Sitting of 7 March 1988

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

  ENERGY
  Mr. Speaker: Before we start on questions to the Secretary of State for Energy, may I say to the House that further court proceedings are still pending in Scotland on the issue of whether the South of Scotland Electricity Board is bound by contracts to purchase coal exclusively from British Coal for certain power stations. This means that that issue cannot be raised in supplementary questions or, indeed, in the debate later today.
  I am, however, prepared to allow questions and speeches to cover the future policy of the electricity boards in Scotland on the use of domestic and imported coal.
  Mr. Douglas: On that point, Mr. Speaker, would you be gracious enough to reflect a little further on how that statement constrains hon. Members with very important constituency interests, and on the debate last week in which this very matter was raised specifically by my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Mr. Eadie) and by me? Will you reflect on how we might be constrained in advocating a position in defence of our constituents' interests, particularly in view of the threat that hangs over 3,000 to 4,000 miners in Scotland?
  Mr. Speaker: When I gave my original ruling, the issue was not sub judice. This week it is. As I have already
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  explained to the hon. Gentleman, discussion of the general proposition on whether domestic or imported coal should be used is perfectly permissible.
  Mr. Salmond: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Can you give us further clarification on whether what is sub judice pertains to the point at issue in the court case, namely, whether contracts have been established? Or are you saying that we cannot discuss the entire issue of the buying in of coal by the privatisation?
  Mr. Speaker: That is exactly what my statement said. What is sub-judice is the issue immediately before the court. I am prepared to allow questions and speeches to cover the future policy of the boards.
  Mr. Dalyell: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Question 6, which refers to this issue, stands in my name. The difference between policy and what is actually about to happen to jobs throughout Scotland is a very grey area indeed. Does this not raise the whole question of the relationship between what Parliament has already accepted on the Order Paper and the courts? On what basis are matters that appear in the courts subsequently allowed to preclude legitimate parliamentary questions?
  Mr. Speaker: Order. The questions were put down before the matter was sub judice. I have nothing to add to the statement that I have already made.

  ENERGY

    Electricity Industry
    Mr. Rost: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy when he proposes to announce his detailed plans for the privatisation of the electricity industry.
    Mr. Favell: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy when he expects to publish his proposals for the privatisation of the electricity supply industry.
    The Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. Cecil Parkinson): I refer my hon. Friends to my statement to the House of 25 February 1988.
    Mr. Rost: Is my right hon. Friend aware that his proposals have been widely welcomed by those who wish

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    to get into the business of electricity production, and that provisional contracts are already being negotiated between private generators and area boards at about 3p per unit of electricity? Is that not evidence that the competitive surge is already beginning and that this will lead to electricity price reductions and a better deal for the consumer and for industry?
    Mr. Parkinson: My hon. Friend is right. There is scope for competition in generation. I believe that that competition will put a downward pressure on costs, and we shall ensure through regulation that the benefit is passed to the customer.
    Mr. Favell: As my right hon. Friend is aware, a large number of CEGB employees live in Stockport. This privatisation differs from others because the employer after privatisation will not necessarily be the same one as before. Can my right hon. Friend say how the change over for employees is to be effected? In particular, will he say something about pension rights and the right to subscribe for shares?
    Mr. Parkinson: This will be a matter for detailed negotiation with the industry, now that we have declared the structure. We made it clear in the White Paper that the negotiating rights would not be interfered with and the machinery would not be disturbed. We also made it clear that one of the scares that are normally run on these occasions—that pensions would be threatened—was without foundation, and that we would ensure for everyone in the industry the right to buy shares on preferential terms.
    Mr. Matthew Taylor: The Secretary of State referred to the detailed plans in the White Paper, but there is nothing in the White Paper about the sort of price protection that there will be for consumers. There are worries in my part of the country that account may be taken in future of reactive losses, the costs of which are currently distributed around the country, and that therefore high price rises may occur in the further-flung regions of the country, to which there are high transmission costs. Can the Secretary of State give any reassurance to my constituents?
    Mr. Parkinson: Yes. If the hon. Gentleman looks again at the White Paper he will find that the regulator will be charged with the duty of making sure that the distribution companies do not abuse their monopolies, that the savings they make in costs of generation should be passed on and that their own prices will be put under pressure.
    Mr. Nicholas Brown: What will the Secretary of State's privatisation proposals mean for the four outstanding orders for coal-fired power stations?
    Mr. Parkinson: We expect those orders to be pursued. We believe that there is an important future for coal and that well into the foreseeable future coal will continue to be the major source of our electricity.
    Sir Anthony Meyer: What can my right hon. Friend say to allay the fears that the form of privatisation that he has chosen will not merely exert pressure on the Coal Board to be efficient, which is acceptable, but will unleash competitive forces which will lead finally to the virtual closure of the British deep mine coal industry?
    Mr. Parkinson: That is pessimistic nonsense. There will be a need for 75 million tonnes of coal a year, and I refuse
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    to believe that the British coal industry, backed by substantial investment and the most modern equipment, cannot meet the challenge of supplying most of that need.
    Mr. Win Griffiths: Can the Minister tell us whether, in his detailed plans, he is prepared to give the regulatory body the power to investigate the comparative value of investment in energy conservation, as opposed to the expansion of energy supply? According to the Prime Minister, £7 billion worth of savings could be made in energy conservation.
    Mr. Parkinson: I do not think that that will be a matter for the regulator. However, the hon. Gentleman has made an important point. Nearly £7 billion a year is wasted in paying for energy, which is subsequently not used properly. We believe that there is tremendous scope for savings for the domestic consumer and for industry. I hope that industry will focus on the scope for reducing its costs by the better use of what it is at present buying.

    British Coal
    Mr. Roger King: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy how much public funding is being provided for British Coal in the current year.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. Michael Spicer): The Government expect to provide £916 million in grants to British Coal in 1987–88.
    Mr. King: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. Is he aware of the great and widespread concern among manufacturers at the high cost of investment within the coal industry, which they are having to pay through their taxes? Is he further aware that some companies, such as the Rover Group, have learnt to live within their means and have not borrowed from the public purse, nor will they in future, and that they look upon the cost of providing the coal industry with the resources it wants as a direct burden upon their profitability? When is the coal industry going to pull itself up by its own boot straps?
    Mr. Spicer: My hon. Friend is right to say that we have been backing the coal industry with taxpayers' money as no other Government have done before. It has been provided with £9 billion in the past nine years—an average of £1 billion per year. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that the taxpayer naturally expects a return on his money. That is why we deplore any continued disruptive action in the pits, which has so far this year cost British Coal £100 million of operating profit. That happens to be the same as the estimated cost of building Margam.
    Mr. Cummings: Will the Secretary of State join me and the House in congratulating the work force of Murton colliery on breaking all productivity records during the week in which we celebrated our 150th anniversary and the cutting of the first sod? Does the Secretary of State agree that, in order to facilitate an atmosphere for increased productivity greater efficiency and better industrial relations, the dismissed miners who lost their jobs during the 1984–85 dispute should now be offered their jobs back?
    Mr. Spicer: Of course I join the hon. Gentleman in congratulating the workers at Murton colliery—which I know because I was a candidate there for 10 years, opposing various predecessors of the hon. Gentleman—on their productivity record. It is true that British Coal as a whole has been making great strides in productivity.

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    As to the second part of the hon. Gentleman's question, this matter has been gone over heavily. Of all the many miners originally considered, only about 50 of those dismissed have any kind of case. The hon. Gentleman knows that that dispute resulted in a great deal of bad behaviour by many people, which led to an enormous number of court cases. There is no question of our reconsidering the position.
    Mr. Andy Stewart: My hon. Friend may care to know that the miners in Nottinghamshire appreciate the Government's total commitment to investment in the coal industry and that, given the opportunity, they will continue to increase productivity. Does my hon. Friend agree that there has been not only increased productivity but increased safety? Only last year the safety record in Nottinghamshire increased dramatically and, given the conditions there, that record will continue to improve.
    Mr. Spicer: I very much agree that a thriving coal industry, with the backing of modern equipment, will be a much safer industry.
    Mr. Hardy: Does the Minister accept that the Government's case for public investment in the coal industry is imperilled by the enthusiastic shortsighted pursuit of cheaper, uneconomic and often dumped coal imports? Does the hon. Gentleman also accept that not only that investment but the future of the coal industry and the mining engineering and equipment industry may be imperilled if that reckless course is pursued, at enormous cost to Britain's future balance of payments?
    Mr. Spicer: I should rather put my answer the other way round: British Coal, with the backing of the taxpayer in recent years, is in a good position to compete against all corners if it will use the equipment properly. The key question is whether that equipment will be used properly.

