and have put forward proposals in that way. A proper chemicals agreement with proper verification is the best way. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Thorne) is right. Failing that, or pending that, we are considering the nature and extent of the protection that can sensibly be provided.
    Mr. Freeson: As the Government seem, in the voice of the Prime Minister, to be insisting on maintaining the possibility of nuclear warfare should there be an outbreak of war between ourselves and the Soviet Union, why does the Home Secretary set aside so briefly the question of civil defence air raid shelters? If the Government are really serious about civil defence, why do they not undertake a programme of building civil defence shelters, which will at least save many people's lives in the event of nuclear war?
    Mr. Hurd: It is precisely thanks to the existence of the deterrent and our intention to maintain it that the risk of war is low. That being so, we must strike a balance in civil defence between measures that ,would provide protection in the case of that sort of attack and the other claims on resources. During the past few years we have struck that balance more sensibly than have any previous Government.

    Crime Prevention
    Mr. Thurnhamasked the Secretary of state for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the progress of the crime prevention pilot projects sponsored by his Department and based in Wellingborough, Croydon, Bolton, Swansea and North Tyneside.
    Mr. Douglas Hogg: I am pleased to report that all the five projects that my right hon. Friend announced in October of last year are making good progress in combating crime.
    Mr. Thurnham: Will my hon. Friend congratulate all those who are helping to make a success of those schemes locally, including the Bolton Evening News, with its "Crackdown on Crime" campaign? Will he extend those schemes nationally? Will he invite Opposition Members to end their foolish criticism of such a positive Government initiative?
    Mr. Hogg: My hon. Friend is right. I shall certainly pass on his kind comments. We especially welcome his support for the extremely valuable work that was done in Bolton. I am sorry that his Labour opponents were not so helpful.
    Mr. Chris Smith: Is the Minister aware of some excellent crime prevention pilot projects being undertaken by some Labour-controlled local authorities, such as that in Brighton? Will he ensure that representations are made to the Secretary of State for the Environment so that the expenditure on such schemes is not caught under rate capping or under penalty for grant expenditure purposes?
    Mr. Hogg: I welcome the hon. Gentleman's support for the crime prevention campaigns introduced by the Government. However, many Labour local authorities are undertaking measures that are profoundly unhelpful.
    Mr. Wheeler: My hon. Friend is generous in welcoming the support from Labour Members for crime prevention, but what does he think of the London Labour boroughs that fund from ratepayer's money a campaign, through the London Labour document "Policing London", against the police in London and against crime prevention initiatives?
    Mr. Hogg: My hon. Friend has a most distinguished record in crime prevention, to which I pay tribute. The action of the Labour authorities to which he referred is positively unhelpful and damages law enforcement by the police. [Interruption.]
    Mr. Speaker: Order. Before I call the hon. Member for Hammersmith, (Mr. Soley), may I ask hon. Members to listen to Question Time?
    Mr. Soley: Why did the Government wait until they were pressed by the Labour party to do something about crime prevention? It is clear from the Minister's replies that he does not even know that the five schemes are situational and neighbourhood crime prevention schemes. Because the Minister does not know that, he is incapable of answering the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith). When will the Minister have a word with the Secretary of State for the Environment to ensure that funds are made available to enable the neighbourhood schemes to be well funded, because at the moment the Government, not any local authority, have been cutting back on crime prevention and victim support, and they know it?
    Mr. Hogg: I am prepared to accept that the hon. Gentleman represents the relatively respectable face of the Labour party, but he must face the unhappy fact that many of his colleagues, both locally and nationally, are profoundly damaging proper law enforcement. As for the crime prevention programme, it is the child of this Government.

    Sentencing Policy
    Mr. Yeoasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what recent representations he has received about sentencing policy.
    Mr. Hurd: We receive many letters about sentencing from Members of Parliament, the public and interested organisations.
    Mr. Yeo: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is great public concern about the apparent leniency of many

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    sentences passed on criminals convicted of violent offences such as child abuse, rape and other forms of assault? Will he ensure that in future the sentences passed not only allay public concern but give the public the protection that they deserve?
    Mr. Hurd: The job of Parliament is to ensure that maximum sentences are adequate. That is why we gave full support to the Sexual Offences Act introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Drake (Miss Fookes). It is also important to make it clear that those convicted of serious offences should serve long sentences. I have made it clear that a criminal serving a life sentence for the sexual or sadistic murder of a child may expect to serve at least 20 years and that those sentenced to more than five years for sexual abuse of a child will not normally get parole. Where sentences appear to be wayward on the side of leniency, we are proposing in our Criminal Justice Bill to enable the Attorney-General to refer to the Court of Appeal any Crown court case which appears to raise public issues of this kind.
    Mrs. Renée Short: Will the Home Secretary examine sentencing policy as it affects pregnant women? Does he recall the recent case of a woman in labour who was left locked in a cell in Holloway for 16 hours without proper medical care and then had to wait an hour and a half for a taxi to take her to hospital, where a caesarean section was performed but the baby died, strangled by the cord? How does he intend to ensure that that never happens again?
    Mr. Hurd: I am familiar with that case and do not criticise the hon. Lady for raising it. Any accusations of negligence will have to be carefully examined to ensure that if there was any shortcoming on the part of the prison service or prison medical staff it will not recur.
    Sir Anthony Grant: In view of the increasing public concern about sentencing, has it occurred to my right hon. Friend — with the greatest respect to his distinguished and learned junior Ministers — that the rareified sanctuary of the Bar should not perhaps be the sole training ground for Her Majesty's judges?
    Mr. Hurd: That is a very explosive suggestion. I will ensure that my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor is acquainted with it.
    Mr. Norman Atkinson: The House appreciates the Home Secretary's concern about lenient sentencing and the fact that he has called for reports, but will he also call for reports on the imposition of savage sentences on young people for political purposes? Does he recall the instances at the Old Bailey in recent weeks of young boys of 18 and 19 being sentenced to seven and eight years' imprisonment for throwing stones during incidents in my constituency? Will he try to discourage judges from reacting to press reports and pressure for long sentences to be used as a deterrent for political purposes?
    Mr. Hurd: No, Sir. It would be quite improper and quite wrong for me to take that advice.
    Mr. Hind: With regard to sentencing policy, will my right hon. Friend resist the temptation to introduce any statute of limitations in relation to people being tried for offences that were committed a long time in the past? In particular, will he reassure the House, and especially the people of Lancashire, that, should there be evidence to
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    suggest that Miss Myra Hindley is involved in two further murders, she will not escape the consequences of her dastardly acts?
    Mr. Hurd: Immunity from prosecution is a matter for my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General, but I understand that in this case he has decided not to grant any such immunity.
    Mr. Corbett: Given that we have more people in prison and a higher level of crime than most other countries in Europe, is the Home Secretary trying to suggest that the sentencing policy is succeeding?
    Mr. Hurd: I am trying to suggest that there is an overwhelming case, supported by public opinion in all parts of the country, for the proposition that people who commit severe offences should receive appropriately severe sentences. I also believe—the hon. Member knows this, as I have always made the point—that those considering cases at the lower end of the scale should understand the great importance of the wide range of non-custodial alternatives available to them.

    Rural Areas (Policing)
    Mr. Harveyasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he has any guidelines for the policing of rural areas.
    Mr. Hurd: It is for each chief officer of police to determine the most suitable methods of policing for rural areas in his force. Many forces are now beginning to benefit from the further increases in manpower and resources which were announced earlier this year.
    Mr. Harvey: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that reply. In view of the enormous increase in spending on the police force under this Government, would he not consider it a serious error if 40 rural police stations in north Wales were to close?
    Mr. Hurd: It is for each chief constable to use the resources available to him as he thinks fit. I am puzzled by the situation in north Wales, as I have received no requests from the police authority for an increase in manpower. I notice that at the end of September the authority was 40 under strength. It is the job of the police authority to recruit up to strength, and if it puts in a request for more manpower, obviously I will consider that request alongside others.
    Mr. Wigley: Is the Home Secretary aware that there is considerable consternation in north Wales at the threatened closure of rural police stations? The population of the towns and villages want to see a police officer on foot—as part of the community—and not someone in a car who spends half an hour whizzing in and out of those communities. Will he remind the local police force of this?
    Mr. Hurd: It is certainly part of the aim of the increases I am authorising that more police officers should be out and about in the villages and on the streets. I have not only authorised these increases, but I have made it easier for all police authorities, including north Wales, to take sensible decisions about policing by increasing to 51 per cent. the rate of police grant.
    Mr. Conway: Bearing in mind the Government's highly successful incentives to expand the role of special constables and their recruitment, will my right hon. Friend

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    look at ways in which the attraction of serving in the special constabulary could be expanded in rural areas? That would enable the return of more policemen on the beat represented by citizens who will serve their community without renumeration.
    Mr. Hurd: Yes. We are always on the alert for ways of encouraging the special constabulary. After a period as it were, on a plateau, I am glad to see that the numbers are beginning to pick up, and that is very important.
    Mr. Skinner: Is it not a rather strange state of affairs that the Tory Goverment seem to have some difficulty in getting police into the rural areas, as shown by questions asked by Conservative Members, yet during 1984–85 the Government filled all the pit lanes they could find in almost every coalfield in Britain with police? At the present time there are about 2,000 police down there in Wapping who could be used in rural areas. Is it not ironic that this Tory Government are using 2,000 police officers down at Wapping to get out the News of the World?
    Mr. Hurd: Everyone in their senses would much rather that the police did not have to be deployed at Wapping. If the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that Sir Kenneth Newman should withdraw all those police and allow the people who want to work at Wapping to be intimidated and prevented from doing so, certainly we on this side of the House would utterly reject that.
    Mr. Adley: Does my right hon. Friend accept that what one might call development growth areas rather than natural growth areas, areas that have grown up on the edges of some of the towns and cities of Britain, present particular policing problems? Will my right hon. Friend consider setting up an inquiry, with chief constables, to consider this problem? The problem might best be served, not by police on foot, which is impractical, or in cars, which is unhelpful, but possibly on bicycles.
    Mr. Hurd: The bicycle is very important, as we saw recently at the party conference in Bournemouth. It is for chief constables to work that out. My hon. Friend is right. One of the factors that we take into account when looking at applications for increases in police forces is precisely the growth of such areas, where the population needing to be protected has increased.

    Visas
    Mr. Maddenasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what representations he has received concerning the recent introduction of visa control for nationals of Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Ghana and Nigeria.
    The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. David Waddington): A number of right hon. and hon. Members have expressed views on the changes, which have been fully debated here and in another place. Many other individuals and organisations have also written.
    Mr. Madden: Does the Minister now understand why the selective introduction of visa control was widely seen as racist? Does he now accept that the most effective way of dealing with the problem at Heathrow would have been to appoint more immigration officers? Does he further accept that the substantial increase in entry visas has added financial penalties to racial injury?
    Mr. Waddington: I wish that Opposition Members would not go around the place bandying allegations of racism. The hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that such an allegation is quite absurd in the present case. He knows perfectly well that we require visas of more than 60 countries, including citizens of Poland, China, the Congo and Burma. As I said in the debate the other week, I make that white, yellow, black, and brown.
    Mr. Dorrell: Is it not the case that the new visa regulations did not change in any detail the right of anyone to come to this country as a visitor? What was changed was a policing system that had been found to be increasingly unsatisfactory, detrimental to the rights of visitors coming to this country and working against their interests. Is it not extraordinary that the Opposition support the policing system that did not work, in the face of one that does?
    Mr. Waddington: My hon. Friend is entirely right. As the President of Nigeria said, visas are a technical and administrative matter. It is not a political decision. It is an administrative arrangement, which is of obvious benefit to all bona fide travellers, who will now be able to come to this country with none of the hassle, waiting and trouble that they had to endure at Heathrow because of the need to process large numbers of people whose claims to enter were in doubt.
    Mr. Maclennan: How many additional officers have the Government put in place in those countries to handle the visa applications and to ensure that there are not unacceptable delays there?
    Mr. Waddington: I think that the answer is 39. I am happy to tell the hon. Gentleman that at present the system is working smoothly, with 95 per cent. of all applications being dealt with on the same day.
    Mr. Lawler: Is it not a fact that 95 per cent. of visa applications being dealt with in 24 hours proves that the system is working efficiently and well? Is not the greatest benefit to our constituents the fact that when they invite a visitor or a relation to come to see them they know that he will turn up at the airport at a time that has been agreed and not hours or, indeed, days, later, as was the case under the old system?
    Mr. Waddington: My hon. Friend is entirely right. That is why I regret so many of the scare stories being put about by Opposition Members, who should know a lot better.
    Mr. Dubs: The Minister has just asserted yet again that his proposals for the five countries are not racist. Can he then explain why, when British people going to South Africa require a visa, white South Africans coming to Britain on holiday do not require a visa?
    Mr. Waddington: The hon. Gentleman should realise from a glance at the list of countries in respect of which there is a visa requirement that we impose visas when it is necessary for administrative reasons. We do not impose visas for the sake of imposing visas and when there is no operational requirement for doing so.

    Football Matches (Public Order)
    Mr. Fallonasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the latest programme of measures to improve public order at football matches.
    Mr. Douglas Hogg: Following the improvement last season, which we attribute to the new alcohol control legislation, the introduction of closed-circuit television and the unremitting efforts of the police, with the co-operation of the clubs, the Government remain determined to achieve further progress. The Public Order Act 1986, which has recently received Royal Assent, contains further measures, including the exclusion order scheme, the extension of alcohol controls to minibuses carrying supporters to matches and a new offence of carrying a firework or smoke-bomb at a football match. We have also urged the football authorities to develop and extend membership card schemes.
    Mr. Fallon: Is my hon. Friend aware that there has already been violence this season at Middlesbrough, Exeter, Darlington, Torquay and Shrewsbury and that this town centre terrorism will continue as long as away supporters are allowed to roam the country without membership cards? If the Football League will not act, will my hon. Friend legislate?
    Mr. Hogg: I am grateful for my hon. Friend's support. He is entirely right to draw the House's attention to the membership schemes. We very much hope that the football industry will move towards that. We would prefer persuasion, but I could not exclude any method of carrying the scheme forward.
    Mr. Ashton: Does the Minister agree that the violence occurs outside grounds and that violent people having passes would make no difference whatever? When Leeds United fans have been banned from away games, they have still turned up and the police have asked for them to be admitted because it is easier to keep control of them in the ground. If one takes a pass away from a villain, how does it stop him being a villain?
    Mr. Hogg: Nobody has suggested that it would be a panacea, but we think that it is an important step forward and we hope that the football industry will carry it forward.

  PRIME MINISTER

    Engagements
    Mr. Wigleyasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 20 November.
    The Prime Minister (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher): This morning I presided at a meeting of the Cabinet and had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall be having further meetings later today.
    Mr. Wigley: Will the Prime Minister find time today to consider the fact that many building and factory workers have to commute weekly from Gwynedd, the rest of Wales, northern England and Scotland to London to find work because of joblessness at home and the impossibility of getting housing in the south-east of England? When will she introduce an effective regional policy that brings work to the people and gives some hope to those who live north and west of a line from the Severn to the Wash?
    The Prime Minister: With regard to housing, one of the problems is that there is not sufficient housing for rent. We
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    are often urged to alter the law to take the controls off. What we have done with regard to assured tenancies helps, but it is not sufficient.
    With regard to regional policy, in 1985 Wales attracted one sixth of all inward investment into the United Kingdom and between 1981 and 1985 the number of self-employed people in Wales increased by 27 per cent. Urban programme expenditure has also been increased, so we have had Wales very much in mind.
    Mr. Teddy Taylor: In the light of information which has come from Brussels this week that butter is now being sold to Russia at 3p a pound and that beef is being sold at 11p a pound, can my right hon. Friend say whether the Government have yet reached a decision on the European Parliament's request for a war chest of £2 billion to sell food even more cheaply from surplus stores?
    The Prime Minister: If there were to be a fund of any size, Britain would have to contribute to it. We do not feel that we should put up our expenditure to Europe anything above the present limits. As my hon. Friend knows, the provision of export funds is sometimes the most cost-effective outlook for surplus products. As for sales to the Soviet Union, when the matter has come before the relevant management committee we have always opposed it, but it is not a matter on which there is a veto.
    Mr. Kinnock: May I ask the Prime Minister a question about the conduct of the Attorney-General? Is she aware that, in court in Australia, Sir Robert Armstrong has testified that officers of the Crown had photocopies of Mr. Chapman Pincher's book several weeks before it was published in 1981? He has said in court that "of course" the book contains a substantial amount of informal ion from former officers of MI5 which, in Sir Robert's view,
    "could certainly prejudice national security, including current and future operations".
    Is the Prime Minister aware that Sir Robert has further testified that the decision of the Attorney-General in 1981 was that there was
    "no basis on which an injunction could be launched"
    to prevent the publication of Mr. Pincher's book? Is it not obvious that any Government who had foreknowledge that information prejudicial to national security was to be published would have absolutely no difficulty obtaining an injunction against its publication? Can the Prime Minister tell us precisely why she accepted that decision by the Attorney-General not to seek an injunction to prevent publication of Mr. Chapman Pincher's book, which was obviously prejudicial to national security?
    The Prime Minister: Proceedings continue in the Supreme Court of New South Wales. Particularly as the Government are the plaintiff in the case in Australia, it would be inappropriate for me to comment on the case — [Interruption.] — or on matters in issue in the proceedings so long as these continue. Some of these matters may be relevant to the proceedings in court. With regard to some previous books, there are questions on the Order Paper for written answer, I believe to the Attorney-General, who will, of course, answer in his own way.
    Mr. Kinnock: Is the Prime Minister giving us an undertaking that she will make a full and detailed statement about the additional information that has become available as a consequence of Sir Robert's public testimony? Meanwhile, given that these considerations

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    affect the particular case of Mr. Wright, will she tell us why they did not appear to affect the case of Mr. Chapman Pincher—or the case of Mr. West, when he published his book in 1982? Will the right hon. Lady, even now, explain the huge inconsistencies in the Government's approach to these three cases?
    The Prime Minister: I am standing by the answer that I have just given, and I would have thought, with all due respect to the right hon. Gentleman, that he would know that it would not be possible to answer in any event from the Government Dispatch Box in the kind of detail that he is requiring. When the case is over, we shall, of course, consider carefully any questions that are put to us in the light of the usual customs and conventions.
    Mr. Heddleasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 20 November.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Heddle: Will my right hon. Friend turn her attention to local government? Did she note on the front page of The Times today that at last the Leader of the Opposition has admitted that extremism exists in a great number of Labour councils—[Interruption.]
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must get his question in order.
    Mr. Heddle: Will my right hon. Friend take time to read page 1 of The Times today, where the view is expressed by the Leader of the Opposition that a growing number of Labour-controlled councils are now run by extremists? Will she take time to read page 2 of The Independent which reports that the shadow Chancellor has castigated the "borrow now, pay later" policies of these councils? Are not these authorities piling up hundreds of millions of pounds of debt, thus imposing intolerable burdens on factories, firms and people?
    The Prime Minister: I understand that the scale and size of the borrowing of some local authorities is giving cause for great concern because they are spending now, mortgaging the future and putting penalties on future generations. As my hon. Friend is aware, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment anounced his intention to legislate against deferred purchase schemes, and that legislation would extend back to catch schemes from 22 July onwards. I believe that that legisaltion will be brought before the House shortly.
    Mr. James Lamondasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 20 November.
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Lamond: Would the right hon. Lady not be well advised to spend some time today getting down in black and white, signed and sealed, everything that she can recall about the alleged agreement that she recently reached with President Reagan in the United States, especially about his promise to supply Trident in the future, as according to The Daily Telegraph, Today and a number of other newspapers, it seems that the President's memory of things that have happened — such as the discussions at Reykjavik and the supply of arms to Iran—is becoming increasingly unreliable hour by hour?
    The Prime Minister: There is already available an agreed statement issued at the press conference on the talks between the President and myself on arms control matters.
    Dr. Michael Clark: Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is a sign of how far behind the times the Labour party is that it still—[Interruption.]
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must get his question in order.
    Dr. Clark: Will my right hon. Friend find time today to observe that the Soviet Union is planning to privatise various small businesses at the same time as the Labour party is planning to take into national ownership various major British companies?
    The Prime Minister: I am certain that any small steps towards freedom in that country will be widely welcomed.
    Dr. Owen: How does the Prime Minister justify the persistent supply of military equipment to Iran since she has been in office? In view of her decision not to do anything to prolong or exacerbate the Iraq-Iran conflict, how does she justify the sale of spare parts for Chieftain tanks and Scorpion armoured cars, which have been used on the front and were sold in 1985? Can she assure the House that no spare parts or any other military equipment have been supplied to Iran in 1986?
    The Prime Minister: As I said last week, the policy was set out by my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary on 29 Occtober 1985. With regard to some of the matters that the right hon. Gentleman mentioned, he will know that some contracts were placed and paid for during the time of the Shah. Some of those items have been sent in small quantities and others remain in the United Kingdom.
    Mr. Cockeramasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 20 November.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Cockeram: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the level of direct taxation in the United Kingdom, particularly the 29 per cent. starting rate, is among the heaviest in the Western world? Will she further confirm that her Government are committed to reducing that burden?
    The Prime Minister: The starting rate is certainly extremely sharp. We have concentrated on trying to increase the amounts of tax-free allowances to taxpayers and we have increased them considerably in real terms. We have also reduced both the standard rate—from 33p in the pound, where it was in 1979, to 29p—and top rates. It is still our hope and intention further to reduce income tax as and when circumstances permit.
    Mr. Altonasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 20 November.
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Alton: Does the Prime Minister agree that the potential of the Anglo-Irish Agreement was well illustrated earlier this week by Mr. Peter Barry's call for members of the Catholic community in Northern Ireland to join the

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    Rcyal Ulster Constabulary? Does she agree that the best interests of Northern Ireland would now be served by, calls from people on both sides of the divide in Northern Ireland fully to support and back law enforcement agencies?
    The Prime Minister: I wholeheartedly support the request for people in both communities fully to back the law enforcement agencies, and I pay tribute to those agencies.
    Mr. Fletcher: Has my right hon. Friend seen today's reports that the Labour party has put Scottish devolution back on the agenda for the general election? Will she join me in welcoming that further evidence that the Labour party has nothing to offer Scotland other than its failed policies of the 1970s — more government, more rates, more taxes and no economic growth?
    The Prime Minister: I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend and I congratulate him on the way in which he has put his question.
    Miss Boothroydasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 20 November.
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Lady to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Miss Boothroyd: Is the Prime Minister aware that the price of gas supplied to British manufacturers is already far in excess of that paid by our European competitors? As she regards it as crucial that British manufacturers reduce their costs and become more efficient, can she guarantee that privatisation will not further increase prices? And will she tell Sid?
    The Prime Minister: The Government's record on fuel prices is far better than the record of the previous Government. The record of gas is also very good. The record of gas under privatisation will exceed even that which it has had in the past five or six years.
    Mr. Haywardasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 20 November.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Hayward: Has my right hon. Friend had the opportunity today to look at the crime figures published by the Avon and Somerset police authority, which show that street crime has fallen to below 50 per cent. since Operation Delivery? Does that not vindicate the tough action taken by the police where appropriate and the active support of most of Bristol's citizens for that operation?
    The Prime Minister: Yes. I should like to congratulate the police force on its excellent work. When the police went into St. Pauls in strength many people there were wholeheartedly behind them and the results of that action are shown in the present figures.
    Mr. Willie W. Hamiltonasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 20 November.
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Hamilton: Is the Prime Minister aware that since 1979 her Government have fiddled official statistics by between 25 and 30 times? How many more times will she fiddle figures in various Government Departments between now and the next election?
    The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman is well aware that that is not the case. What he is doing is reflecting upon the professional standards of those who serve us.
    Mr. Wareing: On a point of order arising out of questions, Mr. Speaker.
    Mr. Speaker: I shall take points of order after business questions.

Business of the House
3.31 pm
Mr. Neil Kinnock: May I ask the Leader of the House whether he will state the business for next week?
The Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John Biffen): Yes, Sir. The business for next week will be as follows:
MONDAY 24 NOVEMBER—Until about seven o'clock Second Reading of the Petroleum Bill.
Afterwards there will be a debate on a Government motion to take note of European documents in relation to Draft budgets of the European Communities for 1986 and 1987. Details of the documents concerned will be given in the Official Report.
TUESDAY 25 NOVEMBER—Second Reading of the Coal Industry Bill.
Motion on Parliamentary Constituencies (Wales) (Miscellaneous Changes) Order 1986.
WEDNESDAY 26 NOVEMBER—Opposition day (1st Allotted Day). Until about seven o'clock there will be a debate entitled "The Effects of Bus Deregulation".
Afterwards there will be a debate entitled "The dispute at J E Hanger & Company Ltd". Both debates will arise on Opposition motions.
Motion on Suppression of Terrorism Act 1978 (Application of Provisions) (United States of America) Order.
There will be a debate on EC Document 4761/86 relating to Community action in the field of tourism.
THURSDAY 27 NOVEMBER — Second Reading of the Criminal Justice Bill.
FRIDAY 28 NOVEMBER—Second Reading of the Banking Bill.
MONDAY 1 DECEMBER — Until about seven o'clock Second Reading of the Advanced Petroleum Revenue Tax Bill followed by Second Reading of the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads Bill.
[Debate on Monday 24 November (EC Budget)
Relevant European documents:

(a) 5484/86

Key figures for the 1987 Budget

(b) 7113/86

Preliminary Draft Supplementary and Amending Budget No. 1 1986

(c) 7068/86

Revised key figures for the 1987 Budget

(d) 7927/86

Preliminary Draft General Budget 1987

(e) 9192/86

Draft General Budget of European Communities for 1987

(f) 8877/86

Letter of Amendment to Preliminary Draft Budget al European Communities 1987

(g) Com(86)360

Letter of Amendment to the 1986 Budget

(h) 8876/86

Preliminary Draft Amending Budget No. 1 1986

(i) 8883/86 & ADD 1

Commission Communication on recent developments affecting 1986 Budget and 1987 Preliminary Draft Budget.

Relevant Reports of European Legislation Committee:

(a) HC 21-xvi (1985–86) para 2

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(b)HC 21-xxiii (1985–86) para 2

(c) HC 21-xxiv (1985–86 para 3

(d) HC 21-xxvi (1985–86) para 1 & HC 272-ii (1985–85)

(e) HC 21-xxvii (1985–86) para 7

(f) HC 21-xxvii (1985–86) para 7

(g) HC 21-xxvi (1985–86) para 4

(h) HC 21-xxvii (1985–86) para 6

(i) HC 21-xxvii (1985–86) para 6

Debate on Wednesday 26 November (Tourism)
Relevant European document:

(j) 4761/86

Tourism in the Community

Relevant Report of European Legislation Committee:

(j) HC 21-xxii

(1985–86) para 2

Mr. Kinnock: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman.
The Secretary of State for Education and Science made a further intervention yesterday in his efforts to wreck the settlement agreed between the teachers and the employers in the course of last week. That intervention has led to a serious anxiety that the Government will try to impose a settlement with all the awful consequences for education. Will the Leader of the House ensure that the Secretary of State for Education and Science makes a statement as quickly as possible giving an undertaking not to make such a destructive imposition?
As the House will not have an opportunity to debate the outcome of the Government's review of student support for some months, will the right hon. Gentleman now make time available for a debate on the urgent needs of all students in higher education?
When are we likely to have the rate support grant statement?
There is considerable anger about the substantial cut that has been made in Arts Council funding. When will the House have an opportunity to debate that matter which affects so many parts of Britain?
In the light of the Prime Minister's confused statement yesterday in the Financial Times interview, in which she implied support for a merger between the Ford Motor Company and the Rover Group and, therefore, a virtual end to British-owned car production, will the Leader of the House ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to make an early statement in order to confirm or deny what the Prime Minister seemed to be saying yesterday?
Finally, I ask the Leader of the House, as a man of rectitude, how many more cases of insider trading we must have to convince the Government that self-regulation in the City is absolutely no answer? Will he accept that he will have our full co-operation if the Government, even at this late stage, bring forward legislation to set up a proper statutory agency to restore law and order in the dealings in the City? Will he make Government time available for a debate on an issue which truly shows the ugly and unacceptable face of the system?
Mr. Biffen: I shall take those six points in the order in which the right hon. Gentleman presented them.
I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will not mind my describing as wholly tendentious his description of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science in seeking to secure a reasonable taxpayers' presence in what is being debated in the educational world. My right hon. Friend has said from the outset that he would make a statement at the most appropriate moment, and I stand by his remarks.

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As to the second point, it might be helpful if we tried, through the usual channels, to secure a debate on student support.
The timing of the rate support grant statement will be broadly similar to what happens normally in these matters, but I take account of what the right hon. Gentleman has said.
I realise that Arts Council funding is a matter of public interest, although I suspect that our economic and social fabric will withstand some of the things that now seem to terrorise the council. My right hon. Friend the Minister for the Arts will be answering questions on Monday, so perhaps that will provide an early opportunity for this matter to be raised.
A statement is not necessary to dispose of the self-induced misunderstanding of what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said about the relationship between British Leyland and Ford, but as ever, in generosity, I shall refer the right hon. Gentleman's anxieties to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.
The House has just enacted wide-ranging and profound legislation, the Financial Services Act, and the system is a combination of both statute and self-regulation. This matter will quite properly be monitored by the House. I take account of what the right hon. Gentleman says, but I can see no prospect of a debate next week.
Mr. Ian Gow: In the absence of devolved government in Northern Ireland, does my right hon. Friend consider that it is satisfactory that we should legislate for Great Britain by the conventional Bill procedure but that we should legislate for Northern Ireland by Order in Council, unamendable and frequently late at night?
Mr. Biffen: That has been the practice in the fairly recent past and, in all candour, I can see no likelihood of its being altered in the balance of this Parliament.
Mr. David Alton: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree with the provision in the new Criminal Justice Bill whereby social security claimants will have their fines deducted at source? Is this provision to be made available to the rest of the community? Will there be a statement on the reduction of £4 million in the budget of the Public Health Laboratory Service, which conflicts with the Secretary of State's avowed claim that the Government will do all that they can to combat AIDS?
Mr. Biffen: I shall refer both points to those of my right hon. Friends who are responsible for the legislation.
Sir Ian Percival: I ask my right hon. Friend about early-day motion 35.
[That this House congratulates and thanks all those whose efforts contributed to the prevention of the hideous crime planned, executed and so nearly effected by Nezar Hindawi, and to his conviction; recognises the existence of international gangs who are prepared to commit mass murder in pursuit of their objectives and that the maximum penalty permitted by law of life imprisonment does not appear to be a sufficient deterrent; believes that fresh consideration should be given to extending the death penalty, now limited to crimes of treason and piracy; and asks the Leader of the House to give time for these matters to be debated.]
I know that he will wish to see how many Members support it before making a decision, and he may know that
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the number has already reached 150, although not all the names are on the Order Paper. I know that my right hon. Friend will not try to fob us off by suggesting that we raise these matters on the Criminal Justice Bill. Will he keep in mind the fact that hon. Members have signed the motion not to go over matters that the House has often debated, but to discuss capital punishment in the context of the hideous villainy of international gangs and the increased risks to which our people are subjected as disclosed by the Hindawi case?
Mr. Biffen: It was my right hon. and learned Friend who referred to the Criminal Justice Bill. I hope, therefore, that he will not be too distasteful about the possibility of using that Bill as a means of ventilating the very subject that concerns him — always, obviously, subject to the judgment of the Chair. I cannot encourage my right hon. and learned Friend to think that the Government will make specific time available for a debate on this topic when there are other possibilities.
Mr. Jack Ashley: Is the Leader of the House aware that last week hundreds of parents of very severely disabled children lobbied Parliament because they want conductive education for their children? The system of conductive education has been proved in Hungary to enable some children to walk who have never walked before. As we do not have conductive education in Britain, many of these parents are going to Hungary in a desperate attempt to get help for their children. May we have a debate on that subject next week, please?
Mr. Biffen: Of course I shall bear in mind the right hon. Gentleman's request, but I cannot offer a debate next week.
Sir John Biggs-Davison: Quite apart from the somewhat acrimonious exchanges at Question Time on the Birmingham bombings, about which I am not fully informed, has my right hon. Friend studied early-day motion 67, which has been newly tabled with all-party sponsorship?
[That this House notes the doubt felt in both Houses of Parliament by two former Home Secretaries, by Lords Devlin and Scarman, by the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, by the Editor of The Times newspaper, by other respected observers and by members of the public who have viewed various television programmes on the matter, as to whether those accused in the Guildford and Maguire explosive cases were justly convicted, despite confirmation of their conviction by the Court of Appeal; urges the Secretary of State for the Home Department, in the interests of the highest standards of British justice, of which this country needs to feel rightly proud, to move forthwith for the appointment of a public inquiry presided over by an independent figure of legal standing, to be assisted by one or more lay assessors of relevant qualifications; and would deplore any further delay, since several of those convicted are still in prison.]
In view of the widespread all-party concern, may we have an interim statement—perhaps next week?
Mr. Biffen: I admire my hon. Friend's courteous persistence in these matters. Of course I shall draw the attention of my right hon. Friend to his request.
Dr. Norman A. Godman: In the light of the unsuitability of the two vessels that have been chosen to police the Falkland islands fisheries zone,

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would it not make good sense to hold an early debate on the management of the Falkland islands fisheries zone and the larger questions concerned?
Mr. Biffen: I cannot accept the premise of that request. However, the hon. Gentleman might like to raise the matter on the Adjournment.
Sir Ian Lloyd: My right hon. Friend will doubtless be aware of the growing and widespread interest, both inside and outside the House, in the question of scientific and technical advice to Parliament. Is there any possibility of the House having a debate on the subject before the end of the year?
Mr. Biffen: I shall bear in mind my hon. Friend's point. However, there are many pressures on Government time in this phase of the parliamentary year, as he will understand from the business that I have just announced, when we are trying to secure the Second Reading of as many Bills as possible.
Dr. Jeremy Bray: Will the Leader of the House say what progress he is making in his inquiries into the case for an office of technology assessment? Tomorrow the House is to debate a very important issue, AIDS, upon which the House and the public have the greatest need for the most balanced and up-to-date scientific and technological advice.
Mr. Biffen: The hon. Gentleman is perfectly right when he says that that is a requirement for tomorrow's debate. I believe that those agencies that are advising the House are doing so in good faith and on a comprehensive basis. They do not necessarily need the facility that the hon. Gentleman is championing.
Sir Trevor Skeet: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, so far as an office of technology assessment is concerned, we are in a unique position in the United Kingdom, in that still no advice is provided for Members of Parliament? Will he bear in mind that an Adjournment debate would be quite unsatisfactory? Therefore, will he give Government time for a proper discussion of this matter?
Mr. Biffen: I must say in all charity to my hon. Friend that I do not think he enhances his case by suggesting that this is, on the whole, an uninformed House of Commons. In my view, the debates in this place are conducted on the necessary information that is available, linked to the passion and the enthusiasm that must go with it. The debates will lose if they are drowned in a mass of technical gobbledegook.
Mr. Tony Banks rose—
Mr. Andrew Faulds rose—
Mr. Speaker: Mr. Andrew Faulds.
Mr. Banks: You always choose my hon. Friend, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Faulds: I am so glad that you have some sense of priorities, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Banks: It is agism.
Mr. Faulds: Well, it may be agism, but I am an elder statesman and I deserve it. In view of the appalling and
698
declining standards of British Rail performance in some of the regions of Britain, and particularly between Paddington and Birmingham, are the Government prepared to give time to my impending ten-minute Bill which will require British Rail management at all levels to travel to work on whatever British Rail services are available?
Mr. Biffen: It sounds like a fascinating prospective piece of legislation, but superficially I would judge it to be hybrid.
Mr. Michael Latham: In view of Monday's debate on what is laughingly called the Community budget, and in view of the possibility of further cuts in milk quotas, will my right hon. Friend impress upon the Minister of Agriculture the need to come to the House and say that this is not an opportune time to ask milk producers to pay £90 for basic inspections?
Mr. Biffen: I shall certainly pass that message to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture.
Mr. Tony Banks: May I draw to the attention of the Leader of the House my early-day motion 76?
[That this House calls upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Governor of the Bank of England to alter the guidelines in respect of the depiction of currency which are being used against artists; demands that the 18 works by six artists seized by the police in a raid on the Young Unknowns Gallery on 31st October be returned to the artists; and believes that, in the interest of artistic freedom, the threat of legal action by the Bank of England against the artist Stephen Boggs for infringement of the guidelines be dropped forthwith.]
The Leader of the House will see from the motion that 18 works by six artists were seized by the police because they depicted currency and offended the guidelines issued by the Bank of England. Will he arrange for an early debate of the arts as requested by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition so that we can discuss this new threat to artistic freedom?
Mr. Biffen: I have speedily acquainted myself with the terms of the motion. I realise it will be of widespread interest to the House, hut, given the difficulties of time at this phase of the year, I refer the hon. Gentleman to arts questions on Monday.
Mr. Jonathan Aitken: Is my right hon. Friend aware that many hon. Members have long held the view that some form of parliamentary oversight is desirable on the activities of past and present members of the security services? Is he further aware that support for this view must have increased as a result of the evidence given by Sir Robert Armstrong in the Australian courts? Will he ensure that at the appropriate time there is a debate on the relationship between Parliament and the security services?
Mr. Biffen: My hon. Friend constructively adds the condition, "at the appropriate time". Of course, there may be a time when this matter can be further considered.
Mr. Robert Maclennan: Will the Leader of the House be prepared to meet a deputation from the Opposition parties to consider the Government's legislative proposals for the financing of local government in Scotland which appear to be designed to take control over local authorities in Scotland away from Scotland?
Mr. Biffen: The hon. Gentleman, perhaps because of a little inexperience, is suggesting that a sort of demarche operates through the usual channels. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would like to test the temperature of the usual channels. If he does, I shall see how things turn out.
Mr. Teddy Taylor: As the Lawnmowers (Harmonisation of Noise Emission Standards) Regulations which were laid before the House on 28 October create an entirely new offence with a penalty of £1,000, as they will create a lot of new public servants whose job will be to test lawnmowers, and as it gives the Board of Trade the power to break into people's property to check the noise of their lawnmowers, does my right hon. Friend agree that the least we should have is a debate on this matter, even after 10 o'clock, as requested in a prayer signed by several hon. Members?
Mr. Biffen: I am sure that my hon. Friend has touched upon one of those developing measures which underline the enthusiasm, the zeal and the eternal unity of the European Community. There are well established procedures for debating these various documents, and I hope that my hon. Friend will try to secure a debate through those procedures.
Mr. Dave Nellist: Is the Leader of the House aware that high-ranking British Army officers, including the commanding officer of 2 Para, Lieutenant-Colonel David Parker, were invited to address the conference organised by a CIA sponsored commercial organisation in London at the beginning of this month? That was revealed in this week's Militant newspaper. Will the Leader of the House explain how, at the Dispatch Box, the Prime Minister can denounce terrorism, when this conference was organised two weeks ago to discuss supporting terrorist operations against the Governments of Nicaragua, Mozambique and Angola'? Will the Secretary of State for Defence make a statement to explain the Government's hypocrisy?
Mr. Biffen: I was unaware of all of those things, which I fear reflects the fact that I would make rather pedestrian company.
Mr. Patrick Nicholls: Will my right hon. Friend consider initiating a debate on the legal implications of people who resign their elective offices prematurely? Is he aware that, of five Liberal councillors who were elected to the district council in Teignbridge at the last district council election, two have resigned completely, two have joined the Conservative party, and the one who remains has been suspended by the Liberal party organisation for putting the interests of his constituents before those of his party'? Will my right hon. Friend find it in his heart to refuse a debate on the implications of that, bearing in mind that there are local council by-elections pending in which people will want to consider the advisability or otherwise of electing Liberal councillors?
Mr. Biffen: Clearly, a most powerful subject is emerging. It should command the attention of the House. I regret to say that this has happened with such speed and so recently that we have been unable to accommodate it in the business for next week, but I shall certainly bear in mind what my hon. Friend has said.
Mr. Willie W. Hamilton: The Leader of the House may know that the Secretary of State for Social
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Services said that he will supply information to Opposition Members or to any other Members who are interested in tomorrow's debate on AIDS. I have been to our Whips' Office. There is no information whatever from the DHSS, and no information is forthcoming from the Scottish Office on this matter. Will the right hon. Gentleman contact those two Departments and ensure that the information is available to hon. Members who are interested in this matter?
Mr. Biffen: I shall most certainly look into that matter.
Mr. David Crouch: I draw my right hon. Friend's attention to the question by the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) on early-day motion 76 about the problem of artists' depiction of currency. I also refer to the fact that the House and the public are concerned about the receipt of currency by artists. I was the only person to raise the matter of the arts during the debate on the Loyal Address. More than a Question Time involving the Minister for the Arts is required. The country would value a debate in the near future on funding of the arts.
Mr. Biffen: I note what my hon. Friend has said. I shall bear in mind his request, which I am certain will be echoed by many others as the weeks go by. At this stage of the Session, a large number of Bills have to be launched on their legislative process.
Mr. Ted Leadbitter: Will the Leader of the House bear in mind that, without exemption, hon. Members are concerned about the problems that pensioners face during the winter months? We are deeply concerned about the manner in which fuel allowances are dealt with and administered. Without being critical of either the Government or the Department, may I ask whether it is possible for the Minister to make a statement so that the House might determine how best to direct our attention to this problem so that speedy efforts can be applied, money benefits can be placed in pensioners' hands at the right time, and some dangers avoided?
Mr. Biffen: The range of subjects covered by the hon. Gentleman's question go much wider than a mere statement. As we have just concluded a debate on the Queen's Speech, obviously I cannot hold out much hope of another debate upon the topic, but I take account of what he says.
Mr. John Wilkinson: Following the important question of my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken), will my right hon. Friend seriously consider the possibility of a very select committee on intelligence, constituted by senior Privy Councillors, since Government spokesmen of successive Governments seem in these matters to be, if not deliberately misleading, economical of the truth? Will my right hon. Friend give this matter the attention it deserves. If the House does not, quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Mr. Biffen: Even if we cannot have the arts, we can have confidence in my hon. Friend. His point has been considered by the House from time to time. The appointment of a Select Committee will be a matter for the House. I cannot go beyond the answer I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken).
Mr. David Winnick: In view of the suggestions by two Conservative Members today, perhaps

701
the long-running farce in Australia will have served some purpose if, at the end of it all, there is some parliamentary scrutiny of the security services, which was demanded when certain matters were debated earlier in the year. When the case in Australia is finished, will there be a statement by the Home Secretary or the Attorney-General?
Mr. Biffen: I totally repudiate the hon. Gentleman's description of the court proceedings in Australia. As to his second question, I shall bear in mind his request.
Mr. Jerry Hayes: No doubt, my right hon. friend has carefully scrutinised early-day motion 56, which has been signed by hon. Members of all parties.
[That this House deplores the clearly stated policy of the holiday company Owners Abroad of refusing to correspond with honourable Members about constituents complaints regarding holidays taken with the company.]
I am sure that my right hon. Friend appreciates that in a few weeks many of our constituents will be taking and booking holidays. Will he take every opportunity to consider initiating a debate on this subject so that we can protect our constituents who will be ripped off by disreputable and perhaps arrogant and incompetent companies such as Owners Abroad?
Mr. Biffen: Whatever one may feel about the practice, clearly few hon. Members would applaud what the company is doing, but the Government have no responsibility for its actions.
Mr. Greville Janner: Is there any prospect of a debate on the allegation that 17 people now living in this country are guilty of major war crimes? In particular, will the right hon. Gentleman ask the Home Secretary and the Attorney-General whether they propose to make statements about the allegations against Mr. Antanas Gaykas of Edinburgh, which were carried in the Scottish press and which, so far as I know, were absolutely correct, that he was commander of a unit of Lithuanian battalions directly involved in the annihilation and mass murder of thousands of civilians in Lithuania and Byelorussia?
Mr. Biffen: I can offer no prospect of a debate on that topic but, of course, I shall mention that point to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. Indeed, he has been in his place and will have heard the allegation.
Mr. Tony Baldry: When considering the allocation of days to debating private Members' motions, will my right hon. Friend consider the fact that, if one studies the Order Paper, looks at the early-day motions and listens to a number of points of order raised by the Opposition, it is clear—
Dr. Godman: The hon. Gentleman has his hands in his pockets.
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member may put his hands in his pockets if he likes.
Mr. Baldry: I am always grateful for your protection, Mr. Speaker. Is it not therefore clear that many Opposition Members live in the total fantasy world of a conspiracy theory and that life to them is one whole conspiracy theory? May we have some days to debate private Members' motions which are devoted to the
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Opposition to argue their conspiracy theories at will among themselves and allow the rest of us to get on with living in the real world? Perhaps special days could be allocated to them, such as saints' days—for example, St. Jude the Obscure?
Mr. Biffen: I think that the slightly fragile nature of life within the parliamentary Labour party accounts for some of the anxiety that borders on conspiracy. I agree that there is not much that parliamentary debate can do to resolve that. However, I should have thought that the more open the argument was, the better it would be for the rest of us.
Mr. Jeremy Corbyn: Will the Leader of the House arrange for a special debate to be held next week, or as early as possible, on the operation of the new visa requirements for visitors to Britain from the subcontinent, and from Nigeria and Ghana? Will he also arrange for some consideration of the cases of those who have been held in this country for more than one month since they tried to come to Britain as visitors on 10, 11 and 12 October? I refer to Mr. Kadir Mia, who is being held in West Lavington detention centre, Mr. Sultan Mia, and Mr. Mohammed Masuk Mia. They all came to Britain as honest visitors, yet they have been treated as criminals and are now apparently to be deported.
Will the Leader of the House also ensure that those who were wrongly removed from Britain after Members of Parliament had made interventions will have their fares paid so that they can enjoy the visit that they had anticipated and can be treated properly?
Mr. Biffen: I understand that the new visa arrangements are proceeding broadly satisfactorily, and that 95 per cent. of visas are processed within 24 hours.
Mr. Corbyn: They have been in prison.
Mr. Biffen: It is all very well for the hon. Gentleman to shout at me, but that will not alter my mind. I am trying to point out that I do not believe that there is any prospect of a debate on the matter. However, the hon. Gentleman has raised several points involving individuals, and I suggest that he should try his luck with an Adjournment debate.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. I shall call the four hon. Members who have been rising in their places.
Mr. Harry Greenway: Will my right hon. Friend arrange for an early debate on the situation in which my constituent, Miss Maureen McGoldrick, finds herself? I visited her last night and she is under more stress than she should be. Once again, she finds herself facing a disciplinary investigation by the Labour-controlled Brent council after being exonerated by her board of governors from charges of racism. That decision was upheld twice in the courts. Is it not a total disgrace that she should continue to be hounded by that Left-wing Labour authority, and that no Opposition Member should denounce it for so doing?
Mr. Biffen: My hon. Friend has raised an issue that has received wide publicity, and I am sure that there is general concern in the House, at least among Conservative Members, about what seems to be the present state of

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affairs. I cannot hold out the prospect of a debate in Government time, but I very much hope that my hon. Friend will be able to raise the matter on the Adjournment.
Mr. Rob Hayward: Further to the question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway), may we have a full debate on extremism in local government? In my constituency, an avowed Marxist represents the Labour party on Bristol city council, and his wife is now standing as a Labour party candidate for the neighbouring ward. Presumably she is also a Marxist.
Mr. Biffen: Important though the topic is, it is simply not feasible to offer Government time for such a debate. However, there are many other opportunities to raise the matter, and I wish my hon. Friend success in that regard.
Mr. Edward Leigh: Following the Leader of the Opposition's remarks, may we have an early debate that will reassure the House that there are no zealots lurking deep within the Conservative Government who want to increase public spending by £28 billion a year resulting in the largest ever tax increase in our history, no zealots who want to indulge in one-sided disarmament tactics, and no zealots who want to prevent the largest ever number of ordinary people from buying shares? Alternatively, does my right hon. Friend think that the Leader of the Opposition should look for zealots on his own Front Bench before looking at the loony Left councils that his party controls?
Mr. Biffen: The reference to zealots within the Conservative Government has me confused. I am hoping that my hon. Friend will, therefore, correct the Official Report so that I can then make my response. But on Conservative Benches there is a sense of balance and a desire to judge all these matters in a practical and unideological way, thus striking a natural chord with the British public in total contrast to the zealots that the
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Leader of the Opposition sees rising up in the city halls and urban centres, and which will eventually swamp the Labour party.
Mr. Peter Bruinvels: Does my right hon. Friend share my concern at the continuing misuse by Labour councils of ratepayers' money, which is spent on political and partisan propaganda? Should not something be done quickly, particularly as Leicester city council is now advertising in the Labour Party Weekly for jobs with the chief executive? When will the local government Bill come before the House? Will it contain provisions affecting such propaganda? Will it give more effective control over the allocation of inner area programme funds? Much of that money is deliberately sent to Labour party organisations within councils such as Leicester.
Mr. Biffen: As I listened to my hon. Friend's abominable indictment and reflected on the inevitably rather measured processes of government, I realised that my hon. Friend, who is a man of speedy decisions, was outlining a subject that was suitable for someone who had come third in the ballot.

Official Report (Division List)
4.6 pm
Mr. Robert N. Wareing: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I seek your guidance on a matter of importance for the House and the country which arises out of a possible mistake in the Official Report. In columns 667 and 668 of the Official Report, the Division List for those going into the No Lobby against the Queen's Speech shows the names of the leader of the Liberal party and 14 of his colleagues, but fails to mention the hon. Member for Liverpool, Mossley Hill (Mr. Alton), the Liberal Chief Whip. Can that be right, or is the hon. Gentleman no longer the Liberal Chief Whip?
Mr. Speaker: I know nothing about these matters. The hon. Gentleman knows that only those who vote in the Division Lobby have their names recorded.

Mr. Peter Wright (Australian Court Action)
4.7 pm
Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 20, for the purpose of discussing a matter that is important, urgent and specific, namely,
"the need for the Government to withdraw from proceedings in the Australian courts against Peter Wright."
You will know, Mr. Speaker, that I raised this issue on 21 July and again on 25 July 1986, when I sought successfully to break the injunctions affecting The Guardian and The Observer. I ask today that the Government withdraw, and I set out my reasons.
The House needs to know why Messrs Blair, Symons, Simkins, Cairncross, Demowbray, King, Leigh, Harmer, Luke, Robertson, Foster, Burgess and his wife, Colonel William Skerden and Colonel Leo Long, Sir Ashton Roskill, Sir Robert Mackenzie, Sir Martin Furnival Jones, Lord Clanmorris, Lord Dacre, and Lord Victor Rothschild have not been dragged through the courts in an attempt to block publication of books for which they gave evidence as former security officers. If the answer is that the Government believe that the Wright position is different, because Wright was publishing a book himself, why did they not take action in the Irish courts against Brandon publishers for the book by Joan Miller, who was a special assistant to Maxwell Knight, former head of—
Mr. Richard Hickmet: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: I cannot take it now.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: There is a parallel: no action in the Irish courts, yet action in the Australian courts. The House needs to know why, prior to the Wright case being heard in the Australian courts, the Government refused to make a statement that they were intending to prosecute Mr. Arthur Martin, a former MI5 officer, and Mr. Rupert Allason, a Conservative parliamentary candidate and author of the book, "A Matter of Trust", when Mr. Martin passed to Mr. Allason classified information—
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must not make the speech that he might make if his application is granted. He must say why the matter is urgent, specific and important.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: That is precisely what I am doing. I have abbreviated my remarks to ensure that I am in order.
To be brief, perhaps I may draw attention to a letter from Mr. Pincher to Mr. Wright, which will undoubtedly influence your judgment, Mr. Speaker. It said:
"On New Year's day I was shooting with Havers, the Attorney … Havers told me that West met Martin six times, and on each occasion Martin told West secret information. In addition he showed him secret documents which should not have been in his possession. West then wrote his book and in it not only quoted Martin by name but quoted from the documents saying that they were secret! Havers then issued an injunction to have the offending parts removed, for had the book been published, the Government would have had no option but to prosecute both Martin and West … Havers told me"—
that is Pincher—
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"that he is still considering whether to prosecute Martin but says he cannot do that without prosecuting West who has been adopted as a Tory candidate! Mrs. T. is furious with him."—
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman has had his time and he must now bring his application to a close.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: Mr. Speaker, he goes on to say—
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman has had his three minutes. I am sorry.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: Perhaps I can conclude my remarks, Mr. Speaker, by referring to other matters that are directly relevent—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."]
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the new rule, which is not so new because we have known about it for six months. The rule is that an application under Standing Order No. 20 must be limited to three minutes. The hon. Gentleman must now complete his application with his peroration.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: May I put it to you, Mr. Speaker, that sedentary interjections and proper interventions of your own have prevented me from having a full three minutes. The House needs to know about conversations—
Mr. Speaker: Order—
Mr. Campbell-Savours: —that a former head had—
Mr. Speaker: Order. In fairness to everyone, three minutes must be the limit. The hon. Gentleman has had four minutes, which takes into account any interventions that I may have made.
The hon. Gentleman asks leave to move the Adjournment of the House for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter—
Mr. Campbell-Savours: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: —that he thinks should have urgent consideration, namely,
"the need for the British Government to withdraw from proceedings in the Wright case in the Australian courts".
I have listened carefully to what the hon. Gentleman has said, and I regret that I do not consider the matter that he has raised to be appropriate for discussion under Standing Order No. 20. I cannot, therefore, submit his application to the House.
Mr. Brian Sedgemore rose—
Mr. Andrew Faulds rose—
Mr. Speaker: I hope that any further points of order will not challenge what I have said.
Mr. Sedgemore: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I wonder whether you will make a ruling on the propriety of what my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) has done. I have seen the documents and I have heard what he has said. He appears to be traducing the Attorney-General in a serious fashion by saying that he has abused the security services for party political reasons. That is an extraordinary allegation for an individual to make against a Member of this place, and I should like to know whether it is in order for my hon. Friend to do so.
Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) must take responsibility for his speech. I heard the very same comments made on the 1 o'clock news.
Mr. Faulds: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am not questioning your putting down of my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours), although it does appear unfortunate that he was not able to extend the evidence he wanted to achieve a Standing Order No. 20 debate. The point I want to make to you, Mr. Speaker, is whether it is advisable to have a three-minute limit on the Standing Order application when often there may be massive material to adduce for the reasons for a debate, which can only be shortened and the request made less effective if this introduction of the new three-minute limit is applied. Is it advisable in terms of the health of Parliament?
Mr. Speaker: I think that the hon. Gentleman should seek to become a member of the Procedure Committee, which made a report on this matter and others which was debated and passed by the House.
Mr. David Winnick rose—
Mr. Alan Williams: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate fully your ruling, and would not challenge it. I accept entirely the attitude that you have taken. Given the severity of the allegations that we have heard, you will appreciate the difficulty in which the House finds itself. We have been told that the Attorney-General is aware of six occasions on which security information was passed by members of the security forces—
Mr. Speaker: Order. This is not a matter for me in any way. I have no knowledge of these things. I heard about them on the news, and now I have heard about them in the House.
Mr. Winnick rose—
Mr. Campbell-Savours rose—
Mr. Michael Morris rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. The right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) should be allowed to complete his point of order before other hon. Members intervene.
Mr. Williams: It must be a matter of great concern to the House when the Attorney-General, who is in charge of the administration of justice, and the Prime Minister, who is in charge of security, have both colluded, according to the letter, to avoid taking action to prosecute someone who has been party to a breach of state security. Because, for reasons which I well understand, you cannot allow us to have a debate on the matter at this stage, may I ask the Leader of the House, through you, to arrange that on Monday we have a statement from the Prime Minister?
Mr. Michael Morris: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. For the guidance of the House, could you tell us whether, given that you heard about this matter on the news at 1 o'clock, it is in order under the new rules for Standing Order No. 20 applications for such issues to be raised subsequent to something that was heard on the news?
Mr. Speaker: It is in order. The application was submitted before 12 o'clock.
Mr. Winnick: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: Order. I shall take first the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick).
Mr. Winnick: You have ruled, Mr. Speaker, although your ruling was challenged, that the matter raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) is not sub judice. Allegations have been made concerning the Attorney-General, and I know that these are not matters for you. My point of order is this: would it not be right to come to the conclusion that, as this is not a matter that is sub judice, it would be in order for the Attorney-General to come to the House, if he wished to do so? The fact that the case is proceeding in Australia—
Mr. Speaker: Order. The only conclusion to which I need come is whether the matter is in order. I cannot speculate on other matters.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: On a point of order. Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: I do not think that I can help the hon. Gentleman. Is his point of order on a different matter?
Mr. Campbell-Savours: It cannot be a different matter, Mr. Speaker. I have raised an issue—
Mr. Speaker: Order. I have ruled on the matter.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: No, Mr. Speaker—
Mr. Speaker: Order. I have ruled on the matter.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You have seen repeated attempts over the recent past on the Floor of the House to bring about a debate in the Chamber on the matters that I have sought to raise in my application under Standing Order No. 20. I do not see why Parliament should be shackled—
Mr. Speaker: Order.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: —because Ministers—
Mr. Speaker: Order.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: —do not wish such a debate to take place.
Mr. Speaker: Order. This is unlike the hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: It is monstrous.
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is an experienced parliamentarian and knows full well the rules of the House. He has made his submission and I have ruled upon it, and that is the end of the matter.
Mr. Faulds: On a further point of order, Mr. Speaker. It is a procedural point of order.
Mr. Speaker: Is it a helpful point of order?
Mr. Faulds: On a procedural point of order, Mr. Speaker. Would you be kind enough to advise hon. Members—we want to take the quickest action possible — how we can proceed to impeach the Attorney-General?
Mr. Speaker: I have no idea.

Moors Murders
4.17 pm
Mr. Geoffrey Dickens: I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 20, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely,
"the moors murders investigation and the implications for prosecution and parole".
This will be a three-minute application, Mr. Speaker. As you will know, the Saddleworth moors are in my constituency. The bodies of Lesley Anne Downey, aged 10 years at the time of her death, and of John Kilbride, aged 12 at the time of his, were found buried in those moors, which are one mile from my home. Today, the Manchester police have started a massive dig-and-search operation on the moors, acting on information received from child murderess Myra Hindley. If other remains are discovered, two important issues will be brought into question. Should any deal be upheld with a child murderess for parole consideration in return for information on other murders? Should prosecutions follow for these other crimes committed 21 years ago?
A debate would provide Members of this honourable House with the opportunity to express public opinion so that our principal Law Officers—my right hon. And learned Friend the Attorney-General, my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General and the Director of Public Prosecutions—are in no doubt about their duties. If the DPP, in conjunction with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, were ever to be hoodwinked by Myra Hindley and her eccentric friend in another place, they would never rest in their beds. They would be haunted by the spectre of anguished parents and relations who are sadly having to serve their own life sentence. I am convinced that public opinion demands no deal with child murderers and that those who sexually abuse and murder children should stand trial even 21 years later.
If you felt able to grant my request for a debate, Mr. Speaker, you would discover that hon. Members are more likely now to support my call to fight fire with fire. I believe that you would be amazed, Mr. Speaker, how strongly has grown the number of those who would wish to see capital punishment restored for child murderers.
Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member for Littleborough and Saddleworth (Mr. Dickens) asks 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 moors murders investigation and the implications for prosecution and parole".
I have listened to what the hon. Gentleman has said, but I regret that I do not consider the matter that he has raised to be appropriate for discussion under Standing Order No. 20. Therefore, I cannot submit his application to the House.

STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS, &c.
Ordered,
That the draft General Lighthouse Authorities (Beacons: Hyperbolic Systems) Order 1986 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.
That the Medicines (Hormone Growth Promoters) (Prohibition of Use) Regulations 1986, (S.I., 1986 No. 1876) be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.—[Mr. Portillo.]

