Sitting of 9 June 1988

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

  LONDON REGIONAL TRANSPORT BILL (By Order)
  Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question [10 December], That the Bill he now considered
  Debate further adjourned till Thursday 16 June

  FALMOUTH CONTAINER TERMINAL BILL (By Order)
  Orders for Second Reading read.
  To be read a Second time upon Thursday 16 June.

  NORTH KILLINGHOLME CARGO TERMINAL BILL (By Order)
  Order for Second Reading read.
  To be read a Second time upon Wednesday 15 June at Seven o'clock.

  NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE TOWN MOOR BILL [Lords] (By Order)
  Order for Second Reading read.
  To be read a Second time upon Thursday 16 June.

  ASSOCIATED BRITISH PORTS (No. 2) BILL (By Order)
  Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question [11 May], That the Bill be now read a Second time.
  Debate further adjourned till Thursday 16 June.

Oral Answers to Questions
  AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

    National Pig Breeders Association
    Mr. Nicholas Baker: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he last met the president of the National Pig Breeders Association; and what matters were discussed.
    The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. John MacGregor): My ministerial colleagues and I keep in regular touch with representatives of pig producers, including the National Pig Breeders Association, on a wide range of issues.
    Mr. Baker: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the serious state of the pig industry, with a large number of pig breeders going out of business? Will he bear in mind the need to continue his pressure in Europe for the abolition of MCAs? Will he examine allegations that some EEC countries are illegally subsidising their pig industries? That practice is unfair competition.
    Mr. MacGregor: Yes, I am aware of the position of the pig industry. Although prices recently stabilised, as my hon. Friend knows, we are in the classic situation of supply outstripping demand, which is the basic cause of the problem. There is a strong case for the abolition of pigmeat MCAs, and I have been making that case in the Council. As always, it is one of the most hotly contested issues in any Council discussion, with several member states taking different views. It is not easy to get the required majority for any line of action.
    On my hon. Friend's point about unfair state aids, the Commission is investigating an Italian state aid, which I think will be found to be illegal. It is also investigating French state aids. We are always assiduous in drawing such matters to the Council's attention.
    Mr. Martlew: Is the Minister aware that, according to the latest figures from the National Pig Breeders Association, in the year to April, the prices that breeders were paid for pig products dropped by 12 per cent., yet the increase in supermarket prices was 2 per cent.? Can the Minister explain that? Could the reason be that a cartel is being run by the major superstores in this country?
    Mr. MacGregor: They are matters for commercial consideration. The basic reason why pig prices have fallen is that supply and demand are currently out of balance; supply is greater than demand. However, although the price to pig producers has fallen, the average ex-farm price of feed wheat is now nearly £17 per tonne lower and hat feed barley is about £5 per tonne lower than they were at this time last year. That is undoubtedly helping margins.
    Rev. Ian Paisley: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the serious position of the pig industry in Northern Ireland, which is on the periphery of the United Kingdom? Can he give the House any inkling about how his negotiations are going and what is being done to rid us of MCAs?
    Mr. MacGregor:Ever since price-fixing discussions began I have been pressing pigment MCA as one of my

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    main issues, and I shall continue to do so. I have again done so this week. We shall return to the Council on Monday of next week, when it is hoped that we shall start to reach conclusions. I assure the hon. Gentleman that I shall again press the matter then.
    Dr. David Clark: In his discussions with the National Pig Breeders Association, did the Minister discuss the implications for the pigmeat trade of the freeing of the market in 1992? Can he guarantee that the health of the British public will remain protected against infected imported meats?
    Mr. MacGregor: Obviously I bear the move to 1992 very much in mind when arguing for the elimination of pigmeat MCAs. However, I believe that that case is already very strong because the current position is out of kilter with the original reason for setting pigmeat MCAs, so I should like them to be eliminated now. Certainly it should be done by 1992.
    We are moving towards harmonisation with regard to protection against disease within the Community. However, it is very important that we have guarantees from countries that are swine fever free that their Governments are as assiduous as we are in ensuring that those areas remain disease free.

    National Farmers Union
    Mr. Bellingham: T: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he last met the president of the National Farmers Union; and what matters were discussed.
    Mr. MacGregor: I last met the president of the National Farmers Union formally on 16 May when we discussed the Commission's 1988℃89 farm price proposals. I have met him informally on a number of occasions since.
    Mr. Bellingham: When my right hon. Friend next meets the president, will he make clear to him the importance of the sugar beet sector to Norfolk farmers, particularly bearing in mind the despondency in agriculture at the moment? Sugar beet is one of the few bright lights on the horizon. Will he assure the House that no sugar beet package will be agreed at Monday's Council meeting that puts the United Kingdom at a competitive disadvantage vis-à-vis Italy and France? Will he do all that he can to persuade the Community to prevent Italy and France from renewing national aid to their sugar beet production sectors?
    Mr. MacGregor: My hon. Friend will know that I am extremely well aware of the importance of sugar beet to Norfolk farmers. I can, therefore, assure him that I will endeavour to achieve what he asks. At the moment the Commission's proposal is for a price freeze which would not affect the competitive position of the United Kingdom industry. An attempt was made during the lead-up to the summit reforms to undermine our position through the sugar supplementary levy and we successfully fought that off. With regard to the aids in France and Italy, there is no Commission proposal to that effect in the price fixing at the moment.
    Mr. Geraint Howells: Does the Minister agree with the statement made by the president of the National Farmers
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    Union today that up to 30 per cent. of support to sheep farmers will be cut under the present proposals of the EEC policy for sheepmeat?
    Mr. MacGregor: That will not happen under the proposals before us on stabilizers—which is the issue that we have already decided—unlessthere is a massive increase in sheepmeat production which would cause the stabiliser to be triggered in a substantial way. I do not envisage that happening. I have not seen the statement, but I imagine that the president had in mind the future of the sheepmeat regime as a whole. We have not yet embarked on discussions on that, so it is not possible to predict the outcome.
    Miss Emma Nicholson: On his next visit to the National Farmers Union, will my right hon. Friend be kind enough to raise the problems raised with me by the Devon branch of the Women's Farmers Union about the continuing and upgraded use of bovine somatotropin in the production of milk? The Women's Farming Union believes that the lack of labelling of milk produced by that method will have a still further depressing effect on the sale of Dorset milk.
    Mr. MacGregor: There is a question later on the Order Paper about product licensing and that is what will determine whether we see a big expansion, or any expansion, in BST milk. I will answer that question when we come to it and we will have to look at the question of labelling. If there is consumer concern about BST, labelling may be the way to tackle it. However, that raises many commercial considerations which will have to be discussed widely.
    Dr. David Clark: In view of the comments of the Select Committee on the Environment on the NFU's sanguine view and the Department's complacent attitude towards agricultural pollution, when the Minister next meets the president of the NFU will he draw his attention to the fact that farm pollution incidents are at their highest recorded level? Will he also tell him that enough really is enough?
    Mr. MacGregor: I assure the hon. Gentleman that we do not take a sanguine view of farm pollution. He will have seen the comments of my right hon. Friend the Minister of State earlier this week when the latest report was published. We take the matter very seriously and I am anxious to reduce substantially the number of farm pollution incidents. We are not sanguine about the matter.

    Milk Marketing Board
    Mr. Robert Hicks: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he next plans to meet the chairman of the Milk Marketing Board; and what subjects he proposes to discuss.
    The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Donald Thompson): My right hon. Friend expects to meet the chairman of the Milk Marketing Board later today to discuss various issues affecting the dairy industry.
    Mr. Hicks: When my right hon. Friend next meets the chairman of the Milk Marketing Board to discuss New Zealand butter, will he confirm that the purpose of the transitional period, which started 15 years ago, was to enable New Zealand to seek alternative markets for its dairy products but that it still has one third of the United

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    Kingdom packed butter market? Is not there evidence that New Zealand can benefit from world markets by the increase in the price of dairy products in those markets? In the last four years alone, that has enabled New Zealand to benefit to the tune of an additional £180 million.
    Mr. Thompson: New Zealand's agricultural interests have been active in putting their case throughout Europe and the world. It will be for the Commission to devise any new arrangements with the New Zealand Government and the New Zealand butter industry. New Zealand butter is not part of our quota arrangements.
    Mr. Ron Brown: Is not the European Economic Community a cynical con which makes people suffer, especially small farmers and working-class individuals? Would it not be better if we were honest enough to face the fact that Britain suffers in many ways because of the EEC and that it would be far better to withdraw from it instead of kidding people that the EEC matters? It matters only to rich farmers and to people in big business. That is a fact.
    Mr. Thompson: It is not a fact that all classes of people in Britain suffer from this country being in the EEC. The contrary is true.
    Mr. Jack: Is my hon. Friend fully satisfied that the Milk Marketing Board has taken every opportunity to develop innovatory products to counter the flow of foreign-produced dairy products on to our supermarket shelves?
    Mr. Thompson: The Milk Marketing Board, together with Dairy Crest, is alive to the competition that it faces on the supermarket shelves. That competition will expand if people continue to buy foreign goods. I am sure that the M MB is looking at every possible way of adding value to milk, thus competing by producing import substitutes, and that it will also do everything it possibly can to find markets for its exports.

    Set-Aside
    Mr. Pike: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he expects the first arable land to he set aside under his new proposals.
    Mr. MacGregor: I shall be making an anouncement shortly on the implementation in the United Kingdom of the Community set-aside scheme in order to enable it to go ahead in time for this autumn's planting.
    Mr. Pike: The Minister has a tight timetable. He has to have a scheme in place by 14 July. Does he intend to allow the option of extensive grazing to be used? If so, what type of payment will be involved? If the Minister intends to permit that option to be used, will it not create other problems for agriculture?
    Mr. MacGregor: Those matters will have to await the announcement, but the hon. Gentleman is right when he says that there is a tight time schedule. We have been working very hard and we are in the final stages of preparation. I am anxious to make an announcement to the House as soon as possible. I know of the widespread interest in the matter and I want to make sure that farmers are able to take details of the scheme into account in their plans for the forthcoming year's planting. As for the hon.
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    Gentleman's last point, I have been listening carefully to all that has been said about grazed fallow, including the views of hon. Members.
    Mr. Latham: Is it intended that when the scheme has been produced, less grain should be grown or that the same amount of grain should be grown on less land?
    Mr. MacGregor: The primary objective is to deal with the problem of surpluses in cereals, but the scheme has other objectives. When farmers have to set aside 20 per cent. or more of their arable land, it will have a considerable impact on their cereal production. It may not be a full 20 per cent. in every case, but it will have a considerable impact, and less grain is the main objective.
    Mr. Skinner: Is it not a sad state of affairs, with one third of the world's population wanting food, that the Common Market and the Minister are getting together to set land aside and leave it fallow? Has the Minister taken into account the fact that after a few years, when some of the land has been lying fallow for a while, his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment may come along and say, "As that land has not been used for arable purposes for several years, we can make a further incursion and use it for development"?
    Mr. MacGregor: The hon. Gentleman's last point does not arise, because normal planning considerations will apply to all land, whether it is set aside or otherwise. The hon. Gentleman will know that we have a substantial food aid programme, but it is not the answer to the problems of agriculture in developing countries and those that are short of food. Those countries' leaders themselves make it clear that they believe that the development of their own agriculture is the important requirement. I should have thought that the hon. Gentleman would share our concern about the cost to the taxpayer of disposing of the surpluses; hence this measure as well as others.

    Fish Farming
    Mr. Dalyell: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what representations he has received about fish farming in England and Wales.
    The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. John Selwyn Gummer): I have recently received a request from the British Trout Association to create a development council for the trout industry and this is now being considered. I am also aware of a number of reports concerning the development of marine fish farming in Scotland.
    Mr. Dalyell: Is anything to be done about the effluent and disease problem?
    Mr. Gummer: We believe it to be an important part of any consideration to ensure that effluent and disease are taken fully into account. Obviously, one cannot buy increased production at an unacceptable cost. My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland has to take that into account, as it is particularly true of the sort of fish farming for which he is responsible.
    Mr. Colvin: Will my right hon. Friend take this opportunity to pay credit to the fish farming industry, which now produces 14,000 tonnes of fish a year worth £30 million and caters for 90 per cent. of the home market,

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    which is no mean achievement? Will he also bear in mind the interests of the 3·5 million anglers in the country who are concerned about water pollution and assure the House that before the water authorities are privatised there is a legal obligation on fish farmers, who might pollute waters, to obtain water abstraction licences before further development?
    Mr. Gummer: My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the tremendous advances in fish farming and to the fact that the price of farmed fish has brought within the reach of large numbers of people products that used to be denied to them. This is a great industry and one which we want to support. I am also concerned about the effect of pollution on rivers and we have already announced that the licensing of water abstraction is to be extended to all fish farms in England and Wales. That will be part of the legislation that comes before the House.
    Mr. Doran: Is the Minister aware that a considerable, if not the greater, part of research work into fish farming in this country is done at the Torry research centre in my constituency? Yesterday he sent me a letter refusing a request for the all-party group of Members with constituency interests in the fishing industry to visit the Torry research centre. Will he advise the House and those hon. Members who wish to visit the centre what exactly is going on at Torry that he wants to prevent them from seeing.
    Mr. Gummer: The hon. Gentleman tells only half the story. He does not mention that I gave him specific permission to visit Torry, to meet anybody whom he wanted to meet and to ask any questions that he wanted to ask. For the hon. Gentleman to suggest that I am hiding something is wholly unacceptable.
    Mr. Key: Will my right hon. Friend find time today to read the excellent report of the Freshwater Biological Association and the Wessex water authority on fish stocks in the river Avon in my constituency, which has over 20 fish farms in its catchment area? Will he consider carefully their request and their recommendation for substantial further research into fish farming and the impact of pollution on that industry and the environment?
    Mr. Gummer: I shall certainly consider that question. I know that much of the work done is of great importance I also agree with my hon. Friend that the industry has to be taken extremely seriously not only in terms of its contributions to the British economy and its substitution for what would otherwise be imports but for its export potential.
    Dr. Godman: I am deeply concerned about the answer that the Minister gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Doran). I intend to visit the Torry research station this month. I sincerely hope that I shall have the Minister's agreement to that visit.
    An effluent causing great concern is that associated with the use of Nuvan 500 EC on fish farms. What information has the Minister about its use on English fish farms and, if it is used, under what regulations is it used? Will he give serious consideration to banning the use of that pesticide on fish farms?
    Mr. Gummer: The hon. Gentleman has asked a serious question about Nuvan. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary is looking at the issue. As far as we know, there
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    is practically no use of that pesticide on English fish farms. I say "practically" because I do not want to say that there is no use, because it may be used℄although we cannot find any evidence of it. We are looking at the issue because it must be taken seriously.
    The hon. Gentleman's comment about his hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Doran) was the wrong way round. I went to great trouble to ensure that his hon. Friend could have every possible access, for the right reason that it is his constituency. When it was asked what facilities should be made available, I said that all facilities should be made available, because the centre is in the hon. Gentleman's constituency.
    I have never refused any sort of co-operation in any such circumstances to Opposition Front Bench Members as I am sure that the right hon. and hon. Friends of the hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) will agree. It is not normal for any of our institutions to be available to any group of hon. Members who happen to wish to visit them, but I try to make such institutions as available as possible. The hon. Member for Aberdeen, South would have done the House a courtesy if he had admitted what I have done for him.

    Bread Prices
    Mr. Tim Smith: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what was the average annual increase in the price of a loaf of bread (a) between 1974 and 1979 and (b) between 1979 and 1988.
    Mr. Donald Thompson: The price of bread rose on average by 14 per cent. per annum between February 1974 and May 1979. The rate of increase between May 1979 and April 1988 was 6·9 per cent.℄less than half the rate during the previous shorter period.
    Mr. Smith: Does my hon. Friend recall that 10 years ago the price of a loaf of bread was a major political issue as it rose inexorably year in, year out, notwithstanding Canute-like food subsidies? From the figures that my hon. Friend has given, will not most people now be able to see which side their bread is buttered and continue to vote for the party of low price inflation?
    Mr. Thompson: I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. The price of bread has increased by 30 per cent. since 1960 compared with the price of milk which has increased by 53 per cent. and the price of a pint of beer which has increased by 87 per cent.
    Mr. Morley: Does the Minister agree that much of the top-quality grain used in bread production has been imported and is not home grown, because the bulk of the cereal grain grown in Britain is of poor quality and goes into intervention stores and attracts the subsidies that go with that?
    Mr. Thompson:Because of the climate, the bulk of the grain grown in Britain is of a different quality, not an inferior quality. It is used for different purposes.

    Green Pound
    Mr. Brandon-Bravo: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what progress is being made with attempts to devalue the green pound, following the recent meeting of the Agriculture Council.
    Mr. MacGregor: Discussions are still continuing. I have made it clear to the Agriculture Council that in my view it would be right to take a measured step in the current price-fixing towards the elimination of MCAs from all products by 1992, and to remove them immediately from the pigmeat sector.
    Mr. Brandon-Bravo: My right hon. Friend is aware that I represent a typically inner-city constituency, but, by way of explanation, I should say that even that constituency has three splendid farms on its southern border. On behalf of that tiny minority, may I ask whether the negotiations will ensure that my three constituents and the rest of the farming community will have a fair deal? For the less initiated, how will it affect the cost of our food?
    Mr. MacGregor: I assure my hon. Friend that I am seeking a fair deal for the United Kingdom farmer at the price-fixing negotiations. I made clear my intentions about the green pound from the outset of the Council discussions. This will, however, he one of the trickiest parts of the negotiations, and we have not yet seriously debated it. My hon. Friend's second point depends on whether there is devaluation and the extent of it. The impact on the retail prices index of a 1 per cent. green pound devaluation is minute.
    Mr. Leigh: Will my right hon. Friend reassure the 500 farmers in my constituency that his efforts on green pound devaluation, MCA abolition and to prevent unfair subsidies abroad will result in a common agricultural policy that is truly free and fair? Our farmers are the most efficient in Europe, but they demand a free market, not a cheats' market.
    Mr. MacGregor: I assure my hon. Friend that that is my objective. I think that he used the words "cheats' market" at the end of his question. That is a separate issue, but he will be aware that I am one of the Ministers taking a lead in Europe in the drive against fraud in the CAP.

    Horses
    Mr. Harry Greenway: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if, pursuant to his answer of 5 May, Official Report, column 588, he will take steps to increase the use of horses as agricultural animals.
    Mr. Gummer: It is up to individual farmers to decide how they shall use their horses as agricultural animals. I recently addressed a conference to promote what I think is a very important aspect of farming.
    Mr. Greenway: Is my right hon. Friend aware that Britain is the only EEC country not to recognise the horse as an agricultural animal? Is he further aware of the damage that that does to racing, breeding, bloodstock, riding and driving in this country? What animal could be more agricultural than a horse?
    Mr. Key: A cow?
    Mr. Devlin: A chicken?
    Mr. Tim Smith: A pig?
    Mr. Greenway: I do not think so.
    Will my right hon. Friend take steps to have the horse recognised as an agricultural animal, as it will be in 1992?
    Mr. Gummer: My hon. Friend must accept that a horse is an agricultural animal when it is an agricultural animal. When it is running in the Derby, it clearly is not an agricultural animal, and we intend to keep it so.

    Pig Movements (Cheshire)
    Mr. Butler: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what representations he has received regarding Cheshire county council's charges for pig movements.
    Mr. Donald Thompson: Representations have been received from a number of individuals and organisations, including the National Farmers Union and the National Pig Breeders Association. All have expressed opposition to these charges.
    Mr. Butler: Is my hon. Friend aware that Cheshire county council is continuing to charge for pig movements, and that that does not have legal status? What action does he propose to take to stop that procedure?
    Mr. Thompson: I am aware of my hon. Friend's anxiety about this matter. He has been good enough to write to me about it, but I must reiterate the advice that I gave. This is a county council matter. It is for local Members of Parliament to put pressure on locally elected councillors who, all too often in this matter as in others, are ready to hide behind the Government.

    Bovine Somatotropin
    Dr. Marek: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he expects to be in a position to announce the final results of the testing of bovine somatotropin; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. MacGregor: Results of trials authorised under animal test certificates are normally submitted to the licensing authority as part of any application for a product licence. They are assessed., together with all other information submitted in support of the application, in accordance with the provisions of the Medicines Act 1968. I cannot forecast at this stage what the outcome of any application in relation to bovine somatotropin would be.
    Dr. Marek: Will the Minister assure the House that when the information is available he will speedily pass it on to the public so that they are aware of BST'? Will he ensure℄I believe that there is cross-party support for this℄that BST-treated milk is labelled as such?
    Mr. MacGregor: Labelling is a separate question and depends on the outcome of applications for product licences. Two companies have applied for product licences, but the applications must be rigorously scrutinised. The difficulty about publishing the results of the trials is that all data supplied by companies in support of applications made under the Medicines Act are kept in strict confidence. The Medicines Act, under which that takes place, prohibits disclosure of the information.
    Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: Is my right hon. Friend's Department paying for, or otherwise supporting, any research into establishing reliable tests to show whether this hormone has been used? Surely without the existence of any such reliable tests it is quite pointless to talk about any control mechanism.
    Mr. MacGregor: There is a distinction between the animal test certificate and the product licence and before issuing an animal test certificate the licensing authority, advised by the veterinary products committee, has to be satisfied that there is no risk to human health. The authority was so satisfied in the case of the applications for animal test certificates. That is why the test trials are going on. There is no scientific reason to impose conditions on the disposal of milk because we have been advised by the veterinary products committee that there is no risk to human health. That has been the outcome of tests that have so far taken place. Wider tests are now taking place in relation to animal test certificates and in due course we shall have to take a view about applications for product licences.

    Raw Sugar Refining
    Mr. Shersby: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what recent proposals made by the European Economic Community Commission have been accepted for assistance in the refining in the United Kingdom of raw sugar imported from African, Caribbean and Pacific countries.
    Mr. Page: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if the European Community Commission recognises any special circumstances surrounding the refining, in the United Kingdom, of raw sugar imported from the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries; what proposals have been made to the Council of Ministers; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Donald Thompson: In this year's price fixing the Commission has proposed a Community-funded aid of about 52p per tonne which will be available to all Community pure cane refineries and which could be adjusted to take account of changes in the storage levy and in Community prices. It has also proposed authorisation for a national aid of up to about £3·28 per tonne, 25 per cent. Community funded, on ACP sugar refined in the United Kingdom.
    Mr. Shersby: Will my hon. Friend confirm that the Government are willing to pay in full whatever percentage of the special refining aid the Commission stipulates should be at the discretion of the United Kingdom Government?
    Mr. Thompson: At present we are concentrating our efforts on persuading the Council to adopt the Commission's proposals which provide for this maximum rate of national aid. We shall review our stance in the light of the decisions reached by the Council.
    Mr. Page: As it has been about two years since the EC agreed to review this sugar cane refining margin, would my hon. Friend like to make a statement to the House about whether the increases will be backdated to 1 July 1987 as was originally proposed?
    Mr. Thompson: Under the Commission's proposals, not yet accepted by the Council, the suggestion is that both refining aids would be backdated to 1 July 1987.
    Mr. Spearing: Will the Minister confirm that, whatever the outcome of any price negotiations in any year, the commitment to 1·3 million tonnes of cane sugar is fulfillable only if the price permits the exporting Third
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    world countres to cover their transport and refining costs in this country? Is it not therefore important that any price should enable the EC to discharge its moral commitment to those Third world countries with which it is in association?
    Mr. Thompson: I know of the great interest of the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) in this matter and the employment implications. I agree with all that the hon. Gentleman has said.
    Mr. Wells: Will my hon. Friend tell the House whether the cost of this extra sugar refining margin will be borne by the sugar producers or directly by the Government? Can he tell us whether we shall simply spend the money of the European Community to which we contribute 20 per cent.?
    Mr. Thompson: The Community will contribute 25 per cent. and the Government will contribute the remainer.

    Irradiated Food
    Ms. Ruddock: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what discussions he has had with consumer and similar groups about the import and export of irradiated food since the Chernobyl disaster.
    Mr. Gummer: As regards exports for which I have responsibility my officials have had contact not only with a great many individual consumers, producers and exporters but with a wide range of trade associations, producer and marketing groups, and trades unions.
    Ms. Ruddock: In the light of that reply, will the Minister reveal whether one of those organisations is the Asian regional office of the International Organisation of Consumer Unions, which claims that there has been deliberate dumping by Europe of contaminated food in the Third world? Will he set up an inquiry to ensure that Britain is not one of the responsible countries?
    Mr. Gummer: I will look into the matter that the hon. Lady has raised. Obviously, dumping of that kind would be completely unacceptable.
    Sir Peter Emery: Will my right hon. Friend tell the House what discussions he or his Department have had with other EC countries to try to establish a standard of irradiation for all food stocks when there has been an accident such as Chernobyl?
    Mr. Gummer: As my hon. Friend knows, we have had a number of discussions. We have a system which will operate should any such accident take place in the future. However, we have not come to the kind of final decision that many hon. Members would like to see. I hope that the United Kingdom will continue to press for decisions based on the best scientific evidence and for proper protection for the consumer rather than rely on arguments which are sometimes merely emotional.
    Mr. Wigley: Will the Minister accept that sheep farmers and farmers generally in Britain played a vital part in minimising the amount of contaminated irradiated food that was produced? In those circumstances, two years after Chernobyl, is it not ridiculous that there are dozens of farmers who have been affected by Chernobyl who still have not had adequate compensation for the trouble that they took at the time?
    Mr. Gummer: The hon. Gentleman fails to mention that £5·3 million has been paid out in compensation. The compensation arrangements were worked out step by step with the various unions and farmers were, in fact, considerably compensated. The only cases remaining are those which have specific objections to the rules laid down in agreement with the farming unions. It really is not fair to blame the Government for what has been a generous scheme.
    Mr. David Nicholson: Has my right hon. Friend had his attention drawn to research from Bristol university on the effects of post-Chernobyl radiation on sheep in Somerset and Devon? Is he aware of the urgent need to reassure farmers and consumers in that area on that matter before the subject is exploited by irresponsible people?
    Mr. Gummer: I am happy to tell farmers and consumers in the whole of the United Kingdom that there is no danger to human health as a result of Chernobyl. The sheepmeat that has been on sale in the United Kingdom has been wholly safe. At that time I was happy that my pregnant wife was busy eating lamb.
    Mr. Flynn: Does the Minister not agree that the research unit at Bristol discovered the new contaminated hot spots, not so much by judgment as by luck? Is it not time that there was thorough research throughout the country to ensure that there are no other hot spots of irradiated land as a result of Chernobyl?
    Mr. Gummer: I do not think that the hon. Gentleman has understood how the system works. He does considerable damage to cast doubt on the safety of the food that is produced in this country. I say again that no lamb has been sold in this country which could possibly he a danger to human health. We stand by that.

    Home Grown Cereals Authority
    Mr. David Davis: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he last met the chairman of the Home Grown Cereals Authority; and what matters were discussed.
    Mr. MacGregor: The last time I met the chairman of the HGCA was on 13 April when he and other senior figures from levy-funded bodies came to discuss the industry funding of research in agriculture, fisheries and food.
    Mr. Davis: I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. In those discussions did he raise with the HGCA the possibility of the use of that research for low-cost, low-input, limited output varieties that will reduce the technological pressure on the CAP rather than exacerbate them?
    Mr. MacGregor: No, because we were not discussing individual items of research. However, I know that research into that matter is going on and a good deal of it will be longer-term. Basically, we were discussing possibilities for more industry funding of near market research, to ensure that the taxpayer was getting value for money and that there were proper priorities in any Government funded research. We also want to ensure proper commercial exploitation of the research that we do. That is what the discussion was concentrating on.

    Horticultural Produce (Dumping)
    Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what steps he takes to prevent the dumping of horticultural produce on the British market.
    Mr. Donald Thompson: The horticultural market in the Community is protected from dumping from third countries by the reference price system for major products and by provisions in the treaty and in Community regulations which enable the European Commission to take action to control imports.
    Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: Is my hon. Friend aware that strawberries from Holland have been on sale in the Bristol and Liverpool markets at 25p per lb, which is well below the cost of production? Will my hon. Friend act to prevent that dumping by using the same Common Market procedure that was successfully used a year ago by the French Government to reduce imports of Spanish strawberries in similar circumstances?
    Mr. Thompson: My hon. Friend is quite correct about the disappearance of the threat of Spanish strawberries to our market. I shall look carefully at what he has told me about Dutch strawberries being imported into this country at a price which he alleges is below the production price.

  PRIME MINISTER

    Engagements
    Mr. Wall: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 9 June.
    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, including one with the President of Tanzania.
    Mr. Wall: Does the Prime Minister accept that many young people are becoming homeless to escape violence, sexual abuse, overcrowding or because of leaving care? Will she explain how, particularly in low-paid Bradford, young people can get together the £100, plus four weeks' rent in advance, which is required by most landlords? Will she explain to Sean Coles, who is 17 years of age, receives £19·40 per week and lives and sleeps in a rubbish skip, how he is to survive in her society? Are squatting or robbing the only alternatives?
    The Prime Minister: Undoubtedly some young people do leave home for the reasons that the hon. Gentleman gave, but by no means all: many leave home voluntarily. The hon. Gentleman is well aware that there have been changes in the way in which homeless teenagers are provided for financially. Under the old system, they used to get money in advance; now they get it in arrears. It is a new system. Local offices have taken special steps to inform landlords and hostels in their areas about the changes. Claimants are provided with evidence of having made a claim to help them to secure accommodation. The early indications are that landlords are beginning to adjust to the new rules.
    Mr. Andrew MacKay: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 9 June.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. MacKay: Will my right hon. Friend welcome today's decision by the French Government to follow our lead in dealing with sub-Saharan debt? Does she agree that it is a pity that they did not respond more positively to the Chancellor of the Exchequer's initiative a whole year ago?
    The Prime Minister: Yes. A number of proposals have been received about how to deal with the debt problem. They all have one thing in common. They follow the initiative of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer of nearly a year ago. I agree that it would have been better if we had had a better response at that time. I hope that we shall deal with the matter effectively at Toronto. In the meantime, I make it clear that this country has already written off £1 billion-worth of debt.
    Mr. Hattersley: In the light of today's reports from the Low Pay Unit and the Child Poverty Action Group, does the Prime Minister still believe that everyone has benefited from increased prosperity during the past eight years?
    The Prime Minister: I have seen briefly the summaries of those reports. The right hon. Gentleman knows that the figures that were published in May, the low-income families statistics, which are the latest statistics and cover 1981, 1983 and 1985, confirm that people at all levels of income have been getting better off. They show that those on lower incomes have done better than the population in general and that there are fewer pensioners, in proportional terms, in the lower income bracket.
    Mr. Hattersley: That answer, as anticipated, dealt with the period up to 1986. Will the Prime Minister now bring her own figures up to date? Will she confirm that this year more than one million families and households are worse off by more than £3 a week as a result of the combined impact of the Budget and social security changes? Will she confirm that a total of seven million households are about to suffer a fall in their standard of living?
    The Prime Minister: I believe that the Child Poverty Action Group figures referred at the latest to 1985; of course ours go beyond that. The Child Poverty Action Group figures are related strictly to the outdated method of supplementary benefit, whereas we are on a wholly new benefit system now. With regard to the new benefits, as the right hon. Gentleman is aware, some 88 per cent. of people are on either the same or an improved rate of benefit—[Interruption.] Yes some others are on a lower rate.
    Mr. Hattersley: That answer may or may not be accurate. [Interruption.] It suffers from the minor deficiency of being the answer to a quite different question to that which I asked. So I ask her again, will she tell us yes or no, whether the very large number of families I quoted will be worse off as a result of the Budget? If she goes on waffling with this answer as she did with the previous one, it will reflect not only on her compassion but on her integrity as Prime Minister.
    The Prime Minister: No, I will not confirm the right hon. Gentleman's figures. The Budget was an excellent one. It has helped many people on lower pay because it has increased the allowances by twice the amount of inflation.
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    It has also reduced the standard rate of tax which, at the time when the right hon. Gentleman was in power was 33p in the pound, and is now down to 25p in the pound.
    Mr. Janman: Given our long-standing commitment to the independent nuclear deterrent, our recently announced support for the European fighter aircraft programme and our continuing full implementation of the armed forces pay review body recommendations, does my right hon. Friend agree that the Government's defence policies are intellectually well founded, firm and consistent, unlike the increasingly divided, indecisive and floundering policies of the Opposition?
    The Prime Minister: Yes, our defence policies effectively safeguard the defence of this country and ensure that we are staunch allies of NATO, including its vital nuclear deterrent policy. I have not been able to make out the Opposition's policy. I do not believe that it has changed from having absolutely unilateral nuclear disarmament and no nuclear deterrent.
    Mr. McGrady: Does the Prime Minister share my concern for the welfare for the fishermen from the County Down coast who have suffered substantial losses of tackle, catches and equipment because of submarine activity in the Irish sea? Does she also share my concern about the unhelpful response from the Ministry of Defence, which said that such losses are due to natural underwater obstacles which have the unnatural ability to drag trawlers backwards at considerable speed? Will she take some action to alleviate their plight?
    The Prime Minister: Of course I am concerned about the plight of fishermen, but I do not think that I am going to get involved in this one. The hon. Gentleman must take it up with the Ministry of Defence, in which I have the greatest possible confidence.
    Sir Ian Lloyd: The Prime Minister will have seen the immensely disturbing reports this morning that Cuban forces are massing on the frontier of Angola and that the South African Government are calling up reserves. In view of the immense importance to the West of South Africa as a stable country, will my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister say precisely where we stand on this matter?
    The Prime Minister: Yes, of course we have seen the reports that there are a comparatively large number of Cuban forces near the Namibian border and comparatively near a very important dam. I think it is important that talks which began in London about the Angolan position are taken further. There is some dispute about where the next round of talks should take place. I think it is important that the two sides should get together and resolve that problem. I think that the Soviet Union too is anxious for it to be solved.
    Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 9 June.
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Jones: The Prime Minister will be aware that the Welsh Office has consulted on the need for a new Welsh language Act and that the period of consultation ended in March 1987. Two thousand responded to the call for evidence and more than 90 per cent. were in favour. Does she now think that because of the obvious demand for

    985
    greater status for the Welsh language in Wales an announcement should be made? If an announcement is to he made, will it include a commitment to legislate at an early date?
    The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the original responses were varied, which is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales decided to take further soundings. My right hon. Friend and the Minister of State are now considering measures to promote and protect the Welsh language, details of which will be announced shortly. There is, of course, no commitment to legislate.
    Mr. Stanbrook: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 9 June.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Stanbrook: Has my right hon. Friend seen the report of the tragic incident at a Manchester school in which an Asian boy was killed? Does she agree that that confirms that so-called anti-racist policies only strengthen race prejudice? Is it not now time for us to abandon policies which emphasise the differences between British citizens and to concentrate instead on those which promote the unity of this nation and pride in our achievements, irrespective of class, sex or race?
    The Prime Minister: I agree with my hon. Friend that everyone who settles here permanently has the same rights and responsibilities, and I welcome all genuine efforts to remove discrimination and racism.
    Mr. Alan W. Williams: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 9 June.
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Williams: Was it the Prime Minister's decision to send the SAS assassination squad to Gibraltar?
    The Prime Minister: We never discuss matters concerning security forces in this House.
    Mr. Cran: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 9 June.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Cran: Is my right hon. Friend aware that unemployment in my constituency of Beverley in the north of England has fallen by 22 per cent. in the past year? Is she further aware that male manual earnings in Humberside are higher than the United Kingdom average? Does that not suggest to her, that her economic policy works for the north of England as well as the south?
    The Prime Minister: Yes, unemployment is falling in all regions, including Humberside which is now doing well. I agree with my hon. Friend that the overall policies of the Chancellor of the Exchequer are returning enterprise to all parts.
    Mr. Foulkes: Has the Prime Minister had time to read today the report of the committee on medical aspects of radiation in the environment, which points to a direct link between Dounreay and an increased incidence of leukaemia, and recommends that increased monitoring, including full body monitoring, should be carried out? Will she confirm that this increased monitoring will apply not just to Dounreay but to every nuclear establishment in Britain?
    The Prime Minister: The committee on medical aspects of radiation in the environment has completed its consideration of the incidence of leukaemia in under 25-year-olds living near the Dounreay nuclear plant in Caithness and its report is published today. As my hon. Friend the Minister responsible for health in Scotland said yesterday, the Government have accepted the report and are now considering how best to implement the recommendations contained in it. The report identifies a number of possible explanations for there being six cases of leukaemia where only one would have been expected. It does not point to any particular explanation and therefore considers that all possible explanations require to be investigated further. Recommendations for these further investigations are made and are accepted.
    Mr. William Powell: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 9 June.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Powell: Is my right hon. Friend aware that her welcome and support for the success of the summit last week has been widely echoed throughout the country? Will she confirm that further rapid progress in the improvement of relations between East and West will be made possible if there is rapid success in the negotiations relating to the elimination of chemical weapons and to the reduction of the imbalance in conventional forces in central Europe?
    The Prime Minister: I agree with my hon. Friend in welcoming the ratification of the intermediate-range nuclear weapons agreement. The next step should he to complete the negotiations on reducing United States and Soviet strategic nuclear weapons by 50 per cent. After that. as my hon. Friend pointed out, we must get on with the negotiations preferably to abolish chemical weapons and those on conventional weapons, and we now have a mandate to do that.

Business of the House
3.31 pm
Mr. Frank Dobson: Will the Leader of the House state the business for next week?
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John Wakeham): Yes, Sir. The business for next week will be as follows:
MONDAY 13 JUNE—Until Seven o'clock, private Members' motions.
Consideration of Lords Amendments to the Dartford-Thurrock Crossing Bill.
Ways and Means resolutions relating to the Finance (No. 2) Bill.
Progress on remaining stages of the Housing Bill.
TUESDAY 14 JUNE—Progress on remaining stages of the Housing Bill.
Motion to take note of EC documents on the limitation of the emission of pollutants from large combustion plants. Details will be given in the Official Report.
Motions on the Building Societies (Commercial Assets and Services) and the Building Societies (Limits on Commercial Assets) Orders.
WEDNESDAY 15 JUNE—Completion of remaining stages of the Housing Bill.
The Chairman of Ways and Means has named opposed private business for consideration at Seven o'clock.
THURSDAY 16 JUNE—Progress on remaining stages of the Criminal Justice Bill [Lords].
Motion to take note of EC document on weights and dimensions of certain road vehicles. Details will be given in the Official Report.
Motion to take note of EC documents on proposals to extend roadworthiness testing. Details will be given in the Official Report.
FRIDAY 17 JUNE—There will be a debate on the growth of the tourism industry on a motion for the Adjournment of the House.
MONDAY 20 JUNE—Completion of remaining stages of the Criminal Justice Bill [Lords].
[Debate on Tuesday 14 June 1988. Relevant European Community Documents: (a) 11642/83, (b) 5124/85, (c) unnumbered, air pollution from large combustion plants.
Relevant Reports of European Legislation Committee: (a) HC 78-xxvii (1983–84) para 4; (b) HC 5-xviii (1984–85) para 2.
Debates on Thursday 16 June 1988. First Debate. Relevant European Community Document: unnumbered, commercial vehicles: weights.
Relevant Report of European Legislation Committee: HC 43-xxvi (1987–88) para 2.
Second Debate. Relevant European Community Documents: ( a) 6878186, (b) 7946/87, roadworthiness tests for motor vehicles and trailers.
Relevant Reports of European Legislation Committee: (a) HC 21-xxiii (1985–86) para 5 and HC 21-xxvii (1985–86) para 4; (b) HC 43-iii (1987–88) para 2.]
Mr. Dobson: I thank the Lord President for telling us what the business is.
I think that the whole House recognises that the Minister for Housing and Planning is having great difficulty in producing a Housing Bill that makes sense even of his own proposals. Will the Lord President accept that the intention to complete the Commons consideration
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of this measure next week will put an intolerable burden on the House and is likely to result in an even shabbier than normal Act of Parliament? Does he not accept that, with the Government having tabled no fewer than 183 new clauses and amendments, there is no possibility of their being properly considered? Will he seriously consider our request that further time be devoted to this Bill, even if it is only to make sure that the Bill is eventually a workable piece of legislation?
Having said all that, I must ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he can tell us when we are to have the opportunity to consider the proposals on short speeches.
Turning from short speeches to the Short money, when can we expect to debate the proposals for uprating the funding of Opposition parties?
The Lord President will be aware that his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales has long been promising something that he refers to as the Welsh valley initiative. Can he give us an undertaking that that will be announced in the House before it is announced anywhere else?
When can we expect the oft-promised general debate on foreign affairs?
Finally, the Lord President will recall that last week I asked him if he would look into the police restrictions placed on access by right hon. and hon. Members to Downing street. I wonder whether he is in a position to make a statement on that now.
Mr. Wakeham: The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) asked me six questions about the business for next week and I shall seek to answer them in the order in which he asked them.
I understand that the Opposition are in some difficulty in respect of the Housing Bill. I believe that the time allocated is adequate, but I recognise that there is some concern. I am prepared to have discussions through the usual channels to see whether any assistance can be provided.
As to short speeches, I regret that the motion that I originally tabled could not be debated at the time that I intended. I hope to bring forward that motion again in the near future.
With regard to the Short money, the financial assistance to opposition parties, I hope that it may be possible to make an announcement about the timing of that debate in my next business statement.
I confirm that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales hopes to make a statement in the House on the valleys initiative in the very near future.
It is my intention to have a debate on foreign affairs in the very near future, but I hope that the hon. Gentleman accepts that the precise timing is best left for discussion through the usual channels.
As the hon. Gentleman rightly said, he raised last week the question—as did one of his hon. Friends—of Members' access to Downing street. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department explained in a written answer on 7 June to his hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick)
"Fresh instructions have been issued by the police to make it clear that, as hitherto, no restrictions should be placed on the number of hon. Members who need to enter Downing street in the course of their parliamentary duties."—[Official Report, 7 June 1988; Vol. 134, c. 448.]
It was most unfortunate that some right hon. and hon. Members were mistakenly prevented from entering

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Downing street to present a petition. I hope that the House will accept that that was a genuine misunderstanding and nothing more. The Metropolitan police restrict access generally to Downing street in pursuance of their common law duty to prevent crime and disorder, but it has never been the intention to prevent hon. Members from pursuing their parliamentary duties.
Several Hon. Members rose——
Mr. Speaker: Order. As we have been away for a week, I will repeat a statement that I made earlier this Session. The purpose of business questions is not to make a speech about a subject of an hon. Member's choice, but to ask for a debate. In order that I may be as generous as possible in calling Members to put supplementary questions, I ask hon. Members to confine themselves to one question and not to make a speech or to expect a detailed reply.
Mr. Michael Fallon: In view of the firm undertaking last night by the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) to renationalise the Rover Group, will my right hon. Friend arrange a debate on the state of the privatisation programme so that those people who work for privatised companies, or for companies which are to be privatised, may be very clear about their fate under any future Labour Government?
Mr. Wakeham: Enough was said in yesterday's debate to cause people concern about what might happen should there unfortunately be a change of Government at any future time. I should like to arrange such a debate, but I cannot promise my hon. Friend a debate in the immediate future.
Mr. Ron Davies: Is the Leader of the House aware of the widespread concern on both sides of the House, and outside it, at the delay in implementing the fair labelling order by his hon. Friend the Minister for Trade? Is he aware that there is widespread support for that measure, and will he give a guarantee that the order will be laid before the summer recess?
Mr. Wakeham: Consultations and discussions are going on at the moment. I shall certainly refer the hon. Gentleman's concern to my hon. Friend the Minister for Trade.
Rev. Ian Paisley: In view of the serious deterioration in security in Northern Ireland, will the right hon. Gentleman ensure that we have a full debate soon, keeping' in mind that not one person has been made amenable to the law for the terrible massacre in Enniskillen, the 11 murders in South Down and the 17 murders in Castlederg? Will the right hon. Gentleman remember that Members from Northern Ireland can take part in debates on and move amendments to English legislation but cannot move amendments to Northern Ireland legislation?
Mr. Wakeham: Of course I recognise the concern of the hon. Gentleman on security in Northern Ireland, the grave and continuing difficulties and the need for a debate. I also recognise the concern about the way in which legislation for Northern Ireland is dealt with. Any changes in that system would be best considered in the wider context of progress towards devolved government. I cannot promise
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the hon. Gentleman an early debate, but I recognise the strength of what he has said and I will bear the matter in mind.
Mr. James Wallace: I am sure that the Leader of the House accepts that the report of the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment on leukaemia clusters requires careful consideration because it raises important and serious issues. Will the House have an opportunity to discuss the report?
Will the Leader of the House also consider early-day motion 1185 in the names of myself and my right hon. and hon. Friends?
[That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Local Government ( Direct Labour Organisations) (Competition) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 1988 (S.I. 1988, No. 956), dated 22nd May 1988, a copy of which was laid before this House on 8th June, be annulled.]
Will we have an opportunity to debate it, in the House or in Committee?
Mr. Wakeham: The second point on local government regulations in Scotland can best be discussed through the usual channels.
I note what the hon. Gentleman said about the COMARE report which has recently been published. I believe that there should be time for consideration. I cannot promise an early debate but I shall certainly bear the matter in mind.
Mr. Tim Yeo: Does my right hon. Friend agree that an early debate on defence policy would give those of us who favour multilateral rather than unilateral disarmament the opportunity to hail the unexpected but none the less welcome arrival in our ranks of the Leader of the Opposition, even if very few of his hon. Friends appear willing to follow him at this stage?
Mr. Wakeham: A debate on defence is an important part of the parliamentary year. We shall have a debate on defence, but the White Paper has only recently been published. I understand that the Select Committee on Defence is in the course of preparing a report on it. I want to have discussions as to the best time for that debate.
Mr. Dave Nellist: Has the Lord President of the Council seen early-day motion 1183 about the tragic crash of an RAF Meteor jet aircraft in Coven try on Monday 30 May and the heroism of the RAF pilot who gave his life to avoid crashing into the houses and the social club in Coventry, South-East?
[That this House notes with regret the fatal crash in Coventry of an RAF Meteor T7 jet aircraft during the Warwickshire Air Pageant on Monday 30th May; recognises that the pilot, Flight Lieutenant Peter Stacey, was a hero to give his life by crashing his plane on the only available space of open ground, between a school and two adjacent housing estates, thus avoiding turning a tragedy into a potential civil disaster; recognises that whilst air displays are a popular family entertainment, no entertainment is worth this risk to the lives of people, such as the constituents of the honourable Member for Coventry, South East who had large pieces of debris scattered onto their houses and grounds, which thankfully caused only minor damage; demands that the future organisation of such air displays be modified to ensure areas of dense population are

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safe from potential accidents; regards the offer by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Armed Forces, in a letter to the honourable Member for Coventry, South East on 6th June, to send an advance copy of a summary of the findings of the Royal Air Force Board of Enquiry into the Meteor crash, as inadequate; and believes that for the peace of mind of the people of Coventry and the relatives of Flight Lieutenant Stacey, the investigation report should be published.]
Can the right hon. Gentleman explain why the Secretary of State for Defence has not yet made a statement to the House on the crash? Air displays such as the Warwickshire air pageant, during which the crash took place, are popular family entertainment, but no entertainment is worth such a risk to the lives of my constituents who had large pieces of wreckage scattered on their homes and gardens.
Mr. Wakeham: I am sure the whole House will share the hon. Gentleman's regret at this tragic accident. A thorough investigation is being undertaken and the results will be made public in accordance with normal practice. I am sure that is the best way to proceed, and that all of us would want to express our sympathy to the relatives of the brave pilot who was killed.
Mr. Richard Holt: My right hon. Friend's announcement of a debate on tourism will be welcome, but tourists need roads. When will we have a debate on motorway policy so that the north-east can be exploited to the full by tourists, who would love to get there if only the motorways were adequate? There is unanimous support for an adequate motorway system to the north-east from everyone, it would appear, except "Pimply" Heller of The Daily Telegraph and those who advise the Minister.
Mr. Wakeham: I have answered previous questions on roads from my hon. Friend. I recognise the connection between roads and tourism. I should have thought that my hon. Friend, with his customary skill, would be able to relate the two in the debate on Friday 17 June.
Mr. Merlyn Rees: The Leader of the House will have seen last week's report on riots in Crowborough in Sussex. In recent years, there have been many such occurrences in more affluent parts of the country. Today, the Association of Chief Police Officers, is publishing a report about the new phenomenon of riots in so-called affluent areas. Will the Leader of the House made sure that we get a sight of the report? Will he arrange for it to be placed in the Library? We should debate the matter, if not next week, then soon, so that we can get away from the idea that the problem arises only in inner cities.
Mr. Wakeham: I recognise the strength of what the right hon. Gentleman has said, in view of the offices that he has held and his great experience in these matters. I shall certainly refer the matter to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and see how best to meet the hon. Gentleman's request.
Sir Eldon Griffiths: Although it was good of my right hon. Friend to agree to draw the
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attention of the relevant Minister to the question of the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Davies) about the labelling of furs, I remind him of my early-day motion 978.
[That this House, noting the intention of the Department of Trade and Industry to introduce a labelling Order to cover the furs of animals caught in leghold traps, a device made illegal in the United Kingdom following the report of the 1951 Scott Henderson Committee, which describes it as a diabolical instrument which causes an incalculable amount of suffering, congratulates the Minister for Trade on taking this valuable step, which will allow the consumer to exercise freedom of choice as to whether or not to purchase garments the production of which will have involved extreme cruelty to animals; and calls upon Her Majesty's Government to include in the Order the furs of badger, beaver, bobcat, coyote, cross fox, ermine, fisher, gray fox, lynx, marten, muskrat, opossum, otter, racoon, red fox and wolf, all of which are frequently caught in leghold traps.]
My motion has attracted close to 100 signatures from hon. Members. We should get a move on so that people can exercise real consumer freedom of choice.
Mr. Wakeham: I have seen my hon. Friend's early-day motion, and I recognise the support that it has attracted. I know that my hon. Friend the Minister for Trade wants to get on with it as quickly as he can. He is in the process of negotiations, and I shall urge him to get on with them as fast as possible.
Mr. Adam Ingram: In view of the huge question mark involving alleged financial irregularities hanging over the proposed sale of the National Engineering laboratory at East Kilbride, is the Leader of the House prepared to make time available to debate that vital issue?
Mr. Wakeham: I cannot promise the hon. Gentleman time to debate the issue. If he has evidence of financial irregularities, I am sure that he knows the right way to deal with them.
Mr. Ian Gow: Will my right hon. Friend reflect on the answer that he gave a moment ago, when he referred to progress towards devolved government in Northern Ireland? Will he explain why it is the Government's policy that there should be no devolved administration in Scotland or Wales but that there should be devolved administration in Northern Ireland?
Mr. Wakeham: My job is to answer questions about business for next week. I shall not indulge in a debate with my hon. Friend about that issue at present, although there are answers that can be given at the right time.
Mr. Harold McCusker: What proportion of the legislation that the right hon. Gentleman today announced will be proceeded with next week has any application to Northern Ireland?
Mr. Wakeham: I cannot give the answer to that question without notice.
Mr. John Browne: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the alarming rise in the offence of violence against the police, that 90 per cent. of it is alcohol-related and it is rising fastest in counties like Hampshire, where the police are thinly distributed—widely distributed—over a large area? Dos he not think that this is such an alarming trend in crime that it deserves an urgent debate?
Mr. Wakeham: Yes, of course, these are important matters. I stated to the former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees), that I shall discuss the matter with the Home Secretary. I confirm that I shall do that.
Mr. Ron Brown: As the Prime Minister has condemned trial by media, surely we should have a special debate to consider the role of press barons, bearing in mind the sort of stories that are repeatedly pumped out about public figures, including hon. Members.
Mr. Wakeham: I cannot promise the hon. Gentleman any Government time for such a debate. Perhaps he would like to have a word with his right hon. and hon. Friends on the Labour Front Bench.
Mr. Tony Speller: Has my right hon. Friend noticed the growing number of parliamentary questions relating to pollution of the atmosphere, the earth, and the waters around our coast? Will he find time in the reasonably near future for a debate on pollution throughout the United Kingdom?
Mr. Wakeham: I noted my hon. Friend's success in obtaining the 17 May Adjournment debate on the subject of marine pollution. The Government are considering the points that he raised. It is not possible in the immediate future to have a debate on the wider issues. I shall certainly bear the matter in mind.
Mr. Tony Banks: May we have an urgent debate next week on the Government's flagrant abuse of parliamentary procedures? The Leader of the House will be aware that the Committee considering the Housing Bill finished its consideration on 15 March. As late as last night, new clauses and new amendments, including the "White Paper", were tabled by the Government. The Government are not giving the Opposition a chance fairly to reflect our role in the House by critically examining the Government's proposals. We do not have Report stages any more; we have new Bills on Report. We need an urgent debate on the flagrant abuse of the Government's position.
Mr. Wakeham: I do not accept what the hon. Gentleman has said, but I recognise the concern. As I said to the shadow spokesman, the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson), I am perfectly prepared to have discussions through the usual channels on matters that are causing concern.
Mr. Chris Butler: In view of the proposals by Power, Water and Waste Ltd. to import millions of tonnes of festering American domestic waste into the north-west and south-west of England, will my right hon. Friend grant a debate so that hon. Members on both sides of the House can express their opposition to those proposals?
Mr. Wakeham: Of course I recognise my hon. Friend's concern. This is primarily a matter for the waste disposal authorities which are responsible for ensuring that any waste disposed of in their areas is dealt with properly and safely. I suggest that my hon. Friend gets in touch with them, but I will bear in mind what he has said.
Mr. Eddie Loyden: In view of the widespread concern about apparent unfettered exploitation by loan sharks, when are the Government going to take some initiatives to bring recommendations to the House to tighten up the laws against loan sharks?
Mr. Wakeham: I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has any particular case in mind. If he has, I suggest that he either gives me details or makes details available to the Department of Trade and Industry or 'to the appropriate authority. With regard to matters of financial irregularity generally, I believe that my right hon. and noble Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry acts properly and swiftly in accordance with the law, which we have very much strengthened in recent years.
Mr. Andrew Rowe (Mid-Kent): Earlier this week a teenage girl was killed in my constituency by a heavy goods vehicle. I believe that that was the fourth such incident in Kent this year and it throws into stark relief the importance of a debate on the whole question of road provision in Kent following the building of the Channel tunnel. Will my right hon. Friend grant a debate on that subject?
Mr. Wakeham: I am very distressed to hear what my hon. Friend has said about events in Kent. Of course, the subject of roads and the Channel tunnel is a suitable one for debate, and I wish that I could offer my hon. Friend an early date for such a debate. He will recognise the substantial increased resources that the Government have found for the road programme.
Mr. Dick Douglas: Will the Leader of the House acknowledge that in the Scottish Grand Committee this morning we received an extremely unsatisfactory reply from the Minister of State? In particular, he could not assure the Committee that there would be a separate Scottish Bill for the privatisation of electricity. Will the Leader of the House assure the House that there will be a separate Scottish Bill—[HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] Because it is an important matter. In view of the obscure replies from the Minister of State in relation to the imports of coal for power stations in Scotland, may we have a statement from the Secretary of State for Energy to clarify the matter and give some clear sign of the state of negotiations between the South of Scotland electricity board and British Coal?
Mr. Wakeham: I have not had an opportunity to read the report of the debates upstairs and I am not sure whether I should comment on it if I had. However, I will take the opportunity to do so, and will refer the matter to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy if I think that he should take any action.
Mr. John Carlisle: Will my right hon. Friend consider giving time for an early debate on the impartiality of the BBC? Is he not particularly worried that this coming Saturday some 10 hours of air time is to be given over to an organisation that supports terrorism?
Mr. Wakeham: These are primarily matters for the BBC. The Anti-Apartheid Movement concert is not a matter for the Government. However, I should tell my hon. Friend that the Government are considering representations received in Pretoria this morning in connection with the matter.
Mr. Paul Boateng: With his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department, will the Leader of the House find time, not least in view of the unusually forthright condemnation of racial discrimination by the Prime Minister a few minutes ago, to arrange an urgent debate on racial harassment, in view of the report that was issued only yesterday by the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis that shows an alarming increase in London alone of 26 per cent. in this particularly unpleasant form of crime?
Mr. Wakeham: I recognise the concern and the force of the hon. Gentleman's argument, but I cannot promise a debate in the near future.
Mr. Eric Forth (Mid-Worcestershire): Will not my right hon. Friend reconsider the question of the BBC's charter and its use of public money? Does he not share the widespread concern, at least on this side of the House, about the fact that the BBC is prepared to spend a large amount of its, and therefore its licence payers', money and a lot of air time on praising somebody who has been convicted of terrorism and who refuses to renounce violence?
Mr. Wakeham: I recognise my hon. Friend's concern. There will be an opportunity before too long for a debate on broadcasting, but I cannot promise one immediately.
Mr. Kevin Barron: In the time allocated next Wednesday to the discussion of a private Bill, will the Leader of the House assure us that the Bill that will be discussed will be a private Bill and that he will not be party to a meeting such as that between the Secretary of State for Transport and the outside promoter of the private Bill which became the Associated British Ports Act? We found out later that there had been collusion between the Secretary of State for Transport and that promoter. Will it really be a private Bill or will it, once again, be a front for the Government?
Mr. Wakeham: I reject entirely the hon. Gentleman's allegations in respect of my right hon. Friend. The question of private Bills is a matter for the Chairman of Ways and Means. I am quite sure that he will see to it that all proper matters are dealt with.
Mr. Roger Knapman: Will my right hon. Friend find time during the next week, or before the summer recess, for an additional Opposition day, bearing in mind the almost total lack of interest in yesterday's debate, with only 12 Labour Members of Parliament being present for the wind-up after the Rowntree debate and even fewer than that for the wind-up after the following debate?
Mr. Wakeham: I am glad to be able to assist my hon. Friend. I am sure that I shall be able to find time for an Opposition day before the summer recess, but I am not responsible for what they choose to debate or for how many Opposition Members decide to come and listen. That is a matter for them.
Mr. Bob Cryer: Could we have a debate next week, or at an early opportunity, on the National Audit Commission's report on the Property Services Agency? Then we could debate that organisation's autocratic and bureaucratic decision to stop the cross-Bradford rail link that would have been a boost for
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Bradford and Bradford railway services. The local passenger transport authority and the local authority want a cross-Bradford rail link to link the interchange and Bradford Forster square. A debate on the National Audit Commission's report would provide an opportunity for an investigation.
Mr. Wakeham: I cannot promise the hon. Gentleman a debate next week on that matter, but I have no doubt that with his customary ingenuity he will find a way to raise matters that he believes to be of concern.
Mr. Michael Colvin: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the growing number of problems that face civil aviation, one of Britain's most successful industries from air safety to airport capacity, from the deregulation of European air services to the computer reservation systems that are currently being studied by the Select Committee on Transport? He will no doubt be aware of the fact that many decisions on these problems will be taken by Ministers and the Civil Aviation Authority before the end of the year, without any need for primary legislation. Is it not very important, therefore, for the House to have an opportunity to debate civil aviation before the summer recess?
Mr. Wakeham: I recognise that considerable changes are taking place in the civil aviation industry and that it would be appropriate for the House to debate them. At this time of the year it is difficult to find days for additional debates. I am sorry that I cannot be more forthcoming about when that time can be provided.
Mr. Nigel Spearing: Reverting to the Housing Bill that is to be considered on three days next week, is the Leader of the House aware that not only were four important new clauses tabled last night but that one of them, new clause 47, has the novelty of being applicable, after Royal Assent, as from today? Is this not an unusual procedure? As the Leader of the House has said that there will be discussions with the usual channels, will he withdraw his decision that consideration will be completed next Wednesday?
Mr. Wakeham: No, I cannot undertake to do that at all. I thought that I was being helpful. The time allocated for the Bill is quite substantial. I recognise that there are some difficulties, and I have undertaken to have further discussions about those difficulties. However, I cannot undertake to say in advance what the conclusions of those discussions will be.
Sir John Farr: I do not know whether my right hon. Friend has seen the announcement in today's papers about the intention of the Murdoch group, News International, to flood the country with satellite television by next year. Does he agree that the House should consider this matter and, in particular, how reasonable standards of decency and morality can be achieved and maintained when this happens, in a very short time?
Mr. Wakeham: I have seen the announcement. I should have thought that my hon. Friend would welcome the increased competition and consumer choice that the services will provide; indeed, he may well do so. As I said before, I hope that we shall be able to arrange a debate on broadcasting in general before too long, when no doubt some of these issues will be highly relevant.
Mr. Greville Janner: May we have a debate soon on the way in which many building societies and banks are blatantly in breach of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 in publishing misleading and confusing advertisements about mortgage interest rates? As that result of the mortgage war is wholly unacceptable, will the right hon. Gentleman refer the matter to the Under-Secretary of State for Industry and Consumer Affairs and seek from him an urgent statement to the House?
Mr. Wakeham: As I understand it, there are codes of practice and codes of conduct in these matters. If the hon. and learned Gentleman considers that he has evidence of improper practice perhaps he will let me have the information and I shall certainly see to it that my right hon. Friend considers it.
Mr. Gerald Bermingham: Having taken time to read the speech by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister of Trade and Industry yesterday in the Rowntree debate, will the Leader of the House invite the Attorney-General to come before the House? The Chancellor of the Duchy said that he had played the Rowntree takeover completely straight and that he certainly had not asked the Treasury Solicitor to approach the trustees of the Rowntree Trust. Someone must have done; somebody interfered. Will the right hon. Gentleman ask the Attorney-General to come before the House and explain who exactly put the Treasury Solicitor up to interfering in the takeover bid?
Mr. Wakeham: I do not think that I can add anything to what my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy said yesterday. I shall draw to his attention the point made by the hon. Gentleman and leave it to him to decide how best to deal with the matter.
Mr. Bowen Wells: Is my right hon. Friend aware that issues concerning the implementation of the Single European Act in 1992 are now being discussed in the EEC, including the questions of monetary union and a central bank? Is he further aware that the Chancellor of the Exchequer yesterday sent to the Select Committee on European Legislation a discussion paper on those matters that should have been debated but which he intends to agree in the Council of Ministers before the House has had any chance to consider the underlying issues at stake? Does not my right hon. Friend consider that it is becoming more and more urgent that the House reconsider the way in which it examines European legislation?
Mr. Wakeham: I recognise that there has been some concern in the House about the way in which legislation has sometimes not been considered as it was intended to be considered. My hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) have been to see me about these matters. A number of EC issues are to be debated next week. I am trying to improve the situation and I shall look into the matter to which my hon. Friend refers.
Mr. Harry Barnes: Has the Leader of the House seen early-day motion 478, which deals with the hunting of deer by packs of dogs?
[That this House deplores the increasing frequency of incidents and damage arising from the hunting of deer with packs of dogs; notes the overwhelming public opinion in
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support of the abolition of, 'his unnecessary practice; and calls upon Her Majesty's Government to introduce early legislation to give deer the same basic protection from cruelty as domestic and captive animals currently receive under the terms of the Protection of Animals Act 1911.]
We seek the introduction of legislation to ensure that deer are dealt with in the same way as captive and domestic animals and to give them the same rights. The early-day motion has broad support in the House and carries 132 signatures. As well as signatures of representatives of the two major political parties, it carries signatures from one of the two alliance parties—if that is not a contradiction in terms—and from the two nationalist and three Ulster Unionist parties. Will time be provided for a debate?
Mr. Wakeham: Wild deer are already protected by the provisions of the Deer Acts 1963 and 1980, which provide safeguards against abuse by poachers and against unnecessary suffering. We have no plans to introduce further legislation.
Mr. Nicholas Budgen: May I, too, refer my right hon. Friend to the Prime Minister's excellent and stirring answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook), in which she said in absolute terms that our citizens ought to be treated equally, irrespective of their class, sex or race? Will my right hon. Friend allow time urgently for a debate to allow the Prime Minister to explain how she squares that with the doctrine of positive discrimination enforced by her Government in the teaching of ethnic languages in schools, the allocation of building contracts in the public sector in inner-city areas and her proposals for employment in Northern Ireland?
Mr. Wakeham: When my right hon. Friend made her statement, I think that she was supported by hon. Members on both sides of the House. I have no plans for a debate on that matter next week.
Mr.Max Madden: May I press the Leader of the House on the subject of the promised debate on foreign affairs? May I ask that the motion be drafted to allow the House a debate about recent events in Pakistan so that we may call on President Zia to hold elections to the national assembly before 29 August and warn him that the reintroduction of powers would have serious implications and create serious difficulties in relationships between the United Kingdom and Pakistan? Will the Leader of the House give such an assurance?
Mr. Wakeham: I certainly give an assurance that I shall have discussions through the usual channels about the form of the debate so that widespread agreement can be reached as to its basis. If we have a wide debate, no doubt the hon. Gentleman will be able then to raise the points that concern him.
Mr. Andrew MacKay: Before the recess, will my right hon. Friend arrange a further debate on the Civil Service to enable hon. Members such as myself whose constituencies are under threat from excessive development to urge the Government to show a lead with a massive relocation of civil servants away from Whitehall? That would benefit the economy in the south-east and in the regions and would offer better value for money to the taxpayer, who funds the Civil Service.
Mr. Wakeham: I recognise that this is a big issue of concern to a number of my hon. Friends. I cannot promise an early debate, but I note that the Minister of State, Privy Council Office, who is responsible for the Civil Service, will be answering questions on Monday and it may be possible for my hon. Friend to raise the matter then.
Mr. Graham Allen: Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on the distribution of butter and beef which is surplus to requirements in the EEC, especially in view of the failure of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to issue tenders for the distribution and packaging of both those commodities?
Will the right hon. Gentleman sponsor my Bill to make the code of practice for publicans and tenants statutory so that Scottish and Newcastle Breweries does not evict 35 tenants in my constituency over the next few weeks?
Mr. Wakeham: The hon. Gentleman is a persuasive arguer, but he has not persuaded me that I should necessarily sponsor his Bill. I shall refer the other matter to my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.
Mr. Harry Greenway: May I draw my right hon. Friend's attention to the widespread admiration of President Reagan's work for peace and for Anglo-American relations? May we have an early opportunity to discuss a suitable high honour for him?
Mr. Wakeham: I am not sure how best the House should proceed in these matters. I certainly recognise the President's contribution to world peace and I shall perhaps talk to my hon. Friend about what he has in mind.
Mr. Alan Meale: Has the Leader of the House noted the large number of early-day motions dealing with badger protection—in particular early-day motions 843, 1091 and 1173?
[That this House notes with concern that Her Majesty's Government has no plans at present to legislate for the protection of badger setts; and calls upon Her Majesty's Government to initiate suitable amendments to the Badger Act 1973 and the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1987 so as to afford protection to badger setts as a matter of urgency.]
[That this House condemns the practice of badger baiting in Britain; and calls upon Her Majesty's Government to amend the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, to protect their setts.]
[That this House condemns the abhorrent practice of badger baiting, as recently depicted on the Central Television programme, The Cook Report, and calls on the Government to amend the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, to protect badger setts, increase magistrates' courts' powers to impose heavier fines on convicted offenders, consider increasing the maximum prison sentences for the offence from six months to two years for persistent offenders and make liable those landowners whose employees in pursuit of their employment deliberately kill badgers or disturb setts on their land.]
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that a recent television programme dealing with the matter showed quite clearly that this abhorrent practice regularly occurs in Britain? Will he find time for a debate on this practice so that we may see an end to it as quickly as possible?
Mr. Wakeham: The Government share the abhorrence expressed in early-day motion 1173 but doubt whether additional measures could reasonably be taken that would significantly increase the protection already afforded to badgers under the existing law.
Mr. John Battle: May I respectfully request the Leader of the House to reconsider his answers to my hon. Friends about the Housing Bill? That Bill was considered for a long time in Committee, longer than the poll tax Bill and longer than the Education Reform Bill but, at the eleventh hour, over 160 Government amendments have been tabled. Yesterday, guidelines were published transferring local authority housing to the private sector, which undercut provisions in the Bill.
The impression is being created that the Bill is being marginalised in terms of the debate in the House by being put on at the tail-end of Monday's business and, as a result, there will not be sufficient time properly to consider the provisions that the Government have now brought before the House. May I ask the Leader of the House at least to reconsider the timetable, or preferably withdraw the Bill, even at this late stage, until the Government have a coherent policy?
Mr. Wakeham: I told the hon. Gentleman's hon. Friends that I would have further discussions. I hope that he does not want me to reconsider that, because I would have thought that that was a helpful response. That is the way forward, and there is nothing more that I can add to what I have already said.
Mr. Dennis Skinner: Did the Leader of the House hear the Speaker yesterday respond to me when I asked the Secretary of State for the Environment to come to the House to be questioned on the new planning procedures as they affect opencast mining applications up and down the country? Since the Leader of the House has an aversion to the earthmoving equipment trampling all over his constituency, perhaps he will understand why there are serious objections to large-scale opencast mining applications being allowed on the basis of new criteria on marketing and commercial viability.
Will the Leader of the House ask the Scretary of State for the Environment to answer questions on this matter and organise a debate so that everybody can take part? Will he point out to the Secretary of State that if the planning application system is allowed to carry on it will result in large incursions into green belt planning procedures and will be used in all sorts of ways up and down the country?
Mr. Wakeham: I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will answer any questions that it is proper for him to answer, if the hon. Gentleman tables them. I notice that there may be a debate on Monday and, with the hon. Gentleman's customary ingenuity, he might be able to get a speech in order that would enable him to express his concerns.
Mr. Paul Flynn: Will the Lord President of the Council give us a guarantee that, in the debate next week on pollution caused by combustion, it will be possible to discuss the pollution caused by the combustion of toxic waste, especially in view of the threat of hundreds of tonnes of toxic waste from Switzerland, which has been rejected by almost every country in Europe and Africa, being brought to Re-Chem in Pontypool? If

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that is not possible, will he give a guarantee that in the near future we will be able to discuss the matter raised by the hon. Member for Warrington, South (Mr. Butler) that waste already at Pontypool has come from more than a dozen countries and that we are importing some of the deadliest substances known to mankind for incineration in a way which, if it became defective, would present a great peril? Is it right that Britain is becoming the dustbin for the waste that the rest of the world has rejected?
Mr. Wakeham: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be able to get the points he wants to make in order for the debate next week. Whether he can do so is a matter for you, Mr. Speaker, not for me. If he does that, the rest of his question is hypothetical.
Mr. Ian McCartney: Will the Leader of the House give us an assurance that the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry will bring forward at an early opportunity the final draft regulations, originally announced in February, for the banning of standard polyurethane and high resilience foams? Will he give a further assurance that the regulations will take account of the phasing out and banning of the sale of secondhand furniture containing dangerous materials with toxic fumes that will kill and incinerate people within three minutes? It is essential that the proposals are brought before the House before the summer recess so that by February next year it will be a criminal offence to sell such obnoxious products. There are still companies on the high street advertising combustion-modified foam as a safe foam when the Government have already announced that it will be a criminal offence to sell such foams. That is a highly irresponsible act especially when, as I have said, it will be a criminal offence by February of next year.
Mr. Wakeham: I give the hon. Gentleman the undertaking that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will consider the points made and all the representations made to him on this important subject. At this stage I cannot give him a firm undertaking about when the orders will be laid.
Mr. Tam Dalyell: Would it not be educative next week for the Leader of the House's colleagues no less than mine if, in the light of early-day motions 1142 and 1156 and in the light of Robert Harris's full-page article in Sunday's The Observer, to have a debate on how No. 10 Downing street now operates? In particular, would it not be helpful to have an explanation next week as to why, on 17 May, the Secretary of State for Education and Science threw a protective smoke-screen around the role of No. 10 Downing street and resorted, uncharacteristically for him, to carefully considered personal abuse and, as transpires from the unchallenged leak of his Civil Service brief, to what looks like calculated deceit of the House?
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[That this House notes that the Guardian of Friday 20th May carried an article entitled 'Thatcher's boy in a cleft stick', which stated that according to Foreign Office sources 'Mr. Charles Powell wants Washington or Paris nothing less, but he's not going to get either of them', and that Mr. Powell had been offered and turned down the post of Ambassador in Stockholm, and that the article added `Powell has another string to his bow he knows where the bodies are buried in the Westland Affair. He escaped appearing before a Select Committee, but not their sharpest criticism for his orchestrating role in the leaking of a letter from the then Solicitor General, which ultimately resulted in the then Secretary of State for Defence's resignation'; expresses its concern that knowledge of wrong-doing by the Prime Minister is alleged to put Mr. Powell in a position to obtain an Embassy more senior than his status warrants; asserts that this is not in keeping with the high moral ground claimed by the Prime Minister; and calls on Her Majesty's Government to make a statement.]
[That this House calls on Her Majesty's Government to set up an inquiry into the SAS operation in Gibraltar, to address itself to the questions as to whether the Joint Intelligence Staff, through its current intelligence groups, was responsible for preparing assessments of the situation in Spain and Gibraltar prior to the shooting, if so, as to how many assessments were made and on what days, as to whether the Joint Intelligence Committee, in any form, considered these or other assessments or reports on the matter, if so, as to when it did so and whether it was as a full committee, a sub-committee or by the chairman alone, as to whom advice was offered by the Joint Intelligence Committee, as to whether the Permanent Secretaries' Committee on the Intelligence Services was involved in considering or formulating assessments or advice, and, if so, on what occasions, as to on what occasions advice or assessments were offered to the Prime Minister by the Permanent Secretaries' Committee on the Intelligence Services, the Joint Intelligence Committee, MI5 or Sir Colin Figures, as to who, or which committee, proposed the use of the SAS, as to whether the SAS was ordered to operate in Gibraltar under pre-existing rules of engagement, or as to whether specific Rules of Engagement were drawn up, as to on what occasions, in the 72 hours prior to the shooting, the Prime Minister was apprised of the sequence of events in Gibraltar, and on what occasions, over the same period she issued instructions or agreed actions in relation to the events, and as to what consultation she undertook with the Overseas Policy and Defence Committee of the Cabinet.]
Mr. Wakeham: I believe that the business I have announced for debate next week will be a more profitable use of the House's time than the suggestions made by the hon. Gentleman, in a spirit of helpfulness.

Orders of the Day

  Housing Bill
  [First Day]
  As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.
  4.16 pm
  Mr. Clive Soley: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I ask you to consider as carefully as you are able the way in which the Government are legislating on the hoof? There are no fewer than 183 new clauses or amendments being added to the Bill, many of them at short notice. I accept that some are in response to our requests in Committee, but that is not a good enough reason for introducing completely new measures that were not even debated in Committee.
  It is extremely important because, as you will know, Mr. Speaker, Standing Committees are set up to look into the way in which legislation is made, not just in areas of disagreement but in areas of agreement. The idea behind that has always been that the Committee procedure should lead to detailed investigation so that we achieve better legislation and avoid the danger of unintended consequences, which is a common problem in the House. In spite of that, some important changes are being made to the Bill.
  A social landlord charter has been announced and it was supposed to be debated in the House. It was announced yesterday by the Minister in a speech. I have still not received a copy of that speech, even though his office told me that it would send me one. The Government have also announced that another amendment on housing associations will be introduced, even while the Bill is on Report. That amendment will affect security of tenure, the tenants' charter and the right-to-buy for housing associations. That has not even been mentioned in the House but it is apparently to be introduced.
  An entirely new part of the Bill is being announced on Report involving a housing corporation for Wales. I am not opposed to that, but, as you will have seen, Mr. Speaker, the legislation involved is complex and detailed. There was no explanation in Committee from the Secretary of State for Wales and we did not have a Welsh representative on the Opposition Front Bench, although there was a Back-Bench Member from Wales representing each party.
  This is not the way to legislate. In the amendments and new clauses the Government are changing legislation that is passing through the House. For example, they refer to the Housing (Scotland) Act, but that measure is not yet an Act of Parliament.
  New clause 47 would dispose of council housing stock and undermine clause 4 of the Bill. It would have a dramatic effect on homelessness but, above all—I place great emphasis on this—it is retrospective legislation. The new clause takes effect from 9 June 1988—today. We shall not be debating it until next week. The Minister cannot claim that it is a new measure because the other day he put in the Table Office a document of about seven or eight pages which states what it is intended to do. Clearly, the Government have been thinking about it for some time, but this is the first time that we have had news of it.
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  I am sorry to delay the House, but it is an important point of order. It is so important to the procedures of the House that we felt it essential to bring it to your notice, Mr. Speaker, to put pressure on the Government to stop them legislating on the hoof. If they cannot get their act together and decide who is the housing Minister, they should give more time to ensure that we have a Housing Bill that meets the needs of our people.
  Several Hon. Members rose——
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I ask hon. Members to allow me to deal with the matter. I have not selected the motion for recommittal for debate and I listened to what the Leader of the House had to say about the matter. I am sympathetic to the points and requests for more time made by the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley), but it would be best to proceed today and see how we get on next week in terms of time.
  Mr. Simon Hughes: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Our concern about the late appearance of substantial new clauses and amendments is that it is impossible for Oppostition parties or Government Back Benchers to table further amendments in the knowledge of what the Government are doing. We are likely to be caught by the publishing tomorrow of amendments that the Government wish to introduce—whether it be by press release or in other documents—to amend major parts of the Bill that will be debated later. There will be no opportunity for us to debate those amendments because the time allocated for such debate will have passed.
  At the beginning of the Report stage there is a proposal that the Bill should not follow the usual order of debate. It is proposed that it be taken in the sequence of the Bill rather than in the sequence of new clauses—starting with Government new clauses—and amendments to them. I have heard that the reason for that may be that the Government believe that, by delaying consideration of a new clause or amendment, they may be able to defeat a proposal from their own Back Benchers that they do not wish to take early on. Whatever the reasons, the lack of opportunity for ordinary Back Benchers to reconsider matters, and the fact that matters have taken an unexpected turn today, mean that there is additional reason for asking, in the presence of the Leader of the House, for reconsideration of the timetable.
  We could deal with certain matters today—I do not believe that the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) dissents from that—and there should be a further delay so that we know exactly what the Government intend before we consider the Bill further.
  Several Hon. Members rose——
  Mr. Speaker: Order. Are the points of order concerned with the same matter? [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes."] I shall take them, but I ask hon. Members to make brief points of order because I doubt if they are points of order for me but questions of time for the Bill.
  Mr. John Home Robertson: My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) said that a number of the amendments refer to the Housing (Scotland) Act 1988, which does not exist. The Housing (Scotland) Bill has yet to have its Report stage in another place.

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  May I draw your attention, Mr. Speaker, to one or two new clauses and amendments that have been tabled by Ministers? New clause 47 includes not only the Secretary of State for the Environment but the Secretary of State for Scotland and specifically amends Scottish housing legislation. As the Housing (Scotland) Bill is before the House, it is open to the Government to amend that Bill on Report in another place and for us to consider those Lords amendments. Is it in order for the Government to use this ostensibly English—and now Welsh—Bill to deal with Scottish housing legislation?
  Mr. Speaker: There is no time limit on the Bill, so it would be sensible for hon. Members to put their questions to the Minister when we reach the amendments or new clauses. I cannot give explanations; that is a matter for the Government to answer.
  Mr. Barry Jones: Further to the point of order raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley), Mr. Speaker. My hon. Friend made some important remarks regarding Wales. New schedule 240 is 180 lines long and new schedule 241 is 400 lines long. Why has this arrogant, high-handed attitude been taken to Wales, and is it not wrong to spring this complicated matter on the House?
  Mr. Rhodri Morgan: I ask you, Mr. Speaker, as the guardian of Back Benchers' rights, to consider my point of order regarding the issuance of the Government's guidelines on the large-scale voluntary transfer of local housing. In Committee in the first week of March, I specifically asked the Minister for Housing and Planning about the Government's response to the initiatives of Cardiff city council and C5mgor Bwrdeistref Ynys Môn in relation to the large-scale voluntary transfer of housing associations. The Minister said that it was purely for local authorities to make their bids. There was no mention in Committee of the possibility of the Government issuing a guideline document. How can it be right for the Government in Committee to table amendments on matters that were first raised by the press? If there was no possibility of debating the matter then, how can we debate it now when the document was issued only last night—the day before the Report stage?
  Mr. Bob Cryer: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It is a convention of the constitution that Parliament strives to avoid retrospective legislation where possible, although there might be odd occasions when it is necessary. It is up to you, Mr. Speaker, to bear that in mind when you make your selection, as I am sure you do.
  The Housing Finance (Special Provisions) Act 1975 proposed to give retrospective support to Clay Cross councillors. You, Mr. Speaker, may recall that Conservative Members stood up in unison and said that retrospective legislation was terrible and was the slippery slope on the road to Fascism. It is proposed that new clause 47 will be effective from today, but it will not be debated until next week and will not receive Royal Assent for several weeks. The Bill, therefore, is bound to be retrospective in that clause alone. The way in which the Government have tabled it shows that they are deliberately proposing retrospective legislation, which is unnecessary. This is a narrow and shadowy matter, but should not the conventions of the constitution be given consideration? Will you, Mr. Speaker, assure the House that, with
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  retrospective legislation, you give consideration to preserving the constitution and preventing us from sliding down what Conservative Members described 14 years ago as the slippery slope to Fascism?
  Mr. Speaker: When the hon. Gentleman looks at my selection he will see that I have born those matters very much in mind. The selection has been generous.
  Mr. Ian Gow: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. It is self-evident that there is an exceptional number of Government amendments, Government new clauses and new schedules. You, Mr. Speaker, did not have the advantage of serving on the Standing Committee that considered the Bill. Many of the amendments appear in response to a number of suggestions made by Labour Members. Can you confirm that all the amendments and all the new clauses and schedules tabled by the Government are perfectly in order in terms of the time limit laid down by Standing Orders? Does it not lie ill on the lips of the Opposition to protest about the tabling of amendments, new clauses and schedules which have all been tabled precisely within the time limit?
  4.30 pm
  Mr. Speaker: I did not have the advantage of serving on the Committee. I understand that some of the amendments are concessions. Some other matters are perhaps new to the Bill, and that was the point raised earlier with the Leader of the House. He has said that he will again look at the matter of timing. I do not think that there is much more we can do about that now.
  Several Hon. Members rose——
  Mr. Speaker: Order. There is no time limit on the amendments and when the Minister comes to them he could be asked about what they mean and could give his explanation in the ordinary way. It is not a matter for me to answer.
  Mr. Nigel Spearing: I have two points of order, Mr. Speaker, and perhaps I could ask you to dispose of the first before I put the second. I was not a member of the Standing Committee. I have served on many Standing Committees that adjourned when statements were made outside the House by Ministers about prospective new clauses. You will know that today there appeared in the Vote Office what purports to be a White Paper about new clauses tabled last night and in particular new clause 47. This means that after Monday we will not be able to table amendments to new clause 47. Therefore the notice for consideration of these matters is short.
  I understand what you, Mr. Speaker, have said about what the Leader of the House said. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) has properly used his procedural rights to put down a motion that the whole Bill be recommitted to the Standing Committee. For reasons about which we can speculate but which, of course, we accept, you have not selected that. You will know that in "Erskine May" there is provision for the committal of part of a Bill. I could not have seen new clause 47 or its sisters, new clauses 45 and 46, until about 9 o'clock this morning, and I do not think that any other hon. Member could practically have been expected to do any better than that.