    Nuclear Safety
    Mr. Sackville: To ask the Secretary of State for energy when he last met representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency to discuss nuclear safety.
    Mr. Michael Spicer: My right hon. Friend and I have met representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency on a number of occasions. The Government are totally committed to ensuring that the British nuclear industry maintains its outstanding safety record.
    Mr. Sackville: Does my hon. Friend agree that those hon. Members who are concerned about the safety of our nuclear installations should arrange to visit the Risley laboratory of the Atomic Energy Authority, where they will find evidence that the British nuclear industry presents a reservoir of expertise and skill in safety matters that is unsurpassed anywhere in the world?
    Mr. Spicer: My hon. Friend is right about the excellent job done on safety matters at Risley. The British nuclear industry's record is second to none on these matters, and we mean to keep it that way.
    Mr. Alan W. Williams: There have been contradictory press reports about the experiment which was supposed to be conducted at the Trawsfynydd nuclear power station. The flow of cooling fluid was to be turned off in a Chernobyl-style experiment. Has that experiment been postponed, or cancelled?
    Mr. Spicer: That is a matter for the CEGB. The experiment has been postponed but, of course, any test would be done under totally different conditions from anything comparable to Chernobyl. It is wrong to raise the Chernobyl matter. As one example of what would have happened, the power station would have been shut down. There was no question of the kind of experimentation and lack of safety systems that existed at Chernobyl being seen here. There is no comparison between the two. At the moment, the CEGB has postponed the experiment.
    Mr. Chapman: Does my hon. Friend agree that the highest standards of international agreements on nuclear safety are vital to this country, not because the British nuclear industry is in any way wanting — it has the highest safety standards of any country — but because there are so many foreign nuclear reactors, and if there were a serious accident the effect on the people of Britain as well as on the people of other European countries would be devastating?
    Mr. Spicer: What my hon. Friend has said is absolutely true, and part of the reason—perhaps the main reason—why we co-operate so greatly on international matters is that we see it as imperative that the kinds of standards that we adopt here are as widespread as possible throughout the world.
    Dr. Thomas: With regard to international co-operation in the nuclear industry, will the Minister ensure that any natural circulation tests that take place in the future at Trawsfynydd, or elsewhere, are subject to inspection by international representatives from the European Community and from the International Atomic Energy Agency?
    Mr. Spicer: If I were to say yes to the hon. Gentleman, which I do not plan to do, that would suppose or presume that we have less than total confidence in our own regulators, which, of course, is not the case. We have total confidence in the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate and in the operators to ensure the continuation of safety in the British nuclear industry.

    Electricity Industry
    Mr. Prescott: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if, when he last met the Confederation of British Industry, he received a copy of the report it commissioned from the Oxford Economic Research Association on "The Privatisation of the Electricity Supply Industry"; and if he will make a statement on its conclusions.
    Mr. Parkinson: I have received a copy of the report and I shall be discussing it with the Confederation of British Industry shortly.
    Mr. Prescott: Does the Secretary of State accept the conclusion of the reporters, who are convinced supporters of his privatisation programme, that a 15 per cent. price increase is totally unjustified on the ground of an increased rate of return on investment? Does he, therefore, accept their statement that the price increase is concerned only with increasing the value of the assets, which supports the view of the Opposition that the 15 per cent. price increase is totally unjustified and is really a privatisation tax to benefit the Treasury, paid for by the consumer, which will produce higher prices and higher unemployment?
    Mr. Parkinson: No, Sir, we do not accept either the conclusions or the reasoning of the report, and if the hon.

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    Gentleman read it carefully, he would not either. We do not believe that short-run marginal costs are a sensible basis for pricing electricity. We do not think that the fluctuations that would follow from such a policy would be acceptable to the hon. Gentleman or to anybody else in the country.
    Mr. Prescott: That is competition.
    Mr. Parkinson: No, it is not.
    Dr. Michael Clark: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the increase in the subscription rate of the Confederation of British Industry over recent years has been considerably higher than the increase in electricity prices? Is he also aware that during the past five-year period that subscription rate has increased by twice the rate of the increase in electricity prices to industry? Does he consider that that might be one reason why the number of manufacturing companies in the CBI has fallen, and is that not a case of people in glass office blocks?
    Mr. Parkinson: My hon. Friend has put forward an interesting set of facts of which I was not aware until now. The CBI has grossly over-reacted to our proposals, and its assessment of the impact on the overwhelming majority of its members is totally wrong.
    Mr. Heffer: In an interesting article in the Sunday Express yesterday the right hon. Gentleman made the point:
    "We are ending monopoly wherever possible. This won't mean that households will be able to choose between rival electricity"—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is an old parliamentary hand. He must paraphrase, not quote.
    Mr. Heffer: I am not reading it, Mr. Speaker; I am just referring to it.
    On that basis, how can the right hon. Gentleman say, "We are now introducing competition in the industry," when we already have a good industry giving good electricity prices? How can he argue about competition? We are not buying suits, clothes or shoes, and it will be the same electricity, whoever supplies it. Are not the Government involved in doctrinaire nonsense?
    Mr. Parkinson: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will follow his reading of my article by reading the White Paper, in which I explain that although distribution is a natural monopoly, generation is not, and generation accounts for 80 per cent. of the costs of electricity. It is perfectly possible to introduce competition into that part which represents 80 per cent. of the customers' bills and to regulate the rest.
    Mr. Thurnham: Does my right hon. Friend agree that his proposals will allow more decision-takers to be involved in the industry? The Opposition should recognise that that is healthier for both the suppliers of generation equipment and the consumers of electricity.
    Mr. Parkinson: I believe that our proposals will open up good career opportunities for many people working in the industry. I do not like the present structure, whereby the average area board consists of two people—usually they have come in from outside the board—and about 12 non-executives. I believe that, in future, there will be scope for promotion within the business for people who have devoted their lives to it. I hope that the Opposition will welcome that.

    British Coal—SSEB
    Mr. Eadie: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he has had discussions with British Coal regarding its threatened court action against the South of Scotland Electricity Board, announced in the press release of British Coal of 17 February.
    Mr. Dalyell: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he will make a statement on his discussions with British Coal and the South of Scotland Electricity Board on the future of the coal industry in Scotland.
    Mr. Michael Spicer: I hope that British Coal and the South of Scotland Electricity Board will reach satisfactory arrangements. This is a commercial matter for the two industries.
    Mr. Eadie: Surely the hon. Gentleman is aware that his Department sponsors the coal industry. Is he trying to tell the House that he and his right hon. Friend did not know that the Secretary of State for Scotland intended to sit on his hands and do nothing about the threat to wipe out the deep mine coal industry in Scotland? We regard the Minister and his right hon. Friend as conspirators in this betrayal of the Scottish miners.
    Mr. Spicer: I thank the hon. Gentleman for reminding me that we sponsor the coal industry. The Government are totally at one on this matter and no one is conspiring against anyone else. In recent years the Government have invested £120 million of taxpayers' money in the Scottish coal industry. Therefore, there is no doubt that we would prefer British Coal and the SSEB to spend more time talking to each other in an effort to resolve this problem than fighting each other in the press and the courts.
    Mr. Dalyell: Does the Minister support the SSEB's short-term marginal costings?
    Mr. Spicer: There are two sides to the issue of costings — the question whether electricity consumers are benefited and employees—
    Mr. Dalyell: Answer the question.
    Mr. Spicer: I will answer the question in my own way. There is also the question whether the consumers or the employees of the coal industry are benefited. The two industries are fighting each other and they each have their own perspective on the issue.
    Sir Ian Lloyd: Does my hon. Friend agree that, although it is invariably appropriate and occasionally necessary for parties to a dispute to settle that dispute and determine their obligations before the courts, it is at best inappropriate and at worst disastrous that energy policy is determined by the courts?
    Mr. Spicer: As I have already said, the Government would infinitely prefer the matter to be settled as a result of discussion between the two industries.
    Mr. McLoughlin: Does my hon. Friend agree that the Scottish coal industry has a bright future, bearing in mind the huge amount of capital invested in the industry by the Government? That future is likely to be blighted only if coal cannot be produced at an effective and efficient price. Bearing that in mind, does my hon. Friend share my surprise that, in the latest ballot held by the National Union of Mineworkers, some 51 per cent. of Scottish

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    miners wanted to continue with the overtime ban, which will do no good whatever for the future of British Coal, but which is no doubt supported by the Labour party?
    Mr. Spicer: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The continued disruption at the Scottish pits has done no good whatever. At the end of the day, unless the consumer of electricity in Scotland is to be disadvantaged, coal must be produced at a competitive price.
    Mr. Douglas: The Minister has made reference to capital investment in Scotland. How much of that investment was made at the Longannet complex? What return can the nation expect from that investment if the product of the mines in that complex is not used by the SSEB?
    Mr. Spicer: The answer to the first part of the hon. Gentleman's question is £60 million. The answer to the second part of the question is that it depends, as I have already said, on the industry making use of the capital invested. The Government have put the capital behind the industry, but it is up to the industry to make use of it by producing coal at the right price.
    Mr. John Marshall: Does my hon. Friend agree that many more people are employed in energy-using industries in Scotland than are employed in the Scottish coal industry? Does he agree also that if the SSEB were to pay through the nose for electricity employment in energy-using industries would be put substantially at risk? Can he justify the calls by Labour Members that the pensioners of Scotland should be asked to pay more for their electricity in order to subsidise the lackeys of Mr. Scargill?
    Mr. Spicer: My hon. Friend makes a good point. Speaking from memory, I believe that about 4,000 people are employed in the Scottish coal industry, so my hon. Friend is likely to be right about the number of people who would benefit from cheap electricity prices. The Government's position is that the industries must sort the matter out themselves.
    Mr. Salmond: Does the Minister wish to maintain his position of 15 February — that the present impasse between the SSEB and British Coal has
    "nothing to do with privatisation"
    —or does he wish to withdraw or amend that statement?
    Mr. Spicer: No, Sir.
    Mr. Darling: Do the Government have a policy for the future of the Scottish coalfield, or do they intend to sit back and act like disinterested spectators?
    Mr. Spicer: The Government's policy is to provide the most efficient industries for our consumers that it is possible for this country to provide. We put a great deal of money into the Scottish industry in the belief that it would make the best use of that equipment, and now we are concerned about the continued disruption that is preventing that equipment from being used properly.