Financing the BBC (Peacock Report)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Portillo.]
Mr. Speaker: Before I call the Home Secretary, may I tell the House that no fewer than 29 right hon. and hon. Members wish to take part in this important debate. It will plainly not be possible to call all of them if speeches are very long. Although I have no control over the length of speeches, I ask for brief contributions.
4.20 pm
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Douglas Hurd): Before mentioning the Peacock report it might be sensible to say something briefly about the principles that lie behind the recent exchanges between my right hon. Friend the chairman of the Conservative party and the BBC about its coverage of the Libyan bombings. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made clear, it is not for the Government as such to form a view on that coverage, and that certainly applies to the Home Secretary, but the principles involved are worth restating.
First, the BBC has a responsibility, contained in article 13 of the licence and agreement, to refrain from sending any broadcast matter expressing its opinion on current affairs or on matters of public policy. It has also undertaken to treat controversial subjects with due impartiality. Those are responsibilities assumed by the board of governors. They put the BBC and those who work for it in a different position from those who work, say, for a newspaper or a cable company. Those responsibilities were undertaken in return for the privilege granted by Queen and Parliament in the charter of exercising what was once a monopoly and is now half a duopoly.
Second, it is not for the Government to enforce that responsibility as regards the normal content of the BBC's output. The responsibility rests on the board of governors. Under the charter and the licence and agreement the Home Secretary has some powers, but it is clear from the texts and from past practice that those powers should be used only in an emergency or wholly exceptional circumstances. As I have already stated in public, the Government have neither the power nor the wish to control the normal output of the BBC.
Third, any group or individual who believes that a broadcasting authority is falling below the standards set has an absolute right to say so. There is no reason why the chairman of the Conservative party should be deprived of that right. My right hon. Friend has shown himself entirely capable of distinguishing clearly between his duties as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and his role as chairman of the Conservative party. He showed that again during Question Time on Monday.
Broadcasters have no reason to believe themselves persecuted or insulted when such criticisms are made, whether by my right hon. Friend or by anyone else. As we observe, they have plenty of opportunities to reply and the public can then judge. Private individuals or political parties have no reason to regard with dumb reverence the output of broadcasters. I have not noticed that broadcasters approach the output of politicians with any such reverence. Both professions are in the public arena and learn to look after themselves. Members of both professions also learn, if they are wise, while defending

711
themselves resolutely, to watch out for the lessons which they can draw from criticisms brought against them. If those three principles are accepted, the recent exchanges will find their proper perspective.
Mr. David Winnick: Although the BBC and the other broadcasting authorities should not be immune from any form of criticism and it is the right of private individuals and organisations to complain if they so wish, does the Home Secretary accept that there is a distinction between a private individual or an organisation and the chairman of the Conservative party who is a senior member of the Cabinet? Does the right hon. Gentleman really believe that the BBC or the public will not make much of a distinction between complaints by the chairman of the Conservative party and a senior member of the Cabinet— one and the same person—and those by an individual or an organisation? The BBC has been bullied, harassed and intimidated by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the Home Secretary knows that full well.
Mr. Hurd: The BBC understands that distinction well. Throughout, my right hon. Friend has been wholly explicit that he has been putting forward his observations as chairman of the Conservative party. It is not the BBC or the general public, but only the Opposition, who wish to blur a distinction which is perfectly well understood.
Mr. Jack Ashley: Will the Home Secretary make it clear that he is now specifically repudiating the views expressed by the chairman of the Conservative party?
Mr. Hurd: Of course not. I shall not fall into that trap. If I began to state personal views on the issues involved, I would he accused of acting improperly as Home Secretary, by leaning on the BBC. I have no intention of falling into that trap or of adding to the clear points that I have made on the matter.
Mr. Merlyn Rees: I do not wish to become involved in the discussion about the chairman of the Conservative party, but it was interesting and valuable to hear him read the rubric under which the BBC must operate under section 13 of its charter. What is the difference between the BBC and the IBA and, therefore, ITN news? Do they have a similar duty, or is it different? Why not mention the other broadcasting authorities?
Mr. Hurd: I did not mention the other authorities because the immediate controversy is not about them. The right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) will recollect that in the Broadcasting Act 1981, which covers the IBA, there is a similar but not identical statutory obligation.
I hope that the debate will concentrate on the long-term future of broadcasting in the light of the challenges and opportunities brought about by rapid changes in technology. When I welcomed the publication of the Peacock report on 3 July, I said that the Government would come to a final view on its recommendations only after they had measured parliamentary and public reaction. Some, out of their native cynicism, interpreted my remarks as a signal that the Government had buried the report, albeit with some compliments and a suitable funeral oration, but I hope that later events have shown that that is not true. The Peacock report is still very much
712
above ground, precisely because it provides a stimulating agenda for the decisions which, during the next few years, must he taken on broadcasting.
The debate provides the House with the opportunity to make its views known. We will listen carefully to those views and take them fully into account in the final decisions on the recommendations, which we have not yet reached. From our point of view, the debate is interrogative and exploratory.
The main thesis of the Peacock report has been widely discussed and is now well known. The report argues that the special structure of broadcasting that we have known up to the present day, with its duopoly and sophisticated system of regulation, has been necessary for two main reasons: first, because there has been a scarcity of broadcasting spectrum; and, secondly, because the consumer could not register his preferences directly.
The report argues that technology is changing all that and that new advanced systems for delivering programmes, mainly cable and satellite, will lead to a multiplicity of channels. Sophisticated techniques for encryption, decryption and direct charging will enable the viewer or the listener in due course to pay direct for the programme of his choice. The report predicts that, as those technologies develop, we shall move towards a genuinely competitive broadcasting market with a multiplicity of channels supplied by a wide range of programme providers from which the consumer can make his choice. In summary, that is the committee's view.
There is no doubt that technological change in broadcasting is coming fast, and we should welcome it. I hope that no one will argue as though we were simply discussing the future of the four existing television channels and the existing radio frequencies. That is not so. The initial comments of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) on the Peacock report suggested that he was simply interested in the status quo, but the world moves on, and the question is how we move with it.
As I said on 3 July, the Committee's emphasis on consumer choice is very much in tune with the Government's general philosophy and with the broadcasting policy that we have pursued since we took office. We have never doubted that the new systems should be allowed to develop freely with as little interference as necessary from the Government. That is why the Cable and Broadcasting Act set up a new framework for the new wide band cable services, retaining only a light framework of interference and regulation. It is also why in May last year we removed restrictions on the reception of satellite programmes direct by individual dishes, so that in back gardens up and down the country one occasionally sees evidence of a slowly expanding market which is international in character.
Also, after a number of false starts, we asked the IBA, under the new Act, to advertise contracts for the new direct broadcasting by satellite service, which will provide three new national television channels. In response to that invitation a number of consortia have applied for a British DBS contract. The IBA tells me that it aims to make a selection before the end of the year, so there is a reasonable prospect—after past disappointments, I do not want to be absolute about this—of progress being made and of a new British DBS service becoming available by the end of the decade. The same period has shown a rapid expansion of satellite programme channels in this country,

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some of which are already providing diversity of choice for viewers, not just in this country, but in the rest of Europe as well.
We have given our full support to these developments, but we have also been conscious of the need to ensure that we do not lose the great benefits of our existing broadcasting services. Like the Peacock committee, I pay tribute to the very high quality of many services provided by both our major broadcasters. There is no reason why, as the broadcasting market expands, we should lose the high quality of those services. Often in the past when changes have been suggested in broadcasting — for example, when commercial television was introduced—there have been those who, with much grave shaking of heads, have warned that existing standards of excellence would not survive any disturbance of the status quo. We have been familiar with that throughout the history of broadcasting. There has always been a great deal of head shaking and predictions that changing anything means spoiling everything. I see no reason, however, why broadcasting should not develop in such a way as to retain high standards, supplemented by greater diversity.
Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: Is the Home Secretary aware of what happened in Italy when the Italian broadcasting authority, the RAI, was subjected to intolerable pressures? Due to the absence of proper legislation, anyone was allowed free entry and the result was almost 90 per cent. American films, no original programmes and material of a standard which I am sure the right hon. Gentleman would not accept.
Mr. Hurd: That is why we put DBS in the public service sector under the Cable and Broadcasting Act and why, although there is a lighter touch and less regulation for cable, there is nevertheless a framework which would rule out the kind of development that the hon. Lady fears.
Mr. Derek Conway: I welcome the Government's progressive attitude towards extending viewers' choice, but will my right hon. Friend comment on the Peacock proposal that the regional contracts given by the IBA should be put out to tender? Would there not be a danger of losing the valuable provincial services such as we enjoy in the midlands?
Mr. Hurd: I shall cover that and several other points later in my speech.
Mr. Andrew Faulds: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way on that point?
Mr. Hurd: No. I have been warned by the last intervention. I note the hon. Gentleman's interest, but I must get on.
As I have said, the Peacock committee stressed that the two main obstacles to a genuinely competitive broadcasting market were scarcity of spectrum and the lack of a direct means of consumer payment. The shortage of spectrum is gradually being overcome by the expanding cable and satellite markets. To speed up the development of a national cable grid, the committee recommended that both telecommunication and cable services should be delivered over common carrier networks operated by British Telecom and Mercury. However, it also recommended that BT and Mercury should be prevented from offering cable television services or interactive
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telecommunications services over those networks. This is a complicated matter and it is fundamental to Government policies on telecommunication and competition as well as on broadcasting. We are far from sure that the Peacock committee has got this particular recommendation right, but we shall consider the proposal in detail and we shall be interested to note any views expressed today on this important point.
On the second point—the absence so far of direct payment—the committee recommended the development of pay television systems. This is one of the most important and far-reaching recommendations in the report. If a system of encryption and subscription were technically and economically feasible, it could provide a means of overcoming the undersirable aspects of the licence fee system which have been widely discussed in recent years and establishing a direct relationship between providers and consumers of television services.
The committee commissioned some useful research to provide an appraisal of the various options, mainly on the economic side, but we judged that further and more further detailed work was needed on both technological and economic aspects. We have therefore commissioned consultants to carry out a study. They will be looking at the technological systems available and the feasibility, in terms of both security and costs, of adopting them for a major television service. The study will also consider the economic effect on broadcasters of the various options for a subscription service, either as a substitute for the licence fee, or as part of a competitive subscription market. Finally, it will consider the impact on the viewer. Technology is developing rapidly in this area and there is already practical experience, albeit on a limited scale, in both France and the United States. We have asked the consultants to let us have their report within six months, so they will be reporting to us in the spring. I hope that we shall then be in a better position to assess the potential role, feasibility and possible time scale of introducing subscription television in this country.
Mr. Allen McKay: As the right hon. Gentleman knows, I have long been interested in concessionary licences. If we go over to a subscription system, how will that concession operate?
Mr. Hurd: That would clearly need to be considered. If the licence were to fade away or be abolished, the concessions would clearly follow suit, but that is still some way down the road. It will be some time before we can assess the extent to which concessions might be built into a subscription system, but the hon. Gentleman raises a reasonable point which he may wish to develop later.
If subscription proved to be the natural successor to the licence fee, it would clearly take time to introduce. The Peacock committee saw it as an option for the medium and longer term. The central question for the committee was whether the licence fee should be displaced in the short term by other means of finance, particularly advertising. As the House knows, the committee rejected the idea that the BBC should be funded wholly or partly by advertising, because it concluded that, with the present limitations of the broadcasting market, competition for advertising between the two major broadcasters would lead to a reduction in the range and quality of programmes.
The committee made out a powerful and detailed case based both on economic principle, on the committee's

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assessment of the price elasticity of demand for advertising, and on research of experience abroad. The arguments were pretty forceful and I believe that the onus now rests on those who disagree with the committee's conclusions to disprove the arguments underpinning those conclusions. We have not reached a final conclusion on this and I look forward to hearing the arguments to be deployed today, which will he taken fully into account in the conclusion that we reach.
Once a final decision has been taken about advertising, the Government will need to decide on the various recommendations put forward by the committee for improving the licence fee arrangements in the short term. The main conclusion in that group of recommendations was that the licence fee should be indexed. The committee recommended that in future the fee should be fixed by reference to the retail prices index, starting from a notional licence fee of £60 on 1 April 1987.
There are attractions in such a proposal for the Government, the public and broadcasters. It would ensure for broadcasters a guaranteed and predictable income on an established basis and reinforce their independence of the Government. It would also provide a considerable incentive to enhance cost-consciousness and improved efficiency. Most important, it would ensure that future increases in the licence fee would move in line with the ability of the viewer to pay. I shall be very interested to hear the views of right hon. and hon. Members on this matter. We have reached no firm decision, but we have much sympathy with the approach recommended by Professor Peacock.
Until these decisions are taken, the licence fee remains with us at the level fixed by my predecessor in the spring of last year. At that time he announced that the fee of £58 would run for a minimum of two years, with the possibility of extending that for a further year if no decision had been taken in time about replacing the licence fee. As the main questions raised by the Peacock report have yet to be resolved, I have decided t hat the present settlement should run for the full three years. Therefore, I can tell the House that the licence fee will remain at £58 for the period from April 1987 to April 1988—that is the third year of the period.
The Peacock committee made a number of important recommendations which affect the independent television system. I come to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Mr. Conway). One of the most significant recommendations was the proposal that in future ITV contracts should be put out to competitive tender. On 3 July I made it clear in my statement that the option for carrying out this recommendation, or indeed any changes to the system, including changes which the IBA has suggested, would be closed off for the next 10 years if the IBA were to proceed under the timetable in the present legislation to award the next round of ITV contracts to take effect from the beginning of 1990.
I have discussed—as I told the House I would—with the chairman of the IBA the means by which the proposed timetable can be amended so that the decisions that we take on the committee's report with regard to ITV contracts may be incorporated in the next contract round instead of having to wait for the next round but one.
I therefore propose that there should be early legislation which would have the effect of enabling the IBA to extend existing contracts, provided that the contractors
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themselves agree, by a period of three years, which would allow an adequate margin for these decisions to be taken. A Bill for that purpose has been introduced in another place. That Bill has not been brought forward because we have already decided on the changes that should be made. We simply do not want to foreclose the options. There should be flexibility so that the Government, after the next election, can decide to introduce changes which they consider necessary without being told that they can do nothing for a long time because the die has already been cast until the beginning of 1998. Unless the change is made, the IBA would award new contracts which would be likely to run until 1998.
The Government believe it is essential to provide an earlier opportunity for change. The Peacock committee forcefully argued that an increase in the amount of independent production in broadcasting services, independent of the BBC and ITV system—
Mr. Tony Banks: I wish to come back to the right hon. Gentleman's point regarding the IBA's ability to extend the existing contracts for a further three-year period. Will the Secretary of State allow the IBA to make any other forms of regulation? There is dissatisfaction with some of the franchises which are currently in hand. It would be wrong to make it impossible or difficult for the IBA to carry out its proper role of ensuring that standards are met by various companies. In certain cases, some companies will be allowed a further three years to print money.
Mr. Hurd: The hon. Gentleman will have his chance to argue that when the Bill comes to the House. We are in no way modifying the IBA regime under which companies must operate, or modifying responsibilities which the IBA must discharge during that period. I am concerned to avoid the situation, after the election, whereby one is told that any changes that are wanted will not be effective because the next round of contracts is already under way and has to be left under the existing system.
With regard to the volume of production independent of BBC and ITV, the Peacock committee argued forcefully that an increase in independent production would help the general move towards a more competitive broadcasting market, which the committee favoured, and have a good effect on the level of costs and efficiency in broadcasting generally. Many sensible people, inside and outside the broadcasting world, consider that it is desirable to encourage the independent sector for reasons of diversity, freshness and efficiency. We agree with that view and believe that the independents, too, deserve a place in the sun.
Historically, broadcasts have been part of a system where all the aspects of programme production were carried out in-house. The programme was commissioned, produced, scheduled and transmitted within the same organisation. Channel 4 and the Welsh fourth channel show that it is possible to separate production, commissioning and transmission without losing any quality of programme standards. Channel 4 is a publisher rather than a manufacturer of programmes. We believe that independent productions should form a substantial proportion of ITV and BBC television programmes. We would like to see a major shift—a shift more substantial than that so far contemplated by broadcasters.
Peacock recommended an increase of at least 40 per cent. of programmes to be supplied by independent

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producers over a period of 10 years. We have been in touch with the independent producers, who campaigned for a figure of 25 per cent. Perhaps that is a more realistic goal. We would look for somewhat faster progress than that envisaged by the Peacock committee. However, important issues are involved — such as how one defines independence — which must be considered quickly. I have, therefore, arranged to meet the chairmen and directors-general of the BBC and IBA soon to discuss the means of achieving the broad targets that we have in mind.
Most of the Peacock report is about television, but there are specific recommendations about radio, the most important of which is the proposal that part of BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2 should be privatised. I do not propose to tackle that question in detail today. Our reactions to the Peacock recommendations on radio will fit in with the proposed Green Paper on radio services which I plan to publish before long.
Radio may be a good testbed for pursuing deregulation rather faster than may be immediately possible for television. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] Because there is a great deal of change in radio. There was the community radio experiment, which was aborted at the last minute. However, we are aware of the problems of the independent local radio companies and we are aware of the proposal for an independent national radio station. There is a great deal of ferment and activity in radio which we wish to encourage. For that reason, it may be possible to pursue a more rapid policy of deregulation, and we will discuss these options in the Green Paper.
Mr. Norman Buchan rose—
Mr. Faulds rose—
Mr. Hurd: I give way to the hon. Member for Warley, East (Mr. Faulds).
Mr. Faulds: The right hon. Gentleman is really talking about the quality of radio broadcasting and the implications, because of the collapse in the last two years, for that quality. He may not remember, because he is not quite as old a Member as I am of this House, that when John—the chap who disappeared—
Mr. Tony Banks: John Stonehouse — he walks on water.
Mr. Faulds: When John Stonehouse was Postmaster-General, I was his Parliamentary Private Secretary—
Mr. Banks: That is why he disappeared.
Mr. Faulds: I am still around, and shall be around for a long time. When I was PPS to that Postmaster General, he introduced a very misguided paper called "Broadcasting in the Seventies". I resigned because I could see what he could not see—[Interruption.] Take this matter seriously. I could see, as he could not see, the implications for the BBC's maintenance of standards of wanting to compete in the commercial market. All that the Home Secretary is now faced with in the decline of standards in radio stems from the misunderstanding of the introduction of that paper. I may have to refer to this matter later in the debate.
Mr. Hurd: The hon. Gentleman's beard grows greyer each day that passes. I do not know what he may have to resign from next, because I am not sure what the next
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pinnacle of his political career will be. I should be sorry if he had to resign over the quality of radio services, because I do not share his pessimistic analysis of what has taken place. To conclude—
Mr. Buchan rose—
Mr. Hurd: I was giving the hon. Gentleman his cue.
Mr. BuchanThe right hon. Gentleman has talked about the deregulation of radio. Why did he block overnight the one single measure of development that was community-based and had the opportunity of properly serving public service broadcasting in the independent sphere?
Mr. Hurd: That is a fair question. There was to be an experiment, the terms of which were announced, for two years. The service was to be completely free—there was to be no regulation. One had one's licence and there was no requirement even to monitor the output. As the time came closer for that to be implemented there was a good deal of anxiety, which was represented in several parts of the House. There was not a Left or Right pattern. People began to be worried that political parties, extremists—Left or Right—racist organisations, all sorts of people, might get control of community radio stations, and there would be no monitoring, no regulation and no sanction of any sort. We thought of various ways in which we could avoid that by importing a little regulation and monitoring, but that was difficult to do on the basis of the original experiment. The pressure for community radio is there, and the experiment showed that it was there. The hon. Member for Paisley, South (Mr. Buchan) will see, when the Green Paper comes out, how we envisage meeting that pressure.
British broadcasting is thus on the edge of one of those periods of change, just as happened 50 years ago when the BBC took its bold step into television, and just as happened 20 years later when commercial television established itself. I am sure that the House will not lose sight of that basic, underlying fact in the stir of immediate controversies. Periods of rapid change, such as we are entering in the broadcasting world, offer a pretty fair mixture of pain and opportunity, but one will not get through those periods successfully simply by complacency or supposing that one has to stay with the institutions and arrangements of the day. All of us have to rethink our attitudes and, for example, in the House we have to think of what different forms of regulation may be required in the new age.
The prospects are exciting. It is an exciting area, not just because of the new technology, but because of the great wealth of creative talent on which broadcasting in this country has always been able to rely. We have to yoke together the technology and the talent in a way that will bring the greatest benefit to the viewer and the listener. That is the task to which we have set our hands as a Government. It will take some time, and I hope that the House will give us today a first instalment of the guidance and insights that we seek.
4.52 pm
Mr. Gerald Kaufman: We are debating today the possibility of the most far-reaching changes ever proposed in the structure of British broadcasting. It is important to recall exactly how that has come about.

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Year by year, dissatisfaction with the steady rise in the BBC television licence fee has led Governments of all parties to be reluctant, or at any rate cautious, about agreeing to applications for increases in the licence fee. It was interesting to note from the Home Secretary's speech that the Government have decided to peg the licence fee for the 12-month period when the general election will almost certainly take place. That seems like a strong argument for annual Parliaments.
In that impetuous way of hers, the Prime Minister decided that the solution to the long-term licence problem for the BBC was to introduce advertising to the BBC. The previous Home Secretary, therefore, set up a committee to examine and, it was hoped, to endorse that notion. The Peacock committee, having examined and rejected the case for advertising on the BBC as at present constituted, decided to ignore its terms of reference. It "overflowed them", as the Secretary of State charmingly put it in a speech to the Royal Television Society the other day.
The committee set its hand to a fundamental re-examination of the function and role of broadcasting in Britain. As its membership included such free-market zealots as Professor Peacock and the bizarre Mr. Samuel Brittan, who appears to have been the Rasputin of this whole dubious enterprise, the outcome was the document that we have before us today—the Peacock report, one of the most intellectually impoverished and ideologically obsessive documents ever to have been put before the House—
Mr. Gerald Howarth: It takes an impoverished intellect to recognise one.
Mr. Kaufman: God, that was a brilliant intervention. No wonder the BBC withdrew its libel action against the hon. Gentleman if it was to be faced with such dazzling repartee.
We are all agreed that any consideration of the issues in the report starts from two bases. The first, as the report concedes at the beginning, is that
"British broadcasting is the most highly regarded system in the Western world".
The second is that technological advance, especially through satellite broadcasting, and also in other ways, will broaden the scope of television in particular and make possible far wider choice. But instead of using those advances to build on the achievements of British broadcasting, the Peacock committee wishes to dismantle our successful structure and replace it with one that would degrade standards and risk turning our present admired system into an electronic equivalent of the tabloid press.
Before Peacock, the Government put forward modest objectives for change. They envisaged not meddling with the present structure but adding to it in three ways—first, by augmenting television choice by a nation-wide network of cable television, established by merchant adventurer enterpreneurs, on whose profitable systems would ride all the interactive services dreamed of by the present Secretary of State for Education and Science before he went on to higher things from the Department of Trade and Industry. Secondly, there would be a direct broadcasting by satellite consortium, which would further expand choice of programmes. Thirdly, a network of community radio stations would enhance choice for radio listeners at local level.
That entire strategy has, of course, collapsed. Cable has failed to make any real progress, as I warned it would
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when the Cable and Broadcasting Bill was debated two years ago. The chairman's foreword to the first report of the Cable Authority was published this week. He states the failure quite cheerfully:
"Almost all new developments start off slowly,"
he consoles himself, and goes on:
"It is foolish to doubt the long term prospects for cable because its initial development has been faster."
The Peacock report is franker and, it has to be said, more doleful. It says that by 31 March 1986,
"of about 130,000 cable subscribers, fewer than 10,000 were connected to the new wideband systems currently under installation following the award of franchises."
Today we have read in the press about what is available to those subscribers. At a time when the Government are deeply exercised about alleged Left-wing bias on television, Cabletel, a cable company in Enfield, has begun offering its subscribers programmes from the main channel of Soviet television, relayed direct from Moscow. It is a great relief to know that, as an alternative to the BBC's Marxism, the lucky residents of Enfield now have available to them direct news of the Thatcherite policies that have been adopted by the Right-wing Soviet Government.
As for DBS, the Home Secretary told the Royal Television Society last week, in his euphemistic way, that
"DBS is not coming about in the way originally envisaged."
That is "Hurdspeak" for saying that his predecessor's planned consortium has flopped, and the whole project, which should have been operating in 1988, has been delayed indefinitely. The Home Secretary expressed a hope, no more, that it might be operative by the end of the decade.
Mr. Tim Brinton: The right hon. Gentleman has made many quips about Russian television being received by cable subscribers in Enfield, but is he not missing the main point? However slow is the development of cable in Britain and however slow is the development of British direct broadcasting by satellite, it is inevitable that satellites will be operated from other countries. The right hon. Gentleman will remember that it took about three years for the video recorder to take off in the domestic market. If people buy reception dishes at the same speed, the result of what I understand to be his policy—no change in broadcasting—is that the BBC and ITV will have to compete with popular programmes from abroad over which he will have no control.
Mr. Kaufman: I do not in the least challenge the hon. Gentleman's forecast that satellite television will eventually transform the opportunities available to viewers in Britain. That is axiomatic, but I was talking not about satellite but about cable television.
As I said on Second Reading of the Cable and Broadcasting Bill, cable is a dead duck in Britain because people will buy video cassette recorders and choose their own programmes rather than pay to have them put on cable. That is being shown in the Westminster area now.
Then there was community radio. The experimental stations should by now have been transmitting programmes. The Home Secretary said in response to an intervention earlier that the experiment was "aborted at the last moment" as though that was regrettable and nothing to do with him. But he ditched the experiment because he suddenly discovered to his alarm that the community radio applicants were likely to be less ideologically sound than the programmes on Soviet

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television. The result is that the Government are now searching anxiously for a new strategy to replace the one that has failed—and along came Peacock to fill the gap.
There are two ways in which to plan the future of British television and radio. One is to build on, expand and vary the country's enviable tradition of public service broadcasting, and to preserve and protect what the annex to the BBC's licensing agreement laid down by the Government declares to be the duty to
"provide a properly balanced service which displays a wide range of subject matter".
We should also try to preserve and enhance the generally high standards of ITV which, as every ITV executive will freely admit, derives indispensably from the standards achieved by the BBC. It is from that structure that the Leeds university study commissioned by Peacock concludes that it is
"highly probable … that the range of choice on any day in the United Kingdom is greater than in most other countries including the United States."
It is because of those standards that the Peacock committee had in its report—
Mr. Richard Holt: The right hon. Gentleman is wrong.
Mr. Kaufman: I am quoting the report. If the hon. Gentleman disagrees with it, he is welcome to.
Mr. Holt: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way then?
Mr. Kaufman: Not at the moment.
Mr. Holt: The right hon. Gentleman is afraid.
Mr. Kaufman: Yes, it is true—I really am afraid of the hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Holt: The right hon. Gentleman is afraid of the truth.
Mr. Kaufman: Afraid of the truth or economical with the truth? We have a choice these days because of the Cabinet Secretary.
Mr. Holt: That is for him.
Mr. Kaufman: It is because of those standards that the Peacock committee had to admit:
"In every country we encountered expressions of amazement — even from NBC and ABC in the United States — that the British should be thinking of changing their system, which is almost universally admired."
Having agreed that Britain has a broadcasting structure which is the envy of most other countries, Peacock brings forward plans to wreck it absolutely on the basis of addiction to the free market economy which is ideologically deranged and, if put into practice, would not merely fail to work as Peacock predicts, but give us not the best but probably the worst television in the world.
Mr. Faulds: My right hon. Friend was extraordinarily charitable in his introductory remarks to the membership of the Peacock committee and commented on only a couple. There is an acolyte of Rasputin on the committee— the extraordinary appointment of a particular lady with an enormous battery of intellectual ability who was chosen for membership because the Prime Minister knew from long personal contact that the young lady had been born from a Tory womb.
Mr. Kaufman: I am not able to go through all of the qualifications for membership of the Peacock committee,
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but I am ready to accept my hon. Friend's word that some qualifications were even more bizarre than others, difficult as it may be to believe it.
We have a few short-term proposals about financing the BBC in the report. One is to give free television licences to pensioners on supplementary benefit. That at least is on the right lines, but we do not believe that it goes far enough. That is why the Labour party is committed to phasing out completely the television licence for old-age pensioners.
Another, to which the Home Secretary referred, is indexation of the current licence fee. Of course, the tolerability of that course would depend partly on the level of the licence when the indexation started. Yet another is the proposal to impose a £10 radio licence charge on all car owners. That is unfairly discriminatory and hard to enforce, and it would bring in only a fraction of the money that the BBC needs each year.
For that very reason, Peacock goes on to propose that BBC Radios 1 and 2 should be sold off. The report does not explain how the sale should be achieved since Radios 1 and 2 do not exist in tangible form. Exactly what property is to be sold? Is Jimmy Young to be put on the auction block? Is so, as she is reputed to be very fond of him, the Prime Minister might decide to buy him for herself, but he would then not be available to a wider audience.
Mr. Tony Banks: Stick him on the mantelpiece.
Mr. Kaufman: If those channels' airwaves were to be for sale, what would there be to stop the BBC from using its existing allocation of airwaves to provide substitute Radios 1 and 2? If a sell-off were achieved, with advertising on the privatised wavelengths as Peacock advocates, the effect on independent local radio would be crippling if not in many cases fatal.
The Peacock report provides the statistics which show how fragile and precarious are the finances, and therefore the prospects for survival, of many existing ILR stations. A study commissioned by the Newspaper Society shows that advertising on Radio 1 would take £50 million away from ILR and, what is more, it
"would be certain to bring about closures"
among local radio stations and regional newspapers.
The murder of many channels of diverse information and opinion could surely not be justified by obtaining a once and for all sum which, at its most optimistic, would account for only a tiny fraction of the revenue needed by the BBC, not just for one year but every year. It also goes without saying that turning BBC radio into a ghetto of talk, however enlightened, and of classical music, however admirable, would be an utter violation of the Government's own requirement in the annex to the licensing agreement that programmes should
"provide a properly balanced service which displays a wide range of subject matter".
Peacock's intermediate proposals are based on the supremacy of market forces and the entire subordination to them of quality and standards. As the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Mr. Conway) has rightly warned, under the Peacock proposals, ITV and ILR franchises would be auctioned to the highest bidder. Commercial objectives would reign supreme over a variety of choice and lead to a bland mash of quiz shows, chat shows and soap operas — the kind of thing which prevails in the United States.
Mr. Roger King: What about "Panorama"?
Mr. Kaufman: There are extremely good "Panorama" programmes from time to time.
Mr. Roger King: They cost £500,000 a programme.
Mr. Kaufman: They are worth every penny.
That is not just my conclusion. This is what the Peacock report said would happen:
"Whereas at present both BBC and ITV pursue policies of mixed programming—with schedules which in peak time include news, current affairs, documentaries, serious drama, and science programmes — the requirement to maximise audiences would mean substituting comedy, variety, quiz shows and other entertainment for many of the 'information' programmes and for the more demanding forms of drama."
Cable would also be sold off to the highest bidder and the restriction on non-EEC ownership would be removed. That would be the first of many changes proposed by Peacock, which would allow the Murdochisation of the British electronic media. Channel 4 would be privatised and, undoubtedly, robbed of its distinctive and enterprising character. The night-time hours of BBC and ITV channels would be sold off, with the BBC and ITV companies excluded from bidding, at least in the early years, without any regulation of content for the companies that win the right to use those hours. The Government, with a Prime Minister who proclaims family values at the drop of a hat and a Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster who preaches from the pulpit, would introduce the night-hours porn shift.
Plans would proceed for the BBC to be reduced from a universal service to a subscription service. ITV would still have its channels vulgarised and cheapened, but available to all viewers at the turn of a switch or the press of a button, whereas the BBC would be available only to those who agreed to pay the subscription. That would rule out large numbers of people and the Peacock report readily admits it. Peacock states—this matter relates to the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. McKay)—
"The substitution of voluntary purchase of broadcasting services means that poor listeners and viewers will have to pay the same as rich listeners and viewers for programmes and the rich will be able to afford a greater volume and variety in their broadcasting 'diet' … The Committee accepts that a move towards a Pay-TV system might result in those on lower incomes paying more for broadcasting services both because of the charges introduced and their desire to alter their 'mix' of the volume and type of programmes that they wish to enjoy. If Pay-TV had any adverse distributional effects then the Committee would prefer to see these taken care of by alterations in the tax or benefit structure or both."
That is the classic argument that anyone may dine at the Ritz, but with the patronising proviso that the Supplementary Benefits Commission should be asked to pay for the dinner. There is a fat chance under the Secretary of State for Social Services or the Prime Minister of anything like that being done. Peacock wants to introduce poor law rules for the reception of television with the added twist that better-off people can afford to go out for entertainment other than and supplementary to television, whereas for millions of the poor television is the only available entertainment.
Mr. John Gorst: Notwithstanding what the right hon. Gentleman has said, does he agree that all is not entirely happy in either ITV or BBC, despite their duopoly of purchasing power, when it comes to the sums
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that they pay for cinema films? Will he concede that there must be a different arrangement from the present one so that the sort of films that have been popular on those two channels should be made more plentiful in future?
Mr. Kaufman: That is an arguable case, but I would go further and say that one of the most admirable ways in which the British film industry in its present precarious state can be assisted is by the types of methods used by Channel 4, whereby original, new films are financed with the intention of showing them in theatres as well as on Channel 4. Some of the best recent British films have been made in that way.
From those proposals the Peacock report goes on to propose a structure of subscription television.
Mr. Hurd: Before the right hon. Gentleman leaves the question of concessions, could he tell us whether the pledge that he has repeated today that the Labour party will make the television licence free for all old-age pensioners is in the outer circle of promises that the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) has told us we should ignore, or in the inner circle of promises, about which he proposes to do something?
Mr. Kaufman: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to emphasise that pledge which will be a priority of the next Labour Government. That was a helpful intervention and the right hon. Gentleman must feel free to rise to his feet again whenever he regards it as appropriate.
Peacock goes on to propose a structure of subscription television, which it calls electronic publishing, in which it foresees a Nirvana of a myriad of television channels with each of us tuning in, after paying our subscriptions, to the programmes that please us most. But we can tune in only to what is available, not to what we should like, if it is not available. That seems obvious, but it is made clear in the study by Leeds university which was commissioned by the Peacock committee. It states:
"The audience cannot actually demand a programme. It can only accept or reject a programme after it has been shown. Any system which gives 'more of the same' because the same is highly popular is failing in its duty to the audience, since the latter is not given the chance to accept or reject something new."
That danger would undoubtedly arise from the system proposed by Peacock. What would be on offer would be programmes to please the lowest common denominator and programmes that would amass the largest number of subscriptions. We would he treated, not to the Faber and Faber and Sidgwick and Jackson of the air, as the Home Secretary imagines, but to the electronic equivalent of The Sun and the Daily Express.
It might well be said, "If that is what people want, why should they not get it?" People are much more selective and fastidious than they are insultingly represented to be by the vulgarisers of the Peacock committee. The Broadcasting Research Unit, which is sponsored by the BBC, the British Film Institute, the IBA and the Markle Foundation of New York, has today published one of the most detailed surveys of public opinion on television and radio ever undertaken. In answer to the proposition that television programmes should try and experiment, even if the programmes often turn out not to be worth watching, 65 per cent. of the respondents definitely agreed or tended to agree, whereas only 6 per cent. disagreed and 16 per cent. tended to disagree.

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The Peacock proposal is based on the axiom that minority programmes must be made cheaply, but "Brideshead Revisited", "The Jewel in the Crown" and many excellent nature programmes could never have been made on tiny budgets. Moreover, popular programmes such as "Eastenders" and "That Was The Week That Was" started as minority experiments. Perhaps those are precisely the types of programme that the Government want to kill.
Mr. Tony Banks: Is my right hon. Friend going to declare his interest?
Mr. Kaufman: I can only say to my hon. Friend that I would be a great deal happier if one of those programmes were running now—
Mr. Banks: And a great deal richer.
Mr. Kaufman: A very great deal richer. The BBC's repeat fees now are much higher than the original fees.
Peacock accepts that consumer sovereignty should not be paramount because it proposes some half-baked public service sponsor, although information about how it would work and how much money it would have at its disposal is dubious in the extreme. It is impossible to reconcile Peacock's recommendation of the creation of this body with its optimistic forecast that
"Discriminating matching of individual viewers' requirements with programme costs will be possible."
That is simply a fantasy conjured up by those who seek to convince themselves that the mirage of a completely free market can be made a reality in a world that simply does not work that way. However, we do not know if it would work technologically, which is why the Home Secretary set up his working party.
The Peacock report is far from confident. It says:
"it is impossible to predict with any accuracy how soon technological developments"—
upon which the proposals depend—
"will be implemented. The coaxial cable industry, for example, once heralded as having the bright new future seems to have been bogged down as of late."
Even if the technology were available, it is clear that the subscription base is unreliable. The Peacock report seems to regard as an argument in its favour the information that
"nearly a million French households receive Canal Plus".
The report claims:
"We are optimistic about the BBC's ability to attract subscription revenue for its two main channels."
It claims in their favour that those two channels
"are not a marginal extra but in the mainstream of broadcasting."
Of course that is the case now, under the present system. However, a million subscribers under a subscription system would not guarantee sufficient finance to retain the BBC in the mainstream. The BBC would then become exactly what the Government want it to be—a marginal provider of minority programmes, subordinated to the commercial giants.
Nobody denies that there will be change, as the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Brinton) commented in his intervention. There will be major change which can enhance the opportunities and widen the choices of our citizens. We must harness change and not become its slaves. We must build on standards of excellence, not
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demolish and repudiate them. That requires careful thought and preparation, and not dogmatic zeal based on Friedmanite wish-fulfilment.
What is more, the regime proposed by the Peacock report for our ultimate broadcasting structure would lack any regulation or controls. There would be a lack of control on sex and violence and for ensuring balance in politics. The same big business political bias that prevails in most of the press would become the rule on television and radio. Of course, that is exactly what the Government want. It is what the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is seeking to bring about by his vendetta against the BBC, which seeks also to intimidate ITV. If yesterday's cosy party at No. 10 is anything to go by, it appears to be succeeding.
The Chancellor of the Duchy holds an office which makes him responsible for the administration of the Duchy estates, the appointment of justices of the peace in the counties of Lancashire, Greater Manchester and Merseyside, and for ecclesiastical patronage in the Duchy gift. According to a parliamentary answer given on Monday to two of my hon. Friends, he spends an average of 20 hours a week on those and other ministerial duties. The equipment that he requires for carrying out those duties is unusual.
In answer to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Mr. Dixon), the Chancellor of the Duchy revealed on Monday that his suite of two rooms and a lobby in the Cabinet office is equipped with a television set and a video recorder. What does he use them for? Are there many programmes about the appointment of justices of the peace in Lancashire, Greater Manchester and Merseyside? If so, does he watch them and record them in order to savour them over and over again? Is there to be a soap opera about the bestowal of ecclesiastical patronage in the Duchy gift, and is the Chancellor to be a consultant on it?
One feels that that public property, together with the electricity needed to operate it, is not being used entirely in the interests of my constituents, and other residents of the Duchy of Lancaster. One feels that it might be being used for wider and more suspect purposes. What is clear is that, whether in his two rooms and lobby or elsewhere, the Chancellor of the Duchy has been watching television in a manner which is obsessive to the point of paranoia.
It is difficult to believe the claim on the first page of his recent letter to the BBC that:
"Media monitoring is not a mainstream Conservative Central Office activity."
Some of the complaints made by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster against the BBC seem—how can I put it—to display a lack of sense of proportion. There is, for example, his claim that the BBC's use of the phrase
"in intensive care with serious injuries"
is
"designed to arouse anti-American emotion."
One would very much like to have a psychiatric explanation for the reasoning which led to this complaint against the BBC:
"Strangely, whereas ITN said the hostages were murdered, the BBC merely said they were 'shot through the head' and 'killed', neutral terms which decriminalise the act, although at the very end of their broadcast, the BBC did acknowledge that the hostages 'have been murdered'."
As it happens, ITN did use the anti-American word "shot" as well.

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There is also the mistake that the BBC admits to having made—the linking of the American raid on Libya with Mr. Hindawi's planting of the bomb on the E1 A1 plane at Heathrow. That was undoubtedly an error, but it was an error made by others as well. For example, the Daily Mail said:
"Scotland Yard had little doubt that the bombing attack was a direct reprisal for Britain's involvement in the American raid on Libya."
The Sun said:
"The bomb was almost certainly meant for an Arab revenge attack following the blitzing of Libya."
The Daily Express said:
"The plot is seen as the start of reprisals for Britain's part in the U.S. bombing of Libya."
On reflection, I concede that the BBC is severely to be censured for having followed the editorial lead of the Daily Mail, The Sun and the Daily Express.
The Home Secretary referred to those matters today in remarks which were deliberately lacking in clarity, a characteristic of the Home Secretary that has seen him safely home through a number of tight spots. The Home Secretary has a clear duty to the House to uphold the licence and agreement with the BBC which was made by his predecessor, Lord Whitelaw.
A few days ago I wrote to the Home Secretary about this matter and his reply to me, dated 11 November, was very soothing. He said:
"I am glad that this particular controversy is dying down, and welcome the further opportunity to remove any misunderstanding."
That, as I said, was on 11 November. However, four days later, on 15 November, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster stirred the controversy right up again, with his second and even more preposterous letter to the BBC, the one containing the analysis from the anonymous, impartial lawyer, of the Chancellor of the Duchy's acquaintance. I do not know whether that is yet another leak of a letter from the Solicitor-General. On this occasion the Chancellor of the Duchy at least let the BBC see his letter first, unlike the previous occasion when he handed his letter over to ITN to be broadcast on its news before it was put into the hands of the BBC.
I ask the Home Secretary now, so that he can respond in the House—does he or does he not believe that the BBC is fulfilling its obligations under the annex of the licence and agreement, for which he is responsible to the House? That obligation says that the BBC must treat controversial subjects with due impartiality. Does the Home Secretary believe that the BBC is fulfilling that obligation? If he does not, will he tell the House what he will do about getting the BBC to uphold the licence and agreement? If he does not, will he tell us what he intends to do about the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster? Does the Home Secretary really want the controversy to die down, as he said in his letter to me? If so, what is the Home Secretary doing to prevent the Chancellor of the Duchy stirring up again the controversy that the Home Secretary told me that he wishes would die down?
Mr. Alfred Morris: My right hon. Friend has put a crucial question to the Home Secretary. As he has not responded, does it not follow that he cannot gainsay the fact that the BBC is upholding the licence and agreement? I hope that my right hon. Friend will pursue that matter very hard.
Mr. Kaufman: My right hon. Friend has a particular authority in such matters and he asks that question with
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that authority. If the Home Secretary does not intervene now when he has the opportunity given to him by my right hon. Friend's intervention, we must take it that he believes that the BBC is fulfilling its obligations under the annex to the licence and agreement and that the BBC is treating controversial subjects with due impartiality. If that is so, it is clear that the intervention of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is even more disgraceful than we have previously said, because the Home Secretary is now implicitly denouncing his own colleague in the Cabinet.
Mr. Hurd: The right hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) are simply repeating a question put to me by the right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley), which I answered during my speech and, indeed, in the first three points on which I spent the first five or 10 minutes of my speech.
Mr. Kaufman: All that the right hon. Gentleman needs to do to clear the matter up once and for all is just to say yes or no to the question: does he believe that the BBC is fulfilling its obligation under the annex to the licence and agreement, for which he is responsible to the House, to treat controversial subjects with due impartiality? The right hon. Gentleman has intervened. All he has to do is to say yes or no. [HON. MEMBERS: "He has answered.] No, he has not.
Mr. Robert Adley rose——
Mr. Roger Gale rose—
Mr. Kaufman: When the hon. Gentleman becomes Home Secretary, I shall be glad to give way to him. Meanwhile, we have this Home Secretary and we must make do with him.
Sir Geoffrey Johnson Smith rose—
Mr. Kaufman: No, the hon. Gentleman is not the Home Secretary either. I want a confirmation. The silence of the Home Secretary must be an implicit condemnation of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster for unwarranted and disgraceful charges against the BBC when the Home Secretary himself, by his silence, is making it clear that he is fully satisfied with the way in which the BBC is observing its obligations.
Mr. Gale: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way to someone who has worked for the BBC?
Mr. Kaufman: We now know where we stand. The Home Secretary has implicitly repudiated the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster by his silence. That is on the record.
Every test of opinion shows that the public want an independent BBC, free of Government interference. Lord Whitelaw, the Home Secretary's distinguished predecessor, insisted that the first principle of broadcasting must be to defend the independence of the broadcasting authorities from Government and Parliament. Does the Home Secretary agree?
Mr. Max Madden: The Government advise any citizens who have a complaint against the BBC to lodge that complaint with the Broadcasting Complaints Commission. Does my right hon. Friend have any information on why the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster did not take the advice which he sees fit to give to all other citizens with any complaint against the BBC?
Mr. Kaufman: It is a mystery; but then the whole conduct of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster defies any logical analysis and has for some little time now.
Mr. Adley: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Kaufman: No, it is the Home Secretary to whom I want to give way.
Lord Whitelaw said that the first principle of broadcasting must be to defend—
Mr. Winnick: Where is the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster?
Mr. Kaufman: I have written to him.
Lord Whitelaw said that the first principle of broadcasting must be to defend the independence of the broadcasting authorities from Government and Parliament. Does the Home Secretary agree? If so, what will he do to defend the BBC from his malevolent colleague who sits with him at the Cabinet table?
The Government today are trying to turn the BBC into a Tory party political puppet, with the hope that ITV will fall into line.
Mr. Gale rose—
Mr. Kaufman: For the future, if the Government follow the Peacock proposals, they will destroy the standards which have brought distinction to British broadcasting and television. It is because we condemn the Government's present anti-BBC vendetta and oppose the Peacock prospect of a free-for-all future that we shall be voting on the Adjournment tonight.
5.35 pm
Mr. Leon Brittan: Listening to what the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) had to say about the Peacock report, the House will have been depressed but not in the least surprised by the antediluvian and backward-looking approach that he displayed.
The House will also recall, at least from the history books for those of us who are far too young to remember it in actuality, that exactly the same kinds of argument were put forward over 30 years ago by those who passionately resisted the introduction of independent television or any kind of breach of the monopoly of the BBC. So respected have the achievements of ITV been that it took a very few years before the Labour party would not dare to criticise or to threaten to repeal that which it passionately opposed coming into existence.
We also heard from the right hon. Gentleman the gleeful repetition of his electioneering pledge to the pensioners. I think that it was one of the people whom he admires who once said that socialism is the language of priorities. The right hon. Gentleman talked about giving free television licences to all pensioners. It is a strange choice of priorities that wishes to give a substantial present to elderly millionaires, apart from anyone else.
What the right hon. Gentleman had to say was not only backward looking; it was also inaccurate. He repeated the canard that the Peacock committee was set up in order to force the BBC to take advertising. There was never any truth whatever in it. The reality of the matter is that, in the debate that raged before I announced the setting up of the Peacock committee, there were, on the one hand, the pro-advertisers who believed that the answer to the problems of financing the BBC was to require the BBC to take in
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advertising and, on the other hand, there were the defenders of the status quo who could not envisage any possible change in the existing arrangements.
I found myself not persuaded by either of the two camps and it was precisely because I thought that the arguments put forward on both sides were not rooted in a full analysis of the implications of either course for the system of broadcasting as a whole that I announced the setting up of the Peacock committee. I thought it important to think through the implications of the various forms of financing broadcasting and that that should be done by a broadly based committee, but one with a cutting edge.
I had no preconceived notion of what the outcome of the committee's deliberations would be, although, frankly. I was not in the least surprised when, at a fairly early stage, it became apparent that the committee was unlikely to endorse the financing of the BBC simply by the immediate introduction of advertising.
The right hon. Gentleman also suggested that in some way the Peacock committee exceeded its terms of reference. I can reassure the right hon. Gentleman that I deliberately formulated the terms of reference in a broad way because I wanted the Peacock committee to consider some of the wider implications of the matters that they were considering. It has in no way exceeded its terms of reference.
Some people asked for, and thought it preferable to have, a broader type of inquiry, a general Annan type of inquiry, into the future of broadcasting. I thought about the possibility but rejected it because it seemed to me that a general inquiry into the future of broadcasting, or even into the future of the BBC, would simply encourage the members of the inquiry, whoever they were, to parade their personal prejudices. Moreover, by looking into the difficult question of the finances of broadcasting, one was likely to have a much sharper analysis of the problems and, at the same time, a full and wide examination of the possibilities.
Mr. Faulds: It would be interesting for the House to have information as to whether the right hon. and learned Gentleman personally was responsible for the selection of the rather odd personnel of that committee, or whether he was instructed by others on whom to appoint.
Mr. Brittan: The hon. Gentleman knows that I am responsible for the people who were appointed, although, equally, it would have been absurd if I had simply sat down and written names on a piece of paper by myself.
The result of the committee's deliberations is a report based on principle but founded on practicality. It does not present merely a theoretical blueprint, and one of the best illustrations of that is the careful phasing of the proposals. The committee looked carefully into what had to be done at each stage to move from the system that we have now to a different system which it envisaged for the ultimate future.
The report recognises and explains clearly that technical developments and the proliferation of broadcasting services both make present arrangements unsustainable and provide opportunities for new arrangements that will be preferable in future. The report encourages choice while preserving the best features of public service broadcasting and reducing state intervention to a minimum.

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It was suggested that the report ignores the importance of public service broadcasting and the features of broadcasting that could not be reproduced in a purely commercial environment. That is shown to be wrong by the serious suggestion, dismissed airily by the right hon. Member for Gorton because it did not suit his caricature of the recommendations of the committee, that there should he a broadcasting council with the authority to provide public service grants to ensure the appearance in television and on radio of programmes that would not otherwise be financed by purely commercial operations. In the totality of the proposals, what is suggested amounts to a new way of combining greater freedom for both viewers and listeners, and programme creators.
The central concept is that ultimately the BBC will be financed by subscription, a concept upon which the right hon. Member for Gorton has wrongly poured scorn. There is nothing for the BBC to be afraid of in that concept, and everything to be gained from it. If that concept were followed, it would free the BBC from the shackles of a political haggle every few years over the licence fee, in which there never are, and never can be, winners.
If we had an agreement about the right basis of the indexation of the licence, we might be able to find an objective basis for deciding how to finance the BBC at its present level of activity. It would he formidably difficult to reach such an agreement, but one could just conceive of it and agree on how to finance the BBC to do precisely what it is doing now. However, the BBC, rightly and understandably, aspires to do better than it is doing now and to do more than it is doing now. When it comes to the question of to what extent it should do so, there is no rational basis for that to be determined by the Government except on the broadest possible general conception of what the traffic will bear.
How can the Government know how much extra radio or television, or more costly or complex radio or television, the public want to buy? Inevitably, there will be a constraint on the BBC in its legitimate operations as long as the present licence fee system exists. The BBC should be self-confident enough to be prepared to face its public and sell itself to them.
I can understand that those at the top of the BBC, who have been used to the present system, with all its inadequacies, should he reluctant to face the challenge of subscription. Equally, I do not find it surprising that many younger people in the BBC rightly regard the licence fee as a straitjacket, and subscription as a potential liberation, giving them the opportunity to sell their wares to the public.
Sir Geoffrey Johnson Smith: I am following my right hon. and learned Friend's argument closely. It may be that in the future the licence fee will be an increasingly stringent straitjacket, but what evidence is there to suggest that the BBC should follow the example of public subscription for broadcasting in the United States, and that that would allow it to escape those restraints?
Mr. Brittan: The studies made by the Peacock committee led it to believe that it is not an unreasonable aspiration for the BBC, which is well established, well regarded and much sought after, that it would be able to raise the finance by subscription. It is significant that many people at the BBC, if not at the top of it, share that view.
I do not agree entirely with the Peacock committee in its view that, when the right conditions are established,
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there is no need for regulation, apart from the general law of the land, which it recommends should be aligned for broadcasting and non-broadcasting purposes. That recommendation seems too far-reaching. There are two reasons for the present extent of regulation. The first and most obvious one is the monopoly character of broadcasting, even today. In spite of the increased number of services, they are still finite, and monopoly has to be regulated and administered. The second is the special nature of broadcasting and its peculiarly intrusive character as compared with other media. The monopoly is disappearing, and proliferation will enable fewer and fewer regulations on monopolistic grounds.
I warmly commend the proposals in the report with regard to lighter regulations on local radio. However, there is still a great deal in the argument that there is something peculiarly intrusive about radio and television that does not permit it to be handled simply in the same way that applies to the written law.
Although I think that we can have much less regulation than we have had in the past, and although it may ultimately be possible to move to a system in which there is virtually no legislation in advance, I do not believe that it can be left at that. The right course to follow when regulation substantially diminishes is to amend the general law of the land to reflect the particular characteristic of radio and television. It would not be impossible to make changes in the law of obscenity and related subjects so that they applied fully to radio and television, and to apply a test of criminality which impinges on radio and television in a way that reflects their greater intrusiveness.
That can be done in one of two ways. Either there could be special provisions affecting radio and television in the amended law on obscenity and related matters or, and probably better, there could be general provisions which took account in their definitions of criminality and the different impact of different media.
In suggesting that, I am not suggesting a specially harsh regime for the BBC or television, but only a way to ensure that the general law achieves the limitation which the charter at the moment requires the governors to impose. I should place the same degree of limitation on what may or may not be shown on the screen, but I think that ultimately, although not immediately, it could be better achieved by a general law rather than by advance control.
Mrs. Dunwoody: Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman accept that there have been many attempts to define obscenity, particularly in relation to something as difficult as broadcast material? Does he not realise from his own experience that it is virtually impossible to find a definition that is both fair to the broadcasters and acceptable to the general public?
Mr. Brittan: I agree with the hon. Lady that it is not easy, but I do not accept that it is impossible.
The Peacock committee also makes important recommendations regarding the independent sector, and I want to touch upon the recommendation that franchise contracts should be put out to competitive tender. Once again, that recommendation has led to howls of anguish from all quarters. The suggestion is that, if implemented, it would lead to the lowering of standards. I am sorry that the IBA has joined in that chorus. I do not agree that in any way that need be the consequence if the

733
recommendations of the Peacock committee are implemented. Of course that would be the case if all that the Peacock committee suggested was a crude auction of the franchises, but even the most cursory reading of the committee's report will show that that is not what is proposed. The suggestion is that the IBA could award the contract to a lower bidder if it believed it to be offering better value for money in public service terms.
I see no reason why the IBA should not be able to adopt an arrangement whereby minimum standards of accuracy were insisted upon. No potential contractor should even reach the starting point unless the IBA is satisfied that that contractor both intends and is capable of providing a television service for the area concerned which meets the standards that are currently required of television contractors. However, all the experience of the past suggests that it would be a grave mistake to believe that there will be only one contractor who meets that minimum standard.
Provided that the minimum standard is insisted upon and maintained, I see no reason why the choice from among a number of contractors, all of whom can meet that standard, should be made on the arbitrary basis of which one happens better to appeal to the members of the IBA from time to time. It would be far better if the IBA confined itself to satisfying itself— and it would be a quite considerable task — that all the contractors who are to be considered meet the basic standard and if the ultimate choice were to be made, from within that limited group, by competitive tender. If that were done, there would be absolutely no threat whatsoever to standards.
The final point that I should like to make does not emerge directly from the Peacock report. However, it is relevant to the general discussion on broadcasting matters that has taken place in recent months. I refer to the management of the BBC. Anybody who has observed the various events and controversies over recent months and years could not possibly believe that the present divorce between the governors and the managers is a satisfactory way of handling the matter. Indeed, it is completely unsatisfactory.
Nobody seriously doubts that it is the duty, the right and the responsibility of the governors to be more involved in the running of the BBC than they have been in the past. At the moment it is extremely difficult for them to be more involved, however much they may wish to be, because the governors represent a rarefied body that sits above and separate from the board of management that is actually running the BBC. Therefore, with the best will in the world, however earnest their intentions may be, it is a very difficult task for the governors to perform.
I am not suggesting constant intervention by the governors in the day-to-day running of the BBC. Because of the tradition of separation of governors and managers, anything that they did would be regarded by the BBC as intrusive and unacceptable and would be met with a solemn, if not a hostile, response. That impasse is unacceptable. It is as damaging to the BBC as it is damaging to the country as a whole.
It may be possible to move to a position in which the governors are accepted by the broadcasters themselves as having a more positive role on behalf of the public. I do not believe that the BBC professionals can seriously think that they should be accountable only to themselves.
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However, I am sceptical about whether it would be possible to reach a position where there is general acceptance of the propriety of intervention by the governors in the way that I have suggested—not on a day-to-day basis, but from time to time.
Mr. Holt: In trying to define the role of the board and the role of the management, will my right hon. and learned Friend say who he thinks should impose the embargo date, after which it is considered that the general election is taking place and nothing that could affect that general election will be allowed, as Mr. Alasdair Milne has done in the case of Mr. Ian Curteis's play?
Mr. Brittan: The suggestion that I am about to make will answer my hon. Friend's point.
I am sceptical about the change that would be necessary if there were a merger. Therefore, I am increasingly attracted by the concept of changing the present arrangements in a more radical way and having a unitary board that incorporated both the governors and the managers who would run the BBC like other concerns, in which there are some non-executive directors and other working directors. That would bring the two together and would be a much healthier way of running the corporation. We may not have reached the point where such a change is inevitable, but we are coming very much nearer to it.
I have to concede, however, that there is one real problem if we move in that direction—the problem of complaints about the contents of broadcasts. In the situation that I have envisaged, it would be difficult for the governors to handle their current task of dealing with complaints if they were parties, as members of a unitary board, to policy decisions.
If we moved in that direction, the answer might be for that aspect of the present role of the governors to be taken over by an enhanced broadcasting complaints commission. I accept that that would be contrary to existing practice, but the idea of having public interest in the BBC represented on the unitary board that was running the BBC, while there would be a separate broadcasting complaints commission, is likely to be considered increasingly in the future.
Looking at the picture as a whole, it seems to me that the Peacock committee has etched out a principled, practical and attractive future for broadcasting. There is no need for an instant Government decision, nor is it expected that the Government would accept it as a whole, but with due respect to my right hon. Friend I do not believe that an expression of general support and sympathy would be sufficient. At the very least, the world of broadcasting should be given in the very near future a clear signal, by at least one specific decision, of the direction in which we wish it to go.
One small decision could be made as soon as the technical studies have been completed, and I commend it to my right hon. Friend: the implementation at an early date of recommendation 1 on page 136 of the report that would require all new television sets to have a peritelevision socket, which would foreshadow and enable the introduction of subscription in due course. That announcement alone would show that the Government were not just mouthing soothing words of general support for the principle but that they were prepared to start on