  1007
  For that reason it was not possible for me either to add my name to the motion in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith or to put down any other motion for today's Order Paper or today's sitting. Would it be in order and would you now consider, Mr. Speaker, a manuscript amendment that new clauses 44 to 47 be recommitted to the former Committee on the Housing Bill? If you feel that you cannot accept that, perhaps you could accept a manuscript amendment that new clause 47 be recommitted, partly because of its nature but particularly because of the retrospective effect from today that has already been well put to you by me and by my hon. Friends. That is my first point of order.
  Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman has said that he would like a ruling on that first. It would be in order to put down a motion but I would not accept a manuscript amendment today because, as the hon. Gentleman will see from the Order Paper, I have not yet selected the new clauses.
  Mr. Spearing: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. With great respect, on page 2 of this very long selection list at the end of group 4 there is listed Government amendments Nos. 42 to 47—I beg your pardon, Mr. Speaker. I incorrectly assumed that the selection list was for the whole of the debate on the Bill, but I see that it is for the first day only.
  Mr. Speaker: I think I can help the whole House. We should proceed with today's business. The Leader of the House has said that he will look at the timetable. I fully understand and I am sympathetic to the points being made about new clauses that have been put down fairly recently. However, the Leader of the House has said that he will look at that and there is nothing else that I can do now about the matter. In any case, we shall not reach them today.
  Mr. Ian McCartney: Some of us who sat for 180 hours on the Housing Bill are celebrating our first anniversary in this place. During the past year the Government have shown an increasing tendency to misuse the Report stage as a Committee stage and to table amendments in a fashion that curtails the rights of Back Benchers. The issue is not simply about time but about the individual rights of hon. Members. I look to you, Mr. Speaker, to protect and safeguard those rights because we are thoroughly sick and tired of being misused and abused.
  I sat on the Committee for 180 hours—longer than the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow) who turned up on occasions. We tried to persuade the Minister to deal with the matter and we did it in a way that should have given the Government an opportunity to improve the legislation.
  I was given categorical assurances about amendments that would improve the Bill and meet my feelings about it. The Government have chosen to ignore the guarantees given to me and to other Back Benchers. The issue is one of principle and it is for you, Mr. Speaker, to sort it out. If it is not sorted out, the Government will be given the green light to use between now and the end of this Session, the Report stage to abuse the House and the rights of hon. Members. For that reason I implore you to look at this matter and to give serious consideration to the request by my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) who asked for the matter to be taken back to the
  1008
  Committee so that hon. Members such as I may have an opportunity to consider the amendments proposed by the Government and to protect our rights.
  Mr. Tony Banks: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I ask how the actual selection works? You have listened to the points made by my hon. Friends and you will clearly understand the distress that we feel. We were in a Committee that finished on 15 March and now find ourselves confronted by vast quantities of new clauses and amendments. Despite what the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow) says, those matters were not discussed in Committee and nor were they the subject of requests made by us.
  We accept that some of the amendments arise out of undertakings given by Ministers, but if the hon. Member for Eastbourne reads them he will see that many of them relate to completely new business. As I say, the Committee finished on 15 March and last night new business was still being tabled and a great wedge of clauses and new amendments came out on Tuesday. That does not give us a chance to operate effectively as an Opposition.
  When one looks at all the new Government business that is put forward, one sees that Report stages are not being treated like proper Report stages. We came back to the House to report the changes that we made to the Bill that went to Committee after Second Reading, but this is a completely new Committee stage. In many cases it will be treated by some hon. Members as a re-run of Second Reading since we will be discussing some fairly broad principles. When you see this happening, Mr. Speaker, and when you see the amendments that have been put down by the Government, surely you should say that you are not prepared to select these amendments on Report because as Mr. Speaker you are not giving the House a fair opportunity to consider these matters.
  Mr. Speaker: I am not having that. If the hon. Gentleman says that I should not select the amendments there is no opportunity for them to be debated. I am sure that he does not mean that. I have made a very generous selection and the hon. Gentleman has only to look at the selection list to know that that is true. I think that we should get on with these amendments, which have been tabled for some time.—[Interruption.] There is no argument about them. They have been tabled long enough for hon. Members to prepare their amendments and speeches.
  What we are concerned about and what I am concerned about is what will happen next week. The Leader of the House has already said that he will look into that.
  I am going to call the motion.
  Mr. Roy Hughes: On a point of order——
  Several Hon. Members rose——
  Mr. Speaker: No. I must put the order of consideration motion.
  Motion made, and Question put,
  That the Housing Bill, as amended, be considered in the following order, namely, Amendments relating to Clause 1, Schedule 1, Clauses 2 to 7, Schedule 2, Clauses 8 to 22, Schedule 3, Clauses 23 to 37, Schedule 4, Clauses 38 to 43, New Clauses 25, 26 and 27, New Schedules 240 and 241, Amendments relating to Clauses 44 to 57, Schedules 5 and 6, Clauses 58 to 71, Schedule 7, Clauses 72 and 73, Schedule 8, Clause 74, Schedule 9, Clauses 75 to 99, Schedule 10, Clauses

  1009
  100 to 108, Schedule 11, Clauses 109 to 114, Schedule 12, Clauses 115, remaining New Clauses and New Schedules, Amendments relating to Schedules 13—[Mr. Ridley.]
  The House divided: Ayes 231, Noes 176

  Division No. 345]

  [4.40 pm

  AYES

  Adley, Robert

  Fox, Sir Marcus

  Alison, Rt Hon Michael

  Franks, Cecil

  Amess, David

  Freeman, Roger

  Amos, Alan

  French, Douglas

  Arbuthnot, James

  Fry, Peter

  Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

  Gale, Roger

  Arnold, Tom (Hazel Grove)

  Gardiner, George

  Ashby, David

  Garel-Jones, Tristan

  Aspinwall, Jack

  Gill, Christopher

  Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

  Goodlad, Alastair

  Baldry, Tony

  Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles

  Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

  Gorman, Mrs Teresa

  Batiste, Spencer

  Gorst, John

  Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

  Gow, Ian

  Bendall, Vivian

  Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

  Biggs-Davison, Sir John

  Greenway, John (Ryedale)

  Body, Sir Richard

  Gregory, Conal

  Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

  Griffiths, Sir Eldon (Bury St E")

  Boscawen, Hon Robert

  Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)

  Boswell, Tim

  Grist, Ian

  Bottomley, Peter

  Ground, Patrick

  Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

  Gummer, Rt Hon John Selwyn

  Bowis, John

  Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

  Boyson, Rt Hon Dr Sir Rhodes

  Hanley, Jeremy

  Braine, Rt Hon Sir Bernard

  Hannam, John

  Brandon-Bravo, Martin

  Harris, David

  Brazier, Julian

  Haselhurst, Alan

  Bright, Graham

  Hayes, Jerry

  Brittan, Rt Hon Leon

  Hayhoe, Rt Hon Sir Barney

  Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

  Hayward, Robert

  Brown, Michael (Brigg & Cl't's)

  Heathcoat-Amory, David

  Browne, John (Winchester)

  Heddle, John

  Bruce, Ian (Dorset South)

  Hind, Kenneth

  Buck, Sir Antony

  Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

  Budgen, Nicholas

  Holt, Richard

  Burns, Simon

  Hordern, Sir Peter

  Butcher, John

  Howard, Michael

  Butler, Chris

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

  Butterfill, John

  Howarth, G. (Cannock & B'wd)

  Carlisle, John, (Luton N)

  Howell, Rt Hon David (G'dford)

  Carrington, Matthew

  Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)

  Carttiss, Michael

  Hunt, David (Wirral W)

  Cash, William

  Hunter, Andrew

  Chapman, Sydney

  Irvine, Michael

  Clark, Hon Alan (Plym'th S'n)

  Irving, Charles

  Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

  Jack, Michael

  Colvin, Michael

  Janman, Tim

  Conway, Derek

  Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

  Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)

  Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

  Couchman, James

  Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine

  Cran, James

  Key, Robert

  Critchley, Julian

  King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)

  Currie, Mrs Edwina

  Kirkhope, Timothy

  Curry, David

  Knapman, Roger

  Davies, Q. (Stamf'd & Spald'g)

  Knight, Greg (Derby North)

  Davis, David (Boothferry)

  Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)

  Day, Stephen

  Knowles, Michael

  Devlin, Tim

  Latham, Michael

  Dickens, Geoffrey

  Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

  Dorrell, Stephen

  Lightbown, David

  Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

  Lilley, Peter

  Dover, Den

  Lloyd, Sir Ian (Havant)

  Dunn, Bob

  McCrindle, Robert

  Durant, Tony

  MacGregor, Rt Hon John

  Evennett, David

  MacKay, Andrew (E Berkshire)

  Fallon, Michael

  Maclean, David

  Farr, Sir John

  McNair-Wilson, M. (Newbury)

  Favell, Tony

  Major, Rt Hon John

  Fookes, Miss Janet

  Maples, John

  Forman, Nigel

  Marshall, John (Hendon S)

  Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

  Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

  Forth, Eric

  Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

  Fowler, Rt Hon Norman

  Maude, Hon Francis

  1010

  Mawhinney, Dr Brian

  Steen, Anthony

  Meyer, Sir Anthony

  Stern, Michael

  Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

  Stevens, Lewis

  Moate, Roger

  Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)

  Montgomery, Sir Fergus

  Stewart, Ian (Hertfordshire N)

  Morrison, Hon Sir Charles

  Stokes, John

  Moss, Malcolm

  Summerson, Hugo

  Nelson, Anthony

  Tapsell, Sir Peter

  Neubert, Michael

  Taylor, Ian (Esher)

  Nicholls, Patrick

  Taylor, John M (Solihull)

  Nicholson, David (Taunton)

  Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

  Nicholson, Emma (Devon West)

  Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman

  Onslow, Rt Hon Cranley

  Temple-Morris, Peter

  Page, Richard

  Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)

  Patten, John (Oxford W)

  Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

  Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

  Townend, John (Bridlington)

  Pawsey, James

  Tracey, Richard

  Porter, David (Waveney)

  Tredinnick, David

  Powell, William (Corby)

  Trotter, Neville

  Price, Sir David

  Twinn, Dr Ian

  Raison, Rt Hon Timothy

  Vaughan, Sir Gerard

  Redwood, John

  Viggers, Peter

  Renton, Tim

  Waddington, Rt Hon David

  Riddick, Graham

  Wakeham, Rt Hon John

  Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas

  Waldegrave, Hon William

  Ridsdale, Sir Julian

  Walker, Bill (T'side North)

  Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)

  Waller, Gary

  Rost, Peter

  Walters, Dennis

  Rowe, Andrew

  Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

  Ryder, Richard

  Watts, John

  Sainsbury, Hon Tim

  Wells, Bowen

  Scott, Nicholas

  Wheeler, John

  Shaw, David (Dover)

  Widdecombe, Ann

  Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

  Wilshire, David

  Shephard, Mrs G. (Norfolk SW)

  Winterton, Mrs Ann

  Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

  Winterton, Nicholas

  Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

  Wood, Timothy

  Shersby, Michael

  Woodcock, Mike

  Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

  Yeo, Tim

  Soames, Hon Nicholas

  Young, Sir George (Acton)

  Speller, Tony

  Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Squire, Robin

  Mr. Peter Lloyd and Mr. Kenneth Carlisle.

  Stanbrook, Ivor

  NOES

  Adams, Allen (Paisley N)

  Clay, Bob

  Allen, Graham

  Clwyd, Mrs Ann

  Alton, David

  Cohen, Harry

  Archer, Rt Hon Peter

  Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

  Armstrong, Hilary

  Cook, Robin (Livingston)

  Ashdown, Paddy

  Corbyn, Jeremy

  Ashton, Joe

  Cousins, Jim

  Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

  Crowther, Stan

  Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)

  Cryer, Bob

  Barron, Kevin

  Cummings, John

  Battle, John

  Cunliffe, Lawrence

  Beckett, Margaret

  Cunningham, Dr John

  Bell, Stuart

  Dalyell, Tam

  Bennett, A. F. (D'nt'n & R'dish)

  Darling, Alistair

  Bermingham, Gerald

  Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

  Bidwell, Sydney

  Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

  Blair, Tony

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

  Boateng, Paul

  Dewar, Donald

  Boyes, Roland

  Dixon, Don

  Bradley, Keith

  Dobson, Frank

  Bray, Dr Jeremy

  Doran, Frank

  Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)

  Dunnachie, Jimmy

  Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)

  Eastham, Ken

  Brown, Ron (Edinburgh Leith)

  Evans, John (St Helens N)

  Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)

  Fatchett, Derek

  Buchan, Norman

  Fearn, Ronald

  Buckley, George J.

  Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

  Caborn, Richard

  Fields, Terry (L'pool B G'n)

  Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

  Fisher, Mark

  Campbell, Ron (Blyth Valley)

  Flynn, Paul

  Campbell-Savours, D. N.

  Foot, Rt Hon Michael

  Canavan, Dennis

  Foster, Derek

  Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

  Fyfe, Maria

  Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

  Galbraith, Sam

  1011

  Galloway, George

  Mitchell, Austin (G'f Grimsby)

  Garrett, John (Norwich South)

  Morgan, Rhodri

  George, Bruce

  Morley, Elliott

  Godman, Dr Norman A.

  Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)

  Gordon, Mildred

  Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

  Gould, Bryan

  Mowlam, Marjorie

  Graham, Thomas

  Mullin, Chris

  Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

  Nellist, Dave

  Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

  O'Brien, William

  Grocott, Bruce

  Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

  Harman, Ms Harriet

  Paisley, Rev Ian

  Heffer, Eric S.

  Patchett, Terry

  Henderson, Doug

  Pike, Peter L.

  Hinchliffe, David

  Prescott, John

  Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

  Primarolo, Dawn

  Home Robertson, John

  Quin, Ms Joyce

  Hood, Jimmy

  Radice, Giles

  Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

  Randall, Stuart

  Howell, Rt Hon D. (S'heath)

  Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn

  Howells, Geraint

  Reid, Dr John

  Hoyle, Doug

  Richardson, Jo

  Hughes, John (Coventry NE)

  Roberts, Allan (Bootle)

  Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

  Robertson, George

  Hughes, Roy (Newport E)

  Rogers, Allan

  Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)

  Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

  Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

  Rowlands, Ted

  Illsley, Eric

  Ruddock, Joan

  Ingram, Adam

  Salmond, Alex

  Janner, Greville

  Sedgemore, Brian

  John, Brynmor

  Sheerman, Barry

  Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside)

  Shore, Rt Hon Peter

  Jones, leuan (Ynys Môn)

  Short, Clare

  Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S W)

  Skinner, Dennis

  Leadbitter, Ted

  Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

  Leighton, Ron

  Smith, C. (Isl'ton & F'bury)

  Lestor, Joan (Eccles)

  Soley, Clive

  Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

  Spearing, Nigel

  Loyden, Eddie

  Steel, Rt Hon David

  McAllion, John

  Steinberg, Gerry

  McAvoy, Thomas

  Stott, Roger

  McCartney, Ian

  Strang, Gavin

  McKay, Allen (Barnsley West)

  Straw, Jack

  McKelvey, William

  Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

  McLeish, Henry

  Vaz, Keith

  Maclennan, Robert

  Wall, Pat

  McTaggart, Bob

  Wallace, James

  Madden, Max

  Wareing, Robert N.

  Mahon, Mrs Alice

  Welsh, Michael (Doncaster N)

  Marek, Dr John

  Wigley, Dafydd

  Marshall, David (Shettleston)

  Winnick, David

  Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

  Wise, Mrs Audrey

  Martin, Michael J. (Springburn)

  Worthington, Tony

  Maxton, John

  Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Michie, Mrs Ray (Arg'l & Bute)

  Mr. Frank Haynes and Mr. Alun Michael.

  Millan, Rt Hon Bruce

  Question accordingly agreed to.

  Housing Bill
    Schedule 1

      TENANCIES WHICH CANNOT BE ASSURED TENANCIES
      The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Ian Grist): I beg to move amendment No. 9, in page 75, line 41, at end insert—
      '(2) The reference in sub-paragraph (1) above to the case where the interest of the landlord belongs to Her Majesty in right of the Crown does not include the case where that interest is under the management of the Crown Estate Commissioners.'.
      Mr. Speaker: With this, it will be convenient to take Government amendment No. 61.
      Mr. Grist: Both are straightforward amendments. Properties let by the Crown Estates Commissioners, like those let by the Chancellors of the Duchies of Cornwall
      1012
      and Lancaster, are to be brought within the scope of the assured tenancy regime although Crown properties are, of course, generally outside the scope of the Bill. The Crown Estate Commissioners and the Duchies were brought within the scope of the Rent Act 1977 by the Housing Act 1980. The Duchies' interests are already covered by clause 43. Government amendment No. 9 applies the assured tenancy regime to lettings by the Crown Estate Commissioners.
      Government amendment No. 61 is a technical amendment. As the Duchy of Lancaster will be letting on assured tenancies, it is necessary to deem that the Chancellor of the Duchy shall be the owner of Her Majesty's interests for the purpose of those tenancies. That is because Her Majesty cannot be sued in the event that legal action should arise. I am sure that hon. Members will accept that the amendments are uncontroversial and necessary.
      Mr. Simon Hughes: The amendments are uncontroversial in one sense, but it would be convenient if the Minister could tell the House how many properties are affected in England, Scotland and Wales, because for the people in question the amendments are clearly important although the percentage of the total stock that is affected is small. How many properties and tenants are we talking about?
      Mr. Grist: I cannot answer the hon. Gentleman off the cuff but I shall certainly try to find out the answer for him.
      Amendment agreed to.
      Mr. McCartney: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. We have just had a vote on the order of consideration motion, but the Minister cannot answer the first question that he has been asked about the first amendment. It is an absolute shambles—[interruption.]
      Madam Deputy Speaker (Miss Betty Boothroyd): Order. I ask the hon. Gentleman to resume his seat. Answers given by Ministers have nothing to do with the Chair. We now come to Government amendment No. 70——
      Mr. Frank Dobson: Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. As you are aware, a considerable number of points of order were raised with Mr. Speaker about the generally unsatisfactory nature of the Bill as it comes to the House on Report, and about the late tabling of amendments. Many of my hon. Friends have made the point that the House as a whole is now being expected to give Committee stage consideration to these amendments rather than the normal Report stage reconsideration. It seems farcical that we are faced with a situation in which an hon. Member, not of my party, asks a perfectly reasonable question about the number of tenancies affected by the very first amendment but the Minister apparently does not have the faintest idea. That seems to reduce our proceedings to a farce. The object should be to allow hon. Members to find out the background, the justification and how many people are involved—[Interruption.]
      Madam Deputy Speaker: Order.
      Several Hon. Members rose——
      Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I think that I can deal with this. I understand the frustration felt by hon. Members, but I must remind the House that the Chair is

      1013
      not responsible for answers given by Ministers. Perhaps the point that has been made by the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) from the Opposition Dispatch Box has gone home to those in all parts of the House. We must now proceed with Government amendment No. 70.
      Mr. Paul Boateng rose——
      Mr. McCartney rose——
      Ms. Dawn Primarolo rose——
      Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I call the Minister to move Government amendment No. 70.
      Ms. Primarolo: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Opposition Members raised earlier with Mr. Speaker the point that new information is before us and that, as Back Benchers, we have been unable to consider that information properly in order to debate the Bill. Mr. Speaker advised us that Ministers would answer our questions during the debate. However, on the very first amendment and on the very first question asked, the Minister told us—he was not even on the Committee— that he could not answer the question. What faith can we have in the proceedings on the rest of the Bill?
      Madam Deputy Speaker: The House cannot go on rehearsing and repeating points which have already been made and which, in effect, are not points of order. We must now proceed with the amendments, which, I repeat, have been before the House and all its Members for some time. It would be to the advantage of everybody concerned to proceed with the amendments.
      Mr. Tony Banks rose——
      Mr. Boateng: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I appreciate your predicament in this matter and do not seek to go beyond your rulings but I am bound to say that in Committee we were used to the somewhat cursory comments from the Front Bench of the Minister of State's acolyte who never departed from her script. Much of the Bill that we considered in Committee has been dispensed with—like, apparently, the services of the Minister who considered the matter in Committee. Is it really in order for this matter to be dealt with by the Minister of State's new acolyte in this way? We ask ourselves, "Where is Marion Roe?"
      Madam Deputy Speaker: I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's sympathy for the Chair, but I assure him that I am in no predicament. I call the Minister to move Government amendment No. 70.
      Mr. Grist: I beg to move amendment No. 70, in page 76, line 14, at end insert—
      `(cc) the Broads Authority'
      I was going to say, Madam Deputy Speaker, that the answer to the question asked by the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) is that the lettings are for the future so the number is hypothetical anyway.
      The Broads Authority was established for the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads earlier this year. For housing purposes it is treated as a local authority. It is intended that its small housing stock should he let on secure tenancies, not
      1014
      assured tenancies. The amendment adds the Broads Authority to the list of bodies in schedule 1, the lettings of which cannot be assured tenancies.
      Mr. Soley: We are glad to know that the tenancies will not be shorthold tenancies in that context. However, in view of the Minister's unfortunate contribution to the debate so far, I advise him that the whole essence of this afternoon has been the Government's inability to get their act together in relation to the Bill. We need detailed answers, given that to some extent the Government seem to have accepted that the Bill is now being drafted on the Floor of the House. Let me put the Government on notice that we expect to have answers to reasonable questions. We do not expect to have dismissive answers. If, in some circumstances understandably, the Minister does not have a complex answer to hand, we expect to hear from the Minister and to be given an answer in due course. Otherwise, the Bill will not only be an appalling mess, but it will be a very long and very bitter, nasty mess.
      5 pm
      Mr. Simon Hughes: On what should be relatively short and uncomplicated matters, the figures are very important. In the same schedule, one of the excepted authorities is the Inner London education authority. The House might believe that the ILEA owns no houses apart from those lived in by school teachers, but that is not correct. Several people who are tenants of the ILEA live near me. It was several months, if not years, before I could discover how many properties in Southwark and Bermondsey not attached to school or education premises were owned by the ILEA. The amendment does not concern my constituency. It is about the Broads. None the less, I am sure that the same question is relevant. How many people will be affected by being in one category of tenancy rather than another? The whole debate is about what tenancies and what rights people will have.
      Like the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley), I hope that whenever we consider proposals—they are all new Government amendments—to put into the Bill or take out of the Bill a category of housing we shall be told how many properties are involved. However small the geographical area, it is a fundamental change for the people in question. Repeatedly in the Bill we have discussed what for many tenants will be the most fundamental change in their status relative to their landlords since the war. I ask again, and I give notice that I will do so on each similar amendment, how many properties and how many tenants are involved.
      Mr. Anthony Beaumont-Dark: It may come as a surprise, but I have not always agreed with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. As I understand the Bill, and as I understand what the hon. Member for Hammesmith (Mr. Soley) said when he talked about 99 if not 100 concessions being made, the concessions which many of us have heard about today are profound concessions that hon. Members on both sides of the House welcome. Surely those concessions were made because the Secretary of State and his team listened to what has been said and listened to the worries that people have had. That will make it a better Bill.
      Is it not right that, even if the Opposition do not like the Bill, it is the will of the country and the will of the Government that the Bill will prevail in the end" Is it not

      1015
      their task to see that it is a better Bill and to discuss the very proper concessions that have been made? Are we not better to move on in that attitude, instead of in the manner of people who think that they still run the country when they do not?
      Mr. Allan Roberts: The assumption is being made that the amendment that we are now considering and the other Government amendments that have been tabled, some at great length, are the result of concessions granted to the Opposition. In Committee we were granted a large number of concessions, or given assurances about a large number of matters, which we saw as concessions.
      The great tragedy for us, and for people in this country, is that the Government amendments, new clauses and new schedules do not reflect the concessions and undertakings given in Committee. If they did, we would be very happy and we would not be complaining. However, they are quite different. They represent the Government's rewriting of the legislation and the final gestation of a dispute between Ministers and civil servants in the Department of the Environment. It is obvious from the length of time between finishing Committee and reaching Report and the panic over the way that the Government have tabled amendments that there have been major problems in the Department of the Environment which have resulted in amendments being tabled in a way that treats the House with contempt. As we discuss Government amendment after Government amendment, the Opposition will point out how concessions which seemed to be granted and agreed in Committee have been ratted on and we shall table amendments to make sure that the Government's promises in Committee are put before the House in the form of Opposition amendments.
      Mr. McCartney: I should like to ask the Minister a question about his statement. I heard him say that the Broads Authority will be treated like a local authority. At about 8 o'clock this morning I received a copy of what loosely could be called a White Paper entitled:
      "Large Scale Voluntary Transfers of Local Authority Housing to Private Bodies".
      I had a cursory look at it. Will the Minister confirm that the Broads Authority will be treated like a local authority and will be included in the concepts set out in that White Paper? If so, has the Broads Authority been advised of the contents of the White Paper and what procedure will be used to consult the tenants of the Broads Authority in respect of the possibility of their homes being transferred to the private sector by the Broads Authority?
      Mr. Spearing: I was not a member of the Committee and therefore I approach these matters as an amateur. That does not mean that the Minister does not have the responsibility to make things absolutely clear. As I understand it, an assured tenancy is a new form of legal tenure which has much less security for the tenant than he has at the moment. Even what is described as a secure tenancy in another part of the Bill is not as secure as such tenancies are at the moment.
      I understand that schedule 1, to which the amendment applies, defines tenancies which cannot be assured tenancies. Therefore, I assume that they are tenancies which, whatever happens to the property, will remain
      1016
      secure tenancies whether they remain with a local authority or whether the local authority disposes of them in the way in which the Government wish.
      The amendment is adding to the list of local authorities, on page 76 of the Bill, the Broads Authority, which does not yet exist. The House has passed a Bill creating the new Broads Authority. Informal discussions are taking place, and I believe that the county clerk of Norfolk county council is about to call a number of meetings in which policies are to be discussed and the authority will take over next year.
      If the Broads Authority is added to the list and becomes a local authority for the purposes of the Bill, presumably it will be subject to the Government's policy of disposal, including the policy of disposal encapsulated in new clause 47 which is on the list of amendments and is therefore important in the debate. Will the Minister tell me whether I am correct in saying that, by adding to tenancies that cannot be assured the tenancies of the future Broads authority, if that authority used the future facilities of the Bill, it could sell off property? Indeed, the Government say that the future Broads Authority, inheriting tenancies and ownership of property, can, if it wishes, come to an arrangement with another landlord under new clause 47, or with anyone else, and sell it off. Therefore, they say, if it is sold it must retain secure tenancies and not assured tenancies.
      Is the Minister saying that the servants of the Broads Authority—which has hardly got going, and which is an important new authority in the administration of a novel sort of national park—who will be in occupation of property, the ownership of which will be visited on the Broads Authority, might have their property sold under them? The implication is that, although that may happen, they will remain secure tenants, but the property will he sold. In answering this short debate, which may be less important than others, will the Minister say whether that is correct?
      Does the Minister envisage that the Broads Authority will be able to sell or to transfer tenancies to charitable organisations as defined in new clause 47? If that were the case, tenants would remain secure, but the ownership would be transferred.
      Mr. Grist: For housing purposes the Broads Authority is treated like a local authority, so it comes under exactly the same rules as a local authority. In the terms of this small amendment, these tenants are secure tenants and the terms of the amendment mean that they remain so. I would have thought that that would be welcomed by Opposition Members.
      Mr. George Howarth: Will the Minister answer the question put by the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes): how many tenants and properties will be affected by this?
      Mr. Grist: I said "few" when I opened this little debate.
      Amendment agreed to.
      The Minister for Housing and Planning (Mr. William Waldegrave): I beg to move amendment No. 10, in page 77, line 17, leave out 'sub-paragraph' and insert `paragraph'.
      Madam Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to take Government amendments Nos. 11 to 13.
      Mr. Waldegrave: These are intricate amendments relating to the resident landlord provisions of the Bill. They derive from a particular case, about which there has been regular correspondence since 1974 between a constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Sir H. Rossi) and the Department.
      Lettings by resident landlords—that is, people who let part of their homes—are not assured tenancies. Under the Bill they are not subject to statutory security of tenure or to rent control. Many of these restrictions were removed as long ago as 1980. Paragraphs 18 to 20 of schedule I ensure that a letting which has been made by a resident landlord does not become assured during certain periods when there there is no landlord in residence in the building.
      Amendment No. 11 covers the case in which there is a change of landlord, a new landlord gives notice that he intends to occupy the dwelling within six months or, within that period, another resident landlord moves in or the landlord's interest becomes vested either in trustees with the beneficiary moving into the dwelling or in the owner's personal representatives following his death. During the intermediate period, when no landlord is in residence, the tenancy does not become assured.
      Amendments Nos. 12 and 13 deal with the case when the landlord's interest is vested in trustees and the beneficiary under the trust who has been living in the dwelling dies. The tenancy will not become an assured tenancy in any period up to two years while the landlord's interest remains vested in trustees until a new beneficiary moves in.
      Mr. Allan Roberts: This seems to be an interesting but somewhat convoluted amendment.
      Mr. Waldegrave: That means that the hon. Gentleman does not understand it.
      Mr. Roberts: It means exactly that. That is why I am on my feet asking the Minister to explain it further so that we can decide whether we agree with it.[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Forth) understands it, I will be surprised. What I do understand is that one of the proposals gets rid of the protection that might exist for some tenants who are living in property where the landlord is not resident.
      If I understood the Minister correctly, he said that if a house is sold with sitting tenants to a new landlord and the old landlord was not in residence, so the sitting tenants have security of tenure, the new landlord can give notice to the tenants that he intends to become a resident landlord in the house which he has purchased within six months, whereupon the tenants lose their security of tenure. That is one of the main thrusts of the amendment.
      Will the Minister confirm or deny that? If that is true, a strange position will be created. If a landlord who is not resident sells a house with sitting tenants and the new owner can get vacant possession, how is the property valued? Is it being sold with vacant possession, half vacant possession or sitting tenants? It will certainly make life difficult in terms of property prices and sales, and the security of tenure enjoyed by those who live in accommodation where there is no resident landlord.
      5.15 pm
      Mr. Simon Hughes: I wish to make a short confession similar to that of the hon. Member for Bootle (Mr. Roberts), but in relation to my notes on the amendments.
      1018
      The first one said, "technical" and the second, "probably technical". By the third one I could not work out whether it was technical, probably technical or neither.
      I heard what the Minister said, but he will accept that this is the sort of amendment which, if we have not understood it or its implications clearly before we hear his contribution, although we can understand the words, we do not necessarily understand the consequences. Would it be possible as a matter of practice, specifically in a Bill such as this to which there are many Government amendments and new clauses at this stage, to have the courtesy of notes on Government changes in the usual way, certainly for those who served on the Committee?
      Many individual constituency cases were raised in Committee which the Minister undertook to consider and do something about. Some came from his side and others from the Opposition. With a clear head and a slightly better opportunity to consider them, we may improve the Bill further. I do not pretend to know the answer, but I should be grateful for that opportunity if it is possible.
      Mr. Waldegrave: I have considerable sympathy with the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) and I shall endeavour to ask my officials to produce a commentary on the Government amendments which I hope to put before the House at the earliest opportunity and which I hope will be helpful. I well understand his anxiety, because many of these issues are complex.
      I assure the House that many of these amendments seek to meet the points on which commitments were made. The hon. Member for Makerfield (Mr. McCartney) suffered from a different problem in Committee. It was not that I made commitments to him which I subsequently broke, but I refused to make any commitments to him except on one occasion at the end, when I made a concession which surprised him. Normally he was given the thin edge of the wedge.
      Mr. McCartney: On one occasion, when the Minister was not present to look after the Under-Secretary of State, she slipped up and gave me a further concession which I shall speak to on clause 14.
      Mr. Waldegrave: I do not want to disappoint the lion. Gentleman but I must point out that my hon. Friend is in Finland—[Interruption.]—which precludes any such repeat. She will doubtless return recreated by a better acquaintance than many of us with Finnish opera and other cultural events.
      These intricate amendments are aimed at a problem which has been brought to our attention over many years in a lengthy correspondence with a constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Sir H. Rossi), Mr. Bednar, and we are taking the opportunity to meet that small point.
      No one who has an assured tenancy will lose it as a result of these amendments. It is about circumstances in which the residence qualification is met by the resident being the beneficiary of a trust—that can be met under the present law—and in which, if the beneficiary dies, it may take some time before another beneficiary can move into the same position. That is covered by the legislation. It would be wrong if he suddenly lost the resident qualification. That would be a radical change in the present law.

      1019
      So it is a tidying up amendment. I apologise for its intricacy. I had to read it at least as many times as the hon. Member for Bootle (Mr. Roberts) before I could understand it. But I assure him that it does not have the implications that he feared.
      Amendment agreed to.
      Amendments made: No. 11, in page 77, line 26, leave out
      `the condition in paragraph 10(1)(c) again applies'
      and insert
      `that interest becomes again vested in such an individual as is mentioned in paragraph 10(1)(c) or the condition in that paragraph becomes deemed to be fulfilled by virtue of paragraph 19(1) or paragraph 20 below.'
      No. 12, in page 78, line 8, at end insert—
      '(2) If a period during which the condition in paragraph 10(1)(c) is deemed to be fulfilled by virtue of sub-paragraph (1) above comes to an end on the death of a person who was in occupation of a dwelling-house as mentioned in paragraph (b) of that sub-paragraph, then, in determining whether that condition is at any time thereafter fulfilled, there shall be disregarded any period—

      (a) which begins on the date of the death;

      (b) during which the interest of the landlord remains vested as mentioned in sub-paragraph (1)(a) above; and

      (c) which ends at the expiry of the period of two years beginning on the date of the death or on any earlier date on which the condition in paragraph 10(1)(c) becomes again deemed to be fulfilled by virtue of sub-paragraph (1) above.'.

      No. 13, in page 78, line 16, after '18', insert 'or paragraph 19(2)'.

    Clause 6

      FIXING OF TERMS OF STATUTORY PERIODIC TENANCY
      Mr. Waldegrave: I beg to move amendment No. 72, in page 5, line 12, after 'landlord", insert 'or the tenant'.
      Madam Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to take Government amendment No. 73.
      Mr. Waldegrave: Clause 6, as hon. Members know, provides that, where a statutory periodic tenancy arises at the end of a contractual fixed-term tenancy, either the landlord or the tenant may, within 12 months, serve a notice on the other proposing a variation in the terms of the tenancy. The party on whom notice is served may, if he wishes, refer the notice to the rent assessment committee to consider whether the proposed variation is reasonable.
      These amendments introduce two small but useful changes to the procedure, which I hope will be welcomed. As drafted, the Bill provides that in serving a notice of variation of terms the landlord may propose an adjustment in the rent to take account of the variation. It seems to us, on reflection, that it should be equally open to the tenant to propose an adjustment of rent in this way, and amendment No. 72 provides the tenant with just such a facility.
      Amendment No. 73 extends from one month to three months the period allowed for the party on whom the notice is served under clause 6 to refer that notice to the rent assessment committee. Here we are moving exactly to meet an undertaking given in Committee. I am glad to see the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) and the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) nodding on that point. I hope, therefore, that that will be welcomed.
      1020
      Since this is the first occasion I have had to refer to the hon. Member for Hammersmith, I will depart from the normal rancour and asperity of party politics to offer him the congratulations of the House on the birth of his son, who is called Benjamin I believe, which is a name with very good Tory credentials.
      Mr. Allan Roberts: We welcome the concession that the tenant can ask for the rent to be reassessed. Can we have an assurance that if the tenant initiates the reassessment the rent will not be put up?
      Mr. Waldegrave: The procedure is symmetrical now and the rent assessment committee can make its own judgment either way. It is the same the other way round —if the landlord puts it in the rent may go down.
      Amendment agreed to.
      Amendment made: No. 73, in page 5, line 16, leave out `one month' and insert 'three months'.
      Mr. Grist: I beg to move amendment No. 14, in page 5, line 18, after 'may', insert
      'by an application in the prescribed form'.
      Madam Deputy Speaker: With this we shall take the following: Government amendment No. 67.
      Amendment No. 228, in clause 12, page 9, line 39, at end insert—
      '(3A) A notice served under subsection (2) of this section shall—
      (a) be in a form prescribed by regulations made by the Secretary of State by statutory instrument subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament:
      (b) contain a statement, in characters not less conspicuous than those used in any other part of the notice,

      (i) that the tenant, if he does not agree to the increase, may refer the notice to a rent assessment committee, within one month of service of the notice:

      (ii) that the tenant is entitled to refer the notice to a rent assessment committee to fix a market rent;

      Government amendments Nos. 15 and 26.
      Mr. Grist: So far as the Government amendments are concerned, a number of points were raised by hon. Members in Committee about the provisions in the Bill which involve the service of notice. In the light of the comments made, we undertook to have a further general look at these provisions. One result of so doing has been to identify the need for three further forms to be prescribed by the Secretary of State. Amendments Nos. 14, 15 and 67 make the necessary provision for this. They relate to an application to the rent assessment committee under clauses 6 or 12 and to the notice of proceedings for possession under clause 8.
      I trust that hon. Members will welcome these new provisions as introducing greater clarity and certainty into the procedures concerned.
      Amendment No. 26 is purely a matter of drafting. It removes an unnecessary definition in respect of the shorthold notice served under clause 18(1).
      Opposition amendment No. 228 reopens an issue which we discussed at some length in Committee—whether it is sensible for a statute to specify the detailed points to be included in a notice which the Secretary of State is empowered to prescribe. Our firm view is that such a course is not sensible.

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      We entirely agree that it is desirable for the prescribed notice to contain essential information on the tenant's statutory rights. We shall be giving very careful consideration to what information should be provided. It may well include at least some of the points referred to in this amendment, but we do not want to prejudge the whole issue by spelling out the details in the legislation itself. That would constitute a wholly inflexible and unwieldy approach and would not, in our view, be of any service to tenants.
      The Government accept the need for the principal notices under the Bill to be in a prescribed form; indeed, our own amendments extend this requirement to three further provisions. We accept, too, the need for notices to provide essential guidance for the tenant. But we resist very strongly the argument that the details of such guidance should be laid down in statute. I therefore hope that the Opposition will not press their amendment.
      Mr. Allan Roberts: Clause 12, which the Government are amending and the Opposition are attempting to amend, implements the high-rent policies behind the Government's legislation. It is the clause that spells out the mechanism by which the Government are to allow landlords to change rents from fair rents to market rents. It is therefore a significant clause. It matters to all tenants of private landlords throughout the country who will receive notices that their rents are being increased, sometimes by massive amounts, to market rents. It will affect the level of rents in relation to council housing and especially those houses that are handed over to the private sector or to bodies other than local authorities. And it will have an influence on the level of rents and how that is dealt with in relation to housing associations.
      So it is a very important clause and the Government amendments, while welcome, go nowhere near far enough. They do not meet the requirements that the Opposition spelled out in Committee. The Minister is correct in saying that we debated them in Committee. We debated amendment No. 192 at the ninth sitting, on Thursday 21 January—columns 361–71—and we had some assurances then from the Under-Secretary—whom I wish well in Finland, which is, as I said from a sedentary position, obviously the western equivalent of Siberia for the period of the Report stage and Third Reading of the Housing Bill.
      We were given some undertakings in Committee along the lines that the Minister has just repeated, except that there was some implication in what was said then that the changes would be even more significant on Report than those we have before us in the form of the Government amendments. The Under-Secretary said that she agreed that
      "the notice should give the tenant some information about his statutory rights."
      Very little is given in the way that the Government have tabled their amendments. She also said:
      "The key piece of information that we would want to include in the prescribed form of notice is that the tenant, if he does not agree to the increase, may refer the notice to a rent assessment committee, and that he has a fixed period within which to do so."
      That essential point does not appear in the amendment. We shall want to think further about what else should go into the notice, but we should certainly not want our hands to be tied by the shopping list set out in the amendment.
      The Under-Secretary went on to say:
      1022
      "I hope, therefore, that the amendment will be withdrawn in the light of my assurance that the notice needs to give the tenant some basic information."—[Official Report, Standing Committee G, 21 January 1988; c. 366.]
      On the basis of that and other assurances given by the Minister in Committee, the Opposition withdrew the amendment. But we should not have withdrawn it; we should have pressed it to a vote, because the Government have not come forward with the results of the assurances that they gave us in Committee. So we want to press amendment 228; we want to keep it before the House and not withdraw it. It would give the tenants the rights and the knowledge that they need. We are talking about the notices that will go out to increase rents massively and change fair rents into market rents.
      First, the tenant, if he does not agree to the increase, should be able to refer the notice to a rent assessment committee within one month of service of the notice. Secondly, the tenant is entitled to refer the notice to a rent assessment committee to fix the market rent, rather than its just being fixed on the basis of what the landlord or the Secretary of State for the Environment thinks the market rent should be—and I am sure that his idea of the market rent would be higher than anybody else's. Thirdly, the tenant's security of tenure under this Act should not he affected by his referring the notice to a rent assessment committee.
      It is the shorthold assured tenancy that is difficult, because, if a tenant starts to be awkward and refers things to a rent assessment committee, when the shorthold period of six months is up the landlord can throw him out anyway and get someone who is not as awkward and does not take these issues to a rent assessment committee. However, that is another issue in relation to our opposition to the concept of shorthold tenancies.
      We believe also that the tenant should be entitled to agree with the landlord a variation different from that proposed in the notice or to agree that the rent should not be varied. The Government claim to be in favour of agreements and negotiations between the two parties in terms of property, without any Government impositions; that is their justification for the whole concept of shorthold tenancies. The Government claim also that tenants and landlords are equal partners, but they know full well that that is not the case. The tenant often has to accept, as a supplicant, the landlord's offer because if he does not do so he will be made homeless.
      5.30 pm
      We believe also that no further notice should be served under subsection (2) in respect of the tenancy until after the first anniversary of the original notice's date of service. In other words, there should be at least one year's breathing space before the landlord may initiate proceedings to push up his rents even higher. Such is not unreasonable or bureaucratic, and it should be written into the legislation. We cannot just accept Ministers' bland assurances that at some future time a code might be produced which will incorporate such safeguards but that they need not be in the Bill. When the courts interpret any legislation, it is only what is in the Act that matters. Codes of conduct and notes of guidance are not legally binding and are not necessarily enforceable in law. Ministers' assurances cannot be quoted in courts of law in order to justify a tenant's action or an attack on those of the

      1023
      landlord. Therefore, we ask the Government to accept amendment No. 228; if not, the Opposition will not withdraw it.
      Mr. Simon Hughes: My name is also appended to this amendment, and I remember well the debate in Committee. I take a slightly different position from that of the hon. Member for Bootle (Mr. Roberts), because I do not necessarily argue that such provisions should be included in the substantive Act. However, I seek from the Minister assurances additional to those which he has already given.
      The House has been reminded that we pressed in Committee that certain matters should be made explicit when the notice is served. The Minister's assurances, coupled with those given by his hon. Friend in Committee, do not go far enough. Nobody should underestimate the potential effect of this clause on private sector tenants, who will be taken out of rent control and into a free market system. The reality of that could be substantial rent increases.
      We ask that when tenants are informed of potentially enormous rent increases the document giving that information should state in bold lettering—and, as is said in the amendment, the wording of which comes from other Acts,
      "in characters not less conspicuous than those used in any other part of the notice"—
      that the tenant may refer the matter to the rent assessment committee and state the time in which he is allowed to do that. It should state also that the rent assessment committee has power to fix a market rent. That may still not provide any great security, but at least the rent may be reduced from being extortionate to one that is truly a market rent. It should be made clear also that if, a tenant goes to the rent assessment committee, that will not affect his security. Many tenants are terrified that if they go to what they think of as a court, that they will lose everything; that is a common fear of tenants. The notice should make plain that the tenant is free to negotiate with his landlord, and that no further notice or regular demand can be served until after the first anniversary of the earlier notice.
      I am sure that the Minister accepts that those are perfectly proper concerns. It is vital that a notice which may be put through the letterbox of a multi-occupancy property, and which might be received by people who do not have English as their first language, should be clear as to its implications and about the opportunities which exist for the tenant thereafter. I ask the Minister to assure the House that, whatever may be the final form of the notice, it will include the information which the amendment suggests. It is one of the most important documents that tenants in the private sector will receive. That information needs to be presented clearly and boldly, leaving no room for uncertainty. The House must be given such an assurance, if it is to be satisfied.
      Mr. McCartney: As the person who moved the original amendment in Committee, and as it forms 50 per cent. of the concessions I have achieved during the three months of debating the Bill, I am bitterly disappointed that the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment is not in her place. I prepared for today's debate a savage indictment of her failure to make adequate proposals confirming her
      1024
      clear and unequivocal promise, given on the morning of the debate in Committee. However, I am relieved that the Under-Secretary is holidaying in Finland rather than in Iceland. Had she chosen Iceland, I would have waited for the Government to introduce proposals for low-cost housing in the United Kingdom, including igloos. Some people, because of cuts in capital allocations, are suffering from heating conditions such as those which exist in igloos; one might then ask the Government to provide resources for heating assessments.
      The Minister will understand that, in directing my fire at his hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State, I am directing it at him also. In Committee, we sought with our amendment to assist the Government, as we did during the whole 180 hours of debate. On every occasion, I and my hon. Friends attempted to improve the Bill, despite our fundamental opposition to the Government's proposals. We tried in practical ways to assist the people who will have to live with the consequences of the Bill. We attempted to improve the Bill in the best ways we could, in terms of clearly setting out the rights of the individual to assessment and advice, be it from housing organizations —and I shall not name those in Leicester in case I fail to mention anyone—law centres and so on.
      It is essential that the Government respond more adequately to amendment No. 228, which is coupled with Government amendment No. 14. It is important to consider rent arrears that will result from the changes made in housing benefit, and the effect that will have on schedule 2 to the Bill. One must consider also the implications for security of tenure and the draconian effect of the introduction of market rents on the budgets of low-income families, as well as the role of the rent assessment committee and its direct influence on rents and related matters. It is important that tenants' rights should be clearly set out in statute and that their security of tenure in rented accommodation should also be safeguarded.
      In Committee, I quoted a promise given to my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Bradley). The Under-Secretary stated:
      "the question of information is being considered. I see no reason why that should not be done as it would be helpful to both landlord and tenant."—[Official Report, Standing Committee G, 12 January 1988; c. 50]
      Subsequently, my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Mr. Roberts) was, as he so eloquently highlighted earlier, given assurances that on Report the Government would bring forward specific improved arrangements that would be satisfactory to the Opposition.
      The Minister's latest assurances are inadequate because they do not answer the grievances expressed by myself and by the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes). At one point, even the hon. Member for Mid-Staffordshire (Mr. Heddle) commented about his feeling of uncertainty about the way in which the Bill was drafted. I hope that the Minister will not proceed as he has done earlier but will give an assurance that he will consider seriously what has been said.
      In Committee the Under-Secretary played a game called "Give us a clue". Each time she got up to utter soothing words she gave us another clue. We wanted to know what the Government's concessions meant, what precisely they would put in the notice and what they intended to do to alleviate the worries expressed by us and by the housing associations and organisations involved with tenants in the private sector. We waited from March

      1025
      until now and the Government have offered us nothing, not a single dot or comma in answer to the points raised in Committee.
      The Minister has taken the place of the Under-Secretary. He has indicated that it is not normal practice to set out in detail the information we require and that the Secretary of State does not seek such powers in legislation. That is rich coming from a Government who, every time they introduce legislation, give draconian powers to the Secretary of State to cover almost any circumstances they can think of. The wording is so loose that on many occasions the Secretary of State's powers cover circumstances which were not thought of when the legislation was drafted.
      We are not in that ball game on housing. There are clear precedents in legislation for the Government to set out in detail the rights of tenants. For example, section 83 of the Housing Act 1985 sets out tenants' rights in detail in the notice seeking possession. In sections 51 and 52 of the Rent Act 1977 the arrangements for security of tenure and rent levels are set out specifically. Therefore, our proposals in Committee and again today are in line with current Government thinking.
      The Minister knows that one thing I could not be accused of is naivety. If I could be accused of anything, perhaps it would be of reading too much into what the Minister and the Under-Secretary said in Committee. I might be accused of being moderate and of putting aside some of my opposition to what was said by the Government in the hope that they would come forward with genuine proposals.
      Are not the Government operating double standards? The Minister is not prepared to insert a simple provision which would make clear the rights of private tenants, yet during the eight years that the Government have been in power they have dealt specifically with every aspect of tenants' rights under local authorities. They have been prepared to detail the rights and obligations of tenants in local authority housing. As a member of a local authority involved with housing I have no objection to that, but I object to double standards. A local authority tenant has protection and rights; the tenant in the private sector has few rights and under this legislation he will have fewer still. My hon. Friends and I are not prepared to accept those nauseating double standards.
      As my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle said, in Committee I set out in detail the principles behind our amendment. The debate is recorded in columns 361–371 of the Official Report of the Committee's proceedings on 21 January. Because my hon. Friends wish to speak in this debate, I shall not repeat those arguments. My hon. Friend the Member for Bootle has put forward many of them today. Therefore, I simply point out to the Minister that it is essential that tenants' rights are protected. There is no point in the Minister making a spurious argument about supporting tenants' rights if the tenant cannot exercise those rights because they are not set out in statute and there is no detail about how he can seek advice.
      5.45 pm
      The Minister conceded in Committee that we are not dealing in the market place with bodies of equal opportunity. The landlord has significantly greater power to determine the level of rent and the condition of the property. The tenants' negotiating strength is non-existent. The Minister conceded that fact in Committee, and he and
      1026
      the Under-Secretary indicated on numerous occasions that they would produce practical proposals to take account of what I and my hon. Friends had said.
      When I moved the amendment in Committee I said:
      "The amendment is practical and does not undermine the fundamental thrust of the Government in relation to the Bill but puts a little meat on the bones of the statement made by the Under-Secretary of State on 12 January. I hope that the Minister will respond positively and either accept the amendment or give an assurance that she will come forward with proposals at a later date. Anything other than that would be a negation of the promise that she gave in the debate, and would undermine our understanding of the promise given to the Committee by the Minister for Housing and Planning that he would consider amendments that were practical and which assisted the passage of the Bill, assisted tenants and their rights and resulted in good relations between tenants and landlords."
      We cannot get any more sympathetic, moderate or practical phraseology. The Minister has had from 21 January until now to make good the promises of the Under-Secretary of State. She promised:
      "The key piece of information that we should want to include in the prescribed form of notice is that the tenant, if he does not agree to the increase, may refer the notice to a rent assessment committee, and that he has a fixed period within which to do so. That essential point does not appear in the amendment. We shall want to think further about what else should go into the notice".
      Later she said in a poignant whisper:
      "I hope, therefore, that the amendment will be withdrawn in the light of my assurance that the notice needs to give the tenant some basic information."—[Official Report, Standing Committee G, 21 January 1988; c. 365–66.]
      I accepted in faith what the Minister said and, despite the concern of some of my hon. Friends, I dutifully withdrew the amendment. I have to ask the Minister again not to give me empty promises, as the Under-Secretary did in Committee, but to come to the Dispatch Box and produce the goods for once in his life. The Under-Secretary could not do so. The Secretary of State is not here. The Minister has an opportunity to speak his own mind for once. So often we have seen the young leviathan harpooned behind the Speaker's Chair. For three months the Under-Secretary gave promise after promise. Then, almost at the end of the Committee, the Secretary of State put his little head round the door and a look was enough. The leviathan was harpooned.
      I ask the Minister to go back to the Dispatch Box and give a firm commitment. Without a commitment, the reality in the market place will be that tenants' rights and their ability to challenge ruthless landlords will be eroded. The Minister's soothing words will be of no use to many of my constituents, some of whom I mentioned in Committee. I referred to genuine cases of hardship. They will be affected by landlords who are ruthless in the extreme. Landlords will pressure tenants and affect rent levels, conditions and other matters that we are trying to improve and get out of the public and private housing sectors. Unless the Minister gives a commitment, his words will be no more than empty promises, and hundreds of thousands of private sector tenants will surely face not only the effects of increasing rents but the real possibility of harassment and losing their right to continued occupation of their properties. We shall not countenance that. We shall press the matter if the Minister does not come up with some proposals.
      Mr. David Winnick: Perhaps the lesson for my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Mr. McCartney) is that he should not be so moderate. Perhaps

      1027
      he should not listen to and take promises from Tory Ministers. That is particularly so, as he indicated, because there seems to be a running battle between the Secretary of State and the Minister. The press would have us believe that the Minister is the moderate in this game, but he recognises the potential for Rachmanites and so on. Whenever he wants to put forward some basic protection for private sector tenants, the Secretary of State makes it perfectly clear that that is out of the question. My hon. Friend was absolutely right. With this legislation, in which, in effect, protection and security for private sector tenants is being thrown overboard, it is perfectly right and proper that we should do our utmost in Committee and on Report, as we are not doing, to try to provide some basic protection and security, especially when landlords propose increases.
      It is perfectly clear that, in most cases, the proposed increases will be quite substantial. To a large extent, the whole Bill is based on the fact that rents should be market rents. As I said on Second Reading, in certain parts of the country—certainly in greater London—many market rents will be higher than mortgage repayments, except that the people concerned will not be able to claim tax relief on their rent payments. We know also that the responsibility of rent officers will be to see to it that, in many cases, housing benefit will not apply to the rents that are demanded by private landlords.
      If there were an adequate supply of accommodation, our fears would be less justified, but we all know that demand is far greater than supply. If a private tenant is asked for a rent increase under clause 12, it is perfectly understandable that that tenant and his family will be absolutely terrified about what will happen unless he pays that rent increase.
      We are suggesting that there should be certain basic protections, that the notice should be quite clearly set out, and that a tenant's security of tenure will not be affected by referring the notice to a rent assessment committee. Surely there is nothing wrong with such safeguards. Surely they do not undermine the purpose of the Bill. The Under-Secretary gave my hon. Friend a promise; it is quite clear that no such promise will be implemented. To a large extent, it is a test not for the Secretary of State but for the Minister. The Minister has done his utmost to get maximum publicity. He has said that there will be adequate safeguards against harassment and Rachmanites, and that all kinds of things will be done so that tenants will be able to claim compensation in court and so on.
      Mr. Keith Bradley: They would be able to apply for compensation only after they had been thrown out of their properties.
      Mr. Winnick: As my hon. Friend says, if they are thrown out, they will not get back into their accommodation.
      Of course, Mr. Ingham and co. have done their utmost to get the most favourable publicity this week for the Minister's various statements. What we have said is not rhetoric, statements or publicity handouts by information Ministers; it is what will be done to try to protect the tenants. What will we do to ensure that tenants and their families receive at least some basic protection against eviction and
      1028
      finding themselves homeless? One of the tests of the sincerity of the Minister's publicly declared wish that tenants should not be subject to harassment is whether the Government are willing to accept amendment No. 228.
      Mr. Grist: I do not know whether Opposition Members are sirens of beguilement or alarm. Unfortunately, they serve to raise alarm among current tenants who will not be affected by the changes. Therefore, Opposition Members sow despondency where it should not be sown. They beguiled by telling me—I was not on the Committee, although I have read the Committee debates—that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary gave promises that were not met in the Government amendments. What was promised then has been met by the Government this evening.
      We are following the precedent of the Rent Act 1977. Again, prescription has been made by the Secretary of State—for instance, in orders and notices such as this—in considerable length and detail, which I shall read if hon. Members wish, but which is not included in the Act itself. We are discussing whether prescription should be on the face of the Bill. We believe that we should follow the precedent of the Rent Act and that we should take great care about what goes into the legislation. I assure Opposition Members that much of the information in amendment No. 228 will be included in the prescribed form under clause 12, but we do not want to put it in a form that may not be suitable later.
      Mr. John Battle: On innumerable occasions in Committee we asked about rent and whether the Minister would be prepared to assure us that a rent increase for people on housing benefit will be matched by a housing benefit increase. Will he assure Opposition Members and those who are interested in the fact that their rent may go up that such increases will be met by housing benefit? It seems to some of us that the reduction in housing benefit will mean that market rent levels will not be met by housing benefit.
      Mr. Grist: Assurances have been given over and over again, but I do not see how they arise from this group of amendments.
      Mr. Simon Hughes: As the Minister will have heard earlier, I accept the point about the matter going into regulations. Perhaps it is the lawyer in me that is more used to dealing with such matters, but I still do not quite understand why the Minister cannot explicitly say that what is in the amendment will be in the regulations. There is nothing unreasonable in that request. It is quite reasonable to ask for an assurance that the request in this amendment will be accepted for inclusion in the document and in the notice. I should be grateful if the Minister would say what, if anything, he finds difficult. If there is nothing difficult, surely the Government should now be in a position to say that they accept it, and their position would be much better.
      Mr. Grist: That seems rather otiose. The situation has worked perfectly well with the Rent Acts. I should have thought that that would have given the assurance that the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members are seeking.
      Amendment agreed to.
      Amendment made: No. 74, in page 6, line 13, at end insert
      `or if the tenancy has come to an end'.—[Mr. Waldegrave.]

    Clause 7

      ORDERS FOR POSSESSION
      Mr. Grist: I beg to move amendment No. 282, in page 6, line 27, leave out 1' and insert '10A'.
      Madam Deputy Speaker: With this, it will be convenient to consider the following: Government amendments Nos. 282, 286, 288.
      Amendment No. 225, in schedule 2, page 80, line 37, at end insert—
      `Ground 10A
      Suitable alternative accommodation acceptable to the tenant is available for the tenant or will be available for him when the order for possession takes effect.'.
      Government amendments Nos. 290, 291, 284 and 285.
      Mr. Grist: A good deal of concern was expressed in Committee about the fact that ground 1 of schedule 2 gives a landlord a mandatory right to possession of a dwelling on an assured tenancy where he makes suitable alternative accommodation available. We undertook to consider making that ground discretionary and the amendment achieves that.
      Under section 98 of the Rent Act 1977 the court will be able to consider whether it is reasonable to grant possession taking full account of the tenant's circumstances. Opposition amendment No. 225 provides a slightly different version of the discretionary ground under which the alternative accommodation must be acceptable to the tenant. That will not do because if the tenant is prepared to accept the accommodation, the landlord would not have gone to court in the first place.
      6 pm
      Mr. Soley: In Committee, the Minister assured my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) that if we withdrew our amendment he would be prepared to consider amending the ground so as to require the court to consider whether it was reasonable to grant possession under the Rent Act 1977. The Minister went on to say that that was the major change.
      Amendment No. 225 places the ground in a discretionary category and includes a repeat of amendment No. 34 moved in Committee which sought to make alternative accommodation acceptable to the tenant. We are concerned about acceptability to the tenant. I know that in Committee the Minister accepted that the discretion should lie with the court. However, we believe that there are real problems about defining what is suitable for a tenant.
      We explained in Committee that a person might be told that he is being offered alternative accommodation without a garden which may be the same or even better internally when compared to the previous accommodation. Who is to decide whether the alternative accommodation is suitable? If the tenant claims that it is not suitable, presumably he can appeal to the court. However, we are still worried that a situation might arise, especially with regard to the elderly who may have an attachment to a house, flat, garden or an area in which they may have lived for many years, in which people will not consider alternative accommodation to be suitable.
      I want the Minister to address problems that may arise in that context. The elderly may be presented with an option which even the landlord and even the court in
      1030
      certain circumstances feel is appropriate but which the elderly tenant may, often for psychological reasons—an attachment to a particular flat, grounds, garden or area —consider unacceptable. We have been troubled by that matter of judgment, especially with regard to the elderly.
      Mr. Simon Hughes: I welcome the concession from a mandatory to a discretionary ground because we argued for that in Committee. However, I am somewhat sceptical about this. I understand the concern expressed by the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley). The insertion of the words "acceptable to the tenant" in practice might mean that a property would never be offered as an alternative. A tenant would always be able to say that it was not acceptable for some reason or another. It is better, with one caveat that I will describe in a moment, to allow the matter to be adjudicated by the court.
      My caveat arises from my experience of these cases. Quite understandably, because judges are not especially keen to spend their days on site considering bathroom sizes, the court suffers from the disadvantage that we discussed in Committee of not being specially charged with housing matters. We discussed in Committee how soon the review and establishment of housing courts would happen. One of the failures of the court system, which need not be a failure inherent in a system that adjudicates on these matters, is that there should be a system which allows proper and slightly fuller evidence to be given in written form about the nature of the accommodation needed and that offered.
      I do not support amendment No. 225 and I accept the reasonable concession that has been made. I hope that my concern will be heard on the Government Front Bench and in other Government Departments that are reviewing the matter, so that when the courts and/or their successors—tribunals or housing courts—have to adjudicate what is acceptable or suitable they can do so in a much more rounded way than at present. The courts make the decisions, but they are often made in a remote way.
      There is a danger that sometimes what a court says is suitable is not suitable in practice. For example, a family in my constituency consists of a widowed mother and a mentally handicapped adult son. The mentally handicapped adult son is enormously hyperactive. He bounces around the house. He jumps around bumping into things and pulls doors off their hinges. He is very strong. They are suitably housed in terms of accommodation because they have enough bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room. However, we have been trying to get the family moved to more suitable accommodation for two or three years because they need outdoor space so that the adult son can have freedom to let off his energy without vandalising the home. That outdoor space must be enclosed so that the community and neighbourhood are not embarrassed.
      A strict definition of suitable accommodation may not produce such an alternative because strictly two bedrooms are sufficient. There should be a discretion for the court to consider the definition of suitable accommodation. The court should be given a slightly wider brief in future and consider itself to have a slightly wider roving task to co-me to fair decisions in all cases and not push tenants out to what may not be a suitable alternative home.
      Mr. Grist: I imagine that the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) will welcome

      1031
      the terms of the Lord Chancellor's review which would go some way towards meeting the hon. Gentleman's demands, and we are considering that review at the moment.
      We have already met the difficulty raised by the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley). The court will judge what is suitable for the tenant. It must be left to the court to decide. It is almost impossible to make a prescription and if we try to do that we shall find that ill justice will be done to many people, and a court would be prevented from righting such injustices in the future.
      Amendment agreed to.
      Amendment made: No. 75, in page 6, line 30, leave out
      'which is for the time being'
      and insert
      'to take effect at a time when it is'.—[Mr. Waldegrave.]
      Mr. Waldegrave: I beg to move amendment No. 283, in page 6, line 32, leave out 'Ground 9 or Ground 10' and insert 'or Ground 9'.
      Madam Deputy Speaker: With this, it will be convenient to consider the following: amendment No. 326, in schedule 2, page 80, leave out lines 28 to 35.
      Government amendment No. 287.
      Amendment No. 226, in page 80, line 30, leave out
      'some rent lawfully due from the tenant is more than three months in arrears',
      and insert
      'at least three months rent lawfully due from the tenant is in arrears.'.
      No. 237, in page 80, line 32, leave out lines 32 to 35.
      No. 238, in page 80, line 37, at end insert—
      'Ground 10A
      Whether or not any rent is in arrears on the date on which proceedings for possession are begun, the tenant has persistently delayed paying rent which has become lawfully due.'.
      Government amendment No. 289.
      Amendment No. 327, in page 81, line 30, at end insert—
      'Ground 17
      Both at the date of the service of the notice under section 8 of this Act relating to the proceedings for possession and at the date of the hearing, some rent lawfully due from the tenant is more than three months in arrears.
      Ground 18
      Whether or not any rent is in arrears on the date on which proceedings for possession are begun, the tenant has persistently delayed paying rent which has become lawfully due.'
      Mr. Waldegrave: This group of amendments honours important undertakings that we gave in Committee and I hope that Opposition Members will welcome them. Hon. Members will recall that we agreed to look again at the persistent arrears ground because it was argued in Committee that persistent arrears were sometimes the fault of delays in the housing benefit payments system. We listened to the arguments and were convinced by them, because such arrears would be outside the control of the tenant.
      We have therefore decided that the ground should be made discretionary and several Oppposition Members and one or two of my hon. Friends argued for that. The amendment will enable the court to consider whether persistent delays are under the tenant's control.
      We also agreed to have another look at ground 10 because the drafting was ambiguous. The more we looked at it, the more we saw that it could be read either way. The
      1032
      amendment makes it quite clear; we have spelt it out so that there can be no doubt. For this ground to apply, the tenant must be owing at least three months' rent at the date of the court hearing. If the tenant pays off any of the arrears before the hearing, the ground will not apply, and if it was the result of a housing benefit computer failure it would be open to the local authority to make a single, one-off payment into the court to bring the arrears back under three months.
      I hope that the amendments will be welcomed by the Oppositon and alliance parties. They are intended to deal with the cogent arguments that were put forward in Committee.
      Mr. Soley: I am grateful to the Minister for making those concessions. I thank him for his earlier comment, but I assure him that there are other derivatives of "Ben" besides "Benjamin". One of them is "Bennett". A second one is "Tam", which has a certain Scottish and Labour ring about it.
      On amendments Nos. 237 and 238, am I right in thinking that the Minister is not happy about making the provision discretionary under ground 11? It was made discretionary in the Scottish Bill. I am not clear whether the Minister said that it will now be discretionary or mandatory. I welcome the other concessions that the Minister has made.
      Mr. Simon Hughes: I, too, welcome the concessions. There was a substantial debate about the matter in Committee. I wish, however, to press the Minister on my amendments Nos. 326 and 327 that argue for discretion in relation to outstanding arrears of up to three months. The Minister said that if it was a housing benefit delay, it would be open to a local authority to make a single payment so that the total outstanding arrears would fall below three months.
      A frequent problem is that people think that their rent is being paid when it is not being paid. That problem often arises at the beginning of a new financial year when the amount of rent is varied or when the amount of DHSS help is varied. It also arises when people think that other odds and ends are included in the rent. They think that the DHSS pays for everything, but central heating is not paid for by the Department. Tenants are unaware of that liability, and they have to settle the account. There may be entirely unpredictable and unforeseeable occasions when somebody finds himself three months in arrear. It may amount to £1 a week, the central heating part of the rent, or it may be that part of the rent that is not met by housing benefit and Government support. According to the Bill, the tenancy of such a person could be terminated.
      The Minister has thought about it and the officials have done their work. The rest of the concessions are entirely acceptable, but in equity, and to ensure that the courts temper justice with mercy when somebody ought not to have a mandatory possession order made against him, that problem ought to be looked at again.
      I do not expect the Minister to say immediately that he will meet that request. It will need to be considered, but I ask him to look at it. There is sufficient evidence to justify that request.
      Mr. Waldegrave: I confirm to the hon. Members for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) and for Southwark and

      1033
      Hughes) that we have not changed our mind. Three months' arrears remains a mandatory ground in the Bill.
      We have to remember the other side of the coin. If a landlord has lost a large amount of money because of a bureaucratic foul-up, it is open to the tenant to go to one or other of those bits of bureaucracy and say, "My case is coming up in court. I shall automatically lose my tenancy if you do not deal with the matter." All that the bureaucracy has to do is to make one payment to bring the arrears down under three months.
      I do not intend to make any further concessions. We would then go too far the other way. We have to remember that small landlords can be in extreme difficulties because somebody is avoiding paying his rent. We think that we have now got it about right.
      6.15 pm
      Ms. Primarolo: The Minister referred to bureaucratic bungles—to a fault by the DHSS or the local authority, or to failure to pay maintenance leading to an accumulation of arrears. Why are tenants being used as a battering ram against errors that they have not made? Even if the landlord has a genuine case, it is not right for him to use the tenant as a battering ram. We are seeking to protect tenants' rights. They should not be used as pawns when the Government seek to protect the interests of landlords, courts, local authorities or the Department of Health and Social Security. The Minister ought to think again and accept our amendments.
      Mr. Waldegrave: We are trying to establish a reasonable balance. The hon. Lady is quite right when she says that we should not use tenants as a battering ram against bureaucratic failure, but the landlord should not have to pay because one part of the bureaucracy or another has failed to provide the money that it owes. It does not have to sort itself out properly. It simply has to make one payment to bring the arrears back under three months and then sort itself out. The DHSS or the housing benefit office must accept its liability and make one payment to bring the arrears back under three months. The tenancy is then safe.
      Mr. Soley: The arrears provision was made discretionary in the Scottish Bill by means of ground 11. They got round the problem in that way. Why was it appropriate to make it discretionary in the Scottish Bill if it is not appropriate to make it discretionary in the Bill for England and Wales? If the argument were so forceful as to make the provision discretionary in the Scottish Bill, why are England and Wales so different? Why not meet the problem that is worrying the Minister and, quite rightly, is worrying my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South (Ms. Primarolo) by dealing with it, if necessary, through the courts on a discretionary basis, should there be a dispute?
      Mr. Waldegrave: There are a number of respects in which the housing legislation for Scotland differs from that for England and Wales. We have come to the conclusion that the concessions that we have made, plus the method that is open to the housing benefit office, if that should be necessary—although it very seldom is—achieves a reasonable balance between the tenant and the landlord.
      1034
      There are a number of respects in which Scottish law shows that the boot is on the other foot. We do not always follow Scottish legislation.
      Amendment agreed to.

    Schedule 2

      GROUNDS FOR POSSESSION OF DWELLING-HOUSES LET ON ASSURED TENANCIES
      Amendments made: No. 286 in page 78, leave out lines 32 to 34.
      No. 16, in page 79, line 18, leave out
      'assured tenancy is for a term certain'
      and insert
      'tenancy is a fixed term tenancy for a term'.
      No. 17, in page 79, line 26, leave out
      'assured tenancy is for a term certain'
      and insert
      'tenancy is a fixed term tenancy for a term'.—[Mr. Waldegrave.]
      Mr. Waldegrave: I beg to move amendment No. 293, in
      page 79, line 43, after 'possession', insert
      'or, if that landlord is a registered housing association or charitable housing trust, a superior landlord'.
      Madam Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to take the following: Government amendment No. 294. Amendment No. 219, in page 80, line 15, at end insert:
      '(e)suitable alternative accommodation is available for the tenant or will be available for him when the order for possession takes effect.'.
      Amendment No. 220, in page 81, line 33, after 'Ground 1', insert 'and Ground 7'.
      Amendment No. 221, in page 81, line 40, after 'Ground 1', insert 'or Ground 7'.
      Mr. Waldegrave: The amendments deal with the question of suitable alternative accommodation. Opposition Members wanted us to make it a condition of the redevelopment ground for possession that there should be suitable alternative accommodation available for any displaced tenant. We thought that that was too restrictive. We do not want the ground to be so circumscribed that it is useless. Moreover, there is already a ground for possession where suitable alternative accommodation is available. I should emphasise that this ground can be used only in respect of assured tenancies, not for Rent Act tenancies and not if the landlord has bought the property over the head of an existing tenant, and only if the landlord has made every effort to ensure that the work cannot be done without displacing the tenant. It is not a ground that can be used lightly to evict. However, it must not be so hedged with restrictions that it is unusable, as clearly there are large areas in which we want to encourage sensible development.
      Amendment No. 293 meets the undertaking that I gave in Committee to examine the amendment suggested by the empty property unit. I am glad to say that we have adopted the suggestion and extended the ground to superior landlords where the immediate landlord is a registered housing association or a charitable housing trust—a matter that the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) raised in Committee. I hope, as the unit believes, that the amendment will facilitate the use of short-life property, and that must be an objective for us all—in all cities and in London especially.
      Amendment No. 294 redrafts the ground in certain ways. It covers joint tenants, so that it cannot be used

      1035
      where some of the tenants in an agreement antedated the purchase of a property by the landlord even though others came in after he acquired it. That is a useful additional protection for tenants.
      The amendment also makes it clear that there may be alternative reasons why it is not possible to carry out the work without displacing the tenant. The original version set out a series of conditions, all of which had to be fulfilled before the ground could apply. This amendment makes the ground more flexible without, I believe, undermining the position of tenants in any way. I hope that the proposals will be welcomed by the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey and perhaps by my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Squire).
      Mr. Battle: It strikes me as ironic that the schedule should be attached to a part of the Bill that refers to security of tenure, given that it deals with grounds for possession. Schedule 2 highlights the great trap for private tenants in the Bill. When the schedule was presented in Committee it showed a marked shift of rights from the private tenant to the landlord. Discretion was taken away from the courts and grounds for possession were made mandatory. I note that the Secretary of State is now present. We have had some welcome concessions on two or three of the earlier grounds. However, I suggest that Government amendment 293 represents a toughening of the original position. As I understand the proposal, a landlord who wants to develop a room in a house in which a tenant rents another room will have the right to claim that the builder has to walk through the tenant's room and that that gives grounds to evict the tenant. In that sense, the amendment extends and toughens ground 7 rather than conceding any of the points that we made about defending tenants' rights.
      Ground 7 comes from the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954. Throughout the Committee stage we argued that the schedule took away tenants' rights under the 1977 Act and marked a shift away from tenants' rights. In Committee, the hon. Member for Mid-Staffordshire (Mr. Heddle) harked back to the 1954 Act, but it is worth remembering that that Act referred to commercial tenancies. It is not common for tenants to have an understanding of complex contractual law. They do not go through the fine print of the contract with their landlord—if they get a contract, that is.
      When people need a home to rent they do not enter into proper contracts with landlords as a matter of free consent. They enter into contracts in which there is inequality of power between the contracting partners—the landlord and the tenant. The purpose of amendment No. 219 is to press the case that suitable alternative accommodation should be made available to ensure that ground 7 does not become a developers' charter, enabling the landlord to winkle out the tenant and gain possession so that he can redevelop the home only to let it at a higher rent, leaving the original tenant on the street.
      We had a long debate in Committee in which the hon. Member for Mid-Staffordshire raised the point that the whole clause hinges on the word "intention". We must ask what is the intention of the landlord. Does he have a real intention to develop or does he simply propose to obtain
      1036
      planning permission or the suggestion of tenders to provide the necessary evidence to obtain a court order to evict without providing safeguards for tenants?
      The Minister will say that ground 7 contains safeguards to prevent a developer from acquiring the freehold over the head of sitting tenants and then using the ground to evict them. The safeguard provides that neither the landlord seeking possession nor any landlord who owned the freehold since the tenancy was granted can have bought the freehold, as opposed to acquiring it by inheritance or gift. However, those safeguards can be bypassed. If the landlord is a company, there is nothing to stop the developer buying a majority shareholding in the landlord and then using ground 7.
      In parenthesis, I remind hon. Members that the business expansion scheme proposal lays the clause wide open because the business expansion scheme offers incentives of £500,000. I would add that some of our anger at the way in which the Bill has been brought before us on Report is that it reflects the fact that the Government have made up housing policy piecemeal. The business expansion scheme was presumably being prepared for the Budget in March precisely when we were discussing the clause, yet we could not discuss the impact that it would have. The Bill should have been referred back to the Committee so that we could study the impact of the business expansion scheme on ground 7, because the BES provision buys developers into the Bill at tenants' expense. If the landlord is a company, or becomes a company with a grant under the new business expansion scheme, there is nothing to stop a developer buying a majority shareholding in that company and then using ground 7. There will have been no change in the identity of the landlord—the landlord is still the company—so the safeguard will not apply.
      Whether the landlord is an individual or a company, there is nothing to stop a developer entering into an agreement with him under which the developer provides finance for so-called redevelopment. The clause is wide open for exploitation under the business expansion scheme provision. How will the clause close doors to future Rachmans or to the other individuals mentioned in Committee? The answer is that it will not; it will blast them wide open.
      Under the clause as drafted, the tenant may be able to avoid possession by giving up that part of the home required by the landlord to carry out the improvement and redevelopment work. But if the landlord wants to arrange for the builder to walk through his room, that does not apply. The only safeguard that can be solidly built into the clause is the provision of suitable alternative accommodation. The scope for abuse by landlords using ground 7 to gain possession to sell rather than to develop and the vulnerability of sitting tenants to developers using ground 7 to sell or redevelop makes a mockery of the White Paper, which claimed that the Bill would give increased protection to tenants. Ground 7 will undermine tenants' protection and make a mockery of that claim.
      I detect that a fracture is developing at the heart of the Government's housing policy. That fracture was evident in the Bill. Sometimes we were told to pay attention to the market because the brave winds of the market were being brought in to free the housing market and provide more housing. In Committee the hon. Member for Eastbourne

      1037
      (Mr. Gow) reminded us often of the works of Milton Friedman who tried to define competitive capitalism. Milton Friedman said that it operates
      "provided the transaction [within the market place] is bilaterally voluntary and informed exchange can bring about co-ordination without coercion."
      He put into italics the words:
      "provided the transaction is bilaterally voluntary and informed".—[Official Report, Standing Committee G, 19 January 1988; c. 259.]
      6.30 pm
      Under ground 7 there is no equality. There is no bilateral, voluntary and informed contract between landlord and tenant. The power to evict is given to the landlord.
      The Government's policy has been based on the philosophy of the social market. There is a fracture in the Government's policy in that the Minister has been underlining the word "social" in the phrase "social market economy". Although we have not yet seen it, he has offered us the social landlord and the social charter. I suspect that the Secretary of State has been underlining the word "market". Therefore, the Minister for Housing and Planning has been stressing the word "social" and the Secretary of State has been stressing the word "market" at the expense of the word "social". Those two things are totally incompatible and the Housing Bill is now emerging as a real hotch-potch.
      If the Bill is designed to transform the private rented market, there is a responsibility to ensure that those who have to live in that transformed private rented market do not feel that they are among the most insecure in our society, barring the homeless who do not even merit a mention in the Bill. The Bill is a missed opportunity.
      Mr. John Heddle (Mid-Staffordshire): I will not attempt to answer some of the points made by the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) except to say that earlier today he and I took part in a television programme on Channel 4 on this very subject. As always happens—I am sure, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that in your long and distinguished career you will have done the same—as soon as one steps out from the television studio, one kicks oneself for not having thought of the simple answer to what had appeared to be a tricky question when sitting before the camera. The hon. Member for Leeds, West said then that there was no mention of homelessness in the Bill. The House will recall that in the Employment Act 1988 there is no mention of unemployment. The purpose of employment Acts is to increase employment and the purpose of the Housing Bill is to increase the availability of housing. I am sure that when it receives Royal Assent it will do that.
      I welcome my hon. Friend the Minister's fine tuning of the definition of "suitable alternative accommodation". I am sure that that is right because I believe that it will facilitate a better and more productive use of our existing housing stock. However, in the event of a disagreement or dispute between the landlord and the tenant as to the suitability of the alternative accommodation provided by the landlord, who acts as the final arbiter? I wonder whether my hon. Friend the Minister will consider that point during this Report stage.
      Mr. Simon Hughes: Amendment No. 293 is welcome. The provisions of that amendment were tabled on an all-party basis in Committee by the hon. Members for
      1038
      Hornchurch (Mr. Squire), for Bootle (Mr. Roberts) and myself. We are members of the management committee of the empty property unit.
      Mr. McCartney: Namedropper.
      Mr. Hughes: No doubt if the hon. Member for Makerfield (Mr. McCartney) was a London Member he would be desperate to obtain a place on that management committee—[Interruption.]—and desperate to obtain accommodation.
      I should like to pick up the points made by the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle). Ground 7 is a ground for possession if there is to be a development of the building. I accept that it is limited because it does not apply to buildings acquired financially. It applies to buildings that are inherited or otherwise held. Nevertheless, it is a common occurrence that the landlord of privately owned property may wish to develop the property, demolish it, reconstruct it wholly or in part, or "carry out substantial works." The landlord may start to do that and leave the tenant with nowhere to go and no other offer of property from that landlord.
      I accept that the Minister and the Secretary of State will say, quite reasonably, that the landlord may not own another property. That may be true. However, if that tenant could not have his or her interest sustained while the property was being redeveloped, probably for continued letting, would it not be right that that tenant should have access to a type of mobility exchange scheme that would require the landlord to provide suitable alternative accommodation? It may be accommodation obtained through another route and not property belonging to the landlord or property over which he has control.
      There is another necessary qualification—that is, if the building was about to fall down or have a notice served on it by the local council. Clearly, one could not expect a tenant to remain in a property that was about to disappear. However, as the hon. Member for Leeds, West argued, it is unacceptable that at the whim of a landlord a tenant can be made homeless. The landlord may simply want to develop a building so as to provide more properties and generate more income and it is wrong that a tenant has no answer from the landlord or the court because the ground for possession is mandatory. The landlord can simply say, "I am sorry, but you will have to leave. We have no way of telling you where you should go and it is no longer possible for this to be your home."
      It is often the case—not always—that the mandatory ground for possession of private property affects the old and the single. It is often the case that it is single pensioners or pensioner couples who, having lived for many years in a property, find themselves in such a position. Local authorities do not respond quickly and housing associations do not have anything available quickly. They are not willing to move until the person is actually homeless or very nearly homeless. It is an inhumane ground for possession if we do not try to do something to provide alternative accommodation for the tenant, and the landlord should be involved in that.
      I would be grateful to hear the Minister's initial response to that. I wonder whether something could be done to protect tenants who find themselves in what would otherwise be a hopeless position.
      Mr. Waldegrave: We had a prolonged debate on this matter in Committee and some of the same arguments have been produced today. There is a division across the Floor of the House. One of the reasons why so little property is brought into the rented sector and why so much property that could be rented is left empty is that landlords fear that it will be virtually impossible for them to gain reuse of the property if major development proposals come up.
      We are trying to strike a balance throughout the Bill. The Opposition are arguing that tremendous obligations should be put on landlords to take responsibility for the housing of their tenants even if they are leaving the landlord business and perhaps taking part in an inner city development, which would be welcome. That would prevent landlords from letting and, if they do obtain possession of a property, it would encourage them to leave it empty rather than run the risk of any further developments being blocked. That is where we must try to achieve a balance in the Bill. We believe that ground 7 is right.
      The hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) asked how serious the intention to redevelop had to be. I hoped that I had shown in Committee that the courts carefully consider the seriousness of intention. I quoted a number of cases from the workings of commercial law, on which our proposal is based, to show that if a landlord wishes to terminate a business lease for redevelopment he must show the necessary intention not only by saying that he chooses to redevelop but by having planning permission and contracts let, assuming that he is charging market rents. If he is making further lettings, he is already charging market rents and does not experience the same pressure to get people out as landlords with Rent Act tenancies.
      Mr. Battle rose——
      Mr. Waldegrave: I fear that I will not convince Opposition Members about this matter. We believe that if we change the balance a little, properties will become available.
      Mr. Battle: The clause is based on the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954. Under that Act, compensation is paid to business tenants who are being moved out, so why is there no compensation in the Bill for those who lost their homes?
      Mr. Waldegrave: If I remember rightly, relocation costs can be paid——
      Mr. Battle: Removal costs.
      Mr. Waldegrave rose——
      Mr. Heddle: Does my hon. Friend agree that under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 compensation is paid in place of providing suitable accommodation? It enables the displaced tenant to provide his own suitable accommodation.
      Mr. Waldegrave: My hon. Friend is more learned about that matter than I am.
      Mr. Simon Hughes: Will the Minister say whether in all cases such development would meet the objectives on which he and his colleagues are so keen—the reletting of property for residential use? I see that an answer is coming from behind the Minister. Is it not right that development for commerical purposes may not necessarily produce
      1040
      further accommodation for letting? If so, it is not easily defended on the ground that it will produce more private sector rented property.
      Mr. Waldegrave: If land is being used not for the provision of homes but for another necessary inner city development, it is more unfair that the responsibility for accommodating tenants should lie in every case with the landlord. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, East (Mr. Knowles) passed me a useful reminder that the existing assured tenancy scheme includes a redevelopment ground.
      Mr. Boateng rose——
      Mr. Waldegrave: We have spent many hours debating this matter, but there is a clear difference of philosophy. We believe that the burdens on landlords have contributed to the decline of the rented sector. Much of the empty property in inner cities is kept empty against the fear of redevelopment. We hope that we have dealt with that problem in the short term.
      If we go back down this route, we shall be contributing to the continuance of empty property, and I would not want to urge the House to do that.
      Mr. Boateng: I invite the Minister to give the first of what I suspect will be many honourable mentions in dispatches to his parliamentary private secretary.
      Mr. McCartney: Hod-carrier.
      Mr. Boateng: Hod-carrier is too crude and coarse an expression to describe the Minister's PPS. He performs a useful function, though it is not as constructive as that of a hod-carrier.
      Once again, the Minister has been writhing and wriggling. We saw the hand motions, the tugging of the ear and the engaging smile that we all came to know so well in Committee. He will have to do much better. If he does not, he will be here for many hours.
      Mr. Waldegrave: I think that I hold the record as a Minister—certainly during this century—for a continuous sitting of the House. I am happy to continue indefinitely. I wish that the hon. Gentleman would unfold his arms, because he is wearing a most remarkable tie. With his arms folded, we are not getting the full benefit of it.
      6.45 pm
      Mr. Allan Roberts: We are not happy with what the Minister has been saying about empty property. Local authorities are the Government's whipping boys. The Government always try to blame the housing shortage and the number of people in bed-and-breakfast accommodation on the fact that waiting lists are growing and on the fact that local authorities have properties standing empty. They always ignore the private sector and especially the houses standing empty that are under Government ownership.
      Over the past 10 years I have campaigned to get empty properties into use. I have been known to propose legislation that criticised local authorities that unnecessarily kept properties empty. I, unlike the Government, have always tried to strike a balance.
      In 1986 there were 111,600 houses in local authority ownership standing empty, but there were 493,200 houses empty in the private sector. By 1987, the number of houses in local authority ownership empty had reduced to

      1041
      108,600, but there had been an increase in the private sector figure to 511,200. During that period, the Government's Housing Act 1980 provisions and the shorthold-tenancy provisions were in operation. The Government said that they would solve the problem and that all houses that landlords kept empty because they could not obtain vacant possession would come flooding back on to the market. The Minister is advancing the same fallacious arguments in these proposals.
      Mr. Robin Squire: As the hon.Gentleman has spoken in public in favour of greater use of empty property under different tenures and ownership, will he concede that if the Bill is passed without further comment about empty private property it is, none the less, perfectly valid to consider proposals for greater use of local authority property?
      Mr. Roberts: As long as local authorities are not being unduly penalised or criticised unreasonably for not letting empty properties that could not be let because they did not have finance following the cuts in housing investment programmes to make empty properties available with the speed that they would like. I agree that we should be critical of local authorities that have properties standing empty unnecessarily. Simply to quote figures of properties in local authority ownership that are standing empty does not give the true picture. The Government quoted massive figures of properties standing empty in Liverpool. They were tenement blocks standing empty prior to demolition. Those figures were unfair and it was not right to pillory local authorities and make them the scapegoat for the Government's failure to allow sufficient houses to be built for people on waiting lists.
      I shall give some figures from Sefton metropolitan district council. It is an important local authority and the constituency of Bootle falls within its boundaries. In Sefton 335 local authority houses and 113 houses owned by housing associations are standing empty. There are 6,333 standing empty in the private rented sector. That is a scandal in view of a waiting list of over 4,000. The local authority is doing an excellent job, even though since 1979 it has had a 78·3 per cent. cut in its housing investment programme allocations.
      Amendment agreed to.
      Amendments made: No. 294, in page 80 leave out lines 1 to 15 and insert—

      '(a) the intended work cannot reasonably be carried out without the tenant giving up possession of the dwelling-house because—

      (i) the tenant is not willing to agree to such a variation of the terms of the tenancy as would give such access and other facilities as would permit the intended work to be carried out, or

      (ii) the nature of the intended work is such that no such variation is practicable, or

      (iii) the tenant is not willing to accept an assured tenancy of such part only of the dwelling-house (in this sub-paragraph referred to as "the reduced part") as would leave in the possession of his landlord so much of the dwelling-house as would be reasonable to enable the intended work to be carried out and, where appropriate, as would give such access and other facilities over the reduced part as would permit the intended work to be carried out, or

      (iv) the nature of the intended work is such that such a tenancy is not practicable; and

      (b) either the landlord seeking possession acquired his interest in the dwelling-house before the grant of the
      1042
      tenancy or that interest was in existence at the time of that grant and neither that landlord (or, in the case of joint landlords, any of them) nor any other person who, alone or jointly with others, has acquired that interest since that time acquired it for money or money's worth.

      For the purpose of this ground, if, immediately before the grant of the tenancy, the tenant to whom it was granted or, if it was granted to joint tenants, any of them was the tenant or one of the joint tenants under an earlier assured tenancy of the dwelling-house concerned, any reference in paragraph (b) above to the grant of the tenancy is a reference to the grant of that earlier assured tenancy.
      For the purposes of this ground "registered housing association" has the same meaning as in the Housing Associations Act 1985 and "charitable housing trust" means a housing trust, within the meaning of that Act, which is a charity, within the meaning of the Charities Act 1960.',
      No. 19, in page 80, line 21, after 'landlord', insert—
      'or, in the case of joint landlords, any one of them.'
      No. 287, in page 80 line 30, leave out from `hearing' to end of line 35 and insert—

      `(a) if rent is payable weekly or fortnightly, at least thirteen weeks' rent is unpaid;

      (b) if rent is payable monthly, at least three months' rent is unpaid;

      (c) if rent is payable quarterly, at least one quarter's rent is more than three months in arrears; and

      (d) if rent is payable yearly, at least three months' rent is more than three months in arrears;

      and for the purpose of this ground "rent" means rent lawfully due from the tenant'.
      No. 288, in page 80, line 37, at end insert—
      Ground 10A
      Suitable alternative accommodation is available for the tenant or will be available for him when the order for possession takes effect.'
      No. 289, in page 80, line 44, at end insert—
      'Ground 11A
      Whether or not any rent is in arrears on the date on which proceedings for possession are begun, the tenant has persistently delayed paying rent which has become lawfully due.'.
      No. 290, in page 81, line 33, leave out '1' and insert '10A'.
      No. 291, in page 81, line 40, leave out 'I' and insert `10A'.—[Mr. Waldegrave.]

    Clause 8

      NOTICE OF PROCEEDINGS FOR POSSESSION
      Mr. Grist: I beg to move amendment No. 20, in page '7, line 4, at end insert
      'and the proceedings are begun within the time limits stated in the notice in accordance with subsections (3) and (4) below'.
      These two amendments are straightforward amendments to ensure that a landlord who serves notice under clause 8 that he intends to seek possession should bring proceedings within 12 months of having served the notice. This makes it quite clear that if a landlord serves notice he must have a genuine intention to start proceedings. He cannot serve notice merely lo threaten his tenant. The tenant benefits in that he cannot have notice hanging over his head indefinitely. If the landlord does not start proceedings within 12 months of serving notice, the amendment removes the court's jurisdiction. These are sensible amendments and I hope that hon. Members will accept them.
      Mr. Boateng: One can hardly see the benefit to a tenant of having this threat hanging over him for 12 months. Why not six months or three months? Twelve months gives ample time for a tenent to be threatened and harassed by

      1043
      his landlord. I see no reason, but perhaps the Government will give us one, for such an extended period to be given to a landlord.
      Mr. Grist: The hon. Gentleman has put his finger on the reason. In our judgment, 12 months is reasonable for both parties. Clearly one could pick a different period of time but 12 months seems reasonable.
      Amendment agreed to.
      Amendments made: No. 67, in page 7, line 12, after `one', insert 'in the prescribed form'.
      No. 21, in page 7, line 19, at end insert: 'and
      (c) those proceedings will not begin later than twelve months from the date of service of the notice'.
      No. 284, in page 7, line 21, leave out 1 to 3, 6 to 8' and inset '2, 3, 6 to 8, 10A'.—[Mr. Waldegrave.]
      Mr. Grist: I beg to move, amendment No. 22, in page 7, line 25, after 'or, insert 'service of'.
      Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean): With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendment No. 23.
      Mr. Grist: These amendments to clause 8 are drafting amendments. When notice is served that the landlord intends to recover possession under grounds 1 to 3, 6 to 8 and 16 in schedule 2, the notice must specify that proceedings will not begin for two months. Amendment No. 22 makes it clear that the relevant date from which the two months starts is the date on which the notice is served. Similarly, amendment No. 23 makes it clear that it is the date on which notice is served which is the relevant date for the purposes of subsection 4(B). This establishes that the earliest date specified in the notice in the case of a periodic tenancy must not fall before the date on which a landlord's notice to quit would have taken effect if served on the date on which notice under clause 8 was served. These are straightforward amendments for the purposes of clarification.
      Amendment agreed to.
      Amendment made: No. 23, in page 7, line 29 after 'of, insert `service of.

    Clause 9

      EXTENDED DISCRETION OF COURT IN POSSESSION CLAIMS
      Mr. Waldegrave: I beg to move amendment No. 24, in page 8, line 29, after 'dwelling-house', insert '(a)'.
      Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to consider Government amendment No. 25.
      Mr. Waldegrave: Perhaps I may comment briefly on parallelism with Scotland because on this occasion we propose to make a change that has been made in the Housing (Scotland) Act 1988. Perhaps I may correct the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley). The Scottish Bill does not make the three-months rent arrears ground discretionary. I should have known that but perhaps the hon. Gentleman should also have known it. We are moving in step on that matter and now propose to move in step on this matter.
      The two amendments ensure that the court does not have the power to suspend possession or adjourn proceedings, as it does in ordinary assured tenancies, when it is considering a shorthold possession case. It may not adjourn proceedings or suspend execution of a possession
      1044
      order when it is satisfied that the landlord is entitled to possession on any of the mandatory grounds in schedule 2 to the Bill. Shorthold is a mandatory ground for repossession even though it does not appear in the list of mandatory grounds. It is of course a mandatory case for repossession under the Rent Act 1977—case 19. Clearly the court cannot have the power to suspend possession of a shorthold tenancy. It is the essence of a shorthold tenancy that the landlord is guaranteed possession provided he has served the correct notice. The amendments give effect to this, and I trust that hon. Members will accept that this must be so. It is logical that it should be so.
      Mr. Tim Devlin: These two amendments are small and technical and have been introduced by the Government at this late stage. Many of the amendments that we are dealing with could have been tabled by the Government much earlier. On a Bill related to the housing of the nation many Back Benchers who did not have an opportunity to speak on Committee want to speak on Report about the general nature of housing law. Unfortunately, we are constrained to sit on the Benches while a number of rather trivial technical points are introduced by the Government simply because the drafting has been inadequate. I make the point at this stage by way of protest.
      Mr. McCartney: I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way.
      Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I think that the hon. Member for Stockton, South (Mr. Devlin) had sat down. If the hon. Member for Makerfield (Mr. McCartney) wishes to make a speech he is free to do so.
      Mr. McCartney: The points made by the hon. Member for Stockton, South were precisely the points that we detailed earlier. Perhaps he could tell the House how he voted when we divided the House earlier.
      Question put and agreed to.
      Amendment made: No. 25, in page 8, line 30, at end add
      `or
      (b) by virtue of subsection (1) or subsection (4) of section 19 below.'