    Pressurised Water Reactors
    Mr. Hannam: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he has recently met the chairman of the National Nuclear Corporation to discuss British involvement in the pressurised water reactor programme.
    Mr. Parkinson: I have met the chairman of the National Nuclear Corporation on various occasions. United Kingdom industry has contributed 93 per cent. of the value of the contracts let for Sizewell B to date.
    Mr. Hannam: Did my right hon. Friend approve the recent decision by the CEGB to prevent the formation of a new PWR construction company by the National Nuclear Corporation and Westinghouse? How does he see the future involvement of the NNC and British contractors in PWR construction in Britain?
    Mr. Parkinson: I regard the NNC as a valuable national asset. At the moment there is a question mark over its future which I am anxious to see removed. I am discussing this with various parties, and as soon as I have more to report to the House I will do so.
    Mr. Frank Cook: Did the Secretary of State discuss the level of insurance cover for liability on PWRs? I thank the Secretary of State for the letter that he kindly sent to me today. In view of the Minister's comments today on how safe and how far ahead of the rest of the world our nuclear industry is, will the Secretary of State explain why the cover that is required is only £20 million, when the cost of any accident could be infinitely greater than that? Why is it that after privatisation the public taxpayer will have to fund any compensation over and above £20 million, whether the accident is at Sizewell or at any other station?
    Mr. Parkinson: The agreement that is incorporated in the Act, which sets the £20 million limit and puts the rest of the cost on to the general body of taxpayers, is an international agreement to which Britain is a signatory, and one that we intend to uphold whether the industry is in the private or the public sector. We do not accept that there will be any change in the standards of safety in the private sector. There will be no relaxation in those standards, and we shall continue to remain a signatory to the international agreement that is embodied in that Act.
    Mr. Neil Hamilton: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the National Nuclear Corporation has a first-class record in the design and project management of nuclear power stations under construction, that Torness and Heysham have been built both to time and to cost, that it is vital for the future of the nuclear industry that power stations continue to be built in a cost-effective way, and that the best way of achieving that is to have an independent contractor constructing these stations after privatisation?
    Mr. Parkinson: Yes. I think that the 3,000 employees of the National Nuclear Corporation have done a good job for Britain and I want those skills maintained and that expertise to remain available. That is why I am in discussion with various parties. I shall report as soon as I have more to say to the House.

    Energy Efficiency
    Mr. John Garrett: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he will make it his policy to support the European Commission's proposed directive on energy efficiency surveys of buildings for sale.
    Mr. Michael Spicer: No. Sir. The United Kingdom Government share the view of most other EC member states that it is not appropriate to require the householder to spend between £100 and £200 of his own money on a mandatory home energy audit.
    Mr. Garrett: Is the Minister aware that the former Secretary of State for Energy was an enthusiast for such a scheme, that experience in Denmark is that for every £1 of survey costs there are £4 in private investment, that the European Commission is promoting the scheme and that the British Government alone are resisting its introduction? Given the abysmally low level of domestic energy efficiency in Britain, which the Secretary of State has admitted, why not introduce the scheme? Why is there no reference whatsoever to energy efficiency in the White Paper on electricity privatisation?
    Mr. Spicer: There are two fallacies in the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question. First, it is not true that all other Governments are backing the scheme for mandatory auditing. Nor is it true that the Danish experience has been particularly successful. The scheme is subsidised by the Danish Government and is mandatory, but the take-up rate had been only 50 per cent. We believe that it is much better to deal with the problem through direct grants to those who need the money. We have spent £20 million on household loft insulation in about 500,000 households, and 400,000 houses have been draught-proofed, at a cost of about £45 million. It is much better to do that for those on low incomes.
    Mr. Moss: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he has any new proposals to improve national energy efficiency.
    Mr. Parkinson: The Energy Efficiency Office is consulting outside bodies with the aim of developing programmes in the most economically attractive areas. We are also examining how the contribution from companies which benefit from the Department's programmes can be increased. I hope to announce the outcome of this work before the summer recess.
    Mr. Moss: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that reply. I know that he is aware of the energy study in the north-west that was undertaken by the March Consulting Group, and I am aware also that he recognises one of the conclusions of the study, namely, that in the north-west industry and commerce could save up to 15 per cent. of energy demand by using known technology. Does he agree that the CBI would be better employed exhorting its members to seek to obtain that saving of 15 per cent. than simply whingeing about electricity prices increasing?
    Mr. Parkinson: It is true, as I said earlier, that there are substantial savings to be made by using energy more efficiently. The Department has been sponsoring a number of projects — I hear Opposition Members making sneering remarks—that have resulted in more than 90 per cent. of lofts in Britain being insulated. By the end of the year we shall have insulated the homes of over 700,000 pensioners. We are making real progress in helping those on low incomes to save energy. It is important that we continue to make progress.
    Mr. Home Robertson: How can the Secretary of State talk about national energy efficiency when the Under-Secretary of State has been talking about the substantial investment that has been made in the Scottish coal industry and the Secretary of State for Scotland is idly standing by and allowing the coal industry and coal-burning power stations in Scotland to be scrapped?
    Mr. Parkinson: I realise that the hon. Gentleman wanted to make his point about the coal industry, but I
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    genuinely think that he has chosen the wrong question on which to do so. This question is to do with the more efficient use of energy in homes and by industry. We are talking about the end user. We believe that there is substantial scope for savings, and so did the March group, whose report I endorse.

    Alternative Energy Sources
    Mr. Boswell: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy how much will be spent by his Department on research into alternative methods of energy in the next five years.
    Mr. Michael Spicer: The public expenditure White Paper, Cm. 288, published in January 1988, envisages that up to 1991 about £50 million will be spent on research into renewable sources of energy. Information for subsequent years is not available.
    Mr. Boswell: Is my hon. Friend aware that the House will welcome the proposal in the White Paper on the privatisation of electricity to put non-renewable sources together with nuclear under a single quota? That is greatly to be welcomed. Will he consider bringing forward his surveys into and studies of renewable energy as soon as possible?
    Mr. Spicer: My hon. Friend is right to say that renewables are included in the quota of non-fossils in the White Paper. That is widely welcomed. We shall produce the survey and report by mid-summer.

    Electricity Exports
    Mr. Pike: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy on how many occasions in the last 12 months electricity has been exported to France via the cross-Channel link.
    Mr. Michael Spicer: None since January 1987. In 1986–87, 188 GW hours were exported to France via the Channel link.
    Mr. Pike: Is it not a fact that for most of the time electricity has been imported from France? Is it not important that when the privatisation of the electricity industry takes place some safeguardss are put into the Bill to ensure that the industry does not continue to import at ever-increasing rates, to the detriment of our own electricity industry?
    Mr. Spicer: The safeguard, if that is the right expression, is that French electricity is interruptible, and cannot therefore be guaranteed. It comes in at a lower price commensurate with that fact. It is highly unlikely that the mainstream of base-load electricity will be imported, but we shall certainly not restrict it.

  THE ARTS

    Musical Instruments
    Mr. Boswell: To ask the Minister for the Arts if he will take steps to ensure that suitable musical instruments are available at reasonable prices to talented young musicians.
    The Minister for the Arts (Mr. Richard Luce): No, Sir. It is not the Government's policy to subsidise the purchase of instruments, but there are several trusts which make loans for the purpose, at nominal rates of interest.
    Mr. Boswell: Does my right hon. Friend agree that our young musicians — teenagers as well as young professionals — need instruments commensurate with their talents? While recognising, as he does, the invaluable contribution made by the loan fund for musical instruments, other trusts and private patrons, may I ask whether he will consider getting together all interested parties, preferably with a number of financial institutions, to ensure that Britain can maintain its musical preeminence?
    Mr. Luce: I acknowledge the fact that musical instruments do, or can, cost a great deal today, and that that can pose a problem for certain people, but, as my hon. Friend said, the loan fund for musical instruments has been set up especially to help professional musicians or potential professional musicians. There are also other grant-making trusts that make loans for this purpose and help other people who are not necessarily professionals. That is the right way to go. I do not think it is right to give taxpayers' money direct to this end, but if my hon. Friend has more specific, detailed ideas, I should like to hear them.
    Mr. Tony Banks: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the excellence of the musical education provided by the Inner London education authority, particularly by its special music school? What provisions will he made for safeguarding ILEA's musical education, and particularly its school? What discussions is the Minister having with his colleagues at the Department of Education and Science?
    Mr. Luce: There is no doubt about the importance of the support given by ILEA to the musical side of things, and discussions are taking place between my Department and that of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science.

    British Film and Television School
    Mr. Greg Knight: To ask the Minister for the Arts what central Government funding has been and will be given to the British Film and Television School in the period 1985–86 to 1990–91.
    Mr. Luce: I provided £3,347,000 over the three years 1985 to 1988. I plan to allocate £4,950,000 over the three years 1988 to 1991, which I hope will be matched, or more than matched, by contributions from the industries.
    Mr. Knight: Is my right hon. Friend aware that most people associated with the film industry will warmly welcome the increases that he has announced? Do the video and advertising industries, which make full use of the graduates from the school, contribute to its running costs? Many of us think that if they do not, they should.
    Mr. Luce: My hon. Friend has a point. They do not contribute at present, but I hope that they will respond to the substantial increase in Government support over the next three years by starting to give their own support. My hon. Friend might like to know that I have injected £300,000 of incentive funding for the school. I hope that that can be used to encourage such industries to join in.
    Mr. Fisher: Is the Minister aware that other countries treat their film schools a great deal more seriously and put in a great deal more investment? The Paris and Berlin film schools, which have costs comparable to ours, receive twice as much central Government investment per student.
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    Is it not time that the Government started recognising the enormous cultural and economic importance of the film industry and began investing in it?
    Mr. Luce: The issues on which the hon. Gentleman tends to intervene never cease to amaze me. I have increased the amount of funding for the school by 42 per cent. in the coming financial year, and by 50 per cent. over three years. That is a strong indication of the importance that I attach to the school. It already has a high international reputation, and it is right that its financing should be based on joint funding between the Government and the television and other industries.