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the process of implementation. I look forward to hearing at an early date the good news that an early decision has been reached.
5.58 pm
Mr. Clement Freud: No one would argue with the contention of the right hon. and learned Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Brittan) about the undesirability of the current relationship between the governors and the managers of the BBC. The whole House welcomes the independent stance which to date has been taken by the new chairman.
We are debating the long-term future of broadcasting, on a motion for the Adjournment of the House. We are debating a report with many recommendations and, as the Home Secretary said, this is an interrogative debate. It is a sign of the lunacy of the procedure of Parliament that the official Opposition are calling a vote on an Adjournment debate.
Mr. Corbett: The hon. Gentleman has not yet learnt why we are calling a vote.
Mr. Freud: I listened with care to the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), who told the House why. My hon. Friends and I want no part in such a vote. We are not abstaining: we are not voting. We are discussing this report and we look forward to hearing, as I am sure the Home Secretary looks forward to hearing, the opinions of all hon. Members about the suggestions in the Peacock report. In many ways the report is not nearly as had or as unhappy as the right hon. Member for Gorton said it was.
Mrs. Dunwoody: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Freud: No. I shall make a short speech, and the hon. Lady can make her speech afterwards.
What we most feared from Peacock has not come about. We welcome the recommendation that BBC television should not take advertising. I find the Samuel Brittan, near-elitist, idea that the BBC should use only what could commercially be exploited a totally unacceptable and essentially vulgar concept. I am unhappy with the recommendation in the report about the separation of BBC Radios 1 and 2 from Radios 3 and 4. It is immensely to the credit of the BBC that one body is charged with running both the popular and the more intellectual aspects of public broadcasting. To separate those and place them under different nets, each retaining an administrative superstructure, is not only insane but uncommercial.
It is important for us to accept what public service broadcasting is, and to make it keep an eye on viewing and listening figures to justify its continued existence is not what public service broadcasting is about. It is not about competing with everything simply because everything is there. The BBC has made no great contribution to breakfast television. I still fail to see why both channels should show the cup final. There is some merit in having the Eurovision song contest and the Miss World contest switched year and year about, but, from my memory as a sports writer covering the Olympics, the organised events of boxing, judo and weightlifting were nothing compared to the impromptu battles between BBC and ITV cameramen trying to take pictures of the same event.
We are rather in favour of pay television, because it might well provide a widening of opportunities for
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independent producers who will be unhampered by the cosy union rules which currently confine programme making to hugely expensive ventures. Channel 4 has shown that that is not essential for good television. Pay TV will help to target programmes to specific sections of society, and that will be welcomed by advertisers. We expect pay television, and specifically the amounts to be charged, to remain under the supervision of a Government Department.
I should now like to deal with licence fees. We have always been attracted by the arm's length principle that these provide, even though we are disturbed by the lack of planning which annual or even three-yearly increases deny the corporation. Indexing is right, but I am not at all sure whether indexing in accordance with the retail prices index is right, because expenditure by broadcasting corporations does not bear much relationship to retail prices. We join all hon. Members in wanting to make it easier for the elderly, the housebound and the handicapped, those who have in common the fact that they do not have a lot of money, to afford licences—if there is a way in which this will not be abused.
Perhaps the Home Secretary will consider that which annoys my constituents most — the unfairness of the current system and the incompetence in tracing and finding licence dodgers. I do not believe for one moment that the vans which purport to be able to tell whether somebody is operating a television set without a licence contain anything except three or four people in the back —playing poker. I remind the Home Secretary of the fury felt by so may pensioners about the 5p per year concession accorded to those in warden-controlled accommodation, while others, many of them poorer and less cared for, paid the full £58. I am also disenchanted with the proposed £10 car radio licence, because this will bring in very little money, be exceedingly difficult to implement, and will annoy and harm those who should least be harmed by new legislation.
We do not believe that the BBC has a monopoly of impartiality, or that public service broadcasting benefits from investigation by the sort of politically motivated investigators who published the most recent report. In Sir John Reith's day deference was considered to be impartiality, and it is certainly pleasing to have moved away from that sycophantic stance.
When the "Real Lives" trouble broke, the general public were suddenly aware of the Right-wing nature of the majority of BBC governors. After the Libyan bombing the Tory party became aware that its general stance on broadcasting had made it more enemies than friends among those who run the media and accused the management of being to the far Left. Both imbalances should have been, and probably will be, rectified. Neither deserved the intemperate outbursts that we heard from the chairman of the Conservative party and his Doppleganger, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
It is quite clear from the report that many Government Departments are messing about with broadcasting. It has long been Liberal policy to have one Ministry for all aspects of the arts — including broadcasting. We have always found it difficult to know what to call this Ministry, because "Ministry of Culture" is a title which we find particularly unattractive.
Mr. Corbett: Give it to MAFF.
Mr. Freud: We could give it to the Milk Marketing Board, but it seems to us totally wrong to have a restrictive Ministry looking after a dynamic medium.
Probably as a result of the diversification of ministerial responsibility, there is a sad lack of forward planning. By not joining the six-country European consortium, British television will in 10 years' time be working on someone else's hardware to someone else's financial benefit. We must ensure that we join in future enterprises, both cable and satellite, to the benefit of our nation.
I am satisfied with the way that we are awarding franchises. I was singularly unimpressed by the suggestions made by the right hon. and learned Member for Richmond, Yorks, who seemed to feel that doing it on a best cash offer basis was satisfactory. For the sake of freshness and efficiency, the assessment carried out by the IBA is a totally satisfactory procedure. I remind the Home Secretary that we in Parliament do not go out to tender. We are assessed every few years by the electorate and that serves us well—or does the Home Secretary think that it might be sensible for us to offer ourselves for tender?
We have as good a television product as any country; let us build on it rather than make changes because they might please the political ambitions of a Government. Let us also define more rigorously what we mean by public service broadcasting. Finally, I believe that we can be more relaxed about pettifogging controls. The laws of the land, when it comes to broadcasting, are already adequate.
6.10 pm
Sir Paul Bryan: I declare my interest in Granada Television and as chairman of Croydon Cable Television.
When the Peacock committee was commissioned, most of us—certainly myself— expected, after the statutory year in which the committee was given to report, to receive a modest volume, mostly devoted to the future financing of the BBC. In fact, we received a massive work which deals with the entire future of broadcasting; I welcome it. It takes us, in considerable detail, through the development of all the new technologies, which will in time make the present BBC-ITV arrangements untenable and will open up many new opportunities for consumer choice.
The committee wisely divided its consideration of these matters into three stages. Stage one takes us roughly to the turn of the century, by which time technological changes will have begun to take place. During that period, it is estimated that the present arrangements will continue, with the BBC having a slightly altered licence arrangement. At stage two, real changes in the arrangements will have to be made to meet the new technology. During stage one, the main competing technologies will be cable, DBS and, less importantly, one or two satellites from Europe.
I should like to correct some of the presumptions of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) about cable television. He described it as a "complete flop". That is not so. Cable television has got off to a slow start, for a number of good reasons. First, cable television is unfamiliar to the British public. I said to an American salesman in Croydon, "In what way is selling cable television in Britain different from selling it in America?" He said, "In America, the potential customer will say, 'At last you have come.' In England, he will say, 'What is cable?'" We simply do not know about cable
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television. It is scarce. Therefore, the natural self-generation which comes from people talking amongst themselves about programmes has not occurred.
Secondly, we laid down for ourselves Rolls-Royce standards — probably rightly — which make our cable television more expensive than American cable television. The Americans hang their television cables on trees, lamp posts and so on. We insisted upon sophisticated technology with interactive capability. By now, those involved in cable television have reached the stage at which we know that it is not a matter of if cable will succeed but when. At last, that confidence is spreading to the City.
Originally cable television finance in this country came mainly from trans-Atlantic banks. They are used to financing cable television. Recently—I am talking about the last few weeks—there has been a surge of interest from British banks with a view to the long-term future. That is encouraging.
My guesstimate-I underline "guess"—is that by the end of the century 4 million households might receive cable television. That is about one fifth of the number of present television licensees. I have no intimate knowledge of DBS, so I am not qualified to give even a guesstimate.
Next week, five consortia will come before the IBA, each of them apparently willing to risk up to £400 million on DBS. Among the names of the consortia are those of some of the best known and most successful people in communications — Murdoch, Maxwell, Virgin, the television companies, Pearson, Saatchi, Bond, and so on. These people tend to be successful. From my soundings, they appear to think that, by the turn of the century, there will possibly be 8 million households receiving DBS programmes. That is almost half the number of present licensees.
Coming to stage two, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Brittan) and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said, subscription television, with a Government subsidy element, is the Peacock solution for BBC finance. I am not as optimistic as my right hon. and learned Friend and my right hon. Friend. For the practical reasons I shall give, cable television would sound the death knell of the BBC as we know it.
At the turn of the century, what will the average viewer be offered? He will be offered two free ITV channels and two or three free DBS channels, provided he is willing to put up a dish, which will be easily obtained through a television rental company. Also, on each of the DBS systems there will one channel for which he can pay if he wishes, and that will undoubtedly be the highly popular film channel. In addition, there is the growing cable system, with customers being offered up to 30 channels. Also, the distribution of video tape recorders will be even wider than it is now. Distribution is reaching 50 per cent. The price of video tapes, which has already plummeted, will be even cheaper. BBC pay television will face formidable competition.
At the moment, through the licence fee, the BBC raises about £1 billion. How will the BBC, through pay television, ever raise £1 billion? Even if half the number of licensees had pay television, £100 a year would have to be raised from each family. I have nothing against the system, but I cannot see how it will work.
To justify the practicality of pay television, the Peacock report quoted America. The report states that America

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started with pay television, but it petered out as it came into competition with superior technology. That is not encouraging.
Also, there is the practical matter of how the BBC will collect its money. That may not sound a very difficult matter, but from my experience of radio rentals the hardest task in the trade is to collect one's money, and the BBC is not skilled at that.
It is proposed that Channel 4 should be independent and raise its own revenue. I remind the House of a phrase used by the Americans—"If it ain't broke, don't mend it." I have never known a stronger case for leaving well alone. Channel 4 has been a huge success. Hon. Members ordained the form it should take. We laid down that it should be distinctive, experimental, independent. It should not compete for funds with ITV but be complementary to it. All those aspirations have been achieved. It is now a highly popular and respected channel. We said that it should be the entree for independent producers, and that is precisely what it has been.
What are the finance arrangements? Channel 4 is paid for by the ITV companies. Last year, it cost them £170 million, about £130 million of which they got back from advertising. Peacock evidently considers that it would be an easy matter to sell its own advertising, but more than half of all television advertising comes from regional customers. The television companies have 15 teams around the country which seek regional advertising. The idea that little Channel 4 would be able to sell on that basis does not arise.
The first part of the Peacock report gives a long, fully argued case on why advertising for the BBC is wrong, but the committee seems to go back on that argument. Once again, it provides for two broadcasting organisations which will compete for funds and the outcome of lower standards will be the same.
We get the same contradiction in the proposal that ITV companies should tender for a franchise. Everyone in broadcasting knows how to produce cheap television. One follows the American pattern of bought-in films, quiz games, and so on. On the programme "The History of Television" an American tycoon said that American television will always be bad because there is so much money in bad television. How will a consortium submitting a bid make a financial estimate of the money it will make in the next 12 years in an industry that is changing quickly and in which the Government are constantly moving the goal posts? It would be almost impossible to calculate. If the sum turns out too high, the consortium will eventually have to reduce its costs by lowering programme standards. If it is too low, the public will lose. Peacock recommends that if the IBA does not consider that the lowest bidder can provide the right standards, that consortium should be rejected. But we would be back where we are with the present system, except that the Treasury would be breathing down the IBA's neck. If the Treasury saw that the highest bid was not being accepted, it would want to know about it. We are at least clear of that interference now.
I was glad to hear that the length of the ITV's contract is to be extended by three years. I must say as a general proposition that the present eight-year contract has been to the detriment of television. Granada, with which I am connected, is the only one of the original large companies that still exists, and its franchise has been unchanged. Even for a company with its stable record over the years much
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managerial and creative time has been diverted into preparing for franchise application. If that can be avoided, it will be for the best. I have no magic solution, but it seems to me that the IBA's suggestion of a 12-year licence, with a reassessment at half time, followed by a final decision about two years before granting of the licence as to whether the company will be required to reapply would get rid of much of the hassle associated with applications. That is not the best of all possible worlds, but it is the least bad.
Recommendation 15 of the report states:
"National telecommunication systems … should be permitted to act as common carriers".
I was glad to hear my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary say that he had great doubts about that. Nearly everyone else seems to have great doubts also, not least British Telecom, which is meant to be the main beneficiary.
6.26 pm
Mr. Merlyn Rees: The hon. Member for Boothferry (Sir P. Bryan) talked about the slow development of cable television. My right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) made the point that two or three years ago one thought, from the talk in the City and the financial press, that the whole of the United Kingdom would be cable within months, but that has not happened. The hon. Member for Boothferry has hopes for the future. He said that the English were not interested. In the part of Wales where I was born, we had cable radio a long time ago, because that was the only way one could listen to the radio. There was good reason for having cable. Cable may be of interest to people in the United States, but backwardness is not the reason why the British are not interested in cable television. They have a better broadcasting service than that which obtains in the United States.
The hon. Member for Boothferry referred to Murdoch, Saatchi and Saatchi, and so on, being associated with cable. I am sceptical about future standards if they run to form. I, too, am sceptical about pay television, for the reasons that he gave. I agree with him about competitive tendering, and there is no point in my repeating the argument.
I remember discussing with my Home Office colleagues in the appropriate Cabinet Committee our response to the Annan report. We decided to agree with the report and the idea of the Open Broadcasting Authority. We discussed how advertising revenue would be raised, but we lost the election. The Home Office view differed from that of the Labour Government, and the incoming Conservative Government took up the Home Office view. It is strange that, after all these years, we go back to the argument of the OBA, at least on the way in which revenue should he raised.
The right hon. and learned Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Brittan), the former Home Secretary, seems to work on the principle that all political parties get it right all the time. We were wrong in 1954, or whenever it was. In this instance we were probably wrong again, for the very reasons that have been given. The 15 regional companies can raise the advertising far better than the OBA could do from London. The latter would find it very difficult to get into the regions and to raise revenue in the same way.

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The hon. Member for Boothferry spoke about the terms of reference and the rather narrow approach, and was surprised that the report was broader than those terms of reference. I was just as surprised when I read the report. The report is narrow in concept, and, although it has overflowed to some extent, it is still narrow in its approach. Unlike the earlier reports, from Crawford to Pilkington, which we all read from time to time, it will not go down in broadcasting history. The report's narrow approach is not very exciting. Of course it deals with future broadcasting. Indeed, no one could consider broadcasting without asking questions about direct satellite, cable, and so on.
I find the new ideological thinking of the Right as arid as the new ideological thinking of the Left. Indeed, the thinking is very similar in approach. The development of broadcasting in Britain since 1926 has not always been right by a long chalk. Nevertheless, during the war the voice of the BBC was heard in many parts of the world. When I am abroad these days, I listen to the World Service. In many ways, our broadcasting system is superior to that in most parts of the world. It is certainly superior to that in America.
I hope that no one will say that I am being anti-American. Before the Americans joined in the war I served with the Americans, or Americans served with me. I served under an American command for four or five years during the war. I am also on the international education board of Boston university, and go to the United States as frequently as possible. However, all that does not prevent me from telling Americans that their broadcasting is pretty poor. They may tell me that there is public service broadcasting, but on a Sunday morning in a hotel room in America or Canada it is pretty frightening to go through the buttons. If that is what free market broadcasting brings, God protect us from the new world.
We are not very good at telling ourselves how good we are. Our natural bent is to run ourselves down, but we do very well at broadcasting, and our job is to adapt and use the technological developments so that we can maintain the standards which, perhaps more by good luck than judgment, have been achieved over the years. The right hon. and learned Member for Richmond, Yorks spoke about "the state". For about 30 years I have not been enamoured of the state boards that run many of the things in this country, but the BBC is not a state board. Sometimes God only knows what it is. However, it was given a charter and independence, and is not a state board. It is difficult to explain that to Americans.
My regard for the BBC is very high, but that does not mean that it does not have problems. I sent evidence to Peacock, and last night I reread what I wrote. As it was written only a year or so ago, it is not surprising that I have not changed my mind about much. From my experience as a junior Minister many years ago, and as Home Secretary, I am convinced that all broadcasting authorities should be independent of the Government, of politicians and of all vested interests. It does not matter what the words say: everything must be done with that in mind. Similarly, those authorities must think hard and avoid becoming vested interests themselves. For example, one thing annoyed me about the BBC when we were looking
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after Annan. If there was any change pending, or papers and discussions in the Home Office, the BBC seemed to become very upset at questioning.
Mr. Tony Banks: Just like Governments.
Mr. Rees: It is probably true that all Governments become upset when they are criticised, and that is probably true the longer that they are in office. When I was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, I was often critical of the media. Like most of the English media, the BBC and the IBA are not very good at Irish affairs —[Interruption.] As the lights have gone out in the Chamber I shall make a shorter speech, because I shall have to remember what was in my notes. However, the BBC does get things wrong and does make mistakes. It and the IBA must learn that, if they are criticised, people are not trying to get at their independence—or are they?
I thus come to the recent exchanges between the Conservative party and the BBC. I have somewhere with me a copy of a letter that I sent to my colleagues in 1978. As the lights are out, I shall have to remember it. I said that the Home Office was not a receptacle for complaints from Cabinet colleagues against the BBC or IBA. I said that if any colleague wanted to criticise the BBC, he should do so in the same way as anyone else and should direct his remarks at a precise point. I also said that it was not the job of colleagues to tell the BBC or IBA how they should run themselves. That is where the Conservative party—
Mr. Tony Banks: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I have heard of people turning up to see the lights, but it is a bit strange to see hon. Members turning up to see the darkness. They are making it very difficult for my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) to make his speech, and even more difficult for us to hear it.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong): I thought that the right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) was doing very well indeed.
Hon. Members: Hear, hear.
Mr. Rees: That point of order enables me to move to another topic that I wish to raise.
Mr. Holt: I hope that the right hon. Gentleman can hear me, even if he cannot see me. When he was Home Secretary and received all those complaints about the BBC from Labour Members, just as complaints are being made today, is it not true that the BBC never once conceded—just as it does not concede now—that it was wrong?
Mr. Rees: The complaints did not get anywhere near the BBC. However, they were rather different in kind.
The BBC believes that the licence fee protects it from Governments and that it is a mark of its independence that it obtains its money through a poll tax that has developed over the years. It knows that it runs into trouble because of the plateau in the amount of money coming originally from broadcasting and then from the television licence. I and the BBC know that when the licence fee is considered the Treasury enters into the discussion, and a small but excellent department in the Home Office also holds discussions with the BBC. Eventually, an amount is arrived at. At present, it is £58.
I no longer believe—I did not believe it very much at the time, but there was not much chance of doing anything about it — that the licence fee should go on being

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collected in the same way. We have heard this evening about the inefficiencies of collecting the licence, and we know that about £80 million is not being collected by the licence system. I put it to the Peacock committee that the amount of money for the licence fee should continue to be determined in the same way, and let us suppose that the fee is £58. It should then be determined what the total sum is to be, and instead of collecting it through post offices and through Bristol, with all the inefficiencies of that system, that sum could be voted by the House. That would not be done at the time of the Budget. Instead, there would be a special procedure within the House, and if the fee were £58 and the total sum to be collected were £X million, collection could be on the same basis as income tax, and once a year. We would do away, of course, with the £5 licence fee for those in sheltered accommodation and warden-controlled accommodation, which I introduced to try to help people in that position when I was Home Secretary.
We have the present system of collection because the BBC believes that it protects it, but I no longer accept that. I do not believe that it protected the BBC when the curious relationship between the Government and the BBC went wrong a year ago. The protection for the BBC lies in its independence, and for my money it does not even lie in the charter. The IBA is subject to an Act of Parliament and does not have a charter, and the fact that one organisation has a charter and the other an Act does not mean that there is any less protection for the IBA.
We should remember that the hoard of the IBA consists of members who are not managing television companies. Instead, they have regard to the principles that are laid down in an Act. The problem with the BBC is that the governors are too close to the management. Perhaps the BBC should be modelled far more on the way in which the IBA is run, and perhaps there is no need for a unitary board. That may well be the right approach.
Mr. Holt: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way to me for a second time. Can he say whether his mind has moved away from his policy, when he was Home Secretary, of introducing a form of national insurance surcharge and phasing out the television licence, as he stated on 6 December 1979? He will find this policy set out in column 648 of Hansard.
Mr. Rees: It seems to be a daft idea. If I thought of it, I must have been out of my mind. As it was not the view of the Government, nor that of the Home Office, I must have been in a funny mood that evening when I chose to relate the licence fee to national insurance. Of course, those were difficult times. The Government had a small majority.
I understand it when my party says that those of pensionable age should not have to pay the licence fee. I believe, however, that it is time to bring an end to the licence fee altogether. The suggestion in the report that the ending of the fee should be confined to those on supplementary benefit is an extraordinary one. We hear about privatisation and all the rest of it, and that is, I suppose, "politics", but in my constituency there would be an enormous amount of trouble if someone in receipt of supplementary benefit did not pay the licence fee and the family next door, which had received £1 a week from Leeds tramways for the past 20 years, had to do so. Whatever else those who formed the Peacock committee are—they
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may be good ideological Right-wingers or Left-wingers— they know nothing about what goes on in constituencies and about those who come to see us on Saturday mornings.
The Peacock committee recommended also that those who have radios in their motor cars should pay a licence fee. When, thank heaven, I drive away from London tomorrow, I shall find it pleasant to listen to Radio 2. I am an avid listener of the Jimmy Young show in the mornings, and thereafter I move on to Radio 4. I listen more to the radio in my car than I do in my home.
The House will recognise that the Home Office has a responsibility also for the police. There are far more policemen than we have ever had, but there are complaints that there are not enough in rural areas. Does anyone really think that chief constables will say, "We shall, of course, have far more policemen on the motorways. We shall stop cars at pull-ups to see whether they are displaying somethng that indicates that they have a licence from the BBC"? The police do not do their job properly now in ensuring that the car licence fee is paid. Right hon. and hon. Members will recall that one of our colleagues in the House some years ago recited a hymn of criticism of the police for not checking cars in the Metropolitan police area to ensure that the owners had paid the licence fee. A week later he was done for not having a road fund licence displayed on his car.
Mr. Tony Banks: My right hon. Friend is speaking about my predecessor in Newham, North-West, and I must complete the story. When my predecessor was stopped, he was found to have a Guinness label where his road fund licence should have been.
Mr. Rees: If the Home Office is considering introducing a car radio licence, it should listen to the story that my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) has completed, instead of going to the police. If such a system were introduced, the number of Guinness lables in lieu of car radio licences would be extremely great.
I have two main concerns. First, there is the independence of the BBC. When I was Home Secretary, I ate only once, I think, at the BBC. It is not the Home Secretary's job to be friendly with the BBC, and nor is it the BBC's job to be friendly with the Home Secretary, so that everybody knows one another and everyone is Bill or Bert. It is necessary to keep one's distance all the time. That is far more important in many respects than a piece of paper which sets out the rules.
Secondly, we should do away with the licence fee. We do not wish to remove the independence of the BBC, but what a way to collect money in the later years of the 20th century.
Finally, we should all be pround of the development of public broadcasting—not that it is perfect by a long chalk. However, public service broadcasting is something of which we should be proud. How do we operate it in a fast-changing world? The report poses the problems, but it has not helped me very much in deciding what we should do to overcome them. Before the Government — well, they do not have much time—or any of us legislate, we should think hard about how we maintain public service broadcasting, with our knowledge of what goes on in the United States. Another example is television in Catholic

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Italy. The developments there are unbelievable. If Mrs. Whitehouse thinks that television is bad here, she should see what is happening in Italy.
It would be easy to make mistakes about public services broadcasting, but "Public Service Broadcasting" should be written in the form of a notice on the front of the Home Secretary's desk. I am not clear how we translate such a notice into action, and that is the weakness in the Peacock report. Its terms of reference were those of an accountant, and it is not an accountancy approach that we want. The most important consideration is the standard of British broadcasting, and for me public service broadcasting is worth supporting.
6.49 pm
Mr. Nigel Forman: I agree strongly with many of the well-made points of the right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees), including those which he made in the dark. I commend him on them.
In paragraph 547 of the Peacock report it is argued clearly and fairly that
"the fundamental aims of broadcasting policy should in our view be to enlarge both the freedom of choice of the consumer and the opportunities available to programme makers".
It also maintained that, with the benefits of some technological developments, those in the media should overcome the two key problems to which my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary referred — the problems of spectrum scarcity, and the technical problem of developing and installing the various gadgets, whose names I cannot pronounce—one is peritelemetry—of pay-per-view.
In paragraph 551, the report states that if those two things were done there would be
"at least a chance of creating a genuine consumer market in broadcasting combined with a continuation of public service."
That was the stated hope of the authors of the report. Those aims may be admirable, but they pose other important questions which the House should consider carefully. The first question that comes to my mind is whether there is a compelling need to change or even abandon the present "comfortable duopoly", as it is called rather pejoratively in the report. The report states that the "comfortable duopoly" must be changed
"in view of the pace and scale of future technological changes."
It is not self-evident that that must be done right away.
Secondly, is it likely that the benefits of facilitating more of a free market in broadcasting will outweigh the costs? If they do not—that is a reasonable expectation—we should pause for thought before leaping ahead.
Thirdly, will it be possible for public service broadcasting, to which the right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South referred at the end of his speech, to survive and, I hope, prosper in a media world dominated by free market pressures? Much of the evidence from abroad suggests that it will not.
The main assumption underlying the Peacock report is that there will soon be a compelling need for change since escalating broadcasting costs and, in some cases, vaulting media ambitions will sooner or later be constrained and made impossible by the relative non-buoyancy of the licence fee as people cease to change from monochrome
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licences to colour licences, and the apparent — I stress the word "apparent"—unhappiness of the public to pay for its radio and television in that way.
I hope that it is not too late at least to question some of those assumptions. Even the colour licence at £58 a year costs only a little more than £1 per week. I and, if they thought about it for a moment, many others would regard that as very good value for money. However, even that amount can be difficult for some people to pay. Surely the answer is to make provision for more people to pay in easier and smaller instalments throughout the year, as is already possible.
The Peacock report also proposes that future increases in the licence fee should be linked to the retail prices index as a financial discipline on the BBC, with its high and rising operating costs. Conservative Members understand and agree with the arguments in favour of greater efficiency. It is hard to dispute that, but we must also consider, in a broadcasting debate, the likely effects on the quality and range of the BBC's output if that discipline were to be imposed. It might increase the productivity of the BBC's activities, but how would that be manifested? It would probably be manifested in more sales of BBC programmes and other published material here and abroad and in the sale of tapes and records, of books of the film and films of book and so on. It would probably be manifested also in cuts in staff and in what the BBC might regard as marginal activities. That would be sad because it might mean a reduction in diversity and possibly in quality. It would almost certainly result in a narrowing and lowering of quality in the programming through the much more extensive use of repeats and archive material.
Those who already see some of those tendencies in the BBC and regret them would not wish to make the problem worse. The financial restraint which the committee recommends would be unfair to the BBC in its implicit competition with commercial broadcasting which has been the reality since the 1950s, as the commercial broadcasters would presumably continue to rely on buoyant advertising revenue as the economy expanded.
Mr. Michael Morris: Has my hon. Friend seen the recent evidence from the IBA which suggests that, by 1990, the difference in resources between the two channels will be £1,000 million?
Mr. Forman: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point.
In all those circumstances, it would be fairer and more realistic to put the BBC on a broadly comparable basis with the commercial companies by indexing the licence fee on a formula of retail prices index plus an agreed modest percentage for a stated period.
We must also consider the longer-term outlook and whether the likely benefits of facilitating more of a free market in broadcasting would outweigh the likely costs. In the medium to longer term, extra finance from somewhere will be needed to make possible a wide range of new services using the new technologies of co-axial and, later, fibre optic cable and direct broadcasting by satellite.
The key point is that if the BBC is to be involved in all those developments it will need to charge or to supplement its existing sources of finance. If it cannot do so, the task of doing all those things simultaneously will become increasingly difficult or impossible.
Mr. Brinton: My hon. Friend seems to assume that the BBC should go into every new piece of progress. Will he explain why?
Mr. Forman: I was coming to that point. It is at the heart of the debate as to whether the future BBC—we are looking at the next 10, 20 or 30 years—should seek, as it always has done, to do everything or whether it should have a more specialised role.
The benefits of using the direct market mechanism of individual subscriptions, as suggested in the Peacock report, should include those of extended personal consumer choice, which we welcome, and the elimination of any form of cross-subsidy from those who watch only programmes made by other sectors of broadcasting.
However, the costs or the drawbacks of individual subscriptions seem likely to include a degradation in the quality of programmes. Anyone who doubts that assertion need only consider the record of Canal Plus in France, which was well documented in a recent article by Raymond Kuhn of Queen Mary college, University of London. The BBC would be placed at a serious competitive disadvantage compared with the advertising finance of commercial television. That point is made clear in table 10.1 of the Peacock report.
On the point or my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Brinton), the dilemma for the BBC is that if it cannot or is not prepared to stand aside from taking up all the opportunities which will offer themselves to the media in future it must swallow its traditional aversion to advertising and/or sponsorship and adopt a buoyant form of mixed financing, as is the case in many other countries.
However, if those in charge of the BBC would specialise more and concentrated within a rapidly expanding total market on what they do best and what they know best, they could continue to entertain, educate and inform in a high quality way, but on the basis of substantial assured public finance supplemented by revenue from sales and sponsorship at the margin.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but the lights will go out at 7 o'clock for about five minutes. We will, of course, continue the debate.
Mr. Forman: I can take a hint, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
My final question is whether public service and commercial broadcasting can and should co-exist in one large organisation — or rather two in the current duopoly—or whether it will be possible for the different roles of broadcasting to be performed alongside each other in different organisations with a variety of different purposes. The latter model suggests the future BBC concentrating on its public service role in ways which complement the commercial output of other organisations. We should recognise the dangers inherent in that model and the political interference or control to which such a restricted BBC could be subjected, because it would then be the only form of broadcasting likely to cause embarrassment or pose a threat to those in power. At the same time, the rest of the broadcasters would be drawn to compete for a mass audience on highly competitive commercial lines, which, I believe, would lead to lower overall quality and the inexorable working out of a Gresham's law of broadcasting in which the bad drives out the good and in which the public is provided with what
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they are believed to want, thus making it difficult, if not impossible, for the broadcasters to provide the best of which they are capable.
I believe that the Government should proceed cautiously in this area. It is clear that we cannot legislate satisfactorily on this enormously important topic in a hurry and probably not this side of the general election. I hope very much that the Government will take full account of the powerful speeches from both sides of the House and will pay very close heed to them, because if we rush ahead according to some kind of technological determinism we shall make irremediable mistakes and damage the quality of our lives in a more fundamental way than some hon. Members may realise.
7.1 pm
Mr. Jack Ashley: If the lights go out again, I shall not be unduly concerned. I shall simply go to the Dispatch Box, where there is a lamp, and where I feel more comfortable anyway.
I have a special interest in broadcasting, because before I came to the House I was a BBC television producer for some eight years, having been a radio producer for seven years before that, and when I came to the House I joined the General Advisory Council of the BBC. I therefore have a deep interest in the subject and I welcome this debate.
However, the two people responsible for this debate are not present. The first is the Prime Minister, who got a black eye when Peacock rejected her wish for advertising on the BBC. The other is the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who got a black eye when the BBC rejected his absurd and malevolent attacks on the BBC. If Dennis Potter ever writes a play about the Government's attempts to manipulate the BBC, he will undoubtedly find a way to break into the old ditty, "Two Lovely Black Eyes", as he likes to bring in the old songs.
The main person with whom we are concerned today, however, is Professor Peacock. He is very worthy but he has shown himself to be lacking in judgment by offering solutions for the future of broadcasting when no one knows what the problems will be. He is like an irresponsible motorist peering through the fog—instead of pausing, he has put his foot on the accelerator and gone charging ahead. So it is not surprising that he has run into trouble. He should have waited for the fog to clear before making recommendations. It is impossible at this stage to evaluate the consequences of the new technologies. 'They are far too complex and distant for us or Professor Peacock to be jumping to conclusions and making firm recommendations. We should advance pragmatically and with great caution, but Professor Peacock has done the opposite, and I believe that the Government will do the same and charge ahead regardless if they get the chance.
I hope that the House will exercise caution and urge the Government to do the same. To judge from the Home Secretary's speech, the Government want to confine broadcasters to the Government's own narrow commercial ideals, which I believe will damage or destroy our magnificent broadcasting values, which are respected world wide. I do not say that every Conservative Member takes that view. I know that some Conservative Members, and, indeed, a couple of Ministers, are well aware of the values of broadcasting, but the Government as a whole will damage both the BBC and the commercial companies if allowed to run amok. The Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and some of their

749
colleagues are obsessed with dislike for the BBC, which is a very dangerous emotion, and they must be resisted by the BBC, by responsible Members on both sides of the House and by the public. I believe that if we all combine we can frustrate the Government's attacks on the BBC.
The BBC is by no means perfect and will eventually need restructuring. As our brilliant former colleague, Phillip Whitehead, so aptly put it:
"Loyalty to public service broadcasting is not coterminous with admiration for the present structure of the Corporation."
I agree with that, but I still admire the BBC and I know that Philip Whitehead does, too. In addition to eventual restructuring, the BBC will need to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances, but it is reconstruction rather than destruction that is required. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Duchy will bring about its destruction if we are not careful. The Prime Minister and to some extent the Home Secretary are making a serious error in equating the provision of broadcasting with the sale of detergents.
Some Ministers, and their allies, the brash entrepreneurs, are great enthusiasts of pay-as-you-view television, but such a system for all would be disastrous because it would erode broadcasting standards and lead to a diet of caviar for those who could afford it and bread and marge for those who could not. Pay-as-you-view television would deprive the millions of people in poverty of the right to view the excellence of television and deny them the information, education and entertainment which are the hallmarks of British television — the traditional fare provided by the BBC and now willingly accepted by ITV. Millions of poor people would be cheated out of something that genuinely enriches their lives and provides them with a window on the world.
There may well be a place for pay-as-you-view television for a few special films on a limited basis, but there is no case whatever for pay-as-you-view television over a wide area. The fat cats of television, these new commercial people, will have to look elsewhere for their fast bucks. They must not be allowed to make a great profit out of pay-as-you-view television. We need to return to public service television and eschew pay-as-you-view at all costs.
I should like to take a stage further the argument concerning the provision of television licences. Although, in principle, I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) that we should phase in free television licences for all pensioners, the priority should be that free television licences are given to those old pensioners on supplementary benefit. That could be paid for by a tax on car radios. I know that my right hon. Friends the Members for Gorton and for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) are not happy about a tax on car radios. Yes, it would be difficult to enforce and it would be an anomaly to have a car tax on motorists and no similar tax on other people, but it would not be as anomalous as having pensioners unable to afford a licence compared to those who can afford a licence. It would be far better to have an anomaly of people with car radios paying extra tax which would pay for the television licences for those very poor pensioners on supplementary benefit.
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We have to cope effectively with the complex problems of the future — modern techniques, satellite dishes, cables, finance, franchises, standards and many other things. We should not be motivated by personal or political animosity, but I believe that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster are so animated at the present time.
The way forward is by constructive and careful consideration, and that could be provided by a permanent standing Communications Commission. It is not by accepting Peacock's recommendations. If we accepted those recommendations for commercialism and pay-asyou-view television, we would damage the standard of broadcasting, damage the skill of broadcasters and damage the interests of millions of poor viewers. We should fight to protect the interests of the BBC and the other television companies—such companies have done splendid work. We must protect the interests of viewers who enjoy television. They are entitled to do so and should not be deprived of it by the Peacock recommendations.
Mr. MaddenOn a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. You will be aware that the Chamber and large parts of the House have been in darkness for various intervals of the evening, and indeed some parts of the House remain in darkness. I should like to know whether there will be a statement from the Leader of the House on the reason for this, and will he assure us that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has not pulled out the plugs to avoid the lights being focused on his recent activities?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: No, I do not think so.
7.15 pm
Mr. Neil Hamilton: The right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) will not be surprised to learn that I do not agree with a great deal of what he said. In contrast, I thought that the right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) spoke much common sense in his speech, which will find echoes in various parts of the Chamber. It was in great contrast to the speech by the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman). His was one of the most reactionary speeches that I have had the misfortune to hear in this House. The right hon. Gentleman appeared to accept the proposition that all was well with broadcasting at the BBC and that there was no criticism that could fairly be made. He was being the most pliant poodle of the Establishment that I have seen for a great many years. That contrasts starkly with what he must have said as his master's voice when Lord Wilson was involved in a great many scraps with the BBC over alleged bias in the late 1960s.
The House will appreciate that I have no special reason to love the BBC, except that, a short time ago, as a result of its failures, I derived a great deal of gratifying publicity. My right hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) and my hon. Friend the Member for Littleborough and Saddleworth (Mr. Dickens) told me how envious they were of the amount of publicity which I had received and which had pushed them from the front pages of the newspapers.
I had to pay a price to derive that publicity. The price was that for three years I was robbed by the BBC of peace of mind. My family and I underwent considerable suffering and anguish. My hon. Friend the Member for

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Cannock and Burntwood (Mr. Howarth) and I put our good names, reputations and possessions on the line and risked bankruptcy and our places in this House to fight what we believed was a great evil on the part of the BBC. That evil must be rooted out so that the BBC's reputation can also be salvaged. As a result of the case, which was settled between my hon. Friend, myself and the BBC, £500,000 of public money was lost. The ethical guidelines which the BBC had laid down were flagrantly breached and, as a result, the BBC's reputation was gravely damaged.
On the basis of that catalogue, what action was taken in the BBC to rectify that matter or to explain it? The answer is that the Director-General said that there would be no disciplining of the journalists responsible for making the "Panorama" programme which had defamed us and that that there would not even be an internal inquiry into the events which had taken place.
Mr. Tony Banks rose—
Mr. Hamilton: I am anxious not to give way, because many hon. Members wish to take part in the debate. I am sure that the hon. Member will make his own speech in due course.
The experience of my hon. Friend and myself is not unique. In May 1985 the BBC lost a case against Dr. Gee which cost £1·25 million, but once again there were no disciplinary proceedings or an internal inquiry. Dr. Gee was libelled in the programme made by Esther Rantzen, who was observed giggling by one of my constituents as she was travelling in a train after that case and the experiences of Dr. Gee. In May of this year that programme continued to broadcast unfairly about Dr. Gee, and it is now the subject of a complaint before the Broadcasting Complaints Commission. I shall say no more about it.
In the past few years the BBC has lost many libel actions. They have cost the corporation a considerable amount of money and have identified many weaknesses in the management of the corporation and in the standards which are acceptable to its journalists. Nothing whatever seems to have been done, and I cannot see any similar cause celebre which may be laid at the doors of the independent television companies.
We must analyse why the BBC seems to be peculiarly susceptible to the failures and weaknesses identified by our cases. The main reason for this weakness was identified by the right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South. It is that the BBC considers itself infallible and thinks that it never makes mistakes. The BBC is the reverse of that, and the truth of the matter is that the BBC is out of control. It is too big and too diverse in its operations. Its constitution is archaic and anachronistic, and it is all tied up with the question of funding.
The management at the top level of the BBC appears to me to be weak, ineffective and incompetent. The managers are far too frightened of the National Union of Journalists' threat to pull out the plugs if they attempt to discipline any journalist for whatever cause. That constitutes weak management.
On the other hand, there are some journalists—I do not wish to damn everybody—probably not more than a small minority, who do disproportionate damage to the corporation's reputation. There are a great many journalists working for the BBC—but not only for the
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BBC — who have an armour-plated arrogance, which leads to recklessness because they think that they will never have to explain the programmes that they make and will never be examined in minute detail on what they have had to say. They are prepared to fight for injustice and to defend their lies to the last penny of taxpayers' money, but when it comes to putting their own money on the line to defend their own reputation they are not prepared to risk that.
Mr. Julian Critchley: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Hamilton: I am sorry. I did not give way to the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks). I must be fair if I am accusing the BBC of being unfair. It would be improper if I were to be inconsistent.
The governors of the BBC are supposed to be the representatives of the public interest. In the past—arid this will probably happen in the future — they have displayed a stunning ineffectiveness, which is tied up to some extent with the nature of the individuals who are made governors, and to a greater extent with the nature of the office itself, which is part-time. Most governors do not come to the corporation with the necessary experience and weight to counterbalance the management in the BBC. All the evidence is that they are often hoodwinked.
Let me take as an example the current fracas over the complaints of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, in his other capacity as chairman of the Conservative party, about the Libyan reporting, on which I intend to make no comment. Did the governors meet at any stage to discuss their response to his criticisms? We have not yet had the answer to that question—
Mr. Corbett: We have.
Mr. Hamilton: The BBC made a response. It would be interesting to know the way in which the BBC management collected the opinions of the governors on that issue. In the case of the libel action of my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock and Burntwood and myself, did the BBC seek the opinion of counsel, for example? I understand that the BBC was given less than a 40 per cent. chance of winning on a good day with a happy judge. No commercial organisation would go into court with such an opinion.
The problem was identified recently in The Independent by William Rees-Mogg, the former vice-chairman of the governors of the BBC, who said:
"there are whole systems of communication inside the Corporation to which they have no access. They issue policy instructions which are solemnly noted and as solemnly disregarded."
That is what I think has happened in this case. The truth is that we have a constitutional structure in the BBC which was fit for the period between 1930 and 1950, before competition was introduced to broadcasting, but which is wholly unsuited for the different times in which we live today. In those days, perhaps television journalists were more scrupulous than they are today and the BBC was more of a national institution.
Politicians should not fear criticism or mockery, but that criticism and mockery must be placed firmly on the bedrock of truth. My objection is that so often in current affairs programmes the bedrock of truth is not there. That economy with the truth, to be complimentary about journalists who have been guilty of infractions of the BBC

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code, arises because of the security of funding of the BBC, arising out of what is effectively taxation. It brings about irresponsibility by virtue of lax management.
The vast resources of the BBC—now £1,000 million a year or more — incline the BBC to the view that, whatever costs arise out of legal actions, they can conveniently be ignored. The costs and damages that the BBC had to pay in the cases of my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock and Burntwood and myself amounted to over £280,000. That is two hours' income for the BBC, but a lifetime's income and more for most of those who would be faced with the task of fighting a corporation the size of the BBC were they defamed by it. The BBC is uniquely unaccountable. It cannot be examined in the House because there is no ministerial responsibility for its internal workings. I should not like to see that change, because I do not want to see the BBC become a plaything of any political party or grouping.
The BBC has no shareholders who must be faced at an annual general meeting. At the moment, the Director-General and those who are responsible for the debacle in our legal actions are skulking in their bunkers, their heads well below the parapet, and it seems that nobody can get at them. We expect to be attacked in the House and outside it for our errors, infractions, failings, deficiencies and so on. If they are sufficiently salacious and newsworthy, the television cameras are parked outside our garden gates waiting to catch every facial contortion, grimace or sadness.
The Broadcasting Complaints Commission seems to me to be a toothless bulldog and suffers from a great many deficiencies, not least of which is that a great many people who were libelled on the same "Panorama" programme as my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock and Burntwood and me have been prevented from securing any consideration of their case because the commission cannot consider a complaint while legal proceedings are pending. There are still cases to come involving hon. Members of the House, which have not been concluded.
The justification that is put forward for maintaining the licence fee, which underpins the system of irresponsibility, is public service broadcasting, yet if we look at a copy of the Radio Times for this week we see in it a great many programmes which cannot be justified on the principle of public service broadcasting, however agreeable they might be to watch. The quality of the programmes does not seem to be uniquely the result of the principle of the taxpayer funding public service broadcasting, because every year the independent companies walk away with the bulk of the awards for quality programmes.
The BBC does not seem to be very innovative, because most of the great innovations that have arisen over the years have come about under the impulse of competition from commercial stations, whether it be afternoon broadcasting in the 1950s, local radio or breakfast television. As the right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South said, quality seems to have become synonymous and confused with lavishness of production. That is surprising, because, as the costs of the technicalities of broadcasting have fallen in recent years, the costs of programmes seem to have risen, when the reverse might have been expected.
The real issue to which we should address ourselves in the debate and in the wider debates outside the House is
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not political bias of the BBC but ethical standards. The BBC is engaged in a ratings war with the commercial stations. There is considerable sensationalising and trivialising. I agree with the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn), who for many years has campaigned for fairer treatment of Left-wing Labour Members of Parliament by the BBC and other broadcasting institutions. There is more than a kernel of truth in the things that he has been saying.
What we want from the BBC is that it should observe its own code of ethics. That is set out in a paper by Alan Protheroe, the Assistant Director-General of the BBC, with several simple propositions, which seem to have been conveniently ignored. He says that basic honesty is something that all contributors to BBC programmes should be able to expect, yet recently in a case involving the "Rough Justice" programme the Lord Chief Justice condemned the interview methods that were used by the people making the programme as "outrageous", and referred to "investigation by menaces." He said that had those methods been used by the police they would have merited instant condemnation from the courts.
When Mr. Justice Bingham was considering an interlocutory application in the proceedings on the Dr. Gee case, he said that these were the methods used by the programme makers:
"the Defendants made a sham appointment with Dr. Gee at his surgery and then proceeded to attempt to interview him in the presence of Dr. Gee's other patients and without giving Dr. Gee any notice of their intentions."
He said that they wrote a letter three days before the programme went out posing a number of questions
"of the when did you last stop beating your wife variety and clearly Dr. Gee was being given little time to consider the criticisms being made or to respond."
Mr. Justice Bingham concluded:
"the Defendants would I think be very well advised to give careful thought to any criticism that they might make and do not think that their initial handling of their investigation reflects great credit on a corporation such as the BBC and I hope that given what I have said the appropriate caution will be exercised by the Defendants."
That hope was completely ignored.
We must also consider the fabrication of evidence, as happened with my hon. Friend and me. In spite of the Director-General of the BBC now saying that there were no deliberate falsehoods in the manufacture of the "Panorama" programme, the reverse is true. The programme wanted to claim a connection between David Irving, the historian who claims that the holocaust never happened, or that Hitler did not know about it if it did, and the Conservative party. It could not find one, so it rang various student Conservative associations to persuade them to set up a meeting with David Irving which the "Panorama" team could then film. It used that filmed evidence to say that there was a connection between Irving and the Conservative party, which it must have known was false.
It is quite clear from the uncut film in our case that another objective of the corporation's code of ethics—to produce programmes that are independent, objective, impartial and fair—was infringed, because it decided the story line in advance and tailored the facts accordingly. The rule in the BBC is "defame first and justify afterwards". That is never necessary if one can oppress and intimidate—a word that we have heard often from the

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Opposition the private people who are the corporation's victims with the vast and oppressive weight of the resources available to it.
The BBC uses third degree tactics in interviews if the interviewee is to be the victim, but if the interviewee is helping the programme makers in their nefarious purposes, he is groomed and coaxed to give such performances as are likely to make the programme more viewable.
The BBC is also warned in its code of ethics to be careful not to be manipulated by lobbyists and the mouthpieces of groups with points of view to put forward. How was it, then, that the programme made on my hon. Friend and me could have been researched by a former Communist party candidate, a convicted burglar with a known record of stealing documents—
Mr. Corbett: Cheap.
Mr. Hamilton: —and the editor of a magazine which employed convicted arsonists? Stolen documents were used in the programme and produced at the trials on the basis—
Mr. Corbett: Say that outside.
Mr. Hamilton: I have said it outside. I should like to observe to Opposition Members that I do not seek the cloak of privilege to defame hon. Members.
There are a great many other techniques of which the BBC should be utterly ashamed. They are used by its employees to defame individuals who often cannot defend themselves. They use Goebbels' techniques. That could happen to any of us, including Opposition Members. If there is a Labour Government again, I dare say that Opposition Members will be subject to treatment such as we have received.
The answer to these problems is to restore real management control and responsibility in the corporation. That can come about only as a result of a complete reassessment of the methods of funding. I applaud the direction in which the Peacock committee exhorts us to go. I entirely support its proposal to privatise Radios I and 2. We could extend that to BBC 2, because public service broadcasting ought to be a sort of Arts Council of the air. That would reduce the BBC to manageable size and restrict it to producing high quality or admittedly controversial programmes made from an admitted political stance, as happens on Channel 4 with "Diverse Productions".
Management must manage and be accountable. Privatisation seems to me to be one of the ways in which to achieve that. When the BBC has to be responsive—as eventually it will have to be with pay television and subscription television—to the needs of its viewers and the people who are responsible for providing the money to make the programmes, many of these evils will be swept away.
It is a great pity that the BBC does not have a system such as we have with the ITV companies, which have to compete for franchises and account for their stewardship from time to time. That is another source of the evils which seem to be endemic in the present vast octopus of the BBC. I warmly applaud the Peacock committee's forward-looking proposals. Not all will be universally accepted, but the broad thrust is in the right direction. Market solutions are the right ones for broadcasting, as for other parts of the economy.
7.35 pm
Mr. Norman Buchan: The hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Hamilton) might realise that we would probably listen to him with a little more sympathy if he had been less free and loose in here about other people. In view of his panegyric on the virtues of the market, it is worth keeping in mind the old slogan about the man who was hanged for stealing the goose from off the common, but let the greater villain loose who stole the common from the goose. That is precisely what the Peacock report does.
The greater villains are those whom we saw rejoicing when the Peacock committee was established. There was an orgasm of joy on the Conservative Benches as they saw the opportunity, with the Peacock committee, to get up to their elbows in gravy. They saw an opportunity to smash one of our greatest public service institutions and to have a go at the BBC, which they regard as an especially snooty organisation.
We might have considered standards, bias and fairness and what the Conservative party has said during the past few weeks through the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the hon. Member for Tatton and the Home Secretary today until we consider their own standards of bias. The Home Secretary told us that debate on the Peacock report would be delayed. It has been brought from the back burner very quickly.
The Government have already asked Communications Studies and Planning International to prepare a report for the Home Office on pay-per-view. It cannot be an objective study. Mr. Jonscher, who has been put in charge, is an enthusiastic free-marketeer who is strongly committed to the expansion of pay television and convinced of the merits of a system in which viewers can buy the entertainment they want to watch. He says:
"There is too little entertainment material coming into people's homes. Television is hopelessly under-financed here. It costs viewers two or three pence per hour. I can't help feeling people would pay more than that".
The Conservatives are delighted at the prospect of being up to their elbows in gravy as a result of subscription televison. The same organisation has been advising on the use of the spectrum—the frequencies on which television and radio signals are transmitted — and the sum for which it could be sold off to interested users. The objective people who the Government have put in charge of the investigation are firmly committed to turning the licence fee into a subscription and to scrambling the signal.
Having listened to the hon. Member for Tatton, I find an article in today's The Guardian about the attack on broadcasting during the past few weeks especially interesting. I should like to concentrate on the media monitoring units. They are apparently objective, and issued the recent report of alleged Left-wing bias among broadcasters. All of them have intimate links with the Conservative party. The hon. Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle (Mr. Leigh), who was in the Chamber for a moment or two earlier, is involved. The Coalition for Peace through Security and Mr. Lewis, the well-known Right wing—
Mr. Holt: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Buchan: The hon. Gentleman has interrupted quite a bit today.
Mr. Holt: The hon. Gentleman has just told a lie and I want to tell the truth.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must withdraw that statement. He cannot accuse an hon. Member of telling a lie.
Mr. Holt: Of course I withdraw the word "lie". The hon. Gentleman just forgot the truth.
Mr. Buchan: I am quoting from The Guardian. It may be wrong, but I shall quote it again. It says that the Coalition for Peace Through Security has among its members
"Mr. Edward Leigh, Conservative MP for Gainsborough."
The hon. Gentleman had better check that with his friends. I thank him for his withdrawal, but it is a pity that he ever made the allegation.
We are witnessing a double attack upon the public service in general and on public service broadcasting in particular. The message coming through from Peacock is quite simple. When we were preparing the evidence for Peacock we recognised within the first three or four weeks that the argument for advertising could not be sustained, because to have any effect on the BBC such advertising would in particular smash the regional aspect of commercial television. We therefore decided that it would not happen.
Our fear was that no such committee once established would say that there was nothing to report. Our worry was about what it would report, and what it has argued is astonishing. It is in line with a general attack on the public service, with the Prime Minister's view of pushing back the boundaries of the state and her view that she wants to end what she calls Socialism, although we might call it public or welfare service.
Peacock's short-term proposals are not so finally serious, although we must beat them if we can. Even more disturbing are the report's long-term concepts. It has basically argued that the new technologies will inevitably mean that we must move away from public service broadcasting because satellite broadcasting cannot be controlled or subject to regulation. Peacock himself said that, like Canute, we could not push back the waves, and as it could not beat the new technologies, the committee took the view, "Let us close our eyes, roll on our backs and think of England. If we cannot control the technology, let it move uninterrupted and let us hasten its coming." Hence the argument about fixing television sets by a certain date to allow pay television to occur.
It is a surrender for mankind to say that the technologies themselves must control us. We recognise that there is a basic problem and difficulties, but the argument used by Peacock that broadcasting should move in exactly the same direction as the press moved in 1694 bears some examination. As all hon. Members will recall, 1694 was the date on which pre-publication censorship was ended. Fifty years before then Milton had used the same argument in relation to the Areopagitica. As a result, freedom of the press came into being. Peacock, and, to a limited extent, Peter Jay, also used the same argument—that we can move in the same direction of unlimited, free market broadcasting as has happened with the press since 1694.
The difficulty is that at that time the campaign for freedom in the press was a campaign against a nervous and tyrannical state. Over the last 300 years the real tyranny in relation to the press is not that of the state but the tyranny of wealth, power and riches. The truth is that with
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a free market the entire popular press of this country is dominated by three people. In addition, we need only look at Berlusconi in Europe. Virtually the entire dissemination of news on a popular basis in the whole of western Europe is controlled by five people — Maxwell, Murdoch and the Express syndicate in Britain and Berlusconi, for example, in Europe.
It should be remembered that human beings operate not on reality but on our perception of reality. This is the power within the media that we must examine. The central thrust of Peacock is the argument about freedom. At the conference last year, he said that I was the only one who understood the central thrust of the paper, which was the question of freedom. He believes that we achieve freedom by removing all controls and regulation and that this will open up the possibility of an entirely free market which will then determine what happens. We argued that in such a situation we merely surrender to two, three or four monopolies, and Peacock, his committee and the Home Secretary know it.
The analogy with the press is absolutely right. An opening up of unrestricted, unregulated, satellite dominated broadcasting would mean in the same way in broadcasting a surrender to three or four people. That is the end-point of Peacock's view of freedom, and it is time that we contrasted it with a better view of freedom, because this really is the central thrust of the argument.
The truth is that uncontrolled broadcasting leads to monopoly and control. Regulated broadcasting by the community is not of itself a restriction. On the contrary, properly regulated broadcasting, which in this country we have to a very great extent, opens up the possibility of access and a diversity of opinion.
These arguments matter and are linked exactly to the philosophy of the Hayeks, Friedmans, Tebbits and Thatchers of this world. Incidentally, can one imagine what the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster would say if "Diverse Reports" were to devote six programmes not to examining the philosophy of the so-called new enlightenment—the old reaction, as I call it—of Hayek and Friedman, the Chicago centre and the St. Andrews school — heaven help us, the second most reactionary university in the Western world — but to Marxism or democratic Socialism? I use the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster as an example of that school of thought. That is the kind of argument going on at present.
To a curious extent, this has been the central argument throughout politics since the beginning of time. It has lasted for several thousand years, and Peacock has suddenly resurrected it again at the centre, just as the Prime Minister has done in her social and economic arguments.
We reject the view that we cannot control the technologies. Once we surrender to technologies and say that we can do nothing else, mankind has finished his chance of progress for ever.
We shall have to recognise that, no matter what is done here, we shall still be able to get unrestricted broadcasting from overseas. Incidentally, the freedom for all to do their own broadcasting does not mean the bloke next door who is buying into the satellites, because the people who have bought into satellite broadcasting are the Maxwells and the Murdochs. They have got a share of the action, and that will mean unrestricted pap.
One of the difficulties is that we are accused of elitism. Let us look at the most recent report undertaken by the

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NOP for the Broadcasting Research Unit. It analysed the percentage of people who were "agreeably surprised" and referred to:
"the surprise factor and the possibility that a programme which a person felt would not be enjoyable might turn out on exposure to be agreeable and acceptable."
Three per cent. of those interviewed said that this happened very often, 20 per cent. said that it happened fairly often and 46 per cent. said that it occurred occasionally. In other words, nearly 70 per cent. of those asked said that, far from it being elitist to think that things that are slightly above the common denominator should be broadcast, they had enjoyed such programmes when they had seen them. Therefore, we are arguing not so much about elitism as about an understanding that if they go below the lowest common denominator, audiences will be maximised. That is what happens with uncontrolled and unregulated broadcasting.
That is not an elitist argument. It is one that says that we cannot secure diversity of opinion and diversity of programme—be it from coarse fishing to politics, opera to jazz— unless broadcasting is controlled in this way. That is the problem to which we must address our minds. Peacock is a massive step backwards in this regard, and it should not be tolerated. It is an immediate, massive backwards step in the arguments about Radios 1 and 2.
The one section of independent radio with which Peacock could do something positive was community radio which gave groups the opportunity to broadcast community or neighbourhood interests. It is astonishing that at the time of Peacock and deregulation, community radio was barred and banned. Why? The Government were terrified of some of the views that might be expressed. They were afraid they would be inimical to the Government. That had nothing to do with freedom.
We now come to the curious case of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. The Peacock report is one aspect of the double attack on all public service and all community activity. Another aspect is the attack that we have heard from the hon. Member for Tatton and that released by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. I am afraid that he is not very bright. He and the Prime Minister both suffer from tunnel vision and second-rate minds.
Mr. Tony Banks: They also suffer from low cunning.
Mr. Buchan: Indeed, they also suffer from elements of low cunning which act like adrenalin upon them.
The Chancellor of the Duchy was asked about bias. He criticised apparent bias in the BBC as did the media monitoring unit. He was asked why he had chosen to attack the BBC over Libya. He said:
"Well, there were a number of possible subjects, some of them would have required a very, very large amount of work, for example the allegation that there was bias in the drama side. What we looked for was something self-contained, something where there were transcripts, where we were dealing with facts."
The interviewer asked whether, if the Libyan broadcasts were self-contained, he thought them typical of BBC news reporting. He replied:
"No, no I wouldn't, and indeed that's part of the whole point I was seeking to make. On the whole, standards are high"—
he might have been kidding, judging from his attack on the Libya broadcast—
"but there are lamentable lapses, and you have to focus in on these."
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In other words, sometimes people make an error, so he will focus in on them. Quietly in an interview, he thought that the standard was good, but 90 per cent. of the British people did not gain that impression from the right hon. Gentleman. The interviewer then asked what the Chancellor of the Duchy was trying to do by "focusing in" on the odd lapse or two. He replied:
"Well if you make the generalised statement that the BBC is biased against the Labour party, which is so often being made, then this statement can be brushed off very easily … So you do have to be precise. And if the standard is generally good, as it is … though there is a tendency to muddle news with comment, and a tendency to sensationalise … er I have lost track of what your question was."
That was his analysis. The right hon. Gentleman has undoubtedly unleashed and given credit to media monitoring, now exposed as a Right-wing group. He has let loose the moral majority who can take every opportunity to be associated with that. I see that the hon. Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle has now joined us. That is to buttress attacks on the best television and radio in the world today. If hon. Members do not believe that, they should lock themselves up for two or three hours and look at some of Murdoch's satellite broadcasting and see how they like that.
Hon. Members could do what I did when I was preparing the evidence on Peacock. I took off to Italy for five days — any excuse to spend five days in Italy. I knew Italian television reasonably well and I was staggered at its unbelievable degeneration. I grew up on bad American B-movies. I did not expect to see four of them at the same time on the 10 available channels in Italy, but I did. They were so bad that even I did not go to see them at the age of 15. There was an absence of commercial breaks. The adverts cut straight into programmes. I was watching a Russian pole vaulter attempting to break the European record and as he loosened up and took off two steps he ran straight into a line of nappies, advertising soap. I have never yet discovered whether he broke the record because by the time that had finished we were in the middle of a 1,000 metre race. I experienced a kind of culture shock at the logo flickering constantly during a film.
The curious result of deregulation and the large-scale expansion of programmes—about 300 private television, stations in Italy—is that they are almost all controlled by one man. It is curious that with relaxation and deregulation, which open up the possibility of more programmes, there is in fact less choice. Berlusconi has now bought into the 300 small private commercial programmes, so basically three massive commercial networks control the 300 apparently private commercial stations. That is what is meant by Peacock's free-for-all and "Do your own broadcasting". Berlusconi is one of five who control the entire dissemination of news in western Europe. In the United Kingdom, we have three.
Peacock knows the end result. Indeed, he is clear about it. Peacock recognises that the commercial world will not produce programmes of value. The report states:
"The Committee has its own views on the types of programme suitable for public patronage, and which form a large part of its concept of Public Service Broadcasting."
So, together with the freedom to have pap, since the stations will not put on good programmes, the committee say that we must call on the public purse to transmit better programmes. The committee expects a minor quantity of
"news, current affairs, documentaries, programmes about science, nature and other parts of the world … high quality