    Clause 11

      PAYMENT OF REMOVAL EXPENSES IN CERTAIN CASES
      Amendment made: No. 285, in page 9, line 6, leave out `1 or Ground 7' and insert '7 or Ground 10A'—[Mr. Waldegrave.]
      Mr. Allan Roberts: I beg to move amendment No. 227, in page 9, line 9, at end insert—
      '(1A) Where the order for possession relates to a dwelling house in respect of which structural modifications have been made for meeting the special needs of a disabled person (whether or not the tenant), then, if—

      (a) a local authority having functions under section 29 of the National Assistance Act 1948 provided assistance; or

      (b) such an authority would, if an application had been made, have provided assistance,

      for making those modifications, the sum shall include an amount equal to the reasonable expenses incurred in making, in respect of a dwelling to which the disabled person removes, comparable modifications which are reasonably required for meeting the disabled person's special needs.'.
      I shall be brief because the issues raised about this amendment were fully debated in Committee. This is a

      1045
      repeat of amendment No. 167 moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) and debated in the House on Tuesday 19 January.
      Hon. Members might ask why if we debated it in Committee it is being debated again on Report. There are two reasons for that. First, it is a very important issue and relates to the removal expenses of replacing a disabled person's special needs in a new home. We are proposing to amend clause 11, page 9, line 9 and that clause deals with the circumstances and arrangements made when possession is sought of a home that is in public ownership and where the tenants, the residents of the home, are being rehoused elsewhere.
      The amendment is before us again because of its importance and because it is necessary to protect the needs of the disabled. When expenses are incurred in the transfer, they should be paid if the money is to cover the cost of replacing a disabled person's special needs in a new home. If the home that a person is being thrown out of by the Government has been specially adapted for the disabled by means of some grant or other under the National Assistance Act, or by the local authority, it is not right that the disabled person should suffer. Some provision should be made. It is before us because it is an issue of principle that will affect, not a massive number of people, but a significant minority, who are some of the most vulnerable in our society. Those are the disabled people who need the adaptations to their home.
      The other reason that the amendment is before us is that, if we had debated it in Committee and we had been given an unsatisfactory answer, we would have voted on it and that might have been that. If it had been debated in Committee and we had been given a satisfactory answer and the Minister had accepted the proposals, that would have been that.
      However, this is what the Minister said in Committee in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith:
      "His amendments—if I have interpreted them correctly —raise a fair point which would need careful consideration. If the hon. Gentleman is content, we shall re-examine the matter and produce appropriate proposals."—[Official Report, Standing Committee G, 19 January 1988; c. 344.]
      7 pm
      On the basis of what the Minister then said, the amendment was withdrawn. He has not re-examined the matter and produced appropriate proposals. It is another example of the Minister ratting on an undertaking given in Committee. Nothing has been tabled by the Government. There are no proposals here to protect disabled persons in the same respect as the amendment that we moved in Committee and we now repeat. Therefore, we ask the Minister to stand by what he said in Committee and accept the amendment.
      Mr. Waldegrave: I strongly rebut the suggestion that commitments have been made which have been broken, as has been said many times. They have not. I remember putting before the Committee the normal three types of commitment that any Minister gives. First, "If we agree it, we shall do what has been said". There have been several examples of that this afternoon. Secondly, "We shall have a look and see whether we can make that work". Thirdly, "That seems to be an interesting point, and, without commitment, we will look at it." This amendment falls into the third category.
      1046
      I am sorry if this is boring my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, South (Mr. Devlin) who may not be interested in these issues. However, to accede to the hon. Gentleman's request, I am strongly advised by those advisers in my Department—and we have specialist advisers on matters concerning the disabled—could paradoxically have the opposite effect to what he and we want. I must say that I would not have spotted that the first time he raised it. Nobody will doubt that modifications of this kind are often crucial to disabled people. That is common ground between us. However, the work cannot be carried out without the landlord's consent. That would be severely jeopardised if the landlord was then laying himself open to having to spend possibly tens of thousands of pounds if he obliged the tenant to move later on. It would not mean that he would fork out that money; he just would not allow the changes to be carried out in the first place. Surely it is better to continue with the present position where the disabled tenant is entitled to receive grants for replacement adaptation when he goes to his new house. The hon. Gentleman will know as well as I that, under the home improvement grant regime, disabled people are eligible to a grant of up to 90 per cent. from the housing department, with social services departments meeting the rest in cases of hardship.
      We have considered this genuinely and discussed it with our disablement advisers. However, if we were to accept it, it has the paradoxical outcome that it might make it standard for landlords to refuse the work to be done in the first place and, therefore, disabled people would be worse off. That is a strong argument against accepting it.
      Mr. George Howarth: In theory, what the Minister has said sounds all very well, that the local authority housing department can provide up to 90 per cent. and that the social services department can top up the rest. However, most hon. Members will be aware that, if the capital allocation is not there, there is often a waiting list that can stretch to two years or more. The reality is that people could find themselves in the position of moving and having to wait for that kind of assistance for a long time, during which time they will be subjected to some discomfort and difficulty.
      The amendment proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Mr. Roberts) is in some way detective. However, the Government with all their resources and all the advice available to them could surely have found a formula that would have achieved precisely what my hon. Friend and others intended with the original amendment that went through the Committee. I am bound to say that I do not find the Minister's explanation so far entirely convincing.
      Mr. Waldegrave: What the hon. Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Howarth) has said is perfectly legitimate. He is pushing to get improvements, saying that more money should go into improvement grants and the disablement grants that are part of them. That is the right part of the system. There are about £40 million worth of disabled adaptation grants awarded each year. Doubtless, he arid also many of my hon. Friends would like to see more. However, this change, which looks as though it would help, will make things worse.
      Amendment negatived.

    Clause 12

      INCREASES OF RENT UNDER ASSURED PERIODIC TENANCIES
      Mr. Soley: I beg to move amendment No. 180, in page 9, line 24, at end insert—
      '(1A) This section does not apply to an assured tenancy which is an assured shorthold tenancy within the meaning of section 18 below.'.
      Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 184, in page 10, line 5, leave out subsection (6).
      No. 236, in page 10, line 7, at end insert—
      '(6A) Nothing in this section (or section 13 below) affects the operation of any term of a tenancy which makes provision for an increase in rent (including provision whereby the rent for a particular period will or may be greater than that for an earlier period) by an amount specified in the tenancy contract or by a percentage there specified of an amount of rent payable under the tenancy.'.
      No. 185, in clause 13, page 11, line 1, leave out subsection (5).
      No. 181, in clause 18, page 12, line 42, at end insert
      `and
      (c) in respect of which either—

      (i) a rent for the dwelling house is determined under section 20 below at the time the tenancy is granted; or

      (ii) an applicant for the determination of a rent for the dwelling house is made by the landlord not later than 14 days after the grant of the tenancy and is not withdrawn.'.

      No. 182, in page 14, line 16, leave out clause 20.
      No. 235, in clause 20, page 14, line 16, leave out from `below' to 'may' in line 20 and insert
      `the tenant under an assured shorthold tenancy.'.
      No. 321, in page 14, line 25, leave out subsection (2).
      No. 322, in page 14, line 32, leave out subsection (3).
      No. 323, in page 14, line 46, leave out from 'from' to first 'the' in line 47.
      No. 183, in page 15, line 7, leave out clause 21.
      New clause 14—Extension of access to Rent Assessment Committee—

      `(1) Notwithstanding any provision in the terms of the tenancy, an application for the registration of a rent for a dwelling-house may at any time be made to the Rent Assessment Committee by the landlord or the tenant, or jointly by the landlord and the tenant, under an assured or assured shorthold tenancy of the dwelling-house.

      (2) Any such application must be in the prescribed form and contain the prescribed particulars in addition to the rent which, it is sought to register.

      (3) Subject to subsection (4) below, where a rent for a dwelling-house has been registered under this Part of this Act no application by the tenant alone or by the landlord alone for the registration of a different rent for that dwelling-house shall be entertained before the expiry of two years from the relevant date (as defined in subsection (5) below) except on the ground that, since that date, there has been such a change in—

      (a) the condition of the dwelling-house (including the making of any improvement therein)

      (b) the terms of the tenancy

      (c) the quantity, quality or condition of any furniture provided for use under the tenancy (deterioration by fair wear and tear excluded), or

      (d)any other circumstances taken into consideration when the rent was registered or confirmed, as to make the registered rent no longer the market rent.

      (4) Notwithstanding anything in subsection (3) above, an application such as is mentioned in the subsection which is made by the landlord alone and is so made within the last 3
      1048
      months of the period of 2 years referred to in that subsection may be entertained notwithstanding that period has not expired.

      (5) In this section "the relevant date", in relation to rent which has been registered under this Part of this Act, means where on an application for the registration of different rent the registered rent has been confirmed, the date of that application or, if there was more than one such application, the date of the last of them.'.

      New clause 24—Reference of excessive rents to rent assessment committee (No.2)—

      `—(1) On receipt of an application under this section, the rent assessment committee for the registration area in which the dwelling house is situated shall determine the rent for the dwelling house.

      (2) In making a determination under this section the rent assessment committee shall have particular regard to the right of the landlord to obtain possession of the dwelling house under Section 19 above, by setting the determined rent 20 per cent. below the rent which would apply had the letting been subject to an assured tenancy other than a shorthold tenancy.

      (3) Where, on an application under this section a rent assessment committee makes a determination of a rent of a dwelling house—

      (a) the determination shall have effect from the date of the determination;

      (b) no further application may be made under this section with respect to the dwelling house until after the first anniversary of the date on which the determination takes effect.

      (4) Where a rent for a dwelling house has been determined under this section, and the dwelling house is for the time being let under an assured shorthold tenancy; the rent so determined shall be the maximum recoverable rent.

      (5) In section 20(8) of the Social Security Act 1986 (income related benefits) insert after "but"—

      "(a) in determining the rent for housing benefit purposes the authority shall treat the rent assessment committees determination of a rent under section 20 of the Housing Act 1988 as the minimum eligible rent, and

      (b).".'

      New clause 36—Extending access to rent assessment committee—

      `(1) Notwithstanding any provision in the terms of the tenancy, an application for the registration of a rent for a dwelling-house may at any time be made to the Rent Assessment Committee by the landlord or the tenant, or jointly by the landlord and the tenant, under an assured or assured shorthold tenancy of the dwelling-house.

      (2) Any such application must be in the prescribed form and contain the prescribed particulars in addition to the rent which it is sought to register.

      (3) Subject to subsection (4) below, where a rent for a dwelling-house has been registered under this Part of this Act, no application by the tenant alone or by the landlord alone for the registration of a different rent for that dwelling-house shall be entertained before the expiry of two years from the relevant date (as defined in subsection (5) below) except on the grount that, since that date, there has been such a change in —

      (a) the condition of the dwelling-house (including the making of any improvement therein);

      (b) the terms of the tenancy;

      (c) the quantity, quality or condition of any furniture provided for use under the tenancy (deterioration by fair wear and tear excluded): or

      (d) any other circumstances taken into consideration when the rent was registered or confirmed, as to make the registered rent no longer the market rent.

      (4) Notwithstanding anything in subsection (3) above, an application such as is mentioned in that subsection which is made by the landlord alone and is so made within the last three months of the period of two years referred to in that subsection may be entertained notwithstanding that period has not expired.

      (5) In this section "the relevant date" in relation to rent which has been registered under this Part of this Act, means—

      1049

      (a) where on an application for the registration of different rent the registered rent has been confirmed, the date of that application or, if there was more than one such application, the date of the last of them;

      (b) in any other case, the date on which the registration of rent took effect.

      (6) Where a market rent for a dwelling-house is registered by the Rent Assessment Committee, the rent recoverable shall be limited to the rent so registered, and the amount by which the rent payable under the tenancy exceeds that limit shall, notwithstanding anything in the agreement, be irrecoverable from the tenant.

      (7) Where a rent has been determined by the Rent Assessment Committee the rent so determined shall be the rent under the tenancy with effect from the date of determination or, if it appears to the Rent Assessment Committee that that would cause undue hardship to the tenant, with effect from such later date as the Committee direct.'.

      Mr. Soley: We come to an important part of the Bill which deals primarily with rents, the way in which rents are set and assured shorthold tenancies. We do so in the context of the Government's central aim of the Bill, which is to provide an increase in the amount of property available for people to rent. We begin in the knowledge that the Government have so far singularly failed in that aim. We know that since 1980, when the Government first started to cut back on the Rent Act, no fewer than I million homes have gone from the rented sector, half of million of which have gone from the Government's much-loved private rented sector.
      We know that the rate of decline is steeper than it has ever been, except when it declined so rapidly after the Conservative Government passed the Rent Act 1956. That was the steepest and fastest decline of all time. Most people know—including the Department of the Environment that has carried out research on the matter—that the majority of private landlords do not keep their properties empty because of Rent Acts. Only about 2·5 per cent. of people who own empty properties claim that the Rent Acts are a deterrent. The vast majority keep their properties empty either because they are intending to spend money on repairs or, more commonly, because they intend to sell them. I reiterate what I have said to the Government over a number of months. Until they do something about housing finance, they will not revive the rented sector. The collapse of the rented sector, especially the private rented sector, is caused by the absurd housing finance system in this country.
      Mr. Winnick: Will my hon. Friend give way?
      Mr. Soley: Yes, but I just say once again and clearly to the Government that we are willing to consider new ways of reforming housing finance in the recognition that any new or reformed system must be fairer both within the purchased and rented sectors, and between those sectors. Any reforms must be capable of being introduced in a way that does not cause economic distress to mortgage payers or to rent payers. We need to remember that in certain parts of the country there are more people in bed-and-breakfast accommodation because of mortgage defaulting than there are for other reasons.
      Mr. Winnick: Ministers try to make excuses for what occurred under the Rent Act 1957, but there was a substantial reduction in rented accommodation in the
      1050
      private sector between the passing of the Rent Act and the incoming Labour Government in the autumn of 1964. Has my hon. Friend not read the proceedins on the Report stage and the Second Reading of the Rent Act, when the same kind of promises were made by Ministers, including Mr. Enoch Powell? They said that once the Bill became law, once deregulation occurred and landlords were not restricted, there would be an ample supply of rented accommodation. As we know, the opposite has happened.
      Mr. Soley: My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) is right to correct me. I said that the year of the Act was 1956 and it was, of course, 1957. It all has to do with housing finance.
      My hon. Friend will know that the 1957 Act led to the introduction of the words "Rachman" and "Rachmanism" into the English language. No doubt, we will see that kind of thing returning with the Bill and all its works precisely because the supply of low-cost rented accommodation is drying up dramatically fast. At the same time, the Government are seeking to pass this Bill, which will make it easier for landlords to evict tenants. There will necessarily be an increase in the percentage of very bad landlords who use harassment to get people out. Such people are not really landlords—they are property speculators who want the property empty so they can sell it.
      One need not look just at London because the figures apply, to a greater or lesser extent, across the country. In Dorset, for example, houses with two or three bedrooms sell for about £90,000. The average manual worker has a weekly wage of between £80 and £90. Surely nobody believes that such people can, get mortgages to buy a house for £90,000. If, in the Secretary of State's famous words, "somebody has a spare house to let" in such an area and if that person knows that he can sell it for £90,000, he will also know that he can put the proceeds in a building society and receive about £200 per week in interest. One does not need to be an economic Tarzan to work out what the market rent will be in those circumstances. In areas such as mine, landlords expect to achieve a total of £1,000 per week in rent. That is what they can achieve either by letting the property as luxury flats or by cramming in as many people as possible, who will often pay £70 per week each and share a room. That is what is so fundamentally wrong. That is why the Bill will not work and why we have tabled this group of amendments.
      Mrs. Teresa Gorman: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that house prices have been chased up and are, as he says, difficult for ordinary people to afford, because such people cannot find anywhere to rent and are, therefore, forced into buying? The whole point of the Bill is that it will provide more opportunities for people to rent.
      Mr. Soley: I saw the hon. Lady taking an interest in what I was saying. She has grasped the first point—that supply has been cut drastically—but she has not grasped the second point, which is that more new properties will not come on to the market. The supply of rented properties at the lower end of the market is decreasing.
      Mrs. Gorman: Why?

      1051
      at the lower end of the market is decreasing.
      Mrs. Gorman: Why?
      Mr. Soley: I am explaining why, if the hon. Lady will bear with me. In London alone, over half the lets are already outside the Rent Acts, yet the rate of decline of properties coming on to the market is accelerating; and that is because of housing finance. One can get more money by selling than one can by renting, without any of the hassle of being a landlord. It is no good pretending ——
      Mrs. Gorman rose——
      Mr. Soley: If the hon. Lady is going to say, "Let's take away all the hassle of being a landlord", I advise her that one would make eviction much easier and allow people to sell with vacant possession at a greater profit. If one then throws in the business expansion scheme which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has introduced, enormous profits can be made easily by people who choose to go into that area of activity, often with no experience of being a landlord.
      If the hon. Lady wants to go into this further, she is welcome to read some of the comments that I made in Committee. I warned the Government that they had made a fundamental mistake. In a way, it is a curious mistake for a Government who claim to understand economic forces, and supply and demand. The supply of public housing in this country has been cut by two thirds since 1980—from about 90,000 completions to between 26,000 and 27,000; housing association starts are more or less marking time; and supply in the private sector has increased only slightly. It necessarily follows that there will be a combination of house price inflation plus accelerating rents.
      If the Government go ahead with the Bill, there will not only be more harassment and evictions, but rent levels will go out of control. The Government talk about dealing
      Ms. Mildred Gordon: Does my hon. Friend agree that the end result of all the procedures that he has just outlined will be an increase in homelessness, especially in London? In Tower Hamlets, 1,200 people are already living in bed and breakfast accommodation. We have people sleeping in the streets and on the floors of friends' houses. However, under one schedule of the Bill people will lose their property if they have put up friends or relatives. In Tower Hamlets, we also have the notorious case of 10 Bengali families—66 people—sleeping in a church hall until today. They are now in bed and breakfast accommodation on a 24-hour basis because the children are in danger. Such things will be exacerbated by the Bill.
      7.15 pm
      Mr. Soley: My hon. Friend is right that such things will accelerate. I am glad that the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) also spoke out against what that council has done. We will all be presented with the problem of local authorities increasingly taking measures that will result in people living in church halls. People such as the Bishop of Stepney have said, "What sort of society does this?" They are right to ask that, because what is happening is appalling.
      The Government try to dodge what is happening by saying, "What about empty council properties?" Local authorities have 2·5 per cent. of their housing stock empty. That compares with just over 3 per cent. for housing
      1052
      associations and just over 4 per cent. for the private sector. It pales into insignificance when compared with the figure of 6·9 per cent. for the Government sector. I warn the Government not to go down that road. We should deal with bad management, whether private, public, Government, local authority, housing association or anything else.
      The Government cannot dodge their responsibilities. They put the pressure on the local authorities and made it virtually impossible for even the best local authorities to manage, but at the same time they cannot get their own house in order. The percentage of empty stock in the Government sector is twice that in almost every other sector.
      Mr. Robert G. Hughes: While we all deplore the fact that any property remains empty, whether owned by the Government, councils or in private hands, the fact that is uncomfortable for the hon. Gentleman is that empty council properties are concentrated in the areas of greatest need, in places such as Newham and Tower Hamlets. Opposition Members should seek to do something about that before complaining about the Government.
      Mr. Soley: That issue is not a problem or embarrassment to me or I would not have raised it, but I have raised it and will continue to raise it in the media and to the embarrassment of the Government. Conservative Members are getting into difficulties because they cannot dodge the responsibility, not only for the figures for Government properties but for creating this situation. They should remember one basic fact. In 1979, hardly anyone was in bed and breakfast accommodation, whereas now the figures of the homeless in that position have literally doubled. In 1979, hardly anyone slept in cardboard boxes, except those with special problems such as those who were recovering from mental illness, alcoholics and drug addicts; in 1979 such people could always be found places—but not any more. Some people came to see me tonight in the House of Commons saying, "I do not have anywhere to sleep tonight." One could refer them to hostels and to places such as Centrepoint, but they are full. Such things have never happened before—and not only under Labour Governments. They did not happen even under previous Tory Governments. What have Conservative Members got to write home about?
      Mr. Spearing rose——
      Mr. Tony Banks rose——
      Mrs. Gorman rose——
      Mr. Soley: I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing).
      Mr. Spearing: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving me the opportunity of putting the record straight about Newham. Is the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes) not aware that 1,000 flats in defective tower blocks count towards that total? Such buildings were forced on local authorities by Governments of all political persuasions. The Secretary of State persists in including Taylor Woodrow blocks in that total, together with empty blocks which are having to be cleared for improvement purposes and those that are unfit because we do not have the money to repair them because the Government do not

      1053
      allow us to use our own money. Why does the hon. Gentleman not insist that, when Secretaries of State make misleading statements, they bear such facts in mind?
      Mr. Soley: My hon. Friend is right. I do not want to stray too far from the point although, in effect, this matter is part of the amendment, but it is true that, more than any other Government, the Macmillan Government—the only Tory Government who at least agreed with the idea of building enough homes to supply the need in this country —told local authorities to cut corners so that they could erect as many units as possible. It is also true that the present Government have the audacity—this applies to what the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes) said—to have between 40 and 50 flats empty for up to nine years in my constituency. Some are Victorian cottages with gardens and four or five bedrooms, but the whole lot is being bulldozed to make way for landscaping and car parking around Wormwood Scrubs prison. That is what we get from the Government who then say, "What about the 2·5 per cent. of empty local authority properties" compared with the 6·9 per cent. of Government properties when their only answer is not to put people into their properties but to bulldoze them and put cars and trees there instead.
      Mrs. Gorman: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I wanted to talk about bed and breakfast, before the hon. Gentleman left that subject. I was on Westminster city council as vice chairman of housing for four years. I should like to point out to the hon. Gentleman that the increase in bed and breakfast accommodation since 1979 has been affected by two pieces of legislation, the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977 and the extension of housing benefit to the private sector.
      I witnessed the enormous increase in the demand for bed and breakfast, ostensibly homelessness, which was directly related to the fact that those two pieces of legislation encouraged some people to make themselves homeless, and others to take on accommodation that Was vastly beyond their means because they were under the impression that the council would pay. We were constantly unable to meet their demands, so the bed and breakfast circumstances developed out of those two pieces of legislation.
      Mr. Soley: If I were representing the Conservative party on the committee of Westminster city council I would resign. Certainly I would not admit it here, as it is one of the most appalling housing authorities. What it has been doing is quite criminal. Perhaps I should be careful about my words, but its actions are quite unacceptable. When it keeps properties empty in order to try to flog them off, instead of putting in them people who are in bed and breakfast, the hon. Lady has only herself to blame if she finds that she is picking up the bill.
      What is so atrocious about that judgment is that until the Government came to power hardly anyone was in bed and breakfast. That is a unique factor of this Government. The hon. Lady is really saying, "Let us get rid of the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act, and then, somehow or other, we will not be able to see the homeless." The fact that Centrepoint has shown in its report that no fewer than half the people who came to it had been in care and therefore have no homes to go back to does not trouble the hon. Lady. She thinks that they can get back into their cardboard boxes and stay there.
      1054
      The amendments seek to do no more than to limit the damage that the Government are doing through the Bill. Amendment No. 180 ensures that rent setting for shortholds is subject only to clause 20, the assured shorthold tenancy procedure, and not to clause 12 which is the assured tenancy procedure. The assured shorthold procedure is, of course, at the heart of the Government's deregulation programme. It is as near as they can get to saying, "Let us do more of what we did in 1957. Let us go further down that same disastrous road.".
      All new landlords have been given a choice. They can let under an assured tenancy at a rent which is negotiated between the landlord and the tenant and which has a slight degree of assurance above a shorthold tenancy—but is still vulnerable on the grounds referred to in the schedules to the Bill—or they can choose a shorthold letting with no security beyond six months but with a right to seek registration of an appropriate rent. The basis of the Government's thinking, as set out in various documents, including the White Paper, is that if they had assured tenancies, they believe that new properties would come flooding on to the market. There is no evidence that that would happen. It is their belief that because those people were letting with less security they should get less rent. But there is nothing to control the rent.
      The majority of landlords will not use the assured tenancy. There is no point in doing so. If one is a landlord, it is far more sensible to use the shorthold tenancy and keep renewing it, as one can evict without going to court and without giving any reason after six months and one can charge the same rent. We are trying to limit that ability. The shorthold landlord has an absolute right to repossess; he does not need to give a reason but can evict at the end of six months, or an even shorter period.
      Amendment No. 181 makes it necessary to have a rent determined for a shorthold tenancy, and if it is not determined an assured tenancy comes into effect. If the Government are serious about having lower rents for shorthold tenancies, they must accept that if rents are not lower an assured tenancy should result. It is meaningless to expect a tenant in a shorthold tenancy to apply to the rent assessment committee. First. what tenant will do that knowing that, whatever the rent assessment committee decides, the landlord will merely evict him? As soon as he makes that application he will be out. The landlord can d o that without any problem.
      We are trying to ensure a real difference between tenures. Amendment No. 182 and new clause 24 allow the rent assessment committee to determine a rent at 20 per cent. below the rent of a similar assured tenancy. The rent must also apply to the dwelling and not just to the tenant, because we must remember that the tenant changes. If the landlord was able to charge a lower rent and, as soon as the tenant moved out, to try the same trick again, clearly that would be unacceptable. There are many good landlords who are quite willing to honour the spirit of the law, but Conservative Members must grasp the fact—all the evidence is within the Department of the Environment —that all the evidence of abuse is in the private sector. It is very serious abuse and the Government's own inquiries have demonstrated that.
      It is no surprise to find tenants of private landlords queuing up to get into council accommodation and housing associations because they know that they are better and more secure. That is why there is so much demand for those properties. yet, as I have already said,

      1055
      the supply is being cut. The amendment also ensures the critical point that determined rents should be eligible for full housing benefit, as the other clever thing that the Government have slipped in is that the tenant will not necessarily be eligible for full housing benefit so that the desperate cases that so many hon. Members on both sides of the House have received recently will continue. Elderly people, handicapped people and others will continue having their housing benefit cut dramatically and eventually having the Government doing an about-turn for a limited period in a limited way so that the rent losses are maximised to £2·50—it can be more than that in certain circumstances—for two years at the most and probably only for one year. I have had a case of a 65-year-old diabetic lady having her housing benefit cut by £10·81 per week, from about £40 a week to about £30 a week. What are people supposed to do at that level of benefit?
      That is what makes the Conservative party a basically immoral party. Whatever it does it cannot square the circle that there is something profoundly morally wrong when the Government can find £400 a week to give to millionaires yet they cannot find £10 a week to give to an elderly person who is already dependent on state support. That is what makes them profoundly and morally wrong and that is why they will have considerable difficulty in justifying such an act to the British people.
      Amendment No. 183 simply ensures that shorthold tenants retain the right to go to the rent assessment committee and that removal of that right would have to be laid before Parliament. If we consider it a right, it should be protected, as we have learnt from bitter experience that under this Government we have to provide such protection.
      Amendment No. 236 applies the wording of clause 24(5) of the Housing (Scotland) Bill. I hope that the Minister will be able to say that it is one example of Scottish legislation which he feels able to accept. It empowers a landlord to insert a rent review clause in a tenancy agreement and state a percentage increase or a specific increase instead of using a vague clause about increases.
      Amendment No. 235 is exactly the same as Government amendment No. 44 to the Housing (Scotland) Bill, but I acknowledge, and the Minister probably already has spotted, that that is a fallback position for us. New clauses 14 and 36 extend access to the rent assessment committee to protect low-income tenants in the private sector by placing limits on rents charged by landlords. We do that by granting access to the committee at any time and limiting rents for assured tenancies and assured shorthold tenancies at market levels. Without that, low-income tenants would be denied access to the committee in certain circumstances. Amendments Nos. 184 and 185 are consequential.
      So long as the Government cut the supply, the crisis in low-cost rented accommodation will increase, the problems in the south-east will escalate and house price inflation will continue to escalate. The next Labour Government will reintroduce a system in which rents are set independently of the landlord because while there is a shortage of supply there can be no alternative.
      1056
      I predict that the Conservative Government will learn from the bitter experience of other people's sad cases, as they learnt in 1957, that it is nonsense to apply a simple market mechanism to housing as though it was a can of beans—as a Conservative Member described it—and one could simply go from one supermarket to another if one did not like one's landlord. Housing and land are not in elastic supply. If the Government are busy cutting the supply, the crisis will necessarily worsen. We shall reverse that in due course. Meanwhile, in order to limit the damage, I ask the House to accept our amendment.
      7.30 pm
      Mr. Waldegrave: The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) has rehearsed the Labour party's hostility, which is well known, to increasing the supply of housing by getting the market to work and to helping people who need help to purchase in that market. That is the difference between us. We endlessly rehearsed the arguments about 1957, in Committee and elsewhere. It is worth drawing the attention of my hon. Friends to the fact that in 1957 the position was different in many key respects. First, there was no proper housing benefit system and, secondly, the Rent Act 1957 proposed to deregulate existing tenancies. I know that some of my hon. Friends would like to follow that route, but it was not shown to be wise when it was undertaken.
      The hon. Gentleman speaks as if the present system has been a success, but it has not. He speaks as if the Rent Acts have driven out bad landlords—the successors to Mr. Rachman—but they have not. We all know that bad landlords still exist and it may well be that the widening gap between fair rents under the Rent Acts and the values of property has provided a doubled and redoubled incentive for bad landlords to get people out. But I hope that we can look with more agreement later to additional powers which will help local authorities to deal with bad landlords. The underlying cause of them is surely that, once a property has a Rent Act tenant in it, it becomes extremely uneconomic for the landlord. That is the consequence and the cause of unacceptable practices.
      We cannot and should not attack the vested rights of those with Rent Act tenancies, but we can avoid making this mistake in future. I remind the hon. Gentleman, who is learned in the history of all this, that between the wars when the regime was one where new lets were decontrolled, although rent control existed after 1919 and continued for most other lettings, 1 million houses were built for rent. That met a large part of the need at the time, which was not unlike that which we have lived through. It was a time of major social change, major demands for the mobility of labour and major structural changes in the whole economy. It remains a fact that Britain is almost alone among the economies of western Europe in having no viable private rented sector, and the Government's purpose is to put that right.
      We firmly oppose amendment No. 184 on the grounds that we seek to return to a system where the landlord and tenant should be free to make agreements and to vary them by agreement. We also oppose new clauses 24 and 36, which would provide that a rent determined by the rent assessment committee would be the statutory maximum recoverable rent. Again, that lies completely outside our intentions. If the landlord and tenant agree to change the rent, they should be free to do so.
      Mr. Boateng: Does the Minister not recognise the point that we have made time and again: that there is no way that one can compare the position of somebody desperate for accommodation with that of somebody going into Tesco or Fine Fare and deciding whether to buy a bunch of bananas? There is a fundamental difference between the two. Someone looking for accommodation is not in a position of equality with someone owning it. It is fundamentally unfair in the midst of the current housing crisis to expect such people to behave as they might in a completely free market. This is not the real world; it is a nightmare world of the Government's creation which they are imposing on the current housing crisis and which will make it even worse.
      Mr. Waldegrave: The best world to move towards is that which I think the hon. Member for Hammersmith referred to on Second Reading. when he quoted Mr. Aneurin Bevan as saying that the best form of rent control was three families chasing four lets or nine families chasing 10 lets. If we can increase the supply, that restores the equality which the hon. Member for Brent, South (Mr. Boateng) wants. In many parts, the pressures to which he rightly refers from his experience in London are not present and the market will work well. I am not for a moment saying that the solution to housing pressures in the high pressure areas will be solved by bringing up the private rented sector. It will make some contribution, especially where the market is under less pressure, but we must seek other methods, in ownership, shared ownership and the various forms of subsidised ownership in high-pressure areas. I do not disagree with him on that.
      Mr. Battle: The Minister will remember that in Committee there was a particular case before the courts relating to Mr. Hoogstraten and that Members on both sides expressed anxiety about it. We were informed that the Government would examine the transcript because that landlord was cleared of all allegations which we might have thought were appropriate, given his practices. Our point was that the provisions of the Bill would make it even easier for that sort of activity to be undertaken and would not help to curtail it. How, as a result of the Minister's inquiries into that case, can he reassure us that we shall not return to the worst excesses of private landlordism?
      Mr. Waldegrave: It is a little difficult to comment on a case when a jury has found a particular accused innocent, and I do not want to misuse the privilege of this House to do so. I invite the hon. Gentleman to read the judge's summing up of that case, as my officials and I have done, because he may be surprised by the outcome. Later we shall return to several measures, some of which will be welcomed by the Labour party, which will help to ensure that those unacceptable practices are made much more difficult.
      At present there is no meeting of minds between us over this, but I hope that if over the next few years we can show that the marginalised private rented sector, which exists in many areas, can be strengthened by the arrival of new money, properly managed and providing good rented accommodation, we may find some meeting of minds.
      Mr. Bradley: Will the Minister give way?
      Mr. Waldegrave: I shall give way when I have finished this little section.
      1058
      I have no doubt that the hon. Member for Hammersmith does not wish to see good accommodation from whatever source which meets housing needs being driven from the market again. He has challenged us to see what will happen, and I accept that challenge. This Bill, with its safeguards, will over the next few years bring forward more rented accommodation, which will benefit not only the most vulnerable people, about whom he is rightly anxious, but mobile workers, managers and others in the modern economy.
      We reject these amendments. I will have another look at amendment No. 235, if the hon. Member will not then accuse me of having been disgracefully making policy on the hoof, but the other amendments go to the heart of the Bill and would destroy its whole purpose. We reject them wholeheartedly.
      Mr. Bradley: The Minister said that he would give way, so I was assuming that he has sat down to allow me to intervene.
      Because of the time element, we have not gone into detail on new clause 14 but, picking up what the Minister said about our thrust in Committee being to try to shift the onus back to give rights and protection to the tenants against the landlord, the purpose of this new clause is to redress that balance and give some rights and security to the tenants. If the Minister believes his position to be. correct, that there will be voluntary agreement between landlord and tenant, why will he not accept through new clause 14 access by the tenant to a rent assessment committee? If he is correct, there will be no great demand for access to a rent assessment committee by the tenant because voluntary agreement will have been reached between landlord and tenant. If he is so convinced that that voluntary agreement will be arrived at, surely he should allow the opportunity for that isolated case, in his world, in which the tenant may want to go to a rent. assessment committee for protection of his position.
      Mr. Waldegrave: It might be convenient if, with the leave of the House, I spoke again later to answer that and other points.
      Mr. Simon Hughes: The Minister might care to add to the points that he will deal with the amendments in this group in my name, to which he did not allude in his response.
      The Minister says that he believes—I am not sure whether he does believe—in deregulation of the private sector, the principal purpose being to bring back into use currently empty property. The solution to that problem is not in any way to be found in deregulating present privately let property. One of the mischiefs that the amendments that I have tabled seek to deal with in part is the suggestion that more property can be brought back into use by deregulating rents not only in relation to property currently empty but in relation to property that is currently let. Those people who are currently letting property presumably find that they are getting at least an adequate income by doing so; otherwise they would have stopped doing it when they had the opportunity.
      If the Government told the House that their principal objective was to get empty properties in the private sector back into use and that they believed that less rent control was necessary in relation to that sector, their argument

      1059
      would be more credible. The Secretary of State, in a press release published, I think, on the day the Bill was published—20 November 1987—said:
      "The legislation would allow landlords to charge market rents on all new lettings. This is the key which will help unlock the doors of over 500,000 empty private properties in this country."
      If that was the intention then, the Government should hold firm to it and use this part of the Bill only in relation to property at present empty; they should not have a market place free-for-all.
      I would argue that the Minister has a case for saying that the present fair rent system works in a very unfair and arbitrary way. Academic studies have shown that it works differently in different parts of the country and that one cannot easily get to the bottom of how it works in any one place. But there is all the difference in the world between keeping some form of licensing or control system and doing away with it altogether, and the Government are proposing here to do away with it altogether.
      The amendments that I have tabled, Nos. 321, 322, 323 and 324—I apologise for my cold.
      Mr. George Howarth: Send for Dr. Owen.
      7.45 pm
      Mr. Hughes: I am trying to ignore a malicious suggestion from my right. I might send for a glass of water. It would be slightly more useful at the moment.
      Mr. Howarth: This water will be more useful than Dr. Owen.
      Mr. Hughes: Thank you very much.
      The amendments that I have tabled seek to make the simple case that there should be an ability to go to a rent assessment committee at any time. It is imperative, if people are not to be completely priced out of the market, that the ability to regulate rents, as well as to have acceptable property, is preserved.
      I ask the Minister to address these amendments and give an adequate, and I hope positive, reply.
      Mr. George Howarth: The Minister peversely touched on the real reasons for this Bill when he said a few moments ago, talking about the inter-war period, that the difficulty has been the effect upon the provision of housing and the mobility of labour. It seems to me that everything about this Bill has to do with providing greater mobility. Certainly according to the utterances of the Secretary of State that has been a key factor in the development of this Bill.
      The hon. Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman)—who I see has grown bored with this debate and left her seat —started to probe some of these issues. The Government will not create a real housing market, for many of the reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) gave earlier. The whole burden of public policy is working to support owner-occupation and to make it so attractive that, no matter how they change the terms, the advantage of being an owner-occupier will be great. This policy will be working for the people who cannot afford to enter that market. The only way to create the kind of market to which the Minister so frequently refers is by going down the road that the hon. Member for Billericay started to advocate, and the
      1060
      difficulty with that—as the Minister knows—is that so many people would be left outside the market living under cardbox sheets on the embankment that it would be unacceptable to the country as a whole.
      That is the kernel of the difficulty that the Minister faces: the Secretary of State wants to go down the market road, but the Minister appears to be trying to modify the worst excesses of that. That is why the Bill is neither fish nor fowl—although it is foul in another sense. It will not achieve what it set out to do, nor will it make the position of existing or future tenants any better. The Bill is a mess and should be taken back.
      Mr. Winnick: We are speaking against a background in which less than half a mile from here tonight people will once again be spending their sleeping hours in cardboard boxes. There are many thousands of people in squalid bed-and-breakfast accommodation, not only in London by any means, and the amount of housing misery is worse than for a very long time indeed. Ministers tell us, of course, that they are going to help to resolve the problem by deregulation, making the market more flexible, giving an incentive to landlords to rent, and all the rest of it.
      Market rents will undoubtedly mean that many properties will be let at sums far in excess of that which a person would pay if he were able to obtain a mortgage. It is precisely because such people are not in a position to obtain a mortgage or to obtain local authority accommodation that they find themselves in those circumstances. Last November, advertisements appearing in the London Evening Standard showed that some properties were available for renting, ranging from £130 to £140 per week. There were a few one and two-bedroom flats available from £30 to £70 per week. Is the Minister telling the House that market rents will be less than that? The likelihood is that they will be more.
      My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) referred to the Rent Act 1957. As I said in an intervention, Ministers made promises at the time that the Act would allow far greater flexibility in the housing market and provide more rented accommodation. That is very much the argument of the hon. Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman). I have some figures for the Minister on which he might like to comment. Between April 1951 and June 1956, before the Rent Act, the private rented sector lost 800,000 dwellings, which was an average loss of 160,000 per year. Between June 1957 and December 1961, the private rented sector lost 1·3 million dwellings, which was an average loss of 236,000 dwellings per year. Those figures are from the report of the 1971 Francis committee on the Rent Act.
      Those figures illustrate that the last time a Tory Government deregulated, far from providing more rented accommodation, they ensured that a far larger number of rented dwellings were lost. That is why we take the view that the Bill is unlikely to provide more rented accommodation. Once landlords know that there is no ceiling on rents and that market values are to apply, they will charge the utmost. We are told that regulated tenants will be in no danger. However, once the property owner recognises that, when the regulated tenant leaves, the property can be relet at market rents or sold with vacant possession, the incentive will be there for Rachmanism, alsatian dogs, and all that we associate with the Rent Act 1957. This week, the Minister has been publicising the Bill's provisions against eviction and harassment and for

      1061
      compensation. However, they will not be of much use to a tenant who is on the streets and unable to find accommodation, and who is in no position financially to obtain a mortgage.
      That is why I and my hon. Friends believe this Bill to be totally inadequate. It will not in any way help those people whom I described at the beginning of my remarks, living in great misery and under stress in housing which is a disgrace to this country. We should at least provide certain basic safeguards.
      When moving the amendment, my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith said that one essential safeguard related to shorthold tenants. I take the view, and it will be seen whether I am right or wrong, that most of the new tenancies created under the Bill will be shorthold. They will not be assured tenancies because landlords will take the view that their tenants should have the least amount of security. Why should they give them more protection and security? Tenants should have the opportunity to go before the rent assessment committee. That is an essential safeguard, and one that is far more important than the provisions which the Minister has been publicising this week. For that reason, I hope that my hon. Friend's amendment, and those grouped with it, will have the support of the House.
      Mr. Boateng: I can be brief because I have been reflecting on the logic of the Government's proposals in the White Paper and the way in which they have been followed through in the Bill. I did not need to reflect long, because the Bill falls short when it comes to following through the minimal logic contained in the White Paper.
      At its heart, the White Paper seemed to be proposing —and we saw in Committee how the Minister departed from this—that a distinction should be made between shorthold tenancies and assured tenancies. The logic of the White Paper, such as it was, envisaged a two-tier scheme, whereby the landlord chose between giving the tenant security of tenure and receiving a market rent or granting only minimal security but accepting a degree of rent control. As Government Members may have realised, the Bill does not achieve that. In practice, it is unlikely that there will be any significant difference between rent levels under the two schemes. What possible reason could a landlord ever have for granting an assured tenancy when he could grant a shorthold tenancy? The magic of the assured shorthold tenancy, from the point of view of the grubby little landlords whom the Government seek to placate with this measure, is that the only thing which is assured and short about it is the shortness of the assurance, so far as concerns the tenant. No sooner is he in than he will be out again, unless he negotiates a higher rent.
      We want from the Minister the answers to three questions. They are all simple and it will not take me long to ask them. I hope that the people with notes for the Minister are ready to pass them down, although I see no sign of the hod carrier. First, what in practice will be the difference in rent levels between the two schemes? Will registered rents under the shorthold scheme be an average of 10, 20, or 30 per cent. below market levels? Secondly, why should a landlord choose to let on an assured shorthold tenancy? Thirdly, what incentive or protection will there be for a shorthold tenant to apply for his rent to
      1062
      be registered? In the last four or five minutes of this debate, may we have the Minister's answers to those three simple questions?
      Mr. Waldegrave: I will end with the questions put by the hon. Member for Brent, South (Mr. Boaterig), although they are not profound. The differences in rent levels will depend on the state of the market in a particular place. The answer to the question why someone should let for assured tenancies is that in many parts of the country, though not in large parts of the hon. Member's constituency where the market is in relative balance, house prices are falling, as the hon. Member for Makerfield (Mr. McCartney) knows. That creates its own problems. In the areas where there is more housing stock than there is demand, people will be looking for tenants. The hoot will be on the other foot. I recognise that in the places where supply is constrained, the Bill will not solve all problems. In those places there will probably be little difference between the rent levels in shorthold and assured tenancies.
      As for the hon. Member's third question, the answer is set out in the Bill. The rent assessment committee can assess a market rent. That is what it can impose in those conditions.
      8 pm
      Mr. Boateng: What about the second question? The Minister has moved ingeniously from the first to the third question. The question which he has failed to answer is why should a landlord choose to let an assured tenancy as opposed to a shorthold tenancy? Would the Minister do it?
      Mr. Waldegrave: The hon. Member has suffered from a short attack of deafness. I answered that point. There will be plenty of places where the demand will not be of the kind that the hon. Member is used to dealing with in his constituency. There, tenants will be able to shop around. In those cases landlords will be competing to get good tenants. One thing a landlord will be able to offer is an assured tenancy. That is the answer to the hon. Gentleman's question. He should not base his judgment on the whole of the market or on the areas where high pressures mean that the landlord is in a seller's market.
      New clauses 36 and 14, which are roughly the same, would both provide a facility for a tenant to apply to the rent assessment committee at any time rather than only in the specified circumstances laid down in clause 12. Obviously this goes to the heart of the principle that the parties should agree the initial rent between themselves for the entire term in the case of a fixed-term tenancy and for the first 12 months in the case of a periodic tenancy. That is why those amendments cannot be accepted.
      As regards amendment No. 323, to require that the rent assessment committee's determination of a rent should in all cases be back-dated to the date of application would seem odd and unnecessarily rigid. Whether or not back-dating was justified would depend on the circumstances of the case. It would not seem fair that a landlord should be required to pay back substantial excess rent where the tenant had been responsible for delaying the proceedings. The right course is to leave the matter to the committee's discretion.
      These are lesser matters than the matters of major disagreement between us. We agree that it is a major failing of the housing system that there are in the private rented sector about 500,000 empty properties; the hon.

      1063
      Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) quoted roughly the right figure. I do not believe that all those are kept off the market through fear of the Rent Acts, although a large proportion may be. All that the Opposition parties have argued is based on the premise that the system which they invented is working. It most patently is not. That is why we seek to reform it. We shall greatly help those who need homes by reforming it.
      Question put, That the amendment be made:—
      The House divided: Ayes 168, Noes 218.

      Division No. 346]

      [8.02 pm

      AYES

      Abbott, Ms Diane

      Galloway, George

      Adams, Allen (Paisley N)

      Garrett, John (Norwich South)

      Allen, Graham

      George, Bruce

      Alton, David

      Godman, Dr Norman A.

      Anderson, Donald

      Gordon, Mildred

      Archer, Rt Hon Peter

      Graham, Thomas

      Armstrong, Hilary

      Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

      Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

      Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

      Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)

      Grocott, Bruce

      Barron, Kevin

      Harman, Ms Harriet

      Battle, John

      Healey, Rt Hon Denis

      Beckett, Margaret

      Heffer, Eric S.

      Bennett, A. F. (D'nt'n & R'dish)

      Henderson, Doug

      Bermingham, Gerald

      Hinchliffe, David

      Bidwell, Sydney

      Home Robertson, John

      Blair, Tony

      Hood, Jimmy

      Boateng, Paul

      Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

      Boyes, Roland

      Howell, Rt Hon D. (S'heath)

      Bradley, Keith

      Howells, Geraint

      Bray, Dr Jeremy

      Hoyle, Doug

      Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)

      Hughes, John (Coventry NE)

      Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)

      Hughes, Roy (Newport E)

      Brown, Ron (Edinburgh Leith)

      Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)

      Buckley, George J.

      Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

      Callaghan, Jim

      Illsley, Eric

      Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

      Ingram, Adam

      Campbell, Ron (Blyth Valley)

      Janner, Greville

      Campbell-Savours, D. N.

      John, Brynmor

      Canavan, Dennis

      Jones, leuan (Ynys Môn)

      Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

      Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S W)

      Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

      Leadbitter, Ted

      Clay, Bob

      Leighton, Ron

      Clwyd, Mrs Ann

      Lestor, Joan (Eccles)

      Cohen, Harry

      Lewis, Terry

      Corbyn, Jeremy

      Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

      Cousins, Jim

      Loyden, Eddie

      Crowther, Stan

      McAllion, John

      Cryer, Bob

      McAvoy, Thomas

      Cummings, John

      McCartney, Ian

      Cunliffe, Lawrence

      McKay, Allen (Barnsley West)

      Cunningham, Dr John

      McKelvey, William

      Darling, Alistair

      McLeish, Henry

      Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

      McTaggart, Bob

      Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

      Madden, Max

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

      Mahon, Mrs Alice

      Dewar, Donald

      Marek, Dr John

      Dixon, Don

      Marshall, David (Shettleston)

      Doran, Frank

      Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

      Dunnachie, Jimmy

      Martin, Michael J. (Springburn)

      Eastham, Ken

      Martlew, Eric

      Evans, John (St Helens N)

      Maxton, John

      Fatchett, Derek

      Meale, Alan

      Fearn, Ronald

      Michael, Alun

      Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

      Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

      Fields, Terry (L'pool B G'n)

      Michie, Mrs Ray (Arg'l & Bute)

      Fisher, Mark

      Millan, Rt Hon Bruce

      Flynn, Paul

      Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)

      Foot, Rt Hon Michael

      Morgan, Rhodri

      Foster, Derek

      Morley, Elliott

      Foulkes, George

      Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)

      Fyfe, Maria

      Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

      Galbraith, Sam

      Mullin, Chris

      1064

      Nellist, Dave

      Skinner, Dennis

      Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

      Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

      O'Brien, William

      Smith, C. (Isl'ton & F'bury)

      O'Neill, Martin

      Snape, Peter

      Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

      Soley, Clive

      Patchett, Terry

      Spearing, Nigel

      Pike, Peter L.

      Steinberg, Gerry

      Prescott, John

      Stott, Roger

      Primarolo, Dawn

      Strang, Gavin

      Quin, Ms Joyce

      Straw, Jack

      Randall, Stuart

      Turner, Dennis

      Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn

      Wall, Pat

      Reid, Dr John

      Wallace, James

      Richardson, Jo

      Welsh, Michael (Doncaster N)

      Roberts, Allan (Bootle)

      Wigley, Dafydd

      Robertson, George

      Williams, Alan W. (Carm'then)

      Robinson, Geoffrey

      Winnick, David

      Rogers, Allan

      Wise, Mrs Audrey

      Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

      Worthington, Tony

      Rowlands, Ted

      Wray, Jimmy

      Ruddock, Joan

      Sedgemore, Brian

      Tellers for the Ayes:

      Sheerman, Barry

      Mr. Frank Haynes and Mr. Frank Cook.

      Short, Clare

      NOES

      Adley, Robert

      Currie, Mrs Edwina

      Alison, Rt Hon Michael

      Curry, David

      Amess, David

      Davies, Q. (Stamf'd & Spald'g)

      Amos, Alan

      Davis, David (Boothferry)

      Arbuthnot, James

      Day, Stephen

      Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

      Devlin, Tim

      Arnold, Tom (Hazel Grove)

      Dickens, Geoffrey

      Ashby, David

      Dicks, Terry

      Aspinwall, Jack

      Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

      Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

      Dover, Den

      Baldry, Tony

      Dunn, Bob

      Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

      Durant, Tony

      Batiste, Spencer

      Dykes, Hugh

      Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

      Emery, Sir Peter

      Bendall, Vivian

      Evennett, David

      Bevan, David Gilroy

      Fallon, Michael

      Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter

      Farr, Sir John

      Body, Sir Richard

      Favell, Tony

      Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

      Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)

      Boscawen, Hon Robert

      Fookes, Miss Janet

      Boswell, Tim

      Forman, Nigel

      Bottomley, Peter

      Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

      Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

      Forth, Eric

      Bowis, John

      Fowler, Rt Hon Norman

      Boyson, Rt Hon Dr Sir Rhodes

      Fox, Sir Marcus

      Brazier, Julian

      Franks, Cecil

      Bright, Graham

      Freeman, Roger

      Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

      French, Douglas

      Brown, Michael (Brigg & Cl't's)

      Fry, Peter

      Browne, John (Winchester)

      Gale, Roger

      Bruce, Ian (Dorset South)

      Gardiner, George

      Buck, Sir Antony

      Garel-Jones, Tristan

      Budgen, Nicholas

      Gill, Christopher

      Burns, Simon

      Goodlad, Alastair

      Burt, Alistair

      Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles

      Butcher, John

      Gorman, Mrs Teresa

      Butler, Chris

      Gow, Ian

      Butterfill, John

      Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

      Carlisle, John, (Luton N)

      Greenway, John (Ryedale)

      Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

      Gregory, Conal

      Carrington, Matthew

      Griffiths, Sir Eldon (Bury St E')

      Carttiss, Michael

      Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)

      Channon, Rt Hon Paul

      Grist, Ian

      Chapman, Sydney

      Ground, Patrick

      Churchill, Mr

      Gummer, Rt Hon John Selwyn

      Clark, Hon Alan (Plym'th S'n)

      Hampson, Dr Keith

      Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

      Hanley, Jeremy

      Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)

      Hannam, John

      Colvin, Michael

      Hargreaves, Ken (Hyndburn)

      Conway, Derek

      Harris, David

      Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)

      Hawkins, Christopher

      Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

      Hayhoe, Rt Hon Sir Barney

      Couchman, James

      Hayward, Robert

      Cran, James

      Heathcoat-Amory, David

      1065

      Heddle, John

      Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)

      Hind, Kenneth

      Rost, Peter

      Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

      Rowe, Andrew

      Holt, Richard

      Ryder, Richard

      Hordern, Sir Peter

      Scott, Nicholas

      Howard, Michael

      Shaw, David (Dover)

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

      Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

      Howarth, G. (Cannock & B'wd)

      Shephard, Mrs G. (Norfolk SW)

      Howell, Rt Hon David (G'dford)

      Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

      Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)

      Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

      Hunt, David (Wirral W)

      Sims, Roger

      Hunter, Andrew

      Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

      Irvine, Michael

      Soames, Hon Nicholas

      Irving, Charles

      Speller, Tony

      Jack, Michael

      Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

      Jackson, Robert

      Squire, Robin

      Janman, Tim

      Stanbrook, Ivor

      Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine

      Steen, Anthony

      Key, Robert

      Stern, Michael

      King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)

      Stevens, Lewis

      Knowles, Michael

      Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)

      Lamont, Rt Hon Norman

      Stokes, John

      Lawrence, Ivan

      Sumberg, David

      Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

      Summerson, Hugo

      Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

      Taylor, Ian (Esher)

      Lord, Michael

      Taylor, John M (Solihull)

      Maclean, David

      Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

      McNair-Wilson, M. (Newbury)

      Temple-Morris, Peter

      Major, Rt Hon John

      Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)

      Maples, John

      Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

      Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

      Townend, John (Bridlington)

      Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

      Tracey, Richard

      Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick

      Tredinnick, David

      Meyer, Sir Anthony

      Trippier, David

      Miscampbell, Norman

      Trotter, Neville

      Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

      Twinn, Dr Ian

      Montgomery, Sir Fergus

      Waddington, Rt Hon David

      Needham, Richard

      Wakeham, Rt Hon John

      Neubert, Michael

      Waldegrave, Hon William

      Nicholls. Patrick

      Walden, George

      Nicholson, David (Taunton)

      Walker, Bill (T'side North)

      Nicholson, Emma (Devon West)

      Waller, Gary

      Oppenheim, Phillip

      Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

      Page, Richard

      Watts, John

      Paice, James

      Wells, Bowen

      Patten, John (Oxford W)

      Wheeler, John

      Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

      Widdecombe, Ann

      Pawsey, James

      Winterton, Mrs Ann

      Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

      Winterton, Nicholas

      Porter, David (Waveney)

      Wood, Timothy

      Powell, William (Corby)

      Woodcock, Mike

      Price, Sir David

      Yeo, Tim

      Redwood, John

      Young, Sir George (Acton)

      Renton, Tim

      Rhodes James, Robert

      Tellers for the Noes:

      Riddick, Graham

      Mr. David Lightbown and Mr. Stephen Dorrell.

      Ridsdale, Sir Julian

      Question accordingly negatived.
      Mr. Waldegrave: I beg to move amendment No. 28, in page 9, line 34, at end insert
      'and
      (c) if the rent under the tenancy has previously been increased by virtue of a notice under this subsection or a determination under section 13 below, the first anniversary of the date on which the increased rent took effect.'
      Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to take Government amendment No. 29.
      Mr. Waldegrave: As the Bill stands, subsection (5) of clause 12 provides that when a landlord has served a notice of increased rent under that clause he is precluded from serving a further notice for at least a year beginning on the date of service of the original notice. Bearing in mind that the actual increase in rent may not take place until some
      1066
      time after the notice has been served—for example, when the tenant made an application to the rent assessment committee and the committee exercised its power to defer the date of increase—the provision as drafted could create a situation in which a tenant is faced with two rent increases taking effect under these provisions in less than 12 months. It is wrong that that could happen.
      On reflection, it seems to us that the 12-month limitation should more properly relate to the date of the actual rent increase rather than the date of service of the notice. That is what the two amendments taken together are designed to achieve. The effect will be to ensure that, once a rent increase has taken effect under the procedure in clauses 12 or 13, the tenant cannot be faced with a further increase for at least a year. Of course, the parties could agree between themselves an increase.
      I hope that this amendment will be welcomed.
      Amendment agreed to.
      Amendments made: No. 15, in page 9, line 43, after `tenant', insert
      `by an application in the prescribed form'.
      No. 29, in page 10, leave out lines 1 to 4.—[Mr. Waldegrave.]

    Clause 13

      DETERMINATION OF RENT BY RENT ASSESSMENT COMMITTEE
      Mr. Grist: I beg to move amendment No. 30, in page 10 line 29, leave out 'an' and insert, 'a relevant'.
      Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to take Government amendment No. 31.
      8.15 pm
      Mr. Grist: As drafted, clause 13(2) provides that, in determining the rent under an assured tenancy, the rent assessment committee is to take no account of any increase in value attributable to an improvement carried out in specified circumstances by a person who, at that time, was the tenant.
      On reflection, it seems to us that the definition of improvement in this context needs to be drawn somewhat more tightly. It would seem inequitable that, when a tenant carries out improvements to a property and then subsequently surrenders his tenancy, a tenant under a subsequent letting should derive financial benefit from such improvements by virtue of the rent assessment committee being required to disregard them in determining the rent under the later tenancy.
      We therefore propose to add to clause 13(2) a broadly similar provision to that in the comparable section of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954. That will have the effect of confining the disregard requirement, either to an improvement carried out during the tenancy to which the notice of rent increase relates, or, alternatively, to an improvement carried out not more than 21 years before the date of service of the notice, provided that at all times since the improvement was carried out the property has been let under an assured tenancy and, on the coming to the end of an assured tenancy at any time during that period, the tenant—or, in the case of joint tenants, at least one of them—did not quit the property.
      Amendment agreed to.
      Amendment made: No. 31, in page 10, line 39, at end add—
      '( )For the purposes of subsection (2)(b) above, in relation to a notice which is referred by a tenant as mentioned in subsection (1) above, an improvement is a relevant improvement if either it was carried out during the tenancy to which the notice relates or the following conditions are satisfied, namely—

      (a) that it was carried out not more than twenty-one years before the date of service of the notice; and

      (b) that, at all times during the period beginning when the improvement was carried out and ending on the date of service of the notice, the dwelling-house has been let under an assured tenancy; and

      (c) that, on the coming to an end of an assured tenancy at any time during that period, the tenant (or, in the case of joint tenants, at least one of them) did not quit.'—[Mr. Grist.]

      Mr. Grist: I beg to move amendment No. 32, in page 10, line 50, at end insert—
      `( ) In any case where—

      (a) a rent assessment committee have before them at the same time the reference of a notice under section 6(2) above relating to a tenancy (in this subsection referred to as "the section 6 reference") and the reference of a notice under section 12(2) above relating to the same tenancy (in this subsection referred to as "the section 12 reference"), and

      (b) the date specified in the notice under section 6(2) above is not later than the first day of the new period specified in the notice under section 12(2) above, and

      (c) the committee propose to hear the two references together,

      the committee shall make a determination in relation to the section 6 reference before making their determination in relation to the section 12 reference and, accordingly, in such a case the reference in subsection (1)(c) above to the terms of the tenancy to which the notice relates shall be construed as a reference to those terms as varied by virtue of the determination made in relation to the section 6 reference.'
      As drafted clause 13(1) provides for the rent assessment committee to determine the rent under an assured tenancy by reference to a notional tenancy, whose terms, other than in respect of the rent, are the same as those of the tenancy under consideration.
      This amendment is designed to clarify the procedure to be followed by the rent assessment committee when it has before it a reference under clause 6 relating to the terms of a tenancy and a reference under clause 12 relating to the rent payable under that tenancy. The amendment provides that, when the date specified in the notice served under clause 6 is no later than the first day of the new period specified in the notice served under clause 12, and the rent assessment committee proposes, to consider the two references together, it shall make the determination of terms first and then proceed to determine the rent—as provided for in clause 13(l)—on the basis of the terms as varied by virtue of the determination previously made.
      Amendment agreed to.
      Amendment made: No. 76, in page 11, line 13, at end insert
      `or if the tenancy has come to an end'.

    Clause 18

      ASSURED SHORTHOLD TENANCIES
      Mr. Waldegrave: I beg to move amendment No. 33, in page 12, line 38, at beginning insert
      `Subject to subsection (2A) below'.
      Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment No. 229, in page 12, line 42, at end insert
      `and
      (c) which falls into one of the following categories—

      (i) the tenant was not, immediately before the grant of the assured shorthold tenancy, a secure tenant of the same or substantially the same accommodation, or

      (ii) the tenant was not, immediately before the grant of the assured shorthold tenancy, an assured tenant of the same or substantially the same accommodation.'.

      Government amendment No. 34.
      Mr. Waldegrave: The amendments stem from an interesting and important debate in Committee where the issue was whether there was a case for a provision which would prevent shorthold tenancies from being offered to existing assured tenants or to secure tenants who transferred to private sector landlords under some scheme or another. We acknowledged that the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) raised a legitimate. point of interest and we said that we would consider it further.
      I want first to consider the position of existing assured tenants. One of the basic principles of the new regime is that, once a tenant has been granted a full assured tenancy, he should have the benefit of long-term security of tenure of a kind broadly comparable to that currently available under the Rent Act 1977. We accept that an unscrupulous landlord might try to undermine that protection for the tenant by persuading him to accept a new tenancy that was designed by virtue of the shorthold procedures as a shorthold. An unwary tenant might agree to such a proposal without realising its full significance and thus forfeit his long-term security.
      We believe that it is right to guard against that outcome by providing that a tenancy cannot qualify as a shorthold tenancy where it is granted to someone who was hitherto a full assured tenant and where the landlord immediately beforehand was the same person as the landlord granting the new tenancy. That is the purpose of amendments Nos. 33 and 34.
      Amendment No. 229 has the same objective, but is unnecessary. Although I do not want to criticise, because the Government should have more drafting resources at their command, amendment No. 229 is slightly less generous because the shorthold prohibition would be confined to the accommodation currently occupied by the assured tenant. Under the Government's amendment, prohibition would apply to any property where the landlord is the same person.
      Amendment No. 229 is unnecessary for an interesting reason. As the law stands, it would be technically impossible for a secure tenant transferring to a private landlord to be granted a legal shorthold tenancy. The landlord taking over public sector housing would not be able to grant legal tenancies to the occupants until the point at which he becomes a landlord—in other words, until he acquires a legal interest in the property. The instant that he becomes the landlord, he will be the landlord of an assured tenancy provided that the relevant conditions have been fulfilled under clause 36. There is a continuum. There is no time at which a shorthold can be inserted deliberately or by mistake.
      By virtue of amendment No. 34, once the tenant has become an assured tenant, it would be possible for him to be granted a shorthold tenancy afterwards. There is

      1069
      protection and I hope that the hon. Member for Hammersmith will believe that we have met the spirit of what he is trying to do.
      Mr. Soley: I must confess that this is one of the third categories of commitment from the Minister. He said that he would consider the matter and he has gone further and accepted our proposal. Amendment No. 229 raises questions about the secure tenancy. I understand what the Minister has said. I will think about his comments because this is obviously a more technical matter than I had thought initially. Obviously that precludes returning to this other than in another place. However, I understand what the Minister says.
      Amendment agreed to.
      Amendments made: No.26, in page 12, line 44, leave out from 'prescribed' to end of line 45.
      No. 34, in page 13, line 5, at end insert—
      `(2A) Notwithstanding anything in subsection (1) above, where—

      (a) immediately before a tenancy (in this subsection referred to as "the new tenancy") is granted, the person to whom it is granted or, as the case may be, at least one of the persons to whom it is granted was a tenant under an assured tenancy which was not a shorthold tenancy, and

      (b) the new tenancy is granted by the person who, immediately before the beginning of the tenancy, was the landlord under the assured tenancy referred to in paragraph (a) above.

      the new tenancy cannot be an assured shorthold tenancy.'—[Mr. Waldegravel.]

    Clause 20

      REFERENCE OF EXCESSIVE RENTS TO RENT ASSESSMENT COMMITTEE
      Mr. Waldegrave: I beg to move amendment No. 35, in page 14, line 20, leave out 'similar tenancies' and insert 'assured tenancies (whether shorthold or not)'.
      Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to consider Government amendments Nos. 36 and 37.
      Mr. Waldegrave: These amendments relate to the basis on which the rent under a shorthold tenancy can be referred to the rent assessment committee and under which the committee can make a determination of rent under that tenancy if it considers it right. The procedure in clause 20 as drafted centres on a comparison between the rent payable under the shorthold tenancy in question and the rent payable under similar tenancies of similar dwelling houses elsewhere in the locality.
      The effect would be to require that the rent payable under the shorthold be considered by reference only to rent payable under other shorthold tenancies. That point was argued in the Housing (Scotland) Bill. We have thought more about the matter and have concluded that the procedure is unnecessarily restrictive. It would seem right that, in considering the rent under a shorthold tenancy, the rent assessment committee should have the freedom to look at the evidence of other shortholds and that of the generality of assured tenancies, whether shorthold or not.
      That will provide a wider frame of reference against which the shorthold rent can be assessed in particular, bearing in mind that one might expect shorthold rents to emerge at a somewhat lower level in many places than those for full assured tenancies. The new approach would
      1070
      enable the rent assessment committee to reduce the shorthold rent in a case where there was no evidence available in respect of other shortholds, but where it was clear that the rent in question was none the less significantly above the prevailing rent levels for assured tenancies. It would be odd if the rent assessment committee could not do that.
      The procedure as amended will of course still require that the comparison be confined to tenancies of similar properties in the locality, but the change will introduce a wider degree of flexibility into the arrangements for reviewing shorthold rents. That can only work to the advantage of the shorthold tenant who has committed himself to paying rent which is clearly unreasonable in market terms. I hope on that basis that the amendment will meet with the approval of the House.
      Amendment agreed to.
      Mr. Grist: I beg to move amendment No. 77, in page 14, line 27, leave out 'or section 13 above'.
      This is a simple drafting amendment designed to delete from clause 20(2)(a) the cross-reference to clause 13. That reference is now redundant as a result of new subsection 20(2)(b) which was inserted in Committee.
      Amendment agreed to.
      Amendments made: No. 36, in page 14, line 36, leave out 'of similar tenancies'.
      No. 37, in page 14, line 37, after 'locality', insert
      'let on assured tenancies (whether shorthold or not)'.—[Mr. Waldegrave.]
      Mr. Grist: I beg to move amendment No. 78, in page 15, line 6, at end insert
      'and, accordingly, where subsection (4) of that section applies, any reference in subsection (4)(b) above to rent is a reference to rent exclusive of the amount attributable to rates'.
      This is a purely technical amendment. Clause 20(5) extends to determinations of rent under clause 20 the provisions in clause 13 regarding the treatment of rates. The amendment simply inserts into clause 20 the necessary consequential reference to rates similar to a reference already included in the corresponding provision in clause 13.
      Amendment agreed to.

    Schedule 3

      AGRICULTURAL WORKER CONDITIONS
      Mr. Waldegrave: I beg to move amendment No. 38, in page 84, line 34 after 'residing', insert 'in the dwelling-house'.
      Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendments Nos. 39 and 71.
      Mr. Waldegrave: Again, I hope that there will be no disagreement over this amendment. Schedule 3 describes the conditions that must be fulfilled for a tenancy or licence to qualify as an assured agricultural occupancy. I am not an expert on this because when the Committee discussed these matters I was engaged in the same kind of activity as that engaged in recently by the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley).
      The agricultural worker condition may be fulfilled if the property concerned is occupied by the widow or widower of an assured agricultural occupancy on that person's death. Amendment No. 39 provides that a person living with the tenant as husband or wife shall be treated as a

      1071
      widow or widower in such a case. It brings the provision into line with changes that we are making elsewhere in the Bill by putting the unmarried partner on the same footing as the legal spouse.
      Amendment No. 38 is essentially a drafting amendment to make it clear that, where it is a qualifying family member who may meet the agricultural worker condition, that family member must have been living in the property.
      Amendment agreed to.
      Amendments made: No. 39, in page 84, line 45 at end insert—
      `(5) For the purposes of the preceding provisions of this paragraph a person who, immediately before the previous occupier's death, was living with the previous occupier as his or her wife or husband shall be treated as the widow or widower of the previous occupier.'
      No. 71, in page 84, line 50, at end insert `and'.—[Mr. Waldegrave.]

    Clause 25

      DAMAGES FOR UNLAWFUL EVICTION
      Mr. Waldegrave: I beg to move amendment No. 262, in page 16, line 36, leave out
      `or any person acting on his behalf'
      and insert
      `(in this section referred to as "the landlord in default") or any person acting on behalf of the landlord in default'.
      Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendments Nos. 263 to 267, 269, 271 and 273.
      Mr. Waldegrave: This important group of amendments deals with strengthened powers to deal with harassment and related matters.
      Clauses 25 and 26 provide a new civil right to compensation for a tenant who has been unlawfully evicted by his landlords or the landlord's agent. The compensation is based on the difference in the value of the landlord's interest in the building with and without the tenant. In Committee we undertook to widen those clauses to catch cases in which the eviction was carried out by a superior landlord or someone acting on his behalf. That could happen.
      The amendments discharge that undertaking. They will be of particular help in cases where the superior landlord is about to require the reversion of the tenancy and therefore might have a large financial interest in getting the tenant out. The amendments will ensure that in those circumstances the tenant can benefit from any increase in the value of the superior landlord's interest in the building as a result of the eviction.
      I hope that the House will forgive me if I say a few words about anti-harassment in general as an introduction to this group of amendments. We must ensure that landlords who harass their tenants do not profit from it. There has been widespread support for the measures in the Bill to strengthen the provisions, and for the new right to civil damages. The amendments will reinforce the provisions to which I have just referred. We intend to introduce amendments to widen the scope of clause 25 and to extend the basis on which damages are assessed under clause 26 to include development value and to widen the new criminal offence of harassment in clause 27. The hon.
      1072
      Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) will probably welcome those amendments, although in some respects he may want us to go further.
      8.30 pm
      All the amendments strengthen the Bill and I am happy to acknowledge that in part they are due to the constructive criticisms that were made in Committee by both sides, many of them by Opposition Members. It is right that I should acknowledge that my officials have had a great deal of assistance from Shelter, the private tenants rights group, the Association of Tenancy Relations Officers and the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux. They have all made suggestions about how the Bill could be improved and, equally important, how it could be effectively enforced. Enforcement is important. We intend to mount a wide publicity campaign to tell tenants about the new provisions and about their rights generally. We must also discuss with local authorities how these matters can be carried forward.
      Some landlords are so negligent in carrying out repairs that their failure to repair could clearly be interpreted as an attempt to drive out the tenant by neglect. In Committee I said that we intended to introduce amendments in another place. They have to be introduced in another place for reasons that I think the hon. Member for Hammersmith understands. They will strengthen local authorities' powers to get repairs done.
      Some of the amendments will entail redefining the person who has control of the property in order to counter evasion. We intend also to amend the relevant sections of part XI of the Housing Act 1985 that deal with similar notices served on the owners of houses in multiple occupation in order to counter evasion of those notices by landlords. All the amendments will prove valuable in reinforcing the considerable powers that local authorities already possess.
      Local authorities have powers, but tenants also have wide powers. It is not the absence of rights that prevents tenants from enforcing rights concerning repairs; it is often the cost and the fear of going to court. That is why we all welcome the proposals in the report of the Lord Chancellor's review body on civil justice, published on 7 June, for housing action as a low cost, informal method of bringing cases such as repairs to court.
      Much of the disreputable activity with which these clauses are designed to deal takes place in houses that are in multiple occupation. Many of the poorest and most vulnerable members of society live in houses in multiple occupation, as our own research has shown. Local authorities have wide powers to deal with the poor conditions that are found in HMOs. They may repair them. They may set up a registration scheme to keep track of HMOs in their areas. They may impose management orders. They may also, where conditions are very bad, impose control orders. There is an environmental health adviser in the Department. He is touring the country and talking to local authorities to find out how these powers work in practice. It is clear that they could be improved in several respects.
      My Department will be consulting local authorities and other interested organisations on a series of proposals to which we hope to give effect in the next Housing Bill. I think that I should be legitimately criticised if I introduced at this late stage a series of amendments that related to HMOs.

      1073
      However, I wanted to address these points because a number of hon. Members, in particular the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. Morgan), made a number of them in Committee and I did not want him to think that we had forgotten about them. We shall propose a revised definition of an HMO. We shall propose that the management regulations on HMOs that apply basic minimum standards should apply to all HMOs. We shall also make proposals for simplifying and improving the control order procedure. We shall consult local authorities on the means of making the registration scheme more effective.
      I have mentioned the control order procedure. Our guidance to local authorities will make it clear that the control order procedure and their compulsory purchase powers can be used in bad cases of harassment. Some local authorities have already successfully used those powers. I hope that the effect of the new provisions will be that there is a reduced need to consider such draconian steps in future. but the powers are there and we shall make sure that local authorities realise fully how many of them can be used.
      I hope that the hon. Member for Hammersmith will forgive me for straying outside the scope of the amendments under discussion. I am aware that not all the problems have been tackled by these amendments. That is why I wanted slightly to widen the debate and to let him know that in due course we shall be consulting local authorities on HMO improvements. I hope that they will meet some of the points that he and his hon. Friends raised in Committee.
      Mr. Soley: The Minister has conceded some of the points that we made in Committee, for which I am grateful. He has also said that he is willing to take action on houses in multiple occupation. They are an acute cause of concern. We shall await his proposals. However, we fear that the Government have underestimated the problems that a tenant faces in taking legal action. If he is faced with the threat of eviction, that alone is sufficient to make him drop any action that is designed to challenge the landlord. If he is in imminent danger of being evicted and he is successfully evicted and made homeless, the chances of him being able successfully to pursue a court case, however quick and easy that process may be, are minimal. We have to bear in mind the changes that are being made to legal aid. Not all these cases will be dealt with under the civil system that has been recommended by the Lord Chancellor. If one bears in mind the proposed changes to legal aid, some people will be in acute difficulties. All the evidence is that tenants have great difficulty in successfully pursuing actions against landlords. They are often better represented and they have far more money and stability with which to fight their case.
      It was pointed out in Committee that it is not sufficient to talk about powers for local authorities. We need to talk about their duties. If a tenant goes to a local authority and says, "I am being harassed," and the local authority says to him, "We are sorry, but we do not have a tenancy relations officer, but you can see the environmental health officer, if you like," the environmental health officer will say to the tenant, "There are only one or two of us; we look into health factors in shops and factories and we do not have time to pursue your case." That tenant will therefore be left without any outside support. It happens in case after case. That is why we should prefer the
      1074
      amendment that is to be introduced in the other place to impose on local authorities a duty rather than just give them a power.
      We shall want to look in detail at the amendment that is to be introduced in the other place. I hope that the Minister will take on board some of our anxieties. I hope that he will ensure that local authorities have both the power to act and the resources with which to deliver that action, thereby making it effective for a tenant to go to his local authority. By doing so, he will make life in his rented home very much more difficult than if he had done nothing.
      Mr. Squire: A great deal of attention was rightly devoted in Committee to the clauses that deal with tightening up of the action that can be taken against rogue landlords. As my hon. Friend the Minister said, there was concern about this problem on both sides of the Committee. What he has said today will therefore be welcomed both inside and outside the House. Any tightening up that makes it less likely that tenants will be harassed and driven from their rightful home has to be welcomed.
      I have been a member of the board of Shelter for six or seven years and I am grateful that my hon. Friend paid tribute to the help that Shelter has given to the Department. He is sufficiently realistic to know that the help that is being given is unlikely to remove all the reservations that Shelter has about the Bill, but I am having fruitful discussions with Shelter about its reservations. It is an important step, welcomed by Shelter and by many other organisations in housing.
      The Minister mentioned houses in multiple occupation. In many cases the position is so bad that we would again find common ground across the Chamber if the Government introduced legislation to tackle the very worst at the earliest opportunity as many people live in the most squalid conditions imaginable. I look forward to seeing the detailed proposals that the Government have undertaken to introduce.
      Amendment agreed to.
      Amendment made: No. 263, in page 16, line 40, leave out
      `or any person on his behalf'
      and insert
      '(in this section referred to as "the landlord in default") or any person acting on behalf of the landlord in default'.
      Mr. Tony Banks: I beg to move amendment No. 199, in page 16, line 44, leave out from the beginning to 'to' in line 3 on page 17 and insert—
      (b) commits any act, or omits to act, or pursues a course of conduct which act, omission or course of conduct is likely to cause the residential occupier of any premises either—

      (i) to give up his occupation of the premises or any part thereof, or

      (ii) to refrain from exercising any right or pursuing any remedy in respect of the premises or any part thereof,

      and such act, omission or course of conduct is likely'
      Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): With this it will be convenient to take the following: Government amendment No. 295, amendment No. 200, in page 17, line 34, leave out from 'that' to end of line 39 and insert
      `the act, omission or course of conduct was the only means by which in all the circumstances he could have secured the health safety and welfare of the residential occupier, or that of

      1075
      the residential occupier of adjacent premises whilst making the least possible infringement of any part of this section in respect of the residential occupier.'
      Government amendments Nos. 296 and 297 and amendment No. 201, in page 17, line 39, at end insert—
      '(7A) It should be a defence for such a person to show that the act, omission or course of conduct occurred wholly accidently.
      Mr. Banks: As the Minister said, we are dealing with the provisions of the Bill that cover harassment and the illegal eviction of private tenants. Notwithstanding the Minister's remarks and the support given by his hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Squire), Labour Members do not believe that the Government amendments match the promises and good intentions stated in Committee. I do not deny that the Minister has many good intentions in that respect; as Tories go, he is quite a decent sort of fellow. That is probably why he is not going to last much longer at the Department of the Environment. I am sure that one of the main reasons for the excessively large gap between the end of the Committee stage and the beginning of the Report stage is that the Minister has been fighting the Secretary of State tooth and nail to try to give some semblance of reality to the promises that he made in Committee. He has undoubtedly won some minor victories. However, whereas the Minister says that the amendments afford private tenants protection against harassment and illegal eviction, we are absolutely convinced that they do not go far enough to realise the assurances that the Minister gave.
      The Government are making much of their stated commitment to make war on bad landlords. I congratulate the Minister on his excellent manipulation of the press in his campaign recently. It would seem that his ability to get good publicity rivals only my own. I read in yesterday's edition of The Guardian, under the heading "Tenants Rights Strengthened", that the Minister was to give tenants new rights. Members of the press would do well to examine the wording of the legislation, which constitutes the enactment of the Government's promises. Of course, I understand that the average journalist was not at the front of the queue when brains were being handed out but if journalists read the Bill and the Government's amendments carefully they will realise that the Government's promises simply do not ring true. I believe that it will be just as hard to prove harassment and illegal eviction and gain compensation for the victims of those evils after the Bill becomes law as it was before.
      8.45 pm
      In addition, we should bear in mind the Bill's main thrust. It will decontrol the private rented market so that on new lettings landlords will be able to give short-term security under the new regime. They will be able to make shorthold lettings and charge market rents. When a landlord owns two houses side by side, one with a protected tenancy with a fair rent of, say, £40 a week and one with a new shorthold letting at, say £90 a week, there will be a temptation, although I put it no higher than that, to encourage the protected tenant to leave. Some landlords step well over that boundary of temptation and adopt courses of action deliberately designed to get the protected tenants out so that they can charge higher rents.
      1076
      Hon. Members should bear in mind that that is exactly what happened in 1957 when the Government decontrolled the market in the Rent Act of that year. Many hon. Members have spoken of accounts of the promises and assurances given when that Bill was approaching the statute book. The 1957 Act did not cause a flood of new private rented accommodation to become available. As we know to our cost, and the Government now admit to their shame, it caused a massive increase in harassment epitomised by that evil person, Rachman.
      When I spoke to the Opposition's amendments in Committee I began by quoting ministerial statements that showed, as I thought at the time, an honest intention on Ministers' part to tackle the problems of harassment and illegal eviction. On 12 January the Minister said:
      "Bad landlords are in a minority but they form a significant group that must be dealt with."
      He went on to say:
      "We are agreed on the objective of trying to make life harder for bad landlords".—[Official Report, Standing Committee G, 12 January 1988; c. 73–76.]
      It would appear that we were in agreement in words only because the undertakings given by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State that she would examine the concerns expressed in our amendments in Committee do not appear to have given rise to any Government amendment that really answers those concerns. I am not surprised that the Parliamentary Under-Secretary has been packed off to Finland. I do not know what she is doing there; perhaps she is studying igloo construction in case there is another winter of discontent. Frankly, our proceedings do not really suffer from the absence of Madam Woodentop. She gave assurances in her hurried attempts to move quickly on to the next brief, to which she stuck rigidly. But perhaps it is rather inelegant to think of the Under-Secretary sticking rigidly to her briefs. She could not understand what was going on. She made promises, hoping that we would then take the heat off and in many cases, in our naivety and gullibility, we believed her, just as we believed the Minister for Housing and Planning. What a lot of trouble that has got us into
      Clauses 25 and 26 relate to a new civil claim for damages that arises if certain things happen: it must be a landlord or his agent who acts; the landlord or agent must commit a positive act; that act must interfere with the peace and comfort of the residential occupier; the tenant has to prove that that act was committed with the intention of getting him or her to leave; and finally, as a result of that act, the tenant must actually have left. When all those conditions are proven, a claim for damages arises. As the Minister said, that claim amounts to the difference between the value of the house with tenants and its value with vacant possession. The idea behind that, which Opposition Members fully support, is to confiscate from the landlord the profit from his crime.
      We must examine, however, where private tenants' difficulties really lie. I am anxious that the two clauses that create the new claim for damages were frequently used by the Under-Secretary of State as a justification for not tightening the criminal law which we shall be considering under new clause 27. In implying that it would be easy for the tenant to obtain massive amounts of compensation by walking out of his or her accommodation and complaining of some trivial matter, she showed no understanding of harassment and illegal eviction. That is not really surprising, as she comes from Broxbourne. If she came to

      1077
      the London borough of Newham she would see what harassment and illegal eviction mean to people in areas such as the east end of London. As I said, the hon. Lady showed little understanding of the Bill. She certainly showed no understanding of proceedings in court or of the insurmountable difficulties that many tenants face in trying to get any justice whatever from the courts.
      The amendments draw attention to the holes in the clause as drafted. One of the problems that we have identified is addressed in amendment No. 199. In the clause as drafted, the landlord must commit a positive act that interferes with the peace and comfort of the tenant and forces him or her to leave the accommodation. I have come across many examples of harassment in my constituency in which no positive act has been involved but the landlord has nevertheless managed to make life extremely uncomfortable for the tenant. I quoted many examples in Committee drawn from my experience in the London borough of Newham. I intend to give a couple more this evening. I shall give only the first initial of the surname but the cases have all come from our housing officers.
      Mrs. O is three months pregnant and lives with her husband and child in two rooms in a house in multiple occupation. There is plenty of evidence that the landlord intends her to leave. He has sent letters telling her to leave. He talks loudly in the hallway to other members of his family saying things such as, "I am not having these people in my house. I will get them out one way or another." There are no positive acts that can be linked to that intention. For example, he insists on the rent being paid in cash and will not give her a rent book. The law as it currently stands obliges landlords to supply rent books only to weekly tenants. That is absurd, as I am sure the Minister would agree. That landlord has ripped off the wallpaper in the hallway, has refused to repair the toilet, which does not flush, has refused to pay the gas bill and, as a result, the gas has been disconnected. Indeed, the gas bill was so high that the local authority refused to use its powers under the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982 to restore the supply. The electricity bill was not paid but, in that instance, the local authority did step in to ensure that the supply continued. Only last week the tenant received a letter from the Thames water authority threatening to distrain for non-payment of the water rates.
      All those elements of the harassment of Mrs. O are omissions rather than acts. As we know, courts are interpreters of the literal word of the law in question. They pay no regard to well-intended verbiage from Ministers in Parliament. We know that judges are not permitted to look at Hansard in order to see what was in the minds of Ministers. They would be hard put to find that out as regards the Under-Secretary of State. However, they cannot find out the intentions behind legislation. All they can do is interpret the words of the legislation as it is presented to them.
      The first aim of our amendment is to ensure that omissions as well as commissions fall within the remit of the definition of illegal eviction.
      Another case in my constituency which did not result in prosecution by the local authority involved a tenant who went into hospital during complications in her pregnancy. While she was away the landlord removed the toilet. When she was to be discharged, the landlord refused to restore the amenities. An omission is not an offence in the criminal
      1078
      law as it stands and, subsequently, no action was taken. The hospital could not allow her to go back into her former accommodation because of the state of it. Therefore, after contacting the local authority the council picked up the client as homeless. The much-maligned local authorities, with all the responsibilities they continually receive from Government, also suffer criticisms and attacks from the Government and journalists.
      In the end, it is the local authority that has to pick up the mess created by the social and economic policies of the Government. For example, I noticed that someone was evicted from a property owned by the Prince of Wales. The spokesperson for the Prince of Wales—I am sure that the Prince would not have agreed—said, "It is not our responsibility. Those people were in the accommodation illegally and were squatting." That is now a matter for the local authority and they will be housed as homeless. That is the attitude that even so-called responsible landlords take. One can well imagine the attitude that will be taken by the landlords who will be encouraged by this Bill if it becomes law.
      Mr. Winnick: Does my hon. Friend agree that the possibility of harassment along the lines of the cases he has illustrated will become more acute? There are regulated tenants who, quite rightly, have the protection of the law under the Bill. However, once those tenants leave, the property will become deregulated and, as I said earlier, there is every opportunity and every incentive for would-be Rachmans to get the regulated tenants out. Once the accommodation is empty, it can be let at market rents or more or sold off with vacant possession.
      Mr. Banks: My hon. Friend knows the Bill well and is an expert on housing. He is absolutely correct. I hope that he will spend some time pointing that out to journalists on The Guardian, who seem to be blinded by the Minister's charisma and ability to dress-up the unacceptable in a way that makes them believe that he has gained great victories for the protection of private tenants when he has done nothing of the sort.
      I do not wish to confuse hon. Members by referring to the criminal law and civil law together as if the burden of proof in each case was the same. However, the definition of harassment in both has proved to have common problems when it comes to proving cases in court
      Another change proposed by our amendment is that it would include a course of conduct in the list of things that the court may consider, when taken together, to amount to harassment. A case in point occurred in Camden. I have quoted the case before. It involved daily actions of a landlord which wore down the nerves of a middle-aged lady tenant. There were instances where he peered through her windows, stored bicycles in her hallway, complained that she was opening the windows when they should be shut and that they were shut when they should be open. Not one of those incidents would amount to harassment within the definition in clause 25. However, put together they made that tenant's life hell. That is the sort of thing that landlords will get up to. If the Minister is serious about trying to do something about harassment and preventing illegal eviction, he should address his mind to such things. Such things are covered in our amendment.
      The second improvement that our amendment brings to clause 25 is that, instead of requiring the tenant to prove that the landlord intended that the tenant should leave, it