    Indemnity Scheme
    Mr. Yeo: To ask the Minister for the Arts how the Government indemnity scheme assists art in the regions.
    Mr. Luce: By removing the need for commercial insurance of exhibitions mounted for public benefit, the Government indemnity scheme has proved very effective in encouraging loans of works of art between London and the regions as well as between provincial museums and galleries.
    Mr. Yeo: Is my right hon. Friend aware that for a small regional establishment, such as Gainsborough's House in my constituency, this scheme is of considerable importance? Will he assure the House that he will continue to develop the scheme, as it offers a means whereby people living in the regions can have access to art treasures that are all too often available only to those who live in or visit London?
    Mr. Luce: I certainly acknowledge the important role played by Gainsborough's House, and I reinforce yet again the importance that I attach to encouraging more exhibitions of our treasures around the country. The public have a right to see them, and the more that the exhibitions can be encouraged, the better. It might be of interest to my hon. Friend to know that this year there has been an increase over last year of 66 per cent. in the applications for indemnity, amounting to £322 million. In addition, I have established, at the Museums and Galleries Commission, a travel and exhibition unit that is designed to encourage these exhibitions.
    Mr. Boyes: While welcoming the Minister's statement on this matter, may I ask whether, when he visits the Photographers gallery, which I understand will be in Cardiff in the next week or two, and the Side gallery in Newcastle, he will ensure that as we approach the 150th anniversary of photography he will do all that he can to encourage those galleries to take advantage of the scheme so that we can have more exhibitions from London visiting the regions?
    Mr. Luce: I am very happy to do just that. I must stress that these are subject to certain conditions, including security, because if such conditions are not satisfied we cannot go ahead with such schemes. However, subject to that, my answer is yes.

    Redgrave Theatre, Farnham
    Mrs. Virginia Bottomley: To ask the Minister for the Arts whether he plans to visit the Redgrave theatre, Farnham.
    Mr. Luce: I enjoyed my visit to the Redgrave theatre on 27 February this year and I am very impressed by the way that the theatre is run.
    Mrs. Bottomley: My right hon. Friend's visit to the Farnham theatre was greatly appreciated. Is he aware that it is the most active repertory theatre in the country and was open 359 days last year and gave 419 performances? Is he aware that for the second time running it has won an award for new sponsors? What steps is he taking to draw to the attention of other regional arts organisations the example set by the Farnham theatre, particularly in responding to his business incentive scheme?
    Mr. Luce: My hon. Friend is right. The Redgrave theatre is a model. It raised 67 per cent. of all its resources from the private sector, largely through the box office, but also through sponsorship. There is a true partnership there between the public and the private sectors. My hon. Friend is right to say that it is the most prolific in productivity of all the repertory theatres in Britain and that it has received business sponsorship incentive scheme awards over the last two or three years. It is a very fine model for other theatres.

    Business Sponsorship Scheme
    Mr. Butler: To ask the Minister for the Arts if he will make a further statement on the progress of the business sponsorship incentive scheme.
    Mr. Luce: The business sponsorship incentive scheme continues to be successful. It has brought in £16·4 million of new money for the arts and attracted 618 first-time sponsors, many of whom have continued to sponsor the arts. As I announced to the House on 26 January 1988, I have increased the budget for the scheme by 70 per cent., from £1·75 million to £3 million, for 1988–89 and restored the £25,000 maximum award limit.
    Mr. Butler: I thank my right hon. Friend for that excellent news. Will he reassure me that the awards will continue to be given on merit rather than on skin colour?
    Mr. Luce: Yes, I can assure my hon. Friend of that.
    Mr. Pike: Will the Minister take steps to ensure that the regions receive their share of benefit from the scheme, which is good, but at present seems to be giving too much advantage to London and the south-east?
    Mr. Luce: I am very anxious that the scheme should be spread as widely as possible. The hon. Gentleman will be interested to note that, on average, 70 per cent. of the funds over the past three years have been directed outside London. That shows how widespread is the scheme.
    Mr. Andrew Mitchell: To ask the Minister for the Arts how many new corporate sponsors of the arts have been brought in during the last 12 months as a result of the business sponsorship incentive scheme.
    Mr. Luce: The scheme continues to attract new sponsors to the arts. There were 216 first-time sponsors in 1987 and I expect this number to increase considerably in 1988.
    Mr. Mitchell: Can my right hon. Friend say how many first-time corporate sponsors returned to repeat their generosity in subsequent years?
    Mr. Luce: It is interesting to note that a survey has been undertaken by the Association for Business Sponsorship
    16
    of the Arts, which supervises the scheme, which shows that no fewer than 90 per cent. of firms that joined for the first time have either decided to renew, or are in the process of renewing, their sponsorship. That is a clear sign of the value of the hard-headed bargain between the sponsor and the arts organisation.

  CIVIL SERVICE

    Agencies (Civil Service Functions)
    Mr. Allen: To ask the Minister for the Civil Service what represetations he has received from the Civil Service trades unions regarding the proposal to establish agencies to run certain functions of the Civil Service.
    The Minister of State, Privy Council Office (Mr. Richard Luce): None. The Head of the Home Civil Service met leaders of the Civil Service unions on 18 February to explain the Government's proposals, and the project manager is ready to meet them when they have considered these proposals.
    Mr. Allen: Is the Minister aware that when Sir Robin Butler met representatives of the Civil Service trade unions they were not reassured that there is no hidden agenda behind the Government's proposals and feel that disestablishing of the Civil Service may be a prelude to privatising parts of the Civil Service? Will he assure the House that members of the Civil Service will have their wages and conditions maintained under any new arrangement? Will he agree to meet leaders of the Civil Service trade unions to answer their questions direct, as he is responsible for them?
    Mr. Luce: There will be plenty of scope for consultation with unions when we discuss each agency as it is put forward for the establishment of an agency arrangement. We must get it straight. The hon. Gentleman referred to "dis-establishing" the Civil Service. There is no question of that. People who will in future be part of the agency arrangements will still be members of the Civil Service. There will be no change in that policy on privatisation. If a body currently under Government control is thought to be better managed outside the Government, that is a separate matter. On the whole, what we are considering are organisations that remain under Government Departments.
    Mr. Neil Hamilton: To ask the Minister for the Civil Service to what extent managers of Government agencies will be able to recruit, set pay, grade and structure staff under the proposed Civil Service reforms.
    Mr. Luce: This will depend on the framework agreement for each agency. The aim is to give agencies flexibility to manage their own affairs within necessary overall controls.
    Mr. Hamilton: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the public interest would be served by having the maximum flexibility in setting pay, grades and determining the number of staff to be employed in these agencies? Does he further agree that placing a straitjacket around the public services in this country has been one of the biggest curses that we have had to face, as we are now discovering with the National Health Service?
    Mr. Luce: I think that my hon. Friend must be right. We are trying to improve still further the quality of

    17
    management in the Civil Service. To do that it is necessary to delegate inure responsibility to managers. We have been trying to do that over the last few years under the financial management initiative, and the agency arrangement takes that process a stage further. This is a good thing, and I think that it will lead to improved performances and results in the Civil Service. After all, the Civil Service costs £13 billion in gross running costs. The taxpayer is entitled to the best value for money. I believe that flexibility is right, subject to certain conditions about levels of public expenditure and about standards of fair and open competition in the service.
    Dr. Marek: The Minister cannot have it both ways. He cannot tell my hon. Friend he Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) that the staff will continue to be part of the Civil Service, and at the same time agree with his hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Hamilton) that maximum flexibility is to be welcomed.—[Interruption] If not maximum flexibility, he said that he welcomed flexibility. Can the Minister categorically assure the House that the staff of the agencies will continue to be United Kingdom civil servants and be part of the United Kingdom Civil Service? Can he further assure the House that pay and conditions for the staff of the agencies will continue to be negotiated as at present?
    Mr. Luce: I see no conflict at all in this. We seek only to continue a process that has already started. First, we have already started to delegate more responsibility to managers in the Civil Service. Secondly, to come hack to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Hamilton), we have started to have more flexibility of pay and conditions. London weighting is already a variation in the pay system and we are developing other forms of flexibility in pay. We are simply taking the developments a stage further. Broadly speaking, the agencies will remain in Government Departments for the foreseeable Future. If we think that privatisation is the right path, that is a separate issue altogether. Those who work for the agencies will remain civil servants and under those conditions.
    Mr. Rowe: Does my right hon. Friend accept that this is a very valuable initiative? Does he agree that even before the Fulton committee report there was tremendous difficulty in attracting people into the Civil Service for limited terms? Does he envisage the creation of the new agencies as one device for getting over that considerable difficulty?
    Mr. Luce: There are already examples of that. A number of people are recruited from outside the Civil Service for a defined period and under contractual arrangements to undertake particular tasks. I think that from time to time we shall see this develop within the agency system where no existing civil servant is found to be the right chap, for example, to be the chief executive. By and large it is likely that civil servants will be the chief executives, but there may be cases where outsiders come in to serve in the agencies on fixed contracts for short terms.

    Civil Servants (Complaints)
    Mr. Dalyell: To ask the Minister for the Civil Service what proposals he has, in the light of the new
    18
    proposed regime for the Civil Service, to afford protection to those civil servants who allege that they have been misused by Ministers.
    Mr. Luce: Throughout the Civil Service, procedures to deal with complaints about personal matters will continue to exist.
    Mr. Dalyell: In an age when many Conservatives sadly acknowledge that Mr. Bernard Ingham has become the most important man in British politics, who can tell a well-loved Leader of the House that he has become semidetached and then that he will be sacked, is it not important that an ex-civil servant such as Miss Colette Bowe and a civil servant such as Mr. John Mogg should be able to go to an outside body to air their grievances, rather than having to place their accounts of events such as Westland in a bank vault?
    Mr. Luce: The hon. Gentleman does not seem to have taken account of the guidelines issued on 2 December 1987 concerning the duties and responsibilities of civil servants in relation to Ministers. They provide for new procedures, allowing a civil servant to appeal — in cases of conscience and other matters—first to his senior, then to the permanent secretary and, if necessary, to the Head of the Civil Service. Those procedures, which are totally new, are ideal for the Civil Service and provide a perfectly reasonable outlet.
    Mr. Stokes: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the real problem is not so much the misuse of civil servants by Ministers, as the misuse of procedure by the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), with his tedious and repetitive questions, of which we are all sick and tired?
    Mr. Luce: As always. I can agree with my hon. Friend. The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) seems to have an obsession. Experience shows that there has been an extremely good relationship between this Government and the Civil Service.
    Mr. Tony Banks: Has Mr. Bernard Ingham ever complained about being misused by Ministers, or is he happy doing the Prime Minister's dirty work?
    Mr. Luce: I cannot think why the hon. Gentleman is so obsessed with Mr. Ingham, who does an extremely good job.