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programmes on the Arts (music, drama, literature etc.) … critical and controversial programmes, covering everything from the appraisal of commercial products to politics, ideology, philosophy."
What kind of television and radio has Peacock got in mind when he says that religion, ideology, drama, literature, music, news, current affairs, documentaries, and programmes about science will form a minor part of broadcasting which must be paid for from the public purse?
We are seeing an attack on some of our most important values. It is not merely a minor matter as to whether we have historical accuracy in "The Monocled Mutineer," for example. It involves the type of civilisation that we wish to create. That cannot be left in the hands of the profit-makers, not only because that is the greater immorality, but because they have no vision or concept other than that of profit. Indeed, they cannot, because, by the nature of the beast, that is all that it can do. Freedom will not remain if it is entrusted to the pockets and the purses of the Murdochs, Maxwells and Berlusconis. They will not preserve the quality of broadcasting, ensure the diversity of programmes or seek to eliminate bias by extending genuine access.
The BBC is not the perfect body, any more than ITV is, but the quality of our commercial television is protected by the existence of the BBC alongside it and through the regulations imposed on it. Without that, it will be unadulterated pap. The people who will not watch that unadulterated pap but will themselves go to the Royal Opera House or the south bank will be the very people who try to push this on the ordinary British people. It must be defeated and I believe that it will be defeated. We have been suffering under this philosophy for a long time. The sooner the election, the better for British civilisation itself.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I should remind the House that Mr. Speaker appealed at the outset of the debate for brief speeches.
7.59 pm
Mr. Tim Brinton: I appreciate that the hon. Member for Paisley, South (Mr. Buchan) cannot entirely grasp the principles of capitalism and profit. However, I am also considerably worried about his version of freedom. He seems to think that control over what is broadcast is a way of establishing freedom. I look forward to the day when there are so many broadcasting channels in this country that we can have the absolute freedom to have radio and television stations to the far Left and to the far Right, and also in the middle.
The hon. Member for Paisley, South alluded to the beginnings of such a broadcasting system, that is to say, the sadly aborted community radio experiment. It was right to abort it because it was but a pilot scheme involving about 20 stations. Those 20 stations would have stuck out like sore thumbs. I hope that when my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary considers this matter he will go at it full bloodedly so that we get that sort of variety and begin to see that absolute freedom to broadcast can work through from the little local centres to something much more important.
Although we sometimes complain about the BBC and ITV, we have to remember that most of the stuff that we see is excellent. It was sad that the criticisms of the
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chairman of the Conservative party happened to coincide with the 50th anniversary of British television, because during that week we saw what the BBC was really made of. I have said publicly that the BBC has problems, and may do so again later. However, I do not believe that they are as deep and difficult as some people suggest, or that the BBC is as white and pure as others suggest. I feel rather like the lady soothsayer—most unsuitably cast—in "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" with Frankie Howerd which was repeated during that celebratory week, who comes rushing in saying "Woe, woe!"
In a sense, although not in the total sense that the hon. Member for Paisley, South meant, we shall be controlled by the developments of the new technology. It is difficult to know when this will come about. The value of the Peacock report was that it brought added emphasis to the previous attempt by the Annan committee, which was also laudable, to say, "The face of broadcasting in this country will change one day."
Many right hon. and hon. Members have accepted that. My difficulty is that I see it as almost a certainty within the next 10, 15 or 20 years. I have scant experience of the House compared with many right hon. and Members, although I have been here seven and a half years, but having considered parliamentary timetables I realise how long it would take to make major changes in legislation in time to carry out that sort of exercise.
If we keep the BBC's activities at the same level and fund them in the same way, or even if we allow it to expand as it has done instinctively during the past few years, understandably so because it wanted to, and nobody was going to stop it, the BBC will be forced into either competing directly against a multitude of popular downmarket programming which we shall be unable to control because it will come from abroad, or backing off and contracting to some degree.
In the 1950s I worked for the BBC, and I am proud of it and all that that means. In the new world of fragmented receiving, viewing and listening, I should like to see a public service broadcasting system in this country that is ready to fit in and that will not be decimated.
In the past few years we have seen the BBC's professional attempt to claw its way back in the ratings. Its ratings in the top 10 were going down, so it employed Mr. Grade, who is an expert in this area, and slowly and steadily, and quite rightly, he pulled them up on the important programmes. In the present climate of competition, there is nothing to be ashamed of if the BBC competes on popular programming. However, if, as the hon. Member for Paisley, South suggested, this material from outer space is all down market, like Italian television, and apparently everyone, although they do not really want to watch it because they would rather go to the opera but cannot afford it, tunes in and watches that unsuitable stuff, our public broadcasters will have to produce similar material to secure the viewers. That is the basis of the Peacock committee's thesis.
The Peacock report gives a few ideas but says to us, and, I hope, to the BBC, "Look ahead carefully. It takes time. How will you fit in in this new world which has not yet come along?"
We should have a public element of funding for the BBC for some time to come. I am not speaking on party political grounds, but one cannot justify continuing the full licence fee for much longer. As multiple choice arrives,

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why should a compulsory tax—that is what the licence fee is because one cannot have a television set without having a licence— be levied to finance, for example, "Dallas" and "Dynasty" which are brought from America and are highly popular? Such programmes would multiply on the other channels, so why should the BBC offer the same?
Like the hon. Member for Paisley, South, I do not claim to be an elitist. I want the BBC to spend its money on the things that it does best, including popular programmes made by the BBC, for example, "Hi-De-Hi" and "The Two Ronnies". Those programmes regularly come at the top of the top 10. They cannot be made by commercial interests because, first, they cannot develop that sort of series because of the nursing and financing needed, and, secondly, because of the constriction of fitting in commercials. When Morecambe and Wise went over to the commercial station, the programme was constrained to roughly a 12½ minute slot before the commercials. There was an artificiality about some of those sketches, good though they were, which did not occur on the BBC's 45-minute programme, because their sketches could stretch to eight minutes, or even to 12, or go back to three minutes, or whatever they wanted. Timing constraints did not matter.
The BBC's genuine talent should be preserved in public service broadcasting. I am not saying that ITV and Channel 4 do not produce excellent shows; it is just a different system.
An element of licence fee should remain, but it should be pegged to a target which allows the BBC to remain independent but which has eventually and in the roughest of ways to be sketched out by Parliament. The Peacock committee rightly suggested that we might move towards a pay television socket being installed in all new sets in about a year's time. That is very important and a matter for technological advance. As those television sets come into use over a period of five years, if the BBC would move BBC2 to a subscription service, leaving BBCI paid for by licence fee, that would preserve the universal nature of one British channel, in BBC1, while BBC2 would be paid for.
The concept of paying for a channel is not as scandalous as one might think. When BBC first started, there was no way that individual payments could be made for the supply of what were then called wireless signals or crystal set signals, so another method had to be thought of and the licence became a universal tax. If there had been another way, I am sure that the corporation would have chosen to send a bill, as for the supply of electricity or the telephone. Indeed, we would not be having this debate because if everybody had paid for their television viewing the matter would have been straightforward. We have all paid to go to the cinema, which was the chief form of visual entertainment before television took off in the early 1950s.
I do not contemplate selling off Radios 1 and 2. As many hon. Members have said, there is nothing to sell except a couple of wavelengths. Jimmy Young can be sold off any day by the BBC or bought by anyone who attracted him. He is independent of the BBC. There is no property there for the BBC to sell, even if it were a good idea.
But we want some far-reaching reforms to cope with the new scene of, perhaps, a contracting BBC with fewer staff and a contracting BBC radio. I like the idea of beefing up the management board of the BBC so that the governors
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become non-executive directors. That would be good. But having done that, I should like that board to run the BBC, not do the policing as well. I should then want to see one television authority policing—if that is the right word— or regulating the public service broadcast element of television and a separate radio authority doing the same for BBC radio, independent local radio and any national independent radio that comes along. In that way, the policemen—the governors, or whatever they are called— will be further away from the problems of management and routines within the BBC, but there will be a stronger board with non-executive directors looking after the day-to-day policy of the BBC.
I do not want to say much about the letter of the Conservative party chairman to the vice-chairman of the BBC, except to applaud the vice-chairman of the BBC because when he spoke in Edinburgh he said, rightly, that all politicians and all political parties always complain about the broadcaster. But, having said that, there are identifiable events, which have happened over the years, which we should draw together. One is the recent libel case against the BBC of my hon. Friends the Members for Tatton (Mr. Hamilton) and for Cannock and Burntwood (Mr. Howarth). I know that there are staff within the BBC who are muddled as a result of that case. I am not taking sides, but what was the BBC's management doing saying that it would fight the case and then withdrawing so quickly after a few days?
Secondly, there is the play about the Falklands by Mr. Curteis. I am not interested in the virtues of whether he was asked to write scenes differently, but I have not heard anyone contradict the fact that that play was apparently commissioned by the Director-General of the BBC As an old BBC man, I ask what the Director-General of the BBC is doing commissioning plays directly. He has many people to do that for him, such as the head of drama, whom he called in to go to see the playwright. That is not denied and that gentleman apparently went down to the playwright's house and talked about changes, forgetting that the BBC had appointed a producer for the venture, Mr. Messina, who had never been brought into the story. That is odd procedure within the BBC's management.
It is that odd procedure which I think gave rise to the guts of the chairman of the Conservative party's attempt to criticise. I do not go along with all his criticisms, but I should like to point to one specifically. It is a narrow point, but it is important because it has not had much publicity. As hon. Members will remember, the BBC admitted that there was one major failing and that has been discussed. But on page 20 of its response to the chairman of the Conservative party, in the first paragraph on the right, it also admitted that there were two sentences which, with hindsight, drew the wrong inference and were ill-advised. The first was:
"in Beirut and in London the terrorists and bombers have struck against the British people."
The second sentence was:
"and the long arm of Arab revenge reaches Heathrow Airport."
The BBC has admitted that it regrets the inclusion of those two sentences. I highlight them today because they illustrate where, perhaps through natural evolution and style, the BBC governors have something serious to look at. There was no attribution of those two sentences and they had language which was opinionated. In a sense, that is an example of the worries that some of us have about

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clause 13(7) in the BBC's licence, which makes it clear that the BBC accepts that it has no opinions on political matters, except for broadcasting. When the staff reader is giving out such news it presents worries.
The only other example to which I want to refer now is the blurring of comment and hard news. I shall fight for the BBC governors' independence from Parliament and politics, but I sincerely hope that the governors will look seriously at those two issues and then many of the other things will come right.
This is the beginning of a long trail. I hope that after the election the Government will start to put in place the pegs for the policy change which we must have if we are not to see the end of public service broadcasting as we have known it.
8.15 pm
Mr. Tony Banks: It is always interesting to hear the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Brinton) talking on a subject about which he has a great deal of knowledge and experience. Indeed, for someone such as myself thinking back to television in the 1950s, when he speaks he conjures up many of the images of the BBC at that time. I know that he is not as old as this, but "2 LO calling" and Alexandra palace come back as vivid images to me when I hear him. I shall be brief in view of what I said the other night, but I hope that the hon. Member for Wealden (Sir G. Johnson Smith) will also catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, so that we can have another blast from the past of the BBC.
One point that I want to take up with the hon. Member for Gravesham is that an element of editorialising is creeping into BBC news reporting. In many ways, that has come about because there is too much aping of Fleet street in the BBC at the moment. I was an official of the Association of Broadcasting Staffs when, with the National Union of Journalists, we were negotiating the newspaper allowance for the newsroom. The journalists were saying that they needed to have the daily newspapers in front of them in order to have the agenda for the news. The BBC should be separate in that sense. I should like to see far more investigative journalism coming from the BBC and far less of the worst practices of Fleet street beginning to infiltrate it.
Having said that, the debate is welcome. I have listened with interest and great care to the contributions that have been made. I am glad that we have been able to strike a fairly objective balance in the debate so far. However, that is not something which is going on in the rest of the media. I must put the blame for that firmly at the door of the chairman of the Conservative party and, indeed, the Prime Minister. The levels of paranoia that they have reached have taken them to the point where they seemed to believe that the BBC is run by Maoists and that the Church of England has become the Kremlin at prayer.
This is an interesting debate, but is it the most important thing that the House should he discussing? Britain faces many other problems as the Government's policies take us closer and closer towards economic and social chaos. When North sea oil runs out, Britain will become a banana monarchy, without the benefit of the bananas. There are many things that we could be discussing, but we seem to be discussing one of the few British institutions that is a success story and is recognized
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as such all round the world. This is an interesting debate, but it cannot be the most important issue that faces the House or the country today.
The real crime that the BBC has committed in the eyes of the Government is not the crime of bias. We all have our feelings about bias in the BBC. Many of us on the Left regard the BBC as biased against the Left—and that was certainly true during the miners' strike. The real crime of the BBC in the eyes of the Government is that it is a public corporation. The Government are opposed to the public sector, whatever the body and whatever its social and economic worth. Therefore, we are talking not about careful consideration of the BBC in terms of its quality and social standing but about attacking a public corporation because the Prime Minister finds it objectionable on ideological grounds.
No doubt the Prime Minister and the chairman of the Conservative party would like to see the BBC as slavishly loyal to them as The Sun, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, The Times, the Daily Telegraph and so on are. Many other people would prefer some objectivity in the news and reporting of current affairs. For all its faults, we are nearer to that objectivity in news reporting and current affairs with the BBC than we are with the mad dogs of Fleet street and Wapping.
It is obvious that the Government were disappointed with the outcome of the Peacock committee. Perhaps that does not include all the Government. I detected from what the Home Secretary said that he viewed with some suspicion the opinions of Peacock and will treat them with circumspection. There is sufficient feeling within both the House and the country for no or very few changes to come about in the BBC as a result of Peacock. On this occasion, I would be on the side of those advising caution.
Peacock did not deliver to the Prime Minister justification for her prejudices. She certainly wanted justification for the break-up of the BBC so that it could be sold off to the likes of Rupert Murdoch. Peacock did not provide that justification. It rightly rejected advertising, which would have been a bad choice. Many people want to choose to look at a television programme or listen to a radio programme without having the interference of advertisements. If there is to be any selling off of any parts of the BBC, and if the Government or the Prime Minister have their way and commercialism comes into the BBC, many people who do not want advertising on radio or television will have lost their choice.
The proposals in the Peacock report for the eventual replacement of the licence fee by subscription are unacceptable. I know that people do like not paying their licence fee. They also do not like paying their rates, taxes or bills. It is a natural reaction. However, for that £58 a year we get two television channels, four national radio channels, a great collection of local radio, and other services. That amount works out at about 15·8p per day. There is no national newspaper of which I can think that costs as little as 15·8p. Even The Sun, which can hardly be classified as a newspaper by any stretch of the imagination, costs 20p. The only objection that people have is that they do not normally pay their paper bill once a year. If they did they would realise what little value for money they are getting for newspapers such as The Sun and the Daily Mail. The licence fee must stay.
Alternatives have been canvassed. We have strayed away from the Peacock recommendations and this has given us an opportunity to trail a few coats. We could look

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at the BBC's finances over five years, which would take them away from the normal term of Parliament. It should be set by an independent review body, which would take much of the politics out of the licence fee. It cannot be beyond the minds of the BBC governors, when considering their programmes, that they must go to the Government to ask for an increase in the licence fee. That would happen with any Government, because no Government like criticism, and this Government like it least of all. I hope that I am not boring the Minister too much. He keeps yawning.
If we were to have something like an independent review on a five-year basis, that could take the BBC out of the political arena in the direct and rather commercial sense. I do not believe that the market conditions about which Conservative Members have spoken improve the choice. The BBC offers the viewer and listener a great deal of choice. That is excellent, and we should want to defend it.
I say this with due deference to my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman). I know that my right hon. Friend will soon be sitting on the Government Benches as the Home Secretary. However, I should like the BBC and broadcasting to be taken away from the Home Office. Many countries call such a department the Ministry of the Interior. There is something rather grating in having broadcasting in the hands of the Government Department that is responsible for police and prisons — even in the fair minded and capable hands of my right hon. Friend the Member for Gorton. I want the BBC not in the Home Office, but, together with broadcasting, printing and publishing, in an enlarged Ministry for the Arts. We shall have to wait for a Labour Government to introduce that change.
External broadcasting should be taken away from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In the minds of many people overseas, the connection between the financing of the BBC External Service and the Foreign Office means that the External Service is giving the opinions of the Government. It does not do so. It is one of the best services that we have, and I know that hon. Members on both sides of the House listen avidly to the World Service and hear a much better quality of news. It is strange that the further one moves along the dial, the more the quality of the news and stories changes, as broadcasters decide that they should shed or cut the news to meet what they see as the expectation of their audience. That is an unacceptable level of patronising.
We need to have far more access to broadcasting by the public. We have already had the discussion about community radio. Community groups, ethnic minorities and interest groups should be able to secure air time.
There should be a television channel delegated wholly and exclusively to the broadcasting of Parliament. People could dip in and out at any time in a debate that interests them. There would be no question of broadcasting authorities deciding what people are interested in. If Parliament is so essential to democracy, it should be available to all the people. The only way to do that is through television, as we are clearly limited in the space that we have in and around the Palace of Westminster.
We do not have a free press in terms of its objectivity or balance. The Sun is not crucial to the maintenance of democracy. However, I deeply believe that in the BBC we have a unique institution. The BBC is central to the maintenance of democracy. The language of democracy is
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that impartial and objective reporting of the news should be available to everyone. For all its faults, I still believe that we get impartiality from the BBC, and if we meddle with it we do so to our cost.
8.30 pm
Mr. Julian Critchley: I agree with a great deal of what was said by the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks). Many of the high hopes of our ideologues regarding Peacock have been, happily, disappointed. First, there is to be no advertising for the BBC. That was always a foolish suggestion. Fortunately, it has been put on one side. Secondly, it was recommended that the licence fee should be indexed. We should do that in the middle term, and do it promptly. However, even by indexation we should still starve the BBC of additional resources over and above the rate of inflation.
There is a curious recommendation regarding the privatisation of Radios 1 and 2. I should have thought that both of them were vulgar enough. I use the word "vulgar" in the proper Latin sense of the word. Why should the BBC be restricted to Radios 3 and 4? The idea is crazy.
More significant is the recommendation regarding the future franchises for the ITV companies. Many of our newspapers are owned by foreigners who do not live in the United Kingdom. The House might care to look at that problem one day with a view to legislation. The idea that at a future date our independent companies will fall into the hands of Hugh Heffner is something that not even this House would welcome.
A few years ago a former chairman of the BBC governors and I talked over lunch about bias. He said, "You should not worry about news and current affairs; what you have to worry about is the drama department." However, if we think about it, we realise that all art is subversive, whether it be the 18th century theatre, the 19th century novel, the 20th century cinema or the "box" of the 21st century. Perhaps we need a Right-wing playwright like Jeffrey Archer.
Surely enough has been said about the dispute between the chairman of our great party and the BBC. The BBC must remain independent. It is one of our great state institutions. The monarchy and the BBC are probably the only two institutions in Great Britain that work. The BBC should be protected from the leaders of political parties in an election year. The electorate is far more interested in government than in politics. The chairman of the Conservative party has laid himself open to the charge of playing politics at this time.
I admire the courage of the chairman of the Conservative party—who does not? — and I enjoy his wit, which is very considerable, but I am under no obligation to agree with him on this issue, or on many others. It is an open secret that within the Cabinet the chairman of the Conservative party had doubts about the wisdom of the American attack on Libya. Therefore, all that he had to do, if he felt so strongly about the Libyan coverage, was to pick up the telephone and get through to a governor. That is the way it should have been handled.
I suspect that the advice that the Prime Minister ought to give to the chairman of the Conservative party is the advice that Mr. Attlee gave to Harold Laski— that on this issue, if on no other,
"a period of silence would be welcome."
8.33 pm
Mr. Chris Smith: I begin by declaring an interest. I have a very close association with the Association of Cinematograph, Television and Allied Technician, to which a few hon. Members on both sides of the House belong.
Before I turn specifically to the Peacock report, one essential point needs to be made, and I am glad that the hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Critchley) has made it. It is the duty of this House to uphold absolutely the independence and impartiality of the BBC. It has an absolute right to tell the truth, no matter how unpalatable that truth may be, to any political party or to any Government, and to tell it interestingly and somtimes graphically. That is where, sometimes, the BBC may be open to criticism. Criticism can always to justified, but pressure is not justified. During the past few months the chairman of the Conservative party has been placing undue pressure, because of an imminent election, on the BBC. That is unacceptable. This House must uphold the impartiality and independence of the BBC.
The Peacock report has provided us with an opportunity to examine many of its specific recommendations and also to examine the general issue of the future of broadcasting in this country. I give a warm welcome to the rejection by the Peacock report of advertising on the BBC. Quite rightly the committee came to the conclusion that the pool of available advertising revenue is limited and that the imposition of advertising on the BBC would be detrimental to the existing independent television channels. That conclusion is completely valid and I welcome it. I sense that the Government have accepted that recommendation, although they have to say that they are keeping an open mind.
Also, we must acknowledge that the licence fee cannot and must not be unlimited. It cannot continue to rise for ever. I favour a standard licence fee, from which pensioners would be excluded, that would be topped up and complemented by funding from general taxation. That would have to be established by a mechanism that was independent of political debate between the parties in this House. It would be difficult to achieve such a mechanism, but that route would provide the best and the most suitable and progressive form of funding for the BBC.
Certain immediate and short-term issues arising out of Peacock and also out of the Home Secretary's speech today pose some important questions. Peacock proposed, though it was not a unanimous recommendation, that Radios 1 and 2 should be privatised and funded by advertising. Today the Home Secretary hinted that this issue is likely to be addressed in the Green Paper on radio, which is expected within the next few months.
If Radios 1 and 2 are to be privatised and funded by advertising, we have to make exactly the same point about the available radio advertising income as Peacock makes about television. Peacock tries to establish a quantum leap into a different generation of advertising that might be generated by the establishment of advertising on Radios 1 and 2. I do not believe that that would happen. There is a limited pool of available radio advertising, just as there is a limited pool of available television advertising. The imposition of advertising on Radios 1 and 2 would have a deleterious effect on independent local radio, which at present is funded by advertising revenue. It would also
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have a deleterious effect on the remaining programmes that are broadcast by the BBC. That point has already been made and does not need to be greatly stressed.
We are entitled to ask the Minister of State, who is to reply to the debate, whether these proposals will be considered in the Green Paper and, if they are to be considered, what time scale the Government will seek to propose for the privatisation of Radios 1 and 2. The Government are playing their cards close to the chest on this issue and I hope that they will come forward with rather more information before the end of the debate.
The other related issue raised by Peacock and by the Government in their first response to the report is the proposed extension of television franchises for — if I heard the Home Secretary correctly—three years. In principle I have no specific objection to the extension of the existing franchises for a limited period. Nevertheless, we are surely entitled to ask how rapidly decisions will be made on whether or not changes to the franchise system should be adopted.
The Peacock proposal is for selling to the highest bidder, but the minimum standards point raised by the right hon. and learned Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Brittan) does not offer any real protection from competing operations. Going for the highest bidder will not necessarily present us with the best mixture of programming, style, content, educational and current affairs programmes, and we need such a mixture if we are to have good and decent television from the independent channels. I would be worried if that were in the Government's mind and if it were the real reason behind an immediate extension of the existing franchises. I am powerfully opposed to the Government going in that direction.
The major proposal in Peacock is the one for subscription television. The proposal is that a much freer market should be allowed in the availability of television programmes. The principle behind that is a perfectly valid and honourable desire for wider choice for the consumer, and surely we all support that. In addition, there is an entirely mistaken assumption that choice comes from the freest possible commercial market. We must challenge that assumption.
There is an illogicality in what Peacock recommends, because stage 2 of the forward-looking proposals says that we should have independent television still financed by advertising revenue and, therefore, free at the point of delivery to the consumer. It also says that side by side with that we should have subscription television provided by the BBC, for which people will have to pay hour by hour to watch. We do not need a free market economist to tell us that people's instant reaction will be to watch the free channel rather than the one for which they have to pay. The impact on BBC income would be disastrous, and if that proposal is adopted I fear for the long-term future of the BBC. It would not be logical to implement that recommendation. I hope that the Government will not choose the road of subscription television, but if they do they should introduce it not piecemeal for one channel or for a couple of channels, but simultaneously for all channels.
There are many flaws in the principle of free market, free-for-all competition for the provision of television, and that is the principle that underlies Peacock. Of course, it fits in perfectly with much of the Government's philosophy, and for that reason I can see why it may be

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attractive to the Government. The first flaw is that it will discriminate against the poor, the unemployed and pensioners if they have to pay to watch television. Such people spend most of their leisure time watching television.
Secondly, it leaves the market open to predatory multinational ownership of precisely the kind that we see in the tabloid press. I do not want to see that happening to British television. Thirdly, it will inevitably drive quality towards the lowest common denominator and bring about fierce and vicious competition for the highest ratings and the highest income from programmes. Fourthly, in reality it will not provide sufficient income to enable minority interest programmes to be well made and provided on anything like a regular scale. Fifthly, Peacock envisages deregulation as a component in opening up the free market, and that would lead us to far fewer safeguards than we have under the present system of guidelines. Sixthly, a proposal of this kind ignores the educational and cultural roles played by television, and those things are important parts of our national life and culture.
For all those reasons, subscription television and the free market principle that underlies it are not appropriate for a good television service for our people. The basic philosophies enshrined in Peacock and the illogical and incoherent conclusions contained in the report will do nothing to enhance choice. They will damage the standards and availability of public service broadcasting. Of course, our present broadcasting network has its faults and failings, but on the whole it has served us well. The Peacock recipe would certainly not improve it.
8.46 pm
Mr. Gerald Howarth: I do not entirely agree with the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith), but he has certainly made a serious contribution to the debate and attempted to be brief. I shall attempt to do the same, and for the purposes of my speech I shall assume that the lights have gone out. I hope my hon. Friends will understand that, having observed a self-imposed silence for nearly three years, there are one or two things that I would now like to say and that it may not be possible to encompass them all in as short a time as I would like. However, I shall be as swift as possible.
It is common ground in the House that much of what the BBC puts out is excellent and of the highest standard, and that is that which we hear around the world. I listened to the World Service broadcast about the Falklands victory while huddled over a wireless in Lagos. I was with a number of other expatriates and we heard Lily Bolero being broadcast to Nigeria. The voice which said, "This is London", had something special and authoritative about it. Having said that, I must add that there are serious shortcomings in the management of the BBC and that is manifesting itself most clearly in the area of current affairs.
My principal worry is not so much about bias, although that is a factor, but about accountability and the maintenance of professional standards about which the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury spoke. If I refer to the recent High Court actions which affected my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Hamilton) and me, it is not out of any sense of wishing to have a go at the BBC or in any sense being vindictive. It is a matter of speaking about an experience which, fortunately, few hon. Members have had. Indeed, few people in the country have
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had such an experience, and I believe it is my duty to raise in the House matters arising from that experience. I hope that the House will understand that.
In 1984 the BBC produced a publication entitled "It's your BBC". How right that is, but the actions of the BBC contradict that title. The BBC should be held in trust for the British people, but instead in recent years it has increasingly become the plaything of the board of management and of a minority of journalists. Quite unlike Parliament, it is a uniquely powerful institution. We are among the most accountable of people. There are no secret votes or secret debates here. The BBC is unlike the trade unions whose members benefit from an increasing amount of accountability and democracy. It is unlike the press or even commercial television. It is accountable to no one. Ministers cannot answer for its day-to-day activities. There are no shareholders to stir up trouble at an annual general meeting. Yet we all have to pay this compulsory £58 levy simply for the privilege of owning a television, even if we refuse to watch the output of the BBC. The only available sanction is the parliamentary approval required for an increase in the licence fee and the power of the Government to appoint governors.
The argument runs that it is to the board of governors itself that the corporation is accountable. That argument has been mentioned a number of times by hon. Members on both sides of the House. Mr. Duke Hussey, the new chairman of the BBC, was reported in last week's edition of The Sunday Times as having told the chairman of the Conservative party:
"It was the job of the governors to uphold the charter of the BBC."
How real is the grip of the governors, that band of 12 good men and ladies true, who speak for the nation? I am sure that they are worthy and excellent people. Well known they may be to many television viewers, but I confess that I do not know and am not familiar with a number of governors of the BBC. It is to them that the nation looks for the protection that everybody agrees they are unwilling to put into other hands. I do not know whether hon. Members know, but there is a national governor for Wales, a national governor for Scotland and another for Northern Ireland. Despite the fact that England produces 93 per cent. of the corporation's income, there is no national governor for England. I wonder who, on the board of governors, speaks for England.
Mr. Tony Banks: The hon. Member for Epping Forest (Sir J. Biggs-Davison)
Mr. Howarth: Perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen and Stourbridge (Mr. Stokes), if he is on the board.
The former BBC vice chairman, Sir William Rees-Mogg, quoted in an excellent article in the first issue of The Independent of 7 October, which was slightly at variance with subsequent remarks he made, said:
"The Governors, miserably underpaid, take responsibility for an organisation they have ceased to control …
They feel themselves to be under the influence of continual bureaucratic manipulation, and read in the newspapers of decisions taken in their name of which they often thoroughly disapprove."
Further extracts from that article have been quoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton.
It is the fault not entirely of the governors, but of the system that they operate. If they are the body to whom the

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BBC is accountable, and Sir William Rees-Mogg is right and they do not have control, the BBC has become de facto unaccountable, because, we are told, it is the board of governors which is answerable for the actions of the BBC.
I am sure it is common ground across the House—and I agree—that the BBC must remain independent of the Government and of any undue political influence from any quarter.
The corporation's reaction over recent weeks shows, however, that it is willing neither to brook any criticism nor to take proper action following that criticism. With an Olympian arrogance as unique as its status, the BBC effectively claims diplomatic immunity. This attitude—this overbearing arrogance—is evident. This unwillingness to respond to any criticism is endangering the very independence of the BBC itself. Those in the corporation who stick their heads in the sand are damaging that which they claim to hold most dear.
The BBC, in its own handbook, recognises the relationship between its prized independence and high professional standards. It states:
"Without genuine independence, it is difficult, if not impossible, for broadcasters to maintain the highest standard of truthfulness and impartiality."
It goes on to say:
"Conversely"—
this is quite right—
"without having established a reputation for just those qualities it is difficult for any broadcasting organisation to he recognised as being truly independent and worthy of trust."
In other words, it accepts that the price of independence is to uphold the highest possible standards of truth, decency and integrity. Some of those who work in the corporation are in danger of forfeiting that trust and thereby endangering the independence that we all wish them to have.
My hon. Friend the Member for Tatton mentioned the guidelines drawn up by Mr. Alan Protheroe and how they have been so flagrantly breached. I shall refer only to one — that information from pressure groups is often tendentious and is a filter between the programme and the primary source. The only guard against manipulation of lobbyists is the professionalism of the programme maker. In the case of the "Panorama" programme, not only was the evidence taken from the lobbyist, but the lobbyist was on the research team. Mr. Gerry Gable, a former Communist party candidate and convicted burglar—
Mr. Alfred Dubs: Come on.
Mr. Howarth: I must tell the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Dubs) that these are the facts of the matter. He has tried in the House to raise matters on behalf of Mr. Gable, who has conducted a most scurrilous campaign, through this programme and by other means, against my hon. Friends. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that nothing that has been said in the House today has not been said outside.
The BBC has made a grave mistake in breaching the guidelines. I shall not draw attention to any more. Let us leave the "Panorama" programme to one side. Clearly, I have a close—closer than I should have wished—interest in "Panorama." "Rough Justice" has been alluded to. Those people were responsible for that travesty, which was
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so strongly criticised in the courts. If that had been the behaviour of others, it would have been the subject of investigative journalism by the BBC. As I understand it. those people are still in the corporation. There was "Monocled Mutineer" — the rewriting of history—and Ian Curteis's play, that scandalous action which my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Brinton) mentioned. Something which has not been mentioned is the poaching by the BBC of ITV film in April of this year concerning Princess Michael of Kent. The BBC deliberately videoed the ITV output and stuck it on the BBC, pretending that it was part of their original film.
Behaviour like that is intolerable. I shall not allude to the submission by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, apart from saying that I think that he was right, because I watched both programmes. Let me leave any further argument aside and mention that the BBC recently put out a questionnaire inviting the public to comment on that attack by the chairman of the Conservative party. The question that was put to the public was:
"Do you think the Conservative party is right to try and influence the way the BBC covers news items, or should it leave such matters to the BBC governors and managers?"
That is not what the chairman of the Conservative party was on about. He was not saying that it was the job of the Conservative party to influence that programme; he was saying that those responsible for that programme had got it wrong. We all make mistakes from time to time. My wife tells me that even I do occasionally. It is the BBC's willingness to brook any criticism that is so unacceptable. The fact that such a disingenuous question was put to the public proves a degree of malevolence which is thoroughly undesirable.
My hon. Friend the Member for Tatton mentioned a number of outstanding libel actions and the number of times the BBC had to pay out large sums in damages. I draw attention to just one. In March 1985, the Grunwick film processing company and its director, Mr. George Ward, won substantial damages and all their legal costs for false allegations on "Open University". The press stated:
"This was 'the latest in a series of damages awards'. Grunwick was libelled twice on the same matter in Open University; the BBC paid damages twice on the first libel then repeated it."
That is thoroughly bad management, at the very least.
Turning from the political arena, there is great anxiety in the commercial world as well. It is not simply politicians who feel that they are getting a raw deal from the BBC. I do not know whether you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, or hon. Members saw a quarter page advertisement in The Times and other newspapers on 22 May 1985 by the British School of Motoring. I believe that it is a supporter of the Liberal party, although I am not sure. That proves that this matter is across party lines. It is to do with standards; it is nothing to do with bias. The BSM advertisement said that the BBC was expected to transmit a programme which it felt was thoroughly unfair. The first point was:
"The BBC is not prepared to specify any of the particular allegations or criticisms which will be made of BSM in the forthcoming programme sufficiently to give BSM an opportunity to investigate the matter."
That type of lousy journalistic standard is a breach of the Protheroe guidelines. It is not a breach of my standards or those of my hon. Friends or Labour Members; it is a breach of the BBC's own standards. It is a breach of decent

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standards, and that is the problem. The BBC does that because the licence fee arrangement gives it a guaranteed income.
I was slightly distressed to hear my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary say that it was reasonable for the BBC to require a predictable income. Few organisations have that privilege. I do not see why the BBC should not be subject to pressure from the need to satisfy customers in funding its activities. I do not believe that the BBC should be immune in the way it is when it can use licence payers' money to freeze out those who wish to take action against it in the courts but do not have the necessary resources. This is not an attack on investigative journalism, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks)—investigative journalism has its place —but it is not a licence to defame and rob people of their livelihoods and reputations.
The essence of the BBC's case against the introduction of advertising has been that it cannot allow its high standards to be sullied by commercialism, yet the catalogue which I have outlined at the very least shows cause for concern and generates a demand for answers which have not been forthcoming. The BBC remains silent. There have been no investigations, inquiries, sackings or resignations. If we had lost our action, all the journalists would have been on our doorsteps. "Doorstepping" is an expression used in journalism. I am told that it means getting one's foot in the door, ramming a microphone up someone's nostrils and getting him to comment with the arc lights on him. That would have happened to us.
The BBC has been able to go to ground. No journalist from the BBC has gone to ask Mr. Milne how he came to lose £500,000 of licence payers' money—the same has been true in all the other actions I mentioned—and no journalist from the newspapers has done so either. Mr. Milne can simply go to ground in a way that we in the House cannot. Of course the BBC is human and capable of making mistakes. Unless it accepts that, it cannot expect to impose its compulsory levy on the rest of us.
I should like to conclude by making a number of short recommendations. The licence fee must be frozen. Any increased revenue required to fund its programme plans should be met from the sale of programmes, by contracting out work, in the way that Channel 4 does, by advertising or by a combination of the three. The board of governors must be strengthened with people who can take a much closer interest in what is going on. The suggestion of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Brittan), the former Home Secretary, for a unified board may be the answer. The board must take a closer interest in current affairs. It must ensure that those libel actions which have been outstanding for three months are properly looked at to ensure that there is no repetition of the recent fiasco which involved my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton and me. Those journalists whose behaviour falls below the standards that the BBC itself sets and whose slipshod actions result in the corporation and, therefore, the licence payers incurring substantial loses must be disciplined. I hope that the board will take that action to heart and see it not as a vindictive response to what has recently happened, but as a constructive approach to try to get some sense.
9.5 pm
Sir Geoffrey Johnson Smith: The hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) has disappeared from the Chamber, but he tempts me to evoke the glowing embers of the past by referring to the days when I was involved in the BBC. However, I shall resist that temptation, as time is moving on. I have no wish to join in the dispute, although my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock and Burntwood (Mr. Howarth) has my sympathy, as I was once involved in a libel case, but I have no doubt that many sections of our community have felt unfairly treated by the BBC during the past decade.
On the whole, standards have not been as high as they should have been. It is tempting for me to say that they were higher when I was involved in current affairs. There was certainly a redoubtable woman, Mrs. Grace Wyndham Goldie, who was very tough and rigorous when dealing with young producers, researchers and interviewers. I suspect that that rigorousness no longer has quite the force that it used to have. It may have something to do with the fact that the edifice has expanded and that the interaction between senior producers, heads of department, assistant heads of department and young sprouts straight from university is not as close as it should be.
I declare an interest as a non-executive director of London Weekend Television. I believe that the BBC and ITV are, on the whole, great success stories. Their success no doubt stems largely from the fact that as a people we are rather good at television, just as we are rather good at writing, acting and producing for the theatre. I must tell my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary that that success also has something to do with the structure that we have devised. It has been a pretty good example of a mixed economy. The ecology is changing and the airways spectrum is widening. We can now get more companies involved, and there is DBS and cable. All that will encourage new entrants.
It is wholly understandable that many of my hon. Friends should begin to think seriously about dismantling the structure that has been patiently built up and about leaving broadcasting to market forces, such as newspapers, books and magazines, but I believe that that course could he disastrous. Equally, it would be foolish to let things go on and to do nothing, because the new ecology will have a marked effect on broadcasting. In order to survive and flourish our broadcasting institutions will need to change, but there are three reasons why I counsel caution, and why I believe that we should think most carefully and allow the Government to take their time about the changes that should be adopted.
First, as the hon. Member for Newham, North-West said, the industry is prosperous. We do not have many examples of this in this country, and I do not want the Government to muck about with it so that we are left with something that is less workable. The industry makes good profits, provides many jobs and provides the Chancellor of the Exchequer with a lot of money. Secondly, the industry as a whole has shown itself to be not only responsible but responsive.
The company with which I am involved, London Weekend, is involved in a consortium for DBS. Also, along with other companies, in January of this year, using a low-powered satellite, British programmes will be linked into European cable. I reckon that that will provide the

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best of British and do a lot of good on the Continent. The BBC should be given time to adjust, and it also has its own ideas for the future. Some of them may be a little bigger than the BBC can afford, but it is not lacking in ideas for future programmes.
Thirdly, the new DBS stations are not in place, so we need not panic. Many people have yet to come into the market, and so it would be unwise of the Government to rush in with ill thought out reforms. The Government and Parliament have adequate time to analyse, reflect and ultimately to propose changes that will, I hope, enable our traditional broadcasting organisations to adapt successfully.
Consequently, I urge my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary not to rush into the idea of abolishing the present licence system that finances the BBC and to make it wholly dependent on advertising. I am shocked that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Brittan) should suggest a subscription. I can think of no evidence to show that a large national broadcasting corporation, which covers a wide spectrum of broadcasting, can be financed by subscription. It is the sort of begging bowl, low-powered broadcasting system that is found in the United States, and I cannot see how it will do the BBC any good.
It seems that the public do not resent the licence fee, but they may as DBS and cable television proliferate. When that time arrives, I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, with the BBC, will have ready and waiting other means that will supplement the licence fee, including pay TV.
I ask my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary not to scrap the present method of applying for commercial franchises by substituting for it an auction. I shall not develop that argument, because the weaknesses of the Peacock committee's proposals have been adequately exposed during the debate. It is a bad idea for one basic reason: it will weaken the public service feature of commercial television. With this in mind, I hope that my right hon. Friend will be careful about severing the links of the commercial contractors with Channel 4. That may give greater independence to Channel 4, but to sever all links would be a serious step to take. The present link enables popular programming to feed minority programmes. London Weekend has proposed a long programme on the trial of Lee Harvey Oswald and the entire programme will be broadcast on Sunday afternoon by Channel 4.
I suspect that the linking of popular programmes with minority programmes is one reason why the BBC is so popular. The licence system is more successful than any other I know in combining popular and minority tastes at peak viewing times, and I would not want to see that unique element disappear.
More positively, I hope that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will embrace the Peacock proposal to increase the proportion of programming made by independent producers. This should help to keep costs down and encourage new talent and innovation. I welcome my right hon. Friend's intention to continue to welcome the participation of new consortia in broadcasting by satellite.
I am far from happy about my right hon. Friend's proposals to privatise Radio 1—
Mr. Hurd: That is one of the Peacock committee's proposals.
Sir Geoffrey Johnson Smith: I am sorry. Yes, I understand that. Those who are involved in local radio have a tough enough time anyway without having that extra burden to bear.
I conclude by saying that I am glad to see my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary on the Front Bench. I urge him to accept change in a manner that will enable the best of our excellent broadcasting traditions to be carried forward into the next century. It would be a pity if they were buried by new technology.
9.12 pm
Mr. Richard Holt: The last occasion on which I was able to speak on television licensing was in the last Adjournment debate on a Friday before the House went into recess. On that occasion I had the company of a duty Minister, a duty Whip and the duty Mr. Deputy Speaker. I shall repeat this evening some of the comments that I made on that occasion, but I want to make it clear that they are what I said previously and do not constitute second sight.
I am in favour of the abolition of the television licence, but there is a danger that the anomalous position in which we find ourselves — further exclusion will only make things more difficult—will lead to far greater problems. I have not yet come to a conclusion on how the licence system should be replaced.
I was delighted to know that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, after he had responded to my Adjournment debate on 25 May, when he said that nothing would be done about television licensing, was reported in The Sunday Times 10 days afterwards as saying:
"Who should pay for television? The Government are considering alternative means, says Douglas Hurd."
I must have been heard on that occasion, if not read very widely.
I find from my own researches into television licensing that some extraordinary statements are made, especially about the elderly and the disabled. As the law stands, an elderly person can have his television supplied and television licence paid for by his local authority.
Mr. Allen McKay: That is rubbish.
Mr. Holt: If hon. Members wish to dispute that, they should take note that I am referring to House of Commons research note No. 105, which states:
"Local authorities have the power under the Health Services and Public Health Act 1968 to make arrangements for promoting the welfare of old people. According to a written answer in 1973, this covers the provision of television and licences for elderly people, although the extent to which the provision is made is a matter for the individual local authority."
It is not untrue unless the House of Commons Library has produced a false research note. I say to those who suggest that it is untrue that the people of Rotherham have been especially well supplied as a consequence of that. When I obtained the research notes, 18,493 people had been helped, of whom 12,726 lived in Rotherham. They all received a £7 subsidy towards their television licences.
Mr. McKay: That is a Labour council.
Mr. Holt: I am not suggesting that it was not. My argument is that provisions exist within the law to make the abolishing of licences unnecessary.
Mr. McKay: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Holt: No, I shall not give way because I have waited for six hours to speak. How long has the hon. Gentleman waited?
I wish to develop further the value-for-money argument — whether we are receiving what we should from the BBC. For some considerable time, standards have been dropping. I must defend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in carrying out his duties. It was not the imagination of the entire Conservative party that caused everyone to write letters to the BBC or to Conservative Members to complain about bias. One need only read the media monitoring report which has just been published—
Mr. Corbett: That is neutral, is it?
Mr. Holt: I am not suggesting for one moment that it is neutral. It identifies the cases where there is bias to the Left and to the Right. Even if the report is not as entirely accurate as it should be, we should not place the BBC under a microscope in that way to discern whether there is bias. The report alleges that 94 per cent. of programmes such as "Open Space" have a Left-wing bias. That is not even-handed. Then it suggested that "TV Eye" on ITV was biased. According to the report, none of the programmes is biased in favour of the Right.
Something must be wrong and we must consider what it is. Perhaps it is the management of the BBC, which is in the hands of Mr. Alasdair Milne. I refer specifically to the Ian Curteis play. Yesterday, I had the opportunity of meeting Mr. Curteis after corresponding with him. Therefore, I obtained full details about what has happened with his play. My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Brinton) said that he had heard allegations that Mr. Milne had commissioned the play, although he had no evidence of that. I have evidence because Mr. Milne wrote a letter to me on 14 November which states:
"Ian was commissioned to write a play by me in the summer of 1983 and took rather longer to finish it than was expected."
It is alleged that Mr. Curteis was late in finishing his play, but he asserts that he was dissuaded from continuing his play at the time of a dispute between the BBC and the Ministry of Defence. Consequently, the play was not completed by the commissioned date of 31 December 1983. Mr. Curteis was not asked to recommence writing it until July 1985. The play is now complete, but what worries me—it should concern Opposition Members and everyone in the House— is that Mr. Milne personally exercised a judgment that the play was not to be performed because, in his opinion, it was likely to affect the outcome of the next general election, whenever that might be.
I will quote another letter. Mr. Milne must be away an awful lot as in September I received a reply from the Assistant Director-General and the reply to my letter of 2 October was dated 20 October and came from the Deputy Director-General. The letter of 20 October states:
"The decision to schedule the production and transmission of the play after the next General Election was taken by the Director-General in the knowledge that it dealt with recent history in a way that would be likely to lead to controversy. In particular, there were obvious difficulties in directing actors to portray serving politicians in the run-up to an election."
If that is so, why did the Director-General commission the play in the first place?
Mr. Tony Banks: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Holt: No, I will not give way.
Having commissioned the play, the Director-General did not like the content so he tried, through Mr. Goodchild, to force Mr. Curteis to rewrite the play, which had received critical acclaim from independent people. When that attempt failed, he shelved the play, saying that it might affect the outcome of the general election. What right has he to make that decision?
Mr. Tony Banks: He is editor-in-chief of the BBC.
Mr. Holt: Has ITV been consulted? Is there a coterminous date after which anything liable to affect the outcome of a general election is shelved at the behest of one man and without reference to anyone else? That is the kind of thing that needs to be looked into and the kind of thing that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and members of the Conservative party have been complaining about.
Mr. Eric S. Heffer: They did not complain about what happened to Ken Loach.
Mr. Holt: Having commissioned the play, Mr. Milne wrote to Mr. Curteis in May to say that he was reading the play. Yet in October he had still not finished reading it. If he is that slow a reader, he should not be in his present position and someone else should take over.
Mr. Banks: Norman Tebbit, perhaps?
Mr. Holt: It is not pleasant to have to indulge in this form of character assassination, but the honesty and standing of the BBC have been under the microsope today and it is from the top that we must examine them.
As I wish to leave some time for my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Morris) to speak, I shall not be able to expand further on the cases of bias about which I personally have written to the BBC in the past 18 months, but out of 47 instances the BBC admitted bias in only one—the 6.30 am religious broadcast, "Lift up your Hearts".
Mr. Banks: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman was wrong about the other 46.
Mr. Holt: The BBC cannot be right all the time. That is part of our argument with it. The new chairman must he given the opportunity to deal with the problems within the BBC. In a truncated debate such as this, it is difficult to deal in a structured manner with the three aspects under discussion—the finance, management and political bias of the BBC—and to deal with each point definitively, but I urge the Government not to come to any urgent or early conclusions. In my view, the Peacock report is a half-cock report, and does not provide the answer. Perhaps it was to be an interim report, but there must be a further and proper examination of the finance, management and political aspects of the BBC. I am told that it is not political influence from without by politicians such as ourselves that needs more thorough examination, but the politics of influence from within. Perhaps an independent body should be brought in to carry out that examination.
9.24 pm
Mr. Michael Morris: I gave evidence to the Peacock committee because I suspected that the role of advertising would be misunderstood. As I had been a director of a major advertising company for some 13 years, until a few years ago, I felt that I ought to

781
submit a paper that explained in reality how advertising was bought by advertising agencies. It is sad that the report ignored not just my evidence but the evidence from the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising.
I suspect that the only people who really welcome the Peacock report are the ITV companies who managed to persuade the Peacock committee that the bonanza of the past 10 years was about to burst and that the growth in advertising expenditure, which had run at the rate of 7 per cent. in real terms, was about to end. Reality, of course, has been totally different. As forecast by the IPA and myself, the bonanza has continued. It has continued because the old trade cycle, which was influenced by the packaged goods manufacturers, who used to be the heavy advertisers, has changed. New advertisers have come in from the world of finance, leisure and other industries which are less affected by the traditional trade cycle. That major point was ignored by the Peacock committee, yet that has a major impact on whether, from a financial point of view, the BBC should consider taking advertising and whether the small TV companies will go to the wall.
I suggest to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary that if one looks at the history of television, as several hon. Members have done, it is clear that the beginning of ITV raised standards. That would be commonly accepted across the House. When ITV first came in, it raised standards not only at the BBC but within the ITV organisation. If a pay television system is introduced—I do not support it—surely there is an analogy with the press. Tomorrow morning, any of us could buy for 75p a copy of The Times that has no advertisements in it, but we do not. Instead, we pay 25p because it contains advertisements—
Mr. Tony Banks: I do not buy The Times.
Mr. Morris: The hon. Gentleman may not buy it. He probably buys The Guardian, which is equally subsidised by advertisements.
The choice is available as regards pay television—perhaps a mixture of part pay and part advertising. The key point that I wish to address in the three minutes remaining to me relates to the vital question asked by the chairman of the Peacock committee, whether programming standards would fall if advertising were introduced on the BBC. It is sad to record that only 10 paragraphs, covering just two pages, deal with that vital question. There is the evidence of the National Opinion Poll, which shows that, roughly speaking, 80 per cent. of people do not believe that advertising would be an adverse dimension on television, while the remaining 20 per cent. — whose views are reflected by many hon. Members—believe that it would.
The Peacock committee states that if the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers' model was followed it would have a detrimental effect on the BBC. Evidence was also submitted from the IPA model, as well as other models, all of which suggested that there should continue to be regulations to control the output from the commercial sector. The committee quotes at great length from Mr. Fremlin and Miss Rantzen, but these are highly personalised contributions and, frankly, many of us would wish to see them refuted.
Peacock argues that advertisers would buy space on a programme which had many viewers—10 million for a
782
comedy programme—instead of on an arts programme which had just 6 million viewers. That is absolute rubbish. The success of Channel 4 and the advertising space that is bought by advertisers on that channel demonstrates that advertisers want a spectrum—a range—of programmes which have different viewers. No advertiser wants to keep hammering away at the same viewer. Advertisers want width and a range of programmes.
When people suggest that the standards of ITV are lower than those of the BBC, we all know that that is a travesty of the truth. It is interesting to look at the export figures —£82 million from ITV and just £24·5 million from the BBC.
Today a great problem faces my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. The revenue figure forecast by the IPA is that by 1990 there will be a £1,000 million difference in the revenue available to the BBC from the licence fee compared to the advertising revenue available to ITV. That means an unfair situation and that resources are mismatched. Frankly, I see no evidence from the Peacock committee to show that that gap will be closed.
If I find the Peacock report disappointing, I suppose that there is a little hope from across the Channel, where the Commission of the EEC, both in its Green Paper "Television without Frontiers" and in its proposed directive, recognises and welcomes the role of advertising. The assumption it makes is that broadcast advertising will be recognised and extended. That is a challenge that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State should address when he considers these matters.
9.30 pm
Mr. Robin Corbett: This has been a quiet and thoughtful debate so far. I understand why the hon. Members for Tatton (Mr. Hamilton) and for Cannock and Burntwood (Mr. Howarth) said what they did, although I wish that they had left much of it unsaid. Let us not forget that the start of the affair over the "Panorama" programme was not only allegations from the Labour party, but a report drawn up by the Young Conservatives concerned about extremist Right-wing infiltration into the Conservative party. As a result of the settlement, the experienced BBC journalists involved in the making of that programme have been denied the opportunity of putting their point of view and being able to defend their actions.
I say this to the two hon. Members in their absence. If Gerry Gable, whom they bad-mouthed in the House tonight, does no more, he should stand high in our praise for unmasking the Conservative candidate in Stockton, South at the last general election as a former National Front candidate in the last two elections in 1974 in my constituency of Birmingham, Erdington. It is to the credit of the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) that when he went there, having found that out, he refused to share a platform with Mr. Finnegan.
It is a pity that the debate has taken place against a background of sustained abuse and hostility towards broadcasters generally and the BBC in particular, which reveals the extreme face of Conservatism. [Interruption.] I thought that that would bring a protest. That is not my judgment about extremism, but the judgment of most of the electors in today's Gallup poll in the Daily Telegraph. Most voters asked to identify which party they saw as the most extreme opted — quite rightly — for the Conservatives. Fifty-two per cent. of them said that the

783
Conservatives were extreme and 34 per cent. saw them as moderate, a word which the chairman of the Tory party, if he were here, would instantly reject. Thank you, Tory party chairman. It will surprise no one that his lone rantings have shown up so dramatically and quickly in the polls.
The right hon. Gentleman is coy about answering questions in the House. He will be more coy tonight, because he is not here, but I have two questions for him. First, if, as has been alleged, the complaints were made in his role as chairman of the Tory party, and in that sense as a private individual rather than a putative Minister of truth, why did he not send them straight to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission, which his Government set up? Secondly, if, as he and some of his hon. Friends imply, the BBC is riddled with Trots and Marxists, can he explain how that happened? Has he forgotten that until last year at least every editorial appointment at the BBC was vetted by a grey man in a small office in Broadcasting House? Is that MI5 failing again in its duty?
What the Tory party chairman wants to achieve and this applies to other extremists in his party—was demonstrated yesterday when ITN's "News at One" came from 10 Downing street. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell) said, there were 14 minutes of the Prime Minister. He had complaints from his constituents that they should not have to watch that while eating their lunch— it put them off. The broadcast ended with the words:
"This is Leonard Parkin and Margaret Thatcher at Downing Street."
Doubtless there will be no complaints about bias there.
Broadcasting will clearly experience more change more quickly than ever before. If that leads to continuing high standards and increased access to groups and interests that are now denied it and widens the scope of information that is available to listeners and viewers, I shall welcome it. Other people, however, have other benefits in mind. They see a chance to make more money and to strip away the protections offered by the BBC board of governors and the Independent Broadcasting Authority. They would privatise and let the people with the deepest pockets and purses take over, just as they have all but dominated the national press and turned Fleet street into a giant bingo hall. That is what lies behind calls for so-called competition and freedom of choice. The route that is advocated by Peacock and supported by the Government would restrict choice to those who are able to pay.
Peacock's argument, and that of the Government, is wrongly based, because they regard broadcasting as consumer driven rather than citizen driven. There is an important difference. Everybody is supposed to be an equal citizen under our law, but all consumers are not equal. What kind of consumer choice do the 4 million jobless people have? How real is consumer choice for the millions of pensioners who are forced on to means-tested supplementary benefit? What consumer preference can be exercised by the 5 million who are at work but on coolie-level wages?
Peacock and the Government want, not pay television, but no pay no television, further to deny the 16 million people who live in poverty any real place in society. It has been asserted today that we pay for BBC television but that somehow we get commercial television free. There is
784
no such thing as free television. There are two ways in which to pay for television — through the licence, or each time we shop.
Supposedly free commercial television costs about 4p for every hour of viewing. It is paid at the supermarket checkout and over the lounge bar, irrespective of whether the programmes are watched. The cost of advertising is drawn from all consumers and puts an estimated 15p on a jar of coffee and 10p on a packet of tea bags. Free commercial television costs each household an estimated £55 a year, as opposed to £58 for the BBC licence, which provides a wider choice and a national service.
Mr. Brinton: I know that the hon. Gentleman has experience in marketing matters. Has he considered that advertising keeps down the price of goods?
Mr. Corbett: That is another story. I am not making that point at all.
We accept that the BBC licence fee is regressive and hits hardest people with the least cash. That is why, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) said, we are pledged to phase out the licence for all pensiioners. [HON. MEMBERS: "Phase out?"] Phase out. The vast majority of viewers can and do pay the licence in return for programmes which are generally recognised as among the best in the world.
No Opposition Member is saying that the BBC is perfect. Many of us would argue that, if bias exists, it is a bias against the Labour party, but that it is by no means as great as the bias against Labour in the pro-Tory national press.
There was an interesting Gallup poll in July 1986. People were asked:
"Do you think BBC programmes tend to be biased against any political party?"
Some 26 per cent. said yes and 59 per cent. said no. They were then asked:
"Which party do you think the BBC is biased against?"
The reply was Conservative 34 per cent., Labour 51 per cent. That does not prove the point, but it reveals people's perceptions.
The banner of so-called competition as advocated by Peacock will not wash. We assert our unshakeable commitment to public service broadcasting, where chasing the ratings to attract advertising is not the main reason for making or showing programmes. Down that route lies round-the-clock "Eastenders" and the equivalent of a junk food diet.
If it is all about giving viewers what they want, we had better know what they do want. The Broadcasting Research Unit asked viewers what they expected. Ninety-seven per cent. said that television should entertain, 93 per cent. said that it should inform, and 84 per cent. said that it should educate. Those preferences do not live in separate boxes, and most programmes are a mix. Those preferences show that the viewers are not the mindless morons which the likes of the sewer Sun take them to be. Those preferences will be ignored and overridden in the quest for profit if bits of the Beeb are flogged and ITV licences auctioned to the highest bidder and, no doubt, those with the lowest standards.
It is the same with the notion of pay television. Peacock said that the decoder cost between £100 and £150 in the United States. How are the millions on supplementary and welfare benefits expected to pay that on top of the cost of the price of a new set? Among the heaviest viewers of

785
television are pensioners and those denied work. How much will they have to pay to view what they want, and where will the cash come from? Just imagine a pay television channel buying up the cup final, the State Opening of Parliament or the Queen's Christmas message — the sky would be the limit as to what they could charge both viewers and advertisers.
It is no wonder that the distinguished Professor Alastair Hetherington, a Peacock committee member, said:
"It is daft because no one has thought out what could be sold."
The same is true of plans for advertising. Where is the extra advertising supposed to come from at a time of recession? Advertising on ITV rose by about 14 per cent. in 1981–82 and 19 per cent. in 1982–83, but slipped back to 10·8 per cent., to reach about £1,000 million, in 1984.
There are many in the industry who believe that advertising has reached a plateau. Advertising on the BBC would hurt both commercial television and the radio stations, many of which are now struggling to make ends meet, as the latest rental reduction agreed by the Government shows. It would also impact on the share of advertising carried by provincial morning and evening newspapers, as well as some consumer magazines. Peacock failed to understand that advertising is not confined to one section of the media, because many campaigns have a carefully chosen media mix.
It is suggested that there are no controls on the broadcasters. That is rubbish. Both the BBC and ITV have standards to meet and machinery to deal with complaints. Neither wants signals that the Government intend to stiffen controls. The NUJ, with many members in broadcasting, has this week established an ethics council to investigate complaints in broadcasting and the media generally from those who work in it and the public. Indeed, it invited the Tory party chairman to send his silly dossier to the council, but he has not yet responded. TVS and the NUJ have agreed guidelines for the conduct of interviews, and the NUJ and ACTT are developing a joint policy on a right of reply. The Home Secretary has been asked to meet the NUJ over broadcasting policy, and I very much hope that he will respond to that request.
Labour wants a vibrant, independent, responsive and responsible system of broadcasting, with a regulatory system which encourages rather than restricts, and which does not limit access to television and radio to those who can pay. That is why we want the go-ahead for community radio development and the building up of regional television and radio, to let more voices be heard, especially from those currently denied access, or find it difficult, in our many ethnic communities.
Satellite broadcasting, properly run and handled, can cross frontiers which now separate us and in its way make a better contribution to improving understanding between peoples. Our democracy will survive and flourish if we preserve and promote what is best in our broadcasting and if we widen and sustain the BBC's role in public service broadcasting. The mix of this mixed economy gives us the best of both worlds. That is why we want to build on it rather than tear it down and let cash alone determine what we view.
The Government and Peacock pose serious threats to the worldwide justified reputation of the BBC, which is rightly described as the envy of the world. All that could
786
be put at risk or lost by the Government, as Professor Hetherington said. Once again the Government have shown that they know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
9.45 pm
The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. David Mellor): Perhaps I can begin by paying warm tribute to those who sat with Professor Peacock and in 12 months produced such a thought-provoking report. It deals not only with the central issues on which they were invited to report, but sets the matter in the proper context, looking more widely at the future of television and radio at a challenging time.
Today's debate has been lively and interesting, indeed, even livelier after the speech of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Corbett). Inevitably some hon. Members agreed warmly with Peacock's proposals, some sought to reject them utterly, and rather more found many recommendations of value, while taking issue with others. That is as it should be.
The purpose of the debate was in no sense to establish the Peacock report and to pre-empt discussions. The Peacock report was the stimulus to informed discussion. It is in that spirit that the Government come before the House tonight. I was happy to yield up half the normal time for which hon. Members must endure a Front Bench speech so that almost all hon. Members could speak. The purpose of the debate was not for the Government to tell the House what we intend it to accept, but for us to have a chance to listen to the House and to hear what hon. Members, especially those with genuine interest in and experience of the media, feel should be the future direction when there is no option but to make changes. The questions are: in what direction do we go, and how far down certain roads do we try to go in the years ahead? It is on that basis that we have listened to the debate and shall study carefully the text in Hansard.
There were some distinguished speeches and some amusing ones. Those of us with a well-defined sense of the ridiculous enjoyed what the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) said about value for money. I admit that I yawned at one point and he properly rebuked me for it, but it was not at that point. He had no difficulty in persuading me that the BBC offered better value for money than the GLC ever did.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Brittan), who has apologised to the House for not being present for the winding-up speeches because of an outside engagement which he could not postpone, properly referred to the report that he commissioned. We should be grateful for his foreight in doing so. He described the report as being based on principle and founded in practicality. The recommendations must be considered on that basis and against that interesting test.
Most hon. Members endeavoured to do that, with the exception of the Opposition Front Bench. In 40 minutes the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) and in 15 minutes the hon. Member for Erdington drew attention not to the inadequacies of Peacock, but rather to the flimsiness of Labour party thinking on the crucial area of the future of broadcasting. In particular, one of their charges was well wide of the mark. In no sense is Peacock gratuitous in the sense that it is inviting us to consider matters that do not need to be addressed. Peacock is taking one view—not necessarily

787
one with which everyone, even on the Conservative Benches, wishes to agree·about future decisions that must be taken against the background of inevitable change, such as the development of the VCR, the introduction of cable, DBS, and international developments which mean that, whatever we choose to do, the rest of the world will take decisions that have implications for us, and, indeed, that offer opportunities for us.
Why should we in Britain always see change as a threat? Why do we not see change as an opportunity? Goodness knows there are few industries where we are better equipped to deal with opportunities than in the media where our reputation stands high around the world. I pay tribute to that. It is no part of our case that we do not have excellent television and radio for the most part and that which is rightly the object of comment and congratulation from others. That gives us a strong base to be confident about developments.
But let us not be more ultra than the ultras. Let us not, in the congratulations that we heap on the broadcasters, even exceed the massive amount of self-congratulation that they are capable of heaping on themselves without any help from us. Let us keep some sort of balance, and recognise that some change is crucial and a lot of change will be inevitable.
I am sorry to take issue with the right hon. Member for Gorton, but it was a sad indictment of his speech that he spent 10 times as long dealing with parliamentary questions about the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster's video recorder as with Labour's vision of the future of broadcasting. No wonder we were treated to that insight into the internal politics of the Labour party in The Independent yesterday. That is proving to be a most useful sheet. It had three attractive photographs—a large one of the right hon. Gentleman in full ortorical flow, and rather smaller ones, as is only appropriate, of his hon. Friend the Member for Paisley, South (Mr. Buchan) looking rather grim—so grim that he is not even here as far as I can see—because he apparently had lost out in the battle to make a Front Bench speech and was obliged to speak from the Back Benches, and a rather attractively rugged photograph of the hon. Member for Erdington, looking as though he had just come off the set of "Emmerdale Farm" and very fetching.
However, the text had little of comfort. What do we find but this revealing paragraph. The media corresponddent of The Independent, displaying proper independence, which I commend, said:
"For the debate finds the Labour party in disarray, still in the process of formulating its media policies. Senior broadcasters who have been lobbying discreetly in the past few days"—
so discreetly that they have not come to my notice—
"are dismayed and shocked at the lack of serious thinking. The bald fact is that Labour has not responded to the Peacock recommendations with a thought-out document."
Nor, indeed, has it responded with thought-out speeches.
It will be no surprise to those who have listened to the speeches from the Opposition Benches that all the worthwhile developments that have been taken place in broadcasting since the war have been under Conservative Governments—the introduction of ITV and independent local radio. The next step forward after the next election will be in our charge as well. For those who are afraid of what the future holds with those changes, exactly the same
788
things were said before the introduction of ITV and independent radio, and, of course, it was found to be equally wrong.
If the Labour party were flimsy on policy, it became positively hysterical when we reached the attacks on what my right hon. Friend the chairman of the Conservative party had to say. Indeed, the right hon. Member for Gorton repeated what he said in July when he said:
"The forthcoming Labour Government will ensure that the BBC, as a great national institution, internationally respected, is not only preserved, but is protected from interference by Governments of any party." — [Official Report, 3 July 1986; Vol 110, c. 1179.]
That sits ill with the days when he was sitting in the kitchen Cabinet of Mr. Wilson. I have to cut out the number of quotes that I can use because I do not have sufficient time, but I must remind him of one from October 1965 when The Times reported that Mr. Wilson — the right hon. Gentleman was there at the time — summoned a producer and warned him to
"mend his ways or the Government will have to think about bringing the BBC under tighter discipline."
The Guardian, that well-known Tory biased newspaper, on 3 October said:
"The Labour Party is to double its 60-strong team monitoring political bias on television, following the appointment on Wednesday of Mr. Marmaduke Hussey as the Chairman of BBC. Mr. John Mc William, MP for Blaydon and a Senior Whip, who runs the Party's monitoring system, said yesterday that the team, which tries to ensure that the definition of balance in the BBC Charter and the Independent Broadcasting Authority Act is applied, would be doubled as Mr. Hussey's appointment was, 'the last straw'."
We are being told that the Labour party wants not a hair of the head of the BBC touched, whereas even before "the last straw" it had 60 people apparently doing nothing but monitoring broadcasting.
That is hysterical, but there is more to come on the interesting point about the phasing out of television licences for pensioners. The right hon. Member for Gorton insisted that this was not one of those optional extras but at the core of the programme. However, the hon. Member for Erdington told us that there would be "phasing out". "Phasing out" is usually what politicians say before an election to justify going into the next election without having done it. I suspect that that will be the reality.
The £3·5 billion that the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) is to take off the rich—nobody else will have their tax increased—will be for specific pledges relating to the relief of poverty. This is not one of them. How will they do it? Is the £325 million to be lost to allow poorly-off citizens such as the right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) and the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) — both pensioners—to be protected so that young couples with two children and on supplementary benefit will have to pay a licence fee of £85 to cover the lost money? Is the truth more like what Mr. Blunkett, poor soul, who let the cat out of the bag and was firmly sat on and squashed, suggested? The electorate will not be taken in by that.
Mr. Allen McKay rose—
Mr. Mellor: No; I do not have time to give way.
We have serious business to do. The development of cable is an exciting prospect and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Boothferry (Sir P. Bryan) said, has many opportunities. We know that within the next few weeks the IBA will announce the allocations, from the five

789
applications that it has received, for three DBS channels, which proves the wisdom of our policy of allowing the market to sort out these things. After the next election, if the House approves the new Bill, we shall be in a position to extend the franchises for three years to allow ITV companies to take crucial decisions on the future of the independent television system.
A group of consultants is looking into the prospects of subscription, about which we have had a variety of interesting comments. We understand the drawbacks of subscription. We are not saying that we are committed to it but we are saying that the idea must be tested and that process will be taken further by those reports.
I particularly commend the principled speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Mr. Forman). He urged us not to rush ahead impelled by technological determinism. It is not that. We do not see ourselves as driven by technological change where we are like, was it M. Roland, the French revolutionary who, as the mob was rampaging through Paris, stood on the sidelines and said, "I must follow them for I am their leader." We do not see technological change in that way.
However, technological change will not be denied. People want the VCR and the satellite. We have to find a system of regulation that best enables us to retain all that is best in British broadcasting and ensure that we move on, as we have always done, to a better era. In that spirit we, and we alone, are tackling the problem.
Question put, That this House do now adjourn:—
The House divided: Ayes 143, Noes 221.