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      will be sufficient for the tenant to show that the acts or omissions that constitute harassment were likely to cause a residential occupier to leave.
      I should mention Government amendment No. 295 which was tabled yesterday. Think about it, Mr. Deputy Speaker. We came out of Committee on 15 March and amendments were being tabled yesterday. What was the reason for the delay if it was not to try to blind us with the sheer weight of the amendments and hope that we would allow these things to go through unchallenged?
      Mr. Boateng: Will my hon. Friend give way?
      Mr. Banks: I know what my hon. Friend is going to say but I do not think I will be able to agree with him.
      Mr. Boateng: My hon. Friend attributes malice to the Minister. He might do just as well to attribute incompetence to him and those who serve him.
      Mr. Banks: I knew that I would disagree with my hon. Friend. I do not think that the Minister is incompetent. He has many incompetent people around him and his boss, the Secretary of State, is a paragon of incompetence. I believe that there is malice in this. Before you were fortunate enough to come into the Chamber, Mr. Deputy Speaker, we had a great deal of discussion about the fact that this Report stage is not a Report stage in the way that we constitutionally understood a Report stage to be. It is a re-run of the Committee stage. We are considering many matters that were not raised in Committee. I do not want to open up that old wound again. I have no doubt we shall return to it later.
      Government amendment No. 295, which was tabled so late yesterday, goes some way down the road that we should like to take. I assume that that is why the Minister was locked in some arm-wrestling with the Secretary of State to table it. We know that the Secretary of State considers the Minister to be an unspeakable wet and a weakling who should be moved over as fast as possible. On that score, the Minister has our complete support. We shall stand shoulder to shoulder with him to resist the Secretary of State.
      Government amendment No. 295 removes from clause 25 the most difficult test of requiring the tenant to prove that the landlord intended him to leave. It still requires the tenant to show the landlord's state of mind and that the landlord knew or had reasonable cause to believe that his conduct would cause the tenant to leave. I am pleased that the Government have taken this road, and I hope that they will be able to accept the rest of our argument about the amendment.
      I want amendment No. 200 to be regarded as drawing attention to the looseness of the drafting of clause 25. The Government have promised much action against bad landlords and have been getting an unfairly favourable press about it. When the Government's promises are analysed in the text of the Bill, they do not amount to much.
      9 pm
      Clause 25(7) allows the landlord to raise the defence that he had reasonable cause to believe that the tenant had ceased to reside in the premises. Suppose the landlord waits until the tenant goes on holiday and writes a letter saying: "I think that you have left. If you do not respond
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      within seven days, I shall assume that you have abandoned the premises." He might ask the neighbours "Have you seen Mr. and Mrs. Y?" Does he have reasonable cause to believe that they have left? I hope that the Minister will answer that question, because we need to be able to test the strength of the Government's intentions.
      If the landlord has reasonable cause to believe that the tenant has left, he can change the locks, store the tenant's belongings and gain possession. This does not seem to be adequate law. We are asking for the defence that the landlord can raise to be restricted, first, to occasions when he can say that his actions were for the health, safety or welfare of the occupants or neighbours, or, secondly, to occasions when he can say that his actions were wholly accidental, as we propose in amendment No. 201.
      In Committee, the Under-Secretary expressed concern that the landlord might need to disconnect services to carry out building works. The Under-Secretary had simple faith in the good intentions of all landlords. She thought that when a landlord broke down the door and regained possession he would do so merely as the act of a kind and charitable person to redecorate the house while the tenant was on holiday. I hope that our amendment will address this problem. It clearly states that where works are necessary to safeguard
      "the health, safety and welfare" of the occupiers or neighbours, that will be an absolute defence to a claim for compensation.
      Government amendments Nos. 296 and 297 also apply to this part of the Bill.
      Harassment and illegal evictions are evils that strike at the heart of a tenant's well-being, comfort, health and security. A person cannot possibly concentrate on work, study, family or leisure if he is constantly in fear of losing his home because of unscrupulous speculation by his landlord. There are many bad landlords. We give examples of only one or two of them, such as Rachman. Rachmanism is alive and well and living in the east end and other parts of London. Indeed, he will thrive and prosper because of the Bill,
      If the Minister and the Government are sincere in their wish to control unscrupulous landlords, they should recognise the failings of their proposals to deal with them and honour the commitments that the Minister gave time after time in Committee to strengthen the powers of the law to control the activities of such undesirable people. The Bill will give free rein to bad landlords
      Mr. Simon Hughes; The case for strong law against bad landlords is overwhelming. It is more overwhelming when the rewards to be gained by them are greater. That is the reality of part 1 of the Bill. It will allow landlords to let at enormous rents and to obtain complete possession for development without the courts having discretion. Unless we have completely sound regulations, they will be able to continue to get away with harassment.
      The debate is about one issue—where one draws the line in relation to harassment. Amendment No. 199 effectively makes the test objective. It suggests that we insert into clause 25 words that will enable the court to judge whether the act, omission or course of conduct of the landlord is likely to cause somebody to depart.
      By contrast, Government amendment No. 95, which I accept is a slight improvement, leaves the test in the mind and therefore subjective in terms of the landlord. The

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      court would still have to find that the landlord knew or had reasonable cause to believe that his conduct was likely to be effective harassment of the tenant.
      Absentee landlords or those employing agents or a series of people to "look after" their property could still get away with the sort of activity that I hope the whole House would condemn. That will happen if we do not have a much harder objective test. Although I accept and welcome the concession, a harsher and more objective test is still compatible with what the Minister would wish to see.
      Some people leave premises not because of one horrendous event. They do not leave because the landlord came in and issued a single overwhelming threat; nor do they leave because of an incident in the middle of the night. Many of them leave as a result of the cumulative effect of the unacceptable behaviour of the landlord or his agents. Our key task is to make sure we give the courts power to say that any interference with what the common law of England calls the quiet enjoyment of tenants is unacceptable and should allow action and criminal proceeding to be taken against the landlord.
      Mr. Boateng: One of the great evils of the legislation that we are considering and which we mulled over for many hours in Committee is not only that it fails to address the difficulties and problems in establishing sufficient grounds to secure conviction in the case of alleged harassment, but that it creates an atmosphere and an environment in which there is every incentive in terms of profit for the bad landlord to flourish. My hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) showed that quite clearly in his speech. It is in that context that we must look at the amendment and the evil and the mischief that it seeks to address.
      When we do that we talk often about Rachman and hark back to a period in the 1950s and 1960s when that landlord was at the height of his infamy. In doing that we overlook the fact that many modern Rachmans are out and about and doing their work in London—even without the provisions in the Bill. That gives us cause for concern about what they are likely to do if the Bill becomes law. If we are unable effectively to control them at present, how can we control them when they are unleashed with the expectation of the profit that the Bill holds out to them?
      No doubt the Minister of State has brought forward his safeguards in all good faith, but they will have very little effect. The constraints that exist in the Bill as it stands will not be sufficient to restrain bad landlords. While not going into areas that have already been examined by a jury, it is right that we should name and expose those who are in the business of exploiting and oppressing their tenants—the modern successors to Rachman.
      It is right that I should name in this place the landlord who is by far the worst. He is a man called Hoogstraten, who has terrorised a whole section of our community in London by his actions. In relation to the particular incident that I shall relate to the House, I am indebted to the London Housing Forum for its excellent publication "Speaking Out", which gives a voice to the people of London in exposing men such as Hoogstraten. Ms. H, whose case I shall refer to, is entitled to be heard. We must learn lessons from her experience:
      "Ms. H moved to her flat in Edgware Road, Westminster, as a short-term leaseholder only to discover that her head leaseholder was the notorious Hoogstraten.
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      The dispute between them began when the head leaseholder claimed rights over the garden area which has exclusively been used by the occupiers of Ms. H's present flat for the last 20 years, and is included on the land registry map of her flat".
      Mr. Hoogstraten has a henchman named Bradshaw, who
      "acquired the flat below Ms. H by harassing an elderly man out of the property, who still continued to pay rent, even until his death, though he was not living there. Harassment to persuade Ms. H to give up her rights to the garden then began."
      All they wanted was her garden. They had to harass this woman of 20 years' occupancy to get it. Ms. H says this about Mr. Hoogstraten:
      "Hoogstraten pushed me and spat in my face, he then pushed me towards my garden door. He accused me of being a prostitute, a cow and a slut. Mr. Bradshaw then said, am moving down there' and pointed to flat A. He also said, `when I move in your life won't be worth living'. I was in a state of shock."
      Since that initial meeting between Ms. H, Bradshaw and Hoogstraten,
      "other threats and incidents occurred. These have included threats of her 'ending up in a wheelchair', being nailed into her flat with 8" nails, with threats of `cementing her in' to follow. `Bradshaw was constantly banging on my window and doors and threatening me'. One time Bradshaw started piling furniture up outside her backdoor. Ms. H and a friend tried photographing these events by climbing up on to the roof. Bradshaw spotted them and hurled a massive slab of concrete at them. They turned and ducked but it hurt Mr. W's hand, who was consequently badly injured."
      Ms. H further said:
      "Ever since I met Mr. Hoogstraten and Mr. Bradshaw, I have been in constant fear of their action. I believe their conduct is designed to make me surrender my right to use the rear garden and even to induce me to leave my flat and live elsewhere. As a result of the actions of these two men I have stayed away from my home, lodging with friends, initially for about 6 weeks, and then returning to the flat for a short time only. In addition since the incidents began my health has suffered and most recently has been worsened because of the stress and fear I have to endure."
      I do not believe for one moment that Ms. H is alone in her complaints against Hoogstraten. There will also be complaints against all the mini-Hoogstratens in our metropolis.
      Finally, someone from Westminster council went to examine her flat. When he met Bradshaw, what did Bradshaw do? Men such as Bradshaw and Hoogstraten are so arrogant in their activities in our city that Bradshaw spat in the face of the representative of Westminster city council.
      Following this particular incident, two years after all this began, Westminster council at last took action. However, it failed properly to draft the charge. As a result of that, it dropped the case. Ms. H says:
      "I was completely devastated because if we'd got a conviction you feel like you've got protection, but this is like saying that nothing has happened, so carry on harassing".
      That was Ms. H's experience as she told it to the inquiry of the London Housing Forum. It highlights the Hoogstratens and Bradshaws of this world. Something should be done about such people. They should be named in our newspapers. All sorts of things appear in our newspapers, but not often enough the names of the Hoogstratens and Bradshaws. They should be exposed.
      9.15 pm
      That evidence not only reveals the activities of those people but says something about the need to ensure that local authorities are in a proper position to respond to

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      such evils and that they get their act together, not only in terms of efficiency, but in terms of the way in which such matters are prosecuted and the zeal with which they are prosecuted, and to ensure that they have the resources to do that.
      The reality is that, whatever we pass tonight and even if the Bill is amended at this late stage by the Minister of State accepting our amendment as we urge him to do in London and throughout the country, legal departments, tenancy relations departments and the sections of housing departments that deal specifically with the private sector are being cut, cut and cut again. Unless that is stopped, there is no hope of even putting people in the appalling bed-and-breakfast accommodation in which council's are obliged to place them.
      The Minister of State has had cause to say good things about my borough and about the way in which it tries to deal with the problem of homelessness. However, in my borough, the section of the council that deals with private sector housing is facing a cut of more than 60 per cent. in its budget and in the resources that are available to the council for dealing with the problems of private tenants. That is the result of the Government's policies relating to local authorities and their resources. The least that the Government can do on behalf of the people who suffer harassment in the private sector is accept our amendment. We would then not only have rhetoric against the Hoogstratens and the Bradshaws of this world; we would have action also.
      Mr. Spearing: My hon. Friends the Members for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) and for Brent, South (Mr. Boateng) have provided an incontrovertible case for accepting what is, after all, only a modest change to the provisions whereby acts of omission can be included in the court proceedings.
      I want to put to the Minister and the House what I believe to be the bare bones of the situation. They must be spelt out because hon. Members and anybody who has listened to the debate must have been gripped by the examples that have been given by my hon. Friends the Members for Newham, North-West and for Brent, South of the relatively small incentives that exist for landlords to get people out of their accommodation.
      Clearly, the purpose behind the Bill is greatly to enlarge the differentials between different types of tenure and, therefore, automatically greatly to increase the incentives to people who may be able to change the tenure of one piece of accommodation with a sitting tenant. Those will be the results if the Bill is enacted. That is the logic of the Bill, which, as we demonstrated in Committee, does not provide or encourage the building of any further accommodation. Therefore, the differentials will increase and the premium on a "void", as I believe it is technically known in the housing world, will be that much greater. If I can use a well-known word to the Government, the return or reward for "enterprise" will be vastly enhanced.
      I started to be involved in politics at a constituency level before the Milner Holland report and before the operations of Mr. Rachman and his cohorts were halted. I hope that the Minister will tell us how far the recommendations of that report will be covered by the Bill. The matter may have been discussed in Committee, but unless the findings of the Milner Holland committee are
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      properly covered, and I very much doubt that they were, what is to prevent a return of the terrible things that happened in the late 1950s which were uncovered by that report?
      I remind the Government that much of the Rachman operation happened in north Kensington, a place where political questions will be raised and choices made very shortly. It will be a good thing for some people to look at the Milner Holland report and see what was going on then. Will the Minister say whether the new law will cover the recommendations of that report?
      I was involved in trying to help people who were being harassed. My hon. Friends have mentioned one or two examples. All sorts of relatively small things can happen. If I were a landlord, I might well be able to tell the tenant that I wanted to inspect the property or come in to see whether I was going to put in some new cupboards. I might go along at 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock at night or send along someone to whom I had given a letter of authority.
      There are terrible problems with multi-occupancy. Multi-occupancy may not be quite as common as it once was, but many council houses still in municipal ownership which were bought up quite properly to house the homeless are multi-occupied and if they revert to private ownership, multi-occupancy and the evils that go with it in respect of harassment will return. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, South said, when there is multi-occupancy and an interest, all sorts of curious things can happen. Faults can occur in electricity supplies and gas taps and appliances are mysteriously switched on. Dustbins are sometimes overturned.
      Some of us could just about cope with that, but the problem is that such landlords go for elderly people, and often elderly women living alone. They were the victims and I fear that they may be again. Cisterns mysteriously and constantly overflow, not always outside down the pipe; water comes down in awkward places at awkward times. I am giving a list of only some of the more obvious things. I do not want to take various ideas too far, but such actions were rife years ago and they still happen in certain places. Those are milder forms of harassment.
      Mr. McCartney: In my constituency there is a Rachman landlord called Mr. Morrissey who owns houses in Platt Bridge and Abram. He recently had the electricity cut off to a multi-occupancy housing arrangement. When the residents approached me and the local authority for assistance, and the electricity board was called in to investigate, it was discovered that that Rachman landlord had attached the electricity to the outside street lamp and had been fiddling the electricity board, despite the fact that some tenants had been paying money into a meter in some rooms and other tenants had been paying him cash each week. The local authority stepped in in an emergency. Families and elderly people were without heating and lighting and without any basics because of the Rachmanlike activity of such a landlord. Unless the Government give the amendments active consideration, I suspect that that will continue and increase.
      Mr. Spearing: I am afraid that my hon. Friend is right.
      My second point is that in east London where the City style of living is moving eastwards, the differential between born and bred Londoners in traditional communities and people who are able to afford higher rents is becoming increasingly acute.

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      The London Docklands development corporation is producing luxury developments on the opposite side of the road to large council estates. Many people, particularly those in Newham, will not necessarily take up such opportunities, if they get them. The original landlords may be all right, but we do not know to whom they will sell. A filtering mechanism is written into the Bill, but only for the initial landlord. As far as I know, there is nothing for years to come about changes in the ownership of premises which are initially sold to approved persons. The constraints that the Minister thinks he has in the Bill may operate for owner No. 1, but as the property market zooms on, as it might well do, what is to prevent owners Nos. 3 and 4 from being of a different character? No legislation produced by this House or the other place could prevent a decline in standards in that respect.
      Where there is a change of living style, the incentive for people to adopt even relatively mild practices grows greater. Accidents happen to cars, dogs appear in the street, people return to find windows broken and even the safety of children is in question. That is the sort of rag-bag private enterprise that we do not wish to see and I am sure that the Minister does not wish to see it either.
      In view of the framing of the Bill and the way economics work, the Minister must include much stronger protection in the law, and I do not believe that he is doing so. Therefore, he should accept the Opposition amendment. Unless he does, the protections that he has in mind will not only not do the job now, but will not even move in that direction.
      I have been having meetings with constituents about the Bill and at one somebody said, "What will the Government have us do? Camp out in Epping Forest?" Unless we are to have that, we must have the protections because we want to keep our traditional community in east London. Unless those protections are included in the Bill, there will be big trouble indeed.
      Mr. Jeremy Corbyn: I was not a member of the Committee but I should like to say a few words about harassment and the problems facing private tenants.
      My constituency has enormous housing stress, high unemployment and, paradoxically, an incredibly rapid increase in land and house prices. We are facing the sort of problem that we thought had gone away in the mid-1970s when protection from eviction, rent controls and protection of private tenants were introduced. Now we have such rapidly increasing house prices that landlords, who previously were relatively happy to let out part or all of their house as bed-sits, realise that they can make an absolute killing by evicting tenants or encouraging them to leave, and selling the property for redevelopment into so-called luxury flats, often of inferior workmanship.
      Whatever the Minister may say about the codes of practice, recommendations and advice that he would give to landlords, he is deliberately encouraging a market economy and a property boom in London and the south-east. The victims are private tenants who are forced out of places where they have often lived for many years. If, instead of going straight home in his ministerial car tonight, the Minister stopped by Charing Cross station or crossed the bridge to Waterloo station and asked some of the poor people sleeping in cardboard boxes tonight, which is not a cold night, why they became homeless, he would find that many had had private tenancies which they
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      lost. Because they were single people they were not eligible for rehousing by the appropriate local authority under the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977. They then went to bed and breakfast accommodation or tried to get lodgings of other sorts, and could not afford it. The property boom caught up with them and they were forced out of yet another place. Eventually they ended up homeless, sleeping on the streets, an absolute disgrace to this country and to the Government who put them on to the streets in the first place.
      I hope that the Minister will recognise that, unless the tightest and strongest form of protection is given to all private tenants, as long as this property boom lasts they are the people who are vulnerable. It is not the articulate, able people who are able to use the law and get advice who suffer most. As my hon. Friends the Members for Brent, South (Mr. Boateng) and Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) have pointed out, it is often the old, the single and the vulnerable who are eased out by landlords, possibly in breach of existing law and of this law, because local authorities lack the resources to give them the back-up necessary and advice bureaux and law centres are under pressure for lack of funding. These are the people who are the victims of a horrible mixture of public spending cuts that take away the carefully constructed support mechanisms of the past 20 years and encourage a property boom in which such people are discarded, considered worthless and left to sleep on the streets.
      The country deserves better of the House than to have those protections taken away. The House owes the people absolute and total protection from the ruthless Rachmans who are at this very moment licking their fingers with glee because they know that once this Bill has gone through, once the Finance Bill has gone through and once the business expansion scheme gravy train has got going they will make a fortune out of the misery of people living in private rented accommodation and soon to become unprotected, many of whom will end up living on the streets. Is that the kind of city and the kind of Government of which the Minister ought to be proud to be a member?
      I hope that the House will support the Opposition's amendment and understand that we are serious about protecting the most vulnerable in our society, who at the moment are private sector tenants.
      Mr. Waldegrave: No one doubts the sincerity or passion of many Opposition Members in drawing attention to the abuses which exist. It was—perhaps unusually for me—the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) who seemed to put his finger on the problem and in some sense to knock down one of the arguments put forward by some of his hon. Friends, including tile hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick), because these abuses are happening now. They are a product of the fact that for those renting accommodation there is no way of getting a return except by selling with vacant possession. That means that the minority of ruthless and wicked landlords follow that route, because they, like other landlords who do not follow that route, value vacant possession above all.
      I am not arguing that the change in this Bill in itself makes this position either better or worse. It is the gap between the value of the property if the potentially statutorily protected tenant is not there and a free market that causes either loss if the landlord behaves well, or abuse if the landlord behaves badly. I will not disagree

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      about that, but it is not logical to argue that by making it profitable for there to be private rented accommodation at market rents one is making matters worse. In the constituency of the hon. Member for Walsall, North and in the constituency of Newham——
      Mr. Winnick rose——
      Mr. Waldegrave: I think that the hon. Member had quite a good go—or any other area where house prices are moving up quickly these pressures are brought to bear. The only way to deal with them is to try to provide for the people in those areas who need housing within the housing association or council sector at rents that can be afforded. But that need is not met, as his party has shown since Milner Holland, by rent control, because this has produced these problems.
      I am not going to be so rash as to refer off the top of my head to all the recommendations of Milner Holland. However, insofar as those recommendations were carried into force in the Labour Government's 1965 Act, we are going further in a number of respects, and that will be welcomed.
      Mr. Winnick: It is perfectly true, as the Minister said, that abuses already occur. My hon. Friends the Members for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks), for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) and for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) gave that as one reason for homelessness. However, does the Minister not recognise that he will make the situation worse, and that the incentive for abuse will be even greater? If a property can be re-let at market rent once a regulated tenant leaves, there will be a tremendous incentive for would-be Rachmans.
      Mr. Waldegrave: The hon. Member for Walsall, North has missed the point. As his hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North said, that incentive already exists. If anything, that incentive will be diminished because there will be the possibility of obtaining a tenancy at a market rent. Putting aside the impressive speech of the hon. Member for Brent, South (Mr. Boateng), it is important to consider whether the proposed amendments will actually introduce the kind of safeguards that Opposition Members want, make the law work better, and ensure the successful conviction of people who are difficult to convict at present.
      In an area where the abuses are so horrible, it is difficult to look coolly at the law and I understand the passion felt by Opposition Members in that respect. However, it is an old saying that hard cases make bad law and so we must coolly consider whether we are making changes which will work. There is a strong case for saying that we have done so.
      The hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) laid about him and said that a whole range of people, from The Guardian to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State, did not understand anything about this subject. That is unfair, and it may be that they understand our proposals more clearly than the hon. Gentleman. The difference between the proposals of Opposition Members and our own is not quite so great as the hon. Member for Newham, North-West believes.
      The starting point for all of this is the definitions in the Protection from Eviction Act 1977, which refer to
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      "acts calculated to interfere with the peace or comfort"
      and so on, which are the words we have adopted for the Bill. The withdrawal of services, which is a technique to which one hon. Member referred, is specifically mentioned in all three provisions. It is clear to my advisers that courses of actions are included within the meaning of the word "acts" in this context, and could make the person guilty of harassment open to prosecution—there is no question about that.
      Clauses 25 and 27 of the Bill use the words
      "acts calculated to interfere with",
      which clearly includes a course of conduct; the legal advice on that point is perfectly clear.
      Turning to amendment No. 199, is it right that a landlord could be liable to damages—which, rightly, could be very large if he were properly convicted—if he did not intend to evict the tenant, did not know that his tenant would leave, and had no reasonable cause to believe that such would happen? Imagine the absurdity of a case where the prosecution could succeed, which would produce injustice the other way. We are no less keen to ensure convictions, but if we produce a law so draconian that it falls into disrepute and must be amended the other way, we shall not have done anything very sensible.
      We began by committing ourselves to the scope of clause 25 and the capacity to secure convictions. The concept of intent was put to us but—and we sympathised with this—intent was too difficult to prove. Our amendments in clause 27 to the Protection from Eviction Act 1977 widen the scope to cover acts which the landlord knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, might cause a tenant to leave his home. Those could be just the courses of action and types of conduct to which Opposition Members have referred. That is why, by amendment 295, we are widening the scope of clause 25. I had hoped that Opposition Members would support that amendment because I am advised that it would help considerably to make convictions achievable.
      Amendment No. 297 provides an additional defence for a landlord who can be sued for damages under the clause. Although it is unpopular to say so, occasionally the tenant harasses the landlord. Unlike the cases quoted tonight, I have had one or two in my constituency the other way round. We must not inadvertently cause injustice the other way. A landlord may withdraw services for reasons which are outside his control or which are not his fault. We should allow him to have a defence which the clause, as it stands, does not provide.
      The changes which we have made will be shown to be important when cases are brought. Under the existing rents legislation we have had the very conditions which have caused some of the appalling cases that Opposition Members have rightly described. Some of the names that have been mentioned are famous. It has been depressing that we have not had enough convictions in the courts to drive those people out of business.
      All the advice I have received strengthens my belief that the additional changes we are making will be beneficial. Let us not forget that in the first place we put a huge new power in the Bill—the right for a person to get damages if he can show that he has been evicted. That is an addition to the armoury. The changes will enable major steps to be taken to rid the country of some of the practices about which Opposition Members have rightly complained. I commend the Government amendments to the House.
      Mr. Tony Banks: On behalf of the Opposition, I accept the good intentions of the Minister. We did that throughout the Committee stage, but I am afraid that good intentions are not enough. The Minister perhaps does not understand. Perhaps the sort of things that are going on are beyond his experience. The actions committed by landlords that are not caught by the Bill amount to harassment by another name. Far from being the odd dramatic example, the cases that we have quoted are symptomatic of conduct in many parts of the country, particularly in the decaying inner cities and in places where houses are in multiple occupation.
      The Minister must understand that we are not trying to take an entrenched position. We are not saying that all landlords must by definition be in the wrong. The Minister knows that we are not comparing equal parties. The average landlord is in an immensely more powerful position than the average tenant. Therefore, the ability of the landlord to harass is inevitably far greater than that of the tenant to make trouble for the landlord. No doubt we could all point to one or two isolated examples of the latter, but we will come to them later.
      Once again, good intentions do not necessarily make good legislation unless they are turned into cast-iron guarantees and assurances within the Bill. On this part of the Bill the assurances have not turned into guarantees. Therefore, we will press the amendment to a Division.
      Question put, That the amendment be made:—
      The House divided: Ayes 174, Noes 211.

      Division No. 347]

      [9.43 pm

      AYES

      Adams, Allen (Paisley N)

      Darling, Alistair

      Allen, Graham

      Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

      Anderson, Donald

      Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

      Archer, Rt Hon Peter

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

      Armstrong, Hilary

      Dewar, Donald

      Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

      Dixon, Don

      Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)

      Doran, Frank

      Barron, Kevin

      Dunnachie, Jimmy

      Battle, John

      Eastham, Ken

      Beckett, Margaret

      Evans, John (St Helens N)

      Bennett, A. F. (D'nt'n & R'dish)

      Fatchett, Derek

      Bermingham, Gerald

      Fearn, Ronald

      Bidwell, Sydney

      Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

      Blair, Tony

      Fields, Terry (L'pool B G'n)

      Boateng, Paul

      Fisher, Mark

      Boyes, Roland

      Flynn, Paul

      Bradley, Keith

      Foot, Rt Hon Michael

      Bray, Dr Jeremy

      Foster, Derek

      Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)

      Foulkes, George

      Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)

      Fyfe, Maria

      Brown, Ron (Edinburgh Leith)

      Galbraith, Sam

      Buchan, Norman

      Galloway, George

      Buckley, George J.

      Garrett, John (Norwich South)

      Callaghan, Jim

      George, Bruce

      Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

      Godman, Dr Norman A.

      Campbell, Ron (Blyth Valley)

      Gordon, Mildred

      Campbell-Savours, D. N.

      Graham, Thomas

      Canavan, Dennis

      Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

      Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

      Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

      Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

      Grocott, Bruce

      Clay, Bob

      Harman, Ms Harriet

      Clwyd, Mrs Ann

      Healey, Rt Hon Denis

      Cohen, Harry

      Heffer, Eric S.

      Cook, Robin (Livingston)

      Henderson, Doug

      Corbyn, Jeremy

      Hinchliffe, David

      Cousins, Jim

      Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

      Crowther, Stan

      Holland, Stuart

      Cryer, Bob

      Home Robertson, John

      Cummings, John

      Hood, Jimmy

      Cunliffe, Lawrence

      Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

      Cunningham, Dr John

      Howell, Rt Hon D. (S'heath)

      1090

      Howells, Geraint

      O'Neill, Martin

      Hughes, John (Coventry NE)

      Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

      Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

      Patchett, Terry

      Hughes, Roy (Newport E)

      Pike, Peter L.

      Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)

      Prescott, John

      Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

      Primarolo, Dawn

      Illsley, Eric

      Quin, Ms Joyce

      Ingram, Adam

      Radice, Giles

      Janner, Greville

      Randall, Stuart

      John, Brynmor

      Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn

      Jones, leuan (Ynys Môn)

      Reid, Dr John

      Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S W)

      Richardson, Jo

      Kennedy, Charles

      Roberts, Allan (Bootle)

      Leadbitter, Ted

      Robertson, George

      Leighton, Ron

      Robinson, Geoffrey

      Lestor, Joan (Eccles)

      Rogers, Allan

      Lewis, Terry

      Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

      Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

      Rowlands, Ted

      Loyden, Eddie

      Ruddock, Joan

      McAllion, John

      Sedgemore, Brian

      McAvoy, Thomas

      Sheerman, Barry

      McCartney, Ian

      Short, Clare

      McKay, Allen (Barnsley West)

      Skinner, Dennis

      McKelvey, William

      Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

      McLeish, Henry

      Smith, C. (Isl'ton & F'bury)

      McNamara, Kevin

      Snape, Peter

      McTaggart, Bob

      Soley, Clive

      Madden, Max

      Spearing, Nigel

      Mahon, Mrs Alice

      Steinberg, Gerry

      Marek, Dr John

      Stott, Roger

      Marshall, David (Shettleston)

      Strang, Gavin

      Martin, Michael J. (Springburn)

      Straw, Jack

      Martlew, Eric

      Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

      Maxton, John

      Turner, Dennis

      Meale, Alan

      Wall, Pat

      Michael, Alun

      Wallace, James

      Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

      Wareing, Robert N.

      Michie, Mrs Ray (Arg'l & Bute)

      Welsh, Michael (Doncaster N)

      Millan, Rt Hon Bruce

      Wigley, Dafydd

      Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)

      Williams, Alan W. (Carm'then)

      Morgan, Rhodri

      Winnick, David

      Morley, Elliott

      Wise, Mrs Audrey

      Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

      Worthington, Tony

      Mowlam, Marjorie

      Wray, Jimmy

      Mullin, Chris

      Nellist, Dave

      Tellers for the Ayes:

      Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

      Mr. Frank Haynes and Mr. Frank Cook.

      O'Brien, William

      NOES

      Adley, Robert

      Budgen, Nicholas

      Alison, Rt Hon Michael

      Burns, Simon

      Amess, David

      Burt, Alistair

      Amos, Alan

      Butler, Chris

      Arbuthnot, James

      Butterfill, John

      Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

      Carlisle, John, (Luton N)

      Arnold, Tom (Hazel Grove)

      Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

      Ashby, David

      Carrington, Matthew

      Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

      Carttiss, Michael

      Baldry, Tony

      Channon, Rt Hon Paul

      Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

      Chapman, Sydney

      Batiste, Spencer

      Churchill, Mr

      Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

      Clark, Hon Alan (Plym'th S'n)

      Bendall, Vivian

      Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

      Bevan, David Gilroy

      Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)

      Biggs-Davison, Sir John

      Colvin, Michael

      Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter

      Conway, Derek

      Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

      Cook, Robin (Livingston)

      Boscawen, Hon Robert

      Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)

      Boswell, Tim

      Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

      Bottomley, Peter

      Couchman, James

      Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

      Cran, James

      Bowis, John

      Currie, Mrs Edwina

      Boyson, Rt Hon Dr Sir Rhodes

      Curry, David

      Brazier, Julian

      Davies, Q. (Stamf'd & Spald'g)

      Bright, Graham

      Davis, David (Boothferry)

      Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

      Day, Stephen

      Brown, Michael (Brigg & Cl't's)

      Devlin, Tim

      Browne, John (Winchester)

      Dickens, Geoffrey

      Bruce, Ian (Dorset South)

      Dicks, Terry

      1091

      Dorrell, Stephen

      Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

      Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

      Mitchell, David (Hants NW)

      Dover, Den

      Montgomery, Sir Fergus

      Dunn, Bob

      Needham, Richard

      Durant, Tony

      Neubert, Michael

      Dykes, Hugh

      Nicholls, Patrick

      Emery, Sir Peter

      Nicholson, David (Taunton)

      Evennett, David

      Nicholson, Emma (Devon West)

      Fallon, Michael

      Oppenheim, Phillip

      Farr, Sir John

      Page, Richard

      Favell, Tony

      Paice, James

      Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)

      Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

      Fookes, Miss Janet

      Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

      Forman, Nigel

      Porter, David (Waveney)

      Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

      Powell, William (Corby)

      Forth, Eric

      Price, Sir David

      Fowler, Rt Hon Norman

      Redwood, John

      Franks, Cecil

      Renton, Tim

      Freeman, Roger

      Rhodes James, Robert

      French, Douglas

      Riddick, Graham

      Fry, Peter

      Ridsdale, Sir Julian

      Gale, Roger

      Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)

      Gardiner, George

      Rost, Peter

      Garel-Jones, Tristan

      Rowe, Andrew

      Gill, Christopher

      Ryder, Richard

      Goodlad, Alastair

      Scott, Nicholas

      Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles

      Shaw, David (Dover)

      Gorman, Mrs Teresa

      Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

      Gow, Ian

      Shephard, Mrs G. (Norfolk SW)

      Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

      Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

      Greenway, John (Ryedale)

      Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

      Gregory, Conal

      Sims, Roger

      Griffiths, Sir Eldon (Bury St E')

      Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

      Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)

      Soames, Hon Nicholas

      Grist, Ian

      Speller, Tony

      Ground, Patrick

      Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

      Gummer, Rt Hon John Selwyn

      Squire, Robin

      Hampson, Dr Keith

      Stanbrook, Ivor

      Hanley, Jeremy

      Stanley, Rt Hon John

      Hannam, John

      Steen, Anthony

      Hargreaves, Ken (Hyndburn)

      Stern, Michael

      Harris, David

      Stevens, Lewis

      Hawkins, Christopher

      Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)

      Hayes, Jerry

      Stokes, John

      Hayhoe, Rt Hon Sir Barney

      Sumberg, David

      Hayward, Robert

      Summerson, Hugo

      Heathcoat-Amory, David

      Taylor, Ian (Esher)

      Heddle, John

      Taylor, John M (Solihull)

      Hind, Kenneth

      Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

      Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

      Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman

      Holt, Richard

      Temple-Morris, Peter

      Hordern, Sir Peter

      Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)

      Howard, Michael

      Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

      Howarth, G. (Cannock & B'wd)

      Townend, John (Bridlington)

      Howell, Rt Hon David (G'dford)

      Tracey, Richard

      Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)

      Tredinnick, David

      Hunt, David (Wirral W)

      Trippier, David

      Hunter, Andrew

      Trotter, Neville

      Irvine, Michael

      Twinn, Dr Ian

      Irving, Charles

      Viggers, Peter

      Jack, Michael

      Waddington, Rt Hon David

      Janman, Tim

      Waldegrave, Hon William

      Key, Robert

      Walden, George

      King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)

      Walker, Bill (T'side North)

      King, Rt Hon Tom (Bridgwater)

      Waller, Gary

      Knowles, Michael

      Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

      Lamont, Rt Hon Norman

      Watts, John

      Lawrence, Ivan

      Wells, Bowen

      Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

      Wheeler, John

      Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

      Widdecombe, Ann

      Lord, Michael

      Wood, Timothy

      Maclean, David

      Woodcock, Mike

      Major, Rt Hon John

      Yeo, Tim

      Maples, John

      Young, Sir George (Acton)

      Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

      Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick

      Tellers for the Noes:

      Meyer, Sir Anthony

      Mr. David Lightbown and Mr. Alan Howarth.

      Miscampbell, Norman

      Question accordingly negatived.
      Amendments made: No. 295, in page 16, line 44, leave out 'with intent' and insert
      `knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that the conduct is likely'.
      No. 264, in page 17, line 10, after 'landlord', insert 'in default'.
      No. 296, in page 17, line 35, after 'believe', insert `(a)'.
      No. 297, in page 17, line 39, at end add
      'or
      (b) that, where the liability would otherwise arise by virtue only of the withdrawal or withholding of services, he had reasonable grounds for withdrawing or witholding the services in question.'.
      No. 265, in page 17, line 48, at end insert
      `and any superior landlord under whom that person derives title'.—[Mr. Waldegrave.]

    Clause 26

      THE MEASURE OF DAMAGES
      Amendments made: No. 266, in page 18, line 11, leave out 'landlord's interest' and insert
      `interest of the landlord in default'.
      No. 267, in page 18, line 14, leave out 'the landlord's' and insert `that'.—[Mr. Waldegrave.]
      Mr. Waldegrave: I beg to move amendment No. 268, in page 18, line 17, leave out 'subsection (1) above' and insert `this section'.
      Mr. Speaker: With this, it will be convenient to discuss Government amendments Nos. 270, 272 and 274.
      Mr. Waldegrave: Clause 26 sets out the basis on which the court is to assess damages when a landlord is found unlawfully to have evicted a tenant under clause 25.
      As the clause stands, the court has to disregard any value that can be attributed to the potential development of the building. The matter was discussed in Committee, but it has also been discussed outside Parliament. The amendments are designed to allow development value to be taken into account in certain cases. They will increase the compensation that is available.
      A common reason why landlords want to evict tenants from houses in multiple occupation is to convert the buildings into fiats for sale. There may be large profits to be made, and the amendments should catch that sort of case. They allow any value resulting from works to the building that is within the general development order to be taken into account, as well as any value from changing the use of the building by increasing or reducing the number of residential units in it. I hope that hon. Members will accept that this is further evidence of the Government's determination to ensure that potentially very wicked behaviour does not pay. Although some people have wanted us to go further, some of the pressure groups involved, such as Shelter, have acknowledged that the amendments will be a great help.
      Amendment agreed to.
      Amendments made: No. 269, in page 18" line 18 leave out 'landlord's interest' and insert
      `interest of the landlord in default'.
      No. 270, in page 18, line 20, at end add 'together with its curtilage.'.
      No. 271, in page 18, line 23, leave out
      `is selling his interest in the building in question'
      and insert
      `in default is selling his interest'.
      No. 272, in page 18, line 27, leave out from first 'any' to end of line 29 and insert
      'substantial development of any of the land in which the landlord's interest subsists or to demolish the whole or part of any building on that land.'.
      No. 273, in page 18, line 30, leave out
      'Subsection (8) of section 25 above'
      and insert
      'In this section "the landlord in default" has the same meaning as in section 25 above and subsection (8) of that section'.
      No. 274, in page 18, leave out lines 34 and 35 and insert—
      '(6) The reference in subsection (3)(c) above to substantial development of any of the land in which the landlord's interest subsists is a reference to any development other than—

      (a) development for which planning permission is granted by a general development order for the time being in force and which is carried out so as to comply with any condition or limitation subject to which planning permission is so granted; or

      (b) a change of use resulting in the building referred to in subsection (2) above or any part of it being used as, or as part of, one or more dwelling-houses;

      and in this subsection "general development order" has the same meaning as in section 43(3) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971 and other expressions have the same meaning as in that Act.'.—[Mr. Waldegrave.]

    Clause 27

      FURTHER OFFENCE OF HARASSMENT
      The following amendment stood upon the Paper Amendment: No. 202, in page 18, line 39 leave out
      The landlord for residential occupier or an agent of the landlord"' and insert 'Any person'.
      Mr. Waldegrave: In the Government amendment we seek to strengthen the armoury that we have in place to deal with such problems.
      It being Ten o'clock, further consideration of the Bill stood adjourned.

    BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
    Ordered,
    That, at this day's sitting, the Housing Bill may be proceeded with, though opposed, until any hour.—[Mr. Ryder.]

    Housing Bill
    As amended ( in the Standing Committee) again considered.
    Mr. Waldegrave: As I was saying, the amendment is an additional weapon in our armoury against bad landlords.
    We acknowledge that the number of successful prosecutions under existing crimimal law has been comparatively small. There have been difficulties in getting convictions, and that is why in clause 27 we have introduced a new criminal offence, which involves having to prove not that the landlord intended to evict the tenant but merely that he knew that his actions would cause the tenant to leave or had reasonable cause to believe that they would do so. Government No. 292 extends the new criminal offence to actions by a superior landlord or his agent. It parallels our amendments to clauses 25 and 26 and the Opposition will welcome it.
    The Opposition's amendment, amendment No. 202, is too wide because it applies the new offence to any person. We discussed the matter in Committee and we believe that
    1094
    there is a real risk that if we extend clause 27 as the amendment suggests, third parties whose behaviour is alleged by someone else to be anti-social, but which should certainly not be criminal, may be affected. One can imagine these powerful criminal sanctions applying in the difficult disputes between neighbours that we all hear of in our constituencies from time to time. While such disputes are a problem, they should not be dealt with by the criminal law, especially if it carries heavy sanctions such as two years in gaol.
    While I understand what lies behind the Opposition's proposals, I fear that if we accepted their amendment we should find disputes between tenants becoming involved with the criminal law in a way that would not be satisfactory. I therefore hope that the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) will acknowledge that our widening of the provision is useful and that to go further would not necessarily be safe.
    Mr. Tony Banks: I thought that I would be called first, Mr. Speaker, because amendment No. 202 is our amendment.
    Mr. Speaker: I think that it was my mistake; I should have called the hon. Gentleman first. I remind the House that we are also considering Government amendment No. 292.
    Mr. Banks: I beg to move amendment No. 202. I am a sort of stand-in Whip for the evening. As you know, Mr. Speaker, I was the Whip on the Bill; some litte problems arose but I am now back in a sort of temporary agency capacity. I realise that the hour is fairly late but these are serious matters which we should address. Ministers and hon. Members should not underestimate the seriousness with which we treat the Bill.
    Amendment No. 202 relates to clause 27, which creates a new criminal offence of harassment, which applies if the landlord or his agent performs a positive act that interferes with the peace and comfort of the occupier or withholds services that he or she needs and if the landlord knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, that his conduct is likely to cause the occupier to leave. The novelty of the clause is that it does away with the need for the prosecution to prove intent.
    After 10 years' experience of the Protection from Eviction Act 1977, tenants and their advisers are agreed that the most difficult element of that Act which renders it, in most cases, useless is the need for the prosecution to prove that the landlord intended, by his acts, that the tenant should leave. Our amendment contains a much more sensible approach. When the landlord has reasonable cause to believe that the likely consequence of his action will be that the tenant will leave, he will be guilty of an offence.
    In clause 27 there is a strange departure from the form of words used in the Protection from Eviction Act 1977. Instead of the wording in section 1 which states:
    "Any person … shall be guilty of the offence.",
    the Bill requires the offence to be committed by the landlord or his agent. That is an unnecessary restriction and we cannot accept that our amendment is an unnecessary extension. When we are trying to deal with the rights of tenants, surely the benefit of doubt should always be given to the tenant. Therefore, we hope that the Minister will accept the amendment.

    1095
    I shall give a quick example from the London borough of Newham.
    Mr. Waldegrave: I am a little confused about the amendment to which the hon. Gentleman is speaking. Has he accepted my arguments on amendment No. 202? He seems to be speaking to amendment No. 203.
    Mr. Banks: I am speaking to amendment No. 202.
    I shall give an example from Newham, as ever. A house in multiple occuption in the Barking road was being investigated by the local housing office because the tenants were being charged excessive rents. There were five tenants in the house. The local housing office managed to contact four of them. The two joint tenants on the ground floor had their rent collected by a man called David. They had seen another man with him who they believed to be the owner. The sole tenant on the rear ground floor had seen a man he believed to be the owner, Mr. B. The rent was collected by his agent. The tenant did not know his name. The tenant in the first floor rear room knew that the agent was called David but he had never seen the owner. The tenant on the third floor was let the room by Mr. B who called round to the property with his brother David. As the Minister will appreciate, it was all very confusing.
    Investigations carried out at the Land Registry under section 129 of the Land Registration Act 1925 were unhelpful. The register gave the name of the owner as a third unknown person and his address as that of the property itself. When the tenants sought to register their rents they started to have problems. They had no evidence that linked the people they knew with the unknown owner.
    Tenants do not have the resources to investigate "agency" arrangements and the Minister must know that. If it is possible to prosecute directly the person who committed the acts of harassment, the evil may be stopped. It seems right that people who persecute tenants should be held responsible for those acts, even if they carry them out because they are paid by the landlord. Therefore, I ask the Minister to accept amendment No. 202.
    Mr. Waldegrave: I am sorry that I misunderstood the early part of the hon. Gentleman's comments.
    There is a problem. Let us use the common example of noise in which people are constantly making life a misery by playing loud music or making other noise. As amendment No. 202 is drafted, it would not have to be demonstrated that the person making the noise was acting on behalf of the landlord. If there were disputes between neighbours in a building, we would find that the weight of the criminal prosecution, which we are aiming at people acting as agents for the landlord, could be used on a tenant who was harassing another tenant.
    I do not want to say that one tenant harassing another in a personal dispute is not a bad thing. However, there are other ways of trying to deal with that. In my constituency I find that disputes between neighbours are some of the most difficult disputes in which to become involved. But surely we do not want to hit one side of such a dispute with powers designed to deal with a landlord who is using harassment to get the tenant out and obtain possession of his property.
    1096
    I sympathise with the hon. Gentleman's case but the amendment is too wide. We have to be able to demonstrate that the person is acting on behalf of the landlord. Amendment No. 202, as drafted, does not do that.
    Amendment negatived.

    Clause 27

      FURTHER OFFENCE OF HARASSMENT
      Mr. Tony Banks: I beg to move amendment No. 203, in page 18, line 41, leave out 'does acts calculated' and insert
      'commits any act or omits to act or pursues any course of conduct, which act, omission, or course of conduct is likely.'
      Mr. Speaker: With this, it will be convenient to take the following amendments:
      No. 204, in page 19, line 5, leave out
      'he knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, that'.
      No. 205, in page 19, leave out lines 10 to 14, and insert —
      '(3B) It shall be a defence for a person charged with an offence under subsection (3A) above—

      (a) to prove that the act, omission or course of conduct was the only means by which in all the circumstances he could have secured the health, safety and welfare of the residential occupier, or that of the residential occupier of adjacent premises, whilst making the least possible infringement of any part of this section in respect the residential occupier; or

      (b) to show that the act, omission or course of conduct occurred wholly accidentally'.

      Mr. Banks: The amendments create a criminal offence of harassment where the landlord knew or had reasonable cause to believe that his actions would lead to the tenant leaving. The amendments are similar to ones that we tabled to clause 25, which creates a new civil claim for damages, so I do not intend to linger on the arguments.
      We are now discussing the criminal law, so the prosecution must prove its case beyond all reasonable doubt. We therefore have that safeguard against frivolous prosecutions of trivial matters. We must ensure that we give adequate safeguards to vulnerable tenants against bad landlords.
      The Bill is generous to landlords in the extreme. For new lettings, they can charge market rents, and if they let on shorthold agreements they can recover possession any time after the end of the initial period of the tenancy, which can be as little as six months. If landlords abuse the legal procedures whereby they can recover possession of their property with comparative ease, which is what the Bill is about, there can be no excuse for them. Only an irresponsible landlord would ignore the new powers that give him such a free hand in court and choose instead to inhabit the twilight land of winkling tenants out, which we believe will happen under the Bill. One must ask why they feel unable to entertain the scrutiny of the courts in their actions for possession. For example, are they avoiding tax or are they involved in mortgage fraud? There can only be a shady and unpleasant reason why they would not use the legal powers that they have been given with such a generous hand by the Government.
      I ask the Minister to give something, however small, to tenants who at present are protected but who inevitably will become the targets of unscrupulous landlords seeking to get them out to let the property on new decontrolled rents, and to the new assured and shorthold tenants, who will have so few rights.

      1097
      In the amendments we are asking for the bare minimum. Amendment No. 203 asks not only that positive acts should amount to criminal offences but the other methods of harassment that are employed by landlords in my constituency and others. Hon. Members have given such examples, and the Minister openly accepted that they happen because he knew that we had not made them up. My hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) gave a litany based on his experiences of the east end and the devices that unscrupulous landlords use.
      Amendment No. 204 asks the court to deduce that the likely consequences of the landlord's actions would be that the tenant would have to leave. The court would be able to examine the proximity of the events to the result and decide whether there is a causal link between them. I do not think that, as the Under-Secretary said in Committee, we shall have hundreds of poor innocent landlords in the dock as a result of that change. Proper evidence would still have to be presented to the court and the magistrate would have to decide whether the case was proven beyond all reasonable doubt. Evidently, for once, Labour Members have more faith in the court system than the Minister and the Government.
      Amendment No. 205 tries to define the reasonable defences that a landlord may raise. We do not wish to penalise a landlord who is making proper arrangements to do repairs. It would be nonsense to do so and we made that clear in Committee and now on Report. I regret that that is the easiest way to harass a tenant but not be caught.
      I should be interested to hear what other reasonable courses of conduct the Government suggest a landlord might take and risk committing the offence of harassment. Our amendment reasonably lists the appropriate defences that a landlord might use. It gives a clear signal to landlords that conduct that interferes with the peace and comfort of tenants is not acceptable to Labour Members or, I hope, to the Government.
      Mr. Winnick: It is always a pleasure to intervene after a speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) and I know that he always appreciates my interventions—or so he tells me.
      10.15 pm
      There has been a great deal of publicity and we have already heard in the debate about the Minister's wish to protect tenants and about the legal steps in the Bill. If the Minister is really determind to stamp out the type of Rachmanism about which my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West has just spoken, our amendments would be accepted. I know the views of the Secretary of State and that the amendments are not acceptable to the Government. Perhaps I am wrong but I suspect that the Minister's boss rather than the Minister has vetoed the amendments. The Minister is considered to be something of a wet in such matters and perhaps he would have recognised our genuine concern and accepted that what we are asking for is modest.
      I should like to repeat the point that I made earlier. These amendments are necessary for the protection of tenants who will become assured tenants and even more necessary for people who will become shorthold tenants. One of our worries, understandable in view of what occurred under the Tory's 1957 Act, is the present position of regulated tenants. The Minister has dismissed my anxiety and has said that some abuse is occurring now. We
      1098
      recognise that, but tenants who remain regulated when the Bill becomes law will contine to have their rents regulated and they will not be market rents.
      Many such tenants, especially in places such as London, will be at great risk from their landlords. That is because the landlords will know that their tenants can be forced out legally and that the houses can he rented out again at market rents. The lettings would automatically be on market rents and on assured tenancies or, more than likely, on shorthold tenancies. That is all the more reason why tenants who will continue to have protection and who have every right to remain in their accommodation should be protected in law. The entire answer to giving such protection would be to leave the situation as it is.
      There is no doubt that the Bill will become law. An amendment that will protect the interests of regulated tenants and enable them to remain in their accommodation within the law is certainly welcome. Such an amendment would prevent tenants from ending up in squalid accommodation or in bed-and-breakfast hostels.
      Mr. Waldegrave: I strongly disagree with the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) that the best thing to do and the solution to all the problems is to leave things as they are. As some of his hon. Friends have eloquently explained, the present situation is far from satisfactory.
      We looked again at this after a similar discussion in Committee. The amendment proposes an incredibly wide automatic use of the criminal law. A landlord who does not repair a dwelling and thereby causes the tenant to leave would not have to know that the tenant intended to leave. He would find himself committing an offence even if he did not know the outcome of his actions. Amendment No. 205 provides a defence, but it is very narrow and one must remember that we cannot introduce the full panoply of' the criminal law without very great care.
      It would be quite wrong to introduce a criminal offence that could be proved almost automatically by the omission of something. In many cases the landlord would not have had any intention of committing an offence nor any knowledge of the tenant's reaction. It is not enough just to say that, if he proves that it was accidental, he has a defence. He has to know what would be in the tenant's mind. If he guesses wrong, he finds himself in gaol for a criminal offence. I think that this is too wide.
      Mr. Tony Banks: It is not as if the tenant will go to court, and the landlord will automatically be locked up or penalised, simply because the tenant attends. The Minister makes it sound as though it would be a matter of straightforward procedure and that the tenant will prove the point in that way. The whole idea of this going through the courts is that one has to prove a case beyond reasonable doubt. We have some faith in the courts and, therefore, if the case being mounted by the tenant does not stand up, of course the magistrate will not find in favour of the tenant. I do not think it is automatic.
      Mr. Waldegrave: With respect, the hon. Gentleman is defining a possible criminal act which in the words of his own amendment would be committed if the person
      "acts or omits to act or pursues any course of conduct, which act, omission, or course of conduct is likely"
      to have the effect of making the tenant leave.
      I agree that the conviction is not automatic, but the commission of the offence is, which is what we must be

      1099
      concerned about in the House. It is then up to the police to catch the criminal. The landlord would automatically have committed a criminal offence without having any intention of damaging the tenant. It really is too wide.
      There are problems here about not getting the repairs done. I argue that that is not an issue where we should use the criminal law. Rather, we should strengthen, as we are strengthening elsewhere, the capacity of local authorities to make stiffer repair orders and so forth that can be properly designed to deal with that problem.
      Amendment negatived.
      Amendment made: No. 292, in page 19, line 22, at end insert
      'and any superior landlord under whom that person derives title'.—[Mr. Waldegrave.]

    Clause 28

      VARIATION OF SCOPE OF 1977 SS.3 AND 4
      Mr. Tony Banks: I beg to move amendment No. 206, in page 19, leave out lines 23 to 26.
      Mr. Speaker: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 207, in page 19, line 27, leave out 'that section' and insert
      'section 3 of the 1977 Act (prohibition of eviction without due process of law)'
      No. 208, in page 19, line 30, leave out the words
      'other than an excluded licence,'.
      No. 209, in page 19, leave out lines 35 to 43.
      No. 210, in page 20, line 4, leave out
      '(other than an excluded licence)'.
      No. 211, in page 20, line 9, leave out clause 29.
      Government amendment No. 40.
      No. 230, in clause 29, page 20, line 17, leave out
      'or a member of the owner's family (whether or not in common with other persons.'.
      No. 234, in page 20, line 21, leave out
      'also at the time it comes to an end'
      and insert
      'at all times since then'.
      Government amendment No. 41.
      No. 231, in page 20, line 22, leave out
      'or a member of his family'.
      Government amendments Nos. 42 to 47.
      Mr. Banks: These amendments relate to clauses 28 and 29 which change the Rent Act 1977. We have accepted that clauses 25, 26 and 27 and the amendments that the Government have moved tighten the law—but, as we have said, not as much as we would like—against illegal eviction. It seems a depressingly inevitable consequence that the Government could not give something to tenants without, of course, wanting to take something from them at the same time. In clauses 28 and 29, they take the most basic protection from certain tenants and licensees: the right to proper notice and an order from the court when evicting tenants and licensees in certain circumstances.
      Those circumstances are, first, if the tenant is sharing certain living accommodation with the landlord or a member of the landlord's family at the beginning and ending of the tenancy; secondly, if the tenancy or licence was granted as a temporary expedient to a person who entered the accommodation as a squatter; thirdly, holiday
      1100
      lets; fourthly, hostels provided by statutory or voluntary bodies; and, fifthly, anyone else whom the Secretary of State names.
      We believe that this seriously undermines the protection from arbitrary eviction that tenants are entitled to expect. We are not asking that the landlord should not be able to obtain possession of his property in certain circumstances, only that there should be proper scrutiny of the facts when possession is sought. For example, are the Government really saying that people living in hostels, possibly having been discharged from institutions dealing with drink or drug dependency problems, should be evicted on to the streets without any protection whatsoever from the courts? If the Government's response is to say that they do not expect hostels to evict residents in such a way, what is the point in giving them the power to do so? One does not give powers to certain institutions and agencies without expecting them to use them at some time in the future.
      I turn now to the vexed question of holiday lets. I have often thought, Mr. Speaker, about what you could get for a holiday let of your premises when you go away. You are not even listening, Mr. Speaker—[Interruption.] Ah, yes, Mr. Speaker, I was saying that holiday lets are the largest category of sham lettings. As we all know, genuine holiday lets do not create security of tenure, but removing the need for a court order makes shams even more attractive to landlords wishing to abuse the system because the court hearing is usually the only point at which the sham can be tested.
      I give the Minister of State a good example. Nurses working at the Royal Free hospital in Hampstead were let rooms on holiday let agreements in the street opposite the hospital. At the end of the six months of the let, it was extended by a further six months. After taking advice, the nurses applied for fair rents to be registered on the premises. The landlord then applied to the courts for possession, but the court upheld the nurses' claim that it was a sham and that they had a protected tenancy. That was because they had the ability to go to court and that is why we feel that it is wrong that that ability should be taken away.
      Resident landlords of houses in multiple occupation regularly keep a room locked and vacant for, they say, their own use which, if the clauses remain unchanged, will make bogus residency claims harder to disprove as evictions will take place without any court hearings. Obviously, resident landlords who no longer have a reasonable relationship with their tenants will want to obtain possession, but as the tenants do not have full security a possession order could be reasonably and easily obtained. However, in our experience it is more often the landlord who makes petty rules and regulations and generally makes life unpleasant for the tenant rather than the other way round.
      I give the Minister another brief example. A student renting a room from a resident landlord in Canterbury was told that she could not have friends to visit or jointly study, that she should not come in after 10 pm or use the bathroom after 9 pm and that she had to vacate the room at weekends if the landlord had any family coming to stay. She was constantly made aware by the landlord that any infringement of those rules or any other disagreement with him would lead to eviction. She was therefore in a state of agitation up to and during her final exams.

      1101
      The forms of tenure being removed from the law would not be the first choice for those with any real choice in the decisions about their housing. However, such tenures will be the only option for people who, because of age, disability, income or ethnic origin, have no real choice about the accommodation that they occupy. The Minister must know that that is often the case. Such people should not be further penalised by the removal of the vestige of protection that they have at the moment.
      The Government are already allowing landlords easier access to courts for possession proceedings, and required notice periods have been reduced. Our amendments do not seek full security for such tenures. We seek only to ensure that the courts are still involved before evictions take place. Excluded tenures would be an incentive to create shams, which are notoriously difficult to prove once the tenant has been evicted. Where possession proceedings are not being brought, the tenant has no easy access to the court to show that a sham is in operation. Tenants would have to predict their landlords' actions and go to court for declarations of protected tenancies, leaving themselves open to harassment and early eviction. Alternatively, they would have to fight their case after they had been evicted, when not only would the facts be difficult to prove, but legal aid would be difficult to obtain.
      I am sure that, on reflection, the Minister will accept that it is unreasonable to remove what minimal protection already exists in such specific examples and I am sure that he will now be willing to accept our amendments.
      Mr. Waldegrave: As a result of the discussions in Committee we believed that one matter needed amendment. I hope that the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) will welcome that fact, although I do not accept some of his other points. The hon. Gentleman will remember that we undertook in Committee—I know that the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) will remember this—to have another look at the situation where the resident landlord is said to be sharing and the tenant is excluded because he is sharing with a member of the resident landlord's family. That seemed to us to be quite an easy form of abuse. A resident landlord could scatter members of his family round and about. We have dealt with that in amendments Nos. 40 to 47.
      Although hon. Members on both sides of the House will approve of the provisions of clause 28 in general, and the strengthening of the Protection from Eviction Act which they represent, we must he careful that as we extend the Bill to cover licences by making the position of licensees far stronger, which we are doing, we do not produce any problems or difficulties. It is inevitable that, if we are to strengthen the position of licensees in general, we have to consider one or two exceptions, and we have done that.
      It has been put to me by a number of bodies involved that it would make the management of hostels impossible if hostel authorities had to get a court order to evict a resident who did not want to move. It might even mean that they had to get a court order to move a resident within the hostel.
      10.30 pm
      Mr. Simon Hughes: I know that the Minister has been approached by the National Federation of Housing Associations about hostels and licences. Does he intend to
      1102
      apply the same approach in the private sector as in the social sector to hostel users and the difficulties involved in such licences?
      Mr. Waldegrave: We shall come to another matter regarding hostels, which I had better not quote from memory at this time of night in case I get it wrong. As the hon. Gentleman knows, I have been in touch with the NFHA and have visited some of the hostels in my constituency and talked through some of the problems and tried to meet them. We shall have to make another amendment in another place fully to deal with the question, but we shall come back to it.
      We want to encourage resident landlords properly to use their property and to let spare accommodation. We know that they will not do that if it means sharing with someone they cannot easily remove if relations deteriorate. We must all have heard such constituency stories; I certainly have.
      Hon. Members accept that in general the resident landlord exclusion is justified and the extension of the provision to cases in which a tenant or licensee shares accommodation with a member of the landlord's or licensor's family was more difficult. We want to cover cases in which the property is sub-divided in such a way that the tenant shares with a family member—say, the landlord's mother—in one part of the house and the landlord lives in another part of the house. We have not quite achieved that and that is why we have tabled amendments.
      The hon. Member for Newham, North-West raised the matter of holiday lets. There has been a problem with holiday lets. We strongly argue the converse of the arguments that were put to us by the Opposition. Shorthold and market rents will make the incentive for sham holiday lets disappear, and that abuse will go of its own accord when the Bill is passed. It would be monstrous for someone making a genuine holiday letting to have to get a court order to evict a holidaymaker who outstayed his let. In many parts of the country where holiday letting is a key part of the rural economy that would produce very severe problems.
      Mr. Tony Banks: Has the Minister any evidence, any hard statistics, about genuine holiday lets which do not create any security of tenancy ending up with the landlord having to go to court to get the tenant out? Do any statistics show such abuse?
      Mr. Waldegrave: I shall check and find out whether there are, but obviously it would be wrong to do anything that would encourage such abuse. More important" the case that the hon. Member for Newham, North-West described would have been answered by shorthold. Presumably the landlord would have let on shorthold and not needed to use the mechanism of a sham holiday let.
      I ask hon. Members to recognise that the widened provisions of the Protection from Eviction Act cannot be sensible if there are no excluded licences and I ask them to reject the Opposition amendments and to accept our amendments which meet the commitment that we made in Committee.
      Mr. Tony Banks: We are bitterly disappointed at the Minister's failure to accept a reasonable set: of amendments, but on this occasion we shall not press the amendment to a vote.
      Amendment negatived.

    Clause 29

      EXCLUDED TENANCIES AND LICENCES
      Amendments made: No. 40, in page 20, line 16, leave out from 'occupier' to 'and' in line 19 and insert
      'shares any accommodation with the landlord or licensor'.
      No. 41, in page 20, line 22, leave out
      `owner or a member of his family'
      and insert 'landlord or licensor'.
      No. 42, in page 20, line 24, leave out from 'the' to `formed' in line 25 and insert 'shared accommodation'.
      No. 43, in page 20, line 25, at end add—
      `(2A) A tenancy or licence is also excluded if—

      (a) under its terms the occupier shares any accommodation with a member of the family of the landlord or licensor:

      (b) immediately before the tenancy or licence was granted and also at the time it comes to an end, the member of the family of the landlord or licensor occupied as his only or principal home premises of which the whole or part of the shared accommodation formed part; and

      (c) immediately before the tenancy or licence was granted and also at the time it comes to an end, the landlord or licensor occupied as his only or principal home premises in the same building as the shared accommodation and that building is not a purpose-built block of flats.

      (2B) For the purposes of subsections (2) and (2A) above, an occupier shares accommodation with another person if he has the use of it in common with that person (whether or not also in common with others) and any reference in those subsections to shared accommodation shall be construed accordingly, and if, in relation to any tenancy or licence, there is at any time more than one person who is the landlord or licensor, any reference in those subsections to the landlord or licensor shall be construed as a reference to any one of those persons.'.
      No. 44, in page 20, line 26, leave out 'subsection (2)' and insert 'subsections (2) to (2B)'.
      No. 45, in page 20, leave out lines 30 to 34.
      No. 46, in page 20, line 36, at end insert
      `and
      (d) "purpose-built block of flats" has the same meaning as in Part III of Schedule 1 to the Housing Act 1988'.
      No. 47, in page 20, line 39, leave out `(2)' and insert `(2A)'.—[Mr. Waldegrave.]

    Clause 30

      NOTICE TO QUIT ETC.
      Mr. Grist: I beg to move amendment No. 27, in page 21, line 37, leave out 'of premises occupied' and insert `to occupy premises'.
      The new subsection (1A) which clause 30 inserts into section 5 of the Protection from Eviction Act 1977 requires an owner to give four weeks' notice to terminate a periodic licence. This parallels the existing provision in section 5(1) that four weeks' notice must be given to bring a periodic tenancy to an end. This amendment brings subsection (1A) more closely into line with section 5(1) by providing that the dwelling does not have to be occupied for the notice requirement to apply.
      Amendment agreed to.
      Further consideration of the Bill adjourned.—[Mr. Kenneth Carlisle.]
      Bill, as amended (in the Standing Committee), to be further considered tomorrow.

  Railway Accident (Colwich Junction)
  Motion made and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Kenneth Carlisle.]
  10.35 pm
  Mr. John Heddle (Mid-Staffordshire): I am most grateful for this opportunity to raise on the Adjournment the subject of the Department of Transport's report on the rail accident which occurred at Colwich junction in the middle of my Mid-Staffordshire constituency on 19 September 1986.
  I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister for Public Transport for kindly being in the Chamber to reply to this debate, and I say that with the utmost sincerity because he has attended most diligently to the parliamentary questions that I have tabled in the intervening period on this matter. When the Department's inspector's report was published on 31 March 1988 he took the trouble to give me a copy at the same time as it was released to the press. For that I am extremely grateful because the press regionally and locally in Staffordshire and the west midlands paid particularly close attention and interest to the outcome of the report on the crash.
  For the record I shall remind the House what occurred. There was a collision on a main railway line running from Euston to Liverpool at 28 minutes past six on Friday 19 September 1986 between the Euston to Manchester express train and a Liverpool to Euston express train in the London midland region of British Rail at a place called Colwich junction. The opening paragraphs of the report state:
  "the 17.00 Euston to Manchester Piccadilly express passenger train, electrically hauled and consisting of 13 vehicles"
  was
  "diverted from the Down Fast line to the Down Slow line some 800 yards from the switch diamonds forming the Junction between the Down Slow-Down Manchester line and the Up Crewe-Euston line and ran past the signal protecting the Junction at Danger, coming to a stand, or nearly so, with the locomotive straddling the switch diamonds of the Junction, 259 yards beyond the signal."
  The other train was the 17.20 Liverpool to Euston express passenger train, again electrically hauled, but containing 12 carriages. The report continues:
  "It was travelling under clear signals at a speed of 95–100 mile/h on the Up West Coast Main Line closely approaching Colwich Junction when, without time for the driver to apply the brakes, the locomotive of the Manchester train was seen ahead astride the junction."
  The two trains collided—obviously, since they were both express trains—with tremendous force. They were derailed, all wheels, and turned over on their sides. The pictures in the national press the following day and on the 9 o'clock news that evening were quite horrendous.
  At this point I would like to place on record—it has been done at other times and in other places—the gratitude of my constituents and, I know, of the families involved in the crash with whom I have been in touch to all the emergency services—the ambulance service, the nursing services, the various hospitals in the Mid-Staffordshire health authority and the police. I would like to pay a particular tribute to my constituents in the villages of Colwich, Great Haywood, Little Haywood and Rugeley who took families and others involved in the collision into their homes to provide comfort and temporary accommodation.

  1105
  Out of 373 passengers on the Manchester train and 500 passengers on the Liverpool train, 75 were injured, and the driver of one of the trains was tragically killed. It was a mercy that only one person was killed.
  As I understand it, my hon. Friend instructed the railway inspectorate in the Department of Transport, on 22 September, to launch an inquiry and prepare a report on the events of that evening of 19 September. That report was sent to the Department of Transport on 29 February this year and, as I have reminded the House, published on 31 March. I do not wish to dwell in detail on the report; it is a very technical and, to my inexperienced and unschooled eye—my knowledge of railways, apart from commuting regularly from Euston to Birmingham International, derives from playing with my Hornby Dublo some years ago now—most extensively and comprehensively prepared. I am quite sure that my hon. Friend, who knows much more about these matters, because of his departmental responsibilities, will agree with that. I have learnt a great deal from having read the report thoroughly, but it raises a few disturbing questions regarding the conduct of certain aspects of British Rail's relationship with some of its employees, and other matters, and I felt it right to bring these to the attention of the House and to seek an assurance from my hon. Friend that some lessons will be learnt from this tragedy.
  First, I cannot understand why it should have taken 18 months to prepare a report. I have said that it is a report of considerable comprehensiveness and thoroughness, but 18 months strikes me as a very long time, and I will explain why the delay has caused anguish to a number of people closely connected with the collision in a moment. I think it is a long time because, on the first Friday of March of last year, some six months after the Colwich crash, there was an even more horrendous collision—that of the Herald of Free Enterprise in Zeebrugge. The report in that respect, also commissioned by my hon. Friend's Department, was published on 24 July of last year, just four months after the collision. I find it difficult, therefore, to understand why the Colwich junction crash report took 18 months.
  When a representative of the regional press, having read on the Order Paper that this Adjournment debate was to be held, made contact with British Rail, I understand that he was told that 18 months was par for the course. Those are the words that have been reported to me. If that is true, I find it a disturbing element of apathy, and I hope that my hon. Friend, if such a collision occurred again and he was in a position to instruct his inspectorate, would ensure that it prepared its report rather more swiftly. I say that because the report entirely exonerates from blame the driver of one of the express trains. I refer to Driver Eric Goode, who, as I have said, tragically died in the crash. He was a constituent not of mine but of the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody). She hoped to be present to make a brief intervention this evening, but I have received a note from the Message Board indicating that she has been detained at Heathrow on her way back from a conference in Rome.
  I had the privilege of meeting Driver Goode's widow at a memorial service which the BBC's religious affairs department staged in Colwich church three months after the tragedy. She has kept in touch with me ever since. I believe it to be true that very little contact was made by British Rail—and I have raised this point with my hon.
  1106
  Friend in the past—during the passage of the inquiry. If my information is correct, Driver Goode's widow has still not received a copy of the inspector's report.
  Because of the publicity attracted by my campaign to persuade the authorities to speed up the inspector's report, by way of tabling written questions in the intervening period, the family of the signalman most directly involved at the particular point in the railway line concerned was also under considerable pressure between the time of the crash and the publication of the inspector's report. The report makes reference to him. He lives in the constituency of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence). That signalman, as with Driver Goode, is totally exonerated from any blame or responsibility for what occurred. However, the clouds of suspicion and guilt which hung over those two families during the period of the report's production must have been unbearable and intolerable. Anything that can be done to expedite inquiries of that nature, as happened in the case of the Zeebrugge disaster, must be to the benefit of those most directly involved.
  I turn to the inspector's conclusions. First, the blame for the collision was placed, sadly and tragically, but fairly and squarely, on the shoulders of the driver of the other express train. One can, from a close inspection of the report, glean the information that he broke a number of rules, including having in his cabin a British Rail employee who should not have been allowed there.
  I am concerned to be assured that the driver—and I shall not mention his name because that would be inappropriate—if he is still employed by British Rail, should not be driving express trains. I draw a comparison with someone who causes an accident on the M1 or M6, and who may as a result be convicted of driving carelessly, dangerously or recklessly, and banned from driving for a time or even for life. In a case of this nature, where there was clearly a breach of rules—and dare I suggest that there may have been an element of negligence—the public has a right to know whether the person responsible is still entrusted with driving trains, be they goods trains, suburban trains or express trains.
  The recommendation of the inspector at paragraph 83 was:
  "The reduction in the number of motive power inspectors, as part of the general 'slimming' down of the railway staff, is, in my opinion, a retrograde step which can only lead to less efficient supervision on vital safety matters."
  I am not sufficiently technically qualified—indeed, I am not technically qualified at all—to know what a motive power inspector is, but clearly he is of considerable importance in ensuring the safety of the rolling stock. If there has been a general slimming down of such personnel, that must have a bearing on the safety of our rolling stock. I invite my hon. Friend, when he replies, to tell me the present position.
  I also wish to draw the attention of the House to paragraph 84 of the inspector's recommendations, which is very disturbing:
  "In addition, this accident emphasises the importance of the continual updating of the British Railways Rule Book, together with associated safety documents. I find the fact that Section C Clause 3.1.1. was not amended or expanded from its original issue dealing with Yellow Flashing Aspects on the approaches to diverging junctions in 1977 until after and resulting from this accident in 1986 most disturbing".
  To me that means that British Rail's rule book had not been updated for 11 years until these recommendations were published. I hesitate to think what the position might

  1107
  be today if the Colwich crash had not occurred. I wonder when British Rail would have got round to updating the rule book—presumably every engine driver's working manual. I ask my hon. Friend to obtain assurances, if possible, (a) that the rule book has been updated, and (b) that express train drivers familiarise themselves with it at regular intervals.
  The final point which attracts my attention, and one which disturbs me greatly, is contained in paragraph 86:
  "A considerable part of this Report has dealt with the braking of train 1H20 immediately prior to the collision. Despite invoking the braking experts of the Director of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering and the Director of Research, also carrying out two sets of speed and braking tests using the coaches actually involved in the collision, or where that was not possible, similar coaches, I am still not completely convinced that the braking after the emergency brake application by"—
  the driver who was subsequently found to be guilty—
  "was as effective as one would have expected. Considerable attention has been paid to the effect of the operation of wheel slide prevention equipment on MkIII coaches and, while I accept that the Lucas Girling equipment, as fitted to the coaches on train 1H20, has not been found to suffer from spurious cyclic activity, I accept the evidence of Senior Technician Morgan that he heard considerable wheel slide prevention activity as the MkIII coaches passed Colwich Signal Box."
  The fact that the inspector was not completely convinced that the braking after the emergency brake application by the driver was as effective as it might have been leads me to suggest to my hon. Friend that members of the travelling public have a right to be assured that all possible attention is paid to these braking systems, however sophisticated they may be, to ensure that if such a crash ever occurred again it would not draw the sort of adverse comment that I have just quoted.
  I raise these points and invite my hon. Friend's comments simply to ensure that we as Members of Parliament can scrutinise as far as possible the activities and the management of British Rail and other nationalised bodies. If I had written to the chairman of British Rail or to the person specifically responsible for the inquiry, I would probably not have got as full, frank and direct a reply as I shall get from my hon. Friend the Minister. I am most grateful for the opportunity to raise the issue.
  10.54 pm
  The Minister for Public Transport (Mr. David Mitchell): My hon. Friend will be aware that the functions of the railway inspectorate of the Department of Transport involve the inspection and approval of new railway works and the investigation of railway accidents.
  Of course, principal responsibility for railway safety rests with the railway operators themselves. The British Railways Board has a duty under section 3(1) of the Transport Act 1962 to have due regard to efficiency, economy and safety of operation, and it is always conscious of that.
  My hon. Friend will also know that the inquiry into the Colwich collision was held under section 7 of the Regulation of Railways Act 1871. Any recommendations made by the inspector in his report are not statutorily binding, and thus British Rail is not forced to adopt them. It is an accepted practice, however, that the British Railways Board gives due consideration to the report as a whole, and to the recommendations in particular. The
  1108
  member of the board responsible for safety, David Rayner, will reply to the Secretary of State in due course—it normally takes two or three months—commenting on the report and the action that the board proposes to take on the recommendations. I say that because my hon. Friend may find the context helpful.
  My hon. Friend has referred to the cause of the accident. I confirm that the immediate cause of the collision was that the driver of the Euston-Manchester train passed the signal protecting Colwich junction at danger and, despite making an emergency application of the brakes shortly before reaching the signal, failed to bring the train to a halt until the locomotive was on the actual junction.
  The reason for the driver passing the signal at danger was his ignorance of the meaning of the flashing yellow aspects and the associated signals approaching Colwich junction. It was the first time he had driven over the route since the signalling had been altered and flashing yellow aspects introduced on the approach to the cross-over from the down fast to the down slow line on the approach to the junction. The driver had received and signed for two weekly notices the month before the accident which gave details of the signalling alterations, but he had not read them. Had he studied them, there is little doubt that he would not have mistaken the meaning of the signals and would have braked so that he came to a halt before the signal protecting the junction.
  I shall deal separately with braking, a possible contributory cause to the accident.
  I join my hon. Friend in congratulating the emergency services on the efficiency with which they evacuated those involved. In particular, I praise the exemplary action of Signalman Millward, who was on duty in the Colwich signal box. He was completely unable to prevent the accident, but, immediately it occurred, he took all the necessary steps to stop all approaching trains and alert the emergency services. I understand that he subsequently found it a strain to work in that signal box and that he has been moved to another signal box in the area where he is more settled.
  As my inspector has stated, the death of Driver Goode, the driver of the Liverpool-Euston train, was particularly tragic, as he had no chance to protect himself. I am sorry also to learn that his widow has recently died. Although it was in no way his duty, throughout his inquiry, my inspector kept in touch with Mrs. Goode and her son Stewart, the latter expressing gratitude on behalf of his mother for the sympathetic attitude shown to the family. I am also assured that the regional operations manager of London midland region personally visited Mrs. Goode after the accident and ensured that the welfare department was providing all the necessary help. I hope that my hon. Friend will be glad to receive that assurance.
  My hon. Friend mentioned the delay in publishing the report. He questioned the 18-month time scale and asked whether it was par for the course. The answer is no. The normal time scale is about half that. My hon. Friend has asked me several questions about that matter.
  I should explain that the delay in completing the report was due to the extensive technical investigations that had to be carried out. The responsibility for delaying the publication of the report until the technical investigation had been completed lies with the inspector who held the inquiry. I believe that he acted correctly in trying to determine by all means possible why the brakes appeared

  1109
  not to operate as efficiently as usual when the driver made an emergency brake application. These investigations included carrying out a number of speed-brake tests with trains as similar as possible to the Euston-Manchester express involved in the accident. When those tests proved inconclusive, he arranged for a special working party of the directorate of mechanical and electrical engineering and the research directorate, British Railways Board, to carry out further investigations in depth into the braking of the train and the possible effect of the malfunctioning or the excessive operation of the wheel slide prevention equipment fitted to the Mark III coaches—in layman's terms, a device to prevent skidding. The inspector was closely associated with those investigations and it was only at the end of last year that he accepted that no definite results could he obtained to explain the apparent poor braking of the Manchester express. He then produced his report as rapidly as possible.
  My hon. Friend raised a number of other specific points, particularly with regard to the question of the position of the driver of the train who was at fault. I am sure that my hon. Friend is aware that any disciplinary action taken by British Railways concerning its staff is a matter entirely for the railway management, and it would be quite wrong for me to comment on the action taken over the driver of the Euston-Manchester train. I understand, however, that the driver, after a long period of sickness, has now been reinstated as a driver, but is now confined to shunting and other local duties.
  My hon. Friend also raised the question of the motive power inspectors. I noticed that the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) nodded knowingly at that point because he thought that that was a sign that the Government have been cutting corners. I shall show the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend that there is no truth in such an assertion. The report emphasises the importance of motive power inspectors who travel in the cab to check the correct handling of locomotives by drivers and their knowledge of the "road" generally, and signalling in particular.
  I understand that there are difficulties in computing the number of motive power inspectors who carry out this function because some of them also instruct drivers. I now understand that the number of inspectors involved has in fact remained much the same for several years, but because the number of drivers has declined the number of inspectors in relation to the number of drivers has actually increased, and the standard of supervision has improved. I am sure that the House will be glad to have that information and correction to the inspector's report.
  My hon. Friend also referred to the updating of the rule book. He drew attention to the inspector's remarks about
  1110
  the importance of continual updating of the British Railways rule book and his recommendation that more attention should be paid to updating rules and other relevant safety documents.
  As the report states, the rule dealing with the use and meaning of signal aspects, including flashing yellow ones, was altered on 4 April 1987, clarifying the meaning of main aspects. Since then, the board has issued a complete revision of the rule book which came into effect on 4 June 1988. That too clarifies the meaning of signalling aspects, and I am sure the board will heed my inspector's recommendation and pay special attention to keeping the rules up to date.
  I refer finally to braking. Somewhat against the clock I must state that, despite extensive investigations into the braking of the Euston-Manchester train, including two sets of speed and braking tests carried out with the coaches actually involved, the inspector has not been completely convinced of the reason why braking after the emergency brake application was not as effective as it was expected to be.
  The full emergency application of the brakes is likely to introduce wheel slide even on dry rails, particularly if adhesion is reduced by any contaminant. That would activate the wheel slide prevention equipment where fitted. Therefore, there must be some reason to believe that it was not mechanical failure that caused the wheel slide mechanism to operate and therefore to slow the effectiveness of the emergency application of brakes. We can never know for certain, but possibly there was some matter on the surface of the track that acted as a lubricant and therefore led to skidding. The reaction of the mechanism, perfectly properly, tried to prevent that skidding from continuing. That led the inspector to recommend that, in the full emergency application of brakes, all brakes should be fully applied even if wheel slide occurs and wheel flats are made on the wheels. The inspector recommends the fitting of equipment to eliminate automatically the operation of the wheel slide prevention equipment in the event of an emergency brake application being made.
  That is a somewhat technical explanation. I hope ghat my hon. Friend will find it helpful. I am grateful to him for raising the matter this evening and giving me the opportunity to explain to him and to the House the background to the four key matters that he raised that arise from the report.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at five minutes past Eleven o'clock.

EDUCATION AND SCIENCE

  Teachers' Pay and Conditions
  Mr. Rowe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science when he will be in a position to publish his proposals for teachers' negotiating machinery for pay and conditions of service.

  Mrs. Rumbold
  My right hon. Friend has received various responses from interested parties to the Green Paper "Teachers' Pay and Conditions: A Consultative Document". He will be undertaking discussions with those parties in the course of the next few months.

  Burnage High School
  Mr. Straw
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science whether, further to his answer to the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway) of 23 May,Official Report, column 13, he has now obtained a complete copy of the MacDonald inquiry into Burnage high school; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Kenneth Baker
  I have received a copy of the published report from Manchester city council and have placed copies in the Library. I have not seen a copy of the complete text. I consider that the report raises issues of public interest and should be published in full, unless the council can demonstrate overwhelming arguments to the contrary. I do not believe that considered conclusions can be drawn on the basis of the present severely foreshortened report. Accordingly I have asked the council for a clear statement of the specific difficulties which it sees in publishing the report in full and why these cannot be met if necessary by excising only particular and limited passages.

OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT

  Nicaragua
  Miss Lestor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will publish a table in the Official Report showing in ranked order the contributions, as a percentage of their total aid budget, made by the

  London

  Edinburgh

  Northern Ireland

  Cardiff

  Number of resident commissioners

  13

  2

  2

  01

  Total number of days devoted to oral hearings

  54

  12

  9

  9·5

  Average number of days on which each resident commissioner conducted oral hearings

  4·15

  6

  4·5

  2·382

  1 Over the period, four different commissioners visited Cardiff from London to conduct oral hearings as required.

  2 This figure is reached by dividing the total number of days by the number of non-resident commissioners who sat at Cardiff over the period, that is 9·5/4.

  626
  development assistance committee donor countries to Nicaragua, for the latest year for which figures are available.

  Mr. Chris Patten
  Net official development assistance from Development Assistance Committee donor countries to Nicaragua in 1986 as a percentage of their total official development assistance was as follows:

  Donor

  per cent.

  Finland

  2·28

  Sweden

  1·61

  Norway

  1·44

  Netherlands

  1·10

  Switzerland

  0·86

  Austria

  0·65

  Italy

  0·57

  Denmark

  0·46

  France

  0·28

  Canada

  0·25

  Germany

  0·21

  Belgium

  0·12

  Australia

  0·01

  United Kingdom

  0·01

  Japan

  0·00

  Source: DAC Chairman's report

  The figures are based on bilateral aid to Nicaragua as a percentage of each donor's total bilateral plus multilateral aid. The United Kingdom's share of multilateral, mainly European Community, aid to Nicaragua in 1985, the latest year for which this figure is available, amounted to about 0·2 per cent. of our total aid; statistics are not available which would show the amount which other DAC countries provided to Nicaragua through multilateral channels.

ATTORNEY-GENERAL

  Social Security Commissioners
  Mr. Win Griffiths
  To ask the Attorney-General how many days on average each social security commissioner has conducted oral hearings in(a) London, (b) Edinburgh, (c) Northern Ireland and (d) Cardiff (non-resident) in the period from January to the end of April 1988.

  The Attorney-General
  The table shows the average number of days over that period on which each of the resident commissioners conducted oral hearings in each of the places mentioned, except for Cardiff for which the table shows the average number of days on which each of the visiting, non-resident commissioners conducted oral hearings.

  "Spycatcher"
  Mr. Winnick
  To ask the Attorney-General if, in the light of the judgment of the High Court in Australia, he will give the latest total amount spent by Her Majesty's Government on all aspects, including legal, travelling, administrative and other costs, relating to the Government's legal action on "Spycatcher" in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.

  The Attorney-General
  The total amount expended to date on legal costs both here and abroad in respect of litigation and advice and on travelling and subsistence is about £848,000. To seek to quantify administrative costs would involve disproportionate expense.

TRANSPORT

  Driving Instructors Licences
  Mr. Gareth Wardell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what information his Department holds on the numbers of approved driving instructors licences issued for each of the last 10 years; and at what level of regional disaggregation this information is available.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  The national figures for the numbers of approved driving instructors on the Department's compulsory register and for the numbers of trainee licences to give instruction are as follows:

  ADIs at year end

  Trainee licences issued

  1977

  20,897

  4,355

  1978

  21,670

  5,358

  1979

  22,511

  5,635

  1980

  23,562

  5,414

  1981

  25,098

  5,496

  1982

  26,101

  5,054

  1983

  26,942

  5,142

  Road constructed in C40 concrete (jointed unreinforced)

  Scheme

  Date of Construction

  Approximate length (miles)

  Defects

  M25

  Leatherhead-Reigate

  July 1984-May 1985

  4·80

  142 full depth cracks

  73 mid-bay cracks

  4 longitudinal cracks

  7,632 joint arris spalling

  M25

  Wisley-Leatherhead

  1984

  4·70

  6 full depth cracks in 1st rip and 16 full depth cracks in the 2nd rip behind dowel bars

  326 thin bonded repairs

  A55

  Hawarden Bypass (Welsh Office)

  1984

  6·0

  None reported

  A11

  Barton Mills

  1985

  1·5

  None reported

  M4 Link

  Culverhouse Cross to Capel Llanilltern (Welsh Office)

  1984

  3·3

  None reported

  A45

  Ipswich Bypass (West)

  April-July 1985 (approx)

  4·5

  None reported

  M42

  Tamworth (Kingsbury)

  June 1985-August 1985

  5·8

  Very few minor cracks

  628

  ADIs at year end

  Trainee licences issued

  1984

  28,090

  5,643

  1985

  28,675

  4,203

  1986

  30,069

  2,350

  1987

  31,336

  2,518

  11988

  32,090

  1,377

  1 To May.

  Regional figures are not available.

  Plutonium
  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what requirements have recently been imposed by(a) the United States Government and (b) the international Atomic Energy Agency regarding the transport of plutonium by air.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply which I gave to the hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) on 1 February 1988, at column 509.

  Motorways (Double-decking)
  Mr. Stern
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he has any plans for double-decking motorways.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  None at present.

  Road Schemes (Specifications)
  Mr. Gardiner
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will list those road schemes which have been built to the same specification as the M25 between Leatherhead and Reigate and identify any defects in the concrete construction of these carriageways which required rectification.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  The information requested, for national roads, is as follows:
  629

  Scheme

  Date of Construction

  Approximate length (miles)

  Defects

  M3

  Popham-Bar End Contract 1

  1984

  6·3

  52 longitudinal, diagonal or corner cracks

  17 transverse cracks

  A564

  Blythe Bridge to Uttoxeter

  July-October 1984

  8·5

  1 mid-bay crack

  M42

  Bromsgrove (Alvechurch)

  June-October 1984

  2·4

  8 cracks in 2nd rip behind dowel bars

  M42

  Bromsgrove (Umberslade)

  June 1984-May 1985

  5·5

  2 cracks in 1st rip and 35 in 2nd rip behind dowel bars

  A30

  Long Rock Bypass

  1986

  1·0

  None reported

  A12

  Chelmsford Bypass

  April-June 1986

  8·8

  None reported

  A43

  Towcester Bypass

  September-October 1987

  3·5

  None reported

  A11

  Wymondham Bypass

  June-July 1987

  4·3

  None reported

  A303

  Ilminster Bypass

  July-October 1987

  8·8

  None reported

  A30

  Whiddon Down to Okehampton

  September 1986–January 1987

  4·1

  None reported

  A10

  Buntingford Bypass

  September-December 1986

  2·8

  None reported

  A27

  Chichester Bypass

  1987-May 1988

  8·30

  A small area of road surface was rain damaged

  Road Construction Contracts (Consulting Engineers)
  Mr. Gardiner
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what progress has been made on the proposed introduction of the changes in the role of the consulting engineer in motorway and trunk road construction contracts which he announced in the House on 23 July 1987,Official Report, column 288–89.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  Details of the proposed amendments to the conditions of contract to give effect to the changes have recently been sent to the professional bodies for comment. The proposals maintain an important role for the consulting engineer, within a framework which places responsibility for major decisions on the Department as employer. Initially, the Department plans to let three contracts under the new arrangements, for which tenders are expected to be invited this autumn.

  M25 (Leatherhead-Reigate)
  Mr. Gardiner
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he is now in a position to make a statement on the progress made in establishing responsibility for the issues arising out of the construction of the M25 between Leatherhead and Reigate.

  Date of count

  12-hour count

  Road

  Location

  Grid reference

  All vehicles

  13 April 1987

  64,874 (64,952 including pedal-cycles)

  A4

  Great-West Road Chiswick West London

  52001780

  The correct count at Woodford new road was 36,690 rather than the 73,380 quoted. I apologise for the error.
  630
  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  We have commissioned a leading consulting and testing engineer to undertake an independent investigation of the important and complex issues underlying the views reached by the engineer to this contract. The investigation will cover other concrete roads built to the same specification, which have apparently not suffered from such extensive problems. We expect to reach a view on the question of responsibility by about the end of the year.