    Efficiency Unit Report
    Mr. Chapman: To ask the Minister for the Civil Service if he will give a timetable for implementing the four principal recommendations of the Efficiency Unit report "Improving Management in Government: The Next Steps".
    Mr. Luce: One of the recommendations, the appointment of a project manager, has already been implemented. One of his first tasks will be to establish a timetable for implementing the other recommendations, and I hope to publish it at an early date.
    Mr. Chapman: It is less than a month since my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made the statement in the House in reply to the Efficiency Unit's report. Will my right hon. Friend accept that there has been widespread acclaim for many of the recommendations of that report, both from inside the Civil Service and from many outside? Does he agree that the best way to keep up this momentum

    19
    for change, which is generally accepted, is by setting a timetable for the implementation of the four principal recommendations?
    Mr. Luce: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and he is right to say that there is widespread support for the reforms and changes that are being proposed. The support
    20
    comes not only from outside the Civil Service, but from managers in the Civil Service. We want to proceed as rapidly as we reasonably can, and I hope to be able to publish before too long a list of those organisations that will be the first to be formed into agencies. We will keep up a relentless drive to identify other organisations that might be suitable for the same treatment.

Shootings (Gibraltar)
3.30 pm
Mr. George Robertson(by private notice): To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the shootings in Gibraltar.
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Sir Geoffrey Howe): As the House will have heard, three identified terrorists, two men and one woman, were shot dead by security forces in Gibraltar yesterday afternoon. Two of them had a previous criminal record of terrorist activity. The IRA has since admitted that the three were members of an active service unit on active service in Gibraltar. The background and facts are as follows.
Another known IRA terrorist, who was under surveillance by the Spanish authorities, recently crossed into Gibraltar and is thought to have carried out a reconnaissance for an act of terrorism. The activity undertaken suggested that the terrorist act might he in connection with the guard mounting ceremony, carried out on Tuesdays. The Gibraltar police were accordingly placed on high alert, and the police commissioner asked for military assistance in the light of his assessment of the threat.
Shortly before 1 pm yesterday afternoon, one of those subsequently shot brought a white Renault car into Gibraltar and was seen to park it in the area where the band for the guard mounting ceremony assembles. Before leaving the car, he was seen to spend some time making adjustments in the vehicle. An hour and a half later, the two others subsequently shot were seen to enter Gibraltar on foot, and shortly before 3 pm joined the third terrorist in the town. Their presence and actions near the parked Renault car gave rise to strong suspicion that it contained a bomb, which appeared to he corroborated by a rapid technical examination of the car.
About 3.30 pm, all three left the scene and started to walk back towards the border. On their way towads the border, they were challenged by the security forces. When challenged, they made movements which led the military personnel operating in support of the Gibraltar police to conclude that their own lives and the lives of others were under threat. In the light of this response, they were shot. Those killed were subsequently found not to have been carrying arms.
The parked Renault car was subsequently dealt with by a military bomb disposal team. It has now been established that it did not contain an explosive device.
Inquiries carried out by the Spanish authorities have matched keys found on one of the bodies with a Ford Fiesta car, subsequently found on the Spanish side of the border, which contained three false passports and items of equipment including insulating tape, electrical screwdrivers, a number of pairs of gloves, wire and an alarm clock. A key was also found for a third car. The search is continuing for this car and for explosives.
An inquest will be held in Gibraltar.
The suspect white Renault car was parked in the area in which the band of soldiers would have formed for the Tuesday parade. A school and an old people's home were both close by. Had a bomb exploded in the area, not only the 50 soldiers involved in the parade, but a large number
22
of civilians might well have been killed or injured. It is estimated that casualities could well have run into three figures.
There is no doubt whatever that, as a result of yesterday's events, a dreadful terrorist act has been prevented. The three people killed were actively involved in the planning and attempted execution of that act. I am sure that the whole House will share with me the sense of relief and satisfaction that it has been averted.
I am equally confident that the House will wish me to extend our gratitude to the Spanish authorities, without whose invaluable assistance the outcome might have been very different. This co-operation underlines once again the importance of international collaboration in the fight against terrorism.
Mr. Robertson: May I start by congratulating those responsible on what appears to have been a well-planned operation, which must have prevented what would have been a terrible loss of life, involving soldiers of the Royal Anglian Regiment and members of Gibraltar's general public and tourists. Our gratitude is also due to the Spanish authorities for their role in protecting lives in Gibraltar. It is an excellent example of the co-ordinated international action that is required against terrorism.
The very fact that this enormous potential car bomb was placed opposite both an old folks home and a school underlines the cynical hypocrisy of the IRA, that ostensibly apologised after the Enniskillen outrage in November. This House speaks with one voice in condemning unreservedly those in Ireland who seek to massacre and bomb their way to power. These people are evil. They kill and maim and give no heed to the innocents who get in their way. They must be dealt with, if any democratic answer is to be found.
May I ask the Foreign Secretary the following questions. First, is he satisfied that those who were shot represent the total number of those involved in this conspiracy? Secondly, are arrangements being made to protect other potential IRA targets in Europe, and will the cost of such protection be fully funded? Thirdly, is there any evidence available to link Libya to this incident or to gun-running to the IRA in general? Fourthly, is there any evidence linking the Basque terrorist organisation ETA to this particular incident?
Fifthly, since there is still considerable confusion in the reports of what happened yesterday, can the Foreign Secretary confirm that those who were shot were warned before fire was opened, and can he say whether there is to be any inquiry into the circumstances of the shooting? Finally, will he place on record, in order to counter the continuing speculation, whether this operation involved the Metropolitan police special branch or the SAS?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his robust and unqualified support. It is of the utmost importance that those who threaten, maim and kill the citizens of this country should know that the actions that we take and are obliged to take against them command the united support of this House of Commons. I thank him also for his tribute to the co-operation of the Spanish authorities and of all those concerned with this matter, and I join him in his forthright condemnation of the cynical hypocrisy of the IRA when one compares what it said after the Enniskillen tragedy with what happened yesterday.
As for the hon. Gentleman's first question, I said in my statement that at least one other known terrorist had been

23
under surveillance ahead of yesterday's events, so it is plainly not possible to say whether all those potentially concerned have been arrested or dealt with. As to the threat to other targets throughout Europe, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that all questions of security affecting potential targets are under constant review in the light of the development of the threat and information about it. Questions of funding have never been allowed to stand in the way of security.
As for the involvement, or possible involvement, of Libya or ETA, I am not in a position to comment on either of those matters, although the hon. Gentleman will be familiar with other examples of the involvement of Libya, notably in connection with the vessel Eksund.
As I have said, the three people concerned were approached by military people operating in support of the Gibraltar police. They were challenged at that time, and the movement that they then made led the military personnel to conclude that their own lives and the lives of others were under threat. The matter, of course, will be subject to further amplification as further evidence becomes available, but I have given the House the full extent of my information at present.
Sir Bernard Braine: As there can be no doubt whatever of the cost in human life both to the men of my county regiment and to the citizens of Gibraltar had the dastardly and cowardly assault been successful, will my right hon. Friend and learned Friend convey on behalf of the entire House of Commons and the people of this country our profound gratitude to the security forces and, indeed, to the Spanish authorities for foiling this murderous design?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I shall certainly convey the thanks of the entire House to all those concerned with the conclusion of the matter, along the lines expressed by my right hon. Friend.
Mr. David Alton: I should like to identify myself, and my right hon. and hon. Friends, with the statement that the Foreign Secretary has made, and with his forthright condemnation of terrorism and those who seek to take innocent people's lives.
May I press the Foreign Secretary further on the links between the IRA and other international terrorist groups, and ask him whether this active service group was in any way involved in the transportation of arms, including the surface-to-air missiles—the SAM 7s—which are now believed to be in the island of Ireland? Will he say what action is being taken to strengthen international cooperation throughout Europe in defeating terrorism?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: Again, I must respond that I am not able to comment on the particular point that the hon. Gentleman has put to me, although other evidence shows very clearly the existence of links between the Libyan authorities and the IRA terrorist movement. I can make no specific comment at this stage. Certainly, the experience of this case underlines what we have learnt so clearly—that the closest possible international co-operation is necessary against terrorism and the threat of terrorism of all kinds. That is why the House has asked me to express its appreciation of the co-operation offered in this case by the Spanish authorities.
Sir Antony Buck: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that it is gratifying that almost the whole House appears able to unite in congratulating the security forces on what they have achieved? Is it not also gratifying that there appears to be substantial international co-operation in seeing that these evil gunmen do not get away with more terrorism? Are there any gaps in this? Are there any nations in which there is not full co-operation, other than the obvious ones such as Libya?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend for his comments in support of the security services and international co-operation. I hesitate to say that there are no gaps, but, as he knows, it has been the purpose and policy of Her Majesty's Government to do everything possible to secure the greatest possible international co-operation. That remains our objective.
Mr. Harold McCusker (Upper Bann): As the Spanish authorities have their own territorial dispute with this country over Gibraltar, will the Foreign Secretary convey to them the particular thanks of the people I represent for helping to rid us of those extremely dangerous people, who thought as little of the lives of innocent Gibraltarians and Spaniards as they do of those of people in either Northern Ireland or this country?
Can the Foreign Secretary tell us whether those people were travelling as citizens of the Irish Republic, using Irish passports; and, if so, what representations have been made to him this morning by the Government of the Irish Republic?
Finally, does the Foreign Secretary accept that, if a member of the security forces has to produce a weapon and then feels compelled to fire that weapon, he has no alternative but to shoot to kill?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: In answer to the last point, the terrorists in this case were shot. As I have told the House, the military personnel involved concluded that their own lives and the lives of others were under threat, and that there was no other way of protecting life.
As for the hon. Gentleman's question about passports, I am afraid that I cannot give him a comprehensive or detailed answer now. One of the features of such cases is the existence of more than one passport, not always of the same nationality. As I have told the House, three additional passports were found in the second car on the Spanish side of the border, and there may be more discoveries of that kind.
I conclude my answer to the hon. Gentleman by saying that his tribute to the co-operation of the Spanish authorities will certainly be transmitted and I am sure that it will be well received. The incident that was so narrowly averted underlines, as the hon. Gentleman made clear, the reckless willingness of the IRA to disregard human life no matter of what nationality or where it may be found. It is for that reason that international co-operation against terrorism is so vital.
Mr. Michael Colvin: The House strongly supports my right hon. and learned Friend in paying tribute to the security forces, with help from Spain, for the way in which they prevented the murder of hundreds of innocent people in Gibraltar. Will he acknowledge that it shows that terrorism knows no boundaries—that it can strike anyone, anywhere, at any