Division No. 5]

[10 pm

AYES

Abse, Leo

Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (L'lli)

Adams, Allen (Paisley N)

Davies, Ronald (Caerphilly)

Anderson, Donald

Deakins, Eric

Archer, Rt Hon Peter

Dixon, Donald

Ashley, Rt Hon Jack

Dormand, Jack

Atkinson, N. (Tottenham)

Dubs, Alfred

Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

Duffy, A. E. P.

Barron, Kevin

Dunwoody, Hon Mrs G.

Beckett, Mrs Margaret

Eadie, Alex

Bell, Stuart

Eastham, Ken

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

Evans, John (St. Helens N)

Bermingham, Gerald

Fatchett, Derek

Bidwell, Sydney

Faulds, Andrew

Blair, Anthony

Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

Boothroyd, Miss Betty

Fields, T. (L'pool Broad Gn)

Boyes, Roland

Fisher, Mark

Bray, Dr Jeremy

Flannery, Martin

Brown, N. (N'c'tle-u-Tyne E)

Foster, Derek

Brown, Ron (E'burgh, Leith)

Fraser, J. (Norwood)

Buchan, Norman

Freeson, Rt Hon Reginald

Callaghan, Rt Hon J.

Garrett, W. E.

Callaghan, Jim (Heyw'd & M)

Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

Campbell-Savours, Dale

Godman, Dr Norman

Canavan, Dennis

Golding, Mrs Llin

Carter-Jones, Lewis

Gould, Bryan

Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

Hamilton, James (M'well N)

Clarke, Thomas

Hamilton, W. W. (Fife Central)

Clay, Robert

Hardy, Peter

Clelland, David Gordon

Hart, Rt Hon Dame Judith

Cohen, Harry

Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

Coleman, Donald

Heffer, Eric S.

Cook, Robin F. (Livingston)

Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

Corbett, Robin

Home Robertson, John

Corbyn, Jeremy

Hughes, Roy (Newport East)

Cox, Thomas (Tooting)

Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)

Cunliffe, Lawrence

Janner, Hon Greville

Cunningham, Dr John

John, Brynmor

790

Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside)

Randall, Stuart

Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald

Raynsford, Nick

Lamond, James

Redmond, Martin

Leadbitter, Ted

Rees, Rt Hon M. (Leeds S)

Leighton, Ronald

Richardson, Ms Jo

Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)

Roberts, Ernest (Hackney N)

Lewis, Terence (Worsley)

Robertson, George

Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)

Lofthouse, Geoffrey

Rooker, J. W.

McDonald, Dr Oonagh

Ross, Ernest (Dundee W)

McKelvey, William

Rowlands, Ted

MacKenzie, Rt Hon Gregor

Sedgemore, Brian

McTaggart, Robert

Sheerman, Barry

Madden, Max

Sheldon, Rt Hon R.

Marek, Dr John

Short, Ms Clare (Ladywood)

Marshall, David (Shettleston)

Silkin, Rt Hon J.

Maxton, John

Skinner, Dennis

Maynard, Miss Joan

Smith, C.(Ils'ton S & F'bury)

Meacher, Michael

Smith, Rt Hon J. (M'ds E)

Michie, William

Soley, Clive

Mikardo, Ian

Spearing, Nigel

Millan, Rt Hon Bruce

Stott, Roger

Miller, Dr M. S. (E Kilbride)

Strang, Gavin

Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)

Straw, Jack

Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)

Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)

Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

Tinn, James

Nellist, David

Torney, Tom

Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

Warden, Gareth (Gower)

O'Brien, William

Wareing, Robert

O'Neill, Martin

Welsh, Michael

Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

Williams, Rt Hon A.

Parry, Robert

Winnick, David

Pavitt, Laurie

Woodall, Alec

Pendry, Tom

Pike, Peter

Tellers for the Ayes:

Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)

Mr. John McWilliam and

Prescott, John

Mr. Allen McKay.

NOES

Adley, Robert

Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

Aitken, Jonathan

Carttiss, Michael

Alexander, Richard

Chalker, Mrs Lynda

Alison, Rt Hon Michael

Channon, Rt Hon Paul

Amess, David

Chapman, Sydney

Ancram, Michael

Churchill, W. S.

Arnold, Tom

Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)

Ashby, David

Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)

Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)

Clegg, Sir Walter

Atkinson, David (B'm'th E)

Cockeram, Eric

Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

Colvin, Michael

Baldry, Tony

Conway, Derek

Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

Coombs, Simon

Batiste, Spencer

Cope, John

Bendall, Vivian

Cormack, Patrick

Benyon, William

Corrie, John

Best, Keith

Cranborne, Viscount

Bevan, David Gilroy

Critchley, Julian

Biffen, Rt Hon John

Crouch, David

Blackburn, John

Currie, Mrs Edwina

Body, Sir Richard

Dorrell, Stephen

Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

Dover, Den

Bottomley, Peter

du Cann, Rt Hon Sir Edward

Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

Dunn, Robert

Boyson, Dr Rhodes

Durant, Tony

Braine, Rt Hon Sir Bernard

Edwards, Rt Hon N. (P'broke)

Brandon-Bravo, Martin

Evennett, David

Bright, Graham

Fallon, Michael

Brinton, Tim

Favell, Anthony

Brittan, Rt Hon Leon

Forman, Nigel

Brooke, Hon Peter

Forth, Eric

Browne, John

Fraser, Peter (Angus East)

Bruinvels, Peter

Gale, Roger

Bryan, Sir Paul

Garel-Jones, Tristan

Buck, Sir Antony

Goodhart, Sir Philip

Bulmer, Esmond

Gorst, John

Burt, Alistair

Greenway, Harry

Butcher, John

Gregory, Conal

Butler, Rt Hon Sir Adam

Grylls, Michael

Butterfill, John

Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)

Carlisle, John (Luton N)

Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

791

Harris, David

Portillo, Michael

Harvey, Robert

Powell, William (Corby)

Hickmet, Richard

Powley, John

Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

Proctor, K. Harvey

Holland, Sir Philip (Gedling)

Raffan, Keith

Holt, Richard

Renton, Tim

Howard, Michael

Rhodes James, Robert

Howarth, Gerald (Cannock)

Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas

Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas

Ridsdale, Sir Julian

Jackson, Robert

Rowe, Andrew

Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

Rumbold, Mrs Angela

Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith

Ryder, Richard

Kershaw, Sir Anthony

Sackville, Hon Thomas

Key, Robert

Sainsbury, Hon Timothy

Knight, Greg (Derby N)

Sayeed, Jonathan

Lang, Ian

Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

Latham, Michael

Shelton, William (Streatham)

Lawrence, Ivan

Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)

Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

Lester, Jim

Shersby, Michael

Lilley, Peter

Silvester, Fred

Lloyd, Sir Ian (Havant)

Sims, Roger

Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

Skeet, Sir Trevor

Lord, Michael

Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

Luce, Rt Hon Richard

Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

Lyell, Nicholas

Soames, Hon Nicholas

McCrindle, Robert

Speed, Keith

McCurley, Mrs Anna

Speller, Tony

MacKay, Andrew (Berkshire)

Spencer, Derek

MacKay, John (Argyll & Bute)

Spicer, Jim (Dorset W)

Maclean, David John

Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

McLoughlin, Patrick

Stanbrook, Ivor

McNair-Wilson, M. (N'bury)

Steen, Anthony

McQuarrie, Albert

Stern, Michael

Major, John

Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)

Malins, Humfrey

Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)

Malone, Gerald

Sumberg, David

Maples, John

Taylor, John (Solihull)

Marland, Paul

Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

Mates, Michael

Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman

Mather, Carol

Temple-Morris, Peter

Maude, Hon Francis

Terlezki, Stefan

Mawhinney, Dr Brian

Thomas, Rt Hon Peter

Mellor, David

Thompson, Donald (Calder V)

Merchant, Piers

Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)

Meyer, Sir Anthony

Thorne, Neil (Ilford S)

Miller, Hal (B'grove)

Thornton, Malcolm

Mills, Iain (Meriden)

Thurnham, Peter

Mills, Sir Peter (West Devon)

Townend, John (Bridlington)

Miscampbell, Norman

van Straubenzee, Sir W.

Moate, Roger

Waddington, David

Montgomery, Sir Fergus

Wakeham, Rt Hon John

Morris, M. (N'hampton S)

Wall, Sir Patrick

Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)

Waller, Gary

Morrison, Hon P. (Chester)

Ward, John

Mudd, David

Wardle, C. (Bexhill)

Murphy, Christopher

Watts, John

Neale, Gerrard

Wheeler, John

Needham, Richard

Wiggin, Jerry

Nelson, Anthony

Wilkinson, John

Neubert, Michael

Winterton, Mrs Ann

Nicholls, Patrick

Winterton, Nicholas

Norris, Steven

Wolfson, Mark

Onslow, Cranley

Wood, Timothy

Oppenheim, Phillip

Yeo, Tim

Osborn, Sir John

Young, Sir George (Acton)

Ottaway, Richard

Page, Richard (Herts SW)

Tellers for the Noes:

Pattie, Geoffrey

Mr. Mark Lennox-Boyd and

Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

Mr, David Lightbown.

Percival, Rt Hon Sir Ian

Question accordingly negatived.

Weston-super-Mare and Banwell (Roads)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Portillo.]
10.12 pm
Mr. Jerry Wiggin: I thank my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for coming to the House to answer this debate.
When I first became the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare, one of my first endeavours concerned the erection of our new hospital. After having several Adjournment debates, I am happy to say that that hospital is now full of patients. I hope that my hon. Friend will bear in mind that he will not have to meet me too often on this subject if he can say something profitable to me tonight.
The problem of the Banwell bypass is of long-standing concern. The village, which sits on the junction of two A roads, was, of course, built in the horse and cart age. It provides a feeder road for a lot of traffic leaving on one side of Weston-super-Mare. It is worth bearing in mind that a seaside town is unique in one respect. Only half the area around the town is available to move in and out of, for obvious geographical reasons. The A371, which runs through Banwell, is a crucial road for people who wish to move in and out of the town. In addition, it is on the route used by much of the lorry traffic that emanates from that great source of road stone in our part of the world, the Mendip quarries. The problem is exacerbated by that.
In his last letter to me on this subject, the county surveyor said:
"The County Council shares your concern about traffic conditions in Banwell and Winscombe and has retained proposals to bypass both communities within the First Alteration to the Structure Plan. Unfortunately it has only been possible within the resources available to programme the Banwell bypass for construction within the period to 1996: the Winscombe bypass will continue to be safeguarded."
The existing plan is that in 1994 or 1995 the county will hope to start to spend £3 million, at 1985 prices, on the Banwell part of this road. I am afraid that that delay is too long. Ten years at least for this hell to continue is unacceptable to my constituents. When I learn that the Winscombe bypass is unlikely to be started until after 1996, at a cost of, say £3·8 million, making perhaps £7 million in all as the cost of the total bypass. I despair at the parsimony of the Government, who should be able to find that sum for such an important road extension.
My constituents—Mrs. Anthea James and a number of her friends—have formed an organisation which they call the Traffic Action Group, Banwell. I sent my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State a copy of the census which they carried out in a professional manner for 12 hours a day for five working days last July. The survey revealed the astonishing figure of nearly 10,000 vehicles of one sort of another a day—not including the night—passing through Banwell. If there is a six-minute delay —the arithmetic is easier using that number—it means that 1,000 man-hours a day are wasted sitting in traffic jams around Banwell. Add the cost of fuel and all the other frustrations emanating from traffic damage and we find that this one bottleneck costs an astonishing amount, running into millions of pounds a year.
The Department of Transport has methods to calculate the economic benefits of bypasses, but it does not need an economics graduate to work out that an investment of £7 million in this bypass would rapidly be returned to the

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local economy in better transport facilities and access. I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will not tell me in too much detail that he does not have any great responsibility for this matter and that it is just the county council's responsibility. The time is coming when central Government will have to grasp some of these transport problems.
My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will know that the vast majority of the road building budget in the county of Avon is taken up on building the Avon ring road. This is adjudged by his Department to be a local feeder road, not a trunk road. I very much hope that he will have yet another look at the prospect of making the Avon county road a Department of Transport trunk road. If he will, that will unblock many schemes in the county, not just in Banwell. His Department has just had an extra £65 million from the Chancellor's largesse. I should have thought that a county as important as Avon—a centre point in our national road system — would certainly justify a little extra expenditure to help us all. I am not in any way suggesting that the Avon county ring road is not a priority; it certainly is. The traffic on the outskirts of Bristol is a disgrace.
I turn to the problems of Weston-super-Mare. My difficulty is that I would hate to give the impression that the town is always one big traffic jam, because it is not. I am pleased to see you in the Chair, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because not long ago you had the good wisdom to marry a most attractive widow who lived in the village of Banwell. Although I would never invoke your assistance in this matter, I appreciate your presence, as you will be only too familiar with the two problems that I am enumerating.
On a Saturday morning in July and August the traffic in Weston-super-Mare is such that any sensible planner would have to consider doing something about it. Indeed, Avon county council, in conjunction with the district, has over the years reserved the line of a road that would run from junction 21 of the motorway, through the heart of the town and out to the industrial estate where the heavy traffic goes. That would have a sensational effect on the town's traffic problems. It is now being actively talked about by all those involved in local government in my part of the world.
During my time as Member of Parliament for Weston-super-Mare more than 10,000 houses have been built in the district known as Worle, and we are still building lots more, with even more planned at Locking castle. Weston-super-Mare does not enjoy a very healthy employment figure. It is about 2 per cent. above the national average, and is the worst in the county of Avon. My industrialist friends and constituents tell me that if the road was built, it would be a substantial inducement to industry to move to the centre of Weston-super-Mare and to employ people in an area where there is considerable pressure. In national terms, the costs are not very great, but they are completely beyond the district council's capacity. It is a county matter, but it has other priorities.
We are talking about £12 million, or perhaps a little less, at today's prices in order to solve the problem in one fell swoop. But there is also section 52 blackmail, by which planning permission is given for houses in return for substantial payments by developers. However, that has come up against a block. The amounts required from the
794
developers are so great that they are not prepared to sell the land. I was horrified to hear of threats of compulsory purchase by Conservative authorities, and to me that is quite unacceptable. We must be careful not to overdo these things. But even if such sums were paid, they would be inadequate to build the town centre-M5 link.
I appreciate that my hon. Friend the Minister listens to such appeals from all over the country, but there is something that he could consider that might help all of us. When the transport supplementary grant is paid, I believe that no money goes to the county authority for design work in advance of construction or for land bought in advance of it. My county surveyor makes a most reasonable plea to me. He says, "If we plan ahead, deploy staff and buy land in advance, as prudent planners should do, we are discouraged because the Department does not give us a grant." That is folly of the highest order. In considering the ever-increasing problems of traffic, I hope that my hon. Friend will bear in mind whether that policy is wise and whether the change that I suggest would not be of considerable assistance.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister for attending the debate. However, I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Swindon (Mr. Coombs) whose mother lives in my constituency and knows it well, would like to intervene for a moment.
10.25 pm
Mr. Simon Coombs: I am grateful for the opportunity to intervene briefly in the debate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Wiggin) has said, I have an interest as a regular visitor to his constituency, where my mother lives. She is a keen supporter of my hon. Friend. From my experience of making many visits to Weston-super-Mare, I agree very much with what my hon. Friend has said. The number of visitors pouring into Weston-super-Mare is enormous now that the quality of the communications network means that the M5 passes its door, and especially in the summer. The town's population has grown rapidly with the development at Worle and the prospect of another development at Locking castle. The village of Banwell, if it had been in any other part of the country, would have been pedestrianised years ago. It is an obvious candidate for a pedestrian scheme as heavy vehicles attempt to fight their way through narrow winding streets.
I support entirely all that my hon. Friend has said. The bypass programme is one of the important features of the Government's transport policy. It has brought relief to many towns and villages. I cannot believe that we should be talking about a gap of 10 years between now and when the people of Banwell and the Weston-super-Mare area generally can expect to be relieved of the heavy volume of traffic that now prevails. I appeal to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State to give this matter the most careful thought and speedy action.
10.27 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. Peter Bottomley): I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Wiggin). During his time in this place, from 1969 onwards, he has fought assiduously for his constituents. I congratulate him on his success over the hospital in his constituency. As he rightly said, his efforts in this instance should be directed as much to the county council as to me, and I suspect that

795
unless his efforts on this occasion pay off even faster than those which he directed to the hospital, he will have to stay in the House for quite some time.
My hon. Friend has offered an ingenious possible solution, to which I shall turn shortly. Before doing so, I wish to recognise the contribution that has been made by my hon. Friend the Member for Swindon (Mr. Coombs). I am delighted to learn that he has some links with the village of Banwell. I wish to recognise also the enduring interest in transport matters of my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Portillo), who is seen in the Chamber on more occasions than he is able to speak in it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare has been persistent. I am glad that not every hon. Member is as persistent as he is, but in fighting for something that otherwise would be delayed it is the proper role of an hon. Member to go on and on until success is achieved. It is true that our national programme of 160 bypasses would not have been possible if there had not been a Conservative Government. The money available for new national road construction between 1974 and 1979 was exactly halved in real terms. We could not provide for the economic prosperity of Weston-super-Mare or of Swindon, with its industrial changes, or of any of the regions of Britain, unless we had the funds to enable us to do so. When there are calls for infrastructure spending, there is a need to look to a Conservative Government, and especially this one, who have provided the resources, rather than turn to the rhetoric that we so often hear from the Labour party.
Although we have achieved much with the national programme of trunk roads and motorways, and have been able to give substantial help to local highway authorities and councils, in the main, through the transport supplementary grant, there is a need to keep a sense of proportion over what my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare gently referred to as the largesse of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I have never thought that providing taxpayers' money was quite largesse, but there has been a welcome increase in the roads programme. If £65 million is divided between the 650 constituencies of the United Kingdom, the result is roughly £100,000 each, if my mathematics are still working at this time of night. That is not the straightforward answer, however.
My hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare spoke of the Department or the Government trunking the Avon ring road. I am sure that that is an issue on which it would he right for me to think. I cannot offer him a guaranteed acceptance of his idea. It is clearly one of the reasons why the county is not able to put the Banwell bypass in the order of priorities that my hon. Friend and his constituents would want.
It is clear that my hon. Friend's constituents not only want, but need, an improvement in the local road network, especially the much-needed bypass at Banwell and I congratulate his action group on its traffic census work. I believe that much more can be done in both road safety and environmental improvement if people get interested in the details of possible beneficial road schemes. It is not just the county or the Department that should provide the expertise. To make inroads into the reduction of unnecessary accidents we need a large number of road casualty reduction experts, preferably about 56 million of them.
796
There is no argument about the desirability of a bypass at Banwell. As my hon. Friend said, the problem lies in the priority to be given to the various improvements recognised as being required. My hon. Friend will not need reminding that, with the exception of the M5 motorway, which is the Department's responsibility, all the roads in his constituency are the responsibility of Avon county council. I note his suggestion that we should trunk a further section of road, but at present, and perhaps for the foreseeable future, it is for the county council alone to determine the priority to be accorded to any improvements considered necessary for its roads.
The approved structure plan contains proposals for a new link between the M5 at junction 21 and the A371 and for a bypass at Banwell. As my hon. Friend said, it is a disappointment for his constituents to know that the motorway link road is shown for construction in the period beyond 1996, and the bypass, to put it gently, in the period up to 1996. The nub of the problem is that the county council has accorded top priority to the construction of the Avon ring road, a new road around the eastern side of Bristol, aimed at improving communications in the depressed southern and eastern parts of the city. This is a very expensive scheme which will cost around £40 million and take up the major proportion of the resources which the council is prepared to allocate to highway improvement for some years to come.
Despite this, the county council has made some progress towards implementing its highway strategy for Weston-super-Mare. Much of the link between the St. George's interchange at junction 21 and the town centre has either been completed or is programmed for construction in conjunction with various development proposals. My hon. Friend also made a number of points about section 52, which could perhaps be considered by officials at the Department or at the Department of the Environment. If there is more to be said, we may w rite to my hon. Friend.
As I have said, there is recognition of the need for a bypass at Banwell. Conditions in the village are well known both to the county council and to the Department. As my hon. Friend said, a route for the bypass is being protected from development, but the county council has expressed the view that many other schemes elsewhere in the county may merit higher priority than the bypass at Banwell following completion of the ring road.
The Government are often accused of interfering with local authorities and of wishing to interfere more. I think that this is one of the occasions when, in general, it might be right for Government not to interfere, although I can understand any hon. Member asking why we have not come in with bigger boots and perhaps some financial inducement for the county council to change its order of priorities. A factual description of the situation, however, is that it is up to people in the county to fight for the right ordering of priorities. I hope that this debate will have a valuable role to play in that.
When the county council has firm plans for Banwell, the Government may be able to help with transport supplementary grant. As my hon. Friend knows, we use this to assist local authorities to improve their more important roads. Hon. Members generally may wish to know that we have recently produced a guide in plain English explaining the transport supplementary grant system. There are copies in the Library and the guide has been sent to all local highway authorities in sufficient

797
numbers for distribution to councillors. I hope that hon. Members of the Labour party and alliance parties, if they are interested, will read Hansard, because at this time of the evening they do not appear to be especially interested in the operation of the transport supplementary grant system.
The grant allows us to respond to bids by local authorities for improvements to their roads which are vital to the national as well as the local economy. The grant system concentrates on programmes helping to cope with heavier, longer distance traffic. The aim is not simply to improve the flow of goods and services or to boost the employment opportunities in the tourist areas, but to help to reduce accidents and save lives. My hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare is concerned about these three aims and that the right mixture is achieved. An important aim of the grant is to help local authorities to bring relief to communities suffering the effects of such traffic, for example, with the type of bypass which my hon. Friend is after.
We are already helping the county with the first stages of the Avon ring road. The bypass for Banwell could be another candidate for consideration when the time comes. I must emphasise that the judgment of how and when the bypass proceeds is a matter for Avon.
798
At the moment my hon. Friend is frustrated, if I may put it that plainly, that his efforts to secure some improvements in the local road network in his constituency have borne little fruit. My hon. Friend rightly says that that difficulty could be solved by the Government, although that is not especially likely at the moment. It could certainly be solved by a re-ordering of priorities, but I would not want to upset my hon. Friend's colleagues in the rest of the country by saying to which schemes the county should give a higher or lower priority.
Parliament has given the county council full responsibility for the local road network, and it would not be appropriate for central Government to interfere in its assessment of the relative priorities of the many schemes contained in its structure plan.
Without the work of my hon. Friend and our colleagues, many bypasses—whether future ones such as Banwell or completed ones — would not have had a chance to be built now or ever. It is only because of the restructuring that we have done in the various spheres of transport that we have managed to get greater efficiency, greater capital spending and provide a greater prospect for relief, slightly earlier, for the sort of communities which my hon. Friend so well represents in this House.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-three minutes to Eleven o'clock.

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  Visas
  United States (Protest)
  United States (Protest)
  Falklands Fisheries
  Falklands Fisheries
  Defence Equipment
  Defence Equipment
  Diplomats (Offences)
  Diplomats (Offences)
NATIONAL FINANCE
  Value Added Tax
  Value Added Tax
  Charitable Giving
  Charitable Giving
  Manufacturing Industry
  Manufacturing Industry
  Housing (Taxation)
  Housing (Taxation)
  Systime plc
  Systime plc
  EC (News Services)
  EC (News Services)
  EC (Finance)
  EC (Finance)
  Patrol Boats
  Patrol Boats
  Personal Taxation
  Personal Taxation
  Consultants (Fees)
  Consultants (Fees)
  Departmental Publicity
  Departmental Publicity
TRANSPORT
  Consultants (Fees)
  Consultants (Fees)
  Departmental Publicity
  Departmental Publicity
  Motoring (Exhibition)
  Motoring (Exhibition)
  M11 (Services)
  M11 (Services)
  Dangerous Substances (Carriage)
  Dangerous Substances (Carriage)
DEFENCE
  Arms Sales
  Arms Sales
  Military Operations and Counter-terrorism (Conference)
  Military Operations and Counter-terrorism (Conference)
  Messrs. Robert Gaunt and David Walker
  Messrs. Robert Gaunt and David Walker
  Defence and Foreign Affairs Group
  Defence and Foreign Affairs Group
  Wintex '87
  Wintex '87
  Defence Scientific Advisory Council
  Defence Scientific Advisory Council
SOCIAL SERVICES
  Drug Abuse
  Drug Abuse
  AIDS
  AIDS
  Benefits
  Benefits
  Hyperactive Children's Support Group
  Hyperactive Children's Support Group
  Severe Weather Payments
  Severe Weather Payments
  Supplementary Benefit (Scotland)
  Supplementary Benefit (Scotland)
  Residential Care Homes
  Residential Care Homes
  Drug/Alcohol Abuse Clinics
  Drug/Alcohol Abuse Clinics
  Invalid Care Allowance
  Invalid Care Allowance
  Warnock Report
  Warnock Report
  Job Training Programme
  Job Training Programme
  Brain Drain
  Brain Drain
  Drugs (Product Identification)
  Drugs (Product Identification)
SCOTLAND
  Labour Statistics
  Labour Statistics
  High Court Judiciary, Glasgow
  High Court Judiciary, Glasgow
  Torness (Emergency Plan)
  Torness (Emergency Plan)
  Broadleaf Woodland Grant
  Broadleaf Woodland Grant
  Forestry
  Forestry
  Forestry Grant Aid
  Forestry Grant Aid
  Pine Beauty Moth
  Pine Beauty Moth
  Windthrow
  Windthrow
  AIDS
  AIDS
  Proctoscopes
  Proctoscopes
  Highland Regional Council
  Highland Regional Council
  Peterhead Prison
  Peterhead Prison
  Prison Officers (Training)
  Prison Officers (Training)
AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD
  Chernobyl
  Chernobyl
  Paté de Fois Gras
  Paté de Fois Gras
  Sows
  Sows
  Nuclear Accidents (Food Production)
  Nuclear Accidents (Food Production)
  Forestry Grant Applications
  Forestry Grant Applications
  Beef, Butter and Cheese
  Beef, Butter and Cheese
  Food and Wine
  Food and Wine
  Green Pound
  Green Pound
  Departmental Publicity
  Departmental Publicity
  Agriculture Act 1985
  Agriculture Act 1985
  Dairy Inspections
  Dairy Inspections
  Thames Barrier
  Thames Barrier
  North Sea (Chemical Spillage)
  North Sea (Chemical Spillage)

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock: The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Newcastle.

Transport Ministers' Council Meeting
Baroness Burton of Coventry: 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 whether they will make a statement on the meeting of the European Council of Transport Ministers held on 10th and 11th November and on decisions taken at that meeting.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Transport (Lord Brabazon of Tara): My Lords, the Transport Council last week concentrated primarily on the content of a first 3-year step towards liberalisation of air transport in the Community by the agreed target date of 1992.
A substantial majority of the Council now supports our Presidency proposals for a relaxation of rigid capacity sharing rules and for making it easier for airlines to enter the market. But six countries are blocking our efforts to allow cheaper fares. We plan to hold meetings with these countries before the next Council in December.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: My Lords, while realising that the Government wish to make progress and that the Minister himself wants to be helpful, may I ask: is the noble Lord aware that there has been a watering down of the original package which was proposed by Britain? Secondly, his reply mentioned capacity. Is the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, aware that the capacity sharing on main routes proposed now by Britain is considerably more protectionist than that which was advanced by the Commission itself? Finally, may I ask the noble Lord this question: if the Government themselves are not prepared to take independent action, as they are fully entitled to do, will they at least press the Commission to act promptly on legal matters in the courts?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, on the point of the noble Baroness about capacity, I appreciate that some people think we have watered down our proposals. However, I can give an assurance, as did my honourable friend the other day, that we will certainly not compromise any further to get an agreement. But I think that the proposal to go to 60–40 in three years' time, as a first step before full liberalisation in 1992, is not a bad one. If the Council fails to agree we shall have to re-examine the various alternative courses, and in particular to look to the Commission to uphold the treaty. We shall also need to consider what further action to take ourselves with a number of member states. Any of these options is likely to lead to the
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European Court, where I am sure that we would eventually win the argument, but of course the process would be slow.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: My Lords, arising out of that reply, may I ask the Minister whether he is aware that I regard the 40–60 suggestion for the capacity sharing as being very weak indeed? Am I not correct in saying that what the Commission proposed was bringing it down to 25 per cent? Lastly, can the Minister tell us which are the countries who are opposing progress in Europe?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I note the views of the noble Baroness on capacity, but she will also appreciate that we have to do our best to get an agreement. As that agreement has not been reached, then of course the argument has been re-opened.
The six countries who oppose liberalisation on fares are France, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Greece and Portugal
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, will the Minister confirm that the intention of the discussions is to eliminate the overcharging of air fare consumers, which matter has reached scandalous and unacceptable levels? Can the Minister explain further the extent of what his ministerial colleague has described as compromise and as the bottom line having been reached? Will the noble Lord take note that consumer groups will be outraged if full and real liberalisation is sacrificed for some shoddy and shabby deal in pursuance of financial interests?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, we certainly do not intend to compromise although we have been accused of compromising too far already. But that was the bottom line; we go no further than that. I can give the noble Lord an assurance on that. As the noble Lord said, our objective is to achieve full liberalisation and cheaper fares, which brings good business to the airlines themselves for all European consumers.
Lord Underhill: My Lords, the Minister replied to the noble Baroness with the names of the six countries which were in disagreement. Can he summarise very briefly the reasons for their disagreement?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, not easily, but in our opinion the opposing arguments are protectionist, ill-founded and anti-competitive.

Lead Levels in the Atmosphere
3.8 p.m.
Lord Gainford: 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 progress they have made in reducing the levels of lead in the atmosphere.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of the Environment (Lord Skelmersdale): My Lords, average air lead levels in the first quarter of

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1986 have dropped by 50 per cent. of their value in the same period in 1985. This is a direct consequence of the Government's decision to reduce the maximum permitted level of lead in petrol from 0.4 to 0.15 grammes per litre at the end of 1985.
Lord Gainford: My Lords, my noble friend has given information which shows considerable progress, for which I thank him. Has he any information which might encourage motorists who are worried that their cars might not run as well on petrol with reduced lead as with the old type?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, most cars on the road today which run on regular leaded petrol can also run on unleaded petrol, but most cars which run on premium petrol cannot use unleaded petrol. Those cars will give rise to a significant, though declining, demand for leaded petrol for a number of years. Leaded petrol will obviously remain available on forecourts while there is a demand for it.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, will the noble Lord contemplate asking his right honourable friend to offer a tax incentive so that the period between the introduction of unleaded petrol on a wide scale and cars capable of using it, and the time when old cars stop using leaded petrol, is not too long? Is the noble Lord aware that that period could be extended for, say, 10 years and that a tax incentive either on the cost of the unleaded petrol or on the cars that are capable of using it would speed up matters considerably?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, my answer to the noble Baroness's first question is, "No, I shall not consult my right honourable friend because he has already made up his mind". In his Budget speech this year he announced that he intends to create a tax differential in favour of unleaded petrol to offset the higher production costs.
The Earl of Selkirk: My Lords, when my noble friend speaks of premium petrol does he mean four-star petrol?
Lord Skelmersdale: Yes, my Lords.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, bearing in mind our outstanding success in eliminating lead from other substances, such as paint and pencils, which were a potent source of lead poisoning in young children, is it not regrettable that we would appear to be dragging our feet in comparison with our European partners as regards petrol? Can the noble Lord say whether any delay, if there is delay, is the responsibility of the Government or of the motor car manufacturers?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I do not think that I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, that we are dragging our feet in comparison with our European competitors. A vital component in all this is the car manufacturers themselves and the ability to produce engines that run on lead-free petrol.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that this is a complicated point which
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your Lordships' Select Committee on the European Communities considered when dealing with the proposal from the Commission? Is my noble friend aware that there is a quite complicated balance between the short-term measure of fitting catalysts and the eventual solution of the lean burn engine? If a tax incentive is given in the meantime along the lines which the noble Baroness has suggested, that may constitute a barrier to trade which would be undesirable in the total context of the European Commission and would be only a very short-term solution. The lines on which the Government are now proceeding of the development of the lean burn engine will eventually produce the right solution, and in the meantime possibly the right approach is to fit catalysts.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for reminding us what your Lordships' Select Committee said on this particular point. However, catalysts have their own disposal problems and produce some pretty horrible wastes.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, can my noble friend give an absolute assurance that, far from the Government dragging their feet wherever else lead may be detected in the environment, there is no lead in their boots in their steady advance towards an unpolluted atmosphere?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I suggest that the figures which I announced in my original Answer prove absolutely that the Government are not hanging about in this matter.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, will the noble Lord take up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Gainford, and tell us what plans the Government have to give information and advice to people who are buying cars within the next 10 years as to what they should do? I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, but I should also like an answer to the question about car tax and whether there could not be a differential there.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, it is not for me to suggest or to prejudge anything that my right honourable friend may or may not say in the future. I have told the noble Baroness what he has said in the past. As regards advice to motorists and those purchasing new cars, new cars coming on stream do not need leaded petrol and therefore in a sense it would be automatic advice. However, I think I am right in saying that the Department of Transport has produced a list which shows exactly which cars on the roads today will run on which sort of petrol.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, is that list to be publicised?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I think that it is publicised, but if it is not I shall make sure that it is.

Namibia: Independence
3.19 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: 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 when they intend to take an initiative to fulfil their responsibility for bringing United Nations Resolution 435 on Namibia's independence into effect.
The Minister of State for Defence Procurement (Lord Trefgarne): My Lords, we are committed to bringing about Namibia's independence under United Nations Security Council Resolution 435 (the United Nations Plan). We believe that implementation of the plan can be brought about only by negotiation. Both the US and the UN have been trying to achieve a negotiated solution, and we shall continue to support their efforts.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I am perfectly well aware that the Government are committed in words, and have been committed for a long time. I am more concerned to know what action they are taking. I also understand that this Government claim to be a great defender of the rule of law. Does that claim extend to international law, and, if it does, what action have the Government taken or what action do they propose to take over the specific breaches of international law last week with the invasion of Angola by South African forces against SWAPO bases and the continued export of uranium by the Rössing Mine from Namibia against all international law, as approved by this and previous British governments?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, the only export of uranium from the Rössing mine of which I am aware was, I think, taken by the CEGB. I understand that that contract has now ended and supplies therefore are not now coming from that source. As for South African incursions into Angola, as the noble Lord will well know, we have roundly condemned those on every occasion.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, is there not in point of fact an unusual opportunity now for the Government to do something about Namibia in that, the United States policy having been forcibly changed by Congress towards a policy which will give that country renewed repectability and credibility in Southern Africa as a whole, we could possibly help them to get off the hook about what is called linkage—namely, the American idea that South Africa need not clear out of Namibia until the Cubans have cleared out of Angola, which was never a very wise idea in the first place?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I have always taken the view that the best place for Cubans is in Cuba, and that remains the essence of our position. But we think that this matter is best taken forward within the context of the United Nations plan. There is no other plan on the table and we think that that is the way we should proceed.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, could the noble Lord amplify that answer? Is linkage still an obstacle to the implementation of Resolution 435? If it is, what representations have Her Majesty's Government made to the Pretoria Government about that? Could the noble Lord say a word about Unita? To what extent is it true that the United States are substantially assisting Unita with the provision of arms, and do Her Majesty's Government support this?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, Cuban withdrawal was not of course part of the Security Council resolution, nor do we recognise it as a precondition for a Namibia settlement. But the South Africans have made it clear that they will not agree to implementation of Resolution 435 unless a satisfactory arrangement on Cubans is found. We certainly think, as I indicated earlier, that Cuban withdrawal could create the best conditions for a lasting Namibia settlement.
Lord Shackleton: My Lords, while not following my noble friend's reference to Rössing uranium, in which I should declare a former interest, may I ask the noble Lord whether he will point out to the South African Government through our diplomatic channels the folly of pursuing a course which has denied freedom to a country which is now well on the way to being a multiracial society? They have refused to talk to SWAPO, who will ultimately, mainly or partly, form the government. This is now condemning innocent people in Namibia to the effect of sanctions imposed on other countries. I would ask the noble Lord whether, as I believe, the Government have been doing their best to see that this resolution is given effect to?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, if I can go to the essence of the noble Lord's supplementary, we certainly believe that the result of the policy should be an opportunity for the people of Namibia to choose for themselves the sort of government that they require. That of course is what the United Nations plan is all about.
May I pick up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, earlier, about United States' aid to Unita, which I omitted to answer? The United States are of course aware of our view that Western interests would best be served by peaceful negotiation of a regional settlement leading to the withdrawal of all foreign troops from the region.
Lord Paget of Northampton: My Lords, would the noble Lord agree that Namibia is quite a problem for the Government? It is four times the size of Britain; it has about 1 million inhabitants, divided into 22 tribes which do not speak each other's language; and the effect of Resolution 435 was to remove all forms of government from Namibia. It was about as irresponsible a resolution as any that the United Nations have passed, and that is saying quite a lot.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, not for the first time, if the noble Lord will allow me to say so, he expresses a view of considerable interest but not widely held elsewhere.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I fail to see the logic of the noble Lord's answer regarding linkage with the Cuban troops. As the South African forces can at present, and as they did last week, invade Angola and kill 39 Angolans, or Namibians, with the Cuban troops there, what would be the position if Cuban troops were withdrawn? Have the British Government any plans for safeguarding the sovereignty of Angola, or are the British Government asking the Angolans to dispense with what defence the Cubans can afford them, and leave themselves totally defenceless?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I fear it is rather a question of the chicken and the egg. As the noble Lord will be well aware, the South Africans have said that if the Cuban troops go, then they will have no cause to go into Angola.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, do the British Government believe that assertion by the South African Government, in view of the fact that Cuban troops were first asked to Angola in order to defend Angola against a South African invasion?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, the South Africans have made it clear that they accept the purport of Resolution 435 and would like to see a solution based on it.

British-Made Weapons: Deployment by US
3.26 p.m.
Lord Kennet: 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 whether in their view the proposed deployment to the Contras of (British) Blowpipe weapons by the United States (Jane's Defence Weekly, November 1st 1986) will contribute to a favourable outcome of the Contadora process or enhance Britain's role at the next meeting of European Community, Central America and Contadora Foreign Ministers due to be held in 1987 in Guatemala.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, as we have consistently made clear, a favourable outcome to the Contadora process requires the utmost restraint on all sides, which includes a reduction in arms levels in the area. The Government continue to work for a political solution to the region's problems and believe that the next EC, Central America and Contadora Foreign Ministers' meeting will contribute to this.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, have the Government seen the factual article referred to in the Question, which is about how the 100 million dollars aid to the Contras in Nicaragua is to be spent, where it states that half of it is to go on surface-to-air missiles, among which will be the British manufactured Blowpipe missiles, delivery of which to the Contras is expected in February 1987? Can the Government say whether or not this is true? If the Government do not know, can they say whether they are taking any steps to find out? If they find out it is true, what will they do?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, it is not normal practice to comment on individual equipment export matters. However, in this particular case the Government have made it clear that they do not believe that the problems of the region can be solved by armed force and have called for a reduction in arms levels. A supply of Blowpipe would be inconsistent with this policy.
Lord Beswick: My Lords, may I ask whether President Reagan agrees that Blowpipe weapons have been sent there?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I do not think that that is a question for me.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, would the Government take a further look at the possibility of extending the useful control known as end-use certificates to arms exports to the United States, given the lengthening list of countries into which that country is running armed rebels, and the increasing likelihood that the more arms we sell to the United States the more they will be used to destabilise or overthrow legitimate governments in countries with whom we have friendly relations?
Lord Trefgarne: No, my Lords.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, the noble Lord's answers lead me to ask him this question: are the British Government aware of the destination of armaments sold abroad by armament maufacturers in this countyr? Were Her Majesty's Government informed by the United States Administration that these Blowpipe missiles were to be sent to the Contras in Nicaragua? It is an unsatisfactory state of affairs, and I think the House would appreciate a clear reply from the noble Lord.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, the position was outlined by my noble friend Lady Young on 15th April in a Written Answer to the noble Lord, Lord Kennet.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, that is a totally unsatisfactory reply. Would the noble Lord clearly say what control Her Majesty's Government have over armaments manufactured in this country and sent abroad? Is it possible that Her Majesty's Government, or some agency of Her Majesty's Government, would have known that these British weapons were going via the United States to the Contras in Nicaragua?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, if I can refer to the report which appeared in Jane's Defence Weekly, to which the noble Lord has referred, I can tell him that I know of no basis for that report.

Reverter of Sites Bill [H.L.]
The Lord Advocate (Lord Cameron of Lochbroom): My Lords, on behalf of my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, I beg to introduce a Bill to amend the law with respect to the reverter of sites that have ceased to be used for particular purposes; and for

345
connected purposes. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(Lord Cameron of Lochbroom.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Minors' Contracts Bill [H.L.]
Lord Cameron of Lochbroom: My Lords, on behalf of my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, I beg to introduce a Bill to amend the law relating to minors' contracts. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(Lord Cameron of Lochbroom.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Recognition of Trusts Bill [H.L.]
Lord Cameron of Lochbroom: My Lords, on behalf of my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, I beg to introduce a Bill to enable the United Kingdom to ratify the convention on the law applicable to trusts and on their recognition which was signed on behalf of the United Kingdom on 10th January, 1986. I beg to move that this Bill he now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(Lord Cameron of Lochbroom.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Chevening Estate Bill [H.L.]
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lady Young, I beg to introduce a Bill to establish an incorporated board of trustees of the trusts contained in the trust instrument set out in the schedule to the Chevening Estate Act 1959 to confer functions on and to transfer property, rights and liabilities to the board, to amend the trust instrument; and for purposes connected therewith. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(Baroness Hooper.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

House of Lords Offices
3.31 p.m.
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Aberdare): My Lords, I beg to move the first Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the Fourth Report of Session 1985–86 from the Select Committee be agreed to.—(The Chairman of Committees.)
The Report was as follows:
1. Lord Chancellor's Salary
The Committee approved a reapportionment of the statutory salary payable to the Lord Chancellor in relation to his duties as Speaker and agreed that a 14 per cent. share should, in future, be paid from the House of Lords Vote.
346
2. Staff of the House
The Committee agreed further proposals from the Sub-Committee and approved revised scales of pay for the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod and the Secretary to the Clerk of the Parliaments, and adjustments in the pay scales for Senior Reporters, Reporters and Hansard Typists. The Committee also agreed ex gratia payments to certain secretarial staff.
2. Parliament Office
The Committee were informed that Miss F. P. Tudor had been promoted to Senior Clerk and that Mr. T. V. Mahon and Mr. W. G. Sleath had been appointed as Clerks to fill vacancies resulting from the retirement of Mr. H. Christopherson and the resignation of Miss C. Kay. The Committee also took note of the appointment of Miss E. M. McCaffrey as Legal Officer in place of Mr. J. Stoodley and of the promotion of Mrs. C. Boden to Assistant Editor and agreed to a temporary increase in the complement of Senior Reporters.
4. Library
The Committee authorised further provision for the employment of casual staff in the Library for a limited period.
5. Revised Scales of Pay
The Committee confirmed the application to staff of the House of Lords of the following Civil Service memoranda:—
CM/767—London Weighting.
IM 86/4—Revised rates of pay for weekly paid Refreshment Department staff.
6. Superannuation
The Committee were notified of the following awards made under the House of Lords Staff Pension Scheme.

(a) Pension and Lump Sum to Mr. W. Frensham, Deputy Editor, who retired on 13th September 1986.

(b) Pension and Lump Sum to Mr. H. Christopherson, Senior Clerk who retired on 2nd October 1986.

(c) Revised Pension and Lump Sum to Mr. A. W. K. Chittil. Senior Doorkeeper, who formally retired on 3rd July 1986.

(d) Short Service Payment to Mr. J. L. Ransley, Reporter, who resigned on 26th September 1986.

(e) Short Service Payment to Mr. A. H. Cree, Clerical Officer, who resigned on 26th September 1986.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

European Communities Committee
The Chairman of Committees: My Lords, I beg to move the second Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That a Select Committee be appointed to consider Community proposals, whether in draft or otherwise, to obtain all necessary information about them, and to make reports on those which, in the opinion of the Committee, raise important questions of policy or principle, and on other questions to which the Committee consider that the special attention of the House should be drawn;
That, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the Lords following be named of the Committee:—

Allen of Abbeydale, L.

Attlee, E.

Bancroft, L.

Brookeborough, V.

Broxbourne, L.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

De La Warr, E.

Ewart-Biggs, B.

Gallacher, L.

Goff of Chieveley, L.

Kearton, L.

Middleton, L.

Murray of Epping Forest, L.

Nathan, L.

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Nicol, B.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Robson of Kiddington, B.

Rodney, L.

Seebohm, L.

Serota, B. (Chairman)

Shannon, E.

Sidmouth, V.

Torrington, V.

Wilson of Langside, L.

That the Committee have power to appoint Sub-Committees and to refer to such Sub-Committees any of the matters within the terms of reference of the Committee; that the Committee have power to appoint the Chairmen of Sub-Committees, but that such Sub-Committees have power to appoint their own Chairman for the purpose of particular enquiries; that two be the quorum of such Sub-Committees;
That the Committee have power to co-opt any Lord for the purpose of serving on a Sub-Committee;
That the Committee and any Sub-Committees have power to adjourn from place to place;
That the Committee have power to appoint specialist advisers;
That the Committee have leave to report from time to time;
That the Reports of the Select Committee from time to time shall be printed, notwithstanding any adjournment of the House;
That the Minutes of Evidence taken before the Committee or any Sub-Committee from time to time, shall, if the Committee think fit, be printed and delivered out;
That the Committee or any Sub-Committee appointed by them have leave to confer and to meet concurrently with any Committee of the Commons on European Legislation, &c. or any Sub-Committee of that Committee for the purpose of deliberating and of examining witnesses; and have leave to agree with the Commons in the appointment of a Chairman for any such meeting.—(The Chairman of Committees.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Science and Technology
The Chairman of Committees: My Lords, I beg to move the third Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That a Select Committee be appointed to consider Science and Technology and that, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the following Lords be named of the Select Committee:—

Blakenham, V.

Butterworth, L.

Carver, L.

Erroll of Hale, L.

Flowers, L.

Hunter of Newington, L.

Ilchester, E.

Lockwood, B.

Nelson of Stafford, L.

Perry of Walton, L.

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Shackleton, L.

Sherfield, L. (Chairman)

Taylor of Blackburn, L.

Tordoff, L.

White, B.