  Traffic Counts
  Mr. Ashley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what is the highest traffic count of(a) all vehicles and (b) heavy commercial vehicles on urban roads that has been reported to his Department in the last two years; what was the date of the count; and where was the road.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  [pursuant to his reply, 25 March 1988, c. 267–68]: I made a mistake in my answer. The information given regarding the highest "all vehicle" traffic count on a built-up road in 1987 was incorrect. The highest recorded 12-hour count was:

ENERGY

  Plutonium (Shipments)
  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy how many shipments of plutonium have taken place(a) by air from and (b) by surface, within the United Kingdom, over the past two years; and if he will give details of airports and routes used.

  Mr. Michael Spicer
  For consignments of plutonium by air, I refer the hon. Member to my reply to the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) on 16 February 1988 at column 592. Plutonium is normally sent from Carlisle airport but small samples for safeguards purposes go from Manchester airport.

  Surface consignments are primarily shipments from Dounreay to Sellafield. For this I refer the hon. Member to the reply given by my hon. Friend the Member for Hampshire, North-West (Mr. Mitchell) to the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Dr. Thomas) on 9 March 1988 at column 205–206.

  Information relating to such movements over a short period and to specific shipments is confidential, for reasons of security and commercial sensitivity.

  THORP
  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy when it is expected that THORP will begin commercial scale reprocessing; and what its expected lifetime will be.

  Mr. Michael Spicer
  THORP is expected to begin commercial reprocessing in late 1992. The lifetime of the plant will be governed by a combination of economic, commercial and operational factors. Experience of other reprocessing plants suggests that THORP can be expected to operate well into the second decade of the 21st century.

  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what information he has as to what countries currently send spent fuel to Sellafield for reprocessing; what countries are expected to use THORP; and what countries are currently in negotiations for its use.

  Mr. Michael Spicer
  British Nuclear Fuels plc currently receives spent magnox fuel from Italy and Japan. Utilities in the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland have entered into contracts for reprocessing in THORP. Ongoing negotiations with potential customers are commercially confidential.

  Energy Efficiency
  Mr. McLoughlin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he plans any future initiatives to promote energy efficiency in the home; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Peter Morrison
  My Department's Energy Efficiency Office, in collaboration with the Building Societies Association, is now launching a new initiative to help building societies to promote energy efficiency to their customers.

  For the purpose of this initiative, the Energy Efficiency Office and the Building Societies Association have together published a new leaflet, "Monergy in Your New Home", which building societies will be able to make available to
  632
  their new and existing borrowers. The leaflet gives basic information on energy efficiency measures and finance, and invites the householder to ask the Energy Efficiency Office for a monergy pack. The pack gives more detailed advice, including a home energy survey checklist and a set of energy saving guides. I am placing a copy of the leaflet and the pack in the Library of the House.

  I very much welome this new initiative, and I am grateful to the Building Societies Association and the participating building societies for making it possible.

  Electricity Privatisation
  Mr. Butterfill
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what arrangements have been made in preparing the Central Electricity Generating Board for privatisation.

  Mr. Peter Morrison
  In his statement to the House on 25 February at column 454, my right hon. Friend set out the Government's proposals for the privatisation of the electricity supply industry in England and Wales. Subject to the passage of the appropriate legislation, it is his intention to make the following appointments to the companies which will emerge from the Central Electricity Generating Board.

  The first company will own some 70 per cent. of the CEGB's generating capacity, both fossil-fuelled and nuclear. Lord Marshall, chairman of the CEGB, is also to be chairman-designate of this new company and Mr. John Baker, managing director of the CEGB, is to be the chief executive-designate.

  The second new generating company will own the remaining 30 per cent. of the CEGB's capacity, all of it non-nuclear. Mr Robert Malpas CBE, currently a managing director of BP, will be taking up the appointment of chairman-designate of this company when he leaves BP in mid-1989. Between now and then he will be available for consultation. Mr. Ed Wallis, presently director of operations for the CEGB, is to be the chief executive-designate of the new company.

  The chairman-designate of the national grid company is to be Mr. David Jefferies, the current deputy chairman of the Electricity Council. The chief executive-designate is to be Mr. Bill Kerss at present deputy chairman of the South Wales electricity board.

  The chairmen and chief executives-designate will be involved in the work which is now beginning within the CEGB to plan for the transfer of the existing business to the new companies once the legislation to restructure and privatise the industry has been approved.

  Energy Efficiency Office
  Mr. Andrew MacKay
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he is in a position to announce his decision on the future role of the Energy Efficiency Office.

  Mr. Peter Morrison
  [pursuant to his reply 22 January 1988, c. 885–86]: As I indicated in my answer of 22 January at columns 885–86, consumers are now well aware of the case for energy efficiency. The Energy Efficiency Office is therefore entering a fresh phase. I have decided that its aims will now be to run specific and targeted services backed by technical support, including guidance on the use of the energy efficiency industries; and to ensure that builders and property managers have the necessary technical advice.
  633
  Accordingly, from 1989–90, the main areas of the EEO's work will be:
  (a) a better regional service offering specific advice and RD and D support to industrial and commercial firms;
  (b) continuing support for community insulation projects targeted on pensioners and low income households;
  (c) new ways of improving the energy efficiency of housing.

  As part of the conclusion of the first phase of the EEO's work, I have decided to bring an end to the energy efficiency survey scheme. There is now wide public appreciation of the potential value of energy surveys, and grants for this purpose are no longer justified. Applications for approval to undertake a survey under the scheme will therefore be considered only if they are received by 24 June 1988.

WALES

  Local Education Authorities
  Mr. Barry Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what plans he has to enable local education authorities in Wales to have the freedom to experiment with new concepts and ideas that are not imposed by the centre, consequent upon his statement to the Welsh Grand Committee on 25 May; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Wyn Roberts
  My right hon. Friend has no plans to prevent them from so experimenting. The Education Reform Bill proposes specific powers to enable him to disapply or modify the national curriculum requirements in a school for the purpose of development or experiment.

TRADE AND INDUSTRY

  Manufactured Goods
  Mr. Canavan
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what is the latest balance of trade in manufactured goods.

  Mr. Alan Clark
  In the first four months of 1988, there was an estimated deficit on trade in manufactures of £3·9 billion.

  Citizens Advice Bureaux
  Mrs. Dunwoody
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster how many citizens advice bureaux have legal aid panels.

  Mr. Butcher
  I understand that about 450 of the 74 main citizens advice bureaux in the United Kingdom currently operate solicitors' rota schemes. Another eight bureaux directly employ salaried lawyers.

  Volume Car Production
  Mr. Tony Lloyd
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what estimate he has made of the trend in volume car production over the next five years; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Atkins
  There are no official estimates available.

  Tropical Forests
  Ms. Walley
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (1) if the Government are proposing or 634
  supporting any special projects related to tropical forest conservation at the forthcoming meeting of the International Tropical Timber Organisation Council session, 22 June to 1 July, in Rio de Janeiro;

  (2) when he last met representatives of the International Tropical Timber Organisation; what support has been given to the International Tropical Timber Organisation in its administration of funding for tropical reforestation, conservation and management of tropical forests and market research relating to the international trade in tropical hardwoods; and if he will make a statement;

  (3) pursuant to the answer of 21 April, Official Report,column 534, what further action he has taken to implement a code of conduct for the international tropical timber trade; and if he will take steps to ensure that the conservation of tropical forests and their genetic resources will be an essential prerequisite for the future development of the international tropical timber trade.

  Mr. Atkins
  We will be represented at the forthcoming council session of the International Tropical Timber Organisation, which is expected to discuss the organisation's future role and work programme, including project assessment. We are currently considering our position on the various questions raised as we prepare for this meeting.

  Ms. Walley
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what is the division of responsibility between the Department of Trade and Industry and the Overseas Development Administration with regard to the International Tropical Timber Organisation, particularly in relation to the tropical forestry action plan.

  Mr. Atkins
  The International Tropical Timber Organisation was established under what is primarily a trade-related commodity agreement; the Department of Trade and Industry has lead responsibility, particularly on trade-related matters. The Overseas Development Administration is responsible for the tropical forestry action plan, co-ordinated by the Food and Agriculture Organisation. The TFAP's overall framework for action in the field of tropical forestry extends to such areas as forestry and land use, conservation and fuel and energy. The tropical timber agreement requires the ITTO to avoid duplication of efforts and co-operate with United Nations organisations such as the FAO. We would expect to see this reflected in the ITTO's future activities.

  Chlorofluorocarbons
  Ms. Walley
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what specific initiatives his Department has already taken and plans to take, in support of the Montreal protocol for reducing the production of chlorofluorocarbons; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Atkins
  The Secretary of State for the Environment has lead policy responsibility in respect of the United Kingdom's obligations under the Montreal protocol, in consultation with my right hon. and noble Friend.

  Her Majesty's Government were an initial signatory to the protocol last September and have actively participated in the subsequent discussions on the proposed EC implementing measures, in particular the provisions relating to the scheduled freeze and cuts in production and consumption, and to identity scope for substitutes and

  635
  increased opportunities for recycling and recovery. We are also supporting the initiatives being taken by industry at a European level to reduce dependance on these chemicals.

  Foxley Wood Planning Inquiry
  Dr. Cunningham
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster if his Department's submission to the Foxley wood planning inquiry in Hampshire represents his policy in respect of proposals for large-scale housing developments in the south and south-east of England.

  Mr. Kenneth Clarke
  My Department does not have policies in respect of housing developments in south-east England or anywhere else. Whether the Department considers it has something to contribute depends on the merits of each case.

  Dr. Cunningham
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster if he will publish his Department's submission to the planning inquiry being held into the housing proposals at Foxley wood, Hampshire.

  Mr. Kenneth Clarke
  Under normal DOE procedures, copies have been sent to the appellant and to the local authority. In addition I have arranged for a copy of the submission to be placed in the Library of the House.

  Film Industry
  Mr. Dixon
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what are the implications for his policy towards the future of the film industry of the reference to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission of alleged restrictive labour practices in that industry.

  Mr. Maude
  The reference is intended to establish whether certain specified restrictive labour practices exist in the broadcasting and film industries and, if so, whether they operate against the public interest. The Government will consider whether action is appropriate in the light of the MMC's report.

  Insurance Brokers Registration Council
  Mr. Page
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster whether he will make a statement on the position of the Insurance Brokers Registration Council as a recognised professional body under the Financial Services Act.

  Mr. Maude
  Recognition of professional bodies under the Financial Services Act is a matter for the Securities and Investments Board. In January the board made an interim recognition order in respect of the council pending the making and coming into effect of the council's new rules on investment business. An order approving the Insurance Brokers Registration Council (Conduct of Investment Business) Rules 1988 has been laid before Parliament and copies of the rules have been placed in the Library. The order and with it the rules will come into effect on 21 June 1988.

  Tin Mining (Cornwall)
  Mr. Harris
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, if he will make a statement on the current position of the Rio Tinto Zinc Corporation plc tin mining operations in Cornwall.
  636
  Mr. Kenneth Clarke
  [pursant to his answer, 22 March 1988.]: The loan of £15 million offered in 1986 to Carnon Consolidated Ltd., then a subsidiary of RTZ Corporation plc, is repayable in the years 1996–2001. The loan of £10 million offered this year to Carnon Holdings Ltd., (the new parent company of Carnon Consolidated Ltd.) replaces guarantees of £10 million commercial loans under the 1986 offer. This loan is repayable from 1993 onwards. Both loans are interest-free and both are linked to capital expenditure. Repayments of both loans are related to the after-tax profits of the preceding year above a minimum level. There are provisions for repayments to be waived if profits are insufficient.

  Companies Registration Office
  Mr. Thurnham
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster if he will make a statement on the proposed increase in the charge for searches at the Companies Registration Office and as to why the request for a duplicate of the roll film of information received at the office each day as a cost-effective service to the public and to the Companies Registration Office was not accepted.

  Mr. Maude
  [holding answer 7 June 1988]: The proposed increase in the fee for searches at the Companies Registration Officies is intended to ensure that the full cost of providing this service is met by those using it. The Registrar of Companies has been discussing with major users the possibility of supplying them with roll film copies of company documents and expects to write to them shortly about such a service.

  Mr. Thurnham
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster how many searches were undertaken by the Companies Registration Office during 1987 on behalf of Government and other public authorities listed as major users.

  Mr. Maude
  [holding answer 7 June 1988]: No Government Department or other public authority is among the major users of search facilities at the Companies Registration Offices. In 1987, some 170,000 searches were carried out for the CROs' own working purposes and those of other parts of the Department of Trade and Industry. Searches for other Government Departments and other public authorities attract the normal search fee and are therefore not always separately identified, but total at least 70,000.

NATIONAL FINANCE

  Value Added Tax
  Mr. Nicholas Bennett
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what percentage of businesses with a turnover of £250,000 or less are currently subject to a surcharge as a result of late submission of their quarterly value added tax returns.

  Mr. Lilley
  Customs do not keep separate surcharge statistics for businesses with a turnover of £250,000 or less.

  At the end of May 1988 approximately 20 per cent. of all businesses registered for VAT were in receipt of extant surcharge liability notices. About half of these had not yet incurred a surcharge.

  Mr. Nicholas Bennett
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the nature of representations he has
  637
  received from small businesses concerning the restriction on companies taking advantage of the new instalment system for value added tax payments to those which are up to date on payments; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Lilley
  No such representations have been received.

  Consumer Credit
  Mr. Simon Hughes
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what was the rate of growth in consumer credit over the past year; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Lilley
  In the 12 months to 31 March 1988, the amount outstanding on all consumer credit agreements rose by 18·1 per cent.

CIVIL SERVICE

  Staff Exchanges
  Mr. Baldry
  To ask the Minister for the Civil Service what was the level of interchange between the Civil Service and industry and commerce in 1987.

  Table 1 Defendants proceeded against and found guilty of litter-related offences1 by police force area

  England and Wales

  Number of defendants

  Police Force Area

  1982

  1983

  1984

  1985

  1986

  Total proceeded against

  Total found guilty

  Total proceeded against

  Total found guilty

  Total proceeded against

  Total found guilty

  Total proceeded against

  Total found guilty

  Total proceeded against

  Total found guilty

  Avon and Somerset

  47

  36

  46

  41

  54

  45

  47

  47

  34

  27

  Bedfordshire

  15

  14

  18

  17

  11

  10

  13

  13

  10

  10

  Cambridgeshire

  22

  21

  24

  24

  23

  21

  15

  15

  18

  16

  Cheshire

  23

  20

  33

  31

  29

  27

  33

  30

  31

  30

  Cleveland

  30

  29

  41

  36

  30

  30

  20

  18

  33

  30

  Cumbria

  156

  148

  141

  128

  155

  140

  185

  174

  229

  209

  Derbyshire

  105

  92

  67

  54

  65

  58

  57

  52

  73

  66

  Devon and Cornwall

  60

  58

  84

  81

  69

  60

  66

  63

  56

  49

  Dorset

  15

  14

  36

  33

  29

  24

  27

  27

  24

  24

  Durham

  12

  12

  29

  26

  14

  14

  13

  17

  24

  21

  Essex

  59

  57

  72

  68

  63

  58

  46

  45

  44

  39

  Gloucester

  26

  26

  28

  28

  32

  32

  30

  27

  36

  34

  Greater Manchester

  103

  96

  100

  97

  76

  73

  65

  59

  47

  45

  Hampshire

  41

  35

  48

  44

  51

  50

  57

  54

  69

  54

  Hertfordshire

  109

  103

  94

  82

  90

  87

  85

  79

  53

  52

  Humberside

  33

  33

  39

  38

  53

  50

  26

  23

  16

  13

  Kent

  67

  63

  60

  57

  53

  48

  41

  36

  29

  23

  Lancashire

  78

  71

  87

  79

  89

  82

  80

  72

  61

  58

  Leicestershire

  37

  36

  36

  35

  36

  33

  23

  20

  27

  21

  Lincolnshire

  30

  28

  47

  45

  49

  48

  39

  35

  48

  44

  City of London

  —

  —

  —

  —

  1

  1

  1

  1

  1

  1

  Merseyside

  66

  59

  55

  46

  77

  61

  48

  31

  39

  27

  Metropolitan Police

  91

  77

  56

  43

  71

  58

  73

  66

  74

  64

  Norfolk

  42

  42

  42

  41

  24

  23

  26

  24

  34

  28

  Northamptonshire

  22

  22

  27

  24

  36

  35

  22

  21

  11

  10

  Northumbria

  55

  54

  46

  41

  29

  25

  23

  21

  40

  34

  North Yorkshire

  37

  36

  41

  33

  37

  31

  30

  28

  23

  20

  Nottinghamshire

  102

  97

  73

  73

  48

  47

  76

  75

  93

  92

  South Yorkshire

  162

  152

  126

  114

  114

  99

  91

  86

  101

  83

  Staffordshire

  73

  69

  59

  58

  35

  34

  46

  43

  55

  51

  Suffolk

  25

  20

  28

  26

  40

  31

  29

  23

  28

  26

  Surrey

  51

  46

  62

  59

  56

  51

  34

  28

  26

  24

  Sussex

  68

  63

  68

  66

  43

  41

  44

  42

  31

  26

  Thames Valley

  54

  48

  42

  39

  37

  36

  46

  45

  46

  41

  Warwickshire

  28

  26

  32

  31

  20

  16

  18

  15

  27

  26

  West Mercia

  59

  54

  77

  65

  59

  57

  55

  52

  79

  69

  West Midlands

  98

  90

  99

  91

  92

  82

  53

  46

  58

  51

  West Yorkshire

  130

  118

  128

  113

  79

  66

  78

  63

  48

  43

  Wiltshire

  31

  30

  44

  44

  24

  23

  23

  23

  18

  18

  Dyfed Powys

  22

  22

  22

  20

  18

  18

  32

  30

  49

  45

  Gwent

  90

  88

  51

  50

  64

  61

  33

  32

  81

  72

  North Wales

  33

  31

  34

  34

  20

  18

  17

  17

  14

  13

  638
  Mr. Luce
  Returns from Departments show that there were 278 outward and 195 inward secondments in 1987, a total of 473. This is more than double the figure in 1979 and is 1 per cent. higher than in 1986. The figure for secondments to other bodies rose by 5 per cent.

  I welcome this high level of interchange and will be reviewing ways of strengthening the links still further. A copy of the 1987 interchange report has been placed in both Libraries of Parliament.

HOME DEPARTMENT

  Litter-related Offences
  Mr. Amess
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many(a) prosecutions and (b) convictions were made for each of the last five years in (i) the United Kingdom, by region, and (ii) Basildon for litter-related offences; and how much was recovered in fines.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  The information available to me, which may be incomplete, is brought together in the following tables. Data is not collected centrally on moneys recovered in fines for individual offences.
  639

  Police Force Area

  1982

  1983

  1984

  1985

  1986

  Total proceeded against

  Total found guilty

  Total proceeded against

  Total found guilty

  Total proceeded against

  Total found guilty

  Total proceeded against

  Total found guilty

  Total proceeded against

  Total found guilty

  South Wales

  126

  115

  117

  113

  96

  83

  83

  73

  84

  76

  England and Wales

  2,533

  2,351

  2,459

  2,268

  2,191

  1,987

  1,954

  1,791

  2,022

  1,805

  1 Offences under the Litter Acts 1958, 1971 and 1983 and the Refuse Disposal (Amenity) Act 1978.

  Table 2

  Defendants proceeded against and found guilty of litter-related offences1

  Billericay2

  Number of defendants3

  1982

  1983

  1984

  1985

  1986

  Total proceeded against

  3

  2

  8

  1

  1

  Total found guilty

  3

  2

  8

  1

  1

  1 Offences under the Litter Acts 1958, 1971 and 1983 and the Refuse Disposal (Amenity) Act 1978.

  2 Data is not collected centrally for Basildon alone but for the whole of the Billericay petty sessional division.

  3 Figures are those recorded centrally and are approximate: detailed checking of individual cases would involve disproportionate cost.

  Mr. Amess
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many offenders already convicted of litter-related offences were(a) re-prosecuted and (b) re-convicted at later dates for similar offences in the United Kingdom, by region, and in Basildon, in each of the last five years.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  The information requested is not available.

  Mr. Amess
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) how many(a) prosecutions and (b) convictions there were for litter-related offences on British Rail property for each of the last five years;

  (2) how many (a) prosecutions and (b) convictions there were for litter-related offences for each of the last five years for each of the United Kingdom's national parks.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  The information requested is not available. Details of the precise location of such offences are not collected centrally.

  Industrial Waste
  Mr. Amess
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many(a) prosecutions and (b) convictions there were in connection with the illegal dumping of industrial waste (i) in rivers and seas and (ii) by other methods in the United Kingdom, by region, and in Basildon for each of the last five years.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  It is not possible to distinguish prosecutions for the unlawful disposal of industrial waste from the records of court proceedings held centrally.

  Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey
  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what provisions of the single European market in 1992 will apply to(a) the Isle of Man, (b) Guernsey and (c) Jersey; and under what powers.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  The provisions of the treaty of Rome which apply to the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man are governed by articles 25–27 and protocol 3 to the treaty of accession. Provisions for achieving the 640
  completion of the internal market will apply to the islands only within this framework. They are primarily concerned with the harmonisation of custom controls and the free movement of agricultural and animal produce.

  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what are the arrangements for the issue of the common European passport in(a) the Isle of Man, (b) Guernsey and (c) Jersey; and how this will affect the right of movement, work and abode in the United Kingdom and other European countries of residents of the islands.

  Mr. Renton
  Passports will continue to be issued in the islands through the lieutenants-governor in exercise of the royal prerogative. The common format passport, which is not a European Community passport as such, will merely bring about changes in form to the present passport. The status, entitlements and privileges of the holder are in no way affected.

  Immigration
  Mr. Fatchett
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether there will be any change to the scope of the definition of public funds, as contained in the statement of changes in immigration rules July 1985, when the wording is revised to take into account the Social Security Act 1986.

  Mr. Renton
  There will be a slight change of scope but only insofar as family credit and income support, which are to be included in the definition, do not cover precisely the same ground as supplementary benefit and family income supplement, which they replace.

  Mr. Fatchett
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether the revised definition of public funds in the statement of changes in immigration rules July 1985 will allow overseas students to be exempt from 80 per cent. of the community charge, on the same basis as students from the United Kingdom.

  Mr. Renton
  Yes, in that whatever criteria are decided for this concession will apply equally to overseas and home students.

  Mr. Janner
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the cost to a person appealing against the decision of an entry clearance officer; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Renton
  There is no charge for exercising any statutory right of appeal provided under the Immigration Act 1971.

  Residence Periods
  Ms. Ruddock
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if there has been any change in the period of residence in the United Kingdom required before indefinite leave to remain can be granted at the discretion of his Department.
  641
  Mr. Renton
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave to a question from the hon. Member for Norwood (Mr. Fraser) on 5 November 1987, at columns 833–34. There have been no subsequent changes.

  Haverigg Prison, Millom
  Dr. Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) if, pursuant to his answer to the hon. Member for Copeland of 17 December 1987,Official Report, column 626, he will publish the report and recommendations of the inquiry into security arrangements at Haverigg prison, Millom, Cumbria;

  (2) if, pursuant to his answer to the hon. Member for Copeland of 17 December 1987, Official Report, column 626, he will state whether any security arrangements have been changed at Haverigg prison, Millom, Cumbria;

  (3) if he will list all those occasions in the last twenty years on which prisoners have escaped, or attempted to escape, from Haverigg prison, Millom, Cumbria.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  Statistics on escapes are published in annual reports on the work of the prison department, copies of which are available in the Library, and show that the following numbers of prisoners escaped from Haverigg:

  Number

  1969

  —

  1970

  1

  1971

  3

  1972

  9

  1973

  6

  1974

  —

  1975

  2

  1976

  4

  1977

  6

  1978

  2

  1979

  6

  1980

  2

  1981

  1

  1982

  5

  1983

  3

  1984–85

  14

  1985–86

  5

  1986–87

  5

  Population of Haverigg closed training prison on 31 March: by security category, 1979–88

  Security category1

  Total population in establishment

  A

  B

  C

  D

  not recorded centrally

  1979

  —

  —

  435

  10

  60

  506

  1980

  —

  —

  370

  15

  145

  534

  1981

  —

  —

  470

  10

  40

  522

  1982

  —

  —

  495

  10

  10

  518

  1983

  —

  —

  475

  20

  45

  539

  1984

  —

  —

  490

  15

  15

  522

  1985

  —

  —

  465

  15

  40

  521

  1986

  —

  —

  495

  10

  35

  533

  1987

  —

  —

  480

  10

  20

  512

  1988

  —

  —

  465

  10

  45

  518

  1 The figures are those recorded centrally and are approximate, detailed checking of individual cases would involve disproportionate cost.

  Dr. Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what investigations have been carried out into alleged drugs abuse at Haverigg prison, Millom, Cumbria, in the last 10 years.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  We attach much importance to keeping illicit drugs out of prison establishments and are determined that counter-measures are taken. The regular
  642
  The 1984–85 figure is for the 15-month period from 1 January 1984–31 March 1985. Subsequent reports relate to the year from 1 April. Between 1 April 1987 and 31 May 1988, five prisoners escaped.

  As to attempted escapes, the readily available information relates to 1986–88. During these years, the following numbers of prisoners were caught while in the process of attempting to escape, or were apprehended or seen in circumstances which suggested that they were about to make an attempt:

  Year

  Number

  1986

  30

  1987

  18

  11988

  4

  1 To 31 May.

  In accordance with standard practice, inquiries were made for internal management purposes into particular incidents at Haverigg to which the hon. Member's question answered on 17 December 1987 related. No changes arising specifically out of those incidents were deemed necessary but the experience of escapes at Haverigg and elsewhere is in forming a general review of security arrangements in medium-low security establishments which is in progress.

  Work has been carried out on the installation of a new fence around the sportsfield at Haverigg, which will bring this area up to current security standards in keeping with the main perimeter of the prison; and work to install a similar fence around the prison's farm was scheduled to start in the near future.

  Dr. Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list the various categories and numbers of prisoners held at Haverigg prison, Millom, Cumbria, in each year since 1979.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  The readily available information is given in the table.

  monitoring of the incidence of drugs is a normal management function. Following the issue of further guidance last autumn, governors were required to review and report upon the situation in their establishment and the need for additional measures to be taken. A full search by drug dogs took place at Haverigg on 23 March, when some cannabis was found. Allegations concerning the

  643
  availability of drugs at Haverigg will be investigated by the deputy director general of the prison service as part of his inquiry into the recent incidents at the prison.

  Vietnamese Refugees
  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will reconsider the limit on Vietnamese refugees allowed into the United Kingdom from Hong Kong, in the light of the recent additional influx of refugees to the colony.

  Mr. Renton
  I have nothing to add to the reply given to the hon. Member for Wrexham (Dr. Marek) on 26 April at columns 85–86.

  DNA Fingerprinting
  Mr. Janner
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will now consider DNA fingerprinting as conclusive evidence of parentage; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Renton
  Due weight is already given to the results of DNA tests submitted by applicants in support of entry clearance applications. The results of the pilot trial to evaluate the role of DNA testing in immigration procedures will be available shortly.

  Mrs. N. Goodman (Passport Application)
  Mr. Teddy Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department why the application of Mrs. Nanette Ida Goodman of 12 Avenue terrace, Southend-on-Sea, to the Petty France office for a passport renewal on 19 April, explaining the urgency of her application, has still not been dealt with; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Renton
  Without Mrs. Goodman's date of birth, the London Passport Office is unable to trace her application on the computerised record of postal applications awaiting processing. If my hon. Friend will let me have this information, we will do all we can to ensure that the application is expedited. The passport department has tried to contact Mrs. Goodman by telephone, but her number is unavailable.

  Ministerial Meeting, Munich
  Mr. Soames
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the recent ministerial meetings he attended in Munich.

  Mr. Hurd
  The Ministers of the States of the European Community responsible for counter-terrorism and immigration met on 3 June in Munich under the chairmanship of Dr. Zimmermann, the Minister of the Interior of the Federal Republic of Germany. Lord Cockfield, a Vice-President of the European Commission, was present for the discussion of immigration matters.

  In the immigration meeting we reviewed the position on possible changes in controls at the internal borders of the Community in the light of the Single European Act. Some of my colleagues envisaged that it might become possible to abolish immigration frontier controls within the Community if a series of conditions were fulfilled. These conditions would include the strengthening of controls at the external frontiers of the Community, including the full harmonisation of visa requirements. Others agreed with
  644
  the United Kingdom that it was not possible to envisage the abolition within the foreseeable future of all immigration controls over third country nationals at intra-Community borders. All the Ministers present endorsed the statement by the presidency that no decision to abolish these controls had been taken.

  Frontier controls were also discussed, at my initiative, in the Trevi meeting in view of their importance in continued international cross-border co-operation to combat terrorism, drug trafficking and other crime. My colleagues unanimously accepted my suggestion that the Trevi machinery should be used to consider the implications of changes in frontier controls and the kind of measures which could be taken to off-set potential security disadvantages which might otherwise result from the implementation of the European internal market.

  At the immigration meeting, we had before us a further report from the ad hoc group of senior officials established in 1986 during the United Kingdom presidency. We endorsed the recommendations made by that group, including recommendations for improved co-ordination between the representatives of member states in third countries, in assessing conditions in those countries which are relevant to the grant of visas, and to the consideration of applications for asylum.

  My colleagues and I continue to be concerned at the considerable increase in some member states of the European Communities in the number of applications for asylum from persons who do not satisfy the criteria laid down in the 1951 Geneva refugee convention and appear to be exploiting the asylum procedure for purposes for which it is not intended. We therefore reaffirmed our aim of guaranteeing every asylum seeking the right to have his application examined in one of the member states but equally the aim of preventing the abuse whereby the same foreign national made different asylum applications in several member states. We welcomed the progress made towards establishing the necessary criteria for determining which state should be responsible for considering any individual application.

  In the Trevi meeting we also discussed events since our previous meeting in Copenhagen in December, including the recent murderous attacks by the Provisional IRA in the Netherlands. There was unanimous and wholehearted condemnation of the Provisional IRA and my colleagues supported my suggestion that this should be recorded in the presidency press statement issued after the meeting.

  Various measures to intensify co-operation were agreed including priority search measures for major terrorists, improved gathering of information on terrorist movements and the immediate exchange of information following a major terrorist incident. Proposals for greater co-operation between Trevi states in the forensic field will be developed by officials. We also agreed a refined and updated assessment of the terrorist threat to Community countries.

  Further co-operation to combat drug trafficking using the drug liaison officer network was agreed.

  My colleagues also agreed to my proposal that we should study ways of confiscating funds intended to support terrorism. The United Kingdom Government's proposals for legislation to replace the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1984, which expires in March 1989, will provide a starting point for that study.

  Prisons (Mother and Baby Units)
  Mrs. Ann Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many women in prison mother and baby units on the most recent convenient date had not previously served a custodial sentence; what were their ages; and for what offences they had been sentenced.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  [pursuant to his reply, 23 May]: I regret that incorrect information was contained in that answer. The reply should have read as follows:

  Forty-two women including seven remand prisoners in mother and baby units on 13 May 1988 had not previously served a custodial sentence. Their ages are shown in table 1. Table 2 lists the primary offences for each of the 35 sentenced women.

  Table 1

  Age

  Number of women

  16

  1

  18

  4

  19

  3

  20

  4

  21

  1

  23

  7

  24

  2

  25

  6

  26

  4

  27

  1

  29

  1

  30

  1

  31

  2

  32

  2

  33

  1

  35

  1

  36

  1

  Total

  42

  Table 2

  Offence

  Number of women

  Drugs offences

  10

  Theft

  9

  Assault

  2

  Wounding

  2

  Robbery

  3

  Burglary

  3

  Fraud

  2

  Handling stolen goods

  3

  Arson

  1

  Total

  35

NORTHERN IRELAND

  Hospitals
  Mr. Beggs
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what overall savings will be obtained by the proposal in the Northern health board operational plan to replace ward accommodation at Holywell hospital by provision of local psychogeriatric units in Lame and Whiteabbey.

  Mr. Needham
  This is primarily a matter for the Northern Health and Social Services Board. Rather than achieve savings, however, I understand that the proposal, which is only at the planning stage, is intended to improve services for elderly people in the areas mentioned.

  Fair Employment
  Mr. McNamara
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will list the employers in Northern Ireland which the Fair Employment Agency has(a) chosen or (b) had discussions with to revoke or modify directions previously given under subsection 2(i) or 2(ii) under Part II, section 13 (5)(a) or (b) of the Fair Employment Act (NI) 1976.

  Mr. Viggers
  [holding answer 20 May 1988]: The information is as follows:

  Cookstown District council;

  Armagh district council;

  Lough Neagh Fishermen's Co-operative.

ENVIRONMENT

  Waste Disposal
  Ms. Walley
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he has any plans to introduce legislation to ensure that the producers of waste are responsible for its disposal; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Moynihan
  We intend, following our September 1986 consultation paper, to announce our conclusions on waste disposal law amendment very shortly.

  Ms. Walley
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when the Government propose to compile a register of persons authorised to handle waste.

  Mr. Moynihan
  Our consultation paper on amendments to the law relating to waste disposal included a proposal to register waste handlers. We plan to make an announcement on the results of the consultation very shortly.

  Litter and Industrial Waste
  Mr. Amess
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) how many tonnes of(a) domestic litter and (b) industrial waste were legally disposed of for each of the last five years in (i) the United Kingdom, by region and (ii) Basildon;

  (2) if he will estimate how many tonnes of (a) domestic litter and (b) industrial waste were illegally disposed of in each of the last five years in (i) the United Kingdom, by region and (ii) Basildon;

  (3) what was the total cost to (a) taxpayers and (b) ratepayers of the disposal of (i) domestic litter and (ii) industrial waste for each of the last five years in (x) the United Kingdom, by region and (y) Basildon;

  (4) how many tonnes of (a) biodegradable and (b) non-biodegradable waste were (i) legally and (ii) illegally disposed of for each of the last five years in the United Kingdom, by region, and in Basildon;

  (5) if he will list the various methods by which (a) domestic litter and (b) industrial waste are disposed of; if he will list the total number of tonnes disposed of by each method for each of the last five years in the United Kingdom, by region, and in Basildon; and if he will express the total for each method as a percentage of the overall total;

  (6) how many tonnes of (a) industrial waste and (b) domestic litter were disposed of other than in seas or rivers in the United Kingdom, by region, and in Basildon, for each of the last five years;
  647
  (7) how many tonnes of (a) biodegradable and (b) non-biodegradable waste were disposed other than in seas and rivers in the United Kingdom, by region, and in Basildon, for each of the last five years.

  Mr. Moynihan
  Responsibility for the regulation of waste disposal lies with waste disposal authorities. Statistics on the amounts of waste disposed of by the authorities or by the private sector under licence, and the costs to local authorities, are not collected centrally.

  The two major methods of disposal of domestic and industrial waste are incineration and landfill, with or without prior treatment. It is estimated that about 100 million tonnes of controlled waste is generated in England and Wales annually. Of this 50 million tonnes is industrial waste, 28 million tonnes is domestic and commercial and the remainder is ash, slag and building waste. Within this total, about 1·5 million tonnes is defined as special waste under the Control of Pollution (Special Waste) Regulations 1980 as being dangerous or difficult to dispose of.

  Industrial waste is disposed of almost entirely by the private sector and the costs are borne by the industry generating the waste.

  Approximately 10 per cent. of the domestic and commercial waste collected by local authorities is incinerated; the rest is landfilled.

  No valid estimates are available of the volume of waste disposed of illegally throughout the country but the London Waste Regulatory Authority estimates that about 1 million tonnes are dumped in the London area at any one time.

  Mr. Amess
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) how many tonnes of(a) domestic litter and (b) industrial waste were disposed of in the sea or in rivers for each of the last five years in the United Kingdom, by region, and in Basildon; and if he will make a statement;

  (2) how many tonnes of (a) biodegradable and (b) non-biodegradable waste were disposed of in the sea or in rivers for each of the last five years in the United Kingdom, by region, and in Basildon.

  Mr. Moynihan
  Waste disposal at sea is the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Quantities and types of waste disposed of in United Kingdom sea areas from 1981–85, the last five years for which published figures are available, are given in the 8th-12 annual reports of the Oslo commission, copies of which are available in the Library of the House. Data for 1986 will be available shortly. Wastes are normally licensed for disposal at sea only if they are biodegradable or inert and non-toxic. Discharges of waste to internal waters is a matter for water authorities and figures are not kept centrally.

  Landfill Waste Sites
  Ms. Walley
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment who is responsible for monitoring landfill waste sites once local authority responsibility ceases after they are closed; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Moynihan
  The obligations of a waste disposal authority under the Control of Pollution Act 1974 to monitor landfill sites cease when the licence expires. However, district councils retain their duties under section 648
  91 of the Public Health Act 1936 to inspect their districts for the occurrence of any statutory nuisance which may be caused by the deposit.

  Housing Density
  Mr. Harry Greenway
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he is satisfied that provisions relating to the density of house and other building and the provision of drainage and sewerage are not being exceeded on land in the vicinity of Cortons brook and the Brent river; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  Decisions concerning the density of development in Ealing, as elsewhere, are a matter for the local planning authority taking into account any general guidance. My Department's circular 17/82 emphasises that, where land drainage considerations arise, they should always be taken into account in determining planning applications. The adequacy of infrastructure is also a consideration for the local planning authority in consultation with the relevant utilities.

  Nuclear Waste
  Mr. Pike
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what high level nuclear waste of United Kingdom origin has been dumped in drums in the sea.

  Mr. Moynihan
  None. High level nuclear waste is being stored for at least 50 years before disposal is envisaged. In any case such waste is unsuitable for disposal in drums at sea.

  Newcastle Recreational Project
  Ms. Walley
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he has any plans to make funds available to Newcastle under Lyme borough council for Newcastle recreational project 1746/88 and to finance similar projects in operation throughout the United Kingdom now and in the future; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Trippier
  Government money specifically allocated to sport and recreation is channelled through the Sports Council. The council dispenses these funds in accordance with its own policies on a regional and national basis. Priority is given to projects which provide sport and recreation opportunities for areas and groups of special need including the unemployed. I understand that the council's west midlands region provided some financial support last year for the Newcastle recreation project and that similar projects in other regions are also assisted by the council. The Government fully support the Sports Council's "areas of special need" policies and increased the council's grant by over £2 million for this purpose in 1988–89, to a total of £39 million.

  Chlorine
  Ms. Walley
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he will take account of the projected rise in chlorine levels in the atmosphere from 3 parts per million to 5 parts per million by the end of the century, in deciding whether to support a ban on the use of aerosol sprays containing chlorofluorocarbons; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Moynihan
  The Government believe that emissions of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are best limited through
  649
  controlling supply rather than specific uses, such as aerosols. The European Commission's proposals for implementing the Montreal protocol in the European Community also reflect this overall approach. We nevertheless welcome the recent announcement by the British aerosol industry that it will voluntarily phase out non-essential use of CFCs in aerosols by the end of 1989. The Government are keen to encourage voluntary reductions in CFC use by all sectors of industry.

  Environmental Impact Assessments
  Dr. Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will explain how the system for including environmental impact assessments in the planning process will operate in enterprise zones and simplified planning zones; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Ridley
  I shall shortly be laying before Parliament regulations applying the requirements of the EC directive

  Year

  Newham

  Southwark

  Tower Hamlets

  Unfurnished

  Furnished

  Unfurnished

  Furnished

  Unfurnished

  Furnished

  £

  £

  £

  £

  £

  £

  1981

  9·71

  13·36

  12·11

  18·04

  9·61

  10·40

  1982

  11·31

  14·81

  14·07

  20·96

  11·46

  17·58

  1983

  11·35

  17·61

  14·19

  28·86

  11·83

  36·96

  1984

  13·02

  23·27

  16·25

  21·04

  13·58

  23·04

  1985

  13·46

  24·17

  16·75

  36·21

  13·71

  18·19

  1986

  15·19

  26·11

  19·21

  30·88

  17·36

  22·60

  19871

  15·60

  27·81

  19·83

  32·44

  16·85

  22·69

  1 First half.

  Mr. Simon Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) if he will estimate the average construction costs of a unit of housing association housing(a) in the area of the London Docklands development corporation and (b) in that part of the London borough of Southwark for which the planning authority is the London Docklands development corporation;

  (2) if he will estimate the change in investment on public housing in real terms in the area of the London Docklands development corporation since 1981.

  Mr. Trippier
  I will write to the hon. Member.

  Mr. Simon Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will estimate the average construction costs of a unit of new housing for private sale(a) in the area of the London Docklands development corporation and (b) in that part of the London borough of Southwark for which the planning authority is the London Docklands development corporation.

  Mr. Trippier
  Information on average construction cost is not available, but average sale prices between October 1986 and September 1987 have been estimated as follows for the LDDC part of each of the three docklands boroughs:

  Newham

  Southwark

  Tower Hamlets

  £

  £

  £

  1 bed unit

  45,000

  57,500

  65,000

  2 bed unit

  55,000

  70,000

  100,000

  3 bed unit

  70,000

  80,000

  120,000

  4 bed unit

  115,000

  150,000

  150,000

  5 bed unit

  —

  200,000

  —

  650
  on environmental assessment to projects subject to development control. Further provision will be required to ensure that the directive's requirements are complied with in enterprise zones and simplified planning zones, without unnecessarily restricting the broad freedom to undertake development in such zones. The necessary instruments will be made as soon as possible.

  London Docklands (Housing)
  Mr. Simon Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will estimate the average weekly rent of a private unit of housing in the area of the London Docklands development corporation for each year since its establishment.

  Mr. Trippier
  The only information available is for rents registered by the rent officer in the year in question in each of the three dockland boroughs, as follows:

  Agricultural Dwellings
  Mr. Simon Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will take steps to ensure that, as a prerequisite to the granting of planning permission for an agricultural dwelling, the future economic viability of the farm is established beyond reasonable doubt.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  No. Guidance about the viability of a farming enterprise is given in the annex to DOE circular 24/73. Each planning application for an agricultural dwelling is decided on its merits in the light of this guidance, the other factors listed in the annex, and all other material planning considerations.

  London Docklands Development Corporation
  Mr. Simon Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how much public money has been spent and how much private investment attracted to the London Docklands development corporation in(a) Southwark, (b) Newham and (c) Tower Hamlets, for each year since the London Docklands development corporation was established.

  Mr. Trippier
  I will write to the hon. Member.

  London Docklands (Population)
  Mr. Simon Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will estimate the population within the area of the London Docklands development corporation for each year since its establishment, and the predicted population for the 1990s.

  Mr. Trippier
  Population estimates and projections for the LDDC area since 1981 are as follows:
  651

  Year

  Population

  1981

  39,429

  1982

  40,700

  1983

  41,100

  1984

  42,000

  1985

  43,820

  1986

  45,749

  1987

  146,564

  1991

  286,700

  1996

  295,100

  1 Provisional

  2 Projection

  Widdicombe Committee
  Mr. Blunkett
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when the Government will publish their response to the Widdicombe committee of inquiry into the conduct of local authority business.

  Mr. Chope
  Soon.

  Council House Sales
  Mr. Baldry
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will update the table giving information on sales of dwellings by each local authority in England, referred to in the answer given to the hon. Member for Banbury on 2 March,Official Report, column 580.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  I have today placed in the Library the latest version of table 2 giving information reported by each local authority in England on the progress of council house sales up to the end of December 1987.

  Tenants' Choice
  Mr. Squire
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he intends to issue further explanatory material on tenants' choice; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  The tenants' choice scheme, provided for in part IV of the Housing Bill, is designed to broaden the choices open to secure public sector tenants; to give tenants better services, whether by changing landlord or through the effect of competition on existing landlords; and further to open up very large stocks of rented housing held by local housing authorities to diversity, competition and best housing management practices. As I undertook at the Committee stage of the Bill to do, I have today placed in the Libraries of both Houses a paper, "Tenants' Choice", which explains how we propose to achieve this, including the part that we propose will be played by secondary legislation and by administrative arrangements. It explains in particular the important responsibilities we propose for the Housing Corporation, not only to approve prospective new landlords, but also to act as enabler and provider of information and assistance to tenants and prospective landlords wishing to operate the scheme: amendments to the Bill, tabled yesterday, provide for this extended role. The paper, additional copies of which will be available in the Vote Office, is being sent to the local authority associations and others with a major interest, but is considered primarily to assist this House in its further consideration of part IV of the Bill.

  Domestic Waste (Imports)
  Mr. Butler
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what information he has as to the particular danger to human, animal and plant health arising from the disposal of domestic waste imported from the United States of America.

  Mr. Moynihan
  My officials in consultation with the MAFF and DHSS are considering whether any dangers are posed to human, animal or plant health by the import of domestic waste from the USA.

  Mr. Butler
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what information he has as to the amount of domestic waste imported into the United Kingdom from the United States of America in each of the last five years.

  Mr. Moynihan
  We are not aware of any imports of domestic waste from the USA in the last five years.

  Mr. Butler
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will seek powers to prohibit the import of domestic waste from the United States of America into the United Kingdom.

  Mr. Moynihan
  The provision of waste disposal services is a legitimate business provided it is carried out in accordance with proper environmental safeguards, does not involve risks to public health and does not jeopardise the availability of suitable facilities for the disposal of United Kingdom waste. I am aware of public concern about proposals to import large quantities of domestic wastes from the United States of America and am considering whether any action may be necessary.

  Mr. Butler
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what information he has on the proposed dumping of domestic waste from the United States of America at Arpley Meadows, Warrington.

  Mr. Moynihan
  I understand that a British Company, Power, Water and Waste, Ltd., have approached the Manchester Ship Canal Company with proposals to landfill United States domestic waste at one of their facilities. I believe negotiations are continuing.

  Mr. Butler
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what information he has on the content of the proposed imports of waste from the United States of America into the United Kingdom for disposal at Arpley Meadows, Warrington.

  Mr. Moynihan
  I understand that the proposal to import waste from the United States of America concerns normal domestic refuse.

FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

  Refugee Camp, Hong Kong
  Mr. Atkinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement about his recent visit to the Vietnamese refugee camp in Hong Kong.

  Mr. Eggar
  My right hon. and learned Friend visited the Green Island reception centre and the Chi Ma Wan closed centre in Hong Kong. He was impressed by the
  653
  efficiency with which both centres are run by the Hong Kong Government, and by the great efforts made to ensure that conditions are as humane as possible.

  There has been a dramatic increase in the numbers of Vietnamese boat people arriving in Hong Kong in recent months. The population in the camps has risen to some 15,000, compared with about 8,000 a year ago. More than 1,500 of these have arrived in June. There is little realistic prospect of resettling people on this scale. The great majority are leaving Vietnam for essentially economic reasons, not because of political persecution.

  This situation cannot go on indefinitely. We are considering urgently with the Hong Kong Government whether their current policy of treating all Vietnamese boat people arriving in Hong Kong as refugees should be changed.

  My right hon. and learned Friend took the opportunity to raise the problem of the Vietnamese boat people with the Vietnamese, Chinese and Soviet Foreign Ministers in New York on 7 June. We will continue to take every opportunity to emphasise to all Governments concerned the need to find appropriate durable solutions to the problem.

  Exercise Purple Venture
  Sir Antony Buck
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what assessment he has made of the effects of Exercise Purple Venture on the United Kingdom's relations with the countries in Latin America.

  Mr. Eggar
  Exercise Purple Venture has no relevance to our relations with countries in Latin America. Purple Venture is essentially a paper exercise, although a command and communications element will deploy to Ascension Island. It is a routine command post exercise designed to test command and control procedures. It has nothing whatever to do with the Falkland Islands.

SCOTLAND

  Clyde Herring
  Mr. McKelvey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he has any plans to review the current total allowable catch for Clyde herring; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  There are no plans to review the current total allowable catch for Clyde herring. The most recent advice from the advisory committee on fishery management suggests that the catch in 1989 should be set at the level of landings in recent years.

  Fish Stocks
  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he has recently received information from the advisory committee for fisheries management about the current condition of fish stocks in United Kingdom waters; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  The most recent advice from the advisory committee on fishery management has been received only this week and is still being considered. Advice for some important stocks, notably cod, haddock and whiting in the North sea, has been deferred until the November meeting of ACFM.

  North Sea Cod
  Mr. Nigel Griffiths
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if it is his intention to seek a review of the state of the stock of North sea cod before the end of June; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  The state of the North sea cod stock is reviewed each year by the advisory committee on fishery management. At their latest meeting, ACFM decided to defer until November their advice on North sea cod when further information should be available.

  Artificial Limbs
  Mr. Galbraith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what profit margin his Department has agreed with the companies which supply artificial limbs to the National Health Service.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  The supply of artificial limbs is to be put to competitive tender from 1 January 1989.

  Prosthetists
  Mr. Galbraith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will give the cost to the National Health Service if all prosthetists currently employed by health boards became contractor employed.

  Mr Michael Forsyth
  The trade union representing the prosthetists gave notice in March to the Scottish Home and Health Department that their members intended to resign from the National Health Service, and take up employment with the contractors who manufacture artificial limbs, from the summer. The cost of this change cannot yet be precisely estimated, but is unlikely to be substantial, in view of the saving of the salaries of prosthetists who resign, (arid the overheads, such as national insurance and superannuation, associated with their employment) and in view of the competitive tendering, for the supply of artificial limbs from 1 January 1989.

  Mr. Galbraith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will give the salaries for prosthetists in the National Health Service who are(a) contractor employed and (b) employed by health boards.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  The NHS salary ranges (effective from 1 November 1987) for the grades of prosthetists employed by health boards are as follows:

  Minimum

  Maximum

  £

  £

  Intern

  6,680

  7,800

  Basic Grade (non-National Centre qualified)

  7,800

  10,020

  Basic Grade (National Centre qualified)

  9,470

  12,250

  Senior/Manager

  11,690

  14,750

  Prosthetists who transfered to the NHS from the commercial companies in 1980 retained as part of that transfer agreement their commercial rates of pay which (effective from 1 July 1987) are as follows:

  £

  Over 30 years service

  14,240

  15–30 years service

  14,210

  655

  £

  10–15 years service

  14,035

  Up to 10 years service

  13,985

  In addition to the salaries of the staff involved, the NHS is of course liable for national insurance contributions, and other overheads.

  Legal Aid
  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many applications have been considered by the Scottish Legal Aid Board since its foundation to the latest convenient date; how many of these have been dealt with by the board; what percentage has been granted; and, of those refused, what have been the reasons for refusal, broken down into percentages in each category.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  Provisional figures for applications to the board in its first year of operation are given in the table. Some of the applications determined were submitted under the arrangements obtaining prior to the assumption of its responsibilities by the board on 1 April 1987. Figures for applications for an increase in authorised expenditure for advice and assistance are not yet available.

  Civil Legal Aid

  Number

  Applications received

  31,390

  Applications determined

  31,589

  Percentage

  Percentage

  Granted

  68·9

  Refused

  31·1

  Reasons for refusal:

  Means

  2·3

  Merits

  12·1

  Abandoned by applicant

  16·7

  100

  Criminal Legal Aid (Summary causes)

  Number

  Applications received

  52,450

  Applications determined

  50,972

  Percentage

  Percentage

  Granted

  89·3

  Refused

  10·7

  Reasons for refusal:

  Not in the interests of justice

  7·6

  Means

  1·4

  Not timeous

  1·7

  100

  Criminal Appeal Applications

  Number

  Applications received

  1,414

  Applications determined

  1,303

  656

  Percentage

  Refused

  55

  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many complaints he has received from(a) the general public, (b) solicitors and (c) right hon. and hon. Members regarding delays or difficulties in the consideration of applications for legal aid by the Scottish Legal Aid Board.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  Since 1 April 1987 when the Scottish Legal Aid Board assumed responsibility for the administration of legal aid my right hon. and learned Friend has received(a) 13 complaints from the general public and various bodies, (b) 24 from solicitors, including representative bodies of the profession and (c) 22 from right hon. and hon. Members.

  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what is the current number of staff working in the Scottish Legal Aid Board; what is the approved establishment figure; whether he has received representations from the board for additional staffing; what his response has been; and if he will make a statement.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  On 31 May 1988 the Scottish Legal Aid Board employed 345 persons, including temporary staff. Control over staffing costs is achieved by determination of the grant in aid for the board's administration rather than by setting a limit to the numbers employed. No representations have been received from the board for additional staff, but the numbers and grading of staff are the subject of a normal efficiency scrutiny which has just begun.

  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what is the total sum approved for legal aid by the Scottish Legal Aid Board since is establishment; what were the comparable figures for equivalent periods in previous years.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  During its first year (1987–88) the Scottish Legal Aid Board sought and received £44·577 million from the Vote for the Scottish Legal Aid Fund. In 1984–85 comparable expenditure was £31·75 million; in 1985–86, £38·525 million; and in 1986–87, £44·025 million.

  Housing Statistics
  Mr. McAllion
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what information he has as to how many houses in the Dundee district authority area are(a) below tolerable standard; (b) require comprehensive modernisation; (c) require major repairs and (d) are affected by dampness, in the public and private sectors, respectively, on the latest available figures; and what are the corresponding figures for each year since 1979.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  The available information is set out in the table:
  657

  Dwellings

  Local authority

  (a)

  (b)

  (c)

  (d)

  Below tolerable standard

  Year position at 31 March

  Public

  Private

  Requiring comprehensive modernisation

  Requiring major repairs

  Affected by dampness

  1979

  1,734

  6,078

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  1980

  1,233

  5,779

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  1981

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  100

  1982

  1,027

  3,776

  n/a

  n/a

  140

  1983

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  1984

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  1,000

  1985

  70

  2,074

  n/a

  n/a

  1,341

  1986

  12

  1,458

  10,366

  11,810

  2,900

  1987

  50

  2,650

  13,825

  n/a

  2,680

  Notes:

  n/a—Not available.

  1 Estimate.

  The information is taken from returns submitted to the Scottish Development by Dundee District.

  Information on (b), (c) and (d) was not collected prior to 1981.

  No returns received on BTS in 1981, 1983 and 1984.

  No returns received on the other categories in 1983.

  Rating Reform
  Mr. McAllion
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will publish in the Official Report the local authorities in Scotland ranked according to the percentage and number of (a) losers and (b) gainers under the poll tax proposals, showing those figures alongside that ranking; and if he will express these figures for both households and individuals.

  Mr. Lang
  The information is not available by local authority.

  Sawmills, Pulp and Board Mills
  Mr. Ron Davies
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will provide an estimate of the number of people employed in Scottish sawmills, pulp and board mills wholly or partly using home-produced timber.

  Mr. Lang
  I am unable to add anything to the replies I gave to the hon. Member on 31 March 1988 and 22 April 1988.

  Labour Statistics
  Mr. McAllion
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will give, for each month since January for which figures are available, the number of job vacancies in Dundee.

  Mr. Lang
  The number of job vacancies (excluding community programme vacancies) notified and remaining unfilled in the Dundee jobcentre area for each month from January 1988 to April 1988 (the latest month for which information is available) is as follows:

  1988

  Number

  January

  350

  February

  379

  March

  452

  April

  462

  It is estimated that only around one third of all vacancies are notified to jobcentres.

  This information is available in the Library.

DEFENCE

  United States Military Constructions
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what information he has about United States military construction projects in the United Kingdom and its dependent territories for which funding approval is being sought for the United States fiscal years 1989 and 1990, giving for each project its location, the nature of the facilities to be constructed arid the project cost.

  Mr. Ian Stewart
  Funding approval for United States military construction projects for fiscal year 1989 is currently being sought for the following projects:

  RAF Alconbury

  Dormitories

  RAF Bentwaters

  Add to and upgrade fire station

  Security police operations facility

  Sound suppressor support facility

  Central Post Office

  Airmen's community centre

  RAF Fairford

  Add to and alter physical fitness centre

  RAF Feltwell

  Passive defence equipment storage facility

  High Wycombe Air Station

  Medical aid station replacement

  RAF Lakenheath

  Semi-hardened communications facility

  Digital European backbone facility

  Chemical warfare protection squadron operations facility

  Dormitory

  Composite medical facility

  Menwith Hill Station

  Expansion of operations facility

  RAF Mildenhall

  Add to and alter operations facility

  Child development centre

  Upgrade water storage and distribution system

  Administration support facility

  RAF Upper Heyford

  Add to and upgrade vehicle maintenance shop

  Combat ammunition control centre

  659

  Passive defence equipment storage facility

  RAF Welford

  Fire station

  Munitions storage igloos

  Antigua

  Boat shop and pier construction

  United States military construction projects in fiscal year 1990 for which funding is currently being sought:

  RAF Alconbury

  Alternate combat runway

  Deputy commander: operations complex

  Squadron operations facility

  Aircraft maintenance facility

  Conventional munitions shop

  Combat repair equipment storage

  Passive defence equipment storage warehouse

  Combat readiness centre

  Add to and alter physical training facility

  RAF Bentwaters

  Semi-hardened telecommunications facility

  Chemical warfare protection—avionics maintenance facility

  Dormitory

  RAF Chessington

  Add to and upgrade contingency hospital

  RAF Fairford

  Jet fuel storage and hydrant refuelling system

  Upgrade water storage and distribution system

  High Wycombe air station

  Dormitory

  Add to civil engineering building

  Physical protection upgrade (at various sites administered by High Wycombe air station)

  RAF Lakenheath

  Chemical warfare protection—squadron operations facility

  Chemical warfare protection—squadron operations facility

  Chemical warfare protection—ready crew facility

  Combat repair equipment storage facility

  Alter dormitory

  Storm drainage disposal

  RAF Lanark

  Contingency hospital

  RAF Locking

  Contingency hospital

  RAF Machrinhanish

  Dining facility expansion

  Enhance physical protection for combined operations

  Centre

  Menwith Hill station

  Administration building and cafeteria

  RAF Mildenhall

  Combat repair equipment storage facility

  Add to and alter gymnasium

  Alter sewage treatment plant

  Operations intelligence facility

  RAF Upper Heyford

  Chemical warfare protection—squadron operations facility

  Alter munitions storage facilities

  Combat repair equipment storage facility

  Dormitory

  Ascension Island

  HF antenna installation

  Ground installation for satellite navigation system

  660
  Diego Garcia

  Ground installation for satellite navigation system

  Budgetary estimates are a matter for the United States authorities.

  HMS Sturdy (Incident)
  Mr. Ian Bruce
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence whether his Department has now completed its investigation of the wartime incident involving HMS Sturdy; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Freeman
  On 25 November 1944 HMS Sturdy sighted a 350-ton coaster, flying the Japanese flag, off Laut island to the south-east of Borneo. As the water was too shallow for torpedoes to be launched, Sturdy surfaced and opened fire on the ship. When this did not succeed in sinking the coaster, the submarine came alongside and a party boarded her. They found the ship to be carrying a cargo of oil, a legitimate target. About 50 men had already abandoned ship and the boarding party attempted to persuade a number of women and children still on board to do likewise. They refused to do so, although a boat was available and, in addition, there was a quantity of floating wreckage nearby. The sea was flat calm and land was less than 5 miles away.

  The boarding party then placed demolition charges with four minute fuses and returned to the submarine, which drew away from the coaster. At this point Sturdy's commanding officer, Lt. W. St. G. Anderson RNR, who had been able to see about eight people on the ship when she was boarded, and who had concluded that there could be no more than about 15 still aboard, learned that there were in fact 40 to 50. By then it would have been too late to return to the coaster. The charges exploded, setting the ship on fire, and she was left as a total loss.

  After he reported this action, Lt. Anderson was relieved of command, and the question whether he should face a court martial was raised at a senior level. In examining the case a number of factors were taken into consideration. Lt. Anderson was a young officer—he was 24—bearing a considerable burden of responsibility who had otherwise served with some distinction. The action in question took place in shallow water where Sturdy could not dive. There was a significant risk of air attack from which the submarine would have had no means of escape, and Lt. Anderson would have been placing his boat and crew in additional danger by remaining on the surface longer than was absolutely necessary. Decisions therefore had to be taken very rapidly. Moreover, had the ship, which was readily indentifiable as an enemy vessel by her flag, been in water deep enough to allow the launching of torpedoes, Lt. Anderson would have been fully entitled under the normal conventions of war to sink her by this means without warning, and without regard to the fate of those on board. In these circumstances, while Lt. Anderson was held to have made a serious error of judgment, a court martial was not considered appropriate. He was subsequently returned to command in another submarine. The deaths of civilians involuntarily caught up in war as a result of a foreign occupation is of course a matter of regret.

  Gibraltar (Shootings)
  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence whether he has given permission for any Army personnel based in the United Kingdom to be summoned by the Gibraltar coroner; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Ian Stewart
  I have nothing to add to the reply I gave to the hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Madden) on 17 May, at column 370.

  Pilot Training
  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what pilot training he proposes to contract out to British Aerospace; what arrangements there will be in relation to costs, security and standard of training; what are the implications for the acquisition of Tucano aircraft for basic pilot training; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Freeman
  We have no plans to contract out any of our pilot training; therefore, there are no implications for the acquisition of Tucano aircraft for basic pilot training by the Royal Air Force.

EMPLOYMENT

  Job Training Scheme
  Mr. Pike
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment whether he proposes to make any changes in the job training scheme.

  Mr. Nicholls
  As was announced in the White Paper, "Training for Employment", the new and the old job training schemes, together with all our other training programmes for adults and the community programme will be replaced by employment training from 5 September. There will be transitional arrangements as the current schemes are replaced by the new programme, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State recently announced that a £10 premium is now payable to new JTS participants in line with plans for employment training.

  Employment Patterns
  Mr. Tony Lloyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what are the implications for the north-west region of current changes in national employment patterns.

  Mr. Lee
  The north-west is sharing in the growth in employment in the service sector, self-employment and part-time jobs. These sectors comprise a similar share of employment in the north-west as in Great Britain as a whole.

  A

  B

  Ratio A:B

  Staff employed by the National Dock Labour Board

  Total number of registered dock workers

  1979

  527

  25,770

  1:49

  1980

  500

  23,110

  1:46

  1981

  433

  18,219

  1:42

  1982

  309

  15,340

  1:50

  1983

  296

  13,813

  1:47

  1984

  277

  12,505

  1:45

  1985

  269

  11,892

  1:44

  1986

  259

  10,482

  1:40

  1987

  245

  9,965

  1:41

  YTS
  Mr. Barry Field
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many young people went into employment, full-time education or further training on leaving youth training schemes.

  Mr. Cope
  The latest results from the 100 per cent. follow-up survey of YTS leavers in the period April 1986 to November 1987 show that three months after leaving YTS 191,686 (59 per cent.) young people were in a job, 35,982 (12 per cent.) were on another YTS scheme and 11,893 (4 per cent.) were on a full-time course.

  Employment Agencies
  Mr. Stern
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he has any plans to introduce legislation to amend the licensing requirements in respect of employment agencies.

  Mr. Nicholls
  We have no plans to introduce such legislation.

  Trades Union Congress
  Mr. Watts
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what plans he has to meet the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress to discuss industrial relations.

  Mr. Nicholls
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has no current plans to meet the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress to discuss industrial relations.

  European Social Charter
  Mr. McAllion
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will make a statement on progress in implementing article 4 of the European social charter.

  Mr. Cope
  The United Kingdom has accepted all of the provisions of article 4 of the European social charter, except paragraph 3.

  Dock Workers
  Mr. Jacques Arnold
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what was the ratio between the numbers of staff employed by the National Dock Labour Board and the total numbers of registered dock workers for each year between 1979 and 1987.

  Mr. Nicholls
  At 31 December of each year the totals were:

  Factory Inspectorate
  Mr. Flannery
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will publish in the Official Report for each of the Health and Safety Executive offices (a) the number of sites under the control of Industrial Major Accident Hazards Regulations, (b) the number of such sites under the jurisdiction of the Chemical Group of Her Majesty's factory inspectorate, (c) the number of Her Majesty's factory inspectors in each chemicals group of Her Majesty's factory inspectorate and (d) the total number of premises under the jurisdiction of each chemicals group of Her Majesty's factory inspectorate.

  Mr. Nicholls
  The information requested is not available. The Health and Safety Executive does not hold information on the number of sites subject to the Control of Industrial Major Accident Hazards Regulations. No HSE area office has a group of inspectors solely for inspection in the chemicals industry.

  Enterprise Allowance Scheme
  Mr. Nicholas Bennett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will revise the regulations concerning the enterprise allowance scheme to enable unemployed persons not in receipt of income support to be considered for assistance under the scheme.

  Mr. Nicholls
  No. The specific purpose of the enterprise allowance scheme is to help those unemployed people who would like to set up in business but are deterred from doing so because they would lose their entitlement to unemployment benefit or income support. I have no plans to change the purpose of this scheme.

  Community Programme
  Mr. Nicholas Bennett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment whether he will review the regulations regarding entry to the community programme so that unemployed persons not in receipt of benefit may be considered for placements.

  Mr. Nicholls
  We have no plans to change the present arrangements. From 5 September all current programmes for unemployed adults, including the community programme, will be replaced by the new adult programme, "Employment Training". Benefit receipt will not be an eligibility condition for employment training.

  Ms. Walley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what action he proposes to take to ensure that recreational opportunities for the unwaged section of the community will not be adversely affected by the discontinuation of the community programme in September in favour of the new adult training scheme.

  Mr. Nicholls
  The community programme will be replaced from 5 September by "Employment Training". Project-based training will be an important part of the new programme with some 194,000 project-based opportunities in the first year, broadly the present level of community programme provision. I hope that most current community programme projects will move forward into employment training.

  Poultry Industry (Tenosynovitis)
  Mr. Strang
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will take steps to seek to reduce tenosynovitis in the poultry industry.

  Mr. Nicholls
  I shall write to the hon. Member as soon as possible and place a copy of my reply in the Library.

HOUSE OF COMMONS

  Palace of Westminster (Labour Statistics)
  Ms. Walley
  To ask the Lord President of the Council how many people are employed in the Palace of Westminster.

  Mr. Wakeham
  With the exception of Members and the 917 staff employed by the House of Commons Commission, the varying nature of attendance of those employed in the precincts of this House makes it impossible to provide any meaningful total.

  It is understood that the political parties, the police, the security and fire authorities, the press and broadcasting authorities, the Property Services Agency and Crown Suppliers, the Post Office and British Telecom, and other authorities have approximately 950 officers and staff whose employment involves some attendance at the House of Commons. Some of these, however, serve both Houses.

  In addition, 1,327 passes have been issued to Members' secretaries and research assistants, but not all are regularly employed in the House. Officials from Government Departments also attend the House from time to time as required.

  Palace of Westminster (Accidents)
  Ms. Walley
  To ask the Lord President of the Council how many accidents have occurred at the Palace of Westminster to members of the public, outside contractors and employees of the Palace of Westminster in each of the last 10 years.

  Mr. Wakeham
  The information requested prior to 1981 is not available. The numbers of reported accidents from 1981 to date is as follows:

  Members of the public

  Outside contractors

  Staff of the House of Commons

  1981

  22

  2

  64

  1982

  29

  3

  40

  1983

  20

  1

  49

  1984

  22

  —

  67

  1985

  35

  —

  45

  1986

  18

  —

  47

  1987

  14

  1

  29

  1988 to date

  8

  —

  20

  Palace of Westminster (Visits)
  Ms. Walley
  To ask the Lord President of the Council what information he has as to how many people visit the Palace of Westminster each year(a) for the Line of Route or the Public Gallery (b) to attend meetings or attend dinners and (c) to attend lobbies of Parliament.

  Mr. Wakeham
  In 1987, the estimated numbers of visitors admitted to the House of Commons were as follows:
  665

  Number

  (a) Line of Route

  112,176

  Public Galleries

  147,439

  (b) Meetings

  69,880

  Dinners

  77,058

  (c) Lobbies

  15,058

  Vote (Delivery)
  Mr. Blunkett
  To ask the Lord President of the Council on how many days in the current parliamentary Session the Deliverer of the Vote has failed to deliver the Vote to recipients outside the House on the day of publication; what the reasons for the late or postal deliveries are; and what steps are being taken to ensure same day delivery.

  Mr. Wakeham
  The Vote has not been delivered to Members' addresses outside the House on the day of publication on 16 occasions during this Session due to printing delays. In addition, of all the morning deliveries ordered by Members this Session, not all of which include the Vote, 3·3 per cent. have had to be posted due to sickness, transport breakdowns or staff resignations.

  I am advised the HMSO has markedly improved the time of delivery to the House of documents for the morning delivery and that all possible steps are being taken by the Deliverer of the Vote and his staff to ensure regular delivery of the Vote to Members on the day of publication.

SOCIAL SERVICES

  Food Regulations
  Ms. Walley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if, in view of recent salmonella incidents, he has any plans to review his policy on food regulation.

  Mrs. Currie
  My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food had already announced on 30 October 1987 that officials had been asked to have further consultations with interested parties to consider the detail of any necessary revisions to current food legislation. I understand that these consultations are continuing, but are expected to be completed by late summer.

  Psychiatric Hospitals
  Mr. Robin Cook
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will publish in the Official Report a list of those psychiatric hospitals caring for long-stay patients in every region showing (a) those which have been approved for closure, (b) those which have been proposed for closure by their regional health authority, (c) those which have been listed in regional strategic plans as possible candidates for closure and (d) the number of patients in each hospital.

  Mrs. Currie
  The table lists every mental illness hospital in England which discharged (in 1986) one or more in-patients after a stay of five years of more. Some sites listed are mixed mental illness and mental handicap but have a predominance of mentally ill patients. The number of in-patients resident at each site is at 31 December 1986. The closure status is annotated according to the classifications set out in the question. Those under(a) are linked to a specified target closure date.
  666

  Menial illness hospitals and units in England by DHA with long term patients ie with a stay of 5 years or more, and number of resident patients at 31 December 1986.

  Hospital

  Resident patients at 31 December 1966

  Closure status

  Northern Regional Health Authority

  North Tees General

  113

  —

  St. Lukes

  294

  —

  Garlands

  579

  —

  Darlington Memorial

  68

  —

  Shotley Bridge

  21

  —

  Sedgefield Community

  105

  —

  Winterton

  783

  —

  St. Georges Morpeth

  649

  —

  St. Mary's

  536

  —

  St. Nicholas

  496

  —

  South Shields General

  100

  —

  Cherry Knowle

  554

  —

  Yorkshire Regional Health Authority

  De La Pole

  318

  —

  Broadgate

  240

  c

  Thorpe Road Howden

  20

  —

  Clifton

  469

  a

  Naburn

  176

  c

  Lynfield Mount

  110

  —

  Bingley

  9

  —

  Scalebor Park

  270

  c

  Raikeswood

  21

  —

  Storthes Hall

  759

  c

  High Royds

  730

  c

  Stanley Royd

  642

  c

  Trent

  Scarsdale

  120

  a

  The Pastures

  572

  b

  Kingsway

  323

  b

  The Towers, Regional Secure Unit

  380

  b

  Carlton Hayes

  496

  b

  St. John's Lincoln

  457

  b

  Rauceby

  338

  b

  Newstead

  67

  a

  Mapperley

  278

  b

  St. Francis

  152

  Saxondale

  317

  a

  Kendray

  133

  c

  Tickhill Road

  97

  Loversall

  105

  Rotherham District General

  101

  Sheffield Mental Illness Unit

  816

  East Anglian Regional Health Authority

  Fulbourn

  325

  Peterborough District

  6

  St. Audry's

  393

  b

  St. Clements Ipswich

  173

  Hellesdon

  309

  One of these

  St. Andrew's

  354

  will close—b

  St. Nicholas

  154

  b

  North West Thames Regional Health Authority

  Fairfield

  609

  b

  Lister

  58

  Hill End

  376

  c

  Napsbury

  775

  b

  St. Bernard's Wing, Ealing

  798

  Shenley

  805

  b

  Horton

  915

  North East Thames Regional Health Authority

  Basildon

  103

  Severalls

  556

  c

  Herts and Essex General

  42

  667

  Hospital

  Resident patients at 31 December 1966

  Closure status

  Princess Alexandra

  104

  Rochford

  67

  Runwell

  508

  c

  Friarn

  754

  a

  Warley

  686

  c

  Whittington London

  86

  German

  105

  The London Hospital St. Clement's

  129

  c

  Goodmayes

  661

  c

  Thorpe Coombe

  53

  Whipps Cross

  2

  Claybury

  792

  a

  South East Thames Regional Health Authority

  Brighton General

  36

  Hellingley

  260

  b

  St. Mary's, Etchinghill

  18

  St. Augustine's

  379

  b

  Stone House

  282

  b

  Maidstone

  645

  b

  Sundridge

  65

  Bexley

  703

  b

  Greenwich District

  39

  Farnborough

  116

  Cane Hill

  576

  b

  Tooting Bec

  662

  b

  North Wing Dulwich

  82

  Guy's

  82

  New Cross

  32

  South West Thames Regional Health Authority

  Abraham Cowley Unit, St. Peter's

  102

  Ottershaw

  78

  Frimley Park

  50

  Brookwood

  675

  b

  West Park

  576

  Netherne and Fairdene

  530

  Graylingwell

  444

  St. Francis, Haywards Heath

  389

  Warlingham Park

  362

  c

  Long Grove

  611

  b

  Springfield

  777

  Chiltern Wing Sutton Hospital

  84

  Wessex Regional Health Authority

  St. Ann's Poole

  73

  Herrison

  346

  b

  St. James's Portsmouth

  294

  Knowle

  337

  b

  Basingstoke District Park Prewett

  523

  The Old Manor

  198

  St. Margarets

  17

  Roundway

  455

  St. Martin's Bath

  59

  Whitecroft

  96

  b

  Oxford Regional Health Authority

  Hungerford

  25

  Fair Mile

  329

  Smith

  24

  Borocourt

  305

  St. John's Stone

  374

  a

  Kettering & Dist General

  21

  St Crispin

  350

  c

  Littlemore

  292

  Warneford

  58

  South Western Regional Health Authority

  Barrow

  209

  Glenside

  391

  c

  Penrice

  45

  Bomcoose

  28

  St Lawrence's Bodmin

  526

  c

  Trevillis House

  26

  668

  Hospital

  Resident patients at 31 December 1966

  Closure status

  Moorhaven

  260

  a

  Tone Vale

  430

  c

  Mendip

  336

  a

  West Midlands Regional Health Authority

  Barnsley Hall

  291

  b

  Stonebow Unit, County Hospital

  33

  St Mary's Burghill

  95

  b

  Worcester Royal (Newtown)

  158

  Powick

  147

  a

  Royal Shrewsbury (Shelton)

  323

  St George's Stafford

  424

  St Edwards

  583

  St Matthews Bumtwood

  656

  Central, Warwick

  418

  b

  Highcroft

  424

  Rubery Hill

  301

  b

  All Saints

  557

  Walsgrave

  176

  Burton Road

  102

  Hollymoor

  290

  b

  New Cross, Wolverhampton

  137

  Mersey Regional Health Authority

  Countess of Chester (Psych Wing)

  644

  To be reduced in size

  Barony

  58

  Arclid

  51

  Crossley

  55

  Parkside

  536

  c

  Winwick

  1,115

  To be agreed

  Sefton General

  137

  Park

  49

  Whiston

  85

  Rainhill

  902

  a

  Greaves Hall

  131

  Walton, Liverpool

  38

  St. Catherine's Birkenhead

  70

  North Western Regional Health Authority1

  Lancaster Moor

  664

  Victoria Blackpool

  122

  Wesham Park

  72

  Lytham

  50

  Whittingham

  705

  Queen's Park

  116

  Accrington Victoria

  34

  Burnley General

  147

  Rossendale General

  67

  Ormskirk and District General

  73

  Bolton General

  151

  Ball Birch

  42

  Fairfield General

  75

  North Manchester General

  341

  Withington

  192

  Oldham and District General

  148

  Edwards ESMI Unit

  43

  Birch Hill

  63

  Peel Hall

  33

  Prestwich

  912

  Stepping Hill

  134

  Ollersett View

  57

  Tameside General

  147

  Bridgewater

  115

  1 North Western Region is developing a long-term strategy which may involve the closure of some of these hospitals.

  Hospital Visits
  Mr. Wigley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services what representations he has received concerning
  669
  the difficulties encountered by people dependent on social security benefits in securing assistance towards travelling costs for journeys to visit close relatives in hospital; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Portillo
  A few representations have been received. Community care grants are available to income support claimants in certain circumstances for the cost of fares to visit a relative in hospital. Guidance and directions for the award of such payments appear in the social fund manual which was published in November 1987. A copy is in the Library.

  Mental Illness
  Mr. Battle
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services (1) how many patients suffering from mental illness, discharged from hospital in the last two years, have an individual case worker assigned to them; and if he will make a statement;

  (2) how many patients suffering from mental illness have been discharged from hospital in each health authority for the past two years.

  Mrs. Currie
  The table provides the available information on discharges, by health authority, from National Health Service mental illness hospitals and units in England for the two latest available years. The figures on discharges exclude transfers to other National Health Service hospitals and the special hospitals, and do not relate to individual patients as a patient may be admitted and discharged more than once during the year. Statistics on the numbers of patients suffering from mental illness who have an individual case worker assigned to them after discharge from hospital are not centrally collected.

  Discharges from National Health Service mental illness hospitals and units in England, excluding transfers

  Health authority

  1985

  1986

  Northern

  12,759

  12,664

  Yorkshire

  15,481

  15,317

  Trent

  14,582

  14,853

  East Anglian

  6,358

  6,574

  North West Thames

  12,881

  12,394

  North East Thames

  13,844

  13,543

  South East Thames

  12,858

  12,896

  South West Thames

  11,002

  11,249

  Wessex

  10,468

  10,729

  Oxford

  6,931

  6,786

  South Western

  11,046

  10,731

  West Midlands

  17,344

  17,630

  Mersey

  10,603

  10,961

  North Western

  18,593

  18,074

  Bethlem Royal and Maudsley

  1,436

  1,538

  Hospitals for Sick Children

  14

  12

  England total

  176,200

  175,951

  Mr. Joseph Gillam
  Mr. Frank Field
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services when he will submit to the pensions appeal tribunal the statement of case in respect of Joseph Gillam, of 58 Meadowfield close, Rock Ferry, Birkenhead, as indicated in the joint Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State's letter to the hon. Member for Birkenhead dated 22 July 1986.

  Mr. Portillo
  The statement of case was originally submitted to the pension appeal tribunal on 9 November 1987. The appeal was returned without action on receipt of 670
  additional evidence from Mr. Gillam's representative on 12 February 1988. A supplementary statement of case incorporating this evidence and the Department's response was submitted on 1 June 1988.

  War Pensions
  Mr. Frank Field
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services what is the average length of time between the receipt of an appeal by the war pensions unit and the submission of the statement of case to the pensions appeal tribunal; and how this compares with past years.

  Mr. Portillo
  Information is not kept in the form requested. The average time between receipt of an appeal and the despatch of the statement of case to the appellant is currently 54 weeks. For 1987, 1986 and 1985 the times were 52 weeks, 48 weeks and 40 weeks respectively.

  Mr. Frank Field
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services how many appeals by war pensioners have been awaiting a submission of a statement of case to the pensions appeal tribunal for more than three months.

  Mr. Portillo
  About 4,700 appeals have been outstanding for more than three months.

  Post-neonatal Death Rates
  Dr. Moonie
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will list the post-neonatal death rates separately for England and Wales for 1985, 1986 and 1987; and if he will make a statement.

  Mrs. Currie
  I refer the hon. Member to my reply to hire on 18 May at columns 500–1.

  Benefit Regulations
  Mr. Nicholas Bennett
  To ask the Secretary of State Cor Social Services if he will review the new regulations introduced on 11 April in the reference to the removal of benefit from households without dependent children where one partner is working 24 hours a week or more; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Scott
  No. Income support is not payable where either partner works on average 24 hours or more a week. However, claimants in vulnerable groups who are affected by the changes to full-time work rules will be provided with transitional protection as outlined in my reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst) on 28 April at columns 253–54. In addition, housing benefit is available to people on low income if they are responsible for rent or rates.

  Cervical Cancer
  Ms. Walley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services (1) how many people were trained in the specialised use of laser equipment to treat cervical cancer in the previous 12 months; and if he will give a regional breakdown of how many people are currently employed in this work;

  (2) if he will list those district health authorities which do and do not have laser equipment to treat cervical cancer.

  Mrs. Currie
  I regret that this information is not available centrally.
  671
  Ms. Walley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will make additional money available to the West Midlands regional health authority for the purchase of laser equipment by the North Staffordshire district health authority.

  Mrs. Currie
  The allocation of resources by regions and districts is a matter for the health authorities concerned. This year's revenue allocation to the West Midlands is 10·39 per cent. higher in cash terms and 5·64 per cent. higher in real terms than last year's, and I understand that the initial revenue allocation to North Staffordshire district health authority for 1988–89 now stands at £103,906,000, compared with £93,337,000 in 1987–88.

  Benefit Fraud
  Mr. McAllion
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services how much was spent by his Department to recover illegally claimed benefits in each year since 1979, in cash and real terms, at 1987–88 prices.

  Mr. Portillo
  I regret that the information requested is not available.

  Mr. McAllion
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will give his estimate of(a) the amount recovered and (b) the amount illegally claimed but not recovered from social security claimants for each year since 1979, in cash terms and at 1987–88 prices.

  Mr. Portillo
  Information on which to base an estimate is not held centrally and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  Claimants (Medical Examinations)
  Mr. Ashley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services on what basis doctors are recruited and trained to carry out examinations on attendance and mobility allowance claimants; and to what extent their work is monitored.

  Mr. Scott
  Claimants for the attendance allowance and mobility allowances are examined by doctors who are selected and trained by the regional office senior medical officer from registered medical practitioners who will have either made an application to be considered for this role or been nominated by their peers as suitable for the task.

  The doctors selected are usually recruited from among general practitioners within the locality who will have demonstrable knowledge of local socio-economic conditions, established experience in general medical practice and evident expertise in the conducting of medical examinations. Before a doctor is permitted to carry out examinations on attendance and mobility allowance claimants formal instruction is given by the regional office senior medical officer on the background of, and requirements for, the particular benefit. This instruction is supplemented by written guidance notes. Initially, the performance of the examining doctors is closely monitored by the regional office senior medical officer who will institute further training sessions as appropriate; thereafter the doctors' work is regularly monitored by the regional office senior medical officer; but the form and pattern of such monitoring may vary and are dictated by the individual regional office senior medical officer.
  672
  Mr. Ashley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services what is the rate of pay for doctors who carry out examinations on attendance and mobility allowance claimants.

  Mr. Scott
  The fees currently payable for medical examinations for attendance allowance and mobility allowance are as follows:

  Mobility allowance

  Attendance allowance

  £

  £

  In surgery examination

  22·30

  —

  Examination by domiciliary visit (including travelling time)

  Up to including 1½ hours

  25·70

  25·70

  Over 1½ hours up to including 2½ hours

  38·50

  38·50

  Over 2½ hours

  59·90

  59·90

  For joint Attendance and Mobility Allowance examinations carried out by domiciliary visit a fee of £48·00 is payable. Where the time taken exceeds 1½ hours £59·90 is payable.

  In some Mobility allowance cases claimants are examined by two doctors at a medical boarding centre. Fees are payable on a sessional basis (2½–3½ hours) at £59·90 for the chairman of the medical board, and £52·30 for the member.

  Women's Health
  Mrs. Gillian Shephard
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services what plans he has to focus medical and public attention on women's health problems; and if he will make a statement.

  Mrs. Currie
  I am pleased to report that plans for the Department to host a one-day conference on women's health on 22 June this year are now well advanced. The conference will be opened by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and will be attended by an invited audience composed mainly of members of voluntary organisations and media dealing with women's health.

  Hon. and noble Members of both Houses who are known to have an interest in health matters have also been invited. Applications for tickets have been very high and reflect the level of interest in women's health.

  The subjects to be discussed are of considerable interest to women in this country today and cover a wide range of killer diseases and conditions which cause considerable suffering amongst women. The main subjects will be cancers, mental illness, the menopause and osteoporosis. The conference will provide an opportunity for those involved in promoting women's health to meet and hear from eminent speakers. It will also profide a forum for dispelling some of the myths and correcting some of the misunderstandings about women's health.

  The media have been invited to attend, so that messages from the conference will be disseminated to women, and those interested in women's health, throughout the country.

AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

  Sheepmeat Industry
  Mr. Speller: T
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on the future of the sheepmeat industry with special reference to the less-favoured areas, including Exmoor.
  673
  Mr. Gummer
  The sheep sector is buoyant; LFA farmers are making a key contribution to our success and, in the forthcoming negotiations, we shall be seeking to ensure that they continue to do so.

  Diversification
  Mr. Kennedy
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on progress towards diversification in agriculture.

  Mr. Gummer
  Capital grants for farm diversification were introduced at the beginning of the year and have attracted an encouraging amount of interest from farmers. They will shortly be complemented by grants for enterprise feasibility studies and marketing costs.

  Competition
  Mr. David Martin
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what measures he is taking to assist the food industry to adjust to the increased level of competition in 1992.

  Dr. Michael Clark
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what measures he is taking to assist the food industry to adjust to the increased level of competition in the European single market.

  Mr. Boswell
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what further action his Department proposes to take in preparation for the single European market in 1992.

  Mr. Gummer
  My Department will continue to keep in close touch with the agriculture, food and related industries on the progress of proposals in the single market programme, many of which continue the process of harmonising member states' laws to remove barriers to trade. Our objectives are to ensure that harmonisation takes place without discrimination and without imposing greater burdens than it removes; to protect our health status in the animal, plant and fish sectors; and to ensure that British companies have all the information they need with which to meet the challenge and take full advantage of the opportunities which harmonisation will bring.

  Home Grown Cereals Authority
  Mr. John Carlisle
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he last met the chairman of the Home Grown Cereals Authority; and what matters were discussed.

  Mr. MacGregor
  I refer my hon. Friend to the reply given earlier today to my hon. Friend the Member for Boothferry (Mr. Davis).

  North Sea (Demersal Fishing)
  Mr. Patchett
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he has any plans to review the management strategy for the control of demersal fishing in the North sea; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Gummer
  The management arrangements are determined in consultation with the industry and we shall shortly be consulting it about the detailed arrangements for next year.

  Meat and Livestock Commission
  Mr. Devlin
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he last met the chairman of the Meat and Livestock Commission; and what matters were discussed.

  Mr. Jack
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he last met the chairman of the Meat and Livestock Commission; and what matters were discussed.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  My right hon. Friend and I maintain regular contacts with the chairman of the Meat and Livestock Commission to discuss matters of mutual interest.

  Wool Marketing Board
  Mr. Kirkhope
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he last met the chairman of the Wool Marketing Board; and what matters were discussed.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  My right hon. Friend the Minister last met the chairman of the British Wool Marketing Board on 1 February 1988 to review the prospects for the 1988 clip year and the level of the guarantee.

  Monetary Compensatory Amounts
  Mr. Cran
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what representations he has received since January from pig farmers concerning abolition of monetary compensatory amounts; and what plans he now has to press for the abolition of the monetary compensatory amount scheme.

  Mr. MacGregor
  I have received many such representations. As I have told the House, I am pressing for the complete elimination of pigmeat MCAs at the current price-fixing. However, some member states do not want to see the system changed, and the negotiation will be difficult.

  Potato Marketing Board
  Mr. McLoughlin
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he last met the chairman of the Potato Marketing Board; and what matters were discussed.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  Ministers meet the chairman of the board from time to time. The last formal meeting was when my right hon. Friend the Minister of State met him in November 1985 to discuss various aspects of the potato market support arrangements.

  Butter Intervention Stocks
  Mr. Patnick
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the current level of butter intervention stocks in the European Community.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  At the end of April 1988, the latest available figure, the European Community butter stock level was 567,911 tonnes.

  Milk Marketing Board
  Mr. Riddick
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he last met the chairman of the Milk Marketing Board; and what matters were discussed.
  675
  Mr. Mans
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he last met the chairman of the Milk Marketing Board; and what matters were discussed.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  My right hon. Friend last met the chairman of the Milk Marketing Board on 25 April when a number of issues of current concern to the dairy industry were discussed. He expects to see him again later today.

  Set-Aside
  Mr. Ian Bruce
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on progress in implementing the community set-aside scheme in the United Kingdom.

  Mr. Alan W. Williams
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement outlining the Government's policy towards grazing fallow as an option in the set-aside proposals.

  Mr. Gale
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on progress in implementing the Community set-aside-scheme in the United Kingdom.

  Mr. MacGregor
  I refer my hon. Friend to the reply given earlier today to the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike)

  Mr. Livsey
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture Fisheries and Food what representations he has made to the European Community on the proposals for the substitution of cereals set-aside with grazing land.