25
time? The people of Gibraltar may sometimes be irritated by the delays at their frontiers with Spain, but today's action shows that Spain, Britain and the people of Gibraltar stand together in the fight against terrorism.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. We all stand together in the fight against the wicked and continuing threat of terrorism. In that fight we all share a common interest in the freedom of movement across frontiers as far as possible. However, that must always come second to our determination to take whatever action is necessary to prevent terrorism in every way possible.
Mr. Eric S. Heffer: As someone who has always opposed terrorism, whether of the IRA or anyone else, and who still condemns terrorism and who, like everybody else in the House, would have been affronted if people had been killed in Gibraltar, can I ask the Foreign Secretary to explain why those three people who, although accepted as members of an active service unit of the IRA, were shot and killed when it was admitted that they were not carrying guns and had not planted any bombs in Gibraltar? Can the right hon. and learned Gentleman explain why that happened and how that can help us in the fight against terrorism? Will that not help terrorism?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman must stand almost alone in the House in offering that point of view.
Mr. Heffer: Well, I have done that before.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I have described the circumstances giving rise to suspicion in this case. I have described the circumstances in which the terrorists were shot. I have made plain to the House the statement by the IRA that the three people were members of an active service unit on active service in Gibraltar. It is difficult to see how I could possibly conclude that the security services could have acted other than they did when faced with the events of that day.
Mr. Ian Gow: Is my right hon. and learned Friend able to confirm that the co-operation between Madrid and London and the cross-border cooperation between Spain and Gibraltar could not possibly have been better in this case and that that co-operation took place without the existence of an Anglo-Spanish agreement?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I acknowledge the generosity of my hon. Friend's tribute to the co-operation that took place in this case. I acknowledge also his ingenuity in pursuing one argument in whatever circumstances he may find it convenient to do so. As a matter of fact, there are a number of Anglo-Spanish agreements, at least two of which I helped to negotiate, which have helped considerably to increase the prospects of co-operation of the sort that took place.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. I remind the House that this is a continuation of Question Time. There is a statement and a busy day ahead, in which a great many right hon. and hon. Members wish to take part.

Member's Letter (Privilege)
3.49 pm
Mr. Speaker: I have a statement to make about the privileges of the House.
I received last week complaints from several hon. Members about the contents of a letter sent by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Mossley Hill (Mr. Alton) to the constituents of certain members of the Standing Committee on the Licensing (Retail Sales) Bill. The letter accused the Members concerned of choosing to filibuster on that Bill as a means of obstructing the Abortion (Amendment) Bill. It went on to urge the recipients of the letter to take action to persuade members to desist from conduct which, it was said,
"would scandalise millions of people".
The letter from the hon. Member was sent before the proceedings on the Licensing (Retail Sales) Bill had begun, and in my opinion its tone and the manner of its distribution amounted to an attempt to bring unacceptable pressure upon Members of this House in the performance of their duties.
The hon. Member for Mossley Hill has written to every Member concerned and to all those to whom his original letter was addressed, withdrawing any suggestion of a filibuster. He has also made this letter public. In these circumstances, I do not propose to use my power to grant precedence to a motion on this matter. I do, however, wish to give a serious warning about the care which those involved with this Bill on both sides must take to avoid committing contempts of the House by seeking to bring improper pressure upon hon. Members.
In considering the present complaints, I have received considerable evidence of unacceptable conduct by bodies outside the House. Efforts appear to have been made to prevent Members from speaking about matters upon which they must be free to speak in this House, and there has been personal harassment of Members in their constituencies. I wish to make it clear that 1 shall take very seriously any continuation of this conduct and I urge hon. Members to use their influence to ensure that the merits of business before Parliament can be discussed calmly and responsibly without threats of intimidation.

Newspaper Article (Privilege)
3.50 pm
Mr. Speaker: I have a further statement to make on a matter of privilege.
I have received a complaint from the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) about an article in The Guardian of Wednesday 2 March. The article, in referring to the absence of Members from the House, made reference to a particular Member, and to Members in general, in terms which I was asked to consider could be regarded as being in contempt of the House.
I have considered this complaint, and have decided that it does raise issues which justify me in giving precedence to a motion relating to it. In consequence, if the hon. Member for Newham, North-West tables such a motion, it will be taken as first business tomorrow.

Inner-city Policy
Mr. Nigel Spearing: On a point of order on the statement and the documents relating to it, Mr. Speaker. Earlier today, I made inquiries as to the documents that would be related to the known announcement and was told that they would be available in the Vote Office at 11 am today. Since they were not available at that time, my office made arrangements to collect and deliver them to my town hall, where I was at that time. The only available document in the Vote Office was labelled "City Grant — Simplification of Urban Grants". The press statements and the glossy paper "Action for Cities" were not included.
I understand that the documents were made available in the Vote Office at 3 pm today, but only because I made inquiries about them. I therefore wish to raise the matter of the Prime Minister, who made the statement earlier today in public, not providing Members of Parliament and their borough councils with documents about public announcements, which should be made in the first instance in the House.
Mr. Speaker: I understand that five Departments have supplied documents to the House in connection with the subject matter of this statement, but that the number of copies of at least one proved to be insufficient and has now been supplemented. The House will be aware of the importance that I attach to the timely and adequate supply of papers. I am glad that the earlier deficiency has now been put right.
3.53 pm
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister of Trade and Industry (Mr. Kenneth Clarke): With permission, I should like to make a statement about inner-city policy.
The Government have today announced 12 new Government initiatives and commended three major private sector developments aimed at furthering our policy of renewal and regeneration of the inner cities. We have also published a booklet entitled "Action for Cities" which is a clear guide to the Government's inner-city policies and is intended for use by people prepared to make a contribution to a combined public and private sector effort in this area.
The new Government measures add to existing major regeneration programmes.
First, a new urban development corporation is to be established in the lower Don valley, Sheffield, which will cover 2,000 acres to the north-east of the city centre. It will have a budget of about £50 million over seven years.
Secondly, the area of the Merseyside development corporation is to be doubled by adding 800 acres on both sides of the Mersey. The enlarged MDC could spend between £50 million and £90 million over eight to nine years in the new areas.
Thirdly, two new city action teams are to be set up in Leeds and Nottingham. This adds to the five established three years ago, which have successfully pulled together Government support for enterprise and development in their areas.
Fourthly, a new simplified grant to support private sector developments in inner cities is to be introduced from May 1988. It will replace urban development grant and