That the Committee have power to appoint Sub-Committees and that such Sub-Committees have power to appoint their own Chairman;
That the Committee have power to co-opt any Lord for the purposes of serving on the Committee or any Sub-Committee;
That the Committee have leave to report from time to time;
That the Committee and any Sub-Committee have power to adjourn from place to place;
That the Minutes of Evidence taken before the Committee and any Sub-Committee from time to time be printed and, if the Committee think fit, be delivered out;
That the Committee and any Sub-Committee have power to appoint Specialist Advisers.—(The Chairman of Committees.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Nuclear Power in Europe: ECC Report
3.33 p.m.
Viscount Torrington Viscount Torrington rose to move, That this House takes note of the Report of the European Communities Committee on Nuclear Power in Europe (18th Report, 1985–86, H.L. 227).
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, in introducing this debate I am very conscious that there is indeed another report, as yet unpublished, which will pervade many of our thoughts today like some unseen radioactive cloud. I hope it will not inhibit us. I refer of course to the forthcoming report of the Sizewell inspector, and I hope that my noble friend the Minister will be able to give us today some inkling of when we may expect the Sizewell report to see the light of day.
When Sub-Committee F began its inquiry into nuclear power in Europe there was evidence of a kind of early spring in the nuclear garden. At the time public opinion, after reaching a rather low point in the early 1970s, seemed to be moving in favour of nuclear power and confidence was increasing. The miners' strike and the use of nuclear-generated electricity to replace some of that lost from coalfired stations demonstrated to many people in the United Kingdom the importance of having a strong nuclear component in the energy equation.
I do not think the industry was in any way complacent. Three Mile Island was too recent for that, in 1979, but its effects were receding and there were continuing but minor problems from Sellafield. But all in all, public opinion on the whole was swinging in favour of nuclear power. As is now well known, that brief spring came to a bitter end on the morning of 26th April when reactor No. 4 at Chernobyl nuclear power station went out of control. There was an explosion: I hasten to add not a nuclear explosion, but a purely mechanical incident caused by pressure, which released volatile radioactive iodine and caesium

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into the atmosphere. There was a fire. More than 200 people were shortly admitted to hospital and at least 26 people died that day or shortly afterwards. Whole towns and villages in the disaster area had to be evacuated and a cloud of radiation passed over many parts of Europe.
Chernobyl was the world's worst nuclear civil accident to date. It is fervently to be hoped that it will prove to be the worst ever and that such an accident will never be repeated. But your Lordships can well imagine that Chernobyl greatly complicated the task of your committee and obliged them to ask a number of questions which would certainly not have been in their minds at the outset of that inquiry. As a result, the committee decided to divide its report into two parts: the first dealing with the situation as it existed before Chernobyl, and the second part covering our view afterwards.
I propose to deal first with the post-Chernobyl situation. With the RBMK reactor the Russians designed and built a plant which needed the minimum of complex engineering facilities which was suited to their available industrial base. But it gave rise to two problems: first, control of the reactor depended to far too great a degree on operator involvement and, as we have seen, human error contributed in major part to the disaster by failure to follow the safety procedures. Secondly, the design was defective in principle. No doubt other noble Lords of a more technical bent will wish to take this subject further, but as I understand it in an ideal reactor, loss of coolant would lead to a decrease in the fission reaction. In the RBMK reactor at Chernobyl, as cooling water was lost after the initial containment failure, the coolant channels filled with steam and the fission reaction increased. Chemical reactions between the steam and the graphite moderator and the zircalloy cladding of the fuel elements ensued and compounded the disaster.
I am assured that there are no nuclear reactors in the West based on the Chernobyl design. The only reactor which had any similarity with the RBMK was the steam generating heavy water reactor: a design which was not proceeded with and of which only one small experimental unit remains.
The committee was assured by numerous experts in evidence that no such accident could happen in any of the main reactor designs now in use in the West. This is because none runs at such high operating temperatures; none has the entire range of physical properties which combined to cause the accident and all have more or better safety systems which place far less reliance on the human factor for control.
But undoubtedly the most important message from Chernobyl is that nuclear power is no respecter of frontiers. In a nuclear world what one does in one's own backyard is of considerable interest to people living even thousands of miles away. The release of radiation from Chernobyl caused alarm, despondency, potential danger and considerable inconvenience in very many countries many miles away. It can be clearly seen that the design, control and monitoring of nuclear power stations is a matter of international concern and not one which can be regarded by any country as a purely domestic affair.
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What seems to me to be needed is more liaison between countries with nuclear power, franker discussions of all aspects of it and more timely warnings when something goes wrong. Perhaps it is too much to hope for, but ideally there should be an international nuclear safety inspectorate and licensing authority with real teeth, able to monitor and sanction developments from Archangel to Hobart, from Vladivostok to Anchorage the long way round.
What is it about nuclear power that most worries people? It should not be the belief that a nuclear power station can explode like a nuclear bomb. That is simply impossible. So a reactor which goes wrong cannot wipe out at a stroke a large area of countryside or city. What worries people most seems, fairly obviously, to be radioactivity. This is mainly because one cannot detect it with one's senses. One cannot see it or smell it, know whether it has harmed you, what the harm is or when it will show itself. Every day, indoors and outdoors, we are bombarded by natural and unavoidable radioactivity without our health being in the least endangered.
The fact is not widely appreciated among the general public and it is important to place the dangers from man-made radioactivity in the context of risks from other industries and other areas of life. The gas released at Bophal killed many people instantly, but it was a chemical accident and therefore seems more understandable than a nuclear accident. Yet nothing like the number of people were killed at Chernobyl or are likely to die as a result of Chernobyl.
Radioactivity is easily detected today by machines, by technology. Indeed, there is a paradox in that just because it is so easily detected and thus easy to take protective measures against, it seems more pervasive and more threatening. Modern technology can detect even minute amounts of radioactivity. When the committee visited Dounreay, the 30-year-old luminous watch worn by the noble Lord, Lord Kearton, set off the detector system. Hundreds of workers in the plant pass through the same detector system every day without setting off any alarms.
If there seems to be so much more radioactivity about today, one reason is that we are so good at detecting it. It follows that any radioactive leaks should be easy to detect and should be able to be plugged quickly. When something is perceived to be a good idea in general but bad or defective in practice, the answer is to improve it and make it better. If the production of nuclear electricity has caused problems, the answer is not to do away with nuclear electricity but to iron out the practical problems which have occurred.
The European Commission's illustrative nuclear programme (known in the trade as PINC) was the starting point for your committee's inquiry. The programme called for a target of 40 per cent. of Europe's electricity to be generated by nuclear power by 1995. It also expressed the hope that 50 per cent. will be provided by the year 2000. The 1995 target is a summation of developments already in the pipeline and, barring a major change of heart by governments, should also certainly be achieved. The figure for 2000 will depend rather more on the political fall-out from Chernobyl.
It must be pointed out that these figures do not refer to any individual country in the EC but to the Community as a whole. Thus France, with well over 70 per cent. of its electricity generated by nuclear power, will help to compensate for those countries which either have no nuclear power or which have alternative major sources of energy and a more mixed energy economy. The United Kingdom is just such a country, and indeed it might be suggested that the United Kingdom, to some extent, has bungled its nuclear choices simply because it has many other energy resources. The problem of choice is much simpler when there are fewer opportunities, as has been the case with France.
One question which recurred throughout the committee's inquiry was that of reactor choice. Should the future of nuclear power stations in the United Kingdom be PWRs or AGRs? The committee decided as a committee not to express a view on this question in view of the impending Sizewell report. Of course, individual members of the committee, as individuals, had strong views on this question. We shall certainly hear some, I suspect, this afternoon, and I hope that I shall be forgiven for saying that, having imposed severe restraints on the committee and on myself as chairman during the inquiry, I now feel free to deal briefly with the question of reactor choice and to state my views on it. Indeed, the recent party conferences and policy decisions make it almost impossible for me not to touch on this question during the debate.
In paragraph 248 of the report, the committee states:
"One danger is that, while the anti-nuclear tide is in full flood (following Chernobyl), political parties will commit themselves to the policy of halting nuclear programmes and phasing out nuclear power, and that when these parties are elected to power the policies may be carried out even if public opinion is becoming more favourable towards nuclear power".
We did not have any political parties represented in this House in mind. We were thinking of other political parties—the Greens and so on in Germany—when we made that remark. We had no idea that the first crop of party conferences following the report would see the adoption, here at home, of the full range of policy options that we contemplated.
I have to say that while I sit on this side of the House I have great respect for the parties which occupy the Benches opposite. However, I confess that I am a little disappointed when I look across the House. What can they mean by those party conference decisions? Are we really to take them seriously? Being an optimist, I look even now for some sort of silver lining to the Chernobyl cloud. While perhaps I shall not be popular with the noble Lord, Lord Marshall, who follows me in this debate, for saying it, I can find some silver lining in Chernobyl if it were to lead to a small delay in the immediate British nuclear programme. Why do I say this? I say this because I think it will provide a little more time and a lot more information on which to decide the great question of reactor choice
I have a natural bias towards home-grown technology. Up at Torness, there is about to be commissioned the latest and possibly the last of the British-designed nuclear reactors, the AGRs. This reactor calls on a great wealth of British skill and engineering experience and there is a just a chance, just
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a small chance, that this AGR will prove to be at least as efficient and competitive as any reactor based upon imported technology—by which I mean the PWR. If the PWR/AGR argument is resolved this year, or early next year, in favour of the PWR, then even if Torness and its sister plant at Heysham 2 prove to be the ultimate in excellence, economy and efficiency, that will simply be academic because the AGR technology will have been junked.
Why do I favour the AGR? The answer, I have to admit, is not based on economics. It is based on safety, and by this I do not mean overall safety but on the simple, physical properties of the reactor. If we look at the three classes of reactor system which remain for the present or the near future, we are left, in order of perceived economic efficiency, with the PWR, which is giving France the cheapest electric power in Europe; the AGR, which is at present giving Britain more expensive electricity but which is probably cheaper than fossil fuels in the medium term and cheaper still if Torness lives up to expectations; and the FBR, the inaptly-named fast breeder reactor, still reckoned by most experts (but not all) to be uneconomic at present.
However, the ranking of these three reactor types, from a purely physical safety standpoint in operation, is the other way round. The FBR in operation is probably the safest of all. The reactor vessel operates effectively at zero atmospheric pressure, the high heat sink properties of the coolant, liquid sodium, are such that the reactor could be left out of control for many days without any danger of the coolant beginning to boil and so carry radiation and radioactive material into the atmosphere. There are question marks about the safety and efficiency of reprocessing the fuel but there is virtually no question about the safety principles of the reactor itself.
By contrast, the AGR retains the middle ground. It has a relatively small primary circuit containing a few tonnes of carbon dioxide, which is not a great carrier of radioactive materials, in any case, and operates at 700 psi. An escape of the coolant will not send much unpleasant material into the atmosphere and the coolant itself does not react with the moderator or the fuel element cladding. Even if there is a control failure, nothing needs to be done in seconds or even minutes and possibly hours—thus leaving plenty of time for sensible decisions to be taken about reactor control.
Finally, with the PWR, one has to say that this has an enormous reactor vessel. The primary circuit contains water at 2,600 psi and its control is much more critical in terms of time. As we have seen, steam easily carries radioactive pollutants, though happily, as we have seen at Three Mile Island, the worst radioactive substances condense or sublime very quickly outside the containment.
When I talk about pure physical safety in this context, I am drawing an analogy with flying machines. The fixed-wing aircraft, properly trimmed, will fly itself, hands off. It is inherently stable. By contrast, the helicopter does not have inherent stability; it has to be kept straight and level by human or autopilot control. In the nuclear context, the FBR is the fixed-wing aircraft and the PWR is the helicopter, with the AGR lying somewhere in between. For those reasons, I do not believe that the case for the PWR is quite as clear or convincing as its advocates suggest.
I accept there are disadvantages in delay. Delay of even a short period has implications for jobs, for the maintenance of skilled technological teams and for the ability of the CEGB to discharge its obligations to the consumer. But since a nuclear pause in Europe now seems likely, or possibly likely, following Chernobyl, let us see it used constructively to help settle the great question of reactor choice if such a pause comes.
Delay or no delay, one thing is clear. Even if this country were to renounce nuclear power today and close all nuclear reactors in this country, we should have the ability only to reduce the number of nuclear plants within 200 miles of London from 14 to six and the number within 600 miles of London from 63 to 46. Naturally the remaining plants are outside this tiny island.
The message of Chernobyl is that there are no nuclear-free zones today. Renouncing nuclear power is not the answer. The answer is to continue the quest for better and safer nuclear power. Nothing is achieved without some sacrifice and some mistakes, and it may be that Chernobyl is the necessary mistake along the road to safer nuclear power. If so, we owe it to those who died at Chernobyl to see that we derive the right lessons from that unhappy event. I remain convinced that those should be lessons on how to do the job better rather than not to do it at all. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That this House takes note of the Report of the European Communities Committee on Nuclear Power in Europe (18th Report, 1985–86, H.L. 227).—(Viscount Torrington.)
Lord Ogmore: My Lords, is the noble Viscount saying that radioactivity is not easy to detect or that it is easy to detect? I am not quite clear on that point.
Viscount Torrington: My Lords, my answer is that I said it is extremely easy to detect by technical means, but we cannot feel it, see it or smell it.
3.52 p.m.
Lord Marshall of Goring: My Lords, I must first declare an interest in this matter and explain that I consider it would not be proper for me to comment directly upon the report produced by the Select Committee led by the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington. But, as he has already stressed, all of us here today must have at the forefront of our minds the dreadful nuclear accident at Chernobyl, and I have had the privilege of attending the Vienna review conference at which the Russians gave a full, frank and complete report of the Chernobyl events. I believe I am the only Member of this House who has had that opportunity and my remarks will be entirely about that event and, as far as possible, I shall use the vocabulary and language which the Russians themselves have chosen.
As all noble Lords know, the Chernobyl accident was a severe disaster and for the first time civil nuclear power has definitively caused human casualties; 31 people have died. They were mostly reactor operators and firemen who coped with the accident during the first crucial few hours after it had occurred. The long-term health effects of the accident, however, are less
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than was first feared. The Russians themselves, who seem anxious not to understate the effects, have estimated that on average the people in the affected parts of the USSR will have received an additional radiation dose roughly equivalent to half of what they would receive anyway from natural radiation during their lifetime. That is very much to be regretted, as is the upheaval caused by the evacuation of 135,000 people within a radius of 30 kilometres and also the fear and concern the accident brought to many people in many countries.
But for us here in the United Kingdom the most important question we must ask is a simple one: "Could Chernobyl happen here?". I must tell your Lordships that in my opinion it could not, and you might like to know that Academician Legasov, who led the Russian delegation to the Vienna conference, has told the press that the Chernobyl accident is simply not possible in any reactor operational outside the USSR. I think it is worth explaining why that is the case.
According to the Russians themselves, the Chernobyl reactor as originally designed has several "shortcomings"—I use their own choice of vocabulary—many of which also concerned a group of British engineers who studied this design in 1975. A matter of particular concern that the Russian reactor had what is called a positive void coefficient. With such an undesirable characteristic, if the amount of steam in the reactor core increases for any reason, then the power of the reactor tends to go up and still more water converts to steam, which tends to create still more power, and so on.
But in all commercial reactors the fuel itself becomes less effective as the power and temperature go up (in our technical jargon we call this the Doppler coefficient). This is a safety feature built in by nature and we all assumed that the Russians had ensured by careful design that this safe feature dominated the undesirable void characteristics I have just described.
But in Vienna the Russians told us that they had done this only for normal operating conditions and that at any power below 20 per cent. the void characteristic dominated and their reactor could have what is called a positive power coefficient. Such a coefficient is a description of the fact that, when all the technical features are taken into account, then a simple increase in power leads to a further increase in power and a still further increase in power, and so on.
What we have is in effect feedback on the build-up of the power which, if it is suitably triggered, is capable of producing massive power increases on a timescale of a few seconds. This unsafe characteristic is not shared by any of the major commercial reactor types operating outside the USSR. It is the key reason why the accident happened, and why the Chernobyl reactor is unique. This is why the Russian operators are instructed to avoid this unsafe condition either by closing down immediately or by using very special operating procedures. In the United Kingdom, it would be unthinkable to have such an overall fast-acting positive power coefficient and it would be unthinkable to place such tremendous safety responsibilities of a fundamental kind on the operators.

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The Chernobyl reactor is a bit like having a powerful automatic car which has a design fault so that, if it is driven below 20 miles per hour, the driver needs to give constant attention to the brake to stop the speed surging away; and if the fanbelt snaps or if a piece of rust interrupts the flow of the coolant water, the car instantly accelerates to 100 miles per hour or more, with no chance for the driver to put the brake on in time. The Chernobyl reactor actually "accelerated" from a fraction of full power to 100 times full power in just four seconds.
The Russians have admitted that they knew of this design deficiency from the beginning, and they chose to compensate for it not by built-in engineering devices but simply by instructing the operators to avoid potentially unsafe regimes. They were very strict instructions. But, in the event, the Russian operators made the error of ignoring those instructions. The Russians now admit—and again I use their words—that their designers made "a tremendous psychological mistake" in placing responsibility for the fundamental safety of the reactor upon the continuous discipline, attention, understanding and concentration of the reactor operator. It is not possible that such a situation could occur in the UK because of the differences in safety philosophy between the Russians and ourselves.
First, in the United Kingdom our reactors must have inherent characteristics which provide built-in protection and that is true whether we build gas cooled reactors or water reactors. Neither of them has characteristics of the kind I have described for Chernobyl. In either case, if anything untoward happens, the natural characteristics of the reactor compensate and oppose the change.
Secondly, in the United Kingdom those natural defences are supplemented by engineering features which prevent, limit or terminate any fault. It is physically impossible to withdraw control rods rapidly from our reactors and if the operator mishandles the control rod system the reactor automatically fails safe; that is, it closes down. Thirdly, our system designs must be tolerant to operator action. If the operator attempts to take action which could pose an immediate threat to the reactor, such action will be prevented by design provisions or the reactor will automatically close down.
Fourthly, our operators are well qualified and trained, not just for routine operations but for unusual and accident situations. The Russians themselves have admitted that improvements in their operator training programmes are required. Finally, our entire nuclear system is overseen by an independent nuclear inspectorate second to none, which can at any time, without hindrance or challenge, close down any reactor. The Russians do not appear to have the same independent inspection capability. For all these reasons, the difference between the Chernobyl reactor and the reactors we operate or might contemplate, including the proposed pressurised water reactor at Sizewell, is not a matter of degree but is a matter of gross qualitative difference.
It is of enormous relief to me, and I suspect to your Lordships, that the Russian authorities have already closed down most of their Chernobyl-type reactors to
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undertake urgent retrofits which move all of them closer to the standards that we apply in the West. We are satisfied that there is no narrow technical issue which we in the West could or should learn from the Chernobyl disaster—and I stress the phrase "narrow technical issue". We have very well established safety rules which we follow meticulously. The Russians have chosen to ignore many of them and, sadly, have now paid the price.
But that is the technical position, and progress in this country, or indeed in any democracy, does not depend narrowly on a technical appreciation. It depends ultimately on public acceptance, and there is no doubt that the Chernobyl events have shaken the confidence of the British public in the safety of nuclear power.
Because of the importance that our designers attach to defence in depth, and because of our strong safety culture, I am confident that an accident on the style of Chernobyl could never happen here. It is important that we remember this when we are considering the future of nuclear power in this country, particularly bearing in mind that since the accident our competitors in France and in Japan have reaffirmed their intention to expand their nuclear programme and the Russians themselves have recently outlined ambitious plans to increase their own nuclear power production.
4.5 p.m.
Lord Nelson of Stafford: My Lords, I first apologise to the House and to my noble friend Lord Torrington for the fact that due to a previous engagement I cannot remain for the whole of this interesting debate. It will, I am sure, be a most interesting one because of the number of speakers who have put down their names this afternoon. I shall read with great interest in Hansard the report of the debate.
I first congratulate my noble friend Lord Torrington and his committee on this excellent report. It is a most valuable contribution to this major subject, particularly at this moment in time when important decisions will be coming up in this area of power supply. It is particularly interesting as it comes at a time when the Chernobyl incident has been commented on recently by the Soviet Union's experts in Vienna. How lucky we are that in his speech this afternoon the noble Lord, Lord Marshall of Goring, has given us such an authoritative statement on exactly what is the position on that incident, which must be a dominating factor in our thinking.
It is extremely interesting to look through this report and see the summary of what is being done in other countries throughout the world, particularly in Europe, in this important field of nuclear power. My noble friend Lord Torrington referred in his opening speech to the fact that the French are now obtaining 70 per cent. of their power from nuclear energy, and a significant portion of that comes from a major station right across the Channel from us outside Dunkirk, where there are six major reactors operating within a very easy distance of a highly populated area of this country.
A factor which comes out in this report, and which I think is of paramount importance, is that our

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European friends have very much in mind the need to ensure to their industries the cheapest possible power that is available to them. In this respect, the French have succeeded in an outstanding way and are not only supplying their own industries but are supplying other industries, including ours, with the cheapest power available.
One hears on so many occasions discussions on this matter of nuclear power which range from the emotive to the highly technical, but very seldom does one hear reference to the economics of the electricity supplied. The price of the electricity which comes from our power stations is a dominating factor in many of our industries, not least to our heavy industries, which are under the most competitive pressures. I believe it is of the utmost importance to ensure that these industries have the cheapest possible power available to them. In any debate on nuclear power or on any other power I should like to see the question of making available to our industries the cheapest possible electricity paramount—but of course safety must also be paramount.
Like a number of other speakers in this debate, I have spent a lot of time in the nuclear construction industry and I know what it means to ensure maximum safety in those stations during construction and subsequently during operations. Also, we are well aware of the long timescale involved in this type of construction so we must all be thinking ahead. Our decisions today will determine what our power supply position will be at the beginning of the next century. Those of us who have been involved in nuclear power are also well aware of the importance of a consistent programme—a consistent programme of construction, of progressive improvement and of recruitment of engineers, scientists and skilled people into this important area, if the safety considerations are to be properly met.
It is now a long time since a decision was taken for a new nuclear power station to be put in hand. Our teams involved in the stations that have been constructed in this country have proved their worth. They have proved that they can produce reliable and safe stations and they have proved their worth in their technical decisions, to which the noble Lord, Lord Marshall, has already referred. But they are all getting rather long in the tooth. There is no new blood coming into the nuclear industry because people cannot see a forward programme. I believe that it is very important we should have competent teams with a proper age balance. That can come only if we have a progressive programme stretching over the years ahead.
This report makes a major contribution to the subject at a timely moment. It will play an important part, as will this debate and the contribution of noble Lords this afternoon, in creating a better public understanding of this important and often emotive subject.
I believe—I repeat—that it is paramount that this country has the cheapest power available to it. I believe that decisions on our future sources of power supply should include a major element of nuclear power. I conclude by emphasising that we have a major responsibility to ensure that future generations
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have the choice of that form of power in the future. I congratulate the committee on a major contribution to this important subject.
4.12 p.m.
Lord Swann: My Lords, I hope that I too may be excused if I have to leave, as I fear that I will, before the end of this important debate.
Sitting as a member of the committee under the able chairmanship of the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, and thinking a good deal about the problems subsequently, I am left with far more thoughts than I can possibly put to our Lordships this afternoon. But I have come to two conclusions that weigh upon me. The first is that, given our present state of knowledge, it could well be that phasing out nuclear energy will be the worst possible strategy. The second is that, because our state of knowledge is continually altering and because of the complexity, the contentiousness and the difficulty of the issues, we sorely need an impartial expert, wholly trusted and continuing official body to which governments and all concerned can turn with confidence for guidance on national energy problems.
In and around the British Isles we have a good deal more coal, oil and gas than most countries. It might seem therefore that we have no great problem. But the world is currently burning up in a year fossil fuels that took nature a million years to lay down. Not surprisingly, therefore, they will run out. How soon depends upon a lot of things, in particular the discovery of new fossil fuel sources, the rate at which we can develop other sources of energy and the extent to which we can reduce the amount of energy that we presently waste. But run out they certainly will, while getting increasingly expensive in the meantime. The time scale is hard to predict with any certainty but, if we go on as we are, there can be little doubt that we shall be in increasing trouble as we move towards the middle of the next century, and we look like being in very serious trouble by the end of it.
It follows that if we care about our successors on this planet—and surely we do—even if governments are prone to thinking no more than a few years ahead, then we have to face the inevitable problem now rather than shirking it.
The exhaustion of fossil fuels, however, is far from being our only problem. All of your Lordships will have heard of acid rain and the greenhouse effect. Unfortunately, when fossil fuels are burnt, acids are generated which blow away on the wind and ultimately fall, dissolved, in rain on countries downwind, polluting their environment and killing their trees. Because there are some thousands of miles of ocean to windward of us it does not very much worry us in the United Kingdom, but this windborne effluent from our power stations, and to a lesser extent our domestic heating, our industrial processes and our motor cars, ends up polluting Europe, and especially Scandinavia, who do not like it one little bit.
Like every scientific and technological problem—and as a scientist I am well aware of this—the phenomenon of acid rain is not as simple as all that, but, after a period of doubt about the true cause, the scientific consensus is moving slowly, steadily, towards the burning of fossil fuels, and especially coal, as the prime culprit.

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In itself this is not disastrous. The smoke from power stations can be cleaned up and the acid removed, but it is expensive. Even that is not the end of the problem. The residue left after the cleaning process is very considerable and, ironically, it contains not less but more radioactivity than the waste from nuclear stations which causes so much public concern. One must never forget that radioactivity is not some freak product of nuclear reactors; it is everywhere around us, and cleaning up smoke from power stations is a very good way of concentrating it in one place, with the familiar problems of disposal. Acid rain then looks like becoming a serious British problem as well as an international one.
But probably far more serious, and certainly much more sinister, is the so-called greenhouse effect. Fossil fuels—if your Lordships will forgive my dwelling for a few moments on a little elementary chemistry—consist of hydrocarbons, and burning them means combining them with oxygen. The result is a lot of hydrogen oxide and carbon dioxide in the air. Whereas hydrogen oxide is simply water, and harmless, carbon dioxide, although not poisonous in the ordinary sense of the word, accumulates in the atmosphere and acts as a shield that prevents the earth losing heat into space, much like the glass of a greenhouse, hence the name.
It might be supposed that a bit of warming up of the earth would be a good idea in our chilly climate, but meteorology is a complex and difficult subject, and there is every reason to believe that warming up the planet, even a very little, will cause extensive climatic changes. If the warming up went on only a few degrees further, it would cause the polar ice-caps to start melting, the sea level to rise and land that is at present only a little above sea level to be flooded—and there is a great deal of land in the world. In passing, I observe that half the capital cities of the world, most notably London, are liable to tidal flooding even as things are.
Scientists have been aware of the greenhouse possibility for a long time. The average temperature of the earth has risen by a degree or so in the last 80 years, the period during which we have been burning fossil fuels on a really large scale. It seems that there may already have been some climatic changes, and there is some evidence of melting of the ice-caps. Whether this is due to the enormously increased burning of fossil fuels in the last century is not proven, although in the opinion of the experts, not me, it looks like being increasingly likely. On any showing it is an alarming phenomenon that needs the most careful monitoring and very expensive research.
How can we hope to escape these dilemmas? There are a number of ways out, none of them easy and few of them very promising. First, we could and should stop wasting energy. Enormous amounts of it are wasted in heating buildings that promptly lose their heat to the outside. But the capital costs of doing much about the problem are gigantic. Likewise, most of our industrial processes and all forms of transport could be made a lot more energy-efficient than they are. We have made a start, but the realistic estimates of what might be achieved overall—that is to say, savings in the foreseeable future of perhaps 20 per cent. or 30 per cent, at most—will not solve the problem.
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Secondly, we could and should pursue more energetically what are known as the renewable sources of energy. We have already gone pretty well as far as the geography of the British Isles allows in the matter of hydroelectric power. However, there are other options: tidal barrages, wave energy, solar energy, wind energy and geothermal energy. Unfortunately, the possibilities are limited. They will also be expensive and some of them are technically very difficult; nor will they make enough difference to enable us to escape from the central dilemma for a long time hence. We nonetheless need them.
In the present state of knowledge, it looks very much as though there is only one possibility likely to be left to us if we want our successors to enjoy in the next century and beyond the vast benefits of modern society. That possibility is nuclear energy. This too has its limitations and, as your Lordships well know and have already heard, it has its risks. The reserves of uranium are not limitless but they look like lasting for at least 500 years, given that we turn sooner or later to using fast breeder reactors which use uranium much more efficiently. Well before then, however, we may reasonably expect that we shall have made enough scientific and technological progress to manage, if need be, without uranium. We may reasonably expect to have the bonus of nuclear fusion—that elusive and much cleaner (if not totally clean) process from which the sun derives its heat. Even failing that, we shall surely know how to use energy far more sparingly and efficiently than we do now. We may also expect to have developed both more and more efficient alternatives sources of energy which will be capable of meeting at least a reduced demand.
As I am sure your Lordships know and will hear much about this afternoon and this evening, there is much unease in the country about the health risks of nuclear energy. There is no time for me to go into details, but the evidence indicates that the risks are in fact less than the health risks of burning fossil fuels. Indeed, the committee was more than a little surprised that the Friends of the Earth (perhaps the foremost campaigner against nuclear energy) conceded in their evidence that the nuclear industry was not significantly better or worse than coal. However, in the light of what I have tried to explain about the hazards of burning coal, oil and gas, it looks as though there ought to be at least as much and probably more unease about that than about turning to nuclear energy.
Moreover, some of the dangers of burning fossil fuels are inherent and inevitable. I have touched on the greenhouse effect. The exhaustion of hydrocarbons, which are essential as a fuel for many sorts of transport, will one day be an alarming problem because they can only be synthesised at a huge cost in electricity. By contrast, the dangers of nuclear energy, as the noble Lord, Lord Marshall of Goring, has already said, are technological problems. Most if not all of those problems are already solved, in the West at least, and any that remain unsolved are, in principle, soluble.
In no way do I presume to say what the precise pattern for future energy in the UK should be as we move into the next century. It is a difficult, complicated and no doubt shifting problem that involves extensive monitoring and research in a great

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multiplicity of areas. As I mentioned earlier, it leaves me in no doubt that we need an extra, impartial and wholly trustworthy standing commission to advise governments, oppositions, industry, trade unions and the general public on what to do for the best.
On the other hand, the then Secretary of State for Energy said in 1982:
"I do not see the Government's task as being to try and plan the future shape of energy production and consumption. Our task is rather to set a framework which will ensure that the market operates in the energy sector with a minimum of distortion and that energy is produced and consumed efficiently".
The then Secretary of State for Energy is currently the Chancellor of the Exchequer and I hesitate to take issue with him, but I do. The free market is an admirable mechanism in a great many respects; but can it encompass the exhaustion of valuable resources for all time, or the efficient use of these dwindling resources when (for complex international reasons) their price has fallen sharply rather than risen; or the legitimate anxieties of society; or the gradual and almost imperceptible but potentially very dangerous disruption of the environment; or new technological possibilities? I do not believe that market forces can deal with what economists call those externalities.
I profoundly hope that some government some day soon will actually want a national energy commission. It is not a new idea, and I cannot do better than quote the last paragraph from a very perceptive report by an impartial and expert professional body, the Institute of Energy. It says:
"In view of the technical complexities … the risk of emotional overtones, of the deep concern of public opinion over certain aspects of the subject, and of the need for dispassionate thinking to support objective policy assessments, we regard the case for a national energy commission to advise the Government on the facts and on the options as an extremely strong one".
4.26 p.m.
The Earl of Bessborough: My Lords, I hope your Lordships allow me to intervene briefly in this debate, to speak especially about France and the French who, as the report says, have the most extensive nuclear programme in Europe and with whom we now have an operational 2,000 megawatt cross-Channel electricity link from which I gather (and I hope my noble friend Lord Davidson may be able to confirm this) we can receive nuclear generated electricity up to 25 per cent. cheaper than we can provide it for ourselves. I think your Lordships would like to congratulate all the engineers who have made this link possible under very difficult conditions. I think I am right in saying that as a result we in this country now know very much more about sub-sea cable problems.
In the late 1940s, nearly 40 years ago, when I was a Secretary in the British Embassy in Paris, I helped Sir John Cockcroft, the famous nuclear physicist then at Harwell, in talking to the French about the building of their first mini test reactor called Zoë at Fort Chatillon. I had many talks with the High Commissioner or Minister, M. Raoul Dautry, as well as with Joliot Curie and Bertrand Goldschmidt of the French Atomic Energy Commissariat.
Ever since then, keeping in touch with my French friends (including M. Gaston Palewski, the subsequent Minister) concerning nuclear energy, I have always
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thought that, despite our own reticence in Britain and reluctance to share know-how with the French due to our close association with the Americans, the French would ultimately develop an effective nuclear industry of their own. I declare an interest, being half French, but at the time I was sorry we did not co-operate more closely with them. Now, with the new cable link, France can supply nuclear generated electricity to us.
I wondered whether this might not ultimately happen when, during the 1960s, I was a Minister and a Shadow Minister concerned with atomic energy and the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, was chairman of the Atomic Energy Authority. Again in the 1970s, when I was for six years energy spokesman for our political group in the European Parliament, I became even more convinced of France's nuclear capability. I became yet more so during the six years I was a member of Sub-Committee F over which my noble friend Lord Torrington now presides so effectively. The report of his sub-committee, endorsed by the full Select Committee, is certainly one of the best a European sub-committee has ever produced, and I should like to congratulate him and his colleagues on their excellent work.
I mentioned France because, as I say, I think the section on that country is one of the most interesting in the report, and I hope that my noble friend Lord Davidson can assure me that nuclear co-operation with France is now as close as can realistically be expected—as close as possible. I fully agree with the conclusions of the report, in both Part I and II. We in this country must also develop our nuclear capability as a valuable contribution to a diversity of energy supplies and as a means of conserving for future generations supplies of fossil fuels.
I have spent many hours in the Energy Committee of the European Parliament considering the problems of Three Mile Island, and I have since read various reports on Chernobyl and have listened to the noble Lord, Lord Marshall of Goring, on this subject on various occasions, including this afternoon. I know how much all your Lordships appreciate his highly important contribution to this debate. With him, and with my noble friend Lord Torrington, I do not believe there is any possibility of similar accidents occurring in the case of our own advanced gas cooled reactors or any future pressurised water reactors which we might build. We all must agree that Chernobyl was an out-of-date design which could never have been licensed in the West, and that there is no possibility of that kind of accident occurring in our reactors.
I hope therefore that the Chernobyl disaster will not result in too long a nuclear pause in the West or long-term falling away of orders for nuclear plant. I agree none the less with the Select Committee that nuclear safety is an international problem which affects everyone, and that there must be an international agreement covering all aspects of safety and rigorous international inspection. However, overall we must accept that atomic energy has caused infinitely less loss of life or injury than coal mining, oil drilling, the kind of industrial accidents which were mentioned just now, or even driving on the roads or smoking. Therefore, I think it would be madness not to continue to develop this economical and relatively safe source of energy.

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I congratulate my noble friend Lord Torrington and his colleagues on thier admirable report. It should certainly help bring us all to our senses and encourage us not to be unduly swayed by the anti-nuclear lobby or. above all, to jeopardise the future of the 100,000 people who depend directly or indirectly on the nuclear industry.
4.34 p.m.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, first of all perhaps I too may congratulate the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, and the members of his Select Committee on the excellent report that we are debating today. It comes at an ideal time because of the problems that have emerged lately in the nuclear industry.
I start from the premise that we must keep a nuclear energy industry. I have listened to previous speakers and I have taken careful note of what they have said. I agreed with most of what the noble Lord, Lord Swann, said in his broad assessment of the problem. But in a debate in this closed Chamber we must be careful not to misunderstand or underplay the deep and widespread public disquiet arising from Chernobyl. The disquiet is felt not only by the Friends of the Earth, the anti-nuclear lobby or one political party.
I have spoken to people outside in the main stream of this country who possibly will never vote for my party. They are seriously concerned about what took place at Chernobyl and about what the future holds for their children and grandchildren if we continue with a nuclear policy. It is incumbent on the nuclear energy industry to be as open and frank as possible, to make people aware of what is happening and to bring that confidence back. It will not be brought back just by speeches in your Lordships' House. It has to be done by example outside.
Having said that, I oppose an over-reaction to and misrepresentation of what is happening in the nuclear energy industry. People who are not in favour of nuclear energy are entitled to oppose it but they must oppose it on a factual basis, produce evidence in a proper manner and not frighten people unnecessarily.
I have before me a press release dated 10th November 1986 from the CEGB regarding an article that appeared in The Times. I accept that what the CEGB says in the press release is quite correct. On that occasion The Times was not performing a public service in any sense of those words. The press release concludes:
"Both reactors at Hinkley Point 'A' are operating normally. The Times was wrong in stating that one reactor would be shut down this week. The Times was also wrong to suggest that Britain's other Magnox nuclear power stations faced premature closure, leading to possible winter power cuts. In fact, there is no evidence at all that any of the other Magnox stations are affected by this particular corrosion problem. For planning and accounting purposes the lives of the Magnox stations have been extended from 25 to 30 years and this is unchanged".
I cite that briefly as an example of what a less than responsible article can do in misinforming people.
I do not want to appear to be wearing the hat of criticising the Russians, but the widespread contamination caused by Chernobyl has frightened people more than anything else. Because nuclear contamination knows no boundaries and depends on the prevailing
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winds we must try to institute some form of international inspectorate which will have the right to go anywhere and see anything as it sees fit; and not at the behest of a particular government.
The question of employment in the nuclear industry has been touched on. The issue of whether or not we have nuclear energy is so profound that it cannot be decided on employment alone. Nevertheless, it is a prominent factor in our debates. I find it strange that the leaders of a trade union who would not ballot their members on a national strike are prepared without a ballot to cast their votes to put more than 100,000 people out of work. I find the double standards to be rather strange, and they are unacceptable to me as a trade unionist who has been able to vote in my own union all my life. I say no more than that.
I have to tell your Lordships that I speak as a complete layman, with no technical knowledge or expertise on this subject, but I have always been led to believe and have always understood that the advancement of nuclear energy is one of our sunrise industries. It is a part of the future and is there whether we like it or not. It is no good people saying that it is a thing of the past. There are upwards of 400 nuclear power stations throughout the world and that number will continue to grow. I accept that there is possibly a case for a pause to re-assess the situation in order to produce absolutely undeniable evidence to the general public that nuclear power is a safe way of producing energy and that it will be quite safe to develop it.
However, what particularly worries me is the number of people employed in the nuclear industry in a special capacity. I think the noble Lord, Lord Swann, also referred to this point. Over 100,000 people are employed. Let me briefly give some figures. British Nuclear Fuels employs a total of 15,502 people. The company lists 2,604 craftsmen, 982 apprentices, 866 scientists, 3,508 technicians, over 5,000 semi-skilled and unskilled workers and 2,380 administration personnel. The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority employs over 13,000 people in arguably Britain's most advanced and leading industry in research and development. The figures are somewhat similar. The authority has 1,601 craftsmen, 462 apprentices and over 1,600 scientists.
I am particularly worried about what will happen if we institute a moratorium that goes on for too long. As I said, I have no technical knowledge or background on which to decide what the issue is, but I have always understood that if one opts out of a fast developing technology, the longer one opts out with a moratorium the more one falls behind and gives competitors the edge. The way that technology is moving these days, I suggest that we would never make up such a loss.
I do not want to be accused of siding with any particular lobby because I believe that we are bound to see coal-fired power stations as our major supply into the distant future, provided we clean up our act. I do not accept that coal-fired power stations in this country are the sole contributors to acid rain, but it is undeniable that they are major contributors. I quote from a report in my own trade union journal:
"Coal contains uranium; every year in Britain from coal burning in power stations 120 tons of uranium is either dispersed into the atmosphere or in the form of ash".

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The source of energy which has so far been attacked by virile periphery groups has been nuclear energy. Not far from where I live in Yorkshire some of the major power stations were under seige by similar groups of people. I do not begrudge them the right to indulge in such activities if they believe they can speed up the Government's programme to deal with the problem of acid rain or the emission of ash from acid rain—sulphur dioxide—which we all want dealt with. However, I suggest that if we follow their arguments to the logical conclusion it will not be myself, my children or my grandchildren who will be affected. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Swann, that there is no way alternative sources of energy have anything like the dimension that will be required for our industrial future. We have to ask: what will our successors eventually become? Do they become troglodytes again? That is the situation if such people pursue the argument to its logical conclusion.
I have heard arguments concerning the safety of the nuclear industry compared with other industries. There is no doubt that the nuclear energy industry in this country has a safety record that is second to none. Some of the claims that have been made about cancer in the area of nuclear power stations, of children suffering from leukaemia in those areas, have been debunked by figures. Children in clusters are suffering from leukaemia in areas that are hundreds of miles away and where there are no nuclear power stations which could possibly affect them. That is another red herring which should be exposed.
I find it difficult to understand people who say that loss of life is another effect because it is not nuclear, it is just sudden death, nothing else happens and nobody is affected afterwards. I find that to be an odd argument to accept. I remember when I was a newspaper boy in Manchester in the early 1930s, when media coverage or availability was extremely limited. I picked up the bundle of newspapers which I was to deliver and noticed the headlines which stated that over 300 miners were trapped in Gresford colliery, near Wrexham, and it had to be sealed off. I would not accept from any present day trade union leader that the tragedy ended there and that it did not scar their wives, children and grandchildren. I suspect that the terrible accident in that colliery probably still scars the area and will do so for time immemorial. To fall back on the argument that it is a "one-off" but nuclear energy carries on is a little bit blasé.
My own party's view is to hold the situation at present. I do not go totally along that road. I believe I clashed with the Minister a few weeks ago when we were debating alternative resources. I believe there are two sides to the equation. If we replace nuclear energy with a further, heavy building programme of coal-fired power stations—I certainly would not turn to oil in the present situation—we are bound to create an increase in ancillary jobs. Whether there would be less or more than in the nuclear industry is conjecture, but there would be some spin-off. I am not particularly making the case that we ought to pursue that line.
Everyone hopes there will be an economic and industrial recovery and I believe that in this country there will be a substantial increase in the need for
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energy. There will not be a reduced role for coal-fired power stations. There is a stable and, perhaps, increasing role. I hope that while we await the result of the Sizewell inquiry—I am not seeking to influence noble Lords present—it will be possible to proceed with a programme of one or two coal-fired power stations in order to meet the situation and help industry in the wider context.
Having said that, I honestly believe that as a nation we cannot turn our backs on nuclear energy. It is here to stay. However, with the provisos I have mentioned of ensuring that we take the public with us, with an open book showing what we are doing, we will regain the public's confidence. However, if any of your Lordships think that the Chernobyl disaster has been forgotten by ordinary people who use electricity, I must insist that it has not. We must do our utmost to allay their fears as best we can.
I close by once again thanking the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, and members of the committee. I think that they have performed a tremendous service and that the debate in your Lordships' House will not only be read nationally but internationally. My only hope is that people will listen.
4.50 p.m.
Lord Tanlaw: My Lords, first of all I want to thank the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, for his dispensation that allowed me to take part in this debate although I may perhaps be unable to listen to his winding-up speech. Having once sat with members of this committee, I must congratulate him and his Sub-Committee F on producing one of their finest, if not the finest report that I can recall being produced by them. I must admit that I agree with almost every word spoken by the noble Viscount in his opening speech which set the theme for this debate. The only point that I shall take up and on which I slightly disagree with him concerns his remarks about the political conferences. If I may pick up something that the noble Lord, Lord Dean, said, I think it is possible to have underestimated the very deep concern of the public at that time and their feeling of slight bewilderment because they were not nearly so well informed as we have been in preparation for this debate. Delegates at those conferences, including my own delegation—and I disagree with their conclusion which I felt was possibly due to the lack of information that is now available to us—felt that the decisions were a reaction to the feeling of the time experienced by most people in the country regardless of party loyalties.
The noble Lord, Lord Marshall of Goring, not only sent me the excellent video Could it Happen Here? but also raised this question in this debate. From the information that has been given, the exchange of letters I have had, and indeed from what has been said in this debate so far, I am absolutely convinced that it is extremely unlikely if not virtually impossible, that such an accident would happen in this country. But this accident did not happen here; it happened over there, in Chernobyl. I think that is perhaps the area which needs to be tidied up, and some assurances need to be given to the general public if nuclear power is to

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receive the go-ahead that it requires under the illustrative programme put forward by the European Community.
I think this point is summed up in paragraph 274 of the conclusions of Volume I of the report:
"The real lesson of Chernobyl is that nuclear safety is an international problem which affects everyone. There are no nuclear free zones".
It is in this context that our procedures in this country were perhaps caught a little by surprise. I think that people were prepared; government departments, the agencies, the CEGB and everyone connected with the nuclear industry had made preparations for some possible accident or emergency on our own patch. However, when something reached us from abroad, I have a feeling that the lines of communication were not very clear and that the public was left in confusion for some period of time as to just how serious the situation was. It is in this area where restoring the confidence of the general public that the safety factor in the nuclear industry is as good abroad as it is at home can be most productive.
In paragraph 845 of Volume II of the report the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, expressed a very valid point and raised serious doubts. We might get it right in Europe, but what about Russia, which still has a number of models of what are considered to be unsatisfactorily designed nuclear power stations? Will the Russians show that they are good Europeans in the sense that they will conform and agree with the safety procedures that the whole of the European Community may well concur are satisfactory? I think that is a point that needs to be expounded and looked into, possibly over the next 12 months.
I mentioned earlier—as indeed did the noble Lord, Lord Dean of Beswick—the public concern at the time of Chernobyl. I think that the existence of a multiplicity of government departments and agencies which have every right to be concerned and to issue statements when such an accident happens was really half the problem. There may very well be a need for one sole agency to be concerned and to act as the interface between the Government and the general public.
I have had difficulty enough—let alone members of the general public—in trying to speak to the persons concerned. As Members of Parliament we are privileged to have access to an officer of, say, the CEGB or British Nuclear Fuels who can keep us well informed, but an ordinary member of the public who is really worried about radioactivity and who has a general worry of this kind, experiences great difficulty in getting through to someone who will either reassure him or tell him the required information or the right department to which he wishes to speak. He may be a sheep farmer on Eskdalemuir who, like myself and many others, several months after the accident at Chernobyl has said to have his sheep killed and examined for radioactivity without being given too much explanation as to why. So I think that it would be very helpful if British Nuclear Fuels, the Department of the Environment, the National Radiological Protection Board, the UK Atomic Energy Authority, the Natural Environmental Research Council, the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology
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and so on—the list goes on—who all have an interest in radioactivity, could intercommunicate and communicate better with the public through one agency.
There is one government agency or department which is not included in that list, yet it is perhaps the most important of all in my view, and it is the only government department that has daily, if not hourly, contact with its counterparts in Europe and the rest of the world. It has a national network of monitoring stations for rainfall, and in many of the main towns it also has a centre which the public are quite used to dealing with. It is of course the Meteorological Office. I am talking only about an incoming disaster or incoming radioactivity. Here the Meteorological Office is vital and the information that it dispenses and predictions that it makes are absolutely critical when an accident takes place, which may occur not only in this country but, more importantly, beyond our shores. As I explained earlier, I feel that there is a case for the argument that the British public were not kept adequately informed after the accident, and it seems to me that it was because there was no one agency involved with a clear means and responsibility to issue the information which the public required.
The situation was handled better in Germany. I understand that the German weather service is responsible not only for measuring rainfall but also for measuring radioactivity, and this may have been a significant factor in explaining the difference between the reactions of the general public in Germany and in the United Kingdom to the event at Chernobyl. I wonder whether there is a good case to be made for setting up a similar arrangement in this country, whereby the Meteorological Office has the ability to detect radioactivity in the weather. The weather centres which have been set up in our larger cities could then provide possibly a good interface between the general public and the information about radiation levels, if and whenever it is of concern to the general public.
What is also missing is that there is no local person or local officer to whom one can go. Obviously, the local authorities will have to be brought in and I suggest that it is a radiation officer—or perhaps someone in the public health department of a local authority could be designated as a radiation officer—who is trained up and organised to link up with other government departments if such an accident should happen again.
In preparation for this debate I have asked each of these departments in turn and each of them says that it will take up to two years to work on a possible inter-relationship between government departments in order to get this information out to the general public. While at first I thought that it was rather shocking that it should take so long, on reflection it may give us a good opportunity to draw back and to think again about how we shall reassure the public. We need the public's confidence in and support for the nuclear programme or it will not work, for the reasons given by the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington.
Let us take the extreme case that he mentioned: that a political party in this country, Germany or even France, decides that it is not satisfied with safety and does not want to build any more nuclear power

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stations or wants to shut existing ones. What are the alternatives? The noble Lord, Lord Swann, with his depth of knowledge, which is greater than mine, said that it is not easy to say, "We shall go straight into fossil fuel to make our electricity".
The atmospheric pollution that coal-fired power stations cause was mentioned earlier. I think that we were told from the Government Benches only two weeks ago that 2·5 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide are released by our power stations every year. That is equivalent to 66kg of sulphur per person per annum. That is a worrying statistic, but I am far more worried about another one—200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide are released from United Kingdom power stations alone every year. That is 3·5 million tonnes per person per annum in this country. That situation is already creating serious problems, and I shall refer to it later. That 65 per cent. of the heat generated by coal-fired power stations goes into the atmosphere is now well known. There may be a 50 per cent. increase in electricity bills. There may be an increase in the number of premature deaths. The American experience, according to one set of statistics, shows that there have been 40,000 premature deaths every year in the United States due to atmospheric pollution.
Decisions are not easy. The European Community and the industrialised world have the responsibility and burden of deciding which way they are going. They will need a good two years before they can come to such a decision. What happens in the industrialised West will be followed by the necessary programmes of rural electrification in the third world if it is to catch up with the benefits enjoyed by industrial civilisations. It too will be adding greatly to atmospheric pollution. It will take a lead from what we do in Europe.
Noble Lords who have a long memory will recall that on 30th November 1978 (col. 1442 of Hansard) I drew to the attention of the House worries about the change in global weather patterns that might result from carbon dioxide or, as it is well known today, the greenhouse effect. I have recently read confirmation in the United States' geographical survey on permafrost in Alaska that the predictions and slight worries expressed in the House at that time seem to be occurring far faster than was predicted in 1978 with the knowledge then available.
Governments in Europe have an ethical responsibility to decide whether we are going to change the atmosphere permanently and change the climate of the northern hemisphere by maintaining a major policy of fossil fuel burning in our power stations.
This debate is timely. The need for decisions on the laying down or commissioning of nuclear power stations may be urgent, but far more urgent is the need to decide whether we use an economic measure alone in making a judgment on the long-term future of nuclear generation. I hope that after two years, and after the safeguards which were missing in the recent disaster have been put right, international co-operation, with Russia in particular, will reach a new level. I hope that Russia, as part of Europe, will co-operate on a problem which is a human and not a political one, so that we can produce a long lasting and happy answer for us all.
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, I wonder whether I may give him the opportunity to correct what must have been a slip of the tongue. He referred to an output of 3·5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per person. With 50 million people in the country that works out at 1·7 x 1014 tonnes of carbon dioxide per nation per year. I feel that he must have made a slip.
Lord Tanlaw: My Lords, with respect to the noble Earl, I queried that figure. I was given it by the CEGB information officer. I was astounded by it. I wait for any further correction from any noble Lord who may be more scientific than I am.
5.6 p.m.
Lord Plowden: My Lords, I should declare a past interest because in 1954 I was appointed the first chairman of the Atomic Energy Authority. I want to congratulate the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, and his colleagues on a most excellent report that we are discussing. The committee's report is an important step in building confidence in the future of nuclear power. I have been encouraged greatly by listening to all who have spoken in the debate and who have accepted the views of the committee and not those of those people who wish to slow down the development of nuclear power.
The report does not confine itself to four or five years; it looks well into the next century. That makes the timescales of energy supply planning clear. It is not possible to discuss the future of nuclear power without accepting, as we all heard today, that many people are apprehensive and fearful of its use. In its report, the committee points out that that stems largely from a fear of radiation because it cannot be detected by the senses.
Some 30 people died in the accident at Chernobyl. No doubt some other people will have their lives shortened by the amount of radiation that they received. We must, however, put those casualties into perspective. I should like to give some figures. In 1985, 4,832 people were killed on the roads of this country; in 1983, 45,800 were killed on the roads of the United States; and, in 1984, 591 people were killed in industry in Great Britain. That includes agriculture, construction and mining. We seem to ignore those figures, horrendous as they are, perhaps because they occur only in small numbers. However, I think it is generally because we have come to accept them as part of the price we pay for the kind of society in which we live.
There are other disadvantages in fossil fuel-fired generating plants, as the noble Lord, Lord Swann, has pointed out. Perhaps I may add to the figures that have already been given. In 1984, United Kingdom power stations poured 2·4 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere. As we know, that has adverse effects on the environment as far away as Scandinavia. That does not take into account the millions of tonnes of pollutants poured into the atmosphere by the motor cars which we all drive.
The report reminds us that there are other substances that cannot be detected by the senses: mercury and pesticide residues. In the last few weeks there have been two accidents in Switzerland on the

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banks of the Rhine involving these materials, but the amount of alarm that this has caused has been very little, at least in this country.
Electric power is the basis of modern civilisation. With the exception of Germany—which has abundant forms of extremely cheap lignite—the committee found that all the European utilities agreed that nuclear energy is the cheapest source available. There have been suggestions that we should delay the whole matter. I am not sure whether I understood the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, aright when he suggested that we should hold up the development of nuclear power until it had been decided whether in this country we wanted to adopt the AGR or the PWR. I do not intend to enter into that controversy.
Viscount Torrington: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord would permit me to correct that impression. I said that if there is a politically or technically caused pause in the nuclear power programme I hope that that pause may be used to sort out the problem of reactor choice. But I did not suggest that I would wish to encourage the pause.
Lord Plowden: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that reassurance. I am reassured. However, the reactor which the noble Lord, Lord Marshall, mentioned—and which is mentioned in the report—to which I attach most importance in the long run is the fast breeder reactor. One was started at Dounreay in the 'fifties and I understand that the progress made has been very great. Within reasonable time, therefore, an economic and safer reactor can be put into use. It has the great advantage not only of better safety but that it can use the spent fuel from the thermal reactors. I understand that there are stocks today which, if used in a fast breeder reactor, are equivalent to the nation's recoverable coal reserves.
However, I would issue a plea that in no circumstances should a delay be imposed so that the teams working on the development of the fast reactor are broken up and the valuable experience lost. It is vital that that knowledge should continue to be exploited, and that it should be exploited on the international scale which has been suggested.
Finally, we want to emphasise that the nuclear industry must be more open and explain to the public the advantages and disadvantages of nuclear power. It must admit its mistakes when they are made. The need for this is extremely urgent, as the noble Lord, Lord Dean of Beswick, pointed out. It is all very well for us in this House to discuss and agree the advantages of nuclear power, but we have to persuade the great British public of its advantages and of its inherent safety when compared with other forms of power. But, if the nuclear industry is to be more open, the corollary is that the media must refrain from treating everything to do with nuclear energy in a sensational way.
If I look back on my time as Chairman of the Atomic Energy Authority, I think that we were too secretive. The reason was that the first use of nuclear power for generating electricity was at Calder Hall and the reactors at Calder Hall were built to produce plutonium for our military programme. That made us particularly secretive. When I think about the fire in one of the very early reactors at Windscale, I do not
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feel we were secretive then. We had two, if not three, inquiries chaired by the then Chairman of ICI, Dr. Fleck. the results of those inquiries were made public. However, as is clear from the report and our discussions this afternoon, we need to be thinking very seriously about how we are to meet the energy needs of our children, our grandchildren, and even our great-grandchildren.
One of the important contributions of the report is to focus our minds on the fact that decisions we take now, or fail to take now, will determine how well placed future generations will be to meet their energy needs and to maintain their standard of living, let alone increase it. The message from the report is strong and clear: that a substantial expansion of nuclear capacity is needed. I would endorse that and suggest that there are no realistic alternatives which have the potential to meet our future requirements with the economic and environmental advantages of safe nuclear power. To renounce nuclear power would cost our descendants very dear, particularly if our competitors continue with it, as indeed the French have already declared that they will do.
5.17 p.m.
Lord Ironside: My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Torrington for introducing this subject which we are now debating. As a member of Sub-Committee F I should like to congratulate him—I am afraid the noble Viscount is not in the Chamber at the moment—on the way that he chaired the committee in this inquiry. If Russian reactors are accident prone, he is not, because he kept the line of inquiry absolutely on course throughout the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident.
It is ironic that the binding forces of nature in the nucleus of uranium isotopes have proved to be far more compelling than the forces of man trying to bring together countries, and for that matter physicists and nuclear engineers, to work towards common thermal reactor designs through the medium of Euratom. It has been easier in fact to split the nations on most aspects of radioactivity than to split the atom. I would say that the only factor that now seems to be fusing minds together—at least in Europe, thank goodness!—is for the realisation of the fast breeder reactor in the early 2000s and the distant prospect of the fusion reactor itself embodied for all of us to see at the moment in the JET experiment at Culham.
The whole subject of nuclear power invites a number of questions on the international scene, as we can see from the illustrative programme which we are now debating. We should be more concerned with the United Kingdom fallout from all of this and how we ourselves can respond to the energy scenario, which is not just centred on the question of which type of thermal reactor we should have, but on other far more significant factors, such as the management of the whole of the uranium fuel cycle, from enrichment to reprocessing to waste disposal, and that sort of thing; and keeping the right balance of coal-fired generation in the face of increased nuclear generation, establishing international safety standards, developing acceptable waste disposal methods, and developing decommissioning and dismantling techniques for stations.