  Mr. MacGregor
  The Community set-aside scheme allows the option to member states to permit land set aside from arable crops to be grazed by livestock. In discussion of the detailed rules, I have insisted that there should be tighter control on the number of livestock which can be grazed on set-aside land in those member states applying this option.

  Raw Sugar Refining
  Mr. Pendry
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what recognition has been given by the European Community Commission and by the Council of Ministers of any special circumstances surrounding raw cane sugar refining in the United Kingdom; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave earlier today to my hon. Friends the Members for Uxbridge (Mr. Shersby) and for Hertfordshire, South-West (Mr. Page).

  Mr. Graham
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is his policy towards the

  Export Performance of Agriculture Supply Industry

  Sectors

  1986

  1987

  (£ million)

  (£ million)

  011·1

  Pure Bred Bovines for Breeding

  5·6

  7·0

  08

  Feeding Stuffs

  139·3

  155·8

  271

  Crude Fertilisers

  0·9

  1·0

  56

  Fertilisers

  67·4

  85·4

  591

  Insecticides

  438·5

  498·6

  721

  Agricultural Machinery

  169·5

  187·4

  722

  Tractors

  444·4

  506·7

  727

  Food processing industry

  108·2

  118·3

  676
  proposals made by the European Commission for assistance in the refining in the United Kingdom of raw cane sugar imported from the African, Caribbean and Pacific sugar-producing countries.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  The Commission proposals are welcome recognition of the need to place the refining margin on a more satisfactory basis. We shall be pressing hard for their adoption.

  Women's Farmers Union
  Miss Widdecombe
  To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he met the president of the Women's Farmers Union; and what subjects were discussed.

  Mrs. Ann Winterton
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he last met the president of the Women's Farmers Union; and what matters were discussed.

  Mr. MacGregor
  My colleagues and I meet representatives of the Women's Farmers Union from time to time and discuss a range of subjects of concern to the agricultural industry.

  Research and Development
  Mr. Doran
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what proposals he has for the future funding of research and development into agriculture and fishing.

  Mr. MacGregor
  We are currently considering these issues in the context of the review of agricultural departments' R and D programmes.

  Agricultural Supply Industry
  Mr. Andrew Mitchell
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on the export performance of the agricultural supply industry.

  Mr. Anthony Coombs
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on the export performance of the agricultural supply industry.

  Mr. Gummer
  Although the agricultural supply industry can be defined in various ways, I am pleased to report that the visible exports attributable to the industry as detailed below is increased by 13·6 per cent, from £1,374 million in 1986 to £1,560 million in 1987. This compares favourably with the 9·4 per cent. increase in total United Kingdom visible exports over the same period.
  677

  Sectors

  1986

  1987

  (£ million)

  (£ million)

  Total

  1,373·3

  1,560·2

  Farm Diversification Grant Scheme
  Mr. Cartiss
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many applications have been received under the farm diversification grant scheme; and what progress is being made towards achieving the targets for applications under the scheme.

  Mr. Gummer
  I refer my hon. Friend to the reply I gave on 7 June to my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Wight (Mr. Field) at columns 490–491.

  Fishing Vessels (Grants)
  Dr. Moonie
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he has any plans to change the criteria by which applications for fishing vessel construction grants are assessed; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Gummer
  The criteria are under frequent review and we shall be considering with the Sea Fish Industry Authority whether any changes are necessary in view of the continuing high level of demand for grant assistance and our Community obligations to reduce fleet capacity by the end of 1991.

  Mr. Loyden
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he has any plans to re-introduce in the near future, a system of de-commissioning grants for United Kingdom registered fishing vessels; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Gummer
  I have no plans to do so.

  National Farmers Union
  Mr. David Shaw
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he last met the president of the National Farmers Union; and what matters were discussed.

  Mr. MacGregor
  I refer my hon. Friend to the reply I gave earlier today to my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, North-West (Mr. Bellingham).

  Mr. Knox
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he will be meeting the president of the National Farmers Union to discuss the dairy industry.

  Mr. MacGregor
  I hold frequent meetings with the president of the NFU, when a wide range of subjects are discussed.

  Beef Graziers
  Sir John Farr
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what are the present prospects for beef graziers.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  The prospects for beef graziers are encouraging. The average price of fat cattle in Great Britain in the week ended 21 May is provisionally estimated to have been 110·28p per kg liveweight, 11·4 per 678
  cent. up on the price in the corresponding week last year. Throughout the EC as a whole, beef supplies are affected by the reductions in dairy cow numbers and this should help to sustain the current firmer tone of the market.

  Green Pound
  Mr. Burns
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what progress is being made with attempts to devalue the green pound following the recent meeting of the Agricultural Council.

  Mr. MacGregor
  I refer my hon. Friend to the rep), I gave earlier today to my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Brandon-Bravo.

  Beamer Licences
  Mr. Harris
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is his policy on the issue of beamer licences.

  Mr. Gummer
  Beam trawlers are subject to the general licensing arrangements operated by fisheries departments for quota species. Because of the pressure on the area VII white fisheries, beam trawler licences for those fisheries are only available—with certain limited exceptions—for a replacement vessel where the length, tonnage and engine power of the replacement do not exceed those of the existing vessels.

  Badgers
  Mr. Flynn
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the Government's policy with regard to the protection of badgers in the light of current research into vaccination; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  I refer the hon. Member to my reply to the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Davies) on 20 May at column 612, adding that the badger is protected under the Badger Act 1973 which is the responsibility of the Secretary of State for the Home Department.

  Mr. Haynes
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he next intends meeting the chairman of the Nature Conservancy Council; and if he will raise the subject of the protection presently afforded to badgers.

  Mr. Gummer
  No date has been fixed for a meeting with the chairman of the Nature Conservancy Council, but my right hon. Friend and I are always ready to meet the council whenever there are points we could usefully discuss.

  Country Landowners Association
  Mr. David Nicholson
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he last met the president of the Country Landowners Association; and what matters they discussed.

  Mr. Moss
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he last met the president of the Country Landowners Association; and what matters were discussed.
  679
  Mr. MacGregor
  I last met the president of the Country Landowners Association on 25 April when we discussed agricultural research and development.

  Fishing Vessels (Licensing)
  Mr. Darling
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he has any plans to review the licensing scheme for fishing vessels; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Gummer
  In April 1987, Fisheries Ministers announced their conclusions following a substantive review of the restrictive licensing scheme. We are continuing to keep the licensing arrangements under review, and will introduce further changes, if they appear necessary, in consultation with the fishing industry.

  Fishery Protection
  Mr. Corbyn
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what was the cost of fishery protection in 1986–87; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Gummer
  The cost to this Department of fisheries protection in 1986–87 was £7·59 million, including £5·36 million in respect of Ministry of Defence charges.

  Fish Farms
  Mr. Galbraith
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what recent representations he has received on pollution control regulations appertaining to fish farms; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Gummer
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply given earlier today to the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell).

  Cereals
  Mr. Ralph Howell
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will state, for 1986 and 1987(a) the total tonnage of cereals produced in the United Kingdom, (b) the total tonnage of cereals and cereal substitutes consumed in the United Kingdom and (c) the total tonnage of cereals or cereal substitutes imported into the United Kingdom.

  Mr. MacGregor
  The information requested is as follows:

  '000 tonnes

  1986

  1987

  Total tonnage of cereals produced in the United Kingdom

  24,488

  121,472

  Total tonnage of cereals consumed in the United Kingdom

  20,626

  219,971

  Total tonnage of cereal substitutes3 consumed4 in the United Kingdom

  1,507

  1,475

  Commodity

  Date

  Quantity

  Destination

  Sale Price

  (tonnes)

  p/lb

  Wheat

  September 1987

  650,000

  USSR

  1·61

  Barley

  September 1987

  850,000

  USSR

  1·31 2

  Wheat

  November-December 1987

  1,012,000

  USSR

  2·11

  Wheat

  December 1987

  480,000

  USSR

  1·71 2

  Barley

  December 1987

  953,000

  USSR

  1·51 2

  Wheat

  April 1988

  70,000

  Poland

  2·41

  Wheat

  May 1988

  110,000

  Morocco

  2·51

  Butter

  November 1987

  200,100

  USSR

  6·03

  680

  1986

  1987

  Total tonnage of cereals imported into the United Kingdom

  3,488

  23,172

  Total tonnage of cereal substitutes3 imported into the United Kingdom

  1,028

  1,081

  1 Estimate.

  2 Provisional.

  3 As defined in Annex D to Regulation (EEC) No. 2727/75.

  4 Information relates to off-farm use of cereal substitutes in animal feeding stuffs production.

  Sources:

  HM Customs and Excise.

  Annual Review of Agriculture 1988.

  MAFF January 1988 Cereal Production Survey.

  MAFF and Department of Agriculture for Northern Ireland Compound Feed Production Surveys.

  Mr. Hunter
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what quantity of cereals is currently held in intervention in(a) the United Kingdom and (b) the European Community as a whole.

  Mr. MacGregor
  At 15 May the quantity of cereals held in intervention in the European Community was 9·4 million tonnes of which 1·3 million tonnes was held in the United Kingdom. A note setting out the volume of intervention stocks in the United Kingdom and the European Community which includes figures for cereals, is deposited in the Library of the House and is updated monthly.

  Fishing Industry (Financial Support)
  Mr. Bill Michie
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he has any proposals to make in the light of the recommendations contained in the 24th report from the Committee of Public Accounts, entitled "Financial Support for the Fishing Industry in Great Britain", No. 266, 1987–88; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Gummer
  We shall be responding in full to the recommendations contained in the 24th report of the Public Accounts Committee in a Treasury minute to be laid before Parliament.

  EC Food Sales
  Mr. Teddy Taylor
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will publish a table showing the recent special sales of food authorised by the European Economic Community, the tonnages involved and the prices in terms of pence per pound.

  Mr. MacGregor
  At any one time CAP arrangements provide for a mumber of sales schemes from intervention and from the open market. These tend to follow established patterns, but the following sales to non-EC countries, agreed over the past 12 months, have distinguishing features:
  681

  Commodity

  Date

  Quantity

  Destination

  Sale Price

  (tonnes)

  p/lb

  Beef

  January-November

  12,000

  Peru

  23·0–31·24

  Beef

  August-November 1987

  8,000

  Peru

  23·0–23·34

  Beef

  March 1988

  5,921

  Venezuela

  31·64

  1 The price is calculated from the dollar equivalent of the price actually paid by the purchaser (including MCAs), converted into sterling at the spot rate at the time of the sale.

  2 Some of the grain exported was of United Kingdom origin.

  3 The price is the actual sale price (exclusive of MCAs), converted into sterling at the green rate. None of the butter was exported from the United Kingdom.

  4 The price is the sale price (including MCAs) that would have obtained if the beef had been exported from the United Kingdom, which it was not.

  Fishing Grounds (Pollution)
  Mr. Ingram
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he has recently received research reports concerning the effects of pollution on the stocks of fish in the fishing grounds off the west coast of Great Britain; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Gummer
  This Department has extensive continuing programmes of research into the aquatic environment and fish stocks in British waters. Reports of this work are published on a regular basis by the directorate of fisheries research at Lowestoft. The biennial report of the director of fisheries research and reports in the "Aquatic Environment Monitoring" series are available in the Library of the House. A recent report is aquatic environment monitoring report number 17, "Irish Sea Status Report of the Marine Pollution Monitoring Management Group".

  The results of this work do not indicate that pollution has any significant effects on fish stocks in the fishing grounds off the west coast of Great Britain or, indeed, any British waters.

  Livestock (Genetic Improvement)
  Mr. Jim Marshall
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the Government's policy with regard to the genetic improvement of livestock; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  The genetic improvement of livestock has been a major aim of research and development for many years and has led to significant improvements in performance and health. New techniques are now available and the Government would wish to see them employed, provided safety and the welfare of animals are not put at risk.

  Sheepmeat Stabilisers
  Mr. Ron Davies
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement concerning the effect so far of the implementation of sheepmeat stabilisers on premium prices.

  Mr. MacGregor
  The sheepmeat stabiliser came into operation on the 23 May. For the first week of its operation we would expect the variable slaughter premium to be 7·7p/kg less than it would otherwise have been.

  Mr. Martyn Jones
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he next intends meeting representatives of the Farmers Union of Wales to discuss the effect of the implementation of sheep stabilisers.
  682
  Mr. Donald Thompson
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales—who has responsibility for agriculture in Wales—maintains regular and close contacts with representatives of the Farmers Union of Wales on sheep matters. My right hon. Friend, the Minister and I also meet FUW representatives to discuss issues of mutual interest.

  Green Fallow
  Mr. John Greenwav
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what representations he has received on proposals for green fallow within the plans for stabilisers.

  Mr. MacGregor
  I have received a number of representations from hon. Members and others about the option under the Community rules to permit land set aside from arable crops to be grazed by livestock. I am considering these representations, and will be making a statement shortly.

  Sea Fish Industry Authority
  Mr. Wall
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he next expects to meet the chairman and members of the executive of the Sea Fish Industry Authority.

  Mr. Gummer
  I expect to meet the chairman and board members again within the next few months.

  Tenant Farmers Association
  Mr. Summerson
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he last met the chairman of the Tenant Farmers Association; and what matters were discussed.

  Mr. Gummer
  I am in regular contact with the chairman of the Tenant Farmers Association and other tenants' representatives on matters of mutual interest.

  Poultry Federation
  Mr. Michael Brown
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he last met the president of the Poultry Federation; and what matters were discussed.

  Mr. MacGregor
  I refer my hon. Friend to the answer given to my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Mr. Alexander) on 5 May at column 998.

  Fur Farming
  Mr. Morley
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will ensure the fur farming is not eligible for farm diversification grants; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Gummer
  The keeping of animals for fur is not an eligible activity under the farm diversification grant scheme.

  Breeding Ewes
  Mr. George Howarth
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the present number of breeding ewes in Great Britain.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  At the December 1987 census, the figure was 18·148 million.

  Mink Farming
  Mr. Terry Lewis
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the lastest number of mink farming licences currently in operation.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  I refer the hon. Member to the answer given to the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Davies) on 3 May 1988 at columns 401–2.

  Animal Foodstuffs (Toxins)
  Mr. McCartney
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he has any plans to strengthen current safeguards governing the levels of toxins in animal foodstuffs; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  New provisions on aflatoxin B came into effect on 6 April which extended the previously existing safeguards to a wider range of feedingstuffs. There will be a further extension of controls in December 1988, when maximum levels will be set for certain substances in specified raw materials that have not previous been restricted in this way.

  Farm Woodlands Scheme
  Mr. Gareth Wardell
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will invite the Forestry Commission to review its present guidelines for planting under the farm woodlands scheme.

  Mr. MacGregor
  The practical guidelines provided by the Forestry Commission in connection with the woodland grant scheme will also apply to planting under the farm woodland scheme when this is introduced. In addition, publications giving detailed advice on establishing and maintaining farm woodlands will be available in good time for the introduction of the scheme in the autumn. In the light of this I do not consider revision of guidelines necessary.

  Bovine Somatotropin
  Mr. Martlew
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what further representations he has received concerning the testing of bovine somatotropin in the dairy herd; and if he will make a statement.
  684
  Mr. Donald Thompson
  I have nothing to add to my reply of 16 May to the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) at column 323.

  EC Agriculture Ministers
  Mr. Cox
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he last met with EC Agriculture Ministers; and what topics were discussed.

  Mr. MacGregor
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Summerson) on 18 May at columns 473–4.

  Pigmeat
  Mr. Gill
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food by what number he estimates the United Kingdom pig population would need to be increased so as to achieve national self-sufficiency in pigmeat; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  Latest estimates indicate that the United Kingdom is currently more than self-sufficient in pork but only 40 per cent. self-sufficient in bacon and ham. An increase in the pig population approaching 30 per cent. would be needed to achieve national self-sufficiency in pigmeat, provided that this increase was wholly used for the production of bacon and ham.

  Breeding Sows
  Mr. Steinberg
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what estimate he has of future numbers of breeding sows in the United Kingdom.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  The future number of breeding sows in the United Kingdom will depend on a range of factors which cannot be predicted with any certainty. I regret that I am unable to provide the figures requested.

  Food Industry (Exports)
  Mr. Stevens
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on the performance of the food industry in increasing exports to the European Community.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  I refer my hon. Friend to the reply I gave on 7 June to my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis) at column 485.

  Bovine Disease (Newham)
  Mr. Tony Banks
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if there have been any reported cases of bovine disease in the London borough of Newham during the last five years.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  I am not aware of any bovine disease in the London borough of Newham in the last five years.

  Fishing Vessels
  Mr. Wallace
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many building grants have been awarded in respect of fishing vessels by the SFIA in the period January to April.
  685
  Mr. Gummer
  During the period 1 January to 30 April 1988, construction grants amounting to some £1,211,000 were awarded in respect of seven new vessels.

PRIME MINISTER

  France (Bilateral Relations)
  Mr. Dykes
  To ask the Prime Minister when she next plans to meet the President of the French Republic to discuss bilateral relations.

  The Prime Minister
  I shall meet President Mitterrand in Paris on 10 June to discuss bilateral relations and other international issues.

  Engagements
  Dr. Thomas
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 9 June.

  Mr. Pike
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 9 June.

  Mrs. Clwyd
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 9 June.

  Mr. Madden
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 9 June.

  Mr. Evennett
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 9 June.

  Mr. Stern
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 9 June.

  Mr. Skinner
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 9 June.
  686
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 9 June.

  Mr. Butler
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 9 June.

  Mr. McGrady
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will, list her official engagements for Thursday 9 June.

  The Prime Minister
  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 including one with the President of Tanzania.

  Commercial Advertising (Ministerial Appearances)
  Mr. Robert Hughes
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will publish in the Official Report the rules governing ministerial appearances in commercial advertising.

  The Prime Minister
  There are no specific rules but it is well understood that Ministers do not lend their names to advertising for commercial purposes. Those who use photographs of Ministers do not necessarily seek their consent.

  Government Departments (Unauthorised Disclosures)
  Mr. Winnick
  To ask the Prime Minister how many unauthorised disclosures from Departments regarding Government internal discussions and proposals have occurred since May 1979.

  The Prime Minister
  We do not collect that information.

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

Message from the Queen
The Earl of Airlie: My Lords, I have the honour to present to your Lordships a message from Her Majesty the Queen signed by her own hand. The message is as follows:
"I have received your Address praying that the Summer Time Order 1988 be made in the form of the draft laid before your House.
"I will comply with your request."

The Lord Chancellor: Leave of Absence
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Mackay of Clashfern): My Lords, before the commencement of business, I take the opportunity to inform the House that with the approval of Her Majesty the Queen, I have accepted an invitation to attend the Conference of European Ministers of Justice in Lisbon and the European Speakers' Conference in Berne between 20th and 24th June. Accordingly, I trust that the House will agree to grant me leave of absence for the relevant period.

Palace of Westminster: Telecommunications
3.7 p.m
Lord Orr-Ewing Lord Orr-Ewing asked the Leader of the House:
What is the total annual expenditure on telephones for the Palace of Westminster and when Mercury Communications Ltd. will be allowed to tender for some of this business.
The Lord Privy Seal (Lord Belstead): My Lords, the total expenditure on telecommunications in the Palace of Westminster and in those other buildings occupied by the two Houses of Parliament in the financial year 1987–88 was £1,919,162. Mercury Communications have approached the authorities in both Houses. Before any possible changes to the existing circuits linking the Palace of Westminster to the public telephone network are considered by the appropriate committees of the two Houses, the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency has been asked to advise the House authorities on the results of a three-month evaluation of the use of Mercury circuits within the Department of Trade and Industry. In the meantime, Mercury has been asked to prepare detailed costings for the possible provision of its services to the Palace of Westminster.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his full and courteous reply. Is he aware that in areas where Mercury can offer services there
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could be savings of 30 per cent. on local calls, 20 per cent. on national long distance calls and about 17 per cent. on international calls? As the Palace of Westminster is paying some £2 million a year, the taxpayer and parliamentarians might gain considerably if Mercury facilities, now on order for the Press Association, were more widely available in the Palace of Westminster.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for giving me notice of possible savings to be made by the use of Mercury services, some of which my noble friend has put before me. As I have said, in the light of the advice from the CCTA and once detailed proposals have been put forward by Mercury, the appropriate committees of the two Houses will be able to consider the matter. I am su they will need to give particular attention to the cost implications.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, in the meantime, will the Leader of the House not agree that the system has given an increasingly first-class service since 1972, when the present system came into existence, with a number of benefits to Members of both Houses which any outside company would find very difficult to match? Secondly, will the noble Lord tell us how many incoming calls are handled by our telephone system on any given sitting day?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I have to admit to the Leader of the Opposition that I do not know the number of incoming calls. I have all the details of the expenditure, but not the number of incoming calls. Perhaps I could try to find that out and let the noble Lord know.
Perhaps I may make one point in answer to the first supplementary question which the noble Lord asked me. The noble Lord referred to the satisfactory nature of the present system and the fact that it had been in place since 1972. I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, that it is a sophisticated system and, so far as I know, serves both Houses well. But it has not actually been in place, as we have it at the moment, since 1972. The system was changed to what was called an Octara exchange system, which consisted of a number of mini-systems, and many new handsets were put in place, as your Lordships know, about two and a half years ago.
The question has arisen today because Mercury did not tender at that time, because the Mercury service of lines was not available when the change was made in 1985–86. Indeed, Mercury approached the authorities of the two Houses after the new system had been installed. Nonetheless, the question is now being considered again. Pursuant to the reply which I gave to my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing, I know that the committees of both Houses are very much aware that Mercury is interested in providing its services within the Palace of Westminster.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, will the Minister break down the nearly £2 million between your Lordships' House and another place? Which portion is being used by which House?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, of the nearly £2 million over £1 million is telephone usage, in other words the making of calls. Then there are other items such as telephonists' charges of £½ million, and other amounts as well. I do not have the total amounts for the House of Lords and the House of Commons. However, I can say that of the total telephone expenditure the House of Commons accounted for 86·1 per cent. and the House of Lords 9·8 per cent.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, do not those figures convey that Members of your Lordships' House are behaving with admirable restraint?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, as always.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, does the Minister agree that Members of your Lordships' House do not have constituents whom they must telephone?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, that is also true.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, can the Minister say whether, in addition to the Palace of Westminster and the DTI, Mercury Services are being given the opportunity to quote for other Civil Service departments?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I believe that other government departments are taking a similar attitude, as are the committees of both Houses. For approximately three months an evaluation has been taking place in the department of my noble friend Lord Young of Graffham and it is reaching a conclusion. The House might like to know that this week officials of the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency will hold initial discussions with the authorities in another place about the DTI experiment.
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: My Lords, as a matter of legal and constitutional machinery, will my noble friend tell the House the process by which an ultimate decision will be arrived at when the two committees have considered the matter? Will both Houses have to pass a resolution?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, as far as I am aware the Services Committee of another place will refer the matter through to the House of Commons Commission. The Administration Committee of your Lordships' House will refer the matter to the Offices Committee of your Lordships' House. The Chairman of Committees is the chairman of both the Administration Committee and the Offices Committee. I should like to refer to him before giving a final answer to my noble and learned friend. However, as I understand the matter, the Offices Committee could then take a decision without making a reference to your Lordships' House.
Lord John-Mackie: My Lords, can the Minister help with the technicalities of the matter? The noble Lord's Question states:
"to tender for some of this business".
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Does that mean that probably there will be two sets of telephones, two sets of lines and Heaven knows what?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, the simple answer, which I also needed to know, is that we would not need two sets of lines.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, do I understand from my noble friend's answer to my noble and learned friend that it could be that the two Houses may come to different conclusions and, as with television, we shall have a different view?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, no. It is most important that I should say to my noble friend that that could not be the case. As your Lordships will appreciate, the Palace has a single exchange and a single unified telecommunications system. It would not be practical for the two Houses to proceed independently of each other.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, will my noble friend allow me to say that the existing staff provided by BT are most helpful, courteous and efficient in handling our calls? However, that does not mean that a whiff of competitive grapeshot would not make matters even better were Mercury allowed to provide an alternative service.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, this has been a useful exchange. Perhaps it will be the more useful if, before we conclude, I say that I was wrong in replying to my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham. As he probably apprehended (but he was kind enough not to take me up on it) the Offices Committee of your Lordships' House would have to report to the House and that report must be agreed by your Lordships' House. That would be the constitutional position.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, in that case, would it not—
Noble Lords: Order!
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, no. Is the Minister saying that if, when the matter is reported to the House, the House comes to a different conclusion, it could be a separate decision? If that is so, his answer to me does not appear to stand.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, it is perfectly true that technically that could be the case. However, constitutionally the two Houses have co-operated together for many years in administering the joint system and they have devised benefit from such co-operation. I like to believe that the two Houses will wish to continue with that system.

Manufactured Goods: Balance of Trade
3.17 p.m.
Lord Dormand of Easington Lord Dormand of Easington asked Her Majesty's Government:
What is the latest balance of trade in manufactured goods.
The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Lord Young of Graffham): My Lords, in the first four months of 1988 there was an estimated deficit on trade in manufactures of £3·9 billion.
Lord Dormand of Easington: My Lords, is the Secretary of State aware that the present horrific deficit in the trade of manufactured goods represents a loss of probably 1 million jobs as compared with 1979? What are the Government doing about that situation?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, I fail to follow the noble Lord's logic as to how that would show a loss of 1 million jobs as compared with 1979. I am aware that productivity in the manufacturing industry has risen by 50 per cent. as compared with that year and that would account for a proportion of the loss. I am also aware that we have created 1·7 million jobs since 1983. The fact does not appear to lie easily with the noble Lord's contention.
Lord Peston: My Lords, bearing in mind the Minister's answer to the supplementary question, can he enlighten the House as to Her Majesty's Government's view of why the trade deficit and the current account deficit are as large as they are? In particular, does he believe that it has any connection with the exchange rate?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, the exchange rate is entirely another matter, but I believe that we should look into this issue. In considering a deficit in manufactured goods of £3·9 billion I fear that noble Lords opposite are still living in yester-year, for today wealth creation is carried out in many ways and manufactured goods is only one of them. Secondly, I should say to noble Lords opposite that the United Kingdom's gross assets overseas at the end of 1986 were £730 billion. That compares with a current account deficit today of £2·4 billion. Therefore, there is a great deal of difference between the two figures.
Lord Bruce-Gardyne: My Lords, is the crucial point not the balance of trade in manufactured goods but the need to ensure that, whatever the balance of trade generally may be in goods and services, there is a countervailing inflow of capital and that interest rates are maintained at the level required to ensure that that countervailing inflow occurs?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, interest rates and exchange rates are another matter from the particular Question which the noble Lord, Lord Dormand of Easington, put to me. At the present time we have a deficit on manufactured goods. We have a smaller deficit overall if we take in invisible earnings. However, we are also at a stage in the economy in which we are investing substantially in new plant and equipment and much of that has an effect on the import figures.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, if the noble Lord believes that the exchange rate and interest rates are irrelevant to the manufacturing trade balance, will he give the Government's view on what is the relationship between the deterioration in the
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manufacturing trade balance and the growing mountain of consumer debt?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, I assure the noble Lord that I did not say that those figures were irrelevant. I did not comment on them at all.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, does the Minister not agree that it is a wholly false equation to seek to equate productivity in a manufacturing industry with employment? Has this not been clearly demonstrated even since the days of the Tolpuddle Martyrs?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, at a time when we are creating more jobs than the rest of the European Community put together, I believe that we have a record of which we are proud in the way in which British industry and commerce is becoming competitive in today's world.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware, when he talks about noble Lords on this side speaking from yester-year, that we are speaking from the year when there were not 2½ million people unemployed, as the Government admit, but probably over 3 million unemployed? Has he read the report of the Select Committee on Overseas Trade and noted that section of it which points out that one of the deterrents to the increase in manufacturing exports from this country is the low purchasing power of third world countries, which are a market to which British exporters could turn their attention?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, the latest figures for unemployment show it standing at 2,450,000 and not a figure of 3 million, which the noble Lord alleges.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, the noble Lord has acknowledged that there is a deficit which may not be terribly disturbing but nevertheless exists, and if it continues it will inevitably have some deleterious effect on employment. Can he say what may be undertaken to prevent that happening?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, I am not sure that I follow the noble Lord that if the deficit were to continue for some time it would have any effect on employment at all. We are in a position where our economy is growing stronger than any other economy. There are stages during that growth in which we import substantially in order to refit industry, which is happening at present. We have to look at all these figures and deficits in the light of the assets of the United Kingdom. I repeat that gross assets overseas of the UK are some £730 billion. That should be compared with a current deficit this year of some £2·4 billion.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I asked the noble Lord two questions but he did not answer the second one. Will he have the courtesy to do so?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, I understand that it is my privilege to answer only one question at a time. I agree with the noble Lord that I have read

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that part of the report of your Lordships' Select Committee. I am not sure that I necessarily agree with it since some two or three years have now passed since that committee reported to your Lordships.
Lord Dormand of Easington: My Lords, the Secretary of State said that he failed to see the logic of my question. Is not the main cause of the deficit the fact that the manufacturing base of this country is still smaller than it was in 1979 and there has been a failure to invest in the manufacturing goods industry?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, in each of the past four years we have seen the record of investment in manufactured goods broken as each year we invest more and more. I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Dormand of Easington, that he should travel overseas and there inquire about the reputation of British manufactured goods. Compared with 10 years ago he will find that we are today recovering our reputation to deliver on time, to provide quality goods and to restore the reputation of which we used to be proud but which, alas, we lost in the 1970s.

Overseas Aid: EC Statistics
3.25 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby Lord Hatch of Lusby asked Her Majesty's Government:
What proportion of the gross national product of each member state in the European Community is devoted to official overseas aid.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Glenarthur): My Lords, precise figures are only available for the eight European Community countries that belong to the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The figures, which show net official development assistance for 1986 as a percentage of GNP, are as follows: Belgium, 0·49; Denmark, 0·89; France, 0·72; Germany, 0·43; Ireland, 0·28; Italy, 0·40; Netherlands, 1·01; and the United Kingdom 0·31.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I am afraid that the noble Lord is not up to date with his figures. The latest figure officially given for United Kingdom development assistance is 0·28, not 0·32; that is for 1987. Those are the figures for which I asked. Is the Minister not ashamed at that Answer when, according to his own Answer, only one country in the DAC spends less of its GNP on overseas aid than this country, that country being Ireland? Is that not something of which to be ashamed, and how does it equate with the Prime Minister's statement two weeks ago in Scotland that as the British people become better off so they share the fruits of their work with others?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the noble Lord is quite right when he says that the figures that I gave refer to a particular year and that others are to come. The figure which the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby,
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quotes has not yet been published, though the figure he gives is likely to be the case; I stress: likely to be the case.
The noble Lord suggests that the United Kingdom figure is shamefully low. It is not as simple as that. One reason is that GNP is half of the equation. That has gone up dramatically and I can quote figures on that. The net official development assistance figure for the calendar year 1987 compares with a net public expenditure provision for overseas aid of £1,247 million in the financial year 1987–88. Perhaps the noble Lord will realise that, when we take into account GNP as well as the actual figure and the fact that future real growth in aid will be 1 per cent. or more, matters are not nearly as bad as he says.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, is not my noble friend aware that the official aid figure is not the only figure that matters? Is it not a fact that investment by the public and the private sector of this country in the developing world is at a highly creditable level and is at least as important as official aid?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, my noble friend is quite right. There are all sorts of other factors which have to be taken into account. Indeed, the figures which I quoted just now could be misleading. There is official development assistance and there is the net aid programme; there are calendar years and financial years; there are different UN targets for different categories of assistance. Together with factors outside our control, including statistical freaks, which was the case in 1987–88, all these factors can make it difficult to draw meaningful comparisons from year to year.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, is the Minister aware that it was reported in the Observer in particular on 29th May that Britain's aid is now more than £1,100 million less each year than it would have been had the previous Labour Government's programme continued? Will the Minister confirm that that is so? If it is true, why have the British Government decided to slash their overseas aid programme at a time when third world countries are clearly suffering greatly in economic terms?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, one other thing may also have been the case if the party opposite had still been in power—we would not have had growth in 1987 provisionally estimated at 4·5 per cent., which is faster than that of any other industrial country. We are about to enter our eighth successive year of growth and that is what enables us now to produce an aid programme which is increasing in real terms.
The Earl of Onslow: My Lords, when is aid going to end? Are we to have the third world perpetually holding out the begging bowl to the more successful countries? Has aid actually done any good to Tanzania, for example, which has had £3,000 million of aid but has seen its agricultural production fall by 3 per cent. a year? The amount of aid which has been given to Ethiopia is enormous but that country has managed to make a mess of its own economy. Should we continue subsidising crooked, third world

1495
countries just to salve the consciences of the party opposite?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I am afraid I do not wholly agree with my noble friend. The fact is that we have much to be grateful for ourselves, as do many overseas countries. Not only have we done much in the way of aid, and will continue to do so, but we have also done a great deal under the debt initiative of my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Lord Oram: My Lords, the Minister said that the figure of 0·28 quoted by my noble friend Lord Hatch has not been published. Is he not aware that it was given in a Written Answer in another place just before the Recess?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I am afraid I was not. My information is that the figure for 1987 quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, was likely to be the case but that it had not been published. If it has been published, I apologise.
Lord Renton: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the indebtedness of overseas governments in third world countries to Her Majesty's Government is also an important factor? When the President of France announced yesterday that one-third of the indebtedness to France was being remitted, he was merely following the excellent precedent set by Her Majesty's Government who, moreover, have reduced interest rates.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, my noble friend is right. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister received a letter from President Mitterrand yesterday setting out his proposals. Indeed, the Prime Minister expects to discuss them further when she meets the President tomorrow. At least one of the French alternative proposals, that creditors should lower interest rates on rescheduled debts, is close to the initiative already taken.
Baroness Macleod of Borve: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that not only do we give financial help to countries that are less well off than ourselves but we also send abroad people of particularly high quality to help such countries? Those countries much appreciate that.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, my noble friend is right. I have seen those people at work and I know the valuable input that they make.
Lord Hughes: My Lords, the Minister said that he did not wholly agree with the extraordinary views put forward by his noble friend. Can he perhaps tell us with which part of that supplementary question he did agree?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, my noble friend to some extent rightly pointed out that aid was an expensive item. I said to my noble friend—or words to this effect—that there are endless examples of where aid was extremely successful.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, rather than putting up the smokescreen of other figures and comparisons than those mentioned in the Question, would not the Government be better occupied in explaining why being second from bottom in the league table is an acceptable place for this country?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the noble Lord fails to take into account the fact that GNP has increased. That is why the proportion appears to be lower than it is. The noble Lord should be under no illusions. We have a substantial aid programme amounting to £1,305 million in the current financial year. That is planned to grow by £70 million in 1989–90 and £115 million in 1990–91. That is an increase in real terms of 1 per cent. over the figure for 1987–88.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, the Government are putting forward the extraordinary argument that the richer we are (unexpectedly so) the less we are capable of giving a share of our GNP to countries that need it. Is that the latest example of Conservative morality?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the noble Lord is misquoting me. Growth has not been unexpected. If GNP increases—and it has—then naturally the proportions of it devoted to any particular sector may be difficult to keep up. As I have said, the fact is that the aid programme is presently increasing.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that he cannot have it both ways? When the overseas aid budget was cut four times as heavily as other public expenditure the Government said that they reluctantly did so because of the depression in the country. The Minister who answered an earlier Question this afternoon claimed that there has been growth for the past eight years. How is it that that coincides with a fall in overseas aid? Is the Minister aware that in a poll taken last year 62 per cent. of those polled said they were prepared to pay higher taxes if those taxes were to be allocated to helping the poorer countries?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the noble Lord must get the position into perspective. The fact is that in 1986 the amount of aid we gave was the sixth largest among Western donors and was geared to the needs of the poorest countries. I have described how the aid programme is now planned to grow in real terms. The noble Lord should not always look back but should endeavour to look forward as well.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, would it not therefore be better to have an aid programme on the same basis as the poll tax where the rich and the poor countries pay the same?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I think I have said enough on the community charge.

Housing Costs: Calculation Policy
3.37 p.m.
Lord Bruce of Donington Lord Bruce of Donington asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will remove the rent and mortgage components from the retail prices index and substitute the Building Societies Association's figures reflecting the rise in house prices.
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, we have no plans to change the treatment of housing costs in the retail prices index. The present treatment follows recommendations made by the RPI Advisory Committee, most recently in 1986.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, I fully appreciate that the use of the RPI in its existing form has certain influences that are statutorily in the income tax Acts of 1970, but is it not the case that the annual rate of inflation as published by the Government is itself derived from the RPI? In view of the terrific rise in house prices, would it not be better if the annual rate of inflation figures, as published, were derived from an amended RPI so that an accurate figure of the annual rate of inflation could be ascertained?
Is the noble Lord aware that at present the annual rate of inflation, taking into account the gross rise in house prices and all property prices, is running not at 3·9 per cent.—which is the published figure for the rate of inflation—but at nearer 7·3 per cent?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, I do not know where the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, obtains his information. The make-up of the RPI is, of course, changed from time to time. An independent RPI Advisory Committee advises the Government and I came to your Lordships' House two years ago to announce the then deliberations of that committee.
No country in the world includes the capital cost of housing in its calculation of RPI figures. However, the mortgage payments are included. Each year, as the average for mortgages rises, the amount of interest paid is included in the RPI figures. I believe that the present system is about the best we could have.
Lord Bruce-Gardyne: My Lords, notwithstanding the source from which this suggestion came, does not my noble friend agree that there is some argument for looking again at the treatment of housing costs in the RPI? The unsatisfactory nature of the impact of the mortgage component in the RPI is a factor which could be looked at again.
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend. I am not sure where the unsatisfactory nature lies because within the index there is the cost of mortgage interest. It is not just the rate of interest; it is based upon the average amount of mortgages. As house prices increase so that amount increases and therefore the effect is contained within the RPI. It is not the average increase in house
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prices which affects the cost of living; it is the price paid for a house when one either buys or sells. I believe that after full advice this figure reflects the current cost of living.
Lord Grimond: My Lords, does the Minister agree that increases or decreases in the retail prices index affect different parts of the community quite differently? To pretend that one index reflects the effect for all is totally misleading. Is there not a strong case for taking into account the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, at least for certain kinds of indices as they affect the treatment of certain elements in the community?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, the RPI Advisory Committee is composed of those representing consumers, retailers, employers, employees, the financial community, government departments and academics. It looks at all elements of the cost of living. It sat and deliberated long and hard as to how the cost of living should best be calculated. In looking at the cost of rents and mortgages it is quite difficult to produce a different RPI for different parts of the country.
For example, we might well find the RPI increase in Scotland rather lower than that in the South-East of England. I believe that it would be impossible to construct separate cost of living indices for each and every part of our country.
Lord Monson: My Lords, does the Minister agree that one of the main factors pushing up the price of houses is the tax relief on mortgage interest? This relief is totally counter-productive.
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, the tax relief on mortgage interest is limited to a mortgage of £30,000. In some areas of the country that is a substantial part of the cost of a house, but in others where the shortage is greatest, it is not. I suspect that local government has a great deal to do because it is planning permissions that determine the cost of land. That is a matter that is very much for local government.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the real matter at issue is the Government's statement on the annual rate of inflation, which at the present time is derived from the existing RPI? Any announcement as regards the annual rate of inflation as such must take into account the real rate of inflation.
The noble Lord asked for the origin of my figures. They were published in the house journal of the party opposite, the Daily Telegraph, on 21st May last, as being the calculations of Shearson Lehman, the well-known stockbrokers.
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, I believe the noble Lord is suggesting that we should ask the RPI Advisory Committee not to recommend any future changes; that we should ask the Department of Employment to cease doing work, and that we should put it out to Shearson Lehman. I find that a very curious suggestion. We have an RPI committee and

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a procedure that has long been recommending this figure. It is the rate of inflation. I do not believe that it does a great service to those who work on the advisory committee and the statisticians of the Government to continue to question their work.

Business
Lord Denham: My Lords, it may be for the convenience of the House if I announce that the Committee stage of the Local Government Finance Bill will be adjourned at approximately 7 p.m. for approximately one hour and that during this adjournment the Committee stage of the Consumer Arbitration Agreements Bill will be discharged and the Lord Chancellor's Salary Order 1988 will be taken.

Local Government Finance Bill
3.45 p.m.
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now again resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now again resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Hesketh.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD ABERDARE in the Chair.]
Clause 39 [Occupied hereditaments: liability]:
Lord Hesketh Lord Hesketh moved Amendment No. 102D:
Page 23, leave out line 15 and insert ("the following conditions are fulfilled in respect of any day in the year—").
The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 102D, for the convenience of the Committee I propose to speak also to Amendments Nos. 102E, 102F, 102G, 125A, 125B, 125C, 125D, 125E, 125F, 125H, 126A, 126C, 186A and 187A.
Clause 39 replaces the present yearly liability to rating with a daily liability. The reason for this is simple. While the present yearly liability works well at the moment, without the body of precedent and usage that attaches to the present system there could be scope for misinterpretation of the method of calculation, where a ratepayer had occupied a property for part of a year. The change is therefore necessary in the interests of greater precision. I might add that the results arrived at by the two methods for the amount due for part of a year should be the same, subject to any differences in the treatment of part days.
Clause 38(1) and Clause 66(1), which make provision for local non-domestic rating lists and residual rating lists, are drafted in terms that the list must show for each day in a chargeable financial year each hereditament which fulfils various conditions. This expression is chosen to reflect the fact that there can be retrospective corrections to an entry on a list. Therefore on the day in question there might not be an entry but, because of a later correction to the list for that day, an entry may have been made. These
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drafting amendments do nothing more than ensure that there is a consistent approach and use of language in the liability clauses which follow the clauses providing for the contents of the retrospective lists.
It is convenient to take with the amendments to Clause 39 the correspondig set which apply to Clauses 60 to 63, Clause 67 and Schedule 13, which cover the provisions for residual domestic rating and eligibility for community charge benefit. Liability in all these cases is calculated on a daily basis, and it is appropriate to clarify the meaning correspondingly. I therefore commend these amendments to the Committee. I beg to move.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: We are prepared to accept that these are drafting amendments. My only complaint and the only reason I am speaking at all is that the noble Lord read out at high speed a large number of amendments which, according to the groupings, are not as agreed. This is a point which my noble friend Lord Underhill has just picked up. Perhaps the noble Lord will not read them out again at dictation speed but arrange that we are informed what amendments are being spoken to now.
Lord Hesketh: I read them out in their entirety, whereas they are in briefer form on the list.
Lord Underhill: As my noble friend said, I have just picked up this list from the Printed Paper Office. It contains only Amendments Nos. 102D to G, 125A to F, 125H, 126A and 126E. There is no mention of the other amendments to which the noble Lord referred.
Lord Hesketh: I quite accept that. I have just spotted that Amendments Nos. 186A and 187A are not on the list, as the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, has pointed out.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: I understand that the list of groupings as originally placed in the Printed Paper Office has been withdrawn and a subsequent amended one put into issue. Perhaps my noble friend can arrange for amended copies to be made available to the Committee in the Chamber.
Lord Mason of Barnsley: It is a bit late now that the debate has started.
Lord Hesketh: I shall endeavour to do that as soon as possible for my noble friend.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Hesketh Lord Hesketh moved Amendments Nos. 102E to 102G:
Page 23, line 16, at beginning insert ("on the day").
Page 23, line 18, after ("shown") insert ("for the day").
Page 23, line 24, leave out ("on") and insert ("in respect of").
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Lord Hayter Lord Hayter moved Amendment No. 103:
Page 23, line 33, leave out ("2") and insert ("5").
The noble Lord said: We have strayed on to the question of the groupings of amendments. So far as I am concerned, they can be torn up. I was not

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consulted about the grouping of my amendment with others, of which there is quite a galaxy, including one on fisheries and sporting rights in fisheries. I cannot imagine how one can have a sporting right in fishery, but I presume that there is such a thing. I am talking about charitable rate relief, and I shall confine my remarks to that subject.
The amendment tabled by my noble friends and I must strike most people as being curious. It seeks to strike out the figure 2 and insert 5. What does it mean? In Clause 39(5) one finds a mathematical formula in which there is the figure 2. We want to take that out and replace it with the figure 5. So far, so unclear. The Government propose that charities should receive a mandatory rate relief of half their rates—in other words, the rates payable will be the rates bill divided by two. Our amendment seeks to restrict the liability of these charities to one-fifth of the rates—in other words, the increase to relief will be 80 per cent. of the bill. Our amendment would leave to local authorities discretion whether to grant a further relief on the remaining 20 per cent.
Why on earth do we suggest that? I was reflecting only yesterday on the element of guesswork that is inherent in connection with the Bill. For instance, as the public approaches the next election, will it really want to see the homeless clobbered or a wife or husband put into prison because a spouse will not pay up? Will the charities (which undertake more and more of the services that used to be provided by government) still be in the position they are today? It may be argued that from the Opposition's point of view—and in this respect I am speaking from the Cross-Benches, so to speak—it would be good tactics if they are sure that they are right on some of these subjects to let the Government get on with the Bill as it stands and let the heavens fall on them. However, on the subject of charity, as I have said before, there is no monopoly in any part of the Chamber, and the Opposition are joining with us in this effort to ensure that charities are given the compassion that they deserve.
The amendment relates to charities and the rates they pay. It seeks to protect them from the cost increases that are likely to arise from the Government's present proposals for non-domestic rates. It would be no exaggeration to say that in our opinion we are now discussing the viability of many charitable organisations after 1990 when the proposals come into effect. The charitable sector in Britain is burgeoning, no doubt encouraged by the Prime Minister's promptings. More than 50 new charities are registered every week, adding to the 150,000 already in existence. Some are very large and some are very small. In many spheres charitable organisations have become household words—Shelter, Dr. Barnardo, Oxfam, and so on. What is more they are enthusiastically supported by the general public. Someone has reckoned that more than half the population participates in some voluntary activity or another, and nine out of 10—and I am sure this figure is about right—give money to charities. They will not want to see it dissipated unnecessarily. They want to see it well-used.
These organisations are heavily reliant on the partnership with central and local government—which is why we have become involved in this Bill—as well as the public at large. A major element of this co-operation is the rate relief given to charitable premises—charity offices, shops, sports centres and village halls. One set of such premises are the care homes catering for the elderly and the disabled. They are granted full relief from the rates and this practice is to be continued under the new arrangements. Let us be glad of that. For the rest, however, a different prospect looms.
The current arrangements provide for remission of 50 per cent. of rate payments for charities on a mandatory basis, with a further 50 per cent. relief granted at the discretion of the local authority. One does not know whether one will get that. However, the Government have also set in train a revaluation of rateable values. This subject cropped up during earlier discussions on the Bill. Combined with the introduction of the new uniform rate of businesses, which will affect these charitable organisations, it seems that the charity premises will face severe absolute cost increases even though the proportion of relief will remain the same.
In the new revalued system, offices and shops will face particularly severe rate increases as opposed to industrial premises which will fare better. For example, it is estimated that the rates bill for Oxfam's shop in Kensington High Street will rise from £2,551 to £9,635. Examination of the effect of these rates seems to have been minimal. In fact, I know of only one survey. It was done not by the Government but by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, which as I have explained before is the national representative body for voluntary organisations and all the charities in England. It published a report this week focusing on the position of charity shops. I do not need to emphasise how very dependent many charities are on the efforts made in the charity shops and the results which they get from them.
The report shows that very large rate rises are in the pipeline. The Children's Society is expecting a rise of £24,000. It runs 108 shops. Help the Aged is expecting a rise of more than 100 per cent. on current costs for its 21 shops. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Ryder of Warsaw, is in the Chamber behind me and I know of the grave concerns she has about the effect of the proposals on her foundation. She will be able to tell the Committee about that later on.
These figures are alarming but they are not alarmist. They are based on conservative estimates of the impact of the new system. They affect groups in society whose work is regularly praised in this Chamber. Those are not sectional groups about which we hear little. Throughout the charitable world there is a great unease about the wisdom of these proposals. Our amendment sets out to ensure that such worries are allayed. By increasing the level of the Government's mandatory relief, we can ensure that the valuable charity effort does not become an unintended casualty of what may be a hastily-prepared clause of the Bill. If that was to happen the nation would never forgive the government in charge.

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At the same time, by restricting the level of mandatory relief to only 80 per cent., we have allowed for local authorities to have some discretion. That is fair enough and was a point made by the Minister in another place. Those local authorities can favour the particular charities that they feel perform valuable services locally.
I said in my Second Reading speech that in drawing up the Bill the Government seem to have failed to take sufficient account of the role of the charities and the voluntary sector as a whole. The issue of charitable rate relief is a major example of the effect of this approach. Whatever the verbal protestations of good intentions by Ministers may be, we fear that severe damage will occur. The Government are therefore presented with a clear opportunity to put into practice their oft-quoted commitment to charitable endeavour, and I hope that they will seize this chance. It may be that they have not had the opportunity of studying the report to which I have referred, although I know that it has been sent to the department. It may well be that we shall be calmed by the assertions of the Minister in relation to this amendment. Meanwhile, I beg to move.
Baroness Faithfull: Knowing the Government's support of the charitable and voluntary sector in our society, I have put my name to this amendment. I think it would be wise for all of us to hear what the Minister has to say, as I cannot believe that great thought has not been given to the matter.
I should like to make a few comments on the role of charities, and especially that of charity shops. It is absolutely essential in this day and age that money is raised for charities and that we are not entirely dependent upon trusts. Everyone is calling for money from trusts, and it is extraordinarily difficult for such trusts to meet the needs of the voluntary sector. Therefore, one way in which the community can really help the voluntary organisations is by helping in their shops so as to make money for the charities. For example, we have 25,000 volunteers serving in the Oxfam shops. I think that a by-product of such shops, and the volunteers who serve in them, is that people begin to know about the work being done by the voluntary organisations.
I am concerned with the shops of Dr. Barnardo's, Oxfam, The Richmond Fellowship and others. I must also say that it is essential that the voluntary organisations raise money for themselves because there must be a partnership between the statutory social services, the statutory health services, education and the voluntary services. Without such a partnership the community will not receive the good service which it deserves.
I must also point out that with rate-capping in the statutory services more people are relying on the voluntary services. I ask the Minister whether full account has been taken in the Bill of the fact that charity shops are rated as shops and offices and not as industrial projects. We know that revaluation is taking place with a view to implementation in 1990. However, will charity shops not face rate rises despite the Government's intention to continue a mandatory
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grant as laid down, and which has been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Hayter? Further, will Her Majesty's Government consider raising the rate to a mandatory 80 per cent., instead of the present 50 per cent? It is important that this debate takes place so that we can all understand the Government's point of view with regard to charities, and especially with regard to charity shops.
4 p.m.
Baroness Ryder of Warsaw: The Committee's decision on this amendment will have a profound effect on the Sue Ryder Foundation which I, as founder, represent. It is an international charity which works day and night for people of all age groups who are dying and others, who are handicapped. In this country alone the foundation cares for over 2,000 people who are severely ill. It costs over £300 per day to care for those with cancer, motor neurone disease and Huntingdon's chorea—to quote but three.
At present there are 347 Sue Ryder shops in this country, all of which pay rates. However, by 1992 we hope to have 550 shops or more to serve the community; to raise interest in the relief of suffering; to raise desperately needed funds and to bring more people together from all walks of life, especially the lonely. Indeed, the Ryder shops are the lifeblood of the whole foundation.
However, this lifeline could be most seriously affected by the Government's current proposals. Such proposals would cost us a staggering £250,000. I am absolutely shocked to hear that our rates will increase from £1·25 million to £1·5 million per annum. That is absolutely dreadful, especially when we look to the Government for support and compassion. The Government always say that they mean to help and encourage charitable work. Nevertheless, it would seem that they have not thought sufficiently about charities when drafting the Bill.
The amendment would relieve a great and unwanted extra burden from all charities, including the Sue Ryder Foundation. The struggle for funds is so hard each day and, further, the number of children and people in need increases daily. I beg the Committee to support the amendment and urge others, with all my heart, to do likewise.
Lord Renton: It is well known that charities are able to obtain rebates of income tax which has been paid by donors of covenants. It was originally thought that charities could obtain a rebate of rates from local authorities. Indeed, power is given to local authorities to grant such rebates at their discretion. However, over the country as a whole that power has been used most unevenly. The Bill therefore provides an opportunity for the position to be rationalised. I should have thought that this amendment gives us the opportunity to raise that point.
Therefore, I hope that when the Government consider the matter they will deem it desirable to ensure that there is uniformity of practice, and that charities receive the exemption from rateable liability which they need. Indeed, the matter has already been pointed out by other Members of the Committee.
The Minister of State, Department of the Environment (The Earl of Caithness): The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, deals with rate relief for charities and other non-profit making bodies. I think perhaps it would assist the Committee if I were to outline the Government's policy on the whole subject of rate relief for such organisations.
First, I should explain that the Bill as it stands does not fully reflect the Government's policy. For that reason we have tabled the amendments which appear in the next group. They give effect to our long-standing policy of retaining the full range of mandatory and discretionary release currently available. Of course, it is quite right that charities should not have to pay the full rates and that there should be scope for reducing the rates bill of other non-profit making bodies.
The provisions now contained in Section 40 of the General Rate Act 1967, which have been developed over many years, command widespread public support and generally seem to work well. I am most happy to confirm that the Government's policy is to replicate the existing provisions as closely as the change to the new system will permit. The Bill already contains provision in Clause 39(5) and (6) whereby charities will have their rate bills automatically rebated by 50 per cent. That is the function of the factor "2" shown in the bottom line of the formula in subsection (5). It is that provision which the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, seeks to amend by substituting a factor of "5" to give the 80 per cent. relief.
The provisions we now intend to introduce will permit charging authorities to increase the rebate for charities up to 100 per cent. They will also give relief of up to 100 per cent., at their discretion, to other bodies which, in the words introduced by Amendment No. 107ZC, are:
"charitable or … philanthropic or religious or concerned with education, social welfare, science, literature or the fine arts",
or those who occupy premises
"wholly or mainly used for … recreation",
subject, in both cases, to the requirement that the body concerned must not be conducted for profit. Thus, I can confirm to the noble Baroness, Lady Ryder of Warsaw, that her shops would be included in that definition. Therefore, not only those organisations meeting the definition of a charity, but also other bodies established to benefit the community, including non profit-making amateur sports clubs, will qualify for relief.
The Government believe that local authorities should make full legitimate use of their powers to give discretionary relief. We therefore intend to ensure that the full cost of giving relief to charities and other non-profit making bodies does not fall on community charge payers.
For mandatory relief, the position is simple: local authorities will be obliged to give this relief, so of course this will be deducted in calculating their contributions to the national non-domestic rate pool. For discretionary relief, it is a little more complicated. At present, the whole cost of any discretionary relief that local authorities give is borne locally. But, of course, that cost is spread across local business as well as domestic ratepayers. If we did
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nothing further, under the new system the entire cost would fall on local community charge payers. That might make authorities less keen to give relief than they are now, which is certainly not the result we want. We have therefore proposed that authorities should be allowed to offset half the cost of any relief they give against their payments into the national non-domestic rate pool. Regulations under Schedule 8 will deal with that. This will roughly mirror the present situation, since at present just under half the total rate bill—and thus half the cost of relief given—comes from domestic ratepayers.
I turn to the detail of Amendment No. 103, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter. The amendment would, as he has said, increase the level of mandatory relief for charities from 50 per cent. to 80 per cent. It is fair to say that the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, is not attacking any new government proposals in the Bill. He is trying to change the existing system, which has worked well and which we will replicate. I remain not only unconvinced by the noble Lord's arguments, but wonder whether charities have taken fully on hoard the advantages of our new proposals to alleviate the worst excesses of the present rating system.
First, not every body which in law is a charity, would be generally agreed to be operating wholly in the public interest. This subject received some public attention in response to the 16th Report of the Public Accounts Committee published earlier this year. I need only refer to some of the more fringe religious cults, which meet the relevant definitions of a charity, but which I think most of the Committee would not wish to see supported with additional public funds.
I am also surprised, but delighted, by the conversion of the Opposition. It is noteworthy to see Opposition spokesmen putting their names to an amendment which would mean additional support from the taxpayer for public schools. I mention that only to remind the Committee just how wide is the definition of a charity. I commend the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, for taking that positive step forward.
Secondly, it is only right to draw attention to the cost of the noble Lord's amendment. Last year, charitable relief cost £80 million, so these amendments would increase that cost to some £130 million. Depending on how that was dealt with, it would mean nearly £5 for every community charge payer, or 2 per cent. on the business rate. There is of course no particular magic about 50 per cent. However, since the Pritchard Report on the rating of charities in 1959 (cmnd. 831), it has been accepted that 50 per cent. rate relief for charities, with the possibility of topping this up to 100 per cent. if the local authority thinks fit, strikes the right balance between the charity's interests and the ratepayers. Charities benefit from very many other tax reliefs. It is right that they should pay something towards local government services if the local authority decides not to use its full discretion. There will be nothing to stop local authorities from giving 80 per cent., 90 per cent. of even 100 per cent. rate relief to charities if they think that is justified. If they give 100 per cent. relief—as many do, selectively, at present—then 75 per cent. of the cost will be borne by the national

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non-domestic rating pool; that is, the whole cost of the first 50 per cent. and half the second 50 per cent. Only 25 per cent will be left to be borne locally by community charge payers. That seems to me to strike the right balance, and I hope will go towards meeting the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter.
I turn now to the core of the noble Lord's amendment. As he said, recently the National Council for Voluntary Organisations sent out a paper which centred mainly on charity shops. I gather it argued that if they do not receive full rate relief they could face large rate increases resulting from the revaluation in 1990. It is true that some charity shops will face significant rate increases if they do not obtain the full discretionary rate relief. I sympathise with any charity shop in that position, but I do not think that the way to deal with it would be to raise the percentage of mandatory relief. My reason for saying that is that the Government are fully aware of the concerns of charities and businesses, not only in respect of the current annual rates assessment but of the effects of the revaluation. That is why we have proposed improvements to the present system and, I hope with the Committee's agreement, will strengthen those improvements later today.
As the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, is aware, charity shops, which at the moment do not receive the full 50 per cent. discretionary relief, are entirely at the whim of the local authority when facing the next year's rate increase. I know that charities, along with other businesses, are delighted that in future their rate increases will be an amount equal to the retail prices index or even less. At last, there will be no more substantial increases at short notice, which have plagued our system. On revaluation we will be introducing for the first time transitional provisions to phase in the increases, if and when they occur. Furthermore, I would draw the Committee's attention to Amendment No. 117E which is in my name and which will be discussed with Amendment No. 105. That extends the transitional provision to include the next revaluation. I look to the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, and to my noble friend Lady Faithfull for support for the Government on that proposal.
I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ryder of Warsaw, that even if we were not to proceed with the Bill, a revaluation of business rates—that means charity rates—would inevitably happen. The cost then to the charities would be considerably more than under the proposals contained in the Bill.
Perhaps I may sum up. There is no new system. What there is is extra relief to businesses and charities, not only in the transition but in the amount of rate increase that they might have to face in the future. Those are the additional safeguards that the Government propose. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, will not argue against them.
The effects of the revaluation will be to reduce rates in the North and Midlands by some £700 million. I am sure that the noble Baroness has shops in the North and Midlands which will be longing for the revaluation so as to receive some of that benefit, and which will be saddened if we did not proceed with the revaluation and the assistance we give in it.
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Lastly, I can assure the Committee that we shall be asking local authorities to look on a more comprehensive and a less piecemeal basis at the use of their discretionary 50 per cent. so that in some areas the noble Baroness's shops receive 100 per cent. relief and in others they do not receive any of the 50 per cent. relief. We have thought about charities. We have given the matter a great deal of thought. I believe that we have gone a long way towards enhancing the present system which is the one we replicate in the Bill.
Lord Sandford: Has not my noble friend just explained that, by leaving the discretion with the local authorities, he and the Treasury are prepared to contemplate that the cost of the relief might rise from £80 million to the full amount of £130 million? I should have thought that that objection does not carry much weight. In dealing with non-domestic rates, are we not now dealing with rates which will be collected locally and then re-distributed on a national formula? Does it not follow from that that any discretion that local authorities exercise is almost entirely watered down and diluted so that it has practically no local effect at all? Would it not therefore be better to take this opportunity to give all charities the same full relief as is enjoyed by the Churches? Where would be the harm in doing that?
Lord Renton: Before my noble friend answers that question perhaps I may just add that it is quite clear from what he said that when the Bill comes into operation, the treatment of charities by local authorities, will be an improvement on the present system. However, we shall still be left with the disparity of treatment in different parts of the country by different local authorities from which charities suffer now. I give the example of MENCAP with which I have been associated for many years. We have premises in various parts of England and Wales. Those premises have to be budgeted for centrally as well as accounted for locally. A difficulty which we have always had is that we just do not know, from year to year, how our charitable premises in different parts of the country will be treated by different local authorities. As my noble friend has pointed out, the Government have been very generous; but I should have thought that in order to get the full treatment which noble Lords have argued charities should receive, and in order to get a more consistent system, the Government might have gone a stage further and said that the relief which they intend should still be discretionary shall be mandatory, like the other relief which they mentioned.
Lord Sandford: Perhaps I may intervene again. I should have thought that the right thing at this stage is for my noble friend on the Front Bench to look at the arguments which have been put and see whether there would not be a great advantage. We are now moving to a much simpler system, and it could be made even simpler still if we used this opportunity to give not only the Churches but all the charities the full rating relief, not just 80 per cent but the whole amount. This is something to which we could come back at the next stage, after my noble friend has thought about it.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: We reached Part III of the Bill (which deals with non-domestic rating) well after midnight on Tuesday night, or in other words in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Then was not the appropriate time for us to open a general debate about the merits or de-merits of centralised business rating. I do not think that the Committee wish me to make a Second Reading speech on this matter, particularly since it was referred to at some length on Second Reading. In summary, I think the position that we take about non-business, centralised non-domestic rating is that the very fact that it takes away another quarter of local government spending from the decision-making powers of local authorities, and local authorities are now left in control of only a quarter of their expenditure, must be a bad thing. It must be a centralising tendency which we can only deplore.
When we come to the practical impact of it, I must say frankly that most of the speculation which has taken place about the impact on particular areas of particular types of business on non-domestic rating is pure fantasy. The existence of a unified business rate, a national business tax, will in itself—to take the regional example first—have a very severely damaging effect on areas which are at present lowly rated; in other words, rural areas, small towns, the North of England, Scotland and so on. But the Government argue that that will be more than offset by the revaluation which will put up the rateable values in the South, in London and the South-East of England. That is pure speculation. In general terms, it may be true; but nobody knows what the net effect will be on any particular type of property, any region, town or city in this country. Therefore when we talk about the effects of a unified business rate, we are talking almost entirely in the dark.
That applies with much greater force to the Government's justifications of their position than it does to the calculations made by the noble Baroness, Lady Ryder, who may well be wrong in detail, although I am sure that the thrust of her argument is sound when she talks about the effect on the Sue Ryder shops.
We now come to the specific issue of charitable relief. In general, I think that we on these Benches wish, if it is possible, to see a continuing degree of discretion on the part of local authorities. In that context, I thought that the Minister slipped below his normal standard of debate when he accused us of supporting the public schools. He knows perfectly well that for several years many of us have opposed charitable relief for what he calls the "public schools"—what I call "fee paying schools for the wealthy". We shall certainly not withhold our support for the real charities just because, by a quirk of legislation of long standing, public schools have achieved charitable status which they ought not to have. Thus I pay very little attention and very little respect to that argument.
In the amendments which the Minister has put clown for discussion in the next group, he has certainly given effect to the undertakings given by his honourable friend in another place on 21st April. So much so that he read out, virtually word for word, the statement of his honourable friend, at cols. 1030 and
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1031 of Hansard. I give credit to him and the Government for the Government having been as good as their word.
I have one remaining concern about this: that in order to achieve the result that the authority should be allowed to offset half the cost, it is proposed to offset their payments into the national non-domestic rate pool. I do not think it is good enough for that to be done by the regulation under Schedule 8. I think that the Government ought to do more than say that it ought to be done by regulation. There is no reason why this should not be introduced as an amendment to the Bill. I hope that the Government will look again at that aspect of the matter.
In general, I think that the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, and supported by other noble Lords from the Cross-Benches has been a very valuable opportunity to debate the whole question of charities. The noble Earl would do well to listen to the advice given to him by his noble friends Lord Sandford and Lord Renton. Despite the Government's intention to continue the existing system, there are quite serious anomalies which remain and which deserve further attention. I hope that the noble Earl will be able to go further in that respect than he has done so far.
Lord Ross of Newport: I shall speak very briefly because I intend to speak in rather greater detail on the next amendments. I think that the document which I received at lunch-time from the NCVO, which gives on its back pages some of the figures which they fear they will face from the increase in rates which will descend upon them, is fully justified. I hope to show this when I speak the next time, if I am called in the next debate.
The amendment is right to go for the full 80 per cent. I concede that the Minister has made a concession when he says that 50 per cent. will remain and that the local authority will be reimbursed for a further 25 per cent. However there is the final 25 per cent. I am not sure whether all Members of the Committee or even the Minister or the Secretary of State fully appreciate what has been going on in our high streets, and not just in our high streets but in secondary shop positions throughout the country, in the South of England, the West of England and the Midlands. I cannot speak for the North. People have been paying huge sums for premiums just to get leases. These are not multiples but quite small shop owners who want to get away from the rat race. They sell a property for a lot of money and buy up small businesses, stores and the rest of it.
I am wondering what will happen when the lists are finally published because there has been a huge increase over the past 18 months. It may well be that the valuation officers have been basing their returns on figures given to them which were supplied six or nine months ago and which are now totally out of date. I can certainly give examples in my part of the country where they are out of date already. I think that those lists will have to be amended right up to the date when this provision comes into force. If valuation officers do assess on current rentals, even an 80 per cent. relief is going to mean a sizeable

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increase in payments from charities. I am quite sure that I shall be proved correct on that point.
I also wish to make the point about water rates. We are now experiencing in a trial area the metering system. That is already showing double charges. The Minister will agree that there is no compensation for that. So charities are facing increases in that area too. Privatisation will mean that they will not come off that system at the moment. I honestly think that charities have a real case, and I hope very much that that case will be pressed.
4.30 p.m.
Baroness Blatch: I rise to support the concessions made by the Government, but I want in particular to refer to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey. I think that there have been some crocodile tears shed this afternoon as regards concern for small businesses. The noble Lord will know that his colleagues in council chambers up and down the land have said that rates are not an issue for business and commerce, that they are a small percentage of turnover—
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: If the noble Baroness will forgive me, I should like to remind her that we are debating charities rather than small businesses.
Baroness Blatch: I am referring to the precise comments that were made by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, when he commented on a centrally collected uniform business rate. I simply want to say that I have long argued that the health and wealth of business and commerce to the country as a whole is too important to be left to the vagaries of local government, and it seems to me that where there have been rate increases in the London area of up to 60 per cent. and in my own county of one-third, that that cannot continue either for charities or for local businesses and our shops in the high street. To refer specifically to the concessions that are now being suggested for charities, I think we have the best compromise of the uniform business rate being a national concern, but giving local authorities the particular discretion to know the local charities in their areas and to suggest rebates right up to 100 per cent. I support that process.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: When the Minister replies will he please clarify this point? As I have listened to the debate, it seems to me that some Members of the Committee are implying that local authorities will no longer have the discretion to waive the rates for charities. At least that was the way that I interpreted the comments of my noble friend Lady Blatch just now. But perhaps I misunderstood, and that is why I ask for clarification.
There is no doubt that if local authorities have the right to waive the rates for charities, areas such as Westminster, which at present collects £460 million in business rates, will get back from the Government something like £17 million in business rates. There will be no incentive whatsoever to encourage any business to continue and we in Westminster shall be delighted to be able to relieve charities because it will not be costing us a penny. That will be the first time
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that we have not had to be provident and careful and to really think about every penny and where charity really first began—in relation to our ratepayers. Now that policy will not help our community charge payers one bit. It will not help them for us to be thinking of anything else, and we may see quite remarkable differences coming about because of this provision.
Baroness Faithfull: I should like to take up a point made by my noble friend Lord Renton. I am sure that local authorities will certainly support charity shops if they serve the people of the area in which that shop is located. But there are many charities, for instance Oxfam, that do not directly help people of a particular area, but help people in an overall global area. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Ryder of Warsaw, has shops in places where she does not have a home, but that nevertheless those shops do support homes in other areas. I fear that local authorities will help those charities that are helping their own ratepayers, but that they will find it a little difficult to help those charities which are global. Therefore, I take up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Renton, and support it.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: I have listened very carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, said. I have not had the privilege of seeing the NCVO brief or its figures, but I see the point of it very much because it is an area in which I myself am involved north of the Border. Recollecting as I do the process within a local authority of going through applications for 50 per cent. discretionary relief to be given by the local authority on top of 50 per cent. mandatory relief, such as we have at the moment, I realise that charities do vary enormously. The staff on local authorities find this as regards the applications that come before them from charities. Some really do not merit 80 per cent. relief because they have ways of raising funds for themselves within the organisation. They do not necessarily have ways of making a profit, but they can raise funds which partly meet the rates that they have to pay.
I think it is satisfactory to continue with the system of the mandatory 50 per cent. and the local authority deciding on the other 50 per cent. My noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes said that a local authority would happily sit there granting rate relief because it would not suffer from it. My understanding of what my noble friend on the Front Bench said was that 25 per cent. of the amount that had to be met through the local authority's decision would be met by the community charge payer. Therefore I do not think that my noble friend Lady Gardner is quite correct.
The decision taken by the local authority as regards relief will be a very responsible decision. That is important. If it were not for that aspect of the decision I would not be inclined to agree to it because I think that the decision would not be correctly made by the local authority.
It sounds to me as if the Government are getting as near as they can, within the new arrangements, to carrying on the existing system. Because this matter has cropped up and been dealt with only within the past few weeks, I think I am right in saying that it

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does not appear in the Scottish Bill at all. I should like my noble friend the Minister to tell us whether it is intended that a similar arrangement to that which Parliament decides will be carried into Scotland. It may be that he cannot find that out, but it would be very comforting for those of us who live north of the Border to know about that.
I did not fully grasp what my noble friend Lord Renton was proposing, but it sounded as if he was putting his finger on something which could be a refinement of the existing system but might well be looked at by the Government in relation to the smaller organisations. However, on the whole, I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, that from the point of view of the way in which a local authority has to take its discretionary decisions, it should have the ability to go from 50 per cent. rates to nil—that is what it can do at the moment. To say that local authorities can go from 80 per cent. to nil is not enough because many organisations which are registered as charities do not merit an 80 per cent. rate rebate.
Lord Renton: I should like quickly to help my noble friend Lady Carnegy of Lour. I was merely suggesting that the relief given by local authorities to charities should be mandatory instead of being discretionary.
The Earl of Caithness: We have had a useful addition to our discussion. It appears that my noble friends Lord Renton and Lord Sandford do not like the existing system and would like it to be changed. That is interesting and obviously something that I should like to look at and read about in detail. I found some points a little hard to follow as regards what my noble friend Lord Renton was saying. But when I read the Official Report I shall of course be able to take note of what he says.
What is interesting is how the debate has continued on the question of whether there should be discretion. The noble Lord, Lord Hayter, does not want local authorities to have discretion, but the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, who has also put his name to the amendment, does want local authorities to have discretion. Similarly, my noble friend Lord Renton does not want discretion, but my noble friend Lady Carnegy of Lour does want discretion. So the argument is an interesting one and I should like to look at those points again.
As regards the rates revaluations, I have not seen the report of the NCVO. It arrived in the office only yesterday and it is something that I should like to look at. However, perhaps I may suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Ross of Newport, that he should have a word with the noble Baroness, Lady Seear. At an earlier stage she said, "Don't worry about the revaluation; if the rates go up, the rate poundage goes down". I contradicted her at the time. However, I believe that there is a slight discrepancy on that Bench as usual.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The noble Baroness will speak for herself. However, if the rate poundage is set nationally, as it is for the business rate, then that
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is untrue. What the noble Baroness said previously about rate poundage going up when rates go down is correct for domestic rates. In other words, the noble Lord is wrong twice.
The Earl of Caithness: If I am wrong twice, perhaps I am right! Perhaps I may say to my noble friend Lady Carnegy that the provision will of course apply to Scotland. I believe that it will be beneficial for all of us to look at what has been said in the Official Report. There have been new arguments and much debate.
I should have mentioned earlier to the noble Baroness, Lady Ryder of Warsaw, that we do not know what the effect of the revaluation will be. Some figures have been bandied about. The work is being undertaken at the moment. We shall take as representative a sample as possible out of that work, analyse it and publish the results, we hope in the autumn. Until that groundwork is done, the figures mentioned are fairly hypothetical and they need to be firmed up. I am sure that some of the worst fears of businesses and charities will not be realised. However, I cannot say anything for certain at this stage and the matter must be looked at in detail. The rate poundage is an important factor to be taken into account. Perhaps we should all read the Official Report and look at the matter again.
Baroness Seear: Perhaps I may say to the noble Lord, before he says too much about disagreements on these Benches—I find them hard to identify—that he should take note of the number of occasions during recent weeks when very distinguished members of his party, including eight Secretaries of State, put down amendments criticising the Government's proposed legislation.
The Earl of Caithness: We are a broad church and welcome healthy debate.
Lord Hayter: I am sure that the Minister speaks wisely when he suggests that we should digest what has been said. We should all look carefully at the Official Report. In those circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
4.45 p.m.
Lord Moran Lord Moran moved Amendment No. 104:
Page 23, line 37, at end insert (" or where on the day concerned the hereditament is occupied for the purposes of a club, society or other organisation not established or conducted for profit and is wholly or mainly used for purposes of recreation")
The noble Lord said: In speaking to Amendment No. 104 I should like to speak also to my Amendment No. 106 and to No. 108 standing in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Mason of Barnsley. To explain in a nutshell what I am seeking to do, I can do no better than to quote the resolution passed by the National Anglers' Council, which represents some 3½ million anglers in this country, at their annual general meeting on 21st May. It reads:
"To call on Her Majesty's Government in reforming the rating system by the Local Government Finance Bill to include in the Bill—

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(1) a means of directing to the bodies having the statutory duty to maintain, improve and develop fisheries (and in future the National Rivers Authority), the rates levied on fisheries and fishing rights;

(2) the retention of the power of rating authorities to reduce or remit the payment of rates by reacreational clubs, societies and other organisations not established or conducted for profit, presently in the General Rate Act, 1967, s, 40;

(3) the introduction of mandatory 50% reduction of rates payable by such clubs, societies and organisations".

The objectives of the resolution are supported by the Country Landowners' Association. I acknowledge the help of its chief legal adviser in drafting the amendments more efficiently than I could have hoped to do. They are also supported by the Salmon and Trout Association and by the British Field Sports Society.
Perhaps I may deal first with the question of recreational clubs, including angling clubs, covered by Amendments Nos. 104 and 106. At present, under Section 40(5)(c) of the General Rate Act 1967, local authorities have discretion to reduce or remit rates to angling or other sporting organisations, provided that they are not established or conducted for profit. That discretion is quite widely used and is valuable to many of those clubs. I do not have to tell Members of the Committee how important such clubs often are in enabling those without substantial means to fish and take part in other sports. But at the moment that discretion is not written into the Bill. It was, I think, being left to regulations to be made after the Bill becomes law. Such regulations might or might not be made and in any case could not be amended by the House.
In my view, it would be better to retain the present discretionary reliefs for recreational clubs in the Bill. That is what my Amendment No. 106 seeks to do. It may be that this is now taken care of by the amendments which the Government have tabled. I have only recently seen those amendments and I confess that I have some difficulty in following the wording. However, if they achieve the retention of discretionary rating for such clubs, I welcome them.
However, one defect in the present arrangements is that rate relief for these recreational clubs operates capriciously. Some local authorities remit rates for them entirely; some give partial relief; some give no relief at all. The object of my Amendment No. 104 is to reduce this element of caprice by giving a mandatory 50 per cent. relief to all eligible clubs, so that they would get at least that reduction and under my Amendment No. 106 possible further relief at the discretion of local authorities. This would be a great help to these clubs, and I hope that the Government will be prepared to amend the Bill on these lines.
I now turn to Amendment No. 108, which deals with the destination of fishery rates. I must first declare an interest as part owner of a short stretch on the upper Wye on which we pay rates on the right bank to the Brecknock District Council and on the left bank to the Radnor District Council, and a small fishery contribution to the Welsh Water Authority. At present rates are payable to local authorities on all fisheries in England and Wales which are severed from the occupation of the land. In addition, some fisheries, for what I believe are historic reasons, pay
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a fishery contribution to a water authority. In Wales that applies to the Rivers Usk, Wye, Teifi and Towy. Those fisheries are double rated. However, no one has made a fuss as the fishery contribution is at present very small, though it could always be increased.
More generally, under Section 28(3) of the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Act 1975 the Minister of Agriculture or the Welsh Secretary can make an order for the levying of a fishery contribution. In practice, such orders have not been made, perhaps because of the reasonable objections of principle to double rating. An application for such an order was made by the Welsh Water Authority, alone among water authorities. However, no order was forthcoming.
At Second Reading I pointed out that fishery rates are often substantial and, unlike domestic rates, no services are received for them. I said that we had a unique opportunity, which might never recur, for the Government were bringing in legislation abolishing most rates and establishing a National Rivers Authority. The noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal was good enough to say that my argument was interesting and would be considered by his right honourable friend.
Under the proposals for privatising the water industry, the NRA will have the statutory duty to maintain, improve and develop fisheries at present exercised by the water authorities, and the power to impose the 1975 Act levies. Anglers have long regarded it as thoroughly unsatisfactory that their rates go to local authorities who have no duties to or interest in fisheries. It would be far more sensible, and would I believe be welcomed by all anglers in England and Wales, if fishery rates now payable to local authorities were to be replaced by an equivalent contribution to the NRA. That would be beneficial and logical. It would give the NRA an increased income, thus reducing by the amount of those rates the need for Exchequer grant to the NRA and the burden on the taxpayer.
In Wales, for example, at present about £1½ million is spent by the Welsh Water Authority on fisheries, £½ million of which comes from licence fees. If a contribution in place of rates could be added it would probably provide them with another £300,000 to £500,000. The Wye itself produces something like £112,000 in rates. That would mean that in Wales the NRA would be two-thirds self-sufficient.
Riparian owners who now pay rates would pay no less but they would see their money spent on maintaining and improving the fisheries. I am sure that the vast majority would like to contribute in that way to the care of the rivers they fish. Through the advisory committees they would have more say in how the money should be spent and they would be encouraged to co-operate more effectively with the NRA in its important work.
I believe that all that would be achieved very simply by Amendment No. 108 standing in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Mason. It would remove the possibility of double rating and encourage the levying of a contribution in place of fishery rates to help fund the fishery services of the NRA. I beg to move.
Lord Mason of Barnsley: I rise to speak specifically to Amendment No. 108 concerning fishery rights and to support Amendments Nos. 104 and 106 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moran. I believe that the amendment could work in practice, although I guess that the Minister may regard it as exploratory.
It is anomalous that there can be double rating of fisheries; namely, local authority rating and a levy imposed by the water authorities under the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Act 1975. In fact levies are not made under the 1975 Act because of the double-rating objections, leaving the odd and indeed farcical position that all rates on fisheries go to local authorities which have no duties towards fisheries. That has always been wrong and most local authorities do not pay any respect to fisheries in return for the rates. Some do, and quite honourably, but they are in a minority.
Therefore, the amendment's first aim is to iron out the anomaly of possible double-rating. Its second aim is to remove rating by local authorities. They are obviously not the bodies which should deal with the maintenance, improvement and development of fisheries in their areas. The amendment would also pave the way for all rates or levies under the 1975 Act to be paid to the projected National Rivers Authority under the proposed privatisation of water resources.
The national angling bodies—the National Anglers Council, the Salmon and Trout Association, the Anglers Co-operative Association and the Country Landowners' Association—have urged that fishery rates should be payable to the NRA when it is formed and not to local authorities.
There is concern that the NRA may well have insufficient Exchequer finances to fund its services and that the fisheries and rivers will suffer. Obviously if there were to be a switch of rates to the NRA it would be logical and beneficial to the fisheries and to fishing, the sport and the environment.
So, in brief, the effect of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Moran, would be to remove the possibility of double-rating of fisheries and so help or encourage the levying of fishery rates to help fund the fishery services of the NRA. It would exempt fisheries or fishing rights from rating under the Bill if and when a contribution is levied on them under the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Act 1975.
The noble Lord, Lord Moran, has already mentioned the annual general meeting of the National Anglers Council. It represents 3 million anglers, and has placed on record that that is its desire.
The present duty of water authorities is to maintain, improve and develop the fisheries in their areas. They are supposed to establish and consult fishery advisory committees in their respective areas. Their fishery function is paid for by the income from fishing licences, rod licences and net licences. The shortfall is made up from the environmental services charge which is recovered from ratepayers by the water rate. I have already mentioned that Her Majesty's Government may prefer the NRA to have a new form of income; namely, the fishery contribution under the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Act 1975 and be less dependent upon the
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Treasury. I also suggest a change which may now be seriously considered especially to assist the finances of the projected NRA—that is, a national rod licence.
The Salmon and Trout Association Sub-Committee on Still Waters—of which I am a member—researched this matter. I must say as a still-water trout fly fisherman who travels all over the country I am aware of most of the problems. I believe that this is the appropriate time to plant the seed in the minds of those preparing the Bill for water privatisation and the setting up of the NRA. The Department of the Environment will be involved and that is why I have raised the point today.
The present system of rod licensing in England and Wales is chaotic. It causes great annoyance to anglers, and to one who fishes in many areas of the country it is ridiculously expensive. Each water authority has its own licensing and prices. There are 10 water authorities and they are all different. There are far too many different classes of licence—adult, junior, pensioner's, disabled, one-day, one-week, two-week tickets, and season licences—each of which varies from one to another of the 10 water authorities.
I often buy trout licences from the Yorkshire Water Authority, the Severn and Trent Water Authority, the Thames and Southern Water Authorities and even in Cumbria. The licences cost between £5 and £7 each permitting me to fish. My annual licence therefore for those five areas would be almost £30, and it would be much more if I go to any of the other water authorities. In addition, my licence for salmon and trout in Northumbria alone costs me £41·25.
When I travel to different still waters and reservoirs to fish—and I may have travelled many miles to do so—if no licence is immediately available at the bailiff's lodge I am tempted to fish without a licence. It is obvious that hundreds do so in a season, resulting in huge losses to the water authorities. A working party of the Salmon and Trout Association, at the request of the Water Authorities Association, undertook a survey of 1,500 anglers in eight water authority areas. The results revealed that there was a considerable amount of licence dodging, mainly due to the complexities of the rod licensing system. The survey indicated that 974 fishermen should have bought 2,140 licences to fish outside their areas. They actually bought 1,297 licences. There were more than 700 people fishing without a licence and about £2,500 was lost. I must also stress that many are not dodging paying. The problem often is that licences are not readily available. A national rod licence is necessary to eliminate such fishing without a regional licence and to produce a saving of thousands of pounds in licence fees.
The water authorities have often turned down such a scheme as impractical but the establishment of a National Rivers Authority creates the perfect opportunity to introduce a national rod licence. The Post Office would be an ideal means of issuing licences—and I guess it would be agreeable to doing so—which could also be checked nationally year by year. The introduction of a well-designed plastic card licence would assist control.

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Such a scheme could provide additional financing for the National River Authority's fisheries management. It would be in the interests of fishery managers, of owners and lessees to ensure that the fishing public paid their share through the purchase of a national rod licence. At the moment fisheries and fishermen have good cause for concern as to what percentage of licence revenue actually goes to the maintenance, improvement and development of fisheries. If the entire income from a national rod licence were to go to the NRA there would be some guarantee of the right and appropriate use of the licence money so generated. A national licence is obviously required. It would be a great step forward and I recommend the idea to the Minister and to the Committee. In doing so I give my total support to Amendment No. 108.
5 p.m.
The Earl of Radnor: Perhaps I may intervene, declaring my interest as a fish farmer, to support the broad principles of the amendment. Perhaps I should also issue a word or two of warning about the idea so eloquently put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Mason, of uniformity throughout the country.
Perhaps I may first deal with rod licences. Uniformity is a nice idea, with everybody paying the same for their fishing; but the fishing itself is not uniform. Therefore, I am not sure that that hat fits quite so nicely as the noble Lord would like to think.
The other point is that it seems eminently reasonable that money from fishermen should go to the sport of fishing. The obvious vehicle that presents itself for this will be the National Rivers Authority. I wanted to take the opportunity to voice a small fear here on the part of fish-farm owners, who of course ply a trade which often provides fish to stock rivers and lakes, and indeed many artificial and natural areas of water. I sense from conversations all round the place that the National Rivers Authority, when it arrives, will be keen to enter this commercial field. I am not sure whether it is right that they should enter that commercial field, held up by large funds from fishermen, to the detriment of those doing it already in competition with each other. I agree with the broad principle of the amendment.
Lord Kimball: Before my noble friend replies may I ask him whether, in his reply, he would look particularly at the point on Scottish fisheries which is covered by Schedule 15 to the Bill, and to which there is an amendment down, 194ZA. It is only a probing amendment. Exactly the same arguments apply north of the Border as south of the Border where a fishery board north of the Border is making an assessment under the Section 15(2) of the 1986 Act. I should be grateful if my noble friend, in his reply, could give some indication of whether or not the district fishery boards in Scotland, where they levy a rate, will be able to retain that rate for the benefit of the fisheries they look after.
Lord Gibson-Watt: Before my noble friend replies, may I support this amendment. I shall not repeat the arguments put so well by the noble Lord, Lord Moran, whose knowledge of this subject is immense.
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I would only add that there has been a deterioration in our fisheries in many rivers. I do not put this down entirely to the responsibility of the water authorities. I think in many cases they have been short of funds to deal with the fishery aspect. However, I believe that we ought to be aware of the contribution that fisheries can and do make to the tourist industry of this country. It is often overlooked. Without further ado, I support both the amendments to which the noble Lord, Lord Moran, has spoken.
Lord Gisborough: I should like to support the amendment. I should particularly like to support the words of the noble Lord, Lord Mason, about the national rod licence. For people to pay for two licences to fish on two rivers not very far apart is absurd.
The Earl of Caithness: May I remind the Committee that the main purpose of the Government's amendments, to which I spoke on the last amendment, is to preserve the existing rules which empower local authorities to increase the rate relief for charities from 50 per cent. to 100 per cent., and to give up to 100 per cent. relief to other non-profit-making bodies, including sports clubs.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I wonder whether we could be clear as to what amendments we are talking to? The noble Lord, Lord Moran, in moving Amendment No. 104, said that he was speaking to Amendments Nos. 106 and 108. He did not indicate that he was speaking to any other amendment. Since Amendment No. 103 had been taken separately, it would be as well if these three, which are not like any of the others, could be disposed of before going on to the Government's amendments.
The Earl of Caithness: They cannot be, for the simple reason that I spoke to the government amendments on the last amendment. I did not move them because one cannot move them, but there is nothing to stop anybody talking to amendments subsequent to the one being discussed. Indeed, I had to do that in order to set the picture for the Committee.
It is the new clause brought in by Amendment No. 107ZC, which I hope to move shortly, that does precisely what I have just said, with the supplementary provisions in Amendment No. 107ZD. I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, that of course these are very relevant to the arguments in Lord Moran's amendment.
I should also like to mention briefly the other government amendments to which we shall be coming and which are also connected with this. Amendment No. 123ZC is an important technical provision which clarifies that charity shops are to be treated as occupied for the purpose of a charity and can therefore benefit from rate relief, and Amendment No. 123CA is a further technical amendment. Amendment No. 123E clarifies the point that to be a charity for rate relief purposes a body does not have to be a registered charity provided that its objects are exclusively charitable.