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urban regeneration grant, which have produced from the private sector over £580 million in investment, providing 28,500 jobs and more than 7,000 homes since 1982.
Fifthly, the drive to bring unused and under-used inner-city land on to the market is to be stepped up by requiring publication of information about land in public ownership.
Sixthly, two new inner-city roads costing £109 million, both of which will directly benefit inner cities—a £59 million improvement of the A13 between Limehouse and Dagenham, and a £50 million spine route through the black country to the M5 and M6—have been added to the Government's roads programme.
Seventhly, a major new initiative to tackle crime and the fear of crime will be introduced in 20 inner cities over the next three years; £2·3 million is being made available in the first year to support the initiative, which has been successfully piloted in five urban areas.
Eighthly, more help for small businesses is to be provided, including new offices for the small firms service, a fund to support local enterprise agency projects helping businesses, an 85 per cent. guarantee on bank loans to firms in task force areas, and help to encourage people into self-employment.
Ninthly, the Manpower Services Commission will give financial and other support to 12 inner-city employer-school compacts, in which groups of employers work with schools to guarantee a job with training for all young people aged 16 to 18 leaving school who meet agreed motivation and achievement standards.
Tenthly, we will be revising our help to unemployed people in inner cities. There will be more MSC and employment service staff working in local communities advising and helping residents, new information points to guide people on training and jobs, and special training in literacy and numeracy and English as a second language. There will be new measures to increase the involvement of employers in training.
Eleventhly, we will be making extra provision of premises for new businesses in rundown inner cities. English Estates, in partnership with private companies, will set up managed workshops. Up to £11 million of public funding will go into the programme in the first year.
Twelfthly, we will be building on our efforts to work with the private sector. The Government are organising a series of break fast presentations to leading business men up and down the country, starting in Newcastle on 13 April. A free telephone link has been set up today so that businesses can find out from a single contact point how they can play their part.
The Government measures announced today build on the programmes and initiatives introduced since 1979 to tackle urban dereliction and inner-city decay, and to raise skills and encourage enterprise. In all, about £3,000 million will go to support urban regeneration in Britain in 1988–89, bringing in several times that total in private investment.
Mr. Bryan Gould: Is it not typical of this tawdry exercise that the right hon. and learned Gentleman's statement should end with the ludicrous assertion that coffee and cornflakes with Ministers will somehow provide the sustenance that the inner cities desperately need?
Why is the right hon. and learned Gentleman making the statement and not the Prime Minister, whose
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responsibility it is? Why was the Prime Minister so keen to spearhead the media hype this morning, yet so reluctant to face the House of Commons this afternoon? Is it because she knows that glossy brochures cannot conceal the simple fact that there is virtually no new money; no new proposals; no White Paper; no legislation; and no involvement of the local communities—in short, that there is almost nothing to offer hope to the people in the inner cities? Is it because after identifying, perhaps unwisely, an electoral problem on election night nine months ago, she now finds that she does not have the faintest idea how to tackle the real social and human problems in the inner cities that have been created by her policies?
Is it because the right hon. Lady knows that the only way to help the inner cities is to abandon the policies that have already caused so much damage and, in particular, to overcome her obsessive antipathy both to local government and to public spending? Is it because she knows that soft words from construction companies, which happen to include many major donors to the Tory party, are no substitute for involving those who really matter — local communities and their elected representatives?
How much longer will the Prime Minister turn her back on the consensus that has now emerged, which includes the Prince of Wales, the Church of England, local government and private developers, to the effect that a partnership that fully involves local government and local communities, as well as private capital, is the only way forward?
When did the right hon. and learned Gentleman first discover the awful truth that his much-touted White Paper had been torn up and that, as the Minister left without any clothes, his simple role was to shelter behind the Prime Minister's skirts? Is it not the case that changes in benefit and the poll tax will have a much greater impact, for the worse, on the inner cities than anything that has been announced today?
When will the Prime Minister, who is surprisingly not present to hear this statement, abandon her ideological prejudices and produce the new resources, new policies and new partnership that alone can help to rescue the people in the inner cities from the poverty, unemployment, disorder, slum housing and despair to which her policies have condemned them?
Mr. Clarke: There is an awful air of sour grapes in the Labour party's reaction to what we have announced. I thought that the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) summed up the right note of pessimism and cynicism, which he and his colleagues tried to whip up over the weekend, but he was unable to put much energy into it.
The hon. Gentleman criticises the booklet that we have produced. I commend it to hint and I believe that he might read it some time with profit—[HON. MEMBERS: "Where is it?"] As Mr. Speaker explained, the copies in the Library this morning went rapidly, but hundreds of copies are now in the Vote Office. I am delighted that there is such demand for it.
If the Opposition parties were asked to set down their policies for the inner cities they could not fill the back of a postage stamp. If they wished to hold a conference to explain those policies to anyone, they would not fill a telephone box. The hon. Gentleman comes out with his usual litany of, "Where is the money? Where are the new proposals?" As I said in my statement, we are spending £3

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billion in the next financial year on urban regeneration. The new programmes announced today come within that total, but they represent about £250 million directed into new policy areas—targeted on the inner cities—that we have not announced before.
I set out a statement explaining the 12 propositions that we have announced today. However, the hon. Gentleman did not ask me a question about one of them.
Mr. Gould: Where are the new proposals?
Mr. Clarke: I will answer the hon. Gentleman's question when he states which of the propositions he is against. Is it simply the fact that he objects to the timing of meetings with business men at breakfast time? Does he object to the Government going to provincial cities and seeking to revive private-sector leadership in urban regeneration?
The hon. Gentleman should read our document. It is not a White Paper, because it is intended to be an action document to be used by those concerned with inner-city revival. When he has read it, he might know more about the subject and will be able to make a better job of questioning our policies the next time round.
Sir Hugh Rossi: May I tell my right hon. and learned Friend that his statement will be widely welcomed on the Conservative Benches and also by the all-party Environment Select Committee? That Committee recommended three things that my right hon. and learned Friend has adopted today—the expansion of the number of UDCs, the simplification of the three types of urban land grant and the greater use of the "domesday book" of property in public ownership. Will the simplified city grant be demand-led, as the Committee requested? Will my right hon. and learned Friend ensure that the "domesday book" is not limited by a minimum size of land to be registered in it?
Mr. Clarke: I thank my hon. Friend for his commendation for what we have done. I recall that the all-party Select Committee, including members such as himself, has been pressing for three of the specific changes that we have made.
The existing UDCs have been hugely successful, and I am sure that the two new UDCs will be welcomed in South Yorkshire and on Merseyside, where they have a great deal to offer. The amounts to be spent on city grant will largely depend on the response that we receive from developers coming forward seeking the grant. We have simplified the various types of grant that we currently have available so that grant can be paid more quickly in response to applications to speed up the process. I am sure that my hon. Friend agrees that more and more developers are acquiring confidence in the ability to invest on inner-city land, and the new simplified grant will help speed up the process.
With regard to the register of land, I shall refer the details to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, but I believe that no minimum size will be placed upon it. My hon. Friend rightly underlines that all our announcements will receive widespread approval from people seriously interested in the subject. I still wait to hear—I am not sure that I will—any member of the Opposition get up and say that he disagrees with a solitary
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one of the propositions that we have made. All they are doing is sitting there, embittered, because they cannot think of what to say in reply and they are trying to pour general scorn on the whole thing.
Mr. Simon Hughes: Although a sincere interest in the inner cities is welcome, is not the watchword of the Government's announcement "power away from the people"? Does not the best experience from home and abroad demonstrate that one does best for inner cities when local people, local councils, local businesses and the local voluntary sector are involved? Is it not evidence of the Government's dishonesty that they have taken two local schemes—the urban regeneration in Sheffield conducted by the city council and the ILEA education-business compact—and pretended that they are their own? Partnership has been ignored. Surely the truth behind the Government's initiative is that, instead of giving power to the people in the inner cities, they are more determined to advantage their friends and themselves rather than the urban poor and disadvantaged.
Mr. Clarke: First of all, I agree with the broad proposition that policies make best progress when they are conducted in agreement with local people of good will; that is what our inner-city policies do. [Laughter.] Of course it is. Anyone who takes the trouble to involve themselves in the work of our inner-city task forces or the city action teams, or who considers the people who are on the UDCs and the way in which local authorities tend to welcome such things happening in their areas, would agree. Not all local authorities enter into that partnership: that is the difference between our experience and that of the Americans. Obviously it will be greatly to the advantage of the inner-city revival when all local authorities are genuinely business-friendly, prepared to co-operate, keep down the costs they impose on business and join in the effort.
It simply is not the case that we have stolen the credit from other people. The Sheffield UDC will bring to a derelict area in the Don Valley the ability of a UDC to assemble land for grant, to give it positive value and to take decisions quickly. There is no doubt that UDC spending is up.
The idea that compact is an invention of ILEA is an extraordinary proposition. The hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) knows that it came from Boston in the United States—[Interruption.] I am delighted to know that we have people who are keen on the Boston compact, however stridently. It was introduced into this country by the London enterprise agency with support from people in government. It is to ILEA's credit that it has agreed to become party to it.
I should have thought that, with ILEA as a party to it, there would be no one Left-wing enough in the country who would be hostile to the idea of more compacts elsewhere. The new idea today, which comes from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment, is that Government money from the MSC will extend the compact idea to 12 other cities. That is a new, positive idea and it should be welcomed.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. I draw the attention of the House to the fact that no fewer than 36 right hon. and hon.

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Members wish to speak in the subsequent debate. May I ask hon. Members to direct single questions to the Minister, which will give me the opportunity to call more of them?
Sir George Young: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that those Conservative Members who represent city seats will welcome the package of measures that he has announced, as will the thousands of people who live in the areas targeted by the new initiatives? Does he agree that, once the huffing and puffing is out of the way, the Labour party will work happily with urban development corporations and the city action teams, and that Labour Members will be queuing up for the new city grant as long as it is to be spent in their constituencies?
Mr. Clarke: I agree with my hon. Friend. That has been our experience so far, and I am sure that it will be again. The huffing and puffing that we hear from the Labour Benches is strangely out of line with the practice on the ground, even among Labour supporters.
Mr. Ron Leighton: Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that there is a sense of disappointment and let-down, because we were expecting a proper White Paper? All that we have is this mouse of a consultation paper on grants, which shows confusion in the Government, a lack of clarity and no new money.
Is the Minister aware that 96 per cent. of the population of the London borough of Newham live outside the development area, that the borough comprises half the traditional east end of London, that this morning the borough council composed a letter to him about the plight of the borough and that, on Friday, I have an Adjournment debate on this very subject, when I shall ask for co-operation between the Government and the council to tackle the borough's problems? Will the Minister give me a guarantee that he will seriously consider both initiatives—he will receive the letter tomorrow—and respond adequately?
Mr. Clarke: I am delighted to hear that the hon. Gentleman is such an avid reader of White Papers. I did not want a White Paper, because a White Paper is suitable —[Laughter.] Perhaps from the laughter of the Leader of the Opposition we now know what their policy is: they would produce a White Paper. White Papers are almost as unread as Acts of Parliament. It is an extremely suitable document when one is contemplating a change in legislation, but it is usually published, read the next day and never referred to again by anyone.
What we have produced is not a consultation document, as the hon. Gentleman described it. He should obtain a copy—[Interruption.] He has one. He should obtain the full document about which we are talking, a copy of which is being waved by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heifer). It is a full exposition of a complete package of policies, covering a wide range of activities.
In response to the hon. Gentleman's latter point, may I say that I am delighted to hear him lobbying for Newham to be allowed to join in the Government's policies. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young) said a moment ago, I expect that that will be the response of most Labour Members the moment this afternoon's session is over. Everyone will be queuing up trying to get similar announcements made for their areas.
Mr. Michael Grylls: Does my right hon. and learned Friend accept that there will be a warm welcome for the provision of more small nursery units for starter firms? For too long, it has been too difficult to find the right premises on the right terms, and what he suggested today will go a long way to meeting that problem, which will then create more new firms and jobs.
Mr. Clarke: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. A variety of such units has been provided so far, and they have been such a success in practice that we thought it important to find a new way of putting extra public finance and a new agency, English Estates, into providing more of them. The present state of the economy makes it easier for small businesses to start up and expand, and we must give special support to that in the inner cities.
Mr. Merlyn Rees: Will the Minister consider a special problem and answer more directly the point made by the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes)? I represent an inner-city area. Like many others in the House, two weekends a month I hold constituency surgeries, and 98 per cent. of the issues discussed are local matters. They include jobs, unemployment—[HON. MEMBERS: "And housing."] And housing. Along come the Minister's officials to Leeds to define an urban development corporation area. No one consults us. I talk to the councillors and ask, "What areas have been designated?" They say, "No one discussed it with us." Along come those civil servants, operating from the middle of Leeds and knowing nothing about the area. Everything is imposed from above. If that is the way the Government intend to set about it, it will just be another glossy magazine that will not work.
Mr. Clarke: The city action team for Leeds comprises the regional officers of the Department, all of whom know the area extremely well and all of whom have constant—almost daily—contact with the local authorities in the area—
Mr. Rees: Action now.
Mr. Clarke: I am sorry if the right hon. Gentleman has not been consulted recently, but he must know the regional officers of the Department in his city. They are riot outsiders. They work in Leeds.
The urban development corporation has been announced and should be welcomed by people in Leeds, because it will speed redevelopment and bring back into active use derelict land in the city. There is a task force on the ground in the middle of Leeds, staffed by people who live and work in Leeds who have the closest contact with many voluntary bodies and with the local authorities. When I visit various bodies in Leeds, I frequently meet the leader of the council and people from the local authority and discuss these matters.
I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman if he has been left out of discussions recently, but he need only contact any of those bodies or me, and we shall happily keep him abreast of what we are doing.
Mr. Anthony Steen: On behalf of the Conservative Back-Bench urban and inner-city committee, may I warmly congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend on doing a magnificent job in promoting urban and inner-city regeneration? Unlike the Opposition, may I offer a constructive suggestion that might help the