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Incidentally, following this last point, we have all just read of the lives lost a few days ago in dismantling a fossil-fired station in this country. There is as yet no experience in dismantling a nuclear station, but I do not think that from this we should necessarily jump to the conclusion that it would be more dangerous just because it is nuclear, and that more lives will be lost. As in the case of ammunition, it becomes dangerous only as soon as you forget that it is safe, but I shall return to the decommissioning point later.
As my noble friend Lord Torrington has said, the illustrative programme's global target is set at 40 per cent. nuclear-fired generation capacity by 1995 and 50 per cent. by 2000, which, in the opinion of the committee is unlikely to be achieved. These figures of course sound very straight-forward, but they cloud the situation in the member states, which have widely different resources and regimes of electricity production.
We have to take decisions nationally to ensure that our own security of supply is at a competitive cost. In trying to increase the contribution of nuclear power to electricity generation, we must not lose sight of the fact that it cannot be done unless there are adequate and readily available engineering skills and capacity in UK industry to carry the decisions from design through into building plant to time and to cost. I think that we must also ensure that we get the right mix of fossil-fired and nuclear power stations to be able to utilise our coal and oil resources in the most effective way before premium uses of these primary fuels appear on the scene and give nuclear power generation its prime role.
All of this decision-making is complicated by the very long lead times in getting generating stations on stream—and this was a point which was emphasised by the noble Lord, Lord Nelson of Stafford—by introducing new reactor technology and clean combustion, and, I suppose, eventually getting into the technology of fast breeders and fusion. The situation we now find ourselves in is the result of earlier decisions to go for Magnox stations followed by AGR. To some extent, we are not alone in this, but I think that we have to bear the agony of having too many reactor designs to worry about.
There are calls now for AGR, PWR and coal, but in the evidence I think that there is a clear case for nuclear-power generation on the grounds of lower unit cost of production, so that, as the noble Lord, Lord Nelson, has said, in the end industry can get electricity at the right price.
I think that the planned nuclear option (if this is what we can call it) of AGR or PWR at Sizewell exists only so long as we can reach a decision in time. The inquiry delay at Sizewell has meant that we are running out of AGR ordering time and, in order to arrive on stream in 1994, we shall find that we are committed to the PWR because, as the CEGB has said, it can start ordering straight away instead of having to wait two years before AGR ordering can commence. Of course, with AGR there are perhaps the added risks of further planning delays. In theory, I suppose that the planned option still exists, but in practice it seems to have just evaporated, and, from
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what has been said in evidence, I think it now looks only like a fall-back position at the best.
Certainly, if Sizewell goes PWR, the AGR can never again be an option. The squeeze will then start to come on the AGR technical resources in the country, putting a premium on the maintenance and running of the 14 stations of this type.
The South of Scotland Electricity Board takes the view that it is better to concentrate resources on one type of thermal reactor, and I think that this makes sense, but it looks as though very late in the day PWR, and not AGR, will become the favourite.
The mood in the United Kingdom nuclear industry—and here I have to declare an interest—is becoming apprehensive, and it is becoming more difficult to justify keeping facilities on tap indefinitely without some firmer ordering prospect than we now have. It is becoming more difficult to attract the right talent and to assure engineers of further career opportunity in this field. It takes years to build up skills and the trained people who operate all the very expensive facilities, and they can be dissipated overnight. I noted that the noble Lord, Lord Dean of Beswick, drew attention to the figures involved here, and the large number of people who have to worry about what the future will be, while the moratorium and the nuclear pause is taking place at the moment.
I think that we can avoid a great deal of this, but not unless we bring to an end the stop-go ordering situation. A case for AGR is strong after getting the design right, but I think that if PWR beats AGR on unit costs of generation, it is also clear that there will be a premium attached to exercising the PWR option in the United Kingdom. The contingency costs of getting that design right will have to be counted and paid for fully. I think that the CEGB recognises this and it has included them. However, I am wondering whether it has included enough here.
I want to turn to decommissioning. I think that the illustrative programme tries to sweep the issue under the carpet and put it out into the "distant future", but it is now here with us. What the report actually says is:
"Since the nuclear sector is of recent origin, demolition is an activity for the distant future".
As the noble Lord, Lord Nelson, said, some of the nuclear stations are already rather long in the tooth and I do not think that this particular statement of the committee in this document lines up and makes sense.
Small experimental reactors have already been decommissioned and the larger Magnox reactors are now in the pipeline for this treatment. I believe that Latina, in Italy, which is a Magnox station, has started decommissioning, or is just about to start decommissioning. Plans are in hand to deal with the French Magnox reactors and that will have to be carefully handled. Plans will have to be put in hand here, as I understand it, to decommission Berkeley and Bradwell in the very near future.
The evidence that we received in committee showed that in Germany the authorities will have to demonstrate that it can be done safely. In France it will go ahead in a planned way, but it has not yet started. Methods of dismantling are being developed, and the first station at Chinon in France may be turned back into green fields. However, they recognise the

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problems with their type of Magnox which represents to them the worst case of contamination in the range of reactors that they have. Private companies will undertake the work and it will take a long time. During this time the site has to be kept secure, and that is very costly.
We are faced with these problems, and evidence from the Sizewell inquiry shows that the CEGB might wait for decades for the Magnox sites to cool down, radioactively speaking. In fact to me it would seem logical to keep them as nuclear islands for ever, and perhaps use them as storage sites for low or intermediate waste. Bradwell is being studied for this purpose at the moment. There is much merit in doing this and arranging for that particular site to be one of the storage sites.
But what I want to say, my Lords, is that the nuclear industry in this country is well equipped to offer decontamination services and has already expertly decontaminated the old naval dockyard at Chatham, and it is well placed to offer services for example to the Australian Government to deal with decontaminating the old Maralinga or Woomera rocket ranges in the great Victoria Desert. It is well placed to provide expert technical assistance, and I hope that the Government will consider this in negotiating with the Australian Government.
Decommissioning, decontamination and dismantling are projects which are not to be treated lightly, and I hope that the United Kingdom plans will demonstrate the major role that the British nuclear industry can play in this sector. The problem is here with us now and not in the distant future, as the Commission suggest.
If the periodic review document under the Euratom Treaty Article 40—which has the acronym, as the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, said, "PINC" for Programme indicatif nucléaire pour la Communauté—shows up anything at all from our point of view, I think it shows that we are not so freshly in the pink as we think we are, even if the EC thinks that Europe is. Clearly there are hard and calculated decisions to take and a long way to go to get to the fast breeder reactor and fusion, if that ever comes, but I hope that whatever is decided on Sizewell B the ordering programme can be swiftly resumed to put the United Kingdom nuclear industry properly back in the pink.
5.33 p.m.
Lord Zuckerman: My Lords, the manner in which the contributions of Members of your Lordships' House have complemented each other during the course of this afternoon is a tribute to the skill of the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, who chaired his committee so superbly. I had the privilege of sitting under his chairmanship, and I do not believe that anyone could have done a better job in steering us to a report which, from what has been said so far, has the approval of your Lordships' House.
We all know that there is a close link between manufacturing output, the growth of the economy, and the consumption of electric power. The noble Lord, Lord Marshall, will correct me if I am wrong,
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but I believe that the trend is towards an increase in electrical consumption per unit of economic growth.
We also know that in general the growth of generating capacity proceeds a little faster than does the growth of the economy, and I believe that I am right in saying that at the present moment there is no particular shortage of electric power. But what we appreciate even more is that there is an enormous shortage of manufacturing power and that demand for electrical power is therefore bound to go up. I forget the exact figure we were given at our hearings, but I seem to remember that it was something like a shortfall in excess of 10,000 megawatts by the year 2000. If this is so, it implies an enormous shortfall that will have to be made good on any reasonable assumptions about the growth of the British economy.
Our inquiry was addressed in the first instance to the Illustrative Programme about the need for nuclear power in the Community as a whole. But our immediate, and important, concern is with our own requirements. The question which faces us, and which has come up in this afternoon's debate, is how critical is the need to add now to our own nuclear capacity, a point made by my noble friend Lord Plowden.
We also want to know what options are open to us for the generation of large quantities of the electrical power that we are bound to call for. If we follow the nuclear path, we also have to decide—or someone has to decide—on the best choice of reactor design; the best choice in terms of the most economical, the safest, and the most acceptable design.
The options for increasing the volume of power which different countries in the Community can exploit vary. We in the United Kingdom believe that at the present moment we can choose between coal, oil and nuclear. Of course there is also conservation. Another option would be to import power, and I shall come to that later.
The fact that France has no coal—she does not have the natural resources that we have of fossil fuel—is probably responsible for her having gone ahead with her nuclear programme as fast as she did, beginning in 1970. I am one of those who regret enormously that we did not do likewise at the same time. We are now unfortunately lagging behind, and so the noble Lord. Lord Marshall, the chairman of the CEGB, is now talking about his first PWR. When he saw the committee, he told us that if he were given permission to go ahead straight away, and if he could follow with further PWRs soon after he got planning permission for Sizewell 2, in the period up to the year 2000 we might have, I think he said, five PWRs, and in the interval the French number would have gone up from its present figure in the thirties to 59.
We have a number of choices before us. We enjoy a mix of all three sources of power, but I do not have the slightest doubt that we are going to need nuclear power. It is not just because we are going to find it difficult to rely upon fossil fuels; there are also the demands of the third world to consider. There is conservation. The noble Lord, Lord Swann, who has had to leave, referred to the fact that our sources of fossil fuel would be running out, and he gave a figure somewhere in the middle of the next century, which is

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somewhat sooner that the figure I would have accepted, I think it will he later than that. In the estimates for the Coal Board, for which the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, was responsible at the time, the minimum figure that was given was 300 years.
I am not competent to suggest which is the best type of nuclear reactor to go for, and nor would I express any views on the general economic considerations which surround the whole of the problem. The fact is that there are pros and cons whatever our choice is. Among the pros for nuclear power are those two issues on which the noble Lord, Lord Swann, dwelt: the greenhouse effect—there would be no addition to the greenhouse effect if we went nuclear—and acid rain. On the other hand, we also know that there are considerable cons to nuclear power—mainly, and essentially public acceptability and public fear. There are hazards, but we have to realise that whatever option we choose, whatever option any country chooses, there are technical and social risks.
I feel that in what has been said about informing the public, we are all a little confused about the components of the nuclear fear. This is a subject which the noble Lord, Lord Marshall, can talk about far better than I can. He has to deal with worker exposure. The radiation levels to which workers at nuclear plants are subjected, minimal though it is, are occasionally reported in the newspapers.
There is the question of environmental radiation, but the main one which really worries everybody is the big nuclear accident—another Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. Admiral Rickover, whom I knew well, once said to me, when referring to variations we were proposing in propulsion reactors, that every reactor ought to be designed to be better than the average of all previous reactors that had been designed. He was not making a silly remark in the sense of saying that we are a great country and cannot afford to have any of our citizens having a standard of living below that of the average. It was not that kind of remark. He was making a real statement about technological progress and efficiency. I am sure that in the design which has been produced for Sizewell 2, and in any future designs, this consideration will he foremost in the minds of those doing the technical planning. They have to do better than what has been done before.
Unfortunately, we have no working experience of PWRs. All we can hope is that so far as worker exposure is concerned the situation will be far better than the average in the United States at the present moment. There are some in the United States who believe that our design assumes far lower levels than are possible.
So far as the general environmental risks are concerned, these have been touched upon and dealt with adequately in what has already been said in the course of this debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Marshall, pointed out when he saw the committee, we face normal environmental radiation risks all the time. This again was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, and by other speakers in the debate who referred earlier to the amount of uranium that is poured into the atmosphere by coal-fired stations.
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No one has discussed the disposal of radioactive waste—and I do not intend to do so—or discharges from reprocessing plants. These issues again are compounded in the general public fear. In the public mind all these risks come together in the concept of nuclear disaster, and in nuclear disasters, as we have learnt from Chernobyl, there are no national frontiers. The nuclear fear is a transnational problem. That is why I particularly like one of the conclusions or recommendations in the second part of the summary of the report in which a call is made for an international agreement covering all aspects of reactor safety and operation, and also for rigorous international inspection. That was not regarded before as seriously as it should have been. Chernobyl undoubtedly has made the international aspect of nuclear safety a primary objective. There has been, and there was, as the noble Lord, Lord Plowden said, undue secrecy at the start. There was secrecy not just because our first station made plutonium. There was competition: one of the things that used to worry Admiral Rickover was that his Shippingport reactor went on stream after Calderhall.
The public should be made aware of the nature and the source of the different fears which are compounded in the fear of nuclear power. They should be assured, which I believe can justifiably be done, that the best engineering standards, coupled with disciplined operational and management procedures, should assure safety. France is much better standardised than the United States, and by comparing the different performances one can see how valuable standardisation is. I have been told that in the United States three plants opened up recently and practically no members of the crews put in to work those plants had worked in a nuclear power station before. I hope that is an exaggeration, but that is what I was told by someone in the industry.
We have heard, and the noble Lord, Lord Marshall, made the point, that the way things are here a nuclear accident of Chernobyl scale could never occur in this country. There is, unfortunately, rather too long a perspective to that word "never". One just has to hope against all hope, or with all hope, that such an accident will never occur. Were there to be another nuclear disaster, that would finish the nuclear industry, regardless of the need for the power it should provide. It certainly would delay progress for a considerable time. Probability calculations are very odd things.
I was involved in those which led to the construction of the Thames Barrier and the likelihood of another North Sea surge occurring. We calculated how many tens of thousands of people would be drowned in their beds with this or that rise in the level of the Thames. Nonetheless, although the probability was utterly remote, the government of the day had to decide to build the barrage. I hope that we can rely on that word "never". That is why I repeat again that the best engineering standards, based upon experience, and with all the knowledge that is now available about negligent operational procedures, will always justify the use of the word "never".
There is one final point. I want to elaborate something that the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, said when he was talking about our relationship with France. I hope that relationship is as close as he

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suggested it was. I hope that our collaboration with France and Europe and in the Common Market generally on the development of nuclear power is as close as it should be. By the year 2000—which is the time by which any new nuclear power stations which we might embark upon now would become operational—Europe will be far more integrated than it now is. We are already importing power from France. As I have said before, had we embarked on the same programme (which we might have done) when the French programme started, we would be in a position to export power. Well, the French got there first. A variety of reasons made us reject the course that France took, and I am quite certain that I am not alone in regretting the way we went.
I therefore conclude by repeating that I believe that Europe is going to be very much more integrated by the year 2000 than it is today. I imagine that as the French programme expands it will become more economic and costs will fall. It seems to me that we have to be quite sure that our current competitive cost estimates can be relied upon to apply to the end of the 1990s. We have a poor record in co-operating technologically with Europe, and not just in the nuclear field. Apart for URENCO, there is very little in the nuclear field; and we were not the most enthusiastic supporters of EURATOM. But times have changed and I hope that in satisfying the additional need for power in this country we do so within the context of the general need for an increase in generating power in Europe as a whole.
5.52 p.m.
Viscount Chilston: My Lords, I should like to congratulate my noble friend Lord Torrington, who chaired the committee on which I was privileged to sit. Indeed, even during the world's worst nuclear power disaster, his organisation of the committee was not diverted when often the questions put to our witnesses were. If we turn that dark, Chernobyl cloud inside out, I am sure that we can find several silver linings shining through. Indeed, this afternoon several have already been identified. In the same way as that highly radioactive cloud of iodine and caesium swept across north-west Russia and into Europe, uncontainable even in a territory the size of the Soviet Union, so also were the clouds of secrecy swept away, unstoppable by any government, even one as powerful as the Kremlin.
It was, after all, the Russians who instigated the first international post-accident review in Vienna in August, and I think that this House is very honoured to have heard the noble Lord, Lord Marshall of Goring, tell us exactly what the Russians said at that meeting. Secondly, the Chernobyl accident (as my noble friend Lord Torrington has already mentioned) poignantly demonstrated that countries without nuclear power are as much at risk as those which are firmly committed to it, perhaps even to the point of persuading non-nuclear countries to think again. After all, if they have to suffer the risks, why should they not also reap the benefits?
Nuclear power generation on a world scale can only be as safe as the weakest reactor in the world, even if that reactor is nearly 1,000 miles behind the Iron Curtain. Every nuclear plant—and there are now more than 370 in the world—must be subject to
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internationally agreed minimum standards, as the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, the noble Lord, Lord Dean of Beswick, and other noble Lords have mentioned. Perhaps now in the light of Chernobyl an international nuclear safety inspectorate, with the sharpest possible teeth, might yet become a reality.
My third and main reason for gilding that terrifyingly posionous cloud is that since that accident there has been no excuse for most Europeans to be ignorant of nuclear options. Prior to 26th April, European public confidence in nuclear power was slowly but surely improving. The miners' strike had shown the importance of a nuclear component in our own generating capacity while the French, enjoying Europe's cheapest electricity—over 70 per cent. nuclear powered—had, hardly surprisingly, a large majority of public support.
Nonetheless, despite the huge economic advantages of nuclear power, despite the environmental damage caused by the burning of fossil fuel, despite the good nuclear safety record in Europe, public opinion even before Chernobyl was not overwhelmingly in support. A MARPLAN survey conducted in September 1985 found, for example, that 50 per cent. were in favour of maintaining or expanding the nuclear component while 38 per cent. opted for the reduction or abandonment of nuclear power.
In the game of party politics, a 12 per cent. majority may be ample to send the country into an immediate general election but not sufficient, I suggest, to justify a wholesale increase in nuclear plant. Why, then, the concern? The public's view of nuclear energy is more often than not emotional rather than rational, being based more upon fear than upon fact; and the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, has already referred to this in his speech. Because of its early associations with nuclear weaponry, our own nuclear power industry grew up with its own cloud of secrecy. In 1985, the World Association of Public Opinion canvassed people in countries accustomed to nuclear power about its desirability. While the actual percentage of pros and cons are now history and probably out of date, I am sure the trends are still valid. For example, women were more opposed to nuclear power than men; the younger generation more opposed than the older; those with only secondary education more opposed that those with a higher education, and those with an arts background more opposed than those with a scientific or technical bent.
An obvious conclusion is that those who know about nuclear power are in favour of it while those who do not are afraid of it. Yet public opinion is by far the greatest restraint to the expansion of nuclear power. Certainly even before Chernobyl great efforts had already been made to improve what virtually all those who gave evidence to us on behalf of the nuclear industry admitted was an appalling lack of information. The noble Lords, Lord Tanlaw and Lord Plowden, have referred to the same crucial point. Indeed, one can adopt a topical phrase and say that the nuclear industry could have been accused in the past of being somewhat economical with the truth.
The Russian accident immediately reversed public opinion. However, it has also resulted in a fact-hungry public—something on which the noble Lord, Lord

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Dean of Beswick, talked a lot; and I shall not repeat what he has said. But the public want to know the risks, they want to understand the pros and cons before they make a judgment, and they ought to be given those facts. In other words, public relations is vital. Many people think of public relations as the first two letters of the word "propaganda". The Institute of Public Relations, hardly surprisingly, defines it differently as:
"the deliberate planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding between an organisation and its public".
The Government are now committed to making information about our nuclear industry widely available. Every leak of radioactivity, however small, however inconsequential, now has to be published immediately. In turn, full government support is being given to the nuclear industry's efforts to build upon their public relations. Last year 30,000 people visited Sellafield, where they have opened a new information centre. According to British Nuclear Fuels, the number of visitors is now running at an annual rate of nearly 100,000. There are many people who cannot or will not go, but if they know that such places are open to them, that in itself must improve public confidence in nuclear power.
Another major priority in educating the public is surely to find some easily understood benchmark to indicate the relative degrees of radiation. Some of these comparisons are fairly astounding—and we have heard a number of them this afternoon—even to those with a fair knowledge of the industry. For example, on average the population of the United Kingdom receives 115 times as much radiation from medical applications such as X-rays as it does from the nuclear industry. Air crews, in their occupation, are exposed to twice as much radiation as workers in nuclear power stations. A person swimming in the Cumbrian sea or eating huge quantities of Cumbrian fish would receive about one twentieth of the radiation he would be exposed to if he lived in certain parts of Cornwall.
In giving evidence to your committee, the noble Lord, Lord Marshall, suggested expressing radiation risks in terms of the number of cigarettes which, if smoked by an individual, would produce a similar risk of cancer. The uranium discharged from Sellafield, for example, in January would have resulted in a radiation dose to a member of the public equivalent to one-twentieth of one cigarette in a lifetime; that is, less than one puff in a lifetime. On that account, I for one would have been better off swimming for many weeks beside the Sellafield outfall than working for a day on this speech!
Chernobyl will undoubtedly produce a nuclear pause in Europe, and the public have every right to be concerned; but unless the truth about nuclear power is communicated that pause could last for ever and a great opportunity to provide Europe with the power it needs would be lost for ever, probably through ignorance alone. If, on the other hand, Chernobyl results in an informed but demanding public supporting a safer nuclear industry, then there is the silver lining.
6.2 p.m.
Lord Sherfield: My Lords, I must begin by saying that owing to the unforeseen popularity of this debate I may have to leave before its end to fulfil a long-standing engagement. I crave the indulgence of the House and of the Minister for that predicament.
The report we are discussing this evening is, in my opinion, one of the clearest, best-balanced and cogent reports which have been issued from the Select Committee on the European Communities. I join wholeheartedly in the congratulations which have been given to the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, and his colleagues. In fact the shortest speech which could be made about this report is really, "Hear, hear!". The committee has also surmounted with aplomb and good judgment the Chernobyl disaster.
A European official is quoted in the report as saying:
"after Chernobyl public opinion will never be the same again",
and one has to agree with him. Yet even this disaster should not, as the committee concludes and as many noble Lords have said this evening, invalidate the case for the development of nuclear power, because there is an inherent difference between the RBMK design and those operating in the rest of Western Europe.
It was in 1963 when, as chairman of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Agency, I was on a visit to the Soviet Atomic Energy Commission that my Russian opposite number or side-kick, as an American might say—who incidentally is still in post—sent me down to visit one of these RBMK reactors then under construction at Voronesh in the Don basin. I am, of course, no engineer, but my advisers had briefed me about the already perceived weaknesses of the design—the choice of materials, the absence of secondary containment and the other characteristics to which the noble Lord, Lord Marshall of Goring, has drawn our attention. My inspection on the spot, though perhaps amateurish, did nothing to reassure me; and so perhaps it was inevitable that this major disaster should have occurred in the Soviet Union.
It also so happens that last February I wrote an article in which I felt able to say that there had not been a fatal accident (except for workmen falling off ladders and the like) in the whole history of civil nuclear power generation. Now that can no longer be said, though the number killed in the accident is about the same as the average number killed in bus crashes, which occur all over Europe with such regularity. There are of course a larger number who may later die prematurely from the effects of radiation, but this effect is extremely difficult to estimate and experience has shown that hitherto it has been very much exaggerated.
However, most nuclear matters seem to be beyond rational argument. If one says that a similar accident, as has been said this evening, could not occur in the types of reactor in service in this country and in other countries of Europe and elsewhere that is not generally believed or understood, because the majority of the population do not distinguish between different types of reactor and indeed do not seem interested in making such a distinction. The noble Lord, Lord Dean of Beswick, has underlined this point very well. The issue of the public perception and acceptance of nuclear

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power has been made much more difficult by what has happened. Three Mile Island, where no one was hurt, was bad enough; Chernobyl was a real disaster.
There is a need to review the safety aspects of all reactors, and to do so on an international scale; but it is essential to retain a sense of proportion. There are two aspects to this—the workforce and the hardware. It is noteworthy that, as in so many air, sea and transport disasters, at both Three Mile Island and Chernobyl the fault lay with the operators, who not only made errors but a whole series of major errors in direct breach of the rule books. Human folly can foul up even supposedly foolproof mechanisms, and so it is essential for the operators of nuclear power plants in all countries to be trained to the highest standards and given refresher courses at regular intervals. No doubt this is an obvious conclusion which will be drawn by all nuclear authorities; and, not surprisingly, the noble Lord, Lord Marshall of Goring, has reassured us that this conclusion has long been drawn in the United Kingdom.
The second conclusion seems to be that the highest possible degree of automation should be built into nuclear reactor control arrangements. But as regards the plant itself, it must be very doubtful whether, except at the margin, much more needs to be built in, and the committee's report confirms this.
Already the safety margins have been greatly increased so far as the AGRs are concerned. I cite a recent article by Dr. Ned Franklin, whose untimely death we recently mourned. Dr. Franklin, after spending over 20 years in the Atomic Energy Authority and the nuclear industry, was elected to the Royal Society and was Professor of Nuclear Energy at Imperial College at the time of his death. In comparing the AGR stations at Heysham I and Heysham II he points out:
"The second reactor will cost one and a half times as much as the first and the increase is certainly due in great measure to increased safety margins, though the exact amount is difficult to calculate".
He concludes:
"Of course, real safety standards should be and are improved in the light of knowledge and experience, but it is difficult to believe that it can be necessary to spend so much extra on the daughter if the parent stations are judged safe for continued operation and unlikely to cause any loss of life, as they certainly are. To do so is to value a single human life at some tens of millions of pounds".
I come now the the question of radiation, which has been referred to by many previous speakers and which, as the report rightly states, is,
"a major cause of public disquiet about nuclear energy".
It also says that,
"public attitudes contain many elements of illogicality and inconsistency";
and, thirdly, that the committee,
"received much evidence that in ordinary circumstances the public's fears of radiation are groundless".
It continues with an eminently objective analysis of the problem.
My contribution to this issue will be once more to quote Professor Franklin. I take two points only. After stating, as indeed the report does, that only one-tenth of 1 per cent. of the total radiation which the population receives from natural sources is caused by the nuclear industry, Dr. Franklin goes on to describe
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the follow-up analysis of the experience of 98 per cent. of the workers at Sellafield, covering 11,500 workers, with more than 1,600 deaths being identified. The main conclusion was that,
"the total number of deaths from cancer has been about 10 per cent. less than might have been expected in the national population",
and the other conclusions were similary reassuring. This sort of information never seems to get into the media.
The second illustration relates to the limits on the amount of radioactiviy which can be discharged into the sea at Sellafield. These limits are set by the consideration of the pathways back to man of the radioactive materials discharged into the sea. In my day at the Atomic Energy Authority, the levels were set by the largest consumer of laver bread, of whom there were a handful in Wales. This is made from a species of seeweed which preferentially takes up the element ruthenium. There was one Welshman who actually ate twice as much of this bread as any other of his colleagues. He was therefore the level setter.
Dr. Franklin tells us that the levels are now set, due to a change of circumstances, by the largest consumer of winkles in the region. This is not, as your Lordships might suppose, a joke. Dr. Franklin says:
"The local winkle eaters now dominate the scene although there are now less than 20 of them in the critical group; that is, the group in the population most at risk. Last year they received about 50 per cent. of the maximum permitted dose of radiation as a result of their diets. The individual risk of radiation-induced cancer is at this dose very small. It represents a doubling of the national background radiation. Nevertheless steps are being taken to reduce this level to 20 per cent. and eventually to a few per cent".
Dr. Franklin concludes by adding rather drily:
"It is estimated that the consequent reduction in dose of this final step will reduce the radiation-induced deaths among all British winkle eaters during the next 10,000 years from two to one at a cost of £250 million for providing and operating the equipment to achieve this final reduction".
I have said enough to illustrate the fact that the issues with which we are faced are essentially concerned with judgments about relative values and assessment of risks and with distinguishing between myth and reality. The committee's report deals with these issues with admirable objectivity and its conclusions and recommendations are soberly and clearly formulated. I hope that the Government will be able to give these recommendations their whole-hearted support. This, I submit, is necessary in order to steady the boat which has for understandable reasons been rocking badly since Chernobyl.
In the past, I have felt that governments have been rather inclined to fluff these nuclear issues. Reference has been made this afternoon to the possibility of setting up some impartial body, national or international, to advise on them. But I conclude that it is only the Government who can really give a firm lead in issues which arouse so much emotion, and I suggest that they should do so by endorsing the conclusions of the Select Committee this evening.
6.17 p.m.
Lord Holderness: My Lords, I am pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, with whom, when he was chairman of the Atomic Energy Authority, I had many interesting discussions on a number of occasions which I hope he also remembers. I should like to share

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in the gratitude which has been universally expressed to my noble friend Lord Torrington and to his committee for what I consider, and what other noble Lords have considered, a superb report.
As usual, I feel apprehensive and apologetic for daring to take part in a debate of great complexity amid a wealth of experience and expertise which I myself can never hope to match. My apprehension is increased by the almost infinite width of this debate, which indeed includes but goes far beyond a short and small debate that I introduced here in June on the comparatively narrow front of disposing of nuclear waste. My noble friend Lord Elton, who was then replying for Her Majesty's Government, gave what I considered to be a very satisfactory reply but there are still certain questions, and perhaps especially the need to allay public anxieties, which continue to cause all of us concern and about which many noble Lords have expressed concern this afternoon.
My own interest in this matter stems from my time many years ago at the Ministry of Power, as it then was. Since then, I reflect that some things have not greatly changed. It seems almost as hard as it was then accurately to estimate the extent of future energy demand. It is perhaps a little easier, but I am not sure it is very much, to weigh the relative economic merits of various means of generation. I myself strongly incline to the committee's view, which seems to be supported by a great volume of very weighty evidence, that,
"a substantial expansion of nuclear power in Europe is necessary."
I agree completely with the three reasons that it gave—the reasons of cost, the desirability to diversify sources and the desirability, as the noble Lord, Lord Swann, earlier reminded us, to conserve non-renewable resources. I believe that if we happen to default, to turn our back on nuclear generation, we should be doing nothing whatsoever to alleviate, and a very great deal to add to, the problems of our successors in the 21st century. This point was strongly made by the noble Lord, Lord Plowden.
Your Lordships have declared themselves this afternoon very clearly, robustly and so far, I believe, with complete unanimity. My own view has not greatly changed over 25 years, but it certainly has been very much strengthened by the committee's report.
What has changed since the 1960s is the state of public opinion, to which, as I say, great attention has been given this afteroon. It seems to me strange that in 1960, only 15 years after the horrific demonstration of nuclear destructive power, a fairly large part of the population—I have no knowledge how large, because public opinions were not quite so active then as they are now—seemed comparatively ready to welcome the harnessing of this gigantic force for more constructive and beneficial purposes. I do not claim that there was no opposition; there was, but much of it was founded on a very natural concern for the coal industry at that time and on smaller, more domestic considerations.
The opposition was lighter then, not because the type of reactor chosen, which happened to be Magnox, was considered superior to all other types. I do not believe that had anything to do with it. It was light because the whole climate of opinion in those days was
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utterly different. I said here in June that a great many people now seem thoroughly rattled. That is certainly true since Chernobyl. I think that it was quite true before that.
The noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, to whom I look forward to listening, recently compared our present public fears with the obsession over witches in a past age. The comparison seemed to me very apt, particularly in the light of the committee's report, which thought that public opinion now thinks of radiation as worrying, mysterious and evil. I believe that those are the very adjectives that some of our less enlightened ancestors may have applied to witches.
It is quite clear (and we all acknowledge it) that radiation does carry risks; but risks, as the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, and others have pointed out, involved in nuclear generation are but dust in the balance compared with the non-nuclear risks that we all run. The risks are infinitesimal compared with the risks run by quite a number of brave men and women whose exploits in games and sport daily bring delight to thousands of our people. I might add, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Swann, said, that the risks involved in any alternative to nuclear generation are considerable. The noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, and others have pointed out that nuclear risks, either in the present or in the future, are not likely necessarily to be home-grown.
Unfortunately—and I think that the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, has recently been making this point—there seems to be very little disposition to balance the risks or to agree that we are all at risk, whatever we do about nuclear generation. Certainly I think that there is very little understanding, possibly little belief, that literally 99·9 per cent. (to turn the figure given by the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, round the other way) of average radiation has nothing to do with the nuclear industry. One could go on, but the difficulty is that fear is an emotion, as my noble friend Lord Chilston pointed out. Rational argument has rather limited power against emotional fear. Nonetheless, I am convinced that those who believe that Great Britain must have a strong nuclear future can never give up the attempt to convince; and the report rightly pays great attention to this need.
I believe that much can be done by the public bodies—the generating board and all the others. If I may say so, the noble Lord, Lord Marshall of Goring, has already performed a signal service this afternoon by pointing out to us very clearly—this has been echoed by other noble Lords—that Chernobyl is unrepeatable in the West. The public bodies can do a very great deal in informing, in educating and in maintaining their record with its great commitment to safety.
But the ultimate responsibility—and here I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, said—must rest with Her Majesty's Government. They now have the immensely valuable support of this fine report. I beg the Government to broadcast as widely as possible the findings and the reassurance that it gives.
Above all, I beg them to spell out the risks of failure to convince public opinion, because I feel that if we follow the Swedish example and try to phase out all nuclear generation, admittedly the risks will be

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different but they will be there. They are something that we cannot possibly live without.
6.27 p.m.
Lord Kearton: My Lords, as a member of Sub-Committee F I had the privilege to serve under the chairmanship of the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington. His chairmanship was at once strong, subtle and decisive. The fact that a fairly large committee arrived at a unanimous report is a tribute of the skill with which he guided us. I feel rather like the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, in saying that my contribution can be very brief in that I stand behind the recommendations of the report.
As the noble Viscount reminded us, we are considering a Community document, the Illustrative Programme. At paragraph 250 our report states:
"as a statement of the general case for nuclear power, of the direction in which Europe needs to move in the nuclear field, of the issues that need to be resolved and of the general lines of action that need to be pursued, the Committee believe that the Illustrative Programme is still valid".
That means, of course, a steady expansion of nuclear power both in this country and in Europe.
The noble Lord, Lord Plowden, said that he had to declare a past interest. Perhaps I may be permitted to declare a past interest of my own and draw some thoughts from it. The phenomenon of nuclear fission was discovered in 1938 by Hahn and Strassman, and elucidated in 1939 by Lise Meitner. Shortly after that, a number of people felt that this discovery might lead to the possibility of the production of a nuclear weapon. In the spring of 1940, Professor Sir Rudolf Peierls, who is still with us, and Dr. Frisch produced a memorandum outlining the scenario for an atomic bomb. An organisation called Tube Alloys was set up, and I was one of the people seconded to that organisation in the summer of 1940. It is interesting that at the time we thought the business of separating the uranium 235 isotope very formidable and very tricky.
In the calculations on the bomb itself we were uncertain about whether in the end we would be able to have a big explosion or just a kind of big fireball with nothing like the dramatic impact. We carried on research and development in this country in collaboration with the Americans until about 1943. Then, because of engineering considerations and the scale of the effort required, the whole of the programme was transferred to America and we became associated with the American effort. I was one of the team which was seconded to work with the Americans.
From the suggestion that an atomic bomb was possible to producing an atomic bomb which exploded took just over four years. In America alone it cost something like 2 billion dollars—a great deal of money in today's terms. However, all the problems were solved and bombs which worked were produced. In the post-war years the Attlee Government decided that we must have similar facilities in this country and I was for some years one of the consultants to the Ministry of Supply, which was concerned with developing a nuclear programme.
When the Atomic Energy Authority was set up, I was invited to join it soon after its formation and I
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remained a member for 26 years. I was a member of two of the committees which were set up in the aftermath of the Windscale accident, which, as my noble friend Lord Plowden said, were under the chairmanship of Sir Alexander Fleck, later Lord Fleck. One committee was concerned with the organisation of nuclear operations and the other with health and safety. I think it is of some interest to see that the recommendations which Sir Alexander Fleck produced have stood the test of time, although they have been modified in the light of progressive developments in this country. However, they laid down the basic principles, which have been followed ever since. It is rather sad, therefore, that this country, which had the lead in the commercialisation of nuclear energy, has fallen behind so badly, and one may ask why.
It has been mentioned that the Chernobyl incident involved a reactor which the Russians developed in the first place to produce plutonium. It is equally true that our first reactors—the Windscale piles and later the Sellafield unit and the Chapel Cross units—were all developed for the same purpose. As I remember, it was for the IMD or Immediate Military Demand programme. When we went to commercialisation, the Magnox reactors were a natural follow-on to the gas cooled reactors at Sellafield and at Chapel Cross. Although they are (by today's standards) large and clumsy reactors, they have proved to be very safe. There have been no mishaps of any kind that I can recall to the Magnox reactors.
It was therefore somewhat understandable that when the search for a more efficient reactor was undertaken the minds of people on this side of the Atlantic were still directed towards gas cooled reactors, whereas in America, owing to the pioneering efforts of Admiral Rickover, who wanted nuclear propulsion for submarines, all effort went towards a more compact type of reactor, which was finally developed into the PWR as we know it today and which was scaled up on a very large scale.
In developing the satisfactory commercial use of atomic energy it has taken a lot more money, sweat, blood and failures than developing first the atomic bomb and later the hydrogen bomb. In other words, the idea that nuclear weapons are immensely difficult to produce in comparison with civilian end uses has turned out not to be true. It was developing safe and economical civilian uses which in fact placed enormous strains on the engineering capabilities of this country.
With hindsight, we completely misjudged the engineering capabilities of the UK. We set up rival consortia to bid for separate designs, which was a very great mistake. There was hardly enough talent to go round for one consortium. When we went to the AGR (as is easily forgotten) the CEGB called for competitive bids. Bids were provided from this country which showed that an AGR would be competitive with a PWR as developed in America. That judgment turned out to be sadly wrong and the whole story of building AGRs in this country from the late 1960s onwards has been a fairly major disaster, with the exception of two of the units at Hinkley Point and Hunterston, which have formed the basis for the present developments at Torness and Heysham II.

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I think that the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, has put his finger on what we must consider for the future. We are all agreed that we must go ahead with more nuclear energy, and therefore the question of what system we adopt is not academic. The noble Viscount correctly pointed out that the fast breeder reactor has fearsome connotations in the minds of many people because of the word "fast". All it means is that fast neutrons are used in the working of the reactor, and in any reactor many fast neutrons are provided in any case. All that happens in ordinary thermal reactors is that they are slowed down. It is intrinisically a safe reactor. It is interesting that work in the last three years in particular has shown great advances in the cost picture for that reactor and it seems a shame that just at a time when most of the very difficult problems of that reactor seem to have been solved we have decided to soft-pedal it.
I was a great advocate of going ahead with the fast breeder reactor 10 years ago. At the time I was wrong because it was quite premature, but the advances which have been made at Dounreay in the last few years have put a totally different complexion on the matter. Some of the evidence received indicated that the fast breeder reactor was going to be almost competitive with the AGR, even if it is not fully competitive with the PWR.
As regards the PWR, the Americans, with their vast resources, were able to put a greater effort into development than we could in this country. Therefore, the conclusion which my noble friend Lord Weinstock and others drew quite a long time ago that our future energy programme in this country should depend on PWRs had a definite logic about it. However, as the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, pointed out, the AGR has certain inherent characteristics which make it just a little bit safer than the PWR.
I agree that we are talking in intangibles. The PWR, as redesigned in this country—a redesign in which the noble Lord, Lord Marshall, has played a very prominent and successful part—is going to be an extremely safe reactor. When one says that the AGR is going to be a little bit safer, it is rather like saying that something which is 99.99 per cent. safe might be 99.999 per cent. safe. However, in view of the considerations which the noble Lord, Lord Dean of Beswick, pointed out most forcefully, the fact that it is inherently a little bit safer—largely because of the time lag in case of any trouble; in other words, one has more time to put right anything that goes wrong—is an important consideration.
I should like to comment on one or two matters which came up during the debate. I do not entirely agree with my noble friend Lord Swann that we should have some kind of overseeing body deciding what is to be done next. In 1974 the then Minister of Energy, Eric Varley, set up a committee with this objective in mind. The committee arrived at the recommendation, supported by many senior industrialists from outside the atomic energy field and the TUC representatives, that the right thing to do was to go ahead with the steam generating heavy water reactor, or so-called SGHW reactor. Correctly, in my view, that recommendation was abandoned in the late 1970s.
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However, it illustrates that going to a group of distinguished outsiders does not necessarily give the right answer.
I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Dean, made a most important contribution in many ways to this debate. What we do not have is public acceptability. In my contacts with non-nuclear or non-energy people, when I talk about radiation and all the figures which have been quoted here today (which are, to anyone with a smattering of scientific knowledge, irrefutable) that information does not really register with the general public. When one thinks about it, that is because of the disappointments of the last 20 or 30 years. Nuclear energy, we were told, was going to be plentiful, cheap and absolutely safe. If I may say so, the scientists of 25 or 30 years ago were regarded almost as demigods. They could produce miracles. That has turned out to be a mirage.
Whereas nuclear energy, whether from the PWR, the AGR or the fast reactor, has an economic advantage over fossil fuel fired reactors, the advantage is nothing like that which was trailed before the public as bait 30 years ago. Similarly, it is only through the efforts of outside bodies that the dangers of radiation have been brought home to the general public. Very few people in the nuclear industry 30 years ago gave a thought to radiation. We dealt with it all the time. We dealt with it in the laboratories, we dealt with it on the site, and the precautions were perfectly adequate. The amount of harm done to anyone was infinitesimal. As the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, pointed out, the number of people harmed by radiation over 30 years of operation is vanishingly small.
I was interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, quote Ned Franklin, whose death is a great loss to this country because of his depth of experience and knowledge. Ned Franklin pointed out that the pendulum has swung the other way. From taking no note of radiation, we have now reached the absurd stage, as the noble Lord pointed out in quoting him, of spending £100 million to prevent the possibility of one death. That is not an economic use of resources anywhere.
I stand firmly behind the recommendations in the Select Committee's report. We must go ahead with nuclear energy. We must make decisions soon, because at the present time the main manufacturers of equipment for the nuclear energy industry are desperately short of orders. If we delay decisions we run a real risk that in three or four years' time we shall not have a capability in this country. Therefore a decision must be taken soon.
I hope that when they take their decision the Government will attempt to provide a balanced view for the public, neither understating the risks nor overstating the economic advantages, but saying that the sensible course is to go ahead; and make a still greater effort to educate the public in the fact that many of the terrors with which they have been fed from so many sources are quite unreal. But to remove an irrationality which is firmly rooted is one of the most difficult jobs for any propaganda or publicity machine, particularly the Government's. All that I can do is to wish them well in that future endeavour.
6.43 p.m.
Viscount Hood: My Lords, I should like to add my word of thanks for the able chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Torrington of Sub-Committee F, of which I was a member. I should like to say a few words in a brief intervention on the economic importance of nuclear power.
It has already been said that electricity pervades our economic life. It is essential to industry not least at the heavy end, as the noble Lord, Lord Nelson of Stafford, said, which today is most vulnerable and about which we are most anxious. All foreign witnesses agreed that nuclear power is the cheapest. The French position involves already very serious competition for the United Kingdom. The French are already offering long-term contracts, stretching into the next century, with a 1 per cent. price reduction in real terms per annum. This is formidable competition to which we must relate the problem in this country of the extension of the nuclear industry.
The price of electricity necessarily depends on cost, and the subject of cost in a new plant is a very difficult one. Even if planning permission is available it takes eight years to build a nuclear plant. It then has a life of some 35 years or more. Therefore in estimating cost one has to take a term of 43 years or more. The same is of course true of coal. The CEGB estimates that power generated by coal is about two-thirds more expensive than the nuclear power generated from Sizewell. These estimates were made a year or two ago but fundamentally this position has not changed.
There is another important factor. The cost of nuclear power is essentially in the plant itself, which represents something over 60 per cent. of the total cost of a kilowatt of power generated from nuclear sources. On the other hand, for coal and coal mining wages the figure is more than 70 per cent. It follows that when the nuclear plant is built the costs are substantially fixed. This is true of France today. The plants are built, they will live for 30 or 40 years and the power is offered on a long-term basis.
Coal is another matter. What the price of coal will be in the year 2000 or 2020 is anyone's guess. The CEGB has taken what I call a conservative view in believing that the price of British coal is not likely to be very different from the world price over time. It is today. The world price of coal is £27 a tonne; the price which the CEGB pays is £44 a tonne. It is anybody's guess where we shall be in the year 2000. It could well be that if this country, in my view very mistakenly, concentrates on coal our generating costs will lead to a price twice as high (or more) as that of the French. That is a dangerous prospect for our industry.
The proposal of the CEGB to build one or more stations at Sizewell, depending necessarily on the report which is now, I hope, imminent, does not form an alternative to coal. The plans of the CEGB are that at least as much coal will be purchased for the generation of power in the year 2000 as is purchased today. But it assumes that British Coal will utilise all the efficient coal opportunities which are now in prospect. If, however, the nuclear programme is cut down and more and more coal has to be used for power generation, the cost in my judgment must
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inevitably rise because obsolete coal mines would remain in being and less efficient mines would be developed.
There are no other alternatives. Oil is not a realistic alternative to nuclear power. I understand that the fall in the price of crude oil has brought down the cost of an oil plant only to that of the least efficient coal plants. But that is not the real argument. Looking 40 years ahead, the known alternatives to Middle East power will have been consumed. It is not a happy prospect to rely on the Middle East. Indeed, it was to get away from this reliance that the European Commission issued the report upon which our own report was based. Following what other noble Lords have said, I do not think that any other sources are realistic in terms of the year 2000 or even beyond.
My conclusions are very close to those of the noble Lord, Lord Plowden. To stop the nuclear programme now would be most damaging to the British economy. To phase it out would be a disaster. I feel that those who advocate such policies for whatever reasons must take account of the very real damage to the economy, to employment and to all such matters of a judgment adverse to nuclear power.
6.49 p.m.
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, first, I too should like to congratulate the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, and his committee on producing an excellent report. It is relatively short but entirely adequate. The committee has made some references to important parts of the evidence, which makes reference easy. I hope this will become a precedent because the record of evidence is, to say the least, indigestible and I suspect very often unread.
I am a supporter of nuclear energy. I would say that, in spite of Chernobyl, its use should continue and expand. Nevertheless, I accept that it is possibly not an ideal method of generating electricity but it is the only one which we have today, apart from coal, which will provide the power we want. Leaving aside the disposal of nuclear waste or even the risk of another major nuclear incident, what worries much more is the proliferation of the atom bomb in the smaller states. Apart from the plutonium route via nuclear reactors, laser separation of uranium 235 may possibly make the uranium route easily available for small countries.
What are the alternatives to the nuclear generation of electricity? Coal is an obvious one. However, there are problems of acid rain. Even with 90 per cent. desulphurisation of flue gases there remains the nitrous oxides, which also produce acid rain; and, as has been mentioned, there is the difficulty of disposing of the by-products when the sulphur has been taken out of the flue gases. Many scientists believe that the greenhouse effect due to carbon dioxide emissions is already having an effect on the world climate and could be really serious in the future. Moreover, the casualties from coal mining are very considerable—death, serious injury and pneumoconiosis. For the latter, in 1983 there were 400 cases for that one year alone due to coal mining; so there must be thousands suffering from that disease.
In passing, it should be noted that existing coal-fired power stations emit a large amount of uranium and other radioactive products. In fact, the uranium

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produced world-wide is nearly as much as is being mined for the nuclear power stations in use. In England, the radioactivity is comparable with that due to our nuclear power stations.
The second alternative is oil and natural gas—and both are diminishing assets. In my view their use for generating electricity in quantity should be limited to countries without high technology because their use for that purpose does not demand sophisticated techniques and could to some extent avoid the danger of more countries potentially gaining a nuclear capability via the plutonium route.
Next there is the idea of preventing an increase in the demand for electricity by energy conservation methods. I do not believe that in practical terms it would solve the problem. Demand for energy is bound to increase as the developing countries develop, and power stations have a limited life. Renewable clean energy sources are attractive but cannot at present, or for the foreseeable future, provide an alternative solution unless the public and industry are prepared to pay several times as much for energy. Even if they were, there would be a long lead time of 30 years or more.
Let us examine the renewable energy resources in more detail. All of the sources which might make a significant contribution—I repeat, significant—are intermittent unless there is energy storage, which is difficult to arrange. I have excluded hydroelectric power because it is being developed to an extent where there are grave environmental problems in going much further, except possibly in some of the overseas countries. We shall be left in the near future with wind energy, wave energy and tidal barrages.
Wind energy has been developed to a point where wind turbines rated at three megawatts should be practical in the near future. However, to equal a modern power station of, say, 1,000 megawatts some 800 such wind turbines would be needed because, on average, they do not work at full power. The blades of such wind turbines have a diameter of 73 metres—that is, 250 feet—which is the length of a long suburban railway train. They need a tower 70 to 80 metres high—almost exactly the overall height of the Big Ben clock tower. I give those figures in both units because some people find it easier to visualise size in one or the other system.
To avoid interference, each unit must be separated from its neighbour by at least 100 metres in any direction. To provide the equivalent of a 1,000 megawatt power station, therefore, requires at closest spacing an area of 30 kilometres square. Therefore if we attempt to substitute a modest proportion of the CEGB's generating capacity of 50,000 megawatts, many clusters of wind turbines would have to be installed out to sea to avoid environmental problems and to get enough wind. The civil engineering for that would raise the cost for electricity by a factor of two or more.
Turning to wave power, the best estimate is that electricity so generated would cost at least three times as much as we now pay; and time for the further development of a suitable wave generator is needed. Some 900 miles—almost as far as from Land's End to
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John o' Groats—of wave generators would be needed to equal the country's existing generating capability.
The third option is tidal power. Although I believe the Government are right in continuing to develop and install a number of wind generators, it is only in tidal power that a real impact can be made fairly quickly; say, within 12 to 15 years. In a fairly short speech it is impossible to argue the merits of the smaller Severn barrage scheme and that of the Mersey. I dismiss them for three reasons. First, there is no need for a pilot scheme. The French barrage scheme at La Rance has been operating since November 1966–20 years—and no new technology is involved. Secondly, the output of the Mersey scheme is very small—only one-third of that of one of our modern power stations; that is, around 400 megawatts, equivalent to less than 0·5 per cent. of our national electricity requirement.
Thirdly, the shorter barrage in the Severn, generating about 1,000 megawatts, probably will result, as may also the Mersey scheme, in sedimentation problems. Moreover, in the Severn it would prevent the larger scheme from being adopted later on.
In my view we should now go all out for the Severn barrage on the lower line, known as the Cardiff-Weston line, costing around £5·5 billion at today's estimates but potentially providing 6 per cent. to 7 per cent. of the CEGB's electricity, In addition, it may well have some EC financial backing and also to a very important degree some from local interests, for sailing, recreation and so on.
Your Lordships will notice that I have not mentioned power from fusion. It is still somewhat pie in the sky. Even with a so-called breakthrough not yet apparent, its useful application is at the very least 50 years away; but I hope that it succeeds.
Any debate on this subject would be incomplete without facing squarely the public's concern about the risks, which a number of speakers before me have done. In the first instance, I should like to dispose of the so-called problem of disposal of nuclear waste. The technologies of doing so without threat to future generations are all there. The only problem is how far to go beyond what seems reasonable to informed persons and at what cost to satisfy the real, though often only emotional, fears of the public. It is long past time that we should worry about this being a major problem. It is not. It would be more useful for protesters to have their attention drawn to the relatively uncontrolled disposal of toxic and long-lived chemicals, for example. When considering problems which arise today, our reaction ought to be pragmatic. An emotional response should be brought in only as a last resort to weigh the factors involved. However, the public are very poorly informed by either governments or the media.
I must take this opportunity of castigating the Government, who in my view have been worse than most at even trying to inform the public on any subject on which their majority allows them to legislate effectively. Be that as it may, there is a real problem in trying to get the public to think rationally about nuclear matters and to measure the risks against the others that we seem to accept. For example, accidents on the road cause over 5,000 deaths a year and 70,000 seriously injured people, some of whom are

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permanently badly injured. The probability of a fatal accident at work during a lifetime is three in 100 in the construction industry; in the nuclear industry it is one-fifteenth of that and less than the average for all other industries. Some of WHO's statistics are revealing. For example, 12 million people have leprosy and one-quarter of the third world is badly undernourished.
I am worried about the emotional approach to cancer deaths. They are and should be described as earlier—probably only slightly earlier—deaths. With Chernobyl, the extra cancer deaths in Russia and elsewhere represent at the most an increase of one in 1,000 on what could normally be expected in those countries.
I have been a spokesman on energy for the SDP, but I believe that in this House one can usefully give one's own views (which is what I am doing tonight) though they are not very different from those at present held by the SDP. The accident at Chernobyl was very unfortunate and worrying, though it is still within what might be called the benefit-risk assessment. It may well bring 1,200 earlier deaths from cancer within Western Europe, but as I said this represents in this case an increase of less than half of 1 per cent. overall. We may yet have to accept some further small problems from earlier PWR reactors on the Continent. Whatever we do, we shall not eliminate possible effects from the many French reactors facing us on the other side of the Channel.
Finally, in the hope that it will lessen public fears and that eventually the media may present a more balanced point of view, I give a few facts about radiation. We are surrounded by radioactivity. It comes from space, the soil, our food and drink; it seeps into our houses as radon gas. If this natural background radiation is taken as 1,000 units a year—and in some areas of the country it is almost double that—then a medical chest X-ray provides 200 units, and this compares with only one unit from our nuclear power stations. Even a four-hour trip in an aeroplane provides 20 extra radiation units. At, or even above, the background level of radiation the possible risks of earlier death from cancers are absolutely minimal compared with the other risks to life. The average risk during a lifetime's work in industry on average is three in 1,000, and for construction workers it is 30 in 1,000.
There are two further matters that I must mention before ending. First, there is the PWR/AGR controversy. We should await the report of the Sizewell inquiry before firmly taking sides, but I make two points in favour of the AGR. One is that however we assess risks, unlikely as they are, the fact remains that the AGR, owing to its thermal inertia, would give four hours to deal with a crisis before it became out of hand. This allows time physically to check and operate valves should the instruments or controls go haywire. This is not so with the PWR. In some circumstances the time available for taking action can be a mere 15 minutes. The other point is that even if the earlier PWRs do produce some incident, the AGR is a very different animal, and to some extent it may be possible to convince the public that such a failure would not occur here.
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The second matter concerns Sellafield. We are investing £2 billion on this project and there are firm commitments from overseas. To overturn it on no more than emotional grounds would be a tragedy and, more than that, an opting out of firm international commitments. As I said previously, the disposal of nuclear waste is an emotional problem and not a real one. Sellafield will progressively reduce its discharges of nuclear waste to at least one-tenth of the present levels if its programme is allowed to continue. Sellafield is needed to reprocess the irradiated Magnox fuel from our own reactors, and this would give a much greater effluent radioactivity than would be the case if the new plant comes into being. It has been said that reprocessing nuclear fuel from abroad is taking in other people's dirty washing, but under the contracts foreign countries have to take back most of the radioactive products after reprocessing.
Let us be realistic and not just a prey to subjective reactions. With the contracts already agreed, Sellafield will produce a very good return. There is absolutely no logical or sensible reason to close down the plant, and there would be enormous financial loss in doing so. Sellafield and BNF as a whole are one of our largest earners of foreign currency. The order book for the year 2000 amounts to £12 billion, of which more than one-third is in export business, and this represents only the firm orders at today's date.
I apologise to the House for taking rather longer than usual, but energy is my main subject and for years I have managed to keep to a 10-minute speech. I am sorry I have not been able to do so tonight.
7.8 p.m.
Lord Rodney: My Lords, first of all may I apologise to your Lordships' House for the fact that I shall not be able to stay here until the end of the debate owing to a long-standing previous engagement. I should like to start by congratulating my noble friend Viscount Torrington and members of his sub-committee on their report, which I personally found extremely interesting and thought provoking. I have been tempted to take part in this debate, though I am far from being an expert on this subject, because I fear that unless the public in general and we in particular can put the question of risk into perspective, decisions may be taken to phase out nuclear power in this country which are based on emotional arguments rather than on a calm assessment of the pros and cons of the situation. Such a decision would, I personally consider, prejudice very seriously our industrial competitiveness in future years.
The lobby against nuclear power is sustained by a number of different motives, some of which are genuine in their sincerity, if perhaps misdirected and ill-informed; but other factions are quite deliberate in their use of scaremongering to achieve their ends ranging from vote catching to other more sinister objectives.
We should not underestimate the potential risks of radioactivity, nor should we relax our vigilance; but on the other hand we should not allow ourselves, or the public, to be stampeded into the total abandonment of a source of power which, in practice to date, has been proved cleaner, cheaper and historically safter than other traditional sources of energy.

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May I ask your Lordships to consider for a moment the risk element of nuclear power stations compared with the fossil-fuelled equivalents? There seems to be a tendency to emphasise the danger to human life of nuclear power and, by omission, to give the impression that energy derived from coal and oil is danger free.
Radiation is the principal danger element derived from nuclear power, but unitl the Chernobyl disaster there is no record, to my knowledge, of anyone dying as a direct result of exposure to radioactivity from a nuclear power station. Considering that there are over 300 in operation worldwide, and that they have been in use for over 30 years, I think that your Lordships will agree that historically they have proved themselves remarkably safe.
On the other hand, sadly, there are almost annual fatal accidents in coal mines around the world, and fossil-fuelled power stations, as we have heard from a number of speeches, are a source of acid rain which, although not a direct risk to human life, can be said indirectly to be so.
There is another product which emanates from those power stations which many people feel, if left unchecked, will, over the years, seriously threaten the world's climatic conditions and eventually human life. It is carbon dioxide which most people associate with car exhausts, but which in fact is released in large quantities from fossil-fuelled power stations. Measurements show that since the beginning of this century concentration of that gas in the atmosphere has increased by no less than 13 per cent. We heard about that from the noble Lord, Lord Swann, who was able to explain the risks from that much better than I can. It is an element which is not often mentioned but which is a definite risk.
It would therefore seem that the only way to make nuclear power risk free is to have no nuclear power stations; equally, the only way of eliminating the risk of a possible climatic catastrophe derived from carbon dioxide is to stop burning fossil fuels. But your Lordships will agree that one suggestion is almost as ridiculous as the other.
Some weeks ago I had the opportunity to visit the French reprocessing plant at La Hague, the biggest in the world, and I have to say that any lingering doubts that I had about safety precautions in the nuclear industry were completely dispelled. It would be a technical task beyond my capabilities to describe all the checks and double checks that the French employ; suffice it to say that they have never had a fatal accident from radioactivity, and so high is their concern for safety that their record on the normal industrial site—nothing to do with the nuclear plant—rates as high as any in the country. As has already been mentioned, the French derive at least 60 per cent. of their electricity from nuclear power. Far from phasing out this industry, they expect that figure to rise to 75 per cent. by the turn of the century. They are now doubling the capacity of their reprocessing plant.
I am sure that we all appreciate and sympathise with the emotional element attached to the fear of radioactive pollution. To a great extent, I believe that
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it is the fear of the unknown. We deplore but comprehend the loss of an aeroplane with 300 people on board or a major earthquake with thousands dead, but the idea of an unseen, unfelt radioactive cloud with the threat of future cancer casualties over many years fills us with terror. If such a crucial decision as the phasing out of nuclear power is to be taken, we must rise above those emotional fears and consider calmly and coolly the facts of the case. For instance, what is the industry's track record? As many of your Lordships have said, it has been extraordinarily good. What is the risk element compared to the advantages to our nation and to our people?
Popular but uninformed fears should not decide our long-term industrial future. It may be worth while reminding ourselves of the risk elements in kindred industries. In 1974, 15,000 people were killed when the Gujarati Dam failed in India. In 1963, 2,000 people died in Italy when the Vaiont Dam broke, but dams are still used as a means of generating electricity. In 1984, 600 people died in Mexico City, and many more were injured, when a liquified petroleum storage depot exploded, but a similar storage depot at Canvey Island is still in use.
One could cite many more similar man-made catastrophes, particularly in the chemical industry; but although safety precautions have no doubt been improved, those industries have not been closed, and neither have they been put in abeyance. Why, then, should the nuclear power industry be treated differently, especially when it has an exemplary safety record and its attention to safety precautions is probably higher than any other comparable industry?
I believe that research into further risk elimination should continue to be given the highest priority in nuclear power stations but, having said that, I can see no logical reason why it should be singled out. The potential risks are considerable, but the actual accident level, even including Chernobyl, has to date proved to be encouragingly low.
7.17 p.m.
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, in rising to address your Lordships this evening, I must, like all my colleagues, pay tribute to the noble Viscount's chairmanship and the excellent work he put in in welding us together into a very happy ship. We worked well together, and those of us who are still on Sub-Committee F, which will become Sub-Committee D, look forward to sailing under him for a long time.
I think that the most significant conclusions are Nos. 254 and 255, which deal with the relationship between the number of options open and the vigour with which policy is formulated and implemented. Britain, with four options—oil, coal, gas and nuclear power—has never had a decisive policy at any time. I do not think that it ever will. France, with only one option, has had a vigorous and decisive policy from the beginning. Germany comes somewhere in between, because it has more than one option. It has not only the nuclear option; it has a great deal of brown coal and hard coal. Belgium resembles France. In Sweden they talk about running down nuclear power, but that is purely political. The establishment in Sweden is clear that that is not to be taken seriously and never will be implemented.

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In the course of working with my colleagues, I drew up a large chart covering the 41 years from 1945 to 1986. Across the chart were the principal divisions of authority in the government, the Civil Service, the nuclear industry and so on. I had the names of every chief executive on that chart. In the course of those 41 years there were only five years when there was no hiccup somewhere at the top which caused the whole system to halt. Inevitably, something was going on in the outside world at the same time and therefore the hiccup at the top interacted with some change in the outside world and something came to a standstill.
It is a rather pathetic chart of indecision and of decisions taken and then reversed. I believe that to some extent temperamentally we in this country rather like that way of going about things. We do not like to be prisoners of a decision so firmly taken that we cannot get out of it.
My life has not been spent in writing elegant essays about options; it has been spent in choosing among them and then implementing the choice as vigorously as possible. I shall therefore tell your Lordships what I would tell my noble friend Lord Marshall in the unlikely event of his asking me what the policy should be. First, Britain's base load power should be based 100 per cent. on nuclear energy generation. The system should be transformed onto that basis as fast as is economically desirable, consistent with approval and licensing by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate. A fast breeder reactor—or fast neutron reactor, as it is better to call it—should be incorporated into the system as soon as a clearance can be obtained from the NII. The comparative cost between electricity generated by thermal reactors and the fast reactors is quite irrelevant. We are concerned with electricity generated by this system, of which a fast reactor is a part, as opposed to energy generated by any other system. Comparing one bit of a system with another bit of the same system does not give one significant information.
Such being my policy for the future, what would I do in the immediate present? Would I build an AGR or a PWR? I am not sure that I would build either. I think that I would place an order for one, or perhaps two, coal-fired power stations using the latest techniques of fluid bed combustion so as to avoid the type of acid rain which the noble Lord, Lord Swann, deplores. I almost seem to hear the popping of corks in the household of the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, when I say that that would be my policy. By doing that I should give myself something like a two-year moratorium on placing orders for nuclear power stations. I would use that in this way. First, I would allow Torness and Heysham II to run in and establish themselves as trouble free, with established, not estimated, costs and with the possibility of serial ordering at the end of that time a reality.
Those two stations were built according to plan right up to the very last moment when they were ready for fuelling. Then a last minute hiccup took place. There was a little trouble with vibration of the control rods, and that has to be cured. However, this is the kind of trouble that engineers have a habit of curing. It has
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happened before; it will happen again. It must mean a few months' delay, but I hope that it will not be more than that.
I would use the same period to redesign the fuel elements in the PWR so as to employ stainless steel instead of zircalloy, which would entail a slight extra enrichment of the fuel, and that would slightly increase the running costs of the PWR. My reasons for doing this are on page 420. I am the questioner. Some of the colleagues of my noble friend Lord Marshall are providing the answer. Question 1013 is:
"Is it the case that in the context of the Three Mile Island accident the exothermic reaction between the water and zircalloy was implicated in the generation of the hydrogen bubble which mercifully did not explode?
"(Mr. Baker) Yes".
The next question is:
"Is there any evidence one way or the other whether the zircalloy steam reaction was implicated at Chernobyl?
"(Dr. Edmundson) You ask for evidence; we have no firm evidence. What is said is that there was a hydrogen explosion and our presumption is that that would have been the source of the hydrogen".
That presumption by Dr. Edmundson in evidence before us has been confirmed by all the accounts we have had of the Chernobyl accident subsequently. The zirconium water reaction was implicated in the generation of the hydrogen, which subsequently exploded and blew the top off. It is much easier to take precautions than prove that taking precautions is not necessary. That is a dictum of the great Lord Rayleigh who discovered argon and was president of the Royal Society. I believe that we can redesign a PWR without zircalloy, using stainless steel.
That two years would also be extremely valuable in awaiting the result of the Westinghouse-Mitsubishi designs of an advanced PWR. We should then have three options to choose from. However, I think at that point we might find that we were getting such good results from the AGR that we would not want to take up the other choices.
We cannot have everything. We cannot have three designs in competition with each other. The design effort would be beyond us if we were to make a good show of it. We cannot develop the PWR, continue development of the AGR and build the fast reactor, which is an essential component of the future system. Therefore a couple of years from now a painful decision will have to be made, but we can use those two years profitably.
The other matter I want to deal with is paragraph 267 of our conclusions on page 75, where we say:
"There is urgent need for an easily understood scale of risk from radiation, both natural and artificial, to help the public measure and assess the dangers of both normal and accidental discharges".
That suggestion originated with me, and in evidence before us my noble friend Lord Marshall said that he thought it was a very good idea. I have subsequently corresponded with the CEGB and British Nuclear Fuels and they asked me whether I objected to it being known as the "Halsbury scale". I replied that if I were to be immortalised along with Richter and the earthquake scale and the Beaufort scale for wind, I had no objection to that at all. Exactly what progress has been made since I do not know. Perhaps the noble

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Viscount who will reply can give us information about how that project is progressing.
I have one last comment I should like to make by way of reassurance to the noble Lord, Lord Dean of Beswick; he can read it tomorrow. It is 10 years since I laid down my responsibility for the Institute of Cancer Research but I have kept in touch with what has been going on in this field for years since. The list of specific tumours that are concerned with a prior infection with an identifiable virus is getting longer and longer. There are leukaemias which are definitely virus induced. They develop sometimes many years after the infection. In the case of cancer of the liver it can be 20 years after hepatitis B that a tumour develops in the liver. This mechanism is not necessarily unique. There may be other means whereby cancer can be induced. There certainly must be, because we can induce it artificially with chemicals.
Nevertheless, the most reasonable explanation for these little clusters of leukaemia—about which the noble Lord, Lord Dean of Beswick, was talking—is simply the co-infection of a young age group at the same time, where cross-infection is very easy between them. Then at a specific period later on there is a tendency to produce leukaemias, and so on. The noble Lord was quite right when he said that there are plenty of these clusters. This is still a matter of epidemiology which is being investigated. There are still many of these clusters that are in no way associated with the presence of nuclear power stations, and even where they may coincide the connection between them is very dubious, because the actual radiation levels to which children at a distance are exposed are very low indeed.
I cannot help recalling that when I was a little boy in a railway station nanny said to me, "Don't go near the boiler, dear. They do burst". I have no doubt that in the early days of locomotive engineering boilers did burst, and this induced a general fear of boilers bursting in the population at large. Nanny therefore being wise in her generation said, "Don't go near the boiler, dear". It took me a few years to get that out of my system but I no longer have any apprehensions of going near a locomotive engine, especially as modern locomotive engines are diesel electric and do not have boilers.
Something of that vague, numinous fear has infected the population at large. I think that it has been amplified by the media which merely use it as a source of promoting circulation. The media are a kind of broker that exchanges entertainment for advertising revenue. All kinds of funny, seamy sides of human nature can appear in their columns as something which the public will buy. There is a funny, queer, strange, love-hate relationship that we all have with something that frightens us. One can go near the edge of a cliff to see whether you can stand up to the feeling of exposure on it; it frightens you and, at the same time, you are slightly drawn to it.
That is why fear can be a source of entertainment, and the media exploit it. I think that they have exploited the fears that have been induced by the unknown elements in nuclear power generation and its
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mysterious association with the first nuclear explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, I believe that if we can keep up relations with the public we shall eventually convince them that we are not being secretive, that we have no secrets, that they can come to visit nuclear power stations, that they can visit the installations of British Nuclear Fuels, and so on. That is the way in which we must handle the matter. I think that the chairmen of both organisations are well on their way to doing so. With that, I think, I too have exceeded my 10 minutes and I thank your Lordships very much.
Lord Tanlaw: My Lords, perhaps I may be allowed to make a correction. The noble Earl queried the statistics about carbon dioxide which I gave. I have checked, and the noble Earl is quite correct. It is 3·5 tonnes per person per annum, and not 3·5 million tonnes per annum, as I mistakenly said. I apologise to the noble Earl and to the House.
7.32 p.m.
The Duke of Portland: My Lords, in the first place I should like to add my voice to the well-merited tributes that have been paid to our chairman, and particularly for the tolerance and patience shown towards a tiresome member of his crew.
I should now like to turn to the nuclear situation in Western Europe. In France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and Spain after Chernobyl there has been no change in their respective nuclear programmes. However, the Opposition in Germany have indicated that, if successful in the federal election next January, they will stop all nuclear construction and gradually phase it out.
In Italy and in the Netherlands the nuclear programmes have been suspended, presumably waiting to see what happens in Germany. As regards Sweden, after a referendum in 1980, the Swedish Parliament decided that nuclear power should be phased out not later than the year 2010.
After the Chernobyl accident both the Prime Minister and the Minister for Energy said that there were no plans to change the energy policy. This was wise, as 50 per cent. of the electricity in Sweden is produced by the country's 12 nuclear units. A week after the Chernobyl accident, the government formed a commission to evaluate this accident and the lessons learnt therefrom. It remains to be seen what this commission will report.
As regards the United Kingdom, all the evidence shows that, if the policy advocated by the Opposition were to be adopted, only the National Union of Mineworkers would benefit, and the rest of the country would suffer. We must bear in mind that, as in the case of the steam engine, the motor car and the aeroplane, the nuclear reactor will inevitably improve and become safer. Progress in the nuclear field is slower owing to the huge capital expenditure involved.
Remembering the somewhat intense lobbying in 1965 in favour of the advanced gas-cooled reactor, as against the pressurised water reactor, I had hoped that it would be possible to avoid a repetition of this on the present occasion. However, my hopes were not realised.