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Turning to Amendments No. 104 and 106 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moran, who has spoken to them primarily in relation to fishing clubs, I should point out that if implemented these amendments would apply to all sporting clubs. That is precisely the point that ties up with the government amendments to which I have just referred. The first of these amendments would extend to 50 per cent. mandatory relief for charities to sports clubs. The second more briefly, and without the supporting detail, would do very much the same as the government amendments; that is, to allow local authorities to give discretionary relief.
First, I see no reason why sports and recreational clubs should receive more favoured treatment than the other cultural or other worthy bodies which qualify only for discretionary relief, though I am aware that not all sports clubs see it in this way. The reason we think that local discretion and not mandatory provision is the right course for non-profit-making bodies in general is that this allows the authority to tailor the level of relief to the benefits that the local community derives from the facilities. It recognises that not all non-profit-making bodies are equally deserving of relief, and that the best people to make local decisions on particular cases are local authorities.
In the case of sports and physical recreation clubs in particular, I appreciate the tremendous contribution that the majority of these organisations provide towards the health and well-being of the local community. I am particularly aware of the value put on the facilities provided by these clubs by young people who wish to further develop and practise their sporting skills beyond the level provided in schools. There are, however, a number of such clubs where sport takes second place to drinking and other social activities, and other clubs which are socially exclusive and which local people may be unable to afford to join. There is no reason at all why ratepayers or community charge payers should subsidise such clubs. We therefore think it is right to allow authorities to go on making a case-by-case judgment of the benefits conferred on their area.
I have no indication that local authorities in general are failing to discharge their duties properly in the exercise of that discretion. It is inevitable that some bodies will be disappointed in the level of relief granted. That does not necessarily mean that authorities have failed to give proper regard to their application. Many authorities do in practice make extensive use of the existing powers. I believe that local authorities should continue to be allowed to develop their own policies and make decisions in the light of local circumstances.
What I can say is that we propose to take steps to remind authorities of their powers and to exhort them to make the most constructive use of them. We intend that there should be guidance issued centrally to which non-profit-making bodies can point if particular local authorities adopt unduly restrictive policies.
The noble Lord, Lord Moran, in Amendment No. 108, also raised the matter of rates paid on fisheries and fishing rights. He has argued that anglers receive
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little or no benefit from the services provided by local authorities and that the rate income from fisheries and fishing rights should be diverted to water authorities or, in the future, the proposed National Rivers Authority, to fund the maintenance and improvement of fisheries.
Rates are not a direct payment for services. They are a tax on the beneficial occupation of property used to fund a wide range of local services. I appreciate that, in the case of fishing, it is an incorporeal right rather than the occupation of a physical asset which is taxed; but, as with all taxes, not everyone benefits from all the services they help to fund all the time. However, I am aware of a very strong body of opinion in favour of transferring the rate income from fishing rights to a body that is more directly concerned with fishery activities. I have to say that I have some sympathy with that point of view.
The noble Lord's amendment has much to commend it in that it does not seek to exempt fishing rights across the board but only if a payment is to be made to a water authority under the powers in the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Act 1975. Those powers have been used only to a very limited extent. Part of the reason is that it would in effect impose double taxation on anglers. The problem would be overcome if exemption from local authority rates were given in exhange for a contribution to the water authority or in future the National Rivers authority. I therefore accept in principle the substance of Amendment No. 108. However, I should like to consider further the detailed drafting with a view to bringing forward at Report stage an amendment which has a similar effect.
I should like to say now to my noble friend Lord Kimball, who has tabled Amendment No. 194ZA, which has a similar effect in Scotland, that the Government also accept the principles of his amendment.
The noble Lord, Lord Mason of Barnsley, raised the issue of a national rod licence. I was interested in what he said but, as he knows, the responsibility for rod licences will ultimately be transferred to the National Rivers Authority. I have no doubt that that body will wish to consider the matter in due course and that the noble Lord will soon be raising the matter with that authority when it takes over its responsibilities.
I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Moran, will now agree with our view that his Amendment No. 104 would go too far and that his Amendment No. 106 is dealt with by the Government's amendments—which I intend to move—and accept that we have promised to consider Amendment No. 108. On that basis, I hope that he will agree to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Moran: I should like first to say that I am very grateful to all Members of the Committee who have supported my amendments. I am very much encouraged by the reply which the Minister gave on Amendment No. 108. All anglers in England and Wales will be delighted to know that the Government accept the substance of our proposals. Of course the Government know better than I what the precise wording should be but I think that it will be very good

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news for all anglers that the Government will consider seriously diverting fishery rates to those who have the responsibility for looking after the rivers and the fisheries.
On the question of clubs, I am very glad to learn that the Government's amendment, as I understand it, preserves the discretion in the present legislation. As for the mandatory relief that I was proposing by Amendment No. 104, I am disappointed to learn that the Government are not prepared to accept that suggestion. I hold no brief for unsatisfactory clubs, such as the drinking clubs and so on that the Minister has mentioned, but I believe that there is a wide difference up and down the country between different local authorities, some of which support fishing and other recreational clubs and are anxious to help them while others are much less keen to do so. I am pleased that the Government propose to remind local authorities of their responsibilities but I hope that in the future, if things do not work out well, they will not exclude the possibility of making some change on the lines that I have suggested. Having said that, I am grateful for the Minister's remarks and I shall withdraw the three amendments, Amendments Nos. 104, 106 and 108. I beg leave to withdraw Amendment No. 104.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
5.15 p.m.
Lord Graham of Edmonton Lord Graham of Edmonton moved Amendment No. 105:
Page 23, line 37, at end insert—
("(6A) (a) Where paragraph (b) below applies the chargeable amount for a chargeable day as calculated in accordance with section 39(2), (3) and (4) shall be reduced by an amount of up to 100% of the sum due on a basis to be determined by regulations made by the Secretary of State.
(b) This paragraph applies where a hereditament is occupied by a ratepayer wholly or mainly for small business.
(c) "Small business" is to be defined in Regulations and in defining the term regard shall be had to—

(i) whether or not the business is in the forming a plc;

(ii) the taxable profit of a business;

(iii) the business's asset base; and

(iv) the number of employees of the business.").

The noble Lord said: I am moving this amendment, which has been tabled in the name of my noble friend Lord McIntosh of Haringey. The Committee will appreciate that once again we seek to pursue what these Benches consider to be inequity and injustice in the Bill and in the manner in which this section bears unduly heavily upon the business community.
I see the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, in her place, as she normally is. A few moments ago she reminded the Committee of the injustice of certain increases in rate levels imposed by some authorities in recent times. I shall shortly indicate to her what the National Chamber of Trade has forecast will be the increase in rates to be borne by both small and large local businesses as a result of this provision in the Bill. This amendment seeks to test and probe. It appeals to the Government to take note not of what they say they intend to do but of what the business community has told us this measure will do to business. The
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Minister is on record in the Financial Times of 3rd June as saying:
"I have lots of sympathy with small businesses but this time they are asking for too much".
The extract continues:
"However, he stressed that their worst fears of rate increases would not be realised".
The Minister must know more about this matter than does the newspaper even though he is not prepared to say very much more than that until the autumn in respect of certain easements and major impacts of the unified business rate on the businesses that have been in touch with us.
We hope by this amendment to enable the Minister to reduce the charge under Section 39—that is the liability—by up to 100 per cent. That is a global figure and we do not remotely think that it should be that percentage. However that figure is offered in order to avoid getting caught by stating a more precise figure. We urge the Minister to take account of the catastrophic situation that will face many businesses. It is hard to believe that the impact of the Bill will be seen by small and large businesses as anything other than catastrophic. Briefs have been sent to me by many of the large organisations which are household names in this and other countries. They all confirm that the Government's present intentions are unfair and unjust. Among the large bodies which have drawn their problems to our attention are: the Association of British Chambers of Commerce, the Association of Independent Businesses, the Confederation of British Industry, the Forum of Private Business, the National Chamber of Trade, the National Federation of Self-Employed and Small Businesses, the Union of Independent Companies and the Retail Consortium.
We recognise that the difficulties are compounded by the long delay in revaluation, which will certainly make a very large impact upon businesses, and perhaps the Minister intends to make a political point when offering reasons for it.
I simply want to remind the Minister of the effects of revaluation in sector terms. In 1985 the effect of the revaluation in Scotland was that the rates to be paid by the retail sector went up by 2·5 times, the service sector by 2·2 times and the manufacturing sector by 1·5 times. One might say, "So what?" but the Minister knows, because he is in touch with these matters, about the impact of rate increases and local payments. As the Committee is well aware, there has been controversy over what they are supposed to pay for, but the fact is that the element of the business rate that will be borne by local businesses, small businesses as well as large ones, is of major and increasingly vital concern. Local rates—this is leaving aside wages—have a great impact on the amount of money that businesses have to find just to keep going.
I should like to quote some of the consequences that will arise throughout the country that have been drawn to my attention by the National Chamber of Trade. Even taking into account anything that the Minister might say by way of relief or limit on the impact to be borne, members of the National Chamber of Trade have said that the rate bill of 100

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of their members has been estimated in 1990 by comparison with 1988. In Bury St. Edmunds members of the National Chamber of Trade are faced with an increase of 240 per cent. That is in line with the estimate of two and a half times for the retail trade. In Colchester the figure is 240 per cent.; in Eastbourne, 145 per cent.; in Epsom, 386 per cent.; in Henley-on-Thames, 240 per cent.; and in Loughborough, 110 per cent. Members of the Committee who know their geography well will say that those are substantially in the southern part of the country. That is correct. My noble friend Lord Mason of Barnsley will be interested to know that members of the National Chamber of Trade in Barnsley have estimated that in 1990 by comparison with 1988 their rate bill will decrease by 18 per cent.; in Doncaster there will be a decrease of 30 per cent.; and in South Yorkshire of 31 per cent.
The Minister is entitled to tell us that we are in the game of losers and gainers. We have had arguments of that kind in respect of social changes in particular and other changes. Those who benefit will take their benefit and smile. The losers are expected to say, "Hard lines, we are among the losers and we have cheerfully to lose so that the gainers may have some equity". In this instance, however, we are speaking of catastrophes that can face not only individual businesses but the high streets of our towns and commerce in general. It is no good the Minister telling us that if the North benefits by the decreases, the South must have increases. Those who have far more experience of running a retail business than I have will know that situations can develop whereby the increase in rates will be so great that large businesses will decide to pull out of the high street. This will not be the result of a decision of a local council of any particular colour but because of the imposition of the NNDR.
I want the Minister to face up to the argument that whatever happens there will be no net cost upon the Treasury in regard to this aspect of the Bill. We say that it is not unreasonable in a revolution of this kind for there to be gainers—so be it. However, if there are losers, the cost of the loss should not be borne by those businesses that will have to face the cost of subsidising the gains of the gainers. This is not a political point; it is a point of equity. It is not even a vested interest point. If the Minister so wished, I could quote instances that have been given to us by respected organisations—not that in which I am mainly interested, the Co-operative Movement—that will be affected in general as well as by other organisations. These are small and large businesses in the North and the South, big household names that are pointing out the detrimental impact upon them of the business rate.
My name is associated with Amendment No. 117, which the Committee will consider later. I have no doubt that the noble Lord, Lord Ross of Newport, will speak to it and argue the case for the small businessman. In Amendment No. 105 we argue that it is the responsibility of the Minister to take on board the serious impact on the small business. The Minister in his speech last week, which I quoted, spoke of the small business. One needs to know his definition of "small business"—whether it is in terms
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of employees, turnover, profit or square footage. The business community wants to know.
The Minister must also recognise that business decisions by the business community are being held up because of the failure of the Minister's parliamentary colleague to do what he promised last December. It was said that a statement would be made "very soon" in regard to the increase on an annual basis, whether it be 15 per cent. or something less. The Minister has carefully not given the figure. The autumn is the magic period that has been quoted more than once as the time when the decision will be made. Meantime, however, both big and small businesses must live and make their decisions this year for next year and the year after that. It cannot wait until the autumn.
The Minister has a major responsibility, even if he is unable to accept the amendment. If he asks me to withdraw it, he should do so with the intention of coming forward later with some proposal after consultation with both big and small businesses to meet the pressing points that have been raised.
Lord Somers: I wholeheartedly support the amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, has given some convincing financial statistics.
I speak from personal experience. I live in a town where, because of the policy of the local government, small shops have been closing one by one. It is therefore very difficult to get anything that one wants or any kind of personal service. It must be remembered that large business may be a very good thing from its point of view—it is probably very profitable to itself and to its shareholders—but it is no use to the general public. As a rule, there is no personal service. The workers in such a business have no personal interest in their customers and no personal desire to ensure that their customers get what they want. They do not know their customers' requirements, and they do not care. This is becoming an urgent matter in some of the smaller towns. An amendment such as this is essential if we are to maintain the standards of what I may call day-to-day shopping.
5.30 p.m.
Lord Rippon of Hexham: I share to a considerable extent the concerns expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, in relation to this matter. I believe that the Government have been courageous, imaginative, and to a large extent have shown immense ingenuity in bringing forward the Bill. But as I said on Second Reading, I think there remains real anxiety about the way in which the proposals in the Bill will in effect turn non-domestic rates into a national tax with the revenue assigned to local government on a per-adult basis in perhaps a rather arbitrary way.
So far as concerns the effect on business generally, the Government have gone a considerable way towards meeting the anxieties expressed by the Confederation of British Industry and others,. However, there still remains, as the noble Lord Graham, has pointed out, real anxieties and doubts

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about the effects of the proposals on re-development and expansion of businesses. It is difficult that so much will remain unknown until October, until the Bill has long left this Chamber and that so much will be determined by regulations. The introduction of the uniform business rate at the same time as the community charge has involved such a fundamental change that the Government have found it necessary to repeal the whole of the General Rate Act 1967 and all the subsequent amending legislation. That means that the law on rating has been condensed to a considerable extent. As a result, the primary legislation is, even more than is now almost customary, in even more of a skeletal form leaving the main detail—the vital detail in many cases—to be prescribed in secondary legislation.
I do not wish to go into great detail in a general discussion of this kind or to quote many of the examples which have been brought to the attention of many noble Lords. But the combined effect of the introduction of a centrally determined poundage and, at the same time, the coming into force of a revaluation will have a substantial effect on the size of the individual's rate bill, particularly the individual business rate bill. Of course the Government have accepted the need for transitional arrangements in a situation of considerable uncertainty about what will happen. I hope therefore that my noble friend the Minister will make it perfectly clear—there is another amendment on the subject later—that there will be continued discussion with the CBI, the local authority associations, with the bodies which are expert in these matters and which will have to administer the law and make it work, such as the Rating and Valuation Association. There is a great deal of expertise at the Government's disposal. It is accepted that the policy in the Bill has been determined in another place. However, giving effect to the Bill, making it acceptable, making it workable and making it as equitable as possible is a very difficult task. It can be successfully accomplished only if the Government will work with the local authority associations and the other bodies who are so vitally concerned.
I hope that the Government will have regard to further changes which, according to the CBI and others, may be necessary, and that they will in particular ensure that there will be transitional provisions to limit individual rate bills and that those transitional provisions shall not be financed by a charge on other businesses which have suffered from high rates and distorted revaluations.
Secondly, I hope that consideration will be given to limiting in some way the business rate. It is possible that it should be limited to no more than 3 per cent. of RPI in any one year, assuming that the RPI is the right basis, and not everyone accepts that.
When the Government talk about flexibility in subsequent regulations, I do not believe that that is a good enough assurance for Parliament in passing primary legislation involving such fundamental changes in the law. I am sure that the Committee will agree that it is absolutely necessary to avoid sudden and significant changes in the rate burden on
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businesses, whether they be large or small, although it may be necessary to make the distinction between the two.
As the noble Lord, Lord Graham, indicated, I believe many of us have received an enormous volume of correspondence about this matter, all of it from people who are deeply concerned that the measure should be able to work.
For example, perhaps I have had a valuable and useful memorandum from 10 of Britain's largest retailers. Perhaps other noble Lords have had the same experience. The point they make is valid. They have suggested a maximum percentage increase in the rates bill of 10 per cent. plus inflation with a maximum of 15 per cent. I do not suggest that those are the right figures; but I believe that before the Bill leaves this Chamber, the Government should give some indication of the way in which they intend to approach problems which are of great concern to businesses throughout the country.
Baroness Stedman: I speak to my Amendments Nos. 106ZA and 106ZC, which narrows the field somewhat for me. We are still within the small business area but concerned with village shops and post offices. I raised this matter with the noble Earl at Second Reading. He assured me then (and I believe he hoped to allay my fears) that only the business part of those premises would be revalued. He implied that it might not make very much difference. I have been making some inquiries and I find that within my own village the community charge is likely to approximate the present rates and the shop keepers will still have the business rate to pay on that part of their property which is used as a shop.
Following that intervention, I was given the copy of a resolution from some 250 local councils that had been sent to the Secretary of State by the Cambridgeshire Association. They urged the Government to introduce measures to ease the situation for village shops and village shops and post offices. In small villages there is often only one shop and it often doubles as the post office. The incomes from both these operations usually produce enough to support the shop owner; but few of those shops support enough on their own to produce very large profits. Any substantial increases in their expenses could lead to the closure of the shop and possibly the consequent loss to the village of the village post office. That would be a real calamity in many of our villages where public transport is not easily available and not everyone has his own car to get into town. It would also create difficulty for the elderly and those in receipt of benefit which they now draw at village post offices. If the shop and post office had to close they would not be able to do that.
We have to remember that there is also a cloud hanging over many of those sub-post offices at present because of the pressure on their viability from the new community sub-post office policy, where a sub-office can be downgraded to become part-time with a reduction in salary if enough business is not transacted. That will tend to reduce the smaller post offices attached to the only shop and the shop itself may be closed. The post office would therefore go as well.

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The rating of village shops is being altered, like all other rating, as a result of this new legislation. There is to be a change in rateable values as a result of the revaluation and a change in rate poundage as a result of the fixing of the poundage at the same figure throughout the country. That is instead of it being locally fixed, relating to the requirements of the district council rates situation in the area where the shop or post office is.
I suspect that revaluations are likely to produce higher than average increases in values in rural areas because of the increased popularity of property within our villages since the last revaluation in 1973. That would not have happened too much in the past because generally the increased rateable values were compensated by a reduction in the local rate poundage. In 1990 the change in the values will put pressures on the village shops because of the proportionately higher increases than the towns alone may have absorbed. In villages price increases may occur as a result of the increased valuation and that could mean that shops are no longer competitive with their counterparts in the urban districts.
The effect of the standard rate poundage over the whole country will be to increase the poundage in the rural areas disproportionately. At present the urban poundages are higher and it is the Government's intention in 1990 to fix a national poundage which will raise the same total nationally from businesses as at present, and leave a business paying the same sum in rates wherever it is.
The combination as seen by the National Association of Local Councils and those connected with it is one of disproportionately higher values and disproportionately higher poundage leading to substantial actual increases in rate payments for village shops even though the businesses in total will pay the same.
At this stage the two amendments are only probing in order to provide the Minister with an opportunity to comment on our suggestions. However, they attempt to give similar relief to village shops as may be given to charities. The total payable could be reduced by a percentage whereas the reduction is already prescribed in respect of charities. We suggest that such relief would apply only to the retail goods businesses which are carried on at only one set of premises. The whole case is that it is the risk in which a particular shop in a village finds itself which must be met. The factors which could be taken into account in calculating relief are turnover, expenses and proximity of other premises, and anything else which the Secretary of State wishes to consider. Shops which can no longer trade at a profit, but which are the only shops available, need to be protected to the extent which our amendments would provide.
It would be only such a percentage as emerged from calculations carried out as prescribed by ministerial regulations. Therefore the percentage would differ from shop to shop according to the circumstances. The use of Z in the formula we have suggested in Clause 39(6)(a) enables that flexibility because Z is worked out through the regulations already provided for in Clause 40(8).
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I hope that the Minister will give the Committee his views on the matter. At the moment they are only probing amendments but I believe that this section of our small businesses needs to have special consideration.
5.45 p.m.
Lord Jenkin of Roding: I should like to make one or two brief points. I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, with growing surprise. In his argument, which concentrated upon the effect of the national non-domestic rate coupled with revaluation on the businesses which wil find themselves paying more, he did not appear to recognise at all that those which will face the largest increases over the years (there are to be transitional provisions to which I shall refer in a moment) are those which, by definition, have benefited the most from the absence of revaluation since 1973.
Massive changes have taken place, particularly in many retail areas. But what has happened since 1973? One listens to surveyors and valuers seeking to establish an appropriate 1973 rateable value on the assumption that the large shopping areas which were not then in existence are not in existence now and cannot be taken into account in fixing the value of a small shop or whatever. One then realises how far into the relams of fantasy the rating system has gone because of the failure of governments to revalue.
I remind the Committee of a point that I made at Second Reading. I believe that it is true to say that in its entire history in government the Labour Party has never had the courage to introduce a revaluation in England and Wales. Therefore, we shall not hear arguments from that party. Those who point to themselves as the biggest losers in the move to the national non-domestic rate from the current rateable values, are those who, by definition, have over many years enjoyed the privilege of paying a substantially lower rate than many of their competitors who have been in different circumstances.
My second point is that that does not meet the argument of the small businessman in particular who will find himself facing a substantial increase in his local taxation. However, that is essentially a transitional problem. I hope that the Committee will not be tempted to accept amendments which seek to build in some kind of permanent bias in favour of the small business or small shop. That would be to distort the pattern of competition and to raise all kinds of arguments about government interference in the retail trade of this country.
Of course there must be transitional provisons. It is right to mitigate the effect of change. I was greatly relieved when I read that in another place the Secretary of State, the right honourable Nicholas Ridley, had announced that in addition to the transitional provisions already provided for in the Bill—and we await the details for reasons which everyone at least on this side of the Committee will understand—there is to be a special transitional provision for small firms. I believe that that goes a long way towards meeting the anxieties that have been voiced on both sides of the Committee about this matter.

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I make my final point in enormous deference to my noble friend Lord Rippon. He suggested that possibly the maximum increase in the non-domestic rate might be lower than the retail prices index. I may have misunderstood but he suggested a figure as low as 2 per cent. or 3 per cent.—
Lord Rippon: It was the CBI.
Lord Jenkin of Roding: If that is a CBI figure it would totally undermine the whole construction of this reform. It would mean that one would be building into the community charge an increase charged on individuals, because that is the residual. The proportion of the local expenditure met by the distribution of the national non-domestic rate would reduce annually. The only consequence of that would be that the community charge would rise annually faster than the retail prices index. I believe that the retail price index is a very fair measure of the increased costs of local government. Some local government costs rise more than that and some less but it is not a bad target at which to aim.
The Government have indicated that they are prepared to have transitional provisions—perhaps even, generous transitional provisions—to ease the change during the few years after the introduction. However, I hope that they will not be tempted to try to build-in any particular bias in favour of this or that group because by then one will have up to date rateable values, revalued at regular intervals by whichever government may be in power.
There will be a national figure so that businesses will no longer be, as they have been in a good many areas, the milch cow of extravagant councils with no vote and very little say as to what should happen to them. That is the great prize for business and, subject to the transitional provisions, I believe that many in the business world recognise that this is a substantial advance.
Lord Ross of Newport: I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, is here in two years' time if there are not adequate transitional arrangements for small businessmen, because I believe we shall be facing a situation here that faced us in 1974 at the time of the last revaluation which of course is the reason why the Mayhew Committee was set up. There were indignation meetings attended by many thousands in places like Manchester and elsewhere.
I go along with the noble Lord entirely when he asks for particularly favourable treatment towards the smaller businesses. I have some confidence that we may get rather more out of the Minister when he replies because in a letter to me recently, which no doubt went to other Members, he inferred that there would be provision for a lower ceiling for small firms although he says that while there is no evidence that small firms will face disproportionately large increases, the Government recognise that small firms are less capable than large ones of absorbing them. I hope to show that small firms are in danger of facing exceptional increases. A letter from the Minister's colleague in another place to the Retail Consortium also said that the Government would look closely at
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the question of a lower ceiling for small businesses on the grounds that they may find it more difficult to accommodate substantial increases quickly.
I think those have to be phased over a much longer period. I take heart that we are now going above the figures of five years but the 15 per cent., if that is what is suggested, is too high. I shall indicate why I think that. Of course, the idea of a rate the index of which is tied to a cost of living index is appealing but it is the base from which one starts that matters most. The Minister criticised the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, for her comment that when the rating revaluation takes place the rating power comes down. However, that is what will happen. At the moment the Government are saying that the average will be about 224p and most people are predicting—although I have not seen the Government's prediction—that when the new lists are published we shall have to look at something like 50p.
For the last 12 years I have been trying to sell to the citizens of Newport the products of Doulton, Wedgwood and a few others. I am just about to leave that because I am retiring. I have employed a manageress and I can promise this Committee that I have not taken a penny out of the till for myself. This is a business which has been run totally honestly and has increased its turnover from year to year from a base of about £12,000 to something like £35,000 per year. I wish to quote a few figures from that and to translate them into what I think will happen if we have a 50p rate. I want to show how it would affect me.
I want to make a point about water rates because we do not receive any relief on water rates and they are increasing fast. The Isle of Wight is one of those areas which was a test case for putting in meters. A small business on the south coast of the Isle of Wight reported to me this morning that its water rate bill last year was £120 and this year it is £264. That business is only open for a few days and weekends in the summer, and mostly closed throughout the winter except on Sundays because it is a restaurant business. Therefore, that shows what some of us may face when metering is adopted throughout the country. I do not say that it is not a fair way to pay for water but it will bring another increase.
I paid £592 for water and general rates in 1986; I paid £695 in 1987 and I was paying around £800 in the current year. My landlord charges me £2,600 for rent and I believe that that is virtually what the rateable value will be because that falls in line with the definition of rateable value. If the DV puts a valuation of £2,600 on me, 50 per cent. of that will be something like £1,300 plus water rates. That is a fairly substantial increase.
I have just sold the lease of my business to someone else coming in for £4,500 plus a substantial premium which is over £10,000. He will not sell ceramics to anybody. He will clear it out and sell clothes, but he is in a secondary trading position. I think the valuation officer—and I suppose I am a mug to put this on record but if someone else is going to have to pay the rates then it is not my responsibility any more—would be perfectly justified to say that the

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rent has suddenly leapt up in the last six to nine months and that he wants to base it on £4,500. That means a very large increase of more than 100 per cent.
For the last 12 months I have been concentrating on trying to sell commercial and industrial property. From my own knowledge of the business all over the South of England, West of England and the Midlands the property market has not just been in a huge "hype" in domestic properties but also in secondary shops, stalls, post offices and so on. People have been paying much larger sums. Quite frankly they have not asked about rates because they do not regard rates in our part of the country as being extremely high. They may ask about them in Cambridge with a 30 per cent. "hype" this time. They probably do so in Camden but they do not in most parts of the country. Extraordinary sums are being paid as "key money", just to get into secondary shops. There may be no hope of surviving for very long but perhaps it is done solely to get into the living accommodation that goes with those shops.
I say that because I believe, rightly or wrongly—and of course it is due to the fact that we did not have a revaluation—that people have done these things and I am quite convinced that when these new lists are published and the rating assessments come out people will face grave difficulties. That is why we tabled the amendments on behalf of the Small Business Association and that is why I am speaking to those amendments. I do not say they are the right answer, although the Minister has looked at figures about possible rateable value cut offs. Although he may criticise, we already do that with corporation tax and on rateable values with regard to housing legislation. Therefore, perhaps the figure of £30,000 is rather high.
In the past 12 months when the "multiples" have been coming into Newport on the Isle of Wight, the rental base for what we call Zone A which is a main trading area, has suddenly shot up from something like £25 per foot to £45 a foot. It is an enormous "hype". Whether or not we like it, to say that you are going to stand firm and not give too many concessions is really running in the face of what these people will be told by their bank managers and pressure will be put on them to pay off the mortgages, overdrafts and so on. Of course it will help them because houses have gone up very very substantially. One hardly sees anything priced under £200,000 in The Sunday Times these days and I wonder how my own children and the younger generation will ever be able to afford to buy a house. Others more fortunate are selling their homes and getting away from London and the crowds so as to be able to do their own thing. Who can blame them for doing that? However, if we are not careful and do not give real concessions then those people will certainly be at the doors of these two Houses of Parliament in 12 to 18 months' time and they will have every right to do that.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: Is it not this side's turn?
6 p.m.
Lord Dean of Beswick: I wanted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin. I listened to the noble Lord, Lord
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Jenkin, who is a former Secretary of State—and I listened to him with care—but I was listening to him as a former leader in local government. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, gave the quite definite view that people in England and Wales had been protected over the years because there had been no revaluation of rateable values and that had there been such a revaluation, there would have been substantial increases in the rates that they would have had to pay.
I was on Manchester City Council at the time of the last rate revaluation in England and Wales. I believe that on a rough calculation rateable values were almost doubled by the Inland Revenue. It did not follow automatically in Manchester that the rate which people had to pay the next year doubled. What happened was that as the rateable values increased, the rate poundages plummeted so that it was still possible for someone to have a tremendous rate increase but it was based on prolific spending and not to do with rating revaluation. In Manchester, for example, if it was necessary to collect £100 million from the ratepayers, the poundage might be £1 in the pound to raise that amount—these are hypothetical figures, but I am seeking to make a case. If the rateable value doubled and you were budgeting for a nil increase, then the charge would be 50p in the pound, not £1 in the pound.
It is misleading for the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, to say that re-rating in England and Wales would automatically mean substantial increases in what ratepayers pay to local authorities. That is a completely false premise unless a council overspends prolifically; but that would have nothing to do with revaluation because the council would have to charge a higher poundage had the revaluation not taken place. The record should be put right. I am saying this with my ex-local authority hat on, having had to operate the system. The former Secretary of State has never had to do that.
Lord Jenkin of Roding: I intervene just to say that I hold myself entirely responsible if the noble Lord has been so sadly misled on the point I was seeking to make. I was endeavouring to say that since 1973 there have been massive differential changes in land values, and that the people who will have the largest increases are those who would have had increases over those years but who have not had them and therefore have been paying rates on much lower levels. That is the point I seek to make. The noble Lord was right to say that if rateable values go up the poundage should come down. However, it is the differentials which have become so out of kilter, and that is where the losers come in.
Lord Dean of Beswick: If one considers this matter in areas, over 40 per cent. of the population are in the urban areas. In my opinion, they would not be affected as the noble Lord predicts. From the way in which he put his case the only conclusion that can be drawn is that revaluation would automatically explode rates upwards. That is nonsense; it would not.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: Following that exchange, I should like briefly to refer to what happened in Scotland because it is important to understand that. In the region in which I was operating as a councillor, when we had revaluation the total rate base of the region stayed the same; that is, the total valuation of properties in the region stayed the same. However, for some of the commercial properties in the town where I live the rateable value increased enormously. In other places it dropped.
Over and above that, there was a rate increase that year of, I believe, 18 per cent. so that the distortion was brought about by the high increase in the rate as well as by a changing differential within the area. Therefore, some small shops in Forfar were having to pay four times as much in rates, while some small shops in Dundee, 15 miles away, were paying half as much in rates.
There had to be swift remedial action. The message is two-fold. First, the rate is not going to increase by 18 per cent. It will be predictable, and therefore will lessen the distortion. Secondly, the distortion will be greater in the rateable value because the time since the previous revaluation is much longer—ours was only seven years and it is now 15 years. There will be much greater distortion in the actual valuations.
That means that the people who are living in an area which has become much more attractive since the last valuation—I imagine that Bury St. Edmunds is probably one of them—can look forward, I am afraid, to greatly increased valuations. There is no question about that. If, in addition, they are paying less than the average rate for the country because they are in a low rated area, that will distort the position in the wrong way for those people. However, people at present in a high rated area, and also in an area which is becoming less attractive, will benefit enormously.
No government can calculate now what is going to happen. The Government will not be so surprised as they were for Scotland. I do not think they knew anything of what was to happen in Scotland until it happened. That was part of the problem that triggered the whole thing off. The Government cannot estimate, and nor can the shopkeepers, exactly what those figures will be because they do not know what the valuations will be. It is therefore absolutely essential that the transitional arrangements should include the flexibility to cater for what will happen; particularly in those places which will suffer most. However, there cannot be a blanket flexibility. My noble friend Lord Rippon, with all his experience, I am sure appreciates that if one keeps the whole thing down for everyone the people who benefit will simply benefit much more. That is not what is required. One must even out differentials.
The message for my noble friend on the Front Bench, therefore, from this extremely interesting and informative debate is that there must be flexibility to cope with such situations when the time comes.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: I am glad that the Scottish experience is being aired in Committee. Listening to
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the debate in general, I have had the feeling that I have been round this course before. In fact, two years ago we had this argument when the Scottish Bill was dealt with. We have now had two years' experience in getting nearer its operation.
I am delighted that in this Bill there has been some recognition of anomalies and some promise of transitional arrangements and special considerations in relation to small businesses. The Minister will be aware, of course, that since the Scottish legislation passed through this Chamber and became law a general election has taken place. The Scottish people gave their judgment in relation to that legislation. The Government managed to win 10 seats out of 72 and moved into third place behind the Scottish Nationalists. That is some indication of the strength of feeling on this legislation.
That applied not simply to the domestic rating provisions but also to business rates. When the Bill was going through this Chamber I was asked by the National Federation of Self-Employed and Small Businesses, the Federation of Private Businesses and the Forum of Private Business to draw the attention of this place to the different structure of retail trading and the importance of rating in the total costing of small businesses. I can speak more freely since my good friend and colleague, my noble friend Lord Sainsbury, has left the Chamber. If one considers Sainsburys and the large public limited companies, about 1 per cent. of costs relates to rates. It is an insignificant amount. However, for small businesses the cost of rates could be 15 per cent. It is the third largest overhead after wages and rents. Therefore, it is significant that if there is a change in the basis, and if there is not to be more consideration for the small business community, the burden will be too great for many of them to carry.
For all the reasons expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, about the village post offices and small stores, it would be wrong and socially undesirable to place burdens on small traders that would mean their elimination from the provision of a decent service in the smaller communities. I ask the Minister to look at that aspect because small businesses are not in a position to increase prices to recover costs in the way that some of the larger businesses can do with their greater volume of trade. Therefore, I make a special plea in that respect. My name is attached to Amendments Nos. 117C and 117E which deal specifically with that point.
In view of the concessions which are now being made in the Bill and which are very welcome, I shall welcome advice from the Minister as to how he will deal with these concessions in relation to Scotland, and whether transitional arrangements and other benefits are to be applied there. If not, then the glaring anomalies which exist between rating in Scotland and in England will be further exaggerated. I shall welcome the comments of the Minister on these points.
The Earl of Caithness: The noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, moved Amendment No. 105. Since then the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, has spoken to her two amendments, Nos. 106ZA and 106ZC; the noble Lords, Lord Ross of Newport and

1537
Lord Taylor of Gryfe, have also spoken to Amendments Nos. 106ZB and 117D. I, too, shall speak to all those amendments and include in my remarks the Government's amendments, Nos. 117A, 117B, 117C, 117BA and 117E. The reason for doing that is that the amendments in this group are all concerned with cushioning the impact of revaluation and the introduction of the national non-domestic rate on small businesses. As such they cover ground that has already been thoroughly discussed in another place.
We are extremely grateful for the very constructive and helpful debate that we have had today. The Government amendments are concerned with transitional arrangements for all businesses, but include special provision for transitional arrangements for small businesses. The non-government amendments all seek to provide special treatment for small businesses. In all cases what is proposed would be a permanent benefit, though the large increases some small businesses will face in 1990 are strictly temporary problems.
Amendment No. 105 moved by the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, is drafted in similar terms to that moved in another place. It would place a duty on the Secretary of State to reduce the non-domestic rate for small businesses permanently, by up to 100 per cent. on a basis to be defined in regulations. The definition of small business will also be in regulations, but will take account of a business's profits, assets, number of employees, and whether it was a plc. I doubt that the noble Lord is absolutely serious about giving my right honourable friend such a wide-ranging discretionary power, but his amendment has served a very useful purpose in allowing him to make the points on small businesses. This new-found concern from the Labour Party about the rates burden on small businesses is a little confusing in view of the record of many Labour authorities in increasing rates under the present system. The 60 per cent increases in Waltham Forest and Ealing last year or the 20 per cent. plus increases in Humberside this year, give perhaps a more practical demonstration of their true concern.
Amendments Nos. 106ZA and 106ZC moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, provide for a similar duty to set a lower rate that would apply only where the ratepayer was a retailer operating from a single property. In calculating the factor by which rates for a qualifying property shall be reduced, the Secretary of State would be required to take into account the turnover and gross operating expenses of the business or businesses operating from the property, and the proximity of similar businesses. Oddly, my right honourable friend would not be required to take into account profit or whether the rate bill in question had gone up or down.
I ask the Committee at this point to pause to consider the amount of work and extra costs that these two amendments would cause local authorities, who at present have access to none of the information about turnover or profit or the company status as proposed. They would have to collect that information or arrangements would have to be made to breach the strict rules of confidentiality of information of the revenue department, to pass over
1538
information which many companies would regard as commercially sensitive. I wonder how far small businesses would really welcome that information being in the hands of their local authority. The proposers of the amendment have not explained how their scheme would apply to businesses with more than one property, perhaps in more than one local authority. As all Members of the Committee appreciate, a business does not have to be a large one to be in that position.
Amendment No. 106ZB, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ross of Newport, is also similar to one considered in another place and would abate the first £1,000 of any rates due on a hereditament by 50 per cent. In other words, it would mean that everyone would pay £500 less, permanently, except, of course, that someone would have to pay more to make up for this. The amendment does not indicate whether this should be other businesses, the community charge payer, or the national taxpayer. Its effect would be to benefit very small businesses most, but if the cost was met by other businesses—some quite small businesses; namely, those with rate bills over £4,000—they would end up paying more to subsidise their competitors.
Amendment No. 117D moved by the noble Lord, Lord Ross of Newport, provides for the ceiling on year-on-year rates increases to continue indefinitely until the increase had been absorbed. It would also provide for non-plcs, occupying property with a 1990 rateable value of less than £30,000, to be subject to a 10 per cent. ceiling on annual rates increases and a special national non-domestic rate set at 70 per cent. of the standard NNDR.
These proposals would mean that the branches of quite large organisations would benefit from the concession. Building societies, Unwins Wines, K Shoe Shops, and many other non-chains owned by non-plc companies or friendly societies operating from a large number of small outlets would benefit at the expense of their competitors. Any business wanting to expand would face a massive increase in its rate bill if its rateable value increased from £29,900 to £30,000. All other businesses would pay more to finance this concession. The National Federation of Self-Employed and Small Businesses and the Forum of Private Business claim that this would be a small addition. I say to the Committee that it would not. We have done our best to estimate the cost. However, because we expect 55 per cent. of all properties to have rateable values below £30,000, even allowing for a proportion to have plc status, that still leads us to the conclusion that we might have to increase the rate bills of other businesses by about 14 per cent. Like the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, I too am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, is not in his place to hear that comment. I do not believe that he would be particularly pleased.
The theme that runs through all these amendments is the false idea that small businesses as a group will be badly hit by revaluation and the introduction of NNDR. This is a distorted view of what is likely to happen in 1990. I must therefore answer the arguments. The first point to make is that we believe that the great majority of small businesses will not in fact face the kind of large rates increases in 1990 that

1539
the small business organisations have been predicting because relatively few will. Away from retailing, large rates increases will be rare and small businesses in industry will generally stand to gain.
As I have said, the full details will not be available until the revaluation is complete. As soon as the sample survey is available the results will be made known and at that stage we shall know much more what is the position.
6.15 p.m.
Lord Ross of Newport: I am grateful to the noble Earl for giving way. Can the Minister give some authoritative indication of when that might be? One hears that there are problems within the revaluation office, such as a shortage of staff and the rest. Can the Minister give some idea when information will be available?
The Earl of Caithness: I hope it will be in the autumn. However, I cannot give the noble Lord a clear indication at the moment. Having been a surveyor and a small business man, I appreciate the need to get out the figures as soon as possible, because it is in the interregnum period, when we are not sure what the figures will be, that all the worries surface and the most extreme examples are naturally put forward.
The second and perhaps key point, is that even in retailing we expect very large rates increases to be confined mostly to those who have been most successful since the last revaluation 15 years' ago. That relates to retailers in prime high street sites, mainly in the South of England. The Committee will appreciate that these are the areas where larger retailers predominate. Secondary shopping centres and neighbourhood shops—the location of the vast majority of small retailers—are much less likely to face large increases. Some, particularly in the North, will even gain. Many will see a relative fall in their rates when compared with their large high street or out-of-town competitors.
So let us be clear: neither small businesses as a whole nor small retailers as a group are more likely to face high rates increases than their larger competitors. This is not to deny that there will be some businesses in particular locations that will face large increases. But we must keep the problem in perspective.
My noble friend Lord Rippon of Hexham said that Amendment No. 105 failed to discriminate between businesses. The amendments do not seek to discriminate between those small businesses that will face large increases, those that will not and indeed those that will gain or even gain substantially. All are to enjoy a subsidy from their competitors.
Who is to pay for this permanent blanket subsidy? Well, it can only be either other businesses or the national or local taxpayer. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Ross of Newport, Amendment No. 117D, makes it clear that this unjustifiable permanent subsidy—a subsidy of 30 per cent. seems to be the preferred figure—is to be paid for by what he described as a small addition to the NNDR for
1540
medium and large businesses, some of which will of course themselves already be facing large rates increases as a result of the revaluation and the introduction of NNDR. Such a subsidy would, as I have already said, put up their rates by around 14 per cent. I question whether this is either small or fair.
I am aware that rates form a higher proportion of costs for small businesses. But rates are a tax on property values. Why should small businesses pay less in proportion to the value of their property than their larger competitors? If small units command higher rents in the market than large, that must reflect a greater demand for small units.
Perhaps the greatest weakness of the case for a permanent subsidy, and of the amendments before us today, is that such a subsidy would be largely self-defeating in the long run. We cannot escape the fact that rates per square foot are higher for small businesses because they reflect a greater demand. A relative reduction in rates for small business premises would serve only to increase that demand. It would not take the large chains long to work out the advantages of operating via wholly-owned private subsidiary companies in smaller units. Rents would then rise further which in turn would, in due course, push up rateable values and hence rates. The proposals would in the long run tend to benefit no one but the landlords of small business premises. That seeks to reinforce the argument made by my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding in regard to the comments and worries of my noble friend Lord Rippon of Hexham.
Another major point that these amendments fail to grasp is the fact that, with the rise in the NNDR limited to the rise in the RPI, business rates will in future rise by much less than they have in recent years, or indeed would have if the present system had continued. If the NNDR had been in place now, this year's business rate rise everywhere could have been no more than 4 per cent compared with actual rises averaging 7 per cent., but were far higher in many parts of the country, as I have already pointed out. I ask the Committee to accept therefore that these amendments, however well intentioned, are misguided, unjustifiable, largely impractical, and would give rise to great unfairness. They are also unnecessary.
They are unnecessary because, as my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding said, the Government are already completely committed to ensuring that those relatively few businesses which will face large rates increases in 1990 should be cushioned against their effects. We fully accept that businesses in that position—large or small—must be given time to adjust. We are therefore committed to generous transitional arrangements which will take the form of a ceiling on year-on-year rates increases as I have said earlier—for so long as is necessary. The amendments are unnecessary because, in addition, we accept that those relatively few small businesses that face large rates increases will find it more difficult than large ones to absorb the increases quickly. That is why we are committed to taking power to set a special lower ceiling for small businesses while we are against a permanent subsidy. We have also made it clear that

1541
we will take power to have continuing transitional arrangements in the period after the 1995 revaluation if that is still necessary.
The whole Committee was grateful for the contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, and my noble friend Lady Carnegy of Lour. Both said that the experience of Scotland showed the need for flexibility. The Government amendments, Amendments Nos. 117A, 117B, 117C, 117BA and 117E, deliver what we have promised. They will give the Secretary of State power to provide through regulations for the transitional arrangements to take the form of a ceiling on year-on-year rates increases, to be paid for by a limitation on year-on-year rates reductions; and a special lower ceiling for small business premises, to operate for properties with a rateable value below a threshold to be defined by regulation. We shall consult widely on the level at which this small businesses threshold should be set. They will provide for fresh transitional arrangements to accompany the 1995 and subsequent evaluations. This will enable us to set the ceilings on rate increases at a level lower than would otherwise have been possible.
One of my final comments covers the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, about how a small business is to be defined. It is to be on rateable value, and it is on that that we wish to consult. I do not exaggerate when I say that this Government are more actively and favourably disposed to small businesses than any in living memory. I do not resist the amendments of the Opposition because of a hostility to small businesses but because we believe the amendments are not justified. They are unnecessary and ultimately self-defeating. The Government are very aware of the concerns and worries of business, and so we have brought in for the very first time substantial transitional provisions not only to cover this valuation but the next one and to take special care of small businesses.
Lord Rippon of Hexham: My noble friend referred to me. Perhaps I may say that I do not wholly recognise his comment on my observations. I do not in any way doubt the good intentions of the Government or the general merit of what he said. However, I should like some assurance, for which I ask definitely, that the CBI, the local authority associations, and others, will continue to be consulted about what will go into the regulations.
The Earl of Caithness: Yes, I give that firm assurance to my noble friend.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: What will be the impact on Scotland if we pass the arrangements contained in the subsequent amendments in the Minister's name which give effect to the transitional arrangements? What will this do to the existing Scottish legislation?
The Earl of Caithness: It is good news for Scotland which I am sure the noble Lord will welcome. I can assure him that there will be powers for transitional arrangements in Scotland. Perhaps I may refer him to Clause 127.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: We have had a useful and constructive debate. I would not want to detract from anything the Minister said about what the Government have done for small businesses. They have created more small businesses than many other governments. The simple fact is that when the Government came to power those small businesses were large businesses.
The Government ask those outside the Chamber to believe that relatively few small businesses will feel themselves badly affected and unjustly dealt with by the Bill. They will listen carefully to what the Minister has said. Of course we on this side of the Committee have our political imperatives; but all that I have said and all that others have said has been put to us by representatives of the business community. Of course, they may have got it wrong; of course they have a vested interest, and of course they will see things on the black side. However, when the day dawns and they are in business with the changed circumstances—the Minister says that relatively few small businesses will find that the impact is unduly large or unfair—they will have to open their shops and try to trade and then succeed in business.
Increases will be rare, said the Minister, in respect of small businesses. We are puzzled that the Minister is not prepared to accept the burden and the pain of the change. The Minister is putting forward a revolution. He is entitled to take credit for courage and enterprise in the change. However, it is nonsense to say that it will be painless or relatively painless to the business community. They see it in a different way.
The Minister makes some play about the terms of our amendment. He was careful to say to the Committee that it is similar to an amendment moved in another place. His briefing note did not include the fact that it was moved by Sir Hugh Rossi, who spoke from his experience as a Minister in local government in a previous Administration. Sir Hugh Rossi is the Conservative Member for Hornsey and Wood Green and served as a Minister in the department. He may have got it wrong. Before he came to the House Sir Hugh Rossi was a long-serving and successful member of a local authority. Therefore he spoke with the advantage of two relevant experiences. In my view, the Minister has failed to answer the charge. Our argument is that it is unfair that in order for one element of the business community to gain an advantage, another element must bear the cost and thereby be disadvantaged.
The Government are telling the country that the economy is booming and indeed the Chancellor was able to distribute billions of pounds to certain sectors of the community in the last Budget. However, we are arguing the issue in order to get the matter as smooth as possible. I can tell the Minister that I accept the Government have moved a long way in the transitional arrangements and have generously conceded many points. However, he has certainly failed to satisfy me, and I intend to press the amendment to a Division.
6.31 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 105) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 77; Not-Contents, 120.

DIVISION NO. 1

CONTENTS

Addington, L.

Listowel, E.

Airedale, L.

Lloyd of Hampstead, L.

Attlee, E.

Longford, E.

Aylestone, L.

Lovell-Davis, L.

Basnett, L.

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Blackstone, B.

Mackie of Benshie, L.

Broadbridge, L.

McNair, L.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Mason of Barnsley, L.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Meston, L.

Carter, L.

Monson, L.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Nicol, B.

Cocks of Hartcliffe, L.

Northfield, L.

David, B.

Oram, L.

Dean of Beswick, L.

Peston, L.

Diamond, L.

Pitt of Hampstead, L.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L. [Teller.]

Dormand of Easington, L.

Elwyn-Jones, L.

Prys-Davies, L.

Ewart-Biggs, B.

Rea, L.

Falkender, B.

Rochester, L.

Fitt, L.

Ross of Newport, L.

Gallacher, L.

Russell, E.

Galpern, L.

Seear, B.

Graham of Edmonton, L.

Serota, B.

Grey, E.

Somers, L.

Hampton, L.

Stallard, L.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Stedman, B.

Hart of South Lanark, B.

Stewart of Fulham, L.

Hatch of Lusby, L.

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Hooson, L.

Taylor of Blackburn, L.

Houghton of Sowerby, L.

Taylor of Gryfe, L.

Hughes, L.

Tordoff, L. [Teller.]

Hunt, L.

Underhill, L.

Irvine of Lairg, L.

Wallace of Coslany, L.

Irving of Dartford, L.

Wells-Pestell, L.

Jay, L.

White, B.

Jeger, B.

Willis, L.

Kilbracken, L.

Winchilsea and Nottingham, E.

Kilmarnock, L.

Lawrence, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Abinger, L.

Cottesloe, L.

Ailesbury, M.

Craigmyle, L.

Alport, L.

Croft, L.

Arran, E.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Ashbourne, L.

Dacre of Glanton, L.

Auckland, L.

Davidson, V. [Teller.]

Balfour, E.

Denham, L. [Teller.]

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Dundee, E.

Beloff, L.

Eden of Winton, L.

Belstead, L.

Erroll, E.

Benson, L.

Fairhaven, L.

Bessborough, E.

Faithfull, B.

Blatch, B.

Ferrers, E.

Boyd-Carpenter, L.

Foley, L.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Fortescue, E.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Fraser of Kilmorack, L.

Bruce-Gardyne, L.

Gardner of Parkes, B.

Butterworth, L.

Gibson-Watt, L.

Caithness, E.

Gisborough, L.

Cameron of Lochbroom, L.

Glenarthur, L.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Goold, L.

Campbell of Croy, L.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

Carlisle of Bucklow, L.

Carnarvon, E.

Hanson, L.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

Carnock, L.

Havers, L.

Carr of Hadley, L.

Hayter, L.

Cathcart, E.

Henley, L.

Chelmer, L.

Hesketh, L.

Clitheroe, L.

Hives, L.

Coleraine, L.

Hood, V.

Constantine of Stanmore, L.

Hooper, B.

1544

Hylton-Foster, B.

Prior, L.

Ingrow, L.

Radnor, E.

Jenkin of Roding, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Johnston of Rockport, L.

Reay, L.

Kimball, L.

Renton, L.

Kinnoull, E.

Rippon of Hexham, L.

Lauderdale, E.

Saltoun of Abernethy, Ly.

Layton, L.

Sanderson of Bowden, L.

Long, V.

Sandford, L.

McAlpine of West Green, L.

Seebohm, L.

Mackay of Clashfern, L.

Skelmersdale, L.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Stanley of Alderley, L.

Manton, L.

Stodart of Leaston, L.

Marley, L.

Strathcona and Mount Royal, L.

Merrivale, L.

Middleton, L.

Swinfen, L.

Mottistone, L.

Teviot, L.

Munster, E.

Thomas of Gwydir, L.

Murton of Lindisfarne, L.

Trafford, L.

Napier and Ettrick, L.

Trumpington, B.

Nelson, E.

Ullswater, V.

Nelson of Stafford, L.

Vaux of Harrowden, L.

Newall, L.

Ward of Witley, V.

Norrie, L.

Weinstock, L.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Windlesham, L.

Onslow, E.

Wise, L.

Orkney, E.

Wyatt of Weeford, L.

Orr-Ewing, L.

Wynford, L.

Oxfuird, V.

Young of Graffham, L.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
6.38 p.m.
[Amendment No. 106 not moved.]
[Amendments Nos. 106ZA and 106ZB not moved.]
Clause 39, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 40 [Occupied hereditaments: supplementary]:
[Amendment No. 106ZC not moved.]
Clause 40 agreed to.
Lord Stanley of Alderley Lord Stanley of Alderley moved Amendment No. 106A:
After Clause 40, insert the following new clause:
("Protection for rural services.
Where a charging authority considers it desirable in the interests of maintaining or encouraging the provision of services to residents in rural areas, it may specify such hereditaments or classes of hereditaments as it considers appropriate where the non-domestic rate chargeable shall be reduced by an amount equivalent to the personal community charge of that authority in that chargeable financial year.").
The noble Lord said: The noble Baroness, Lady Stedman on a previous amendment, posed our concern over the need to protect the village shop. In supporting her by moving this amendment, I make two points. First, I hope that my noble friend will make an uncompromising and categorical statement that the Government appreciate the importance of the village shop in the rural scene. Now that the Church has, much to my regret, temporarily declined in influence, the village shop is the village's social centre and, as such, plays a more important role than dishing out icecreams and lollies to the children and pensions and social security payments to many of us.
I therefore disagree with some of the remarks made by my noble friend Lord Jenkin on the previous amendment. The high street shop does not provide that social service. I hope that my noble friend the

1545
Minister will see the need to bend over backwards financially to prevent further closures of such shops. Provided that my noble friend agrees with that first point, it is merely a question of how we achieve what I call the especially favoured rating of the village shop. My noble friend was kind enough to write to me saying that there is no question of village shops paying twice on the non-domestic part of the house. I am concerned that when the rating officer does his valuation of the shop part of the house he should use a criterion that deals much more leniently than in the case of a high street shop. Will my noble friend give me some idea of what guidelines will be used when the shop part of the house is revalued?
I was not, I am sorry to say, reassured by my noble friend's remarks on this matter when he referred to it on the previous amendment. In particular, what evidence can he give me to support the words of his helpful letter, in which he wrote:
"We would expect to see a relative decrease in the rateable values of many village shops"?
I suspect that that phrase sounds a bit "Yes, Ministerish" and that the words upon which he will rely are "rateable value" rather than actual value.
Will my noble friend assure me that the village shop will be no worse off under the Bill than under existing conditions? Our amendment would ensure that by releasing the shop from one community charge. We leave the decision as to which shops are to receive that concession to the discretion of the local authority, so avoiding the long-term problems described by my noble friend on the previous amendment. I beg to move.
The Earl of Radnor: I put my name to the amendment, first, because it was a matter of rural business; and, secondly, because this is not so much a question of the intricacies of the Bill or past or future rating regimes, but more of the decline of important parts of country life.
I should cast my net a little wider than merely the village shop. The amendment in fact casts its net wider. I have in mind the small engineering works which serve the countryside so well, to which the farmer goes and upon which he relies because it may not always be practical to go to larger concerns in the nearest town.
It has already been said by the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, that the shop is under tremendous pressure. It is. I think that commercial reasons—the supermarket and the hypermarket—and ease of transport into the local town make it difficult for shops to survive in relatively small villages; but they are still terribly important, because there are always people in every village who do not want or cannot go to the supermarket.
The village shop is vital because some villages are far away from towns. I feel that this form of subsidy—if I may so describe it—arrived at by taking off one personal community charge may be a good way to ensure that such businesses go on into the future and serve the people who live in the countryside, who will not be well served otherwise. I support the amendment.
6.45 p.m.
Lord Jay: In the case of the village shop, should we not also take into account the fact that in the common case of a village shop run by a husband and wife who live on the premises, when the Bill becomes law they will presumably by paying not merely the non-domestic rate but also the ordinary domestic rate—the poll tax, as it is commonly called—in each case? That will be an additional tax in their case. As a result of the Bill, they will have to pay both imposts. Surely, that is something that should be taken into account when we consider the case of the village shop.
The Earl of Caithness: As my noble friend Lord Stanley has made clear, the principal motive behind the amendment is the fear for rural services, especially village shops and post offices, many of which, as customer mobility increases, face increased competition from town supermarkets. The amendment gives me an opportunity to expand upon points that the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, raised on the previous amendment.
Coupled with my noble friend's concern is fear about the effects of the introduction of NNDR and revaluation on the position of village shops and fear that where a trader lives on the premises, the combined burden of community charge and NN DR may be such that he can no longer compete with the urban supermarkets and may be forced out of business. I understand those concerns and having considered them I find that there are several points to make in response. The first is to correct a misapprehension which is commonly held, that where a trader lives on the premises he will pay both NNDR on the premises and a community charge. Let me make it clear that, while a community charge will be payable, rates will only be charged on that part of the premises used for business purposes, so any community charge should be compared with the rates previously charged on the domestic part of the property.
My noble friend Lord Stanley asked about the guidelines as to how shops will be valued. The guidelines will be as now. Shops will be valued on a rental basis which will be considered in relation to the square footage of the shop which is allocated for retail or commercial purposes.
Secondly, contrary to the impression given by some village small traders—some of the Committee may have received some of the more unrealistic forecasts given by them—I doubt whether village shops, as a group, will have a great deal to fear from the effects of the introduction of NNDR and revaluation. We are all well aware of the problems that village shops face as a result of competition from supermarkets and new urban shopping centres. That is where the revaluation will in all probability help, because the revaluation will follow the market. If the trading position of village shops has been undermined by supermarkets, one would expect that to be reflected in the rents that they are paying.
There is therefore no reason for us to expect the rates for village shops to increase substantially in real terms. It is too early to make detailed forecasts, but

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we would expect to see a relative decline in the rateable values of village shops, at least when compared with those of high street shops in the main shopping centres and out-of-town superstores, which are likely to increase substantially. That will go some way to redress the competitive balance to the small rural shops' benefit.
My noble friend Lord Stanley of Alderley asked me whether village shops would be any worse off than they are at present. I cannot say categorically as regards each rate for each village shop because I do not know the particular circumstances. But I can say to the noble Lord generally that of course they will be much better off. Not only will they have transitional provisions following the revaluation of which they never had the benefit before, but there will be special transitional provisions for small businesses. In addition to that, their rates can only be increased in future by the retail prices index and will no longer be subject to the whims of the local authority giving them substantial rate rises, totally unrelated to the retail prices index. So I hope that my noble friend will be comforted by that.
Let us nevertheless take the hypothetical situation where costs increase. Is it right that rate relief should be used to help these properties? Rates are a tax, the proceeds of which are a major element in the financing of local government. Granting relief from rates to one sector of business would create a shortfall in the yield which could only be made good by increasing the rates of other ratepayers or by increasing the burden on the national taxpayer. It would be difficult to explain to the many other small shopkeepers, many of whom might be facing significant increases, that they should face a further burden to assist shopkeepers in other areas, regardless of whether their rates were higher or lower or had gone up less than their own.
However, we have considered how help can best be given. I should also remind the Committee that should any particular rural business face a large increase in its rates bill, not only could it benefit from both the transitional arrangements that I have just mentioned, but it could also benefit from any special scheme for a longer transitional period for small businesses on which I look for support from my noble friend in due course. The rural businesses about which my noble friend is concerned are most likely to be beneficiaries of such a scheme, should they be in need of it.
As I have said, we understand the concerns of the small rural businesses. That is precisely why we have allowed for the transitional provisions which do not apply under the present rating system.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: I should like to ask the Minister this question. As the Minister knows, we have had the experience of revaluation in Scotland. It was a fact that the valuers did not take into account the situation in every case. In other words, it was rather uneven; there were cases of small rural businesses which suffered enormous increases in valuation, as the Conservative Party found out at their conference in Perth. Those increases came as the result of odd things like a whole lot of building
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societies coming into a small town, thereby upping the value. In many cases the assessors certainly did not take enough account of the difference between the town and the small country businesses.
I cannot really see the Minister's objection to putting in some guideline to the assessors which would say precisely what this amendment says. The Government have stated often enough that they have a rural policy to maintain the rural population.
Baroness Stedman: The point which the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, has raised is worrying the rural village shopkeepers. What the Government do not seem to have grasped at the moment is that the rural rate poundage on the whole has been lower than that in the urban area. Therefore it will be a burden on those who have village shops, particularly those in the more remote rural areas. They will now be faced with paying their community charge on the domestic part of their property; having their shop valued and paying the national business rate at the same level of rateable poundage as those people in the city. We want some concession or some guidelines so that the valuers are able to take account of the fact that in our remote rural areas there are not the same services nor the same facilities provided for the ordinary residents and particularly for the village shopkeepers as there are in our conurbations and bigger areas.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: As I was in considerable sympathy with the amendment, although I did not feel that I had anything very much to add at the beginning, I listened very carefully to what the Minister said in reply. It was when he used the phrase:
"I doubt whether village shops, as a group, will have a great deal to fear",
that I realised that there was a great deal to fear. When Ministers have a brief which puts their views in those words, then we know that there is something quite badly wrong.
The fact of the matter is that we are not just considering the case of the non-domestic rate. Village shops tend to be run by a husband and wife; it is very difficult for one person alone to do it. The husband and wife running a village shop will pay two personal community charges and the business rate set at the national level. I think that is the thrust of the argument and that is why, even if this amendment is not right, the Government must find some way of protecting village shops.
The Earl of Caithness: The reason why I said the words which the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, repeated, about village shops as a group, was as a result of my knowledge of rural village shops and of rating and valuation. I do not think that as a group those shopkeepers have the concerns that are being expressed. Undoubtedly there will be some who, because of the changes in circumstances, will face rate increases. That has not been denied.
However, that is precisely why we have already built in the transitional provisions together with the extension that I propose to move later on this evening for a further transitional provision for as long as necessary, to make sure that the small businesses and

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indeed large businesses adapt to the new system that we propose of regular five-yearly revaluations. I suggest to the Committee that, combined with the linking of rates to the retail prices index in the future, is a considerable benefit to the small business.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: That does not even attempt to answer the point I made; namely, that it is a combination of the burden of two personal community charges with the business rate on the shop which will be the difficulty.
Lord Stanley of Alderley: I should like to thank noble Lords for the contributions which they have made, and particularly the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh. Village shops have much to fear. I shall keep my powder dry now because I have some fairly nasty figures which will come up at the next stage but I do not think my noble friend understands the vital social role which these shops play in the village. That must be brought clearly home to the Government who time and time again say that they are worried about this. Meanwhile I shall reserve my position to come back at Report stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 41 [Unoccupied hereditaments: liability]:
The Earl of Caithness The Earl of Caithness moved Amendment No. 106B:
Page 24, line 20, leave out from beginning to end of line 26 and insert ("the following conditions are fulfilled in respect of any day in the year—

(a) on the day none of the hereditament is occupied,

(b) on the day the ratepayer is the owner of the whole of the hereditament,

(c) the hereditament is shown for the day in a local non-domestic rating list in force for the year, and

(d) on the day the hereditament falls within a description prescribed by the Secretary of State by regulations.").

The noble Earl said: I beg to move Amendment No. 106B and at the same time to speak to Amendment No. 107ZB. These two government amendments replace the present yearly liability to rating with a daily liability. The reason for this is simple. In the view of parliamentary counsel, while the present yearly liability works well at the moment, without the body of precedent and usage that attaches to the present system there could be scope for the misinterpretation of the method of calculation where a ratepayer had occupied a property for that part of a year. The change is therefore necessary in the interests of greater precision. I commend these amendments to the Committee. I beg to move.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Alport): I have to advise Members of the Committee that if this amendment is agreed to, I shall not be able to call Amendment No. 106C or Amendment No. 107.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I think we shall have to do something about the grouping arrangements on this Bill. The noble Earl has moved two amendments which I am the first to agree are mainly drafting amendments. However, partly because of reasons of
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pre-emption to which the noble Lord, the Deputy Chairman of Committees, has referred and partly because the grouping covers it as well, I wish to speak now, and I think it is proper that I should speak now to Amendment No. 107 which is by no means a drafting amendment.
The Earl of Caithness: I quite agree with the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, that it is right for him to speak to Amendment No. 107 and to some other amendments grouped with it. The reason I did not speak to them before is that the noble Lord has not spoken to them and I thought it would be discourteous.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I am grateful to the noble Earl. Amendment No. 107 which will fall if Amendment No. 106B were agreed to, is on a very major matter. We are discussing the whole issue of the rating of empty properties. As proposed by the Government, decisions about the rating of empty properties will be taken by the Secretary of State in the form of regulations. I put it to the Committee that rating of empty properties has historically been a very sensitive issue in local government. It has been one on which there have been disagreements between different residents in particular areas, and strong differences of view between one local authority and another.
This is a matter where really the local knowledge of local authorities—the circumstances under which they find themselves, the extent to which there are empty properties being kept empty deliberately in hope of a capital or rental gain, and the extent to which empty properties are empty for no discreditable reason—enables them to consider the situation very much better than the Secretary of State. I am not making a party point here. This has been a matter of great concern to Westminster City Council which wanted to take action on empty properties in its area, in my view rightly.
There are many things which the Secretary of State has to provide for by regulation—although nothing like as many as there are in this Bill. But this is a very clear example of something which should be dealt with by the local authority with full knowledge of local circumstances and in accordance with the wishes of the electorate. I hope very much that before the noble Earl moves Amendment No. 106B, which would pre-empt my amendment, he will indicate sufficient sympathy with this amendment to enable me to bear its loss under pre-emption without saying, as I would otherwise have to do, that this must be dealt with at a later stage of the Bill.
7 p.m.
Lord Rippon of Hexham: I hope that the Minister will give consideration to this question of the rating of empty properties, either now or at some subsequent stage. As the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, said, there is a history of discussion about the rating of empty properties. I hope that it will never happen to my noble friend the Minister that he will follow what increasingly has become a practice, namely, that of former Ministers getting up subsequently and declaring, "I am afraid I got it all wrong."

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In this instance I can say mea culpa, because I recall how I was caught by an undertaking of a predecessor that the Government would rate empty property if the developer of Centre Point did not either let it or sell it. The poor man could do neither, but such was the pressure of public opinion at a time when property values were rising and he was thought to be gaining an unearned increment, that we rated empty property.
I am not sure that that is always the right thing to do, especially in regard to new development. A developer may start off in a boom period, but after a year or two he may find himself in the middle of a slump. Therefore he is unable to let his property. I think that at least some provision should be made whereby a ratepayer could demonstrate that he has made his best endeavours to let or sell the property concerned. Otherwise it might result in an unfair penalty being superimposed on a developer who is already incurring a financial loss. There should be some discretion built into this.
My own view is that it is right that the local authority, which after all can assess the problem, given that there is a suitable right of appeal for the ratepayer to show that he has used his best endeavours to let or to sell the property, should be given this discretion. I hope that the Government will be willing to give consideration to this matter. It may be that if empty rate provision is to continue, it should not apply to newly constructed property, or at least not for a period of time. That indeed is already the case in the City of London which acts under local powers. In Tower Hamlets, where a great deal of redevelopment is going on, in practice what is now happening is that an extended period is given when no rates are payable. I hope that, as regards some of the points that the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, has made, the Government will be sympathetic in looking at this matter, either now or in the future.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I am grateful for the support of the noble Lord in general terms. I was amused to find Harry Hyams described as a poor man.
Lord Weinstock: The Members of the Committee have been mostly concerned in what they have been saying with office property and residential property in urban areas. I hope that they will remember that there are industrial sites where there are many factories and where sometimes it becomes necessary to close a part of a site—a factory. If there were no discretion to allow a rebate of rates for that part of the site, perhaps a firm would decide to move away entirely. That would not necessarily be desirable. The local authority would be the best judge of such a situation.
Lord Ross of Newport: The noble Lords, Lord Rippon of Hexham and Lord Weinstock, have spoken to Amendments Nos. 107 and 107ZA. The latter appears under my name. I am very glad to have the support of the noble Lords. I think they are right, and I totally support the words of the noble Lord who has just sat down. In the past ten years or so the rating of empty properties has led to necessary
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demolition or taking the roofs off industrial premises, particularly in the West Midlands. It is perfectly true too, although it is hard to imagine now, that in 1975 to 1976 occupiers of shop properties could not sell them. They found that they literally could not sell them, but they were paying substantial rates on empty properties.
On the other hand, I have tried to show in the amendment which I gather I cannot move, that there is a middle passage, and that perhaps after six months a local authority would be entitled to levy a rate or could levy a rate where it was shown that the owner was not using his best endeavours to let or sell that hereditament.
I wish the Government would go further. If we are to have regulations, I wish to put to the Government the question of land or property which is totally without a roof over it, and therefore incapable of occupation. I think that those types of properties sometimes should be rated. I should like to move on to that matter later.
It seems to me that we are falling between two stools. On the one hand, if we are not careful, we shall rate people who should not be rated and who are genuinely trying to sell. On the other hand, there are people who are sitting on land and who have been sitting on land for many years which should be developed and which is zoned for development. Such land is causing a blight in many parts of our towns, but we do nothing to those people at all. I wish we could get this right.
Lord Monson: I wish to support the words of the noble Lord, Lord Ross of Newport. The Government are proposing to give relief from the community charge where domestic properties are vacant for three months. Logically speaking therefore they should apply the same formula to industrial and similar properties.
The Earl of Caithness: The effect of Amendments Nos. 106C and 107ZA would be to exclude from rating, by primary legislation, all non-domestic property unoccupied for less than six months. The effect of Amendent No. 107 of the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, is slightly different and would be to restore local authority discretion over the categories of property to be subject to unoccupied property rating, and over the level of that rating.
In dealing with these amendments it might be helpful if I deal with the background to the rating of unoccupied property and our policy. Under the present system rates are not payable on empty non-domestic property for up to three months. After that, local authorities may decide to rate such property, up to a maximum of 50 per cent. of full rates—and with the exception of empty factories and warehouses which are excluded from rating altogether by order of the Secretary of State, and various other categories such as listed buildings which are excluded by main legislation.
Historically, the purpose of empty property rating has been partly to reflect the fact that empty properties do benefit from some local authority services—police, fire and so forth—and partly to encourage owners to bring empty property back into

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use. Authorities have had a discretion whether to levy empty rates to enable them to take account of local market conditions, which will affect the speed with which owners can reasonably be expected to let or sell their empty properties. However, when types of property have been in excess supply in many parts of the country, as with factories and warehouses, the Government have stepped in to exclude them from empty rating.
About half of the local authorities in England exercise their discretion to levy rates on unoccupied property. But these include almost all the London boroughs and the majority of metropolitan districts. The proportion of empty properties subject to rates at the moment is therefore substantially over half, and some £40 million of income is generated.
In considering the treatment of unoccupied non-domestic property under the new system, we face a choice between three options. We can continue with something like the present system under which authorities can exercise discretion within limits over whether to rate unoccupied domestic property; we can go for a standardised approach under which the Secretary of State has power to prescribe categories of empty property to be rated; or we can simply exempt unoccupied non-domestic property from rating altogether.
The option of continued local authority discretion which would be allowed by the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, must be seen in the context of the national non-domestic rate pool. We have heeded the representations of the local authority associations which have made it clear to us that it would be unrealistic to expect authorities to exercise a discretion on the matter which offers few direct benefits to their areas if community charge payers are to be expected to make good lost revenue in whole or in part. On the other hand, if the costs were to be borne by the national pool it is clear that local authorities would have no incentive to exercise the discretion sensibly, particularly in view of the difficulties often associated with enforcing empty property rates. We feel that following that approach would, over time, lead to a situation where empty property rating would fade away altogether with a short-fall of some £40 million in the national non-domestic rate yield which could only be met by increasing the poundage on occupied non-domestic property or by placing the burden on the community charge payer or the national taxpayer.
In view of the benefits enjoyed by even empty business properties and the case for providing some clear incentives not to keep property empty unnecessarily, we believe that some empty property rate is appropriate. We accept the logic that under the national non-domestic pool arrangements the matter should fall to be determined by the Secretary of State in the regulations. Under Clause 41 it will fall to the Secretary of State to decide which categories of hereditament should be subject to the standard 50 per cent. empty property rate. The cost of that relief will then be borne by the national pool under separate regulations.
We believe that for England and Wales the Bill represents the best approach. In those areas where
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empty property rating is not practised presently it will lead to some new burdens. We hope to use the regulation-making powers so that the scope of empty property rating reflects general market conditions. So, for example, we would not at present wish to bring empty factory and warehouse premises within the scope of the provision. We shall also retain the present exclusions for listed buildings. It will be possible to make separate regulations for England and Wales to reflect differences in market conditions in the two countries.
We accept part of the argument which lies behind the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Ross of Newport. We wish to allow a reasonable period during which property may remain unoccupied following a change of owner or tenant without becoming liable to rating. I cannot follow him in the period of exemption in whole or in part. I have listened to what has been said, and I can give an assurance that we shall consider and consult on the length of the period of grace before empty property rating is to apply. From my own experience as a surveyor I believe that the use of primary legislation to define and fix the exemption period would be inappropriate and unduly restrictive. That is what it has proved to be.
The regulations, however unpalatable they are to the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, give the necessary flexibility. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Ross of Newport, will understand that. I therefore hope that Members of the Committee who have taken part in our useful discussions will read and consider what I have said when it is printed in the Official Report.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
[Amendments Nos. 106C, 107 and 107ZA not moved.]
The Earl of Caithness The Earl of Caithness moved amendment No. 107ZB:
Page 24, line 31, leave out ("on") and insert ("in respect of").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 41, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 42 agreed to.
Lord Hesketh: I suggest that this is a suitable hour to break for dinner and that we should resume the Committee stage of the Bill at 8.15. I beg to move that the House do now resume.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.

Consumer Arbitration Agreements Bill
7.15 p.m.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I understand that no amendments have been set down to this Bill and that no noble Lord has indicated a wish to move a manuscript amendment or to speak in Committee. Therefore, unless any noble Lord objects, I beg to move that the order of commitment be discharged.
Moved, That the order of commitment be discharged.—(Lord Lucas of Chilworth.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Lord Chancellor's Salary Order 1988
Viscount Davidson Viscount Davidson rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 5th May be approved [25th Report from the Joint Committee].
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, the need for this order arises out of the link between the salaries of the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice. The independent Top Salaries Review Body recommended in 1983 that the Lord Chancellor should be paid more than the Lord Chief Justice in recognition of his position as the head of the judiciary and of his wider responsibilities. The House accepted the principle of the TSRB recommendation and has successively re-affirmed this with the approval of the Lord Chancellor's Salary Orders for the years 1984 to 1987.
An annual Lord Chancellor's Salary Order is necessary because the Lord Chief Justice's salary is set annually following the recommendations of the Top Salaries Review Body. This year the TSRB recommended a salary of £85,250 for the Lord Chief Justice—a 5·3 per cent. increase. The Government accepted this figure but decided to stage all the TSRB recommended salaries so that a 4·0 per cent. increase was paid from 1st April with the balance from 1st October. For the Lord Chief Justice this meant a salary of £84,240 from 1st April to 30th September, and £85,250 from 1st October.
The Lord Chancellor has a salary lead of £2,000. The House accepted this figure in 1983, and it has remained at that level since. Its real value has eroded since it was first established, but this of itself is not a valid reason for changing it. The lead exists because the Lord Chancellor is head of the judiciary and this makes it right that an appropriate differential should exist between him and the Lord Chief Justice. A lead of £2,000 fulfills such a requirement.
The order establishes the Lord Chancellor's salary at £86,240 for the period between the date when it comes into force—it cannot be made retrospective—and 30th September. From 1st October it is established at £87,250.
These salary levels derive directly from the TSRB report and embody a principle established five years ago and accepted by the House on five previous occasions. I hope that once again it will commend itself to the House this year. I commend the order to the House.
Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 5th May be approved [25th Report from the Joint Committee].—(Viscount Davidson.)
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, the relationship between your Lordships' House and another place is obviously most harmonious, and happily so, since I observe that the order went through the other place "on the nod" on 26th May.
Under the provisions of the draft order, the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor will receive a gross raise per annum on a full year of some £4,250. Your Lordships will perhaps note that owing to the provisions of the last Budget, and in terms of a net pay increase, which, after all, the noble and learned Lord will be sufficiently human to regard as his extra
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reward in the matter, he will receive in a full year some £13,000 a year more than he received in what may euphemistically be termed take-home pay during the preceding full year.
Perhaps it may be of interest for your Lordships to recall that in 1979 the Lord Chancellor—at that time the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones—received some £20,000 a year gross. It is quite clear that matters have marched on considerably since that time. Whether that is due to the activities of the review body or to the rate of inflation is immaterial.
It is interesting to observe that the take-home pay of the Lord Chancellor in the next full year will be many times a multiple of the gross income received by some of the poorer sections of our community. That indicates that, in the march to a rather greater degree of fairness than exists at the present time, we still have a long way to go.
On the other hand, if one considers relativity it should perhaps be borne in mind that the new salary of the Lord Chancellor will be very much less than is at the moment fashionable among the leading captains of industry, who have been known to award themselves £1 million a year, or even more, as what are euphemistically called the nation's creators of wealth. We on this side of the House have not the slightest hesitation in saying that on a value for money basis—a term which I am sure is very close to the hearts of Her Majesty's Government—the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor represents infinitely better value for money than some of those so-called captains of industry. For that reason we are very happy indeed to concur with the terms of the order.
The noble and learned Lord has always shown himself—as have his predecessors—most accessible to Members of your Lordships' House, and is always very co-operative in any inquiries that are made of him. He has a formidable task before him and he should be sustained in that task by remuneration of the kind proposed in the order.
There is a long way to go before all the subjects of Her Majesty are equal before the law. The recent review which is being considered by the noble and learned Lord marks some endeavour to ensure that the myth of all Her Majesty's subjects being equal before the law ultimately becomes a fact. That endeavour will need many labours by the noble and learned Lord in bringing to your Lordships' House those measures of which he is so conspicuously capable. Those measures are necessary in order to ensure that there is a greater measure of fairness and justice, not only in the administration of the law itself but also in its availability to those citizens who are unfortunately unable to amass the kind of resources that would enable them to combat cases brought by very large commercial enterprises or to bring cases against such enterprises, which are able to afford vast fees for legal advice and for the employment of counsel. We shall observe with interest and indeed give every possible encouragement to the noble and learned Lord in those endeavours, which we sincerely hope he will undertake.
We on this side of the House welcome the order laid before your Lordships. We welcome also its

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pensions implications, although we trust that, subject to the harsh arbitrament of political arithmetic, his retirement may be long deferred. We support the Motion.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, for his reception of the order. I was interested to hear his accountant's view of various matters. I am sure that my noble and learned friend will also be most grateful.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now adjourn during pleasure until 8.15 p.m.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
[The Sitting was suspended from 7.25 to 8.15 p.m.]

Local Government Finance Bill
House again in Committee.
The Earl of Caithness The Earl of Caithness moved Amendment No. 107ZC:
After Clause 42 insert the following new clause:
("Discretionary relief
.—(1) Where the first and second conditions mentioned in subsections (1) and (2) below are fulfilled for a day which is a chargeable day within the meaning of section 39 or 41 above (as the case may be)—

(a) the chargeable amount for the day shall be such as is determined by, or found in accordance with rules determined by, the charging authority concerned, and

(b) sections 39(4) to (6) and 40 or (as the case may be) sections 41(4) and 42 above shall not apply as regards the day.

(2) The first condition is that one or more of the following applies on the chargeable day—

(a) the ratepayer is a charity or trustees for a charity, and the hereditament is wholly or mainly used for charitable purposes (whether of that charity or of that and other charities);

(b) the hereditament is not an excepted hereditament, and all or part of it is occupied for the purposes of one or more institutions or other organisations none of which is established or conducted for profit and each of whose main objects are charitable or are otherwise philanthropic or religious or concerned with education, social welfare, science, literature or the fine arts;

(c) the hereditament is not an excepted hereditament, it is wholly or mainly used for puposes of recreation, and all or part of it is occupied for the purposes of a club, society or other organisation not established or conducted for profit.

(3) The second condition is that, during a period which consists of or includes the chargeable day, a decision of the charging authority concerned operates to the effect that this section applies as regards the hereditament concerned.
(4) A determination under subsection(1)(a) above—

(a) must be such that the chargeable amount for the day is less than the amount it would be apart from this section;

(b) may be such that the chargeable amount for the day is 0;

(c) may be varied by a further determination of the authority under subsection (1)(a) above.

(5) A decision under subsection (3) above may be revoked by a further decision of the authority.
(6) A decision under subsection (3) above is invalid as regards a day if made after the end of the financial year in which the day falls.
(7) The Secretary of State may make regulations containing provision—

(a) requiring notice to be given of any determination or decision;

(b) limiting the power to revoke a decision or vary a determination;

(c) as to other matters incidental to this section.

(8) A hereditament is an excepted hereditament if all or part of it is occupied (otherwise than as trustee) by a charging authority or a precepting authority falling within section 142(2)(a) to (f) or (h) to (k) below.").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Earl of Caithness The Earl of Caithness moved Amendment No. 107ZD:
After Clause 42, insert the following new clause:
("Discretionary relief: supplementary
.—(1) This section applies for the purposes of section (Discretionary relief) above.
(2) A hereditament not in use shall be treated as wholly or mainly used for charitable purposes if it appears that when next in use it will be wholly or mainly used for charitable purposes.
(3) A hereditament not in use shall be treated as wholly or mainly used for purposes of recreation if it appears that when next in use it will be wholly or mainly used for purposes of recreation.
(4) A hereditament which is wholly unoccupied shall be treated as an excepted hereditament if it appears that when any of it is next occupied the hereditament will be an excepted hereditament.
(5) If a hereditament is wholly unoccupied but it appears that it or any part of it when next occupied will be occupied for particular purposes, the hereditament or part concerned (as the case may be) shall be treated as occupied for those purposes.").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Hesketh Lord Hesketh moved Amendment No. 107ZE:
After Clause 42, insert the following new clause:
("Reduction or remission of liability.
.—(1) A charging authority may—

(a) reduce any amount a person is liable to pay to it under section 39 or 41 above, or

(b) remit payment of the whole of any amount a person would otherwise be liable to pay to it under section 39 or 41 above.

(2) But an authority may not act under this section unless it is satisfied that—

(a) the ratepayer would sustain hardship if the authority did not do so, and

(b) it is reasonable for the authority to do so, having regard to the interests of persons subject to its community charges.