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When speaking to the committee in favour of the advanced gas-cooled reactor, Mr. Miller, the chairman of the South Scottish Electricity Board, concluded with the words:
"The UK should stick with the known, the proven, the established, that is to say with AGRs".
In referring to the advanced gas-cooled reactors I think that Mr. Miller had in mind not all the AGRs, but those at Hinkley Point and Hunterston which, even yet, are not operating with high availability. There are at present over 145 pressurised water reactors operating worldwide as against those two advanced gas-cooled reactors.
I am aware that it is said by a number of persons in this country, whose opinion is highly respected, that the advanced gas-cooled reactor is safer than the pressurised water reactor. Nevertheless, I cannot believe that the French would have based their future energy programme on the pressurised water reactor; nor would the Belgians, Germans, Swiss and Spaniards have done likewise unless they had full confidence in the safety of the pressurised water reactor.
In 1973, when I was on the board of the Franco-Belgian Nuclear Fuel Company, I had opportunities to see the distaste with which the French accepted Westinghouse technology. I am certain that they would have preferred that technology to have come from the United Kingdom, if they had believed it to be competitive. Time has shown that they made a wise decision then. It may well be that the new advanced gas-cooled reactors have no defects, but I submit that this can be known for sure only after they have operated for at least a year.
One of the most important recommendations contained in the committee's report calls for an international agreement covering all aspects of reactor safety. The disaster at Chernobyl demonstrated that reactor safety is an international issue. A nuclear disaster in one country can affect many others. For instance, the disaster at Chernobyl affected vegetables in the Southern Ukraine and the moss consumed by reindeer in Lapland. Consequently, safety standards worldwide must be brought to the highest pitch, which can best be done by a universal international agreement. Steps have already been taken in this direction.
On 24th September the International Atomic Energy Agency's general conference approved a draft convention on early notification of a nuclear accident, and another draft convention on assistance in the case of a nuclear accident or radiological emergency. However, there remains the even more important matter of ensuring that nuclear reactors should be designed to be tolerant of operator error. In the case of the two most important accidents—those at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl—both were due to human error and a reactor design which did not failsafe when those errors were made. Finally, every effort must be made to ensure that the reactors are themselves absolutely safe and subject to regular inspection by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The international agreement, which I have outlined, will only be attained, and subsequently ratified, if pressure is kept up by Her Majesty's Government. As
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time passes after the Chernobyl disaster, nuclear safety will come to be regarded less and less as a matter of great urgency.
In their report the committee have drawn attention to the unsatisfactory nature of the present planning procedure. In this connection I wish to draw your Lordships' attention in some detail to the time which has elapsed since the Government abandoned further research into the steam generated heavy water reactor and decided to make a survey of the various other reactor systems.
In 1977, the advanced gas-cooled reactors having proved disappointing, a decision was reached that the possibility of constructing a pressurised water reactor should be studied, and Sizewell was chosen as a suitable spot for the construction of such a reactor. In April 1980 a letter of intent for a pressurised water reactor was sent by the Central Electricity Generating Board of Great Britain to the National Nuclear Corporation.
In January 1983 Sir Frank Layfield, QC, was appointed inspector to conduct a planning inquiry, and he spent the following two years taking evidence. The inquiry itself ended in 1985, since when Sir Frank Layfield has been writing his report. This, I understand, is to be delivered to the Secretary of State for Energy either in the last week of this month or the first week of next. Although almost 10 years will have elapsed since the construction of a pressurised water reactor was proposed, the Government are accused of introducing the pressurised water reactor into this country at a Gadarene gallop.
7.42 p.m.
Lord Weinstock: My Lords, I have first to add my congratulations and thanks to those of other noble Lords to the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, and his committee for this informative and timely report. The noble Lord, Lord Marshall of Goring, gave the House a clear and authoritative exposition of the dramatic events which occurred at Chernobyl and dealt in simple terms with the question uppermost in every lay mind, "Why shouldn't it happen here?" It will not happen here, and the noble Lord explained why not. But as he and other noble Lords spoke we could hear the reverberations of past doubts and mistrust.
I have to express an interest since the company for which I work is a shareholder in the National Nuclear Corporation and a supplier of components for nuclear reactors, although its main commercial interest in power stations is in the turbine generators which are driven equally by steam raised by nuclear boilers or any suitable fossil fuel source.
I have for many years supported the expansion of electricity generation by nuclear power. As other noble Lords have said, we cannot in the United Kingdom get much more than a marginal contribution from windmills, solar, water and wave power, and so on. There are only two really effective other fuels for large-scale production of electricity, coal and oil, in which I include gas for this purpose.
Leaving aside the obvious fact that supplies of these materials must eventually run out, the first of them, coal, is under the control in the United Kingdom of a

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monopoly supplier because of the difficulties of importing cheap foreign coal in large quantities. The second, oil and gas, is mostly controlled by an international cartel whose members' interests are political as well as commercial.
The recent moderating of the unbridled power of the National Union of Mineworkers is a relief to the whole nation, but there is no guarantee that this is more than transient; and the same is true of OPEC, thrown into disarray by the glut of oil resulting from the temporary overproduction coincident, on the one hand, with industrial recession and, on the other, with a chronic, and uncured, crisis in international finances which continues to inhibit the matching of the material needs of relatively poor countries with the unused resources, including unemployed workers, of most of the relatively rich ones.
On purely economic grounds the case for nuclear power is unanswerable, other things being equal. But other things are not equal, because for one reason and another the resonance set up by the word "nuclear" creates an impression of danger. Several noble Lords have referred to the need to give the public reassurance, but I wonder whether the lack of understanding is really the fault of the generating authorities and the nuclear industry.
Even in the field of diagnostic medicine, we have found that the use of the word "nuclear" is at least undesirable, even to describe a machine where there is no question of nuclear activity in the sense of radiation or anything of that sort. I suppose that in the field of public relations in this matter only the Government can take the lead, as the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield said.
We cannot support nuclear power unless we believe it to be safe, by which I mean free, for all practical purposes, of major risk. Chernobyl was not an inevitable choice on the road to nuclear power, as the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, suggested. The noble Lord, Lord Marshall of Goring, to the prejudice of his own career when he was deputy chairman of the Atomic Energy Authority, opposed the choice of the steam generating heavy water reactor, which was forced on the industry in 1974 by the Government of the day, rejecting thereby the probability of the joint development with France of a nuclear power industry, as the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, would have wished.
That reactor which, as the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, pointed out, bears certain similarities to the Chernobyl machine, was fortunately abandoned largely due to the scientific judgment of the noble Lord, Lord Marshall of Goring. His persistence lost him at the time his post as adviser to the Department of Energy. The noble Lord took the view that the SGHWR suffered from many practical difficulties, and if it could be built at all to meet our rigorous safety standards the cost would have been prohibitive.
The fact is that a large part of the cost of nuclear reactors lies in making them safe to standards which are as severe as the imagination of scientists and technologists can conjure up. That is not to say that nothing ever goes wrong in our nuclear power stations. Things do go wrong, but when they do the design and
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the operating procedures ensure that there are no consequences of the Chernobyl type or anything remotely like them.
The pressurised water reactors, which I hope will be built following the painstaking and exhaustive Layfield report, have been operating now for decades without causing a single death, or any more industrial ill-health than would be expected in any non-nuclear industrial installation for a similar purpose. Seventy per cent. of the electricity generated in France, as other noble Lords have pointed out, is powered by 42 of these reactors already operational, and 13 more are under construction; even if we never build another nuclear power station in this country, Heaven help us if they are unsafe.
By collaborating on safety matters with other countries whose nuclear power programmes are going ahead, we can make assurance doubly sure. By failing to shake off the semi-superstitious fear which defies all scientific and technological reassurance, we merely store up trouble for those whose well-being in the future depends upon adequate supplies of energy.
I must say that I do not quite follow noble Lords in the reasoning that deaths and injuries caused by accidents in activities which have nothing to do with energy and nuclear power generation constitute an argument in favour of nuclear power. But, my Lords, those who sincerely support the case for nuclear energy, those who design, build and operate the power stations, too, live in this world, and they too are concerned not less than the Friends of the Earth for the safety of their children and grandchildren. Since we depend upon these same people for so much that is vital for the present and the future, let us at least hear their arguments with balance and objectivity.
At paragraph 118 of volume 1 of the Sele;ct Committee's report we read,
"that in most countries nuclear programmes have been overwhelmingly based on light water reactors, mainly PWRs. Agonising over thermal reactor choice has been a uniquely British preoccupation."
Let us hope that this time round, after more than 20 years of policy lacking in decisiveness, resolution and good judgment, the present Government will finally get the United Kingdom's nuclear power programme right.
7.50 p.m.
Lord Hankey: My Lords, I think our remarkably efficient committee has produced a truly excellent report. I support all its main conclusions. First, I support the European Communities Illustrative Programme to produce 40 per cent. of nuclear electricity by 1995 and, if possible, 50 per cent. after the turn of the century. These are very ambitious goals, especially the second one, but there is a particular reason why I think the nuclear option is important. I say this because I was a diplomat with much experience in the Middle East.
Europe is still very dependent on oil, especially oil from the Middle East. Of course we have a lot of oil in the North Sea and more has been found elsewhere since OPEC put the price up in the 1970s. But the Middle East is still very important to Europe as a source of energy, and it is almost always in a very unstable condition. Israel's relations with its

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neighbours seem to be almost insoluble, and there has been trouble with Europe's oil supplies before. Now the war between Iran and Iraq, lasting six years, shows few signs of ending and could well endanger supplies from the Persian Gulf. A dark Soviet shadow hangs over the area to the north, fortunately not too dark just at present. But in short we cannot see far ahead through this mist of troubles.
It is important for us in Europe to diversify our sources of energy and the obvious and cheapest alternative is nuclear energy. I am sure that is the conclusion of our debate already. Our wise Select Committee did not think anything of other alleged alternatives. I think the House will have noticed that the representative from Sweden, where the government are committed to phasing out nuclear energy, was at a loss to suggest where else Sweden's power was to come from.
Nuclear power plants do not cause acid rain—a fossil fuel problem that will clearly cause a great deal more trouble. Its solution is bound to increase the cost of burning fossil fuels and make nuclear energy relatively more attractive. I do not believe the problem of disposing of nuclear wastes safely is technically impossible. After reading this report I am fully convinced that the real problem is largely psychological, and more especially emotional, and is due, as we have said, to fear of radiation. But surely over the years we can educate our public to see it in a better light.
My noble friend Lord Marshall of Goring showed clearly how much natural radiation, including that produced by coal-fired power stations, exceeds the minute quantities released into the atmosphere by the nuclear industry. My noble friend Lord Hanworth also gave some interesting statistics on that. But we must all support the insistence in the report that safety factors must receive absolutely prime consideration.
This brings me to Chernobyl. That terrible accident showed how our world had become one. Many speakers have recognised that today. It is demonstrably absurd for Leeds or a London borough to declare itself a nuclear-free zone. We are all in this together. In this sense the public are quite right to be concerned. It is our job to reassure them. But a conclusion which should clearly not be drawn from Chernobyl is that AGRs or PWRs are in some way shown to be unsafe. It is true that we would not licence the Chernobyl type of PWR here. It has features we should not approve on safety grounds, as has clearly been explained in this debate. Our safety rules here and in Europe are extremely strict, but we now know, since our Select Committee's report was written, that the Chernobyl accident was caused by human error—engineers turning off the safety circuits for experimental reasons; clearly a half-baked thing to do. One cannot—I repeat cannot—argue back therefore from the accident at Chernobyl to conclude that European reactors are unsafe.
That brings me to the Sizewell problem on which we most earnestly await the report of the public inquiry. Our Select Committee decided to await that report before recommending whether we should build a PWR or another advanced gas-cooled reactor. Until now I had hoped that it would be an AGR, but for the
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reasons explained by my noble friend Lord Marshall in this report I shall not be at all surprised if the Government decide that it is time for us to join the mainstream of European and American production and order a small family of PWRs year by year. The strong opinion of the users—in this case the Central Electricity Generating Board—must carry some weight in this.
The CEGB intends to get a good, well-tried design and replicate it, as the French have done. That is important. We made the same mistake with the AGRs as we did with tanks during the war. I warmly support what my noble friend Lord Kearton said about this. We kept altering the design; we employed a number of different companies and corporations; we encouraged them to compete with each other, keeping rival teams of experts here and there, and it was a flop. They missed many opportunities to learn by experience. The French have shown us how to do it. Let us follow their example. They have been immensely successful and I warmly admire and congratulate them.
I add here how important it is to follow this through so as to keep the skilled and experienced staffs together. The noble Lords, Lord Nelson, Lord Plowden, Lord Ironside, and others have stressed this issue. It is very important. We do not want just one order. We want a succession of orders to keep the firms busy, to keep skilled staff going and to give employment.
This brings me to the fast breeder reactor. The committee agreed that the eventual move to fast reactors was inevitable. The groundwork has already been done, first, by ourselves at Dounreay and, secondly, by the French who already have two FBRs operating—the Phenix and the Super-Phenix. It will be some time before the FBRs can become competitive in costs, but I draw your Lordships' attention to the very interesting evidence given by M. Carle, the top expert from Electricité de France, who has no doubt that the FBR costs can, with more experience, be reduced to make them fully competitive with PWRs even in France, where PWR costs are now low. France exports cheap electricity to all neighbouring countries, including the United Kingdom, and this is undoubtedly due to its success with nuclear energy.
The major point about the fast breeder reactors is that they burn up the uranium 238 with plutonium, both by-products of the thermal reactors—Magnox, AGRs, PWRs, and so on. These waste products, uranium 238 and plutonium, can only be an embarrassment in the age we live in. Surely, it is much better to burn them up and produce more electricity as we have been doing at Dounreay for nearly 30 years. Moreover, as M. Carle, the French representative, said,
"Although there is no immediate likelihood of a shortage of uranium, it does seem important to protect ourselves against any future shortage, any embargo upon uranium, any political crisis over uranium, in the future".
We live in a decidedly sticky world and I do not think we should take risks in this matter. The development of really competitive FBRs will take some years, no doubt, and a lot of experimental work in research. Seven to 10 years is the shortest period before a new FBR can reach full production after being ordered. We cannot possibly foresee what the world will be like in

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10 years' or 20 years' time. We do not want the new Europe to be vulnerable, as it was in the oil crisis of 1974, only some 12 years ago.
I hope that we are going to get on with this. I do not like the idea of putting off decisions. I think that my noble friend Lord Halsbury is one of the wisest men I know; but I must honestly say that I was slightly dismayed at his suggestion that we put off a decision for two years about the next thermal reactor. Both the EC Illustrative Programme and the memorandum of understanding of 1984 among Britain, Belgium, France, Germany and Italy foresee the need to make progress with FBRs. I entirely share the view expressed to the committee by both my noble and experienced friend Lord Marshall and also by M. Carle from EDF that, in view of the long lead times involved, we should make a start with further development of FBRs very soon. And since we have been active and fairly successful in this field for some 30 years, I hope that the next European FBR may be built in this country.
In this connection I draw your Lordships' attention to the fact that at Dounreay we have already completed the plutonium refuelling cycle, extracting the new plutonium from the burned-up uranium 238 fuel and feeding it back in new fuel elements into the reactor. That is not the least of the very remarkable achievements at Dounreay and it should encourage us to press forward soon with the support of our European partners.
Our European colleagues will want an assurance that planning delays will not hold up construction in this country. They are quite right. I must say that I am appalled at the ridiculous proceedings at Sizewell, and, indeed, the critics of nuclear energy seem to be shocked, also. We really must lay down better and much stricter rules for the conduct of such inquiries. Nor do I understand why months and months go by before reports of an inquiry are produced. Are we always to be pipped at the post because we are incompetent to settle these matters? We must do better. I urge the Government to do something effective about this soon. Incidentally, M. Carle gave our committee one rather nice bit of advice. He said:
"Do not consider the nuclear option as a religious question nor as a philosophical question but just as an economic question".
I hope we are going to be practical about it.
To conclude, I warmly support this excellent report. I go a bit further: I hope that we shall very soon go forward with ordering further reactors, perhaps as suggested by my noble friend Lord Marshall, and also start work soon with our European partners on a new prototype fast breeder reactor of commercial size. We need to keep our country in the forefront of modern technology, which is the only safe place for it to be, and to train and maintain the scientific, engineering and industrial staffs to make such a policy effective. It is essential for the Government to have and to maintain an effective energy policy in this matter. I earnestly hope that they will go ahead soon on these lines.
8.5 p.m.
Viscount Mersey: My Lords, it will come as no surprise to noble Lords that many of the points that I was going to make have already been made by other
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noble Lords far more eminent than I am, and I certainly do not intend to repeat them. I must congratulate this committee on a very well balanced and sound report, having taken evidence from witnesses as diverse as the noble Lord, Lord Marshall, on the one hand, and the Friends of the Earth, on the other; and from people as pro-nuclear as M. Remy Carle and as anti-nuclear as the MEP Paul Staes of the Rainbow Party.
Whereas the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, said that he found the oral evidence rather (as he put it) "indigestible", I must confess that I found it quite appetising. For instance, the witness Herr Jelinek Fink describes the problem in West Germany. He states in his evidence that only if you tell the people the true facts about nuclear power a thousand times over will they manage to get the issue in perspective; and that all that hard-won perspective can be destroyed by one newspaper headline, containing the two words "nuclear" and "disaster". Newspapers, said Mr. Fink in evidence, are tempted to entertain rather than to inform and the headline, "Nuclear disaster", does entertain and therefore sells papers.
I have an example here from the Daily Mail:
"Radioactive sheep alert".
This article is by Mr. Robin Oakley, normally a very sound journalist; but the headline must show that Mr. Oakley does not realise that every sheep is radioactive, just as all of us are. Every sheep, also, is woolly. And every sheep is hot-blooded. I am wondering this. Supposing the headline had read, "Hot-blooded sheep alert". How would the public have reacted? I would mention that the area under concern is the Lake District. I suppose that people would have been sorry for the sheep and would have come to the conclusion that the wretched animal had a temperature caused perhaps by some sort of ruminant 'flu or sheep louse.
I think that what the public would not have done is what they did over this, what I might call, alert radioactive sheep. They boycotted the Lake District. I know this only too well because I went through the Lake District at the height of the tourist season. I was in a party of 10. We had no hotel bookings; yet every night we could just pitch into an hotel, and we were in. Those hotels always had rooms, they were empty at the height of the season.
I think, however, that it would be unfair to confine muddled thinking to the sort of shock-horror probe headlines of the tabloid press. There is a sentence, not in this report, but in the 1985–86 report of the Environment Committee in another place, which reads:
"Low activity wastes of very long half lives present very serious problems for waste management".
I do not think that anyone has mentioned this sentence so far but it is rather an interesting one. Granite chippings fall into this category, but no one is worried about disposing of them or, indeed, about dispersing them as, I suppose, gravel on one's drive.
Many noble Lords have made this sort of point. The noble Lord, Lord Marshall, and the noble Lord, Lord Swann, mentioned in particular coal ash. That is in the same category and that was not seen by the Environment Committee. Each coal-fired station—and the noble Lord, Lord Marshall, will correct me if I am

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wrong—that produces one megawatt of electricity produces also a million tonnes of radioactive coal ash every year. We really have not been too worried about the disposal of coal ash over the last 200 years or so.
There is one other area of confusion which I do not think has been touched upon as much as it might have been. That is the connection between the two types of nuclear industry—the power industry and the weapons industry—and the feeling that it is a clandestine operation working hand in glove one with the other, and that the former exists to feed the latter. Were that the case, one would expect there to be the strongest nuclear feeling in the nuclear-weapon states (that is, France and ourselves) and less nuclear controversy in the non-nuclear weapon countries such as West Germany.
This is not so. As Herr Jelinek Fink told us, there is widespread opposition to nuclear matters in Germany; whereas the famous M. Carle from France tells us that there is no opposition to nuclear power in his country despite it being a weapon state.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hankey, that M. Carle talks interestingly, so much so that I would like just to mention one or two more of his remarks to the committee. As the noble Lord said, he represents Electricité de France. He tells the committee that each time a French region has economic difficulties the government comes to him and says to his company: "Why don't you build a nuclear reactor there? It would be a good thing: it would give employment and create more activity". Then, says M. Carle, "Unfortunately, all the regions now want a nuclear unit and the whole thing has gone too far. We have to resist them sometimes because we do not want so many nuclear plants".
In other words, the French people want more nuclear power stations than Electricité de France wishes to build. This is a unique situation, but also a powerful situation economically. My noble friend the Duke of Portland asked M. Carle to whom France exported electricity, and this was the reply:
"To all our neighbours: Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and Portugal. The biggest amount is to Switzerland but that is because the Swiss resell electricity to other countries like Yugoslavia and Austria."
As many people will know, Austria actually built its own nuclear power station but it never generated any electricity, and now they are pulling it down again. Instead, the Austrians seem to prefer to buy their nuclear electricity from France, via the middlemen of Switzerland. So the French profit and the Swiss profit and surely the Austrians lose out. Surely we should not ourselves go down that Austrian road.
My final quote has just been used by the noble Lord, Lord Hankey, but I think it is so good that I will read it again. As M. Carle puts it so eloquently,
"Do not consider the nuclear option as a religious question, nor as a philosophical question, but just simply as an economic question."
We really must be economically realistic and continue our nuclear programme.
8.12 p.m.
Lord Thurlow: My Lords, I will take the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, and confine my
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comments on the main content of this admirable report to two words: "Hear, hear!"
However, I want very briefly to pursue the aspect raised by the noble Duke, the Duke of Portland, on safety. We have heard from many authorities that, as the report has said, we can for practical purposes be satisfied with the standards of safety that have been developed in this country and in Western Europe generally in present conditions. But ought we not to take a rather wider horizon? In the world that we are moving into the demand for power is going to develop on a vast scale in, for instance, the third world as well as elsewhere. I have spent a great deal of time in different parts of the third world and it is a rather frightening prospect for me to contemplate so many countries that are really still technologically inefficient moving into the world of nuclear power. It will come; but we have to guard against all kinds of contingencies in respect of human error and inefficiency. We have seen this terrible example of what negligence can lead to.
There are other contingencies that have not been taken into account in the report. I suppose that in the world to come terrorism may adopt new dimensions directed at the kind of targets that can create the greatest possible social damage. Again, may there not be physical catastrophes, seismological upheavals, earthquakes and so on, that could reduce all present safety standards to a comparative nonsense?
What seems to be necessary is fairly large-scale research, undertaken internationally, as the first step towards the kind of international co-operation that the report recommends in paragraph 249. As regards research, surely we cannot expect the Atomic Energy Authority to devote its resources to this kind of wide-horizon research: it has plenty to do with its resources in relation to this country. So it should be an international project, in the first place presumbly (as the European Parliament has recommended) on a Community basis. I would hope that we would bring in other major nuclear countries such as the United States, Japan, Russia and India, and work to form a basis for the kind of international co-operation in action that may be possible in the long term. But it is certainly a very long-term affair and, in the terms of reference for such a research project, may we envisage the worst kinds of things that can happen? Can we ask research to cover "design for catastrophe"?
The Swedes are already engaged in what I believe to be valuable and fruitful research into the storage and disposal of waste in subterranean salt caves free of water penetration. It may be that in a kind of science fiction world to come people may deem it necessary and desirable to site nuclear power installations on a vast scale in subterranean sites, thereby using the natural shields of rock.
We need a planetary horizon and a great deal more research to cover the widest contingencies; and so I ask Her Majesty's Government to take the initiative with our European partners in starting this ball rolling to pursue the recommendations of the Select Committee on moving towards international co-operation, and starting in the first place with research.
8.19 p.m.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, we are now nearing the end of this long but very interesting and well-informed debate. I had the pleasure of serving on the committee responsible for producing this report and I should like to join all those who have paid tribute to the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, for the masterly and skilful manner in which he blended our various opinions in order to produce a single report.
This report, of course, is primarily about the Illustrative Programme of the European Community in connection with nuclear power. I think it would be regarded in future years as a remarkably succinct summary of nuclear power developments in the various countries of the Community.
As has already been pointed out, we can see the diversity of national approaches within Europe alone—I am not talking about America or Japan—towards nuclear power, ranging from the position of the French and the Belgians at one end, and the position of Denmark at the other, without any nuclear power at all, with, in between, countries like Germany and the United Kingdom.
Tribute has quite rightly been paid to the remarkable French achievement, where they not only decided that they would have to solve their energy problem by concentrating on nuclear power, because they had no alternative readily available, but they did it in a remarkable manner. At paragraph 19 of our report on page 14, we say that the rationalisation policy of France,
"has led to the choosing of a single type of nuclear steam supply system, supplied by a single manufacturer, FRAMATOME. It also led to the choosing of a single supplier, ALSTHOM, for the turbo-generator sets".
Here is a remarkable degree of co-ordination the like of which we have not experienced in this country, because we tend to go for debate, difference of opinion and fragmentation.
Although the report was primarily about the European programme, the prime interest of those who will read it, and of course of those noble Lords who have debated it today, is the impact of this thinking on the British position, because we in Britain have reached the situation of having to decide on how we go forward, if indeed we go forward, in nuclear power.
One cannot see nuclear power in isolation; it forms a part of the whole energy scene. So I should like to explain my own position in the matter, in case there is any misunderstanding because of my past associations. I have always believed that we should have an energy policy based on a diversity of supplies of energy. We are a country which has been favoured with an abundance of coal in the past, which is also likely to last for some time in the future, and we must make the best use of that. In more recent times, we have had access to oil and gas in the North Sea which has been most effectively exploited and we have to make the best use of that. We also led the way in the peaceful use of the nuclear operation and have developed great expertise there, and I believe we must make the best use of that. In addition, we probably need to pay more attention to renewables and to accentuate the work that has been admirably stimulated by the present Secretary of State for Energy in conservation.
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So this is the total energy picture as I see it, but the problem at any one time is: what precise balance do you reach between these various components? We are concerned here with the nuclear component, but we have a little problem because we have had this very long running Sizewell inquiry. The preparation of the report, as the noble Duke, the Duke of Portland, has reminded us, has also taken a long time and it has not yet appeared.
However, in the meantime two major developments of great relevance have taken place. One is the Chernobyl disaster, to which we have referred a lot this afternoon, and the other is the halving of the oil price. I presume that the report which will be prepared on Sizewell will deal with the evidence presented at the inquiry. It will not, I presume, be able to deal with the subsequent developments unless a further inquiry is initiated. So it will mean that these subsequent factors will have to be very carefully taken into account.
We have talked a good deal about the Chernobyl situation and we were very fortunate indeed that the noble Lord, Lord Marshall of Goring—the very energetic and effective chairman of the CEGB—told us at first hand how that situation was presented at the meeting in Vienna. He has explained quite clearly the particular characteristics of that unfortunate mishap. It seems fairly clear that it was related to that type of plant, but what noble Lords have very rightly emphasised during the course of this debate is that one important consequence of that disaster—whether or not it could take place in that form, or in some other form in other types of nuclear reactor—has been the impact on public opinion, and it is quite clear that this situation will have to be dealt with.
There is very grave misgiving in the public mind, rightly or wrongly, about nuclear energy and anything associated with it, as many noble Lords have said in the course of this debate. So it seems to me, in the wake of the Sizewell report, that one action that is absolutely essential and which must probably be initiated by Government—I fail to see how else it could be initiated—is to reassure the public mind not only by what might be called propaganda, but by hard fact. I think the proposition of my noble friend Lord Tanlaw, that this whole question of radiation intensity is something which should be measured locally and should be available to anybody to know about it—in case people have fears about, for example, the disposal of nuclear waste or about whether, for whatever reason, the level of radiation may be getting too high—is something which must be very carefully taken into account.
I now come to the other factor to which I referred, which is the halving of the oil price, because this has changed the whole nature of competitiveness in the energy market. A great deal of the evidence that was put to the Sizewell inquiry related to competitiveness. In fact, quotations were made by noble Lords about the views of the leading personality from Electricité de France that this is really an economic matter. So we cannot ignore the economic aspects.
To what extent have the economics changed since the oil price halved? I think that this needs to be inquired into. All I can say is that in quite a carefully structured article in the Financial Times of 19th

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August, Mr. Max Wilkinson wrote the following paragraph:
"With a 10 per cent. discount rate and coal at 55 dollars a tonne—the price which British Coal believes will be the ceiling this century—a coal station would be cheaper and would retain its advantage as long as the annual increase in the real price of coal was less than about 2½ per cent. over its 40-year lifetime".
That was, of course, written on the basis of various assumptions. I have quoted it only because I say that it raises the question.
I do not believe that the economics, as argued at the inquiry, will any longer be relevant. No doubt in the long run the advantages of nuclear, economically, will be perfectly valid, but we are concerned here with the medium-term, with an early decision about what we do next. I do not believe that we should go into this and make this decision without clarifying that issue.
Your Lordships will not be surprised if I say that I found the suggestion made by the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, as one of great interest. What we must do in the future is to continue the range and diversity of our sources of energy. It seems clear from what the CEGB has estimated that in the early 1990s it will require additional generating capacity. I have no reason whatsoever to doubt that. I have heard speeches that the board has made on this matter, and it is absolutely clear. The question is whether that capacity can satisfactorily be met by an additional nuclear station, having regard to all the issues that still have to be faced up to.
I have not even mentioned yet the question of the choice of reactor, on which it is quite clear from your Lordships' contributions there are different views. It seems to me, therefore, that if we are going to continue to depend on a diversity, and if the need for extra generating capacity is as urgent as I am sure the CEGB is right in saying, then a proper first step might well be to go for another coal-fired station.
Let us not decry the coal-fired stations. The CEGB, whose system depends very largely on coal-fired stations, operates them most efficiently and effectively. Naturally, I have been over very many of them. Let us not be too afraid of the construction of new coal-fired stations because the performance at Drax B was exemplary. It was built on time and within the cost limits. Let us not say that the question of acid rain cannot be dealt with; it can. It will be much easier to deal with it in a new station and to build in the necessary desulphurisation plant than to retrofit it on to an existing station.
Therefore, it seems to me that, while we sort out these other questions—for example, identify clearly what the economic case is, convince the public, make our choice of which reactor we want to go for, give the new AGRs a chance to prove their mettle—there might well be a case for saying: but on the other hand, the CEGB has to have its additional generating capacity, so why not start by going for a new, up-to-date and thoroughly efficient coal-fired station that would virtually eliminate the acid rain problem. Let us then get the nuclear choice right.
Our debate is, of course, in advance of the report. I think that it is very timely because it can act as a curtain raiser. We have aired our views, we will undoubtedly be coming back to the question on a large number of occasions, but I think that we are fortunate
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in our timing. We have been able to clarify our minds about the nuclear programme throughout the European Community. I think that the broad conclusion on the programme is that the likely position is that by 1995 a figure of 40 per cent. will be achieved, although it now seems unlikely, as the report states, to go up to 50 per cent. by the year 2000 because of the repercussive effects of the Chernobyl incident.
I think that the debate has much clarified our views on both the European and the British side. I am very pleased to have been able to participate in the committee's work.
8.34 p.m.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, it has indeed been a very long debate and certainly an interesting one. I should like first to join others in congratulating and thanking the committee for its report and the hard work that it put into the gathering of evidence, into interviewing witnesses and into presenting the report. I think that thanks are also due to the officials who assisted with the report and the inquiry and, indeed, to the witnesses who were good enough to give evidence to the committee.
I should like also to congratulate the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, chairman of the committee, on the manner in which he presented the report to the House. I am sorry of course that he was disappointed at the Labour Party's reaction to Chernobyl—I presume that is what he meant—but I have to tell him that Labour Party policy, which was agreed at this year's conference, was as a result of resolutions passed in 1985, and the Chernobyl accident in fact confirmed all the fears that had been expressed at the conference in 1985. Therefore, it seems that the Labour Party and its conference had foresight in 1985, and ought not to be denigrated for that.
I recognise, of course, that the committee went to a good deal of trouble to obtain evidence from those intimately concerned with the nuclear industry in this country and in other countries, and took evidence from individuals and organisations opposed to any extension of nuclear power generation in Europe.
Arising from that evidence, and no doubt in the light of its own knowledge and experience of the subject, the committee has concluded that the case for an expansion of nuclear power both in the United Kingdom and in Europe is strong. However, the committee will not be surprised to learn that its conclusions will not gain unanimous acceptance in the country or, indeed, in the House—almost so in this House, but not quite. There is an alternative view, and I shall try to express it.
Before coming to that, I should like to express some doubt in my own mind about the desirability of the committee publishing its report before the full implications of the Chernobyl disaster could be assimilated and assessed and some of the witnesses re-interviewed, following the disaster. Bearing in mind that four-fifths of the evidence was taken before that fateful Saturday, 26th April, when the catastrophic accident at Chernobyl happened, it is at least conceivable that some of the evidence might have been changed in content or in tone, or both, following

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that accident, especially bearing in mind that this was the first accident—I emphasise that—at a civil nuclear power station where the containment was breached and considerable amounts of radioactivity released into the world environment. That did not happen at Three Mile Island. It happened here. It was the first of its kind in the world.
I believe that there was a case for a pause, for people to stand back and ponder awhile before reaching firm conclusions for the future. I say that recognising fully the inherent defects of the Russian reactor and the differences in safety concepts as between the Russians and ourselves.
I also take the view that the committee, before making its report, should have considered visiting the Soviet Union to find out at first hand from officials and others exactly what went wrong, how such an accident could happen and the effects on the population in the immediate vicinity of the nuclear power station—and, indeed, on the population of the large city of Kiev. There may indeed have been lessons to be learnt about the techniques of evacuating quickly large numbers of people at short notice and in a very short period of time.
We have to bear in mind not only the risk of an accident at our own nuclear power stations (which I accept is very low indeed) but risks which may arise in other countries—France in particular. I think we were reminded by the noble Lord, Lord Nelson of Stafford, that there are six nuclear PWR stations 25 miles across the Channel. We must therefore bear in mind the risks which arise in other countries. We have no control over the type or the operation of installations in France. We therefore need to be even more concerned about the safety of our population. A catastrophic accident at a nuclear power station on the French coast could have appalling consequences for the South East, including London. We need to know what contingency plans exist for the possible need to evacuate large numbers of people and for other arrangements necessary for their protection and well-being. That is very important. Perhaps the committee did not have the remit to go into that sort of problem, but it is one that needs to be addressed. I hope the noble Lord may be able to give us some reassurance about this when he winds up.
There is another problem in connection with the report. It is a problem for which the committee bears no responsibility and which has been mentioned already this evening. That problem is the delay to the report of the Sizewell inquiry, for which we have all been waiting for well over a year. We have been promised that report on several occasions and we have not received it. It is about time we did receive it. Can the Minister tell us tonight of a firm date for the publication of the report, or when the Secretary of State may receive it? I did see something concerning that in the newspapers—I think on Monday—but one has seen things in the newspapers before stating that the report would be available in February and then in July and then in October. Can the noble Lord tell us when we shall have the report? We need it and we need it quickly.
Because the committee's report is so comprehensive it is not posssible to deal with every aspect in what
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must necessarily be a short speech. Bearing in mind that there have been 26 speeches in favour of the report and that this is the only speech likely to have any reservations concerning it, I think I should be given a great deal more time than approximately 20 minutes. However, I shall try to restrict my remarks and deal with those matters which I see as being most important.
First, there is the question of safety. Paragraph 268 of the Select Committee report says:
"No source of energy is absolutely safe. Nuclear risks differ in kind from other risks because of their potential for devastating, widespread and long-lasting damage in the event of a serious accident. If nuclear power is to be generally acceptable, a systematic and meticulous approach to all aspects of safety is essential so that no such acccident can occur".
Looking through the report we find that a number of areas of risk have been mentioned. Is the risk of one catastrophic accident every million reactor years acceptable? That is a question which the committee has asked. It thinks the answer is: "Possibly". However, if there are a thousand reactors in operation that could mean one accident to one reactor every thousand years. Some may think that that is acceptable as well because neither they nor their children nor their grandchildren will be here a thousand years hence; that is a problem for people who will live a very long way ahead in time. However, statistically, the accident might happen at the very beginning of that thousand years and not at the end. Therefore, I do not believe that that risk of one accident in a million reactor years is good enough. It is not acceptable.
I should remind your Lordships that in a period of seven years between 1979 and 1986 we have had two nuclear accidents. The accident at Three Mile Island was potentially catastrophic and led to a partial meltdown. The accident at Chernobyl was, as we know, actively catastrophic. I think two accidents in seven years ought to give us reason for pause. That is why people are worried. That is why the general public have come to mistrust to some extent the advice given to them by experts. They have seen accidents occur which they were assured could not occur. The public recognise that the more reactors there are, in whatever country they may be, the greater the risk. That is the reason for the Labour Party policy. That is why the Labour Party believes that in this country we should not contribute to increasing the risk. That is a perfectly reasonable policy for a political party to pursue, especially bearing in mind the public reaction to the Chernobyl accident.
No matter how safe the reactor design, the risk of human error remains. At Three Mile Island the accident occurred because somebody switched off the emergency cooling system and also, in my view, because of the bad layout of the control room. The Chernobyl accident was due to farcical, tragic and unauthorised experimentation by a very senior engineer. Once again, it was due to human error. Yet in February of 1986, two months before that accident, the Minister of Power in the Ukraine dismissed fears about the wisdom of siting nuclear reactors near centres of population like Chernobyl. He said:
"The odds of a meltdown are one in ten thousand years. The plants have safe and reliable controls that are protected from any breakdown with three safety lines".

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That is what the people of the Ukraine were told in February. In April they had a catastrophic accident. We therefore see that firm assurances, honestly given, can be rendered worthless by events.
The same was true of Three Mile Island. The people of Harrisburg were given the firm assurance that the accident which did happen could not happen. I myself heard that from the lips of the people of Harrisburg when I visited Three Mile Island and spoke to them. That is why the people of Harrisbuurg are bitter and that is at least one of the reasons for the reluctance on the part of the people of the United States to consent to a further extension of nuclear power.
There is every justification for the public in this country to have their reservations about increasing our nuclear potential and every reason why political parties should put forward alternatives to nuclear power, as the Labour Party has done.
I turn now to the economics of nuclear power generation. Certainly the Select Committee has accepted the evidence that electricity from nuclear reactors is cheaper than that from coal; and for that matter, except for hydro-electricity, it is cheaper than any other source. Perhaps that was inevitable in the light of the evidence. But it is by no means universally accepted that, taking into account all the costs and all the uncertainties related to nuclear power, it is cheaper to produce electrical power from nuclear reactors than from coal.
We tend to be mesmerised, I think, by the alleged cheapness of electricity produced by the French from their huge battery of PWRs. But one thing I have learnt about the French during my lifetime is that they are great illusionists. They have the innate capacity to convince you that they are doing one thing when in actual fact thay are doing the reverse. In connotations other than this one all noble Lords would agree with me, but perhaps they think this is the exception which disproves the rule. But I prefer to go by my own experience.
The evidence of Mr. Paul Staes gives some indication of how the French may be performing their illusion. But in any event we should not accept as gospel that French nuclear electricity is indeed, and will remain, 25 per cent. cheaper than British electrical power. I saw an article in the Guardian of Wednesday, 5th November, which was written by one Andrew Warren. Discussing the cheapness of electricity provided for the French consumer he said:
"What perhaps is sometimes less well-publicised … is that this cut price bargain has been achieved at the cost of the French taxpayer. Unlike their British counterparts, Electricité de France trades at a loss. Moreover, it has debts which put it almost in the class of a Third World subsistence economy. It owes 200 billion francs (around £20 billion), equivalent to the cost of 20 reactors; and it borrows some 30 billion francs annually. Its foreign borrowings stands at 80 billion francs".
There are grounds for querying the French figures. The French industry does not make a profit. It is subsidised by the taxpayer, as against the CEGB in this country which makes a profit and then in addition is robbed by Her Majesty's Government of about £1.3 billion through the negative external finance limit. Not only does the CEGB make a profit, it also contributes to the Treasury. When we are discussing the cost of French electricity we need to take these matters into account as well.
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The article by Mr. Warren goes on to say:
"Last year, that most respected US financial magazine, Forbes, published a major survey entitled 'Nuclear Follies', which opened by describing the US nuclear power programme as the 'largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale'. It concluded that 'nuclear power is now an option nobody in his right mind would seriously consider'".
There are two points of view. There is an argument on the other side. It is not universally accepted that nuclear energy is completely safe, nor indeed that it is cheaper than electricity produced by other means.
The French connection is also evident in relation to the continuing argument between the CEGB and the SSEB over the relative merits of the PWR and the AGR. Mr. Miller does at least have the benefit of operating an AGR at Hunterston at nearly full output. The noble Lord, Lord Marshall, on the other hand, can only build his hopes for a PWR on speculation, since he has never built or operated one: and nor does he know what additional safety measures may be imposed by the Sizewell inquiry. He is operating in the dark, if I may say so, and I am sure he will agree.
The noble Lord has not seen the Sizewell report, has he? I hope he has not. Even the Minister has not seen that. Therefore he does not know what additional safety measures may be imposed upon him; and that will have an effect on the estimates of the price of electricity from that nuclear power station. The costs of the PWR are unknown at present, and even with the AGR we can have no real appreciation of lifetime costs, bearing in mind the difficulties experienced by the CEGB, especially at the Dungeness B nuclear power station.
But we must not imagine that the nuclear power strategy is the only one available. Nor can we assume that over the long-term it will be the cheapest. There are a number of imponderables other than the consequences of a catastrophic accident to a nuclear reactor. For example, if the noble Lord, Lord Marshall, is allowed to build his pressurised water reactor, can he give a guarantee that the pressure vessel will be constructed to such perfection that there will be no crack during the 35 or 40 years life of that reactor? If he cannot—and he knows it—he cannot guarantee that that reactor will continue for its planned life.
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, I do not think it is right for the noble Lord to be addressing these hypothetical questions to my noble friend, when he has already admitted that it would be improper for him as chairman of the CEGB to speak on the controversial matters raised in this report.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I am most obliged to the noble Earl for drawing that to my attention. The noble Lord, Lord Marshall, and I have known each other over a long period of time. The noble Earl is quite right. The noble Lord is in a difficulty and therefore I shall not address further questions to him.
We cannot be sure about the estimates that are now made of the costs of nuclear power from nuclear reactors because we cannot be sure that those reactors will operate over their planned lifetime. As the capital costs are most important, that is the greatest element in arriving at the cost of nuclear power.

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One accepts the Select Committee's point that fossil fuel supplies, including coal supplies, are finite, but at the present rate of use we have anything between 100 years and 300 years of reserves. That is why the suggestion made by the noble Earl, and supported by the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, is sensible. Whatever our views about it, whether we have different views about the future of nuclear energy, at least we should be able to agree about standing back for a couple of years, allowing perhaps one or two coal-fired stations to go ahead and then evaluating the nuclear power programme over a longer period of time.
I have spoken for 25 minutes, although I have by no means completed all that I wanted to say; but it is getting late and we have had a long debate. I shall listen with interest to what the Minister has to say in reply to the debate generally. It has been a good and most interesting debate. I feel sure we shall come back to this subject in, I hope, the not-too-distant future when we shall have a debate on the long delayed report from the Sizewell inquiry.
9 p.m.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I am most grateful for this opportunity to pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Torrington and to the members of his Select Committee for their excellent report, which has rightly received universal acclaim today. I recognise the amount of hard work that has gone into preparing what is both a comprehensive and incisive analysis. The interesting and wide-ranging debate we have had today has fully complemented the committee's report. It has helped to set in proper perspective the future of nuclear power in this country and internationally. It has also been most helpful to have the views of this House before nuclear issues are to be discussed in the energy and environment councils next week.
I feel too that it is very appropriate that this debate should take place on the day after the debate on the Queen's Speech. This highlights the importance which the Government attach to the future of nuclear power within the United Kingdom.
The Government are delighted to note the Select Committee's conclusion that there is a strong case for an expansion of nuclear power in Europe. The Government fully support this view. In his speech to the International Atomic Energy Agency's general conference in September, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Energy warned of the dangers of casting aside nuclear power. It is a very great stimulus to the world economy.
Though a relatively new source of power, it already contributes significantly to Europe's energy needs. It has greatly reduced demand for imported OPEC oil, thus benefiting security of supply. It also enables the world's developing countries to catch up on our present living standards. If Europe does not maintain the development of nuclear energy, we should deprive the world's poorer nations of abundant energy supplies at costs that will enable them to develop. As the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, said, we have the third world to consider. The poor nations would again have to compete with the rich for ultimately finite supplies of oil and other fossil fuels.
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The national advantages of investment in nuclear power are most clearly shown in the case of France. As my noble friend Lord Bessborough, with his unique experience, reminded us in what I may say was an admirable example of a short, incisive and informative speech, we are now able to share in these advantages through the newly commissioned cross-Channel link. This is an important example of international co-operation in its own right. I can confirm to my noble friend that the present arrangements also provide for supply at a cost up to 25 per cent. cheaper than could be provided on average in the United Kingdom.
The noble Lord, Lord Swann, was right to say that nuclear energy also obtrudes on the environment less than any fossil fuel. I am convinced that Europe could not have developed at the pace that it has without nuclear power. I am equally convinced that it has provided us with a much cleaner world in which to live—even allowing for Chernobyl.
Following Chernobyl, the Government's most important task is to rebuild confidence in nuclear power. I must say that the contribution from the noble Lord opposite did nothing to help that. It has evidenced that pollution is no respecter of international frontiers. The effort to raise standards therefore has to be international. It must embrace all who have the potential to pollute. This is why the Government have said that international collaboration on nuclear safety can only be done effectively through the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The Government are fully committed to supporting the agency in its work. We have already signed the two new conventions on early notifications and mutual assistance and are pledged to play a full part in developing a regime for broader international collaboration on safety. Furthermore, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Energy has laid particular emphasis on the need for the agency to look in depth at all existing regimes, suggesting a three-stage approach to this work. The first would be an updating by the agency of its information about the details of all existing national regulatory systems. Having done this, the agency could then see that arrangements of one regulatory authority that have benefit are transmitted to other authorities where they do not exist.
The third stage would be the possibility of the agency having a team that could co-ordinate a review of international regulatory systems. The aim would be to bring about a constructive exchange as to how those regulatory systems could reach the highest possible standards. He has also suggested that the agency should develop the skill and expertise to provide national nuclear inspectorates with suggestions and advice which could improve their performance.
The Government believe that we must make real and important progress in the area of international safety in which the world has confidence and trust. Our aim will be to ensure that safety initiatives in the context of the European Community shall be carried forward in full harmony with the wider work currently in progress under the aegis of the Vienna agency.
During the course of this most interesting and informative debate many points were raised with the Government, and I shall do my best to comment on them as concisely as possible. However, I am sure that your Lordships will forgive me if, due to the late hour

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and the long list of speakers, I do not cover all the points or all the speeches which have been made during a debate which has now lasted more than five-and-a-half hours.
First, perhaps I may say in reply to my noble friend Lord Torrington that the inquiry inspector said that he now intends to deliver his report to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Energy by early December. In passing, I cannot resist saying that I do not understand why on earth the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, is so keen to receive the Sizewell report, as I understood that his party now has no interest whatever in nuclear reactors either past, present or future. However, he will no doubt have a copy when it arrives.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I am sure that the Labour Party would like to see the report, but I am intensely interested in seeing the report myself. I have a personal view on this. I want to see the report and I want the people of this country to see it. They are entitled to see it.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, of course the people of this country will see the report. The noble Lord will see the report; but I still cannot understand why he wants to see it.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: I want to read it, my Lords.
Viscount Davidson: All right—like a best seller. My Lords, going on from there I can only echo the conclusion in the report of the Select Committee that I do not have a remit to comment on the question of reactor choice. The Sizewell inspector had a considerable amount of evidence on these issues and I am unable to prejudge or speculate on any of his conclusions.
I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Marshall of Goring, for his important contribution to this debate. We are grateful to him for sharing with us his considerable scientific knowledge on the subject of nuclear power. He has made it very clear that from the beginning there were design defects in the Chernobyl reactor. The pity of it is that the Russians themselves did not recognise these shortcomings in time to prevent the accident. It is indeed reassuring to have the noble Lord's view that such an accident could not occur in commercial reactors operating in the Western world. As chairman of the CEGB he has responsibility for the safe operation of nuclear power stations in England and Wales and his opinion carries great weight—and I wonder whether perhaps the noble Lord opposite was out of the Chamber when he spoke.
The noble Lord has also rightly drawn attention to the importance of having an independent nuclear inspectorate. The operation of all nuclear power stations in the United Kingdom has to be licensed by the nuclear installations inspectorate. Nuclear reactors are shut down for examination every two years and cannot be restarted without consent from the inspectorate. Nuclear reactors are therefore subject to a continuous process of review and reassessment as part of the very high standards of safety applied to nuclear power in this country.
My noble friends Lord Nelson of Stafford and Lord Hood pointed to the importance of supplying our
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industry with the cheapest electricity available from whatever source. I fully share that view. The choice of economic generating capacity rests with the commercial judgment of the generating boards, but the French experience, to which both I and the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, have already referred, points to the advantages of investment in nuclear power.
The noble Lord, Lord Swann, advocated the establishment of a national energy commission to plan and control the energy market into the future. Such grand designs have been tried and have failed in the past. They will always fail because experts, civil servants and statisticians, however well intentioned, cannot plan the future. We have only to look at recent changes in the oil market to realise the folly of trying to predict prices or market shares even six months ahead. Bureaucratic planning in energy, as in other sectors of the economy, can result in serious misallocation of resources. We believe that the mix of fuels in the economy and the rate of production is best left to the free interplay of market forces.
The noble Lord, Lord Dean of Beswick, in what I may say was an extremely helpful and sensible speech, and my noble friend Lord Holderness said that an important means of bringing about greater understanding is for the man in the street to see the nuclear industries at work and to see at first hand the care that it takes in its operations. The operators recognise this.
My noble friend Lord Chilston has already referred to the considerable number of some 30,000 people who visited Sellafield last year. A much larger number has already passed through the gates so far this year. British Nuclear Fuels have been joined by the other operators. They, too, are now having successful open days at their installations.
I very much welcome the suggestions of the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, for the pooling of all resources that are available to government in times of emergency.
The Government have announced that a thorough review of contingency plans and procedures for nuclear incidents is being carried out in the light of experience following the accident at Chernobyl. I shall ensure that the noble Lord's comments are taken into account.
The noble Lords, Lord Plowden and Lord Sherfield, and my noble friend Lord Rodney made some very pertinent remarks about the public perception of risk assessment. The fear of radiation commented upon by a number of noble Lords means that nuclear risks are seen differently and are widely misunderstood by the public. By comparison with everyday dangers such as the toll of road deaths or the dangers of chemical accidents, the safety record of the nuclear industry should be applauded and not criticised.
Perhaps I may refer very briefly to the question of acid raid. Some noble Lords, and notably the noble Lords, Lord Swann and Lord Tanlaw, and the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, referred to the environmental effects of burning fossil fuels as opposed to nuclear generation and in particular to the effects of sulphur dioxide. The Government take the problems of acid deposition very seriously. The United Kingdom's record in reducing sulphur dioxide

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emissions is good. We have already achieved over 40 per cent. reduction in national emissions since the peak year of 1970. Our nitrogen oxide emissions are down too, while those of many countries are still rising. It remains our aim to achieve greater reductions of 30 per cent. in sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions by the late 1990s on 1980 levels and we have recently authorised the CEGB to install flue gas desulphurisation equipment. We have also decided that flue gas desulphurisation equipment will be installed in any new coal-fired power station in the United Kingdom.
It is nice to know from so eminent a commentator as the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, that laver bread and winkles have an important role to play in the nuclear industry. Apart from the question of Welsh winkle eaters, discharges from Sellafield are of course subject to authorisation by the Department of the Environment and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Your Lordships will wish to note that a new liquid discharge authorisation came into effect on 1st July. That sets new and tighter limits on discharges.
The noble Lord, Lord Kearton, gave a valuable historic perspective to the debate. He noted that nuclear technology has progressed far faster than public understanding or acceptance of it. The future of the industry, both in educating the public and in the flow of power station orders, is of course of prime concern to the Government.
As always, we enjoyed the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury. We hope that his famous name will be enshrined along with that of Richter and Beaufort. I understand from an informal source not far from where he is sitting that the nuclear industry hopes to make a firm proposal to the Government in the near future.
The noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, urged the Government to take a lead in the European Community and in international co-operation; in particular, to promote safety research. As President of the Community, the United Kingdom has been overseeing the work in hand in the wake of Chernobyl. Progress with that work is to be discussed by both the Energy and the Environmental Councils next week. As a result of that work, proposals on Community health and safety standards are expected shortly from the Commission. The United Kingdom is also playing its full part in the International Atomic Energy Agency's discussions in Vienna.
I must stress that it is the future which concerns us. Just as the present mix of generating capacity is the result of decisions taken over the past 30 years, so decisions must be taken soon on new generating capacity for the mid-1990s and beyond. "Wait and see" is not an option for anyone concerned about maintaining secure and economic electricity supplies. Anyone who looks that far ahead also knows that future levels of electricity demand cannot be predicted with certainty. That is why the supply industry in its planning looks at a number of possible scenarios. In its view, a shortfall of supply over demand is likely to appear in England and Wales by the mid-1990s. This could grow to about 10 gigawatts by the year 2000.
The noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, talked of the importance of energy efficiency. The Government
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place a high priority on the promotion of energy efficiency. We believe the opportunity is there for the nation to save 20 per cent. of our energy—energy which is at present wasted. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Energy has spearheaded a campaign that has taken this message the length and breadth of the land. But greater energy efficiency will not negate the need for new capacity. Indeed improvements in energy efficiency mean a more prosperous economy and so may lead to more rather than less energy being consumed—an expectation borne out by the experience in Japan since 1945.
I should like to dispel any illusion that the Government, in emphasising the important role for nuclear power, are somehow rejecting coal and indeed the renewable sources of energy. We believe in developing all sources of energy to the maximum economic extent consistent with the highest safety standards. I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, that coal will continue to play a major part in meeting our energy needs. The Government are committed to the future of the industry. Since the Government came to office, we have invested about £5 billion in the industry. We are currently investing over £2 million for every working day.
Renewable energy sources are also being developed with the aid of government funds. Given the early stage of technical development in this area, it is not surprising that the appropriate level of investment is at present less than that required in the mature nuclear energy industry. But as the noble Lord, Lord Dean of Beswick, said, in the United Kingdom renewable energy sources seem unlikely to provide more than a small proportion of the growing demand for electricity in the foreseeable future. At present, most of these technologies are relatively untried and costly compared with fossil fuel and nuclear technologies.
The noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, urged us to proceed urgently with the Severn barrage. Its potential contribution is significant but should not be overestimated. It would reliably contribute only about one nuclear power station's output to meeting peak demands, given the potential size of the project. It also needs careful consideration. It is not safe to assume that these new technologies, if developed on a large scale, would not have an impact on the environment. We see nuclear power as one component of the total nuclear energy future. Provided new stations can be built to time and cost, it is economically attractive. Fossil fuel prices are now low, but it would be unwise to rely on them continuing at current levels over the potential life of a new nuclear station—perhaps 30 to 40 years. Fossil fuel reserves are finite.
We are therefore pursuing, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Dean, a balanced approach to energy development. Nuclear power is already playing a major role in meeting our supplies, and it provides an element of security. Once built, nuclear power stations are much less dependent on the fluctuations of the fossil fuel market.
As I began by saying, the experience of Chernobyl has been salutary. Improvements in international co-operation are already in hand. All now recognise the important contribution this can make to improving safety measures. The results of this work by the Vienna agency and the European Community will be brought

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to your Lordships' attention as further proposals are formulated in the new year.
Finally, I think it is appropriate to remind the House that there has not been a nuclear emergency at any of this country's civil nuclear installations in over a quarter of a century. We can be proud of this enviable safety record. However, the Government assure this House that they will not rest on their laurels. It is only by continuous effort and vigilance on the part of all concerned that we shall maintain this excellent record.
9.20 p.m.
Viscount Torrington: My Lords, I think that after nearly six hours and 26 speakers we can truly say that we have taken note of the committee's report. I should love to pick up certain points from the speeches of other noble Lords but at this late hour I think I should content myself with thanking each noble Lord who has taken part in the debate. I thank all noble Lords for the praise which they have lavished upon the report. As in all these matters some of that praise, in large part, is due to people outside this House, and I shall convey it there.
I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Marshall, can take back to his industry when he goes home tonight the conviction that at least the House of Lords on the whole has not lost its nerve for nuclear power.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

London Docklands Railway (City Extension) Bill
Reported from the Unopposed Bill Committee on re-commitment with amendments.
House adjourned at twenty-one minutes past nine o'clock.

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