(3) Where an authority acts under this section, section 39 or 41 above shall be construed accordingly as regards the case concerned.").
The noble Lord said: A charging authority is implicitly required by its general fiduciary duty to collect rates as diligently as may be and to refrain from enforcing debts only when to pursue a debtor further would not be cost effective. This new clause gives authorities a discretionary power to refrain from enforcing a debt for unpaid non-domestic rates where this would cause hardship to the ratepayer.
There are provisions in current rating legislation which allow an authority to remit rates on the grounds of poverty or hardship. But it was not thought that the provision was designed for use in the non-domestic sector. As a consequence the Government's "yellow paper" on Amendments to rating legislation in England and Wales proposed that the provision should not be retained. The responses from local authorities, professional and business organisations all argued strongly that there were circumstances where the reduction or remission of

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rates can make the difference between survival or bankruptcy of a business.
The Government accepted the force of these arguments and gave an assurance in another place that an amendment to the Bill would be tabled. The new clause provides authorities with the power to reduce or remit the payment of rates, but only where the authority is satisfied, first, that the ratepayer would sustain hardship if it did not do so and, secondly, it is reasonable to do so having regard to the wider interests of the people in the area, on whom some or all of the cost will fall as community charge payers. I therefore commend this new clause to the Committee. I beg to move.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: We on these Benches are in general sympathy with the amendment but we are rather worried by the phrase "having regard to the interests of persons subject to the community charges", if that phrase means that the revenue that will be forgone by these provisions comes from the general community charge pool.
As the noble Lord will be aware, the present situation is that it is discretionary rate relief. What we would prefer to see is that the revenue foregone should come from the national non-domestic rate pool. I understand that in another place the Minister responsible indicated that this is what would be done, but we do not see an appropriate amendment in the appropriate schedule. I should like to have some assurance from the noble Lord that this is the intention, and I should like him to tell us how it will be given effect to.
Lord Renton: When we were discussing Amendment No. 103 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, and my noble friend Lord Caithness gave a welcome assurance that he would consider this question of discretionary and mandatory relief being given to charity, I assumed that the undertaking he gave was an undertaking to consider this new clause in the light of all that was said in that debate. I should be very disappointed if I found that in passing this new clause we were doing it in a way which was not covered by that undertaking.
Lord Hesketh: In answer to the question of the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, the fact is that part of that charge will come from the national pool but that is a matter which is still under discussion so I cannot give him a specific answer this evening. If I may, I shall write to the noble Lord, Lord Renton, about his point concerning charity.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I do not think that either of those answers is entirely satisfactory. Having willed the end, the Government must have thought about the means and should be able to reply to the noble Lord, Lord Renton. As regards my question, will the Minister give an assurance that we shall receive an answer on this point before we reach Report stage?
Lord Hesketh: I do not think I can go further—
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Does the noble Lord wish me to speak for a few minutes longer? If so, I
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should be happy to do that. This is not the first occasion on which I have been required to play the role of cover for the messenger. It seems to me to be rather like covering the back when a loving cup is passed at a City banquet. I am becoming quite used to the role. Perhaps I have now carried on speaking for long enough to permit the noble Lord to answer.
Lord Hesketh: As I was just about to say before being so ably assisted by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, we hope very much that the consultations that are taking place will have been completed before the Report stage, in which case we shall be able to give a specific answer. Obviously I cannot give him an undertaking that they will have been completed at that time.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 43 agreed to.
Schedule 5 [Non-domestic rating: exemption]:
Lord Mason of Barnsley Lord Mason of Barnsley moved Amendment No. 107A:
Page 100, line 45, after ("livestock") insert ("or the breeding or rearing of horses or ponies").
The noble Lord said: I apologise for the absence of my noble friend Lord Colnbrook, who unfortunately is unable to be present as he has to chair a meeting abroad. To be quite honest, we mistimed the arrival of this amendment on the floor of the Chamber. It therefore falls to me to move Amendment No. 107A and I hope that the Committee will bear with me as I attempt to persuade the Minister that, although it is not the Government's fault, they have been thrust into a taxation muddle and this amendment is designed to help them in the awkward and difficult predicament in which they find themselves, particularly in view of the court case of last December.
This amendment seeks to extend exemption from rates in respect of agricultural premises to include buildings which are used in the breeding and rearing of horses and ponies. Because of the decision that emanated from the Whitsbury Manor Stud case, it seems that the present legislation does not exempt from rates the buildings that are used for the breeding and rearing of horses and ponies. That decision caused a major disturbance in the industry. Prior to the decision, rates had not been levied on buildings used for the breeding and rearing of horses and ponies on farms. Every section or organisation within that vitally important industry believes that the previous position should be restored. Those organisations include the National Light Horse Breeding Society, the British Horse Society, the Jockey Club, the Country Landowners' Association, the Horse Racing Advisory Council, the National Farmers Union, the National Pony Society and the Thoroughbred Breeders' Association; and of course one must not forget the agricultural workers who can readily see some of their jobs put at risk. That is quite an important and formidable Lobby.
All those people wish to see the previous position restored and ensure that in this legislation it is made clear that the breeding and rearing of horses and

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ponies is regarded for rating purposes as an agricultural activity, as it has been for nearly 50 years until quite recently and as it still is for purposes of income tax, corporation tax and capital taxation.
If the position is not restored, not only will it be a deterrent and curb breeding, but it will also be much to the detriment of the racing industry and affect our exports of horses and horsemeat. I believe it to be Parliament's will that the previous position should be restored. During the 50 years of exemption Parliament had ample opportunity to change the situation but chose not to do so. Obviously Parliament was satisfied. It could have removed the exemption if it so desired when tax relief was enlarged to include fish farms and broiler houses, or when agricultural relief for estate duty purposes was debated in Parliament. It did not do so. There was never any suggestion that horse and pony breeders should not qualify for rate exemption on their agricultural buildings.
Again in 1984 Parliament confirmed the importance of horse breeding and stud farms. The then Financial Secretary to the Treasury stressed the role of the bloodstock industry and said, during the course of a speech in the other place which I shall paraphrase, that it was an important part of our national heritage and a valuable part of our economy. Exports of well bred horses exceed f100 million a year and the industry employs 150,000 to 200,000 people. The racing industry also gives pleasure to millions and the Government appreciate the sizeable sum contributed to the Exchequer by the racing industry in the form of the betting levy. Time after time Parliament has understood and fully appreciated the importance of the industry and the assistance that should be given to it. What is more, the Treasury has concurred.
The Government are actively encouraging farmers to engage in making alternative uses of their land. For that purpose grants towards the capital cost of buildings are available. That makes sense. Accordingly, farmers are being advised to diversify by MAFF and ADAS (the Ministry of Agriculture and the Agricultural Advisory Service), especially in the light of falling returns from food production. Horse and pony breeding and rearing is a natural diversification for a farmer. Therefore exemption from rates on buildings used for that purpose is simply common sense and in line with the Ministry's general objectives.
Also both thoroughbred and non-thoroughbred horse breeders supply national hunt horses, point-to-point horses and event horses and the breeders of those types of animal find it difficult to be certain of trading profitably because of the length of the breeding cycle to the point of sale and the high risk nature of the exercise. There is also always the possibility that horse and pony breeding is judged wrongly as just for the rich. That is not so. I draw the attention of the Committee to a speech delivered in the House of Commons in 1984 by the then Financial Secretary to the Treasury in the course of the debate on the Finance (No. 2) Bill, when he said:
"the industry, like many others, undoubtedly includes some very wealthy individuals, but its bedrock comprises the many small
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breeders countrywide with a few acres and a handful of mares". [Official Report, Commons, 11/7/84; col. 1071.]
So the vast majority of all horses and ponies come at the bottom end of the market where production costs are critical. Most of the small breeders are incorporated in mixed farming enterprises, and their activities are an integral part of their farming business. The rating imposition could be quite important to them and adversely affect them, especially as the United Kingdom breeders have suffered some disadvantage in the treatment of VAT within the European Economic Community. In this respect, we must note that much business is done selling horsemeat and the United Kingdom is the largest producer of horsemeat for human consumption in Europe.
It is a useful diversification for farmers that should be encouraged and rating exemption will help. Just as the Treasury through the Financial Secretary stressed the importance of the bloodstock industry, I believe that this activity of breeding and rearing horses and ponies equally should receive recognition by the derating of buildings used for this purpose. I emphasise that horse and pony breeders are seeking not a special concession in the Bill but merely a restatement of the exemption that prevailed in practice for nearly 50 years.
In brief, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food desires it; ADAS, the advisory service, advises it; the Treasury has said it, and Parliament has not disagreed. I hope that the Committee will agree with the amendment and support it accordingly.
8.30 p.m.
Lord Middleton: I support the noble Lord, Lord Mason of Barnsley, and endorse his statement that what we are asking for is a confirmation of the pattern of taxation affecting the breeding and rearing of horses that, up to last year, was accepted and agreed by successive governments for nearly half a century. We are asking the Government to put sense into a situation where at present there is no sense. This implies no criticism—indeed, I would not dare so to criticize—of the decision in the Whitsbury stud case only last December. There was then a doubt as to how the law stood. Because of the way the case was resolved on appeal, there is this anomaly, to which the noble Lord, Lord Mason, has referred. The amendment would remove any doubt as to whether horse breeding is an agricultural activity.
Perhaps I may illustrate how nonsensical and illogical the present situation is. If on one's farm one has a brood mare or a pony turned out by day in a field, it is agricultural. When one brings it in at night for shelter in a loose box, as one will do in winter, it is non-agricultural and the loose box is rateable. If, as is so often the case, the loose box is part of a complex of farm buildings, it will be the only part of that complex that is rateable. It must make sense either to treat horse breeding as an agricultural activity for all fiscal purposes, including rating, or to regard horse breeding as non-agricultural for fiscal purposes, including all taxation purposes.
However, if one did that, not only would it require elaborate amendments in a Finance Bill but, as the noble Lord, Lord Mason, pointed out, it would not

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be in line with government policy. He has reminded us of the passage of the 1984 Finance Act, in which it was confirmed that for tax purposes the breeding and rearing of horses and ponies and the land, houses and ancillary buildings used in connection with those activities shall be taken as agricultural. The Financial Secretary in that debate in another place said:
"This is not a concession; it is a confirmation of the pattern of taxation".
The noble Lord, Lord Mason, referred to the implications for United Kingdom agriculture and the need for diversification. One of the measures agreed by the European Council of Ministers this year, designed to bring the CAP under much stricter budgetary control along with the so-called stabilisers that will lower guaranteed prices as production exceeds an agreed level, is that member states shall adopt a plan for what is called set-aside of agricultural land. It is highly probably that under the United Kingdom scheme, which has to be finalised by the end of next month, farmers will be encouraged to put a proportion of their cornland down to grass. That would make good sense, providing that it does not lead to a rapid increase in our livestock numbers leading to yet more surpluses. This may very well provide encouragement for farmers to turn to breeding and raising horses and ponies on this set-aside land, but they would surely hesitate if they are to be penalised through the rating system.
It would be wrong to penalise our bloodstock industry, as the noble Lord, Lord Mason, said, which is acknowledged by the Government to play an important role in the economy, especially if it is to be put at a disadvantage in comparison with its competitors on the Continent and in Ireland. The rearing of horses is labour-intensive. It would be a great pity if the money and employment generated by the breeders of thoroughbreds were to be transferred abroad. There is a danger that it will be unless we can get the Bill right. I am sure that the development commission will have strong views on this.
The noble Lord, Lord Mason, referred to the lower end of the market. He said that some 3 million people who now use horses for recreation need to be supplied with animals to ride. Here surely is an alternative crop for British farmers that should be encouraged and not penalised. All that is needed is for horse breeding to be treated once more as an agricultural activity for all fiscal purposes, including rating.
I hope that my noble friend the Minister will consider this modest proposal carefully. It has a great bearing on the well-being of our rural community.
The Earl of Balfour: Heavy horses are being used more in agricultural work now than they have been for many years. There is a steady increase in the use of heavy horses in place of the tractor. On land that can take that kind of animal, it is kinder to the land and of great benefit to the farmer.
The Earl of Radnor: I wholeheartedly support the amendment if only because it is so irregular that horses should be left out of the farming scene in this way. So far as I know, every single form of livestock
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is included. There has been the recent addition, in which I myself have to play a part, of fishes. If fishes could be added in, horses surely should be for the reasons so well given, particularly when farmers are in for a harder time probably than they have been used to. Times have been getting gradually worse over the past few years. It is ridiculous to say that diversification should take place and then to penalise that diversification but not the crops from which one wishes to diversify. It is wrong in every way. I hope that my noble friend will agree to tidy up the situation once and for all and make horses part of the farm regardless of whether they are smart racehorses or Shetland ponies bred for the amusement of children and suchlike.
Lord Renton: I wish to refer to a matter that has not so far been mentioned. There has historically been exemption of agricultural land and buildings for a number of reasons. In modern times I think the strongest is the contribution that agriculture makes to the balance of payments.
If I may, I shall take the Committee back rather a long time to 1960 when Lord Butler of Saffron Walden was Home Secretary. He charged me with the responsibility of some rather tough negotiations with the bookmakers. We then prepared and piloted through another place the Horserace Betting Levy Act, which has undoubtedly been of great benefit to racing. At that time it was acknowledged that the bloodstock industry also had a valuable contribution to make to the balance of payments. Also at that time the bloodstock industry had the exemption—through the definition of "agricultural land and buildings"—that it had until this recent case.
All that I am suggesting is that what held good in 1960 about the value of that industry in contributing to the balance of payments is just as valid today, in fact perhaps more so. One could elaborate, but I hope that this is a point of which my noble friends will not lose sight. I strongly support the amendment.
The Earl of Carnarvon: I should declare a vested interest to the extent that I am president of the Thoroughbred Breeders' Association and I am a breeder. However, I should like to help the Committee by giving a few statistics in support of the excellent proposition suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Mason. On the thoroughbred breeding side, there are about 6,500 breeders: 4,500 own one mare; 1,000 own two mares and 1,000 own more than two mares. Of that last 1,000, only 50 thoroughbred breeders own 15 mares or more. I believe that those 50 breeders provide an enormous amount of employment within the industry. They provide an enormous amount of foreign currency and retain very important blood lines in the stallions in this country.
I felt that it was important to explain to the Committee that although they may be wealthy people, they benefit the bloodstock scene in a very big way. I fully support the proposition made by the noble Lord, Lord Mason.
Baroness Blatch: I feel that most of the speakers tonight are speaking for the amendment. I believe it behoves someone not to speak against it—I do not

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intend to do that—but to broach rather sensitively the area of thinking behind the possibility that somebody may wish to tax this group of people in a new way under the proposed reform.
If we are to take the amendment and all the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Mason, seriously, this is an argument for consistency. It is not special pleading on behalf of these people; it is asking the Government to make very clear in all their determinations on this subject whether or not this group of people should come under the umbrella of agriculture. The temptation is to confuse this with the other subject which needs mentioning which concerns whether or not agriculture should be brought into the rating system.
That however is a different subject which should be tackled quite separately and distinctly from the proposition made by the amendment. The amendment is asking for the status quo. It is suggesting that while the Bill is being discussed the status quo should prevail, that agriculture should subsume the horse and pony breeding businesses. If anybody is tempted to think—and this point was made by the previous speaker—that this group of people is disproportionately affluent in the community, evidence has been given to the contrary. If they are tempted to believe that these people should be brought into the rating system, I would seriously suggest that that should be the subject for another day and another debate. We must concentrate on the point that the noble Lord, Lord Mason, made so well and which was reinforced by the comments of my noble friend Lord Renton; namely, that historically such people have been accepted as being part of the agricultural scene. That today is more significant than ever when enormous efforts are being made to pursuade farmers to diversify. Many of them will diversify into this line of business and I believe that the argument for consistency is very great. I support the amendment.
Lord Boardman: I follow my noble friend in support of the argument for consistency. Whatever mental aberrations the court had in deciding that horses and ponies were not livestock I know not, for I have not read the judgment. Surely the consistent argument is that horses and ponies are just as much livestock as Hereford bulls and all the other kinds of animals that farmers breed. I very strongly support the amendment put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Mason.
Lord Borthwick: I should like to support the amendment as well. There is another matter that I have not heard mentioned since I came here this evening and that is forestry. In Scotland much of the hill country presents a very difficult situation when planted up. How the timber will be extracted when the trees are only half grown and when thinning has to take place, I am not quite sure. It will be rather difficult. Therefore I suggect that in the future when these trees require thinning and felling, horses will be required for extraction. I support the amendment.
8.45 p.m.
The Earl of Caithness: There have been many cases about whether particular types of buildings should
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enjoy agricultural exemption. The question as to whether buildings used for the breeding and rearing of horses and ponies should qualify has a long and convoluted history. Some noble Lords assert that the ruling of your Lordships' House in the appeal case of Whitsbury Farm and Stud Ltd. has introduced a new interpretation of the present law which has overturned a practice that has existed for nearly 50 years.
I must admit to the Committee that even when I was a surveyor I used to agree with the assertion that has been put forward tonight that it was clear that stud farms were derated up to 1981. I cannot agree with that assertion any more because I have discovered that there was some uncertainty between the mid-1930s and the early 1980s. Although it is agreed that many stud farms did not pay rates, I understand however that some 40 to 50 stud farms were assessed for and accepted rating during that time.
But, Lands Tribunal decisions in 1981 and 1984, the Court of Appeal's affirmation two years later, and the ruling of your Lordships' House all provide clear evidence that all stud farms should, in fact, have been rated throughout the period. The basis for claiming that they had originally been derated as a matter of law rests on the Special Commissioners for Income Tax acceptance in 1933, in a different context, that stud farm activities are "husbandry". It is also asserted that this was backed up by the decision of the Newmarket Assessment Committee in 1936 that the principle in the 1933 case could be applied in a rating context. Decisions of assessment committees are not, however, binding precedents in law, and if stud farms were not assessed as a result, that practice grew up on a misunderstanding of the earlier decisions.
I move now to the area of tax and the link with tax and rating which my noble friend Lord Middleton mentioned. There is no inconsistency here. If the breeding of horses is taken to be agricultural for capital transfer tax purposes—because there are particular reasons connected with that activity and that tax—it does not constitute a valid reason for it to be agricultural for other purposes if those purposes do not require it. If horse breeding were to be treated as agricultural for rating purposes it would be wholly exceptional.
I shall now answer the point of my noble friend Lord Boardman. The horse would be the only mammal, or indeed bird, within the definition of "agricultural" that was not kept for food or wool or for its use in farming the land.
The Earl of Radnor: We have heard this evening that the meat of the horse is used for food.
The Earl of Caithness: I am just coming to that point. The dictum of Lord Justice Lawson on the appeal of the Whitsbury Farm and Stud Ltd. pointed out that under the Local Government Act 1929—which I know my noble friend is fully conversant with—agricultural land meant land used for the purposes of contributing to human subsistence. That did not include breeding thoroughbred racing stock. Despite the fact that horsemeat is exported for consumption, we are not considering the breeding of horses specifically for that purpose tonight.

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I cannot accept assertions that there is an inconsistency in Government policy over the initiative, on the one hand, to find alternative uses for surplus agricultural land and current rating practice. The boundaries for any exemption or relief from the payment of rates have to be drawn as tightly as possible. Any shift of the line invites new pressures and perhaps I can give an example. While I appreciate that we are considering the breeding and rearing of horses and ponies, it would in practice be very difficult to resist pressure for extending exemption to other establishments using horses including racing and livery stables, pony trekking centres and even to other animal breeding establishments. The potential loss of rate income could therefore be considerable and would have to be met by other ratepayers and eventually community charge payers. I hope that my noble friend Lord Middleton will give consideration to that matter.
The Government are of course aware of the contribution that the various activities concerned with breeding, rearing and keeping horses make to the economy. To encourage these activities further, my right honourable friend the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has recently announced the availability of grants under the alternative land use proposals for livery and pony trekking. This, together with the considerable increase in leisure riding generally, will help to stimulate greater demand for horses and ponies and provide a further impetus for breeding.
But the fact remains that, unless horses are used in the farming of the land—and that covers the point raised by my noble friend Lord Balfour—they are not agricultural animals and for rating purposes the breeding of horses and ponies is not an agricultural operation. There have been assertions, so far unsubstantiated, that the imposition of rates will deter farmers from breeding and even force some breeders out of business. I cannot conceive that the typical rateable value of £20 to £25 for each purpose-built loosebox is likely to have such drastic effect on those solely or mainly engaged in horse and pony breeding as a commercial activity. I am able to accept however that a rate burden of that size could be a significant blow for the large numbers who keep on their farms—and I stress "on their farms"—one or two horses for their own enjoyment or for breeding on a small scale, largely as a hobby. Such cases also cause some practical valuation difficulties where buildings are shared for different purposes. In such cases this activity probably does not detract materially from the agricultural use of the farm. The Government are therefore prepared to provide an exemption from rates where there is a de minimis use of buildings for breeding and rearing of horses and ponies and will table an appropriate amendment at Report.
Having covered the ground fairly fully, and having removed some of the assertions that have been made in good faith but which have been proved in law to be incorrect, I should like to say that I understand the Committee's feeling about this matter. I should like to take the matter away for consideration between now and another stage, notwithstanding the
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concession that I have already announced. I hope that Members will read what I have said about the difficulties that are imposed. I also ask the Committee to consider that the land must be agricultural. Some of the people mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Carnarvon, will find that they will not benefit because their land is not agricultural but merely a paddock adjacent to the house or a couple of looseboxes at the end of the garden. As I understand the matter they will not be covered because in most cases their land will not be agricultural. There are many complications and the more one looks at the issue the more difficult it becomes. I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Mason, that we all go away and have another think. I shall be happy to meet the noble Lord between now and another stage to discuss the matter.
Lord Rippon: I am surprised by the Minister's answer. It seems to be totally against the weight of the views expressed in the Committee. It has confirmed me in a view that I have long heard and believed. It is that surveyors are awfully good on law but not so good on values, they are best left to the lawyers.
I do not believe that anyone is disputing the fact that there have been doubts about the state of the law and that a certain judgment has now been made which is no doubt correct. However, it is not the judgment that Parliament intended. I believe that it has taken everybody by surprise. Therefore, the Government should accept the amendment. I am bound to say that merely inserting a de minimis provision adds to the difficulties and uncertainties. I hope that the amendment will be pressed and the de minimis answer not accepted.
Lord Middleton: I do not know what the noble Lord, Lord Mason, will say. However, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rippon. I am glad that the Government are willing to look at the matter; it is excellent. My noble friend Lord Caithness referred to the fact that there is no intention of asking for the exclusion from rating of such establishments as training stables, riding schools and so on. As the noble Lord, Lord Mason, has said, we are very much concerned with the agricultural side of the horsebreeding enterprise.
The noble Earl referred to the complications; of course there are complications. The uncertainties to which he referred gave rise to the case which has been resolved in the way that we have described. I believe that the beauty of the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Mason, is that it removes all the uncertainty and makes the issue so much simpler. I hope that between now and Report stage we can persuade the noble Earl that this is a simple matter to resolve. I wonder what he means by the de minimis proposal. I do not know how one can differentiate between large and small breeding establishments. It is a question of, how long is a piece of string? I am encouraged by the noble Earl's reaction but I do not know what the noble Lord, Lord Mason, will say.
Lord Renton: In view of the fact that my noble friend has said that any exemption must relate to agriculture, I should like to emphasise the fact that the amendment is so drawn that if accepted it would relate only to agriculture.
The Earl of Caithness: I should be sad if the advice which my noble friend Lord Rippon gave to the noble Lord, Lord Mason, were accepted. If one makes a suggestion in good faith that we can discuss the matter between now and another stage one hopes that that will be accepted.
I stress the difference between agricultural and non-agricultural land to put it firmly on the record in case some people who believe that they might benefit from the de minimis provision, which we have already said we shall bring forward, find that ultimately they do not. I believed that it would be clearer if I spelled it out now.
Lord Mason of Barnsley: Of course the Minister will recognise the fact that the thrust of the argument was based on the reinstatement of the previous position which was held for 50 years until last December. However, we are obliged to him for his reply.
He was partly supportive and we appreciate that, but I am sorry that he has not gone as far as we should like. I do not think that at this stage it would be wise to exchange views with the Minister on the degree of ministerial support that we have received. I do not want to press the matter to a Division at this stage. However, I must remind the Minister that every contribution that was made supported the amendment. First he offered to consider fresh words at the Report stage. Secondly, he said that he would be prepared to meet Members who have prepared the amendment and spoken during the course of the debate. In the hope that we shall make further progress and have further discussions at the Report stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 108 not moved.]
9 p.m.
Lord Stallard Lord Stallard moved Amendment No. 108ZA:
Page 105, line 3, at end insert—
("Property used for homeless persons without means of support
15A. A hereditament is exempt to the extent that it consists of a charitable property which, on a voluntary basis, caters for homeless persons without means of support or persons receiving supplementary benefit or the equivalent thereof.").
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 108ZA standing in my name on the Marshalled List. Schedule 5 outlines a number of exemptions. The amendment adds one more exemption to that list. It deals with the exemption of property used for homeless persons without means of support. I know that many Members of the Committee are involved with organisations that might fit into this category. So far this evening we have dealt with big businesses and small businesses; we have dealt with sporting premises; we have dealt with social club premises; we have dealt with horses, ponies, salmon and trout. I want to deal with the Simon Community and its properties.
The Simon Community is a registered charity catering for people who are often referred to as "down and outs": people who have severe problems stemming from alcohol dependency, drug dependency and abuse and, in many cases, illiteracy often accounted for by mental illness and various
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physical and psychiatric ailments. It is that that forced me to put this amendment into this area because there are other amendments which seem to hint at the same problems.
Perhaps I may mention Clause 15(1)(a), which could be interpreted as an exemption for this community, to the extent that it refers to property used for keeping suitably occupied people who have been suffering from illness—and "illness" is defined as being something in the National Health Act 1977. I even looked up what "illness" meant in that Act, and it simply said that it includes mental disorder within the meaning of the Mental Health Act 1959.
Sadly, many of the people I have met recently among the homeless are people who are being moved into community care from the big mental institutions, but are finding themselves on the streets because of all sorts of problems in finding places to live and so on. I have found a number of people who within weeks, have been in the predicament of so many of the people who are looked after by the Simon Community because they have been released from psychiatric institutions into community care, which is very often not there. They then gravitate towards being homeless with all the problems which that brings. Therefore, I believe that it could be argued that the Simon Community could come within that category.
I had doubts, but I gave myself the benefit of the doubts and left the amendment to stand. As matters stood when I tabled the amendment—and I have heard nothing this afternoon that would change that—then the future looks financially bleak for the Simon Community. I shall not give all the reasons, but I shall outline one or two of them. At the moment the Simon Community pays a maximum of 50 per cent. of its rates because it is a charity. Under this Bill that situation will disappear and there will be no such exemption unless some alterations have been made by way of the amendments of the Minister this afternoon. I have heard all the amendments, but I have not cleared my mind as to what they all mean in relation to this amendment.
In the case of the Simon Community the Government intend to levy a collective community charge on properties where people come and go frequently. A local government official will estimate a likely occupancy rate on each of the Simon Community properties and will make it pay a collective charge on the basis of that assessment. One does not have to be a genius to understand the problem that that will cause to an outfit like Simon. In order to recoup the money the community will be expected to levy a nightly charge on each and every occupant, even those who are invited in for just a few hours overnight. In inner London that charge has been estimated to be at least £1·50 per person per night. The Simon Community would normally have about 50 members in the community each night, both workers and resident members. That would mean paying £75 each night or £27,375 a year to the local authority, and sometimes there are more than 50 people there.
Of course, that is out of the question for an organisation which relies solely on donations from supporters and sponsors. There is no government

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money or funding involved in this organisation at all. It depends entirely on its own resources. Therefore, I believe that we should look at the question of this community because it deals with people with whom no one else wishes to deal. These people are sometimes extremely difficult to cope with. They cannot be fitted into any of the excellent structured programmes that we know exist—and we are grateful that they do exist—which are operated by many admirable voluntary organisations. However, these unfortunate homeless people that I am discussing are taken in by the Simon Community and are usually without means of support. There are a number of reasons for that. They are taken into one of the four properties managed by the community, staffed by voluntary workers and maintained by donations from supporters with no outside grant.
When I say that they are taken in by the Simon Community, they are picked up on what is a "street run". I do not know whether the Committee is familiar with that, but I should like to take one or two of the Committee on this street run, when volunteers tour the streets of London and find these people in street doorways, on the pavements or on the main line stations. They are people who are obviously very ill, who are immobile and suffering from something in addition to their dependency. They are offered assistance. Very often the only assistance that can be given is for them to be taken back in the van, given a blanket to cover themselves and a cup of tea and something to eat, if they can manage it. For that assistance and service they will have to go through this paraphernalia of charging £1·50. I do not know from where they will get it. How can you charge these people £1·50 before they go away in the morning? How can you recoup your losses? How can they keep these registers? It is absolutely impossible to structure these people into the tidy little slots into which we should like these organisations to fit, according to a clause in this Bill.
I am really pleading a special case here as regards the Simon Community. These people do not receive any benefits. The other night when I went on the street run to see what the latest situation was I met a person who does not really exist. He is unable to obtain benefit because he has no identification papers. He does not know where his birth certificate is and has no recollection of either his identity or his age. How can you charge such people who have no benefits from any source?
It might be a useful exercise if Members of the Committee on their way home this evening passed through one of the main line stations or walked up one of the roads concerned to see these people because, sadly, they are there. In doing so, one should ponder for a moment on where they will be tonight if the Simon Community does not pick them up and give them shelter for the night, or refer them to somewhere suitable. From there, one should ponder further and ask how could one get £1·50 per night from those people. If they cannot pay, how can the Simon Community foot the bill for all of them? It would be ludicrous to allow the Bill to remain as it stands without special treatment and consideration being given to the Simon Community.
I should have hoped that we would be discussing not so much how to get this money from these people in the circumstances I have tried briefly to describe, but how to recompense organisations such as the Simon Community which are providing services no one else can provide, including us. One way, I suggest, we could perhaps help is to agree to this amendment, and perhaps go further and discuss the whole predicament of the Simon Community to see whether we can be of further assistance. I beg to move.
Baroness Faithfull: I am involved in a large Simon Community and also a Church Army hostel for the homeless where people come in for a night, sometimes for only half a day and perhaps for two days. As the noble Lord, Lord Stallard, said, assessment of such people is extraordinarily difficult.
I should like to make a further point. These people are what we used to call tramps. There is no question of them knowing to which local authority they are responsible. On one day they will be in, say, Banbury and the next day in Oxford; then moving on to Salisbury, or wherever it may be. The local authority, its charge, and the accounts of the authority mean absolutely nothing to them.
The running and administration of hostels is extremely difficult. At the same time, I have to say that the hostels save many men from getting into trouble with the police. As the noble Lord, Lord Stallard, said, they are saved from sleeping rough—though too many people are still sleeping rough. The whole administration is an absolute nightmare without having further complications. Perhaps my noble friend the Minister will take up the matter of accountability to local authorities, which simply cannot exist in these circumstances.
Lord Dean of Beswick: I am delighted to support this amendment because my colleague and noble friend Lord Stallard, as he has done throughout his political career, has again chosen to champion people at the lower end of the social scale. The Committee may recall earlier in our proceedings on this Bill that I referred to what happened in tramp wards in the old days. They were given a night's lodgings, even if in a low standard bed, and a frugal breakfast in the morning of perhaps a slice of toast and cocoa on which they were expected to do a day's work; but they rapidly disappeared.
The case has been expertly put by my noble friend. I was interested also in the point forcefully made by the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, regarding identification with an authority. In London, both inner and outer, the borough boundaries merge and tramps can have no concept of which borough they are in. The same situation can exist in Manchester where there are 10 metropolitan districts which, in a geographical sense, are closely related to one another. While I suspect that the biggest problem will be in the centre of Manchester, there is no doubt it will exist on the edge of town. People like myself, who lived on the outskirts of Manchester, have seen these people of no abode, with no identification, passing through daily. One could see them going to and returning from various places, sleeping rough in the park, and so on.

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It is a fact that the organisation to which my noble friend Lord Stallard referred has taken to itself what is, in some respects, a very unpleasant job on behalf of the community and which, if we had the time and resources, we should be doing ourselves. It is incumbent upon the Government, on behalf of society, to do their best to help that type of organisation. Are they to be asked to fund, collect and pay the community charge on behalf of these people? There is no doubt that they will have to pay if they are legally obliged to, but whether they will ever collect it is another matter. This will mean that the meagre resources they are able as a charity to collect from generous people and organisations who are prepared to fund them will be further dissipated.
I hope that in his reply to my noble friend this evening the Minister will be able to give as sympathetic a reply in response to this amendment as he did to the previous one. I do not carp at Members, but it seems strange to me that while nine or 10 Members of the Committee can speak with conviction on an amendment concerning horses, there is a diminishing interest when we are talking about people at the bottom end of the scale. I have a great respect for the noble Lord, Lord Rippon of Hexham, who unfortunately has left the Chamber. He made the point as though the whole of the Committee was speaking in favour of the previous amendment. In fact we know it was special pleading by a particular lobby. No one is grumbling over it because that is what politics is about.
As I said previously, throughout the whole of the political life of my colleague who sits behind me, both in another place and here, he has been recognised and identified as a champion for the homeless, the deprived and for people—we are talking about the inner London area in the widest sense—who cannot look after themselves. His voice has been almost a lone one, with the support of myself and of the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull. I hope that the Minister will not take the number of speakers as a criterion for what society shoud be doing. I have pleasure in supporting the amendment.
9.15 p.m.
The Earl of Caithness: The noble Lord, Lord Stallard, referred yet again to the very important subject of charitable hostels for the homeless and similar institutions. He has proposed that they should be exempt for non-domestic rating From what the noble Lord said, I believe that the establishments about which he is concerned are predominantly residential, providing living accommodation for longer or shorter periods to people who would otherwise be homeless. If so, they would fall within the definition of domestic property in Clause 56. They will not be subject to non-domestic rating and so there can be no question of specifically exempting them.
The exclusion of domestic property from rating will encompass facilities which are normally provided along with living accommodation, such as dining and recreation rooms. There are issues concerned with the application of the community charge to residents in such institutions. As the Committee will recall, there
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was a thorough debate on these issues when we were dealing with Part I of the Bill. We all recognised that we would need to return to them at Report stage. Now is not the time to anticipate that further debate. This is absolutely no discourtesy to the noble Lord, Lord Stallard, or to my noble friend Lady Faithfull; it is that we are considering further the situation raised by the noble Lord this evening.
I said that most of the premises with which the noble Lord is concerned will be domestic under the terms of the Bill. His amendment would also apply to some which would be treated as non-domestic. For example, there may be day centres for homeless people, and a few hostels may provide facilities that go beyond what can reasonably he described as domestic; for example, in-house medical facilities. In such cases non-domestic rates will he payable. However, as we discussed on an earlier amendment, when an establishment is run by a charity the rates will be automatically reduced by a half and the local authority will have power to remit them entirely.
I believe that it would be misguided to single out the category of establishment referred to here, worthy as it is, for more favourable treatment than other charitable property. This has been a useful opportunity for the noble Lord, Lord Stallard, with his very considerable experience in this field, to add to the arguments he used in the debate on Part I of the Bill. I can give the noble Lord the assurance that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State and I will bear in mind very carefully what he said. I am grateful to all Members of the Committee who have taken part in this debate tonight.
Lord Sandford: Before my noble friend sits down and the noble Lord responds, can my noble friend on the Front Bench confirm that this, being a charity, will be included in the reconsideration that he has already promised to undertake?
The Earl of Caithness: If it is a non-domestic property run by a charity, then of course.
Earl Russell: As the Minister said, we have been here before. Last time, during the debate on the first part of the Bill, the noble Earl said, at the third time of asking, a little more than he said just now. He used the magic words, "I will take this back and think about it". Once again, we are up against the idea that these hostels are residential.
Not to put too fine a point on it, the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, said that we are here dealing with tramps. The concept of residential accommodation for a tramp comes close to a contradiction in terms. We have here people who are proverbially of no fixed address, which is why, as the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, said, the concept of accountability does not and cannot be made to apply to them. They have to go somewhere. The Minister might consider whether there is a distinct risk that if they are turned away from hostels that are able and willing to receive them they might go to places where people will make them a great deal less welcome. This is not practical. I hope the Government will take it away and think about it.
The Earl of Caithness: The noble Earl will, I hope, know by now that, when I say I shall take it away, I shall take it away.
Lord Stallard: I am grateful to those who have contributed to this short debate and I thank the Minister for replying in such a constructive way. I readily admit that I had reservations when I put down the amendment. I am grateful for the way in which he dealt with it. I am grateful too for the consideration which he said will be given to the amendment and I look forward to something helpful being proposed between now and Report stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Whether Schedule 5 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Monson: The Minister will be aware that English vineyard owners, who produce increasingly well made and drinkable wine against all the climatic odds, have for many years complained about the unfavourable treatment they receive in terms of tax, rates and subsidies in comparison with their Continental counterparts. As the Bill stands, not only their land—that is, their vineyards—but the buildings used in their business are to be treated as wholly agricultural, bringing them into line with all other agricultural enterprises. If that is not the case, should this not be put right at a later stage of the Bill?
The Earl of Caithness: I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Monson, for giving me a little notice that he might ask me this question. Although, like many noble Lords, I am quite keen on wine, I am not too knowledgeable about vineyards. However, I am able to tell him that vineyards are exempt by virtue of the agricultural exemption in Schedule 5(2) and (1)(d), since they are treated as market gardens. Also exempt are the fermenting and bottling facilities. Only the retail premises, if any, are rateable, in the same way as farm shops. Complications arise, however, where the vineyard also imports wine from elsewhere. Then the ancillary buildings may have a value attached to them reflecting the proportion of their use attributable to the bottling and handling of the imported wine.
Lord Monson: That is on the whole a satisfactory answer.
Schedule 5 agreed to.
Clause 44 agreed to.
Clause 45 [Contents of central lists]:
Lord Hesketh Lord Hesketh moved Amendment No. 108A:
Page 25, line 36, leave out from ("require") to first ("the") in line 38 and insert (", a central non-domestic rating list must show, for each day in each chargeable financial year for which it is in force,").
The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 108A, I should like to speak also to Amendments Nos. 108B, 108C, and 108D. I have already explained to the Committee, when introducing Amendments Nos. 102D to 102G relating to the local rating lists in
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Clause 39, that the present yearly liability to rating is being replaced with a daily liability. We now come to a similar group of technical amendments to Clauses 45 and 46, which relate to the central rating list.
Amendment No. 108A removes an implication in the present drafting that a central list might not be in force. Amendment No. 108B corrects an erroneous cross-reference. The amendments to Clause 46 simply tighten up the precision of drafting by making it clear that what matters for liability purposes is what the list shows for a day, not on a day. This is because the list could be adjusted retrospectively—for example, where a ratepayer successfully appeals against rateable value. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Hesketh Lord Hesketh moved Amendment No. 108B:
Page 26, line 2, leave out ("(3)") and insert ("(1)").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 45, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 46 [Central rating: liability]:
Lord Hesketh Lord Hesketh moved Amendments Nos. 108C and 108D:
Page 26, line 8, leave out ("on") and insert ("for").
Page 26, line 14, leave out ("on") and insert ("for").
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Clause 46, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 47 [Alteration of lists]:
[Amendments Nos. 108E and 108F not moved.]
The Earl of Caithness The Earl of Caithness moved Amendment No. 108G:
Page 27, line 5, at end insert—
("(bb) as to the period within which a proposal must be made,").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Ross of Newport Lord Ross of Newport moved Amendment No. 108GA:
Page 27, line 9, leave out subsection (5) and insert—
("(5) Where there is disagreement about the accuracy of a list between a valuation officer and another person making a proposal for its alteration, or between a valuation officer who has made a proposal and another person, an appeal may be made to a valuation and community charge tribunal established under Schedule 14 below. In any appeal the onus of proof for an alteration in the valuaton list shall lie with the person who made the proposal.").
The noble Lord said: This amendment is tabled in the names of the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and myself. As is already known, the noble Earl is unavoidably detained on business somewhere in the West Country, so I shall speak on his behalf.
The amendment deals with the situation where there is disagreement about the accuracy of a valuation list. We seek to obtain from the Government an undertaking that the onus of proof in a dispute should lie with whoever has made the proposal to change the list, and that the Bill should clearly specify that he/she is responsible for justifying it—as is the present position. We should like an answer to that question.
The Earl of Caithness: The noble Lord's amendment would have two effects. First, whereas the existing Clause 47(5), which the noble Lord wishes to delete, merely empowers the Secretary of State to make regulations providing for disputes about rateable values to be referred to valuation and community charge tribunals, the amendment would write into the Bill that they should be so referred. I have to say that this is a distinction without a difference. There is no serious possibility of the Secretary of State not making such regulations without which there would be no right of appeal against rateable values. For all practical purposes the word "may" in this context means "shall", so there is no need for the amendment to ensure that a right of appeal exists. However, I can give the Committee an undertaking that there will be such a right. Moreover, the amendment would not avoid the need to make regulations dealing with the form of appeals, the time for making them, and so on.
Secondly, the amendment would provide that when the tribunal came to hear such an appeal the burden of proof would lie on the person seeking to have the rating list altered. Thus, if the occupier was proposing a reduction he would have to justify it; whereas if the valuation officer was seeking an increase—which normally he does only when there is a material change of circumstances—the burden would fall on him.
I have to say that the valuation process does not work like a criminal or a civil trial. When the valuation officer first values a property he assembles all the evidence, especially about market rents from comparable properties in the area, and forms a professional judgment about the rent that the property could be let for on the statutory terms to that well-known figure in rating law; namely, the hypothetical tenant.
When there is an appeal the local valuation court—now to be called the valuation and community charge tribunal—goes through the same process. It listens to the arguments from both sides and forms its own judgment of the appropriate value, subject to one limitation which I shall come to shortly. There is no question of proof because one cannot prove anything about what a hypothetical tenant would pay and it is therefore a matter of judgment.
That being so, I must say that if the noble Lord's amendment were to be incorporated into the Bill I am not at all sure what effect it would have on tribunal practice. To the extent that it did have an effect, this could well be to the disadvantage of the ratepayer. In the early years, after a revaluation, there will be far more appeals by ratepayers against the new rateable values than there will be by valuation officers who will have set those rateable values and will, as I said, normally alter them only if the state of the property changes.
Given the worries that many ratepayers have about changes in rateable value they might face on revaluation, despite the generous transitional measures we have proposed, I do not think that it would be right to erect a new hurdle for them to leap in order to succeed on appeal. As I explained to the Committee on Tuesday, we are taking some steps to
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discourage misconceived appeals, but we do not want to make life any more difficult for the appellant in a genuine case. I hope that that covers the point raised by the noble Lord and has set his fears at rest.
Lord Ross of Newport: I am grateful to the Minister for that response. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 108H not moved.]
Clause 47, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 48 agreed to.
Schedule 6 [Non-domestic rating: valuation]:
[Amendments Nos. 108J and 108K not moved.]
9.30 p.m.
Lord Ross of Newport Lord Ross of Newport moved Amendment No. 108L:
Page 107, line 5, at end insert—
("The decapitalisation rate levied on hereditaments rated under the contractors test method shall be determined by the formula:
A=B+1½
where A=decapitalisation rate, per cent.
B=interest rate on 20 year index-linked government securities, per cent.")
The noble Lord said: The amendment deals with capitalisation. Many Members of the Committee will have received a somewhat complicated document from the Chemical Industries Association. There are problems—I intend to be brief—about the rating of industrial premises in Scotland, and the object of the amendment is to try to bring Scotland and England into line.
The rateable value of heavy industrial plant such as oil refineries is calculated by applying a decapitalisation rate to a capital value. It is believed by most of the industry and by the CBI that the rate should be specified in the legislation and should relate to long-term interest rates.
The Chemical Industries Association, which I suspect has written to many Members of the Committee, says that underlying all its thoughts is the belief that it is vital that the decapitalisation rate should be set centrally on a uniform and logical basis by the Secretary of State by calculation with reference to external financial bases. Anything less would undermine the long-term benefits of any adjustments. It has recently submitted proposals setting out how that might be done. It is apparently becoming concerned that there may be moves towards setting the rate arbitrarily and somehow by agreement. Any tendency to compromise between the position in Scotland and England would not ameliorate the Scottish position sufficiently and would worsen the English position to no good purpose and for no logical reason.
This is highly specialised material dealt with by rating specialists upon which I am not competent to comment from personal knowledge. I am sure that the Minister will have some answer for us and I look forward to hearing from him. I beg to move.
The Earl of Caithness: Over the years, valuers in England and Wales on the one hand and Scotland on

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the other have adopted different approaches to working out the capital value, bearing in mind the fact that such properties are not often sold, and deciding what is the appropriate rate of interest to use. That has resulted in some odd anomalies—most notoriously the pipeline whose owners have to pay more than twice the rates per mile for the stretch north of the Border than for that in England.
The Committee will be aware that the Government hope to move towards a uniform poundage throughout Great Britain in the longer term. Clearly though, that makes sense only if there is also a common basis for assessing rateable value. We have therefore taken power in Schedule 6 to prescribe the interest rate to be used on contractor's tests valuation. An equivalent power is being taken for Scotland.
It is too soon, however, to say whether the Government will use this power to impose a common decapitalisation rate by statute. It may be possible to arrive at a common percentage by agreement between the Inland Revenue valuation office and the Scottish Assessors' Association which will then be the subject of review by the courts. This is a thorny issue. We are giving it very great consideration but I have to say to the Committee that Amendment No. 108L is premature until we can take the matter further.
Lord Tordoff: As someone who has been involved in the industry for a number of years, perhaps I may say that that answer will be less than satisfactory to the industry. The industry had hoped that the noble Earl would give some encouragement to the view that the Secretary of State might be prepared to take this into his hands, to produce some form of equalisation. One recognises that different parts of the chemical industry in this country use different feedstocks, therefore one can get a certain situation where there are curious competitive anomalies arising out of this kind of legislation.
I still hope that the Secretary of State may find it possible to take it unto himself to make the final decision and not leave it to some local arbitration, because this is an industry which contributes an enormous amount to the balance of payments of the UK. Perhaps the Minister could give some indication that the Government are prepared to rethink the matter without my necessarily pressing the amendment to a conclusion.
The Earl of Caithness: I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, that we attach very great importance to the speedy achievement of harmonisation in this difficult area. As I am sure the noble Lord will be aware, we have listened carefully to the representations of the CBI, the Chemical Industries Association and the Petroleum Industries Association on this subject and sympathise with their concerns. I can assure the noble Lord that we have given priority to work on this issue and will shortly be receiving the formal recommendations of the Inland Revenue valuation office and the Scottish Assessors' Association. We shall then consult with the rating profession and the industry on the way in which harmonisation is to be achieved; the level at which the
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common decapitalisation rate is to be set; and whether it is necessary to impose that by statute. I think the situation is perhaps more active than the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, thought.
Lord Ross of Newport: I think that that response satisfies my colleague on this Bench who has much more knowledge of the oil industry than I. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Schedule 6 agreed to.
Schedule 7 [Non-domestic rating: multipliers]:
Baroness Stedman Baroness Stedman moved Amendment No. 109:
Page 108, line 14, leave out ("retail") and insert ("local authority").
The noble Baroness said: We come now to a fairly large group of amendments. I wish to move Amendment No. 109 and speak to Amendments Nos. 111,112,114 and 116. No doubt the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, will be speaking to the others. I do not think there is a lot of difference between us; it is just a question of wording.
As I see it, one of the major problems of the Bill is that it is linking the national non-domestic rating multiplier to the movements in the retail price index. However, those of us who have been, and still are, in local government know that local government costs tend to be dominated by the employees' costs, and in recent years these costs have moved much faster than prices. So it would seem sensible to take note of this fact when varying the national non-domestic rating multiplier.
There is considerable concern to ensure that proper account is taken in future of such increases in pay and prices which are actually incurred by local government. These have to be fully and fairly recognised in the future indexation of the grants and the business rates. That is why I propose the use of a local authority index rather than the retail price index which takes no account of the teachers', the police, the fire service and the manual workers' pay awards which are not included in the retail price index but which bear especially heavily on local authorities. They cause an increasing proportion of local authority costs to have to fall on the taxpayer.
It is essential that central government, who now determine the level of the teachers' pay awards and the police pay, are tied to increases in what is known as the upper quartile of male manual workers. Therefore local authorities and their associations have no control at all these days over the pay of about one-third, which represents about half the total pay costs of local authority employees. It would surely be unfair if the real local taxpayers—the ones who are paying the community charge—have to bear a disproportionate share of local government costs in order to protect non-domestic ratepayers.
CIPFA has done a lot of work on this which shows that if the new system of local government finance had been introduced in 1986–87, and the size of the national non-domestic rate pool were calculated initially on the basis of actual rate poundages in 1986–87, and in subsequent years on the basis of

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index-linked non-domestic rate poundages, after only two years of index-linking the pool would be some £650 million smaller than might reasonably have been expected. That means that the community charge would have to have risen by £18 for every adult in the country to make good that deficiency.
The Association of County Councils obviously takes an interest in this as well. On the local authority side, Lincolnshire County Concil has been preparing annual repricing factors for local authority measures of the inflation facing local authorities which are used in the various official returns and publications. There are quite a lot of facts and figures about that, but in fact over a full nine-year period of local authority inflation which Lincolnshire has measured, it exceeded both the government sponsored inflation indices—the gross domestic product and the retail prices index.
In the most recent three years, local authority inflation has been relatively stable at around 6 per cent. per annum, and it has been rising at roughly 1·5 per cent. ahead of both the retail prices index and the GDP deflator. So it is straightforward to assess what the effect on the community charge would be nationally if this situation were to continue for a further three years after the introduction of the proposed system of local government grant and finance. It would show that an inadequate increase in the national non-domestic rate over that period could mean a 19 per cent. increase in spending which, of itself, would result in a 30 per cent. increase in the community charge. To put it another way, if one takes as a base year a community charge at £225, in the first year after that it would have to increase to £245; in the second year it would be £267, and in the third year, £291.
What this really means is that if the price indices used are not the ones which reflect the actual costs of local government, one has to consider this in terms of the shift in burden from business ratepayers and government grant to community charge payers. Even if local authority inflation were only to exceed the increase in the retail prices index by the observed nine year average of 0·7 per cent. in each year, after 10 years there would have been a shift of over £1·25 billion from business ratepayers to community charge payers. I do not think that is fair; I think that the index that should be used should be one which is geared to local authorities' actual costs. I beg to move.
9.45 p.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I wish to speak to Amendments Nos. 110, 111, 113, 115 and 117. My amendments perform an elegant dance around the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, in the Marshalled List. We come together very happily at Amendment No. 111, which is in both our names. Unfortunately there is an intrusion of some vulgar amendments with the letters A and B appearing after them which come in the middle, standing in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness.
There are three important points in these amendments. I very much support what the noble
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Baroness, Lady Stedman, has said. The first point (on which she rightly placed the most emphasis) is that everyone who knows about local authority costs knows that they are heavily influenced by wages and labour costs. Those are not labour costs in general but a specific kind of labour costs. History has shown, as the noble Baroness has said, that over a period of years the inevitable costs—often imposed by central government; teachers' salaries are a good example—are ahead of the retail prices index. To that extent, the risk of the revenue available to the local authority from sources other than the community charge declining in real cost terms is very considerable.
The second point, raised in Amendment No. 111, refers specifically to the potential for increases in the national non-domestic rate. As the Bill is drafted, there is a possibility that the national non-domestic rate poundage could be increased by a figure which is even less than the retail price index. That is entirely in the hands of the central government. The inevitable effect of such an increase would be to shift the burden from the national non-domestic rate to the community charge. Although one might think that that would have the desirable effect of increasing the proportion of a local authority's expenditure which is under its control, it would be a proportion of a smaller figure and it would be a thoroughly undesirable way of achieving those objectives.
The third point, which is perhaps of less significance, is raised in Amendment No. 117. I believe that the Minister will be very familiar with the point that there should be appropriate consultation procedures between the Secretary of State, representatives of local government and representatives of non-domestic ratepayers. The significance of that is not simply that there should be consultation but that there should be consultation before the non-domestic rating multiplier for a chargeable financial year is calculated.
We shall come to that matter later in the Bill. However, there is a serious danger that the Secretary of State can intervene virtually at any stage in the financial year to change the boundaries of the financial resources of local authorities. I shall refer to that in connection with rate capping when we come to it. However, it also applies to the non-domestic rate and I hope that the Minister feels able not only to agree to consultation but to agree that it should take place before the figure is calculated so that we do not have the shifts in ministerial diktat which have tended to occur in recent years, particularly when we look at rate support grant.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: The speech and the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, are obviously inspired from the point of view of local authorities. Looked at solely from their point of view, there is plainly a good deal of logic in what she has said. However, the Committee must also consider the non-domestic ratepayer. His income may well not be rising any faster than the retail prices index. Indeed, in some cases it may be rising more slowly. The Committee should be careful in going all the way with the interests of the local authorities and ignoring the

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ratepayers. One of the major objectives of the Bill is to give the ratepayer a better deal than he has been getting in recent years.
I take the point made by the noble Baroness that some items of local expenditure—teachers' salaries, for example—are fixed not by the local authorities but by the central government. On the other hand, I think that very few noble Lords with any experience of local government would dispute the fact that local government, if it has to, can make economies in its administration. I would suggest to the Committee that if the local authority index, as the noble Baroness
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describes it—that is, the way in which local authority costs are rising—is rising faster than the retail price index, surely it raises the question whether or not local authority expenditure requires looking into. If, indeed, one important item of local authority expenditure—to wit, teachers' salaries—rises for reasons beyond the control of the local authority, surely it is up to the local authority to reduce expenditure in one direction or another so as to keep its total rise in line with the retail price index. If we have to choose between the interests of the local authorities and the interests of the ratepayers, I am on the side of the ratepayers.
Lord Monson: Before the noble Lord sits down, I should like to ask whether or not he is aware that Lincolnshire County Council, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, referred—which is a Conservative controlled council—is run as an extremely tight ship. I think that if there had been any economies which it could have made, it would have done so.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: I admire the noble Lord's simple faith in any local authority. Simply to say that if any economies could have been made it would have made them, argues a credulity which I am not prepared to share.
The Earl of Caithness: The simple effect of Amendments Nos. 109 to 117 would be to force business rates up by more than the rate of inflation. By contrast, the Government wish to provide at least the possibility that they might be reduced. I hope that the business organisations which have expressed concern about the possible effects of revaluation and the national non-domestic rate are taking note of the real attitude to the business community of both parties opposite. As my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter has suggested in his helpful intervention, it is with these amendments that we hear the true voice of the Labour and SDP parties who are concerned to go on subsidising the high-spending policies of some local authorities at the expense of precisely those small businesses they seemed so anxious to protect earlier.
The Government on the other hand seek to limit the tax burden on businesses. We have provided that business rates cannot rise faster than general inflation. In another place we allowed for the possibility that they may rise a little less by taking power to trim the increase resulting from the RPI link in any year. Our basic position is that business rates should rise in line with general inflation. That will give businesses the protection they need against the excessive rate increases that many local authorities have been prepared to impose on them year after year. It will mean that business rates should go on making the same contribution towards keeping community charges at a reasonable level.
There are, however, several reasons why we might from time to time want to consider abating some of the inflationary increase in business rates in any one year. First, the total yield from business rates tends to rise in real terms over time by about 1 per cent. to 2 per cent. a year. In a normal year we would propose to leave the benefit of that buoyancy with local authorities to reflect the extra cost of providing services to the new buildings. Occasionally it may be right to stop and think whether some of that benefit might be given back to the business community which is generating the extra revenue.
Secondly, business rates have increased excessively in recent years and are now higher than we should like. There may be a case over the longer term for shifting some of the burden on to some other tax, the benefit of which could be fed back into the system
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through grant. That incidentally is one of the reasons why the power is conferred on my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer rather than on my right honourable friend the Secretary of State.
Thirdly, we all know that authorities can make savings from greater efficiency. The pressure of proper accountability through the community charge should make them look much harder at where the fat can be trimmed. If and when they succeed there may be a case for giving some of that benefit back to business. Again, those powers—which the amendment of the noble Baroness would remove—would permit us to give business a share of any savings that authorities were able to make, though I do not expect the power to increase business rates by less than the RPI to be used often.
Turning in detail to the amendments before the Committee, in different ways these would replace the RPI in the formula for uprating the poundage by a local government cost index to be maintained by the Secretary of State. Behind these amendments lies the concern, possibly even the hope, of the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, that local authority spending will continue to rise faster than the retail prices index, as it has done for many years past despite the Government's best efforts.
For the future, if authorities increase their spending faster than inflation they will no longer be able to obtain a share of the cost of the increase from the non-domestic ratepayer. The full cost of increases in spending will therefore fall on the community charge payers who will have the chance to make their own judgment about whether their authority's high spending is justified.
In other words, under our proposals the full cost of irresponsible, profligate local government spending is going to be brought home to all the voters who can express their views at the ballot box. That surely is as it should be. These amendments are therefore trying to link the non-domestic rate to the actual cost of local government by means of a local government cost index in order to help hide spending increases from the voters.
Underlying this is the view that because a high proportion of local government spending goes on wages and salaries it is reasonable that local government spending should increase in line with wages rather than prices. This is a view that we unequivocably reject. In the private sector the pressure of competition means that wages can rise faster than prices only if a firm can make productivity improvements—making the same number of goods with a reduced workforce, or more goods with the same workforce. There is no reason why this principle should not apply to local authorities too.
We know that there is scope for productivity improvements in local government. The Audit Commission has identified many areas where costs could be saved without cutting services—indeed, while improving them. But authorities show a

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remarkable reluctance to realise these savings. Instead they just accept that costs should go on rising year after year. It is perhaps only in the world of local government that some of the bad old attitudes survive, where authorities decide first on the services they want and only then think how they are going to pay for them.
These amendments would serve to reinforce that attitude. If local authorities decided to pay all their staff more, then up would go this local authority cost index and up would go the business rate. Businesses would have no say in what was going to be well hidden from the community charge payer. We see no reason why local government spending should rise by more than the RPI. We in fact believe that there is plenty of scope for it to rise by less. But even if it rises by more there is no reason for businesses to be forced to pay. As I have said, there is an arguable case that they pay too much now. It is for the community charge payers, the electors, to consider whether they want more services at higher cost. They can only take a balanced view if that cost would fall on them.
Perhaps I may answer one point of the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh. I think he worked from a misapprehension when he said that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State could intervene at any time during the year. The Secretary of State cannot intervene in the course of the year. Local authorities will know the income that they will get from grant and non-domestic rates from before the start of the year, and there will be no—and I repeat "no"—scope for changing this after 1st April.
Lord Monson: I do not think that the noble Earl has answered the pertinent point made by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, which was also on my mind, about teachers' salaries and other centrally-imposed price rises.
The Earl of Caithness: I covered the point of wages and salaries. I admit that some are done from the centre, but I think, as the Audit Commission said in its recent report, that there are considerable savings to be made in the way that local authorities conduct their business. We do not see why the extra costs above RPI should fall on the business community.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The Minister makes the same tired old cracks about the irresponsible and profligate expenditure of local authorities. He ought to look at the balance between those parts of his script that come from Conservative Central Office and those that come from the department. It seems to me that the former is taking over in quite a large part of the speeches he is given to read.
When he is talking about local authority expenditure the noble Earl ought to remember that central government expenditure has been going up faster than local government expenditure in the course of this decade.
Noble Lords: Control it!
10 p.m.
Lord Ross of Newport: I must make a protest about the Minister's comments concerning local government. It really does not help when the Government constantly criticise local authorities that are trying desperately to comply with the Government's diktat. God knows, they are implementing any number of things at the moment to try to save money, particularly cutting back on the arts and that sort of thing which I think, quite frankly, is proving disastrous for the country. It is not clever to stand at the Box and constantly gripe about local authorities—and incidentally, some of the local authorities in which the Alliance party has some interest have actually had a lower rate increase this year than those that are controlled by Conservatives. Let us have that put on the record, although I do not want to make party political points on this subject. The breakdown of the relationship between central and local government in this country is an absolute disaster. Why do not the Government abolish local government altogether? That is what they really want to do.
Baroness Stedman: I am very disappointed with the Minister's reply and, like my colleagues on the other Benches, I am becoming fed up with the continual disparagement of local government that we hear from the Benches opposite. I should like to see us return to the day when local and central government consulted each other and worked together in the same frame of mind as they enjoyed 15, 20 or 25 years ago. That will not happen if all the time central government are picking on local government and making them the scapegoat for everything. Salaries comprise the biggest part of most local authorities' budgets. When central government fix the salaries of a very high proportion of people, then local authorities have very little money left in the kitty with which to fund projects. I see that the noble Lord wishes to say something.
Lord Dean of Beswick: I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. Perhaps she remembers that only a few years ago the police forces received from the Government, or at least by government negotiation, a very substantial increase in salary to which the local authorities objected because of the proportion of that increase that they would have to meet. Nevertheless, they were completely ignored.
Baroness Blatch: Before the noble Baroness continues, perhaps I may say something that has not been mentioned by any Member of the Committee today; namely, that the Government meet 51 per cent. of the actual costs of police pay. That has not been mentioned at all. They pay 51 per cent. of the actual cost to the local authority, whatever it is. We are talking about having a kind of blank cheque in advance of funding local government. We are trying to get away from that blank cheque policy. It is not an attack on local government. Local government still has a very real input into negotiating bodies, as it did into what was the Burnham Committee. It is for the local authorities to go to the negotiating bodies with sums that people can afford to pay, whether they

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are national or local taxpayers, and to take a realistic attitude towards funding. They should be able to talk to whoever it is on whatever pay settlement is being negotiated and not have on the negotiating table in advance the knowledge that whatever the bill comes to the Government will pick it up.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I think it is rather unwise of the noble Baroness to refer from those Benches to the Burnham Committee, when it was her party's Government that only last year abolished that body and took the entire control of teachers' salaries into the hands of the Secretary of State for Education and Science.
Baroness Blatch: Considering the record of the Burnham Committee, it was a good thing too!
Baroness Stedman: Perhaps after four interventions I may continue. The noble Lord, Lord Monson, is quite right. Many of the counties are running very tight ships. I was in local government before I came to this Chamber 14 years ago. In Cambridgeshire, which is the county of the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, we were even then making considerable savings and beginning to reduce our expenditure. That has gone on year after year. I think that it is very unwise and unfair of the Government Benches—and perhaps the Minister will listen to what is being said—
The Earl of Caithness: I am listening.
Baroness Stedman: I think it is very unwise and unfair of the Government continually to blame local government as a whole for what a few authorities have done, and done badly. All we are asking in this group of amendments is for the Government to base their returns on the real, practical considerations of local government. Local authorities are given statutory duties to do a job but there is not enough money left in the kitty to do that job without considerably putting up charges to the community charge payers.
Yes, we have consideration for business and, yes, we know that when the costs of business rise too high they are likely to make business non-competitive. But we are also concerned about the people who pay the rates in the local authority areas. We should like to see them granted some salvation and receive some consideration when the Government are working out how the grant should be effected.
I am very disappointed. However, I am not prepared to press my amendments at this hour, but I hope that the Government will take note of what has been said and will at least try to work with local government and not continually go against it.
Lord Ross of Newport: Would the noble Baroness agree that one of the biggest growths in the costs of bureaucracy to local government will come from implementing this very Bill?
Baroness Stedman: It will indeed put up the costs tremendously, and we do not know who will met them. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey Lord McIntosh of Haringey moved Amendment No. 110:
Page 108, line 14, leave out ("retail prices") and insert ("prescribed").
The noble Lord said: I have already spoken to the amendment. I beg to move.
10.6 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 110) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 18; Not-Contents, 45.

DIVISION NO. 2

CONTENTS

Airedale, L.

Pitt of Hampstead, L.

Dean of Beswick, L.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L [Teller.]

Graham of Edmonton, L.

Hacking, L.

Ross of Newport, L.

Hayter, L.

Russell, E.

Hughes, L.

Seear, B.

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Stedman, B. [Teller.]

McNair, L.

Tordoff, L.

Monson, L.

Underhill, L.

Mountevans, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Abinger, L.

Glenarthur, L.

Arran, E.

Henley, L.

Balfour, E.

Hesketh, L.

Beaverbrook, L.

Hives, L.

Belstead, L.

Lindsay, E.

Blatch, B.

Long, V. [Teller.]

Boardman, L.

Mackay of Clashfern, L.

Borthwick, L.

Munster, E.

Boyd-Carpenter, L.

Radnor, E.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Caithness, E.

Renton, L.

Cameron of Lochbroom, L.

Rippon of Hexham, L.

Carlisle of Bucklow, L.

Saltoun of Abernethy, Ly.

Carnock, L.

Sanderson of Bowden, L.

Carr of Hadley, L.

Sandford, L.

Craigmyle, L.

Skelmersdale, L.

Croft, L.

Stanley of Alderley, L.

Denham, L. [Teller]

Teviot, L.

Dundee, E.

Thomas of Gwydir, L.

Elliot of Harwood, B.

Trafford, L.

Faithfull, B.

Trumpington, B.

Ferrers, E.

Wynford, L.

Gardner of Parkes, B.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
10.13 p.m.
[Amendments Nos. 112 and 113 not moved.]
Lord Hesketh Lord Hesketh moved Amendment No. 113A:
Page 108, line 19, at end insert—
("(4A) But where the base month for the retail prices index for September of the financial year which precedes that preceding the year concerned (the first year) differs from that for the index for September of the year which precedes the year concerned (the second year), C is the figure which the Secretary of State calculates would have been the retail prices index for September of the first year if the base month for that index had been the same as the base month for the index for September of the second year.").
The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 113A, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 114A, 115A, 115B and 116A. These are straightforward technical amendments, the purpose of which is to plug a gap in the drafting of the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I accept that this is a drafting amendment but I cannot help observing that, if attention had been paid earlier to the wise words of the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, and my own wise words, we should not have needed it. The RPI is an unsatisfactory means of measuring local authority expenditure. It is particularly unsatisfactory because the index is recalibrated so often.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Renton): Before calling Amendment No. 114, I must point out that, if it is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments Nos. 114A, 115 or 115A.
[Amendment No. 114 not moved.]
Lord Hesketh Lord Hesketh moved Amendment No. 114A:
Page 108, line 32, leave out ("and (4)") and insert ("to (4A)").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
[Amendment No. 115 not moved.]
Lord Hesketh Lord Hesketh moved Amendment No. 115A:
Page 108, line 35, leave out ("either") and insert ("any").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Hesketh Lord Hesketh moved Amendment No. 115B:
Page 108, line 37, at end insert—
("(7A) For the purposes of sub-paragraph (4A) above the base month for the retail prices index for September of a particular year is the month for which the retail prices index is taken to be 100 and by reference to which the index for the September in question is calculated.").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
[Amendment No. 116 not moved.]
Lord Hesketh Lord Hesketh moved Amendment No. 116A:
Page 109, line 9, at end insert—
("(1A) Where the financial year is one for which the Secretary of State has calculated a figure for C under paragraph 5(4A) above, the notice must contain the figure he has calculated.").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
[Amendment No. 117 not moved.]
Schedule 7, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 49 [Special provision for 1990–95]:
The Earl of Caithness The Earl of Caithness moved Amendments Nos. 117A, 117B, 117BA and 117C:
Page 27, line 35, leave out ("before the beginning of the year").
Page 27, line 39, leave out from ("be") to end of line 42 and insert ("an amount found in accordance with prescribed rules (which may be the same as or different from the amount he would be liable to pay apart from the regulations).").
Page 28, line 13, at end insert—
("(3A) In relation to a hereditament or hereditaments in the area of the Common Council, subsection (3) above shall have effect as if the reference to a general rate included references to a rate in the nature of a general rate, the poor rate and the St. Botolph tithe rate.").
Page 28, line 13, at end insert—
("(3A) Without prejudice to section 141(1) below, regulations under this section may contain different provision in relation to locally listed hereditaments whose rateable value exceeds, and those
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whose rateable value does not exceed, a prescribed figure; and a locally listed hereditament is a hereditament for the time being shown in a local non-domestic rating list.
(3B) Regulations under this section in their application to a particular financial year (including regulations amending or revoking others) shall not be effective unless they come into force before 8 March in the preceding financial year.").
The noble Earl said: I beg to move Amendments Nos. 117A, 117B, 117BA and 117C en bloc. I have already spoken to these amendments.
On Question, amendments agreed to.
[Amendment No. 117D not moved.]
Clause 49, as amended, agreed to.
The Earl of Caithness The Earl of Caithness moved Amendment No. 117E:
After Clause 49, insert the following new clause:
("Special provision for 1995 onwards.
.—(1) In relation to any relevant period the Secretary of State may make regulations under this section.
(2) The regulations may provide that, in any case falling within a prescribed description, the amount a person is liable to pay in respect of a relevant financial year under section 39 or 41 above as regards a hereditament, or under section 46 above as regards hereditaments, shall be an amount found in accordance with prescribed rules (which may be the same as or different from the amount he would be liable to pay apart from the regulations).
(3) The rules prescribed under subsection (2) above may be framed by reference to—

(a) the amount (or a prescribed proportion of the amount) payable by way of a non-domestic rate under this Part as regards the hereditament or hereditaments in respect of the financial year preceding that for which the amount is to be found.

(b) the amount (or a prescribed proportion of the amount) which would have been so payable by the person mentioned in subsection (2) above if facts identified under prescribed rules had been the same in that preceding year as in that for which the amount is to be found, or

(c) such other factors as the Secretary of State thinks fit.

(4) Without prejudice to section 141(1) below, regulations under this section relating to a relevant period may contain different provision for different relevant financial years.
(5) Without prejudice to section 141(1) below, regulations under this section may contain different provision in relation to locally listed hereditaments whose rateable value exceeds, and those whose rateable value does not exceed, a prescribed figure; and a locally listed hereditament is a hereditament for the time being shown in a local non-domestic rating list.
(6) Regulations under this section in their application to a particular relevant period shall not be effective unless they come into force before 1 January immediately preceding the period; but this is without prejudice to the power to amend or revoke.
(7) For the purposes of this section—

(a) a relevant period is a period of five years beginning on any 1 April (other than 1 April 1990) on which lists must be compiled;

(b) a relevant financial year, as regards regulations relating to a relevant period, is a financial year falling within the period.").

On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clauses 50 and 51 agreed to.
Schedule 8 [Non-domestic rating: pooling]:
Lord Hesketh Lord Hesketh moved Amendment No. 117F:
Page 112, line 10, at end insert—
("(4A) The Secretary of State may incorporate in the rules provision for deductions (of such extent as he thinks fit) as regards—

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(a) the operation of sections (Discretionary relief) and (Reduction or remission of liability) above;

(b) costs of collection and recovery;

(c) such other matters (if any) as he thinks fit;

and sub-paragraphs (2) and (3) above shall have effect subject to this.").
The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 117F is little more than a drafting amendment. It deals with the amounts the charging authorities will, under rules that the Secretary of State will make, be required to pay into the national non-domestic rate pool. Clearly the amount that an authority has to pay in cannot be just the amount it actually manages to collect. That would mean that authorities would be under no pressure to pursue defrauding ratepayers to collect the money on behalf of all the other authorities which will be sharing in the pool. On the other hand, it is equally important that authorities should not have to pay in money which they could not reasonably have collected; for example, because a ratepayer has gone bankrupt.
There will need to be rules for calculating the amount authorities are deemed to have collected and are required to pay in, taking account of the various causes of shortfall in collection. We have already discussed with the local authority associations what the rules are to provide and we shall consult them further before the regulations are actually made. In particular, we intend that the rules should allow authorities in calculating their payments into the pool to offset a standard allowance for the cost of rate collection. We also intend that the pool should bear part of the cost of any discretionary relief which authorities choose to give to charities and other nonprofit making bodies under the new clauses which we discussed earlier. There may be other cases of variation in income for which allowance needs to be made.
Paragraph 4 of Schedule 8, as drafted, refers to the rules being framed so that the amount calculated under them would be broadly the same as the amount which the authority was able to collect if it acted diligently; in other words, if it made all reasonable efforts to collect the full amount owing to it. We believe that as they stand the words would have allowed us to provide for allowances for cost of collection, discretionary relief and so forth. However, to make that assurance doubly sure the amendment spells out in unambiguous words that such allowances can be made. For that reason, I would expect it to be welcomed by the charging authorities as giving them the assurance that the power is there to make the allowances as we have promised. I beg to move.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: We welcome the amendment, but I cannot help thinking that if the Deputy Chairman had been in his place on the Benches he would have been suspicious of the phrase "little more than a drafting amendment".
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Hesketh Lord Hesketh moved Amendments Nos. 117G to 117J:
Page 112, line 35, leave out ("by its auditor") and insert ("under arrangements made by the Audit Commission for Local Authorities in England and Wales").
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Page 112, line 37, leave out paragraph (c) and insert—
("(c) notify the amount to the Secretary of State, and send to him a copy of the certification of the calculation and the amount.").
Page 113, line 29, leave out sub-paragraph (6).
The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 117G, I should also like to speak to Amendments Nos. 117H and 117J. These are technical drafting amendments concerned with the arrangements for auditing the accounts of local authorities' contributions into the national domestic rate pool. I beg to move.
On Question, amendments agreed to.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Renton): Before calling Amendment No. 118, I have to point out that if it is agreed to I cannot call Amendments Nos. 119, 119A or 120.
Baroness Stedman Baroness Stedman moved Amendment No. 118:
Page 114, leave out lines 9 to 39.
The noble Baroness said: Again, we have a rather lengthy list of amendments which have been grouped together, and I wish to move Amendment No. 118 and speak to Amendments Nos. 122, 134, 142, 143, 145A, 149, 150A, 158A, 159A, 160A, 161A and 162ZA. Having said all that and knowing that this group of amendments is also in support of county councils, I rise with a somewhat heavy heart in view of the treatment we had from the Benches opposite in the last set of amendments.
The county councils feel that there is a need to bring into being the same system for dealing with the collection and allocation of the new rates in England in line with the system proposed for Wales. What is being done at present is proposed to be done in Wales. Under the system that is proposed for Wales, the grant and non-domestic rate redistribution is made direct to counties and that means that the county levy will represent the amount that the community charge payer actually has to pay and that must enhance their accountability.
As the Bill stands, the counties in England will be obliged to precept on districts rather than raise their poll tax separately. Those registered to pay should be able to see what individual districts are spending. They should be able to see how much they are paying towards the expenditure of the county services and of the district services.
However, the revenue support grant and the non-domestic rate is to be paid into the district collection fund and counties and other precepting authorities will then precept on the collection fund for their total expenditure net of any specific grants, fees and charges. The bill received by the community charge payer will only show one community charge for the area as a whole. That means there is no direct link between an authority' spending and the composite community charge which is being levied. Therefore, the charge payers cannot see how much they are paying towards the authority's services and an authority cannot measure the impact of its budget decisions on the community charge payers in its area.
As the bill is sent out by the district councils in the shire areas, the responsibility for explaining what is to be paid lies with the district treasurers; and the link

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of accountability between an authority and its local residents is substantially weakened.
The Bill itself recognises the unsatisfactory nature of these arrangements. In order to cope with the possible need for additional grant to be paid to recognise exceptional circumstances arising during the year, the Secretary of State may direct that additional grant can be paid to specific local authorities.
In Wales different arrangements will apply. The grant and the non-domestic rates will be paid direct to the relevant authorities; those authorities only precepting on the collection fund for their net community charge. Therefore, the Welsh districts and counties will have their own separate community charges.
My understanding is that the Government's main argument for the collection fund approach is that it will remove the need for what they deem to be disaggregation of grant between tiers of authority—that is, the counties and the districts—and so reduce the complexity of the grant. However, neither of those ought to be an issue. The violent swings in the current grant system have been the product of the grant penalties, of rate-capping, of safety nets and high grant recycling followed later by its abolition. The intention, as I understand it, is that the new grant system will be simpler and more stable, with grant entitlements being fixed in advance of the year, a much simpler needs assessment system and the presumption against any annual changes in the methodology.
This group of amendments would introduce arrangements for England similar to those which will apply in Wales. The grant and the non-domestic rate would be paid direct into all the main precepting authorities—at this stage excluding parishes—with the collection fund remaining purely for the collection and distribution of the community charge.
I have been supplied with a couple of what are believed to be the pro formas which the authorities will send out. If they send them out from the district collection fund, as proposed in the Bill, they will have all the details of the county councils' spending, the district councils, parish councils and the collection fund, with the government assessment of spending on the other side. From the actual spending they will take away the government grant and the contribution from the non-domestic ratepayers, which will leave the community charge for the area.
On the other side, when those same items have been deducted it will leave what is estimated will be the community charge if the authorities had calculated it according to their grant-related expenditure. On the bottom of the form will be stated what is the registered population and the government assessment of population. In the example I have, there is a difference between 55,860 as the registered population and the government assessment of 58,800.
If one adopted the form which these amendments propose, and we had the same system as in England, one would have, again, the community charge bill and set out under community charges the county
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council community charge, the district council community charge and the parish council precept so that the persons receiving the bill could see exactly what they are being asked for together with an amount for collection fund expenses. One would then know the total community charge payable and on the other side have the government assessment which, in this case, is on the same population and shows the same deficit. At least people are able to see what each authority is precepting and it enables members of county councils and district councils to argue properly and fairly who is responsible for the rise or fall in the expenditure. If the English system can be brought into line with the Welsh proposals then the grant and the non-domestic rate redistribution will be made through the counties. The county levy will represent the amount that the community charge payer actually had to pay. I think that this will greatly enhance accountability at all levels of authority. I beg to move.
10.30 p.m.
Baroness Blatch: This is a point with which I have always had enormous sympathy. The noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, and I have attended the same meetings and we have been well briefed by one highly-regarded local government officer from my own authority. Since those meetings I have done a great deal of thinking about the problem.
I have a view about both the present system and the new one. It is that too little regard is paid to the spending levels of authorities. I am not saying this as a criticism of any local government authority, but we are terribly preoccupied with the level of rates and all kinds of comparative tables. In the present system the actual level of spending is very often masked by the complexity of the system.
One of the advantages of the new system, I believe, is that it is more simple and that it exposes absolutely everything. It exposes the spending level of the local authority, whether district or county, and it rightly exposes the involvement of government with local authorities. For example, it will expose the national government when they make a determination about the RPI and their contribution to local authorities. The proposed pro forma referred to by the noble Baroness ensures that the spending levels of the county councils are set out clearly, as also are the spending levels of the district councils. The Government's own assessment of what the spending levels should be is also set out alongside. The resultant consequential community charge is there as a figure at the end of the day.
I believe that if we return to splitting up those figures and talking about two community charges, we shall be returning to the difficulty the public anyway have in understanding local government. More than that, I believe we shall start to fuel an already attractive thought in the minds of many in the community as regards dividing and ruling between county and district authorities, which I consider to be an unhealthy step to take.
Having talked it through with officials and having gone back to my own director of finance, I am convinced in my mind that the information required

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by those who will pay the community charge is clearly set out in the forms, which separate district from county councils. I shall be supporting that, because I believe it is clear, although I understand the point made by the noble Baroness that it would be desirable for the counties to be treated separately. I do not honestly believe that it is going to resolve some of the problems set out. Anything that brings home accountability between the people who have to pay for the services and the spending authorities is important. This pro forma does not preclude the most important part of all, which I believe was referred to towards the end of the presentation by the noble Baroness. It does not preclude both the county and the district councils from setting out the breakdown of their spending, which will be very important.
An enormous amount of progress has been made by all local authorities in giving their electorate proper information about spending.
Indeed, they are now required to give such information. It will be for the county council to set out not only in clinical form in this pro forma what its total spending will be, but to break it down to make comparisons with what happened last year and what is to happen next year. The districts will do the same. I believe that all the information is there and the simpler it can be kept the better. I am convinced that this pro forma provides all the information in a relatively simple form.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I rise to speak to Amendments Nos. 119, 121, 146, 149, 151, 155 and 157 and to the amendments already spoken to by the noble Baroness. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, I have been having second thoughts. There is a real difficulty in that the Government are proposing a system whereby for Wales the grants go separately to the district councils and to the county councils, and for England they go to the district councils which set up a collection fund which is then allocated to the county councils. Clearly, whichever view one adopts as being correct, what one cannot do is to have one system for Wales and another system for England. I know that the Government will have a complex and no doubt Jesuitical series of reasons to explain that Wales is totally different from England in this respect. I do not think that we need spend too much time on them. Either the argument for accountability works better with a collection fund or it works better with the grant being separately allocated to each of the two tiers of local authority.
The argument for having a collection fund would have to stand on the basis that the allocation of grant between the two tiers was in some way artificial. I have not heard that convincingly argued so far. It may well be that there are arguments on that basis and that in consequence the community charge payers would be misled by a division of charges. I am bound to say that, having thought about my amendments, having thought about the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, and having thought about the objective which we must all have of achieving the greatest level of simplicity of explanation to the ratepayers, I have come to the conclusion that she is right, that I was wrong and that we in England ought to adopt the Welsh system of a
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separate grant rather than adopt in Wales the English system of a collection fund. For those reasons I shall not be moving the amendments standing in my name.
I appreciate that this is a difficult matter. I appreciate that it divides local authorities. For example, the Welsh members of the Association of District Councils are in conflict about this with the English members of the association. Nothing we do will please all local authority associations. The conclusion we have to draw is that perhaps it is not so important to please local authority associations. What is important is to produce the best result for community charge payers and to increase accountability. I do not think that the Government proposals do that. The Government must come down on one side of the fence or the other. I suggest that they would be well advised to accept the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman.
The Earl of Caithness: As we have heard, these amendments would change the basis of payment of the revenue support grant. There are those who would have the English system like the Welsh and those who feel that the Welsh system should be brought in line with what we have proposed for England.
I am interested that the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, is now changing ground on this matter. The arguments, which continue outside the Chamber as well as inside it, convince me that we have it right and I hope to persuade the Committee that what we propose for both England and Wales has been well thought out and is workable and appropriate in each case. We have proposed different systems for each of the two countries for very good reasons. The fact that we have before us amendments in favour of both the Welsh and English systems demonstrates that there are arguments for both courses.
In England there are three main problems with the present system. First, it is complicated. Very few people can understand the link between council spending, grant and rate bills, so reducing the accountability of authorities to their ratepayers and voters. Secondly, the present system is unstable. Authorities' entitlements to grant can change markedly from year to year and even within a year, often for reasons beyond their immediate control. One of the reasons for grant shifts has been any change in the priority given to services, as reflected in differential increases in spending provision. We just cannot do away with these grant shifts even though they have little effect on ratepayers. Such shifts are a by-product of our decisions about spending need and overall distribution of grant across the country.
Thirdly, the grant system provides a hidden and little understood subsidy to some regions through the present system of resource equalisation which gives more grant to authorities with low rateable value. Resource equalisation puts up the rate bills of some, entirely independent of the spending decisions of their own councils and gives equally randomly uncovenanted benefit to others. This serves to confuse accountability even further.

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To overcome such difficulties we concluded that amending the present system would not be enough. We would have to make radical changes and make the grant system simpler. The key simplification is that grant will depend only on assessed need and not spending. An authority's entitlement in a year will not vary with its spending that year and certainly not with any other authority's spending. By not basing the whole local government finance system on rateable values, we do away with resource equalisation through the grant system.
Those two elements taken together mean that it will be quite clear that the size of the community charge in an area depends upon what the authorities in that area spend compared with what, in total, they need to spend. However, those elements will not alone overcome the difficulties of dividing grant between tiers. When we came to consider this, we realised that there is another simpler way of looking at grant and that is to consider it as a payment in support of the local domestic taxpayers of an area. If there were no grant and no business rates, local domestic taxpayers would have to finance all of the expenditure of the authorities providing services in their area. That would be a heavy burden which would fall unfairly as between areas of high and low need.
So grant and business rates are paid not so much to help authorities as to support local community charge payers and so reduce the amount they personally have to contribute. The relationship between the taxpayer, as provider of revenue support grant, business, and the charge payer is embodied in the concept of the collection fund.
As my noble friend Lord Glenarthur explained when we were considering Part II, a collection fund will be established for each area. The fund will receive revenue support grant and community charges and the non-domestic rates for the area. Local authorities will make demands for their revenues on the collection fund. Such demands represent the costs of the services that the authority is providing; costs which will have to be met by the charge payers supported by the taxpayer through grant, and business, through NNDR. This arrangement means that charge payers will be able to see clearly the full cost of local services. I know that my noble friend Lady Blatch believes that to be an important consideration. Indeed, I was most grateful for her contribution to the debate.
While it would be possible to achieve some of this with a system which paid grant and NNDR to each tier of authority, we would nevertheless be faced with the technical problems of dividing up every stream of income which under our proposals goes into the collection fund—that is grant, NNDR and the charge—between all the authorities in an area. That would at once begin to complicate the system all over again.
It has been suggested that the system would encourage greater accountability if each authority set its own charge, taking account of its spending and its own share of grant and NNDR. I disagree. Not only would we have the technical problems that I have just
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described, but it would mean that each tier of authority would spend as much time worrying about whether it was getting its fair share of grant as about its actual spending and the level of services it provides. This happens under the present system. All it does is generate a lot of misplaced effort by authorities trying to show that the district, or the county as the case may be, is getting too much and they are getting too little.
Under the collection fund arrangement, income will not be hypothecated. It will all flow into one big purse and each authority will draw what it needs without having to worry about whether the money comes from the taxpayer, the charge payer or business. What that does is put the major focus where it belongs—on the actual level of spending compared with need—because it is spending which will determine the final level of the charge. If charge payers see that the charge they are being asked to pay is £20 more then the national norm for spending at need, they will be able to see that this is not due to the level of business rates or whether the district is getting more or less grant, but because the authorities in that area are spending £20 per adult more than they need to. We intend that on the charge demand note the charge payer will be able to see which authorities are responsible for that £20 and how much each contributes to it.
So far I have spoken chiefly about grant, but many of the amendments we are considering relate to NNDR. Similar issues arise here. Once we had decided that grant should not be divided between tiers but put into the collection fund it was clearly right that NNDR should be treated in the same way. Paying NNDR and grant into a collection fund avoids the majority of the problems which have plagued the present grant system in England. More importantly, it forces the debate to focus on spending as the real issue underlying questions about the level of community charge.
That outlines the system which will apply in England, but we do not think such radical change is needed for Wales. The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, has proposed that NNDR should be paid into a collection fund in both England and Wales rather than to counties and districts in Wales. We have proposed a different arrangement for Wales because the position there is in our view quite different. In most respects, the new grant system in Wales will be the same as that for England. There will be a separate distribution report in Wales, and each year a separate revenue support grant report; but in Wales NNDR and grant will be paid separately to county and district councils.
Wales has a less complex system of local government, and has its own separate and different grant arrangements at the moment. I do not see the logic of the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, when he says that they should be the same. By and large these have worked very well in the Principality. A system of needs distribution has evolved in discussion with the local authority associations there, which is simpler and more stable than the equivalent one in England. In addition, there is in Wales a closer relationship between local authority spending and assessed need.

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There have not been the year-to-year fluctuations of grant between tiers, partly because in Wales grant is split between districts and county councils on a tier basis rather than a service basis, as happens in England. Nor has there been the acrimony between districts and counties about shares between tiers which has at times characterised the English scene. So, in Wales, the system has worked well up to now on the basis of splitting grant between district and county councils and there seems little reason to change those arrangements.
Disaggregating grant and NNDR allows the charge payer to see how much of the community charge which he or she pays goes to each tier of local authority; but in Wales, as in England, it is important that charge payers should also be made aware of actual spending per head compared with assessed need, and that information will also be provided in Wales with the charge demand.
Despite the conviction with which the noble Baroness and the noble Lord have argued their case this evening they have not made me doubt that we are correct to propose two different solutions for the two different sets of problems in England and Wales.
There have been two sets of amendments backing each of the different arrangements, which shows that this place recognises that each arrangement has its merits, although, as he said, the noble Lord is shifting on that point. From outside government there has also been recognition of the benefits of both systems. The Association of District Councils has welcomed the proposal not to pay grant to two tiers and has asked why the Welsh system cannot be like the English. The Association of County Councils has asked why the English system cannot be like the Welsh. We believe that this is very much a case of horses for courses and we have drawn up these different arrangements to tackle different problems.
Baroness Stedman: I thank the Minister for giving us such a comprehensive reply so late in the day. It was rather much to take in. I should like to read what the Minister said to see whether we can come back to the matter at a later stage.
Can the Minister now say whether there will be a standard way in which the charge will be sent out? Will it be obvious from that how much of the costs are attributable to county services and how much to district services? If not—if it is to be a general bill on the whole of the services—I can see a great deal of passing of the buck between one authority and another, either placing the blame or taking the praise for whatever they have done.
Whatever system finally evolves—it looks as though it will be the one already in the Bill—I hope there will be a standard form when it is sent out to the charge payer, and that it will be obvious from that form which expenses go to which authority and for which services those authorities are responsible.
The Earl of Caithness: The noble Baroness and I are on common ground; that is exactly what we seek to achieve.
Baroness Stedman: In the interests of saving time I shall withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 119 not moved.]
The Deputy Chairman of Committees: Before calling Amendment No. 119A, I must point out that if it is agreed to I cannot call Amendment No. 120.
The Earl of Caithness The Earl of Caithness moved Amendment No. 119A:
Page 114, line 21, leave out sub-paragraph (6) and insert—
("(6) The relevant population in relation to an authority shall be calculated by—

(a) taking the number of those members of the population of the authority's area who fall within such description as is specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State, and

(b) making such adjustments (if any) by way of addition or subtraction (or both) as are specified in, or calculated in a manner specified in, the regulations.").

The noble Earl said: I beg to move Amendment No. 119A and at the same time speak to Amendments Nos. 122A and 130A. Doubtless my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes will move Amendment No. 120 and I shall therefore respond to her after she has moved it. Our aim is so to define "relevant population"—
Lord Sandford: Perhaps I may interrupt my noble friend. I think the noble Lord the Lord Chairman said just now that if Amendment No. 119A was carried—and I imagine my noble friend Lady Gardner intends to move her amendment, No. 120—it will pre-empt Amendment No. 120. I should have thought that it would be for my noble friend Lady Gardner to speak to her amendment in the discussion on the noble Earl's amendment.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees: The noble Lord is quite right.
The Earl of Caithness: I am sorry, I think I said that my noble friend would move her amendment. What I meant was that she would speak to it. My noble friend is absolutely right.
Our aim is to so define "relevant population" that it is a fair representation of the tax base for community charges. These government amendments are to ensure that we have the powers to make regulations that allow us to fulfil that aim. Our amendments will allow my right honourable friend to make regulations which will enable the definition of "relevant population" to reflect for example that students pay 20 per cent. of the community charge. I am sure that Members of the Committee will agree that it is appropriate to reflect these in the definition of "relevant population". We shall in due course be talking to the local authority associations about the fine-tuning of the definition in the regulations.
We intend that the same definition of "relevant population", broadly reflecting the taxable capacity of the area concerned, should be the same for all aspects of the new system of local government finance. "Relevant population" will therefore be the basis on which a precepting authority apportions its precepts among the charging authorities in its area.

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This is provided for in Clause 76 and Amendment No. 130A relates to this matter. Likewise "relevant population" will be the basis on which contributions from the NNDR pool are distributed and Amendments Nos. 119A and 122A relate to this. "Relevant population" will also be the basis on which we distribute revenue support grant and this will be specified in the distribution reports we shall be making under Part VI of the Bill.
These amendments will give us the powers we need if we are to define "relevant population" in the way I have described and I commend them to the Committee. I beg to move.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: Is this the appropriate moment for me to speak to Amendment No. 120? I listened to the Minister's comments on Amendment No. 119A, but I am not sure that they really make any difference to my own view and to my wish to see my amendment agreed to rather than that of my noble friend. I am somewhat concerned that although this amendment gives all sorts of powers according to the regulations, nothing is spelt out or in any way made clear as to what that means. As those regulations are not before us and nothing is known about them, it makes it very difficult to comment on that point at this stage.
The Minister, in speaking to his amendment, asked me to declare an interest in Westminster. I do this without hesitation. I have just recently finished my year as Lady Mayoress of Westminster. My husband is an elected councillor. I am a resident of Westminster and one of those poor unfortunates who will pay a very high community charge by comparison with other areas after this Bill comes into force. I think the situation of Westminster is very different from that of anywhere else in the whole country save the City of London.
The Government have recognised that the City of London is a special case, but they have made no recognition whatsoever of the particular problems which will face the City of Westminster under this Bill. The City of Westminster is not opposed to this Bill, but it does believe that there should be fairness to its ratepayers and to those who will meet its community charge. Westminster has an adult resident population of 150,000 people. It has a daily commuter population—a working population—of an additional 400,000 people. Even the City of London has a working population of only 300,000.
I see that the Chief Whip has come into the Chamber. I should say that not only do I wish to speak but a number of others do, too. This is an important amendment and I should like to clarify the position as regards whether we are going to deal with the whole amendment tonight. We certainly do not want to hear just half of the speakers. I know that there are at least 10 or 12 other speakers who want to speak and who will be happier to be here on Monday. Perhaps the Chief Whip would prefer that. I defer to the wishes of the Committee on this matter. It seems that I am to continue.
Lord Denham: As my noble friend has particularly mentioned me, I should say that the agreement is that
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we do not go beyond 11 o'clock tonight. If we can get this through by 11 o'clock we shall of course do it.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: The position of course is that we have already started to debate Amendment No. 119A in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and we must finish our debate on that amendment.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: I thank the Members of the Committee for their comments. The latest figures that are available are the 1981 figures from the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys. That means that even the figures I am quoting will be almost 10 years out of date by the time the Bill comes into force. But it is clearly very unjust for 150,000 people, through their community charge, to bear the very heavy expenses of the services that have to be provided not only for themselves but for the additional 400,000 people a day. Westminster City Council gets no rate support grant, and indeed it pays an equalisation levy to help poorer boroughs in London of £77 million. But there is an assessment for—
Lord Denham: Will my noble friend give way just for a minute? We are actually discussing Amendment No. 119A. I think that my noble friend is discussing a later amendment which is grouped with that.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: The position is quite clear. We are discussing the amendment standing in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. If this amendment is carried, then Amendment No. 120 cannot be called.
Lord Denham: I have a guarantee from the Members opposite that the Committee will not sit later than 11 o'clock tonight. If we can get somewhere near 11 o'clock, or well before a quarter past, that is fair enough. But if not, I think we shall have to adjourn at this moment.
Lord Carr of Hadley: There are very important issues to be raised here. I certainly wish to support—not oppose—the Government's amendment; but before I support it, and certainly before one is prepared to be satisfied by it, we need to get answers to questions which can only be raised by a proper discussion of Amendment No. 120. It would not be satisfactory to be cut short. I say that particularly as those of us concerned with this amendment made it clear (in ways it is possible to make clear) that this is a probing amendment that we did not wish to force to a Division, if only we could have the opportunity to raise the questions and get answers to them.
Lord Denham: Perhaps I may say that when the House is sitting on a Friday, we cannot sit much beyond eleven o'clock on a Thursday night.

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Obviously, if we had known that the amendment was going to take this amount of time, we would not have begun our discussions on it. If we adjourn the House now, the amendment can be considered afresh when we are next in Committee on the Bill. I apologise to my noble friend and other noble Lords who have already spoken on the amendment. However, I believe that we should start afresh when we next consider the Bill. I beg to move that the House now resume.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.
House adjourned at eleven o'clock.

  NUCLEAR POWER STATIONS: CONSTRUCTION POLICY
  NUCLEAR POWER STATIONS: CONSTRUCTION POLICY