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Government to get rid of some of the derelict and vacant land in public ownership? Has my right hon. and learned Friend considered privatising public land, passing it to a private company and giving the value of the land, in the shape of a share certificate, to the public authority so that the private company can market the land and regenerate the inner city?
Mr. Clarke: The proposals that we have announced are designed to ensure that the large amounts of public land that are still derelict and vacant should be brought into productive use more quickly. I shall pass my hon. Friend's commendable suggestion to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, if it turns out that the latest moves in relation to the register do not have the desired effect of speeding the release of public land for development.
Mr. Frank Field: May I welcome the extension of the Merseyside development corporation to Birkenhead, and ask the Minister for two undertakings? Will he draw the attention of the MDC to the wish of many of my constituents to live in the centre of the town which, at present, having been handed over to the private sector, is an industrial desert? Secondly, when the redevelopment is carried out, will the planning powers be handed back to the local authority?
Mr. Clarke: The hon. Gentleman's reaction to the extension of the urban development corporation into his constituency is in line with that of most local authorities, of all political persuasions, in all the recent extensions. We hope that things can be achieved on his side of the Mersey in line with what has been achieved in the Albert dock and the surrounding area on the other side of the Mersey. I share his desire to see as wide a range as possible of people living in the centres of cities and towns, but we must ensure that those who live in derelict inner-city areas are not people who are there because they have no choice and who would leave the moment they were given an alternative. We need a good mix of development in the centres of towns to get the mix of population that we require. Once the work of the UDCs is over—they will not he timeless organisations—I expect that the planning powers will revert to the local authorities.
Mr. William Shelton: Does my right hon. and learned Friend accept that this is clearly a good day for inner cities? Does he further accept that I am lobbying on behalf of Lambeth? We need a mini UDC at Waterloo, where the new rail terminal of the Channel tunnel debouches, and we need a housing action trust in Brixton. May I visit my right hon. and learned Friend some time and discuss it with him?
Mr. Clarke: Lambeth is already included in the area served by the city action team. Both the points made by my hon. Friend are relevant to the well-being of the people of Lambeth. I suggest that he arranges a meeting with my colleagues at the Department of the Environment, to whom both his questions should be directed, and I am sure that they will take note of what he says. Housing action trusts are an important new development which will be taken further this year, and in due course my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment will
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announce where those housing action trusts are to be set up. I shall draw my hon. Friend's suggestion to my right hon. Friend's attention.
Ms. Harriet Harman: Is the Minister aware that, last week, I met officers of the North Peckham task force? Does he understand that people in Peckham are angry because, during the past two years, the Government have removed £20 million from Southwark council, yet they expect to be congratulated on the fact that, during the same two years, they have put in less than £1 million through the task force? Why are the Government prepared to put £700 million of public money into the London Docklands development corporation to attract private capital for luxury housing, yet they are not prepared to give the £18 million that is desperately needed to rebuild the Gloucester Grove estate or the £18 million that is needed to lift the threat of asbestos that hangs over the tenants of the Willowbrook estate? Is not his statement a cynical public relations exercise which shows that the Government are concerned about profit, property and politics, not about people and poverty?
Mr. Clarke: I owe the hon. Lady an apology. At this morning's press conference someone referred to her attacks on the North Peckham task force and I said that for two years she had not bothered to meet it or to discover what it was doing. She has now discovered that it is spending money, organising training and job opportunities, and targeting a great deal of money into north Peckham. I am delighted that the hon. Lady has crossed the threshold. I hope that she does not lose the nomination for her seat as a result of being seen talking to departmental officials. If she follows up these matters, she will find that much good will continue to come from the North Peckham task force.
The hon. Lady mentioned some estates in her constituency that suffer from some of the worst combinations of social and other problems of which I am aware anywhere in the United Kingdom. I am sure that she shares my pleasure that such large grants from Estate Action, for example, are being made available to improve the Gloucester Grove estate. I am delighted also that the hon. Lady is now aware of the existence of the London Docklands development corporation, which has been shunned by most of the politicians in Southwark ever since it was established and began to revive part of their area.
If the hon. Lady continues to learn more about the inner-city policies that are being applied in her constituency, I am sure that we shall be able to welcome her co-operation and support.
Mr. Anthony Beaumont-Dark: Will my right hon. and learned Friend accept that many in Birmingham and the west midlands will welcome action for cities? Regional development grants always acted against our best interests. The city grants are bound to be useful to us.
I ask my right hon. and learned Friend to take a word of advice from those of us in Birmingham and the west midlands. If he could stop my rght hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment from giving one permission after another for incursions into the green belt—all builders want to build on easy ground rather than difficult ground — the tens of thousands of acres of derelict land in the midlands would be taken up more quickly without any cost to the Government. As long as

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my right hon. Friend gives easy work to builders, they will continue to build in Solihull and Meriden rather than in difficult areas in the west midlands.
Mr. Clarke: I am always grateful to my hon. Friend for his advice on Birmingham. I am glad that he welcomes the new city grants. A great deal of effort is going into inner-city Birmingham through the task force in Handsworth and through the support that we are giving to the Birmingham heartlands attempt to rebuild on the derelict land around Saltley. The local authority, central Government and the private sector are working closely together. I shall draw my hon. Friend's opinions on planning policy in the west midlands to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment.
Ms. Clare Short: Is the Minister aware of the work of Sally Holterman on the nature of urban deprivation and inner-city problems, which shows that all these areas are merely a concentration of poor people? We have a Government who have increased unemployment, poverty, and low pay and worsened the housing stock, and that is why the inner cities have become worse. The gimmicks that have been announced will not address the fundamental problems. We shall use any money that we can get, of course, but it is the Government who are damaging inner cities and making the problem worse. The Government's gimmicks will not put right that which is wrong.
Mr. Clarke: I have not read the work to which the hon. Lady referred and I do not agree with the analysis that has been put forward, if the hon. Lady has described it accurately, as I am sure she has. I do not agree with the proposition that the only problem in inner cities is poverty and that all that we need to do is to alleviate poverty, there being no need for other policies. [HON. MEMBERS: "She did not say that.] I do not accept either the Right-wing proposition that we need only to make the country better off as a whole without making any special effort in the inner cities.
The hon. Lady knows that we are taking positive action in her constituency to bring the unemployed into contact with work experience and training opportunities—
Ms. Short: Just 12 jobs in Broughton road, which the Minister talks about constantly.
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Lady has already put her question to the Minister.
Mr. Clarke: I shall be happy to introduce the hon. Lady to other projects apart from the excellent Broughton road one, of which I am satisfied she has knowledge. A great deal is happening in her constituency, with the result that unemployment is steadily dropping and deprivation is becoming less. I am sure that we can improve the quality of life in her constituency and in other parts of inner-city Birmingham if we increase our efforts.
Mr. Richard Holt: My right hon. and learned Friend will know from his own experience that Teesside has enjoyed an urban development corporation for the past six months, and that as a consequence there has been a complete change in the atmosphere surrounding the economics of the region. We already see new entrepreneurs and new businesses coming into the area. It was significant that on the one o'clock news today
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on Radio Cleveland it was announced that there were no further sites left in north Teesside, in Hartlepool, for a company that wants to build a factory there to expand.
Given the expansion that is taking place in the area, it is disappointing that the Government continue to neglect the north-east by failing to recognise the need for a three-lane motorway from the south to the north along the east coast.
Mr. Clarke: The new Teesside urban development corporation appears to be making the fastest progress. The enterprise zone has been of great benefit there. The task forces in Middlesbrough and. Hartlepool have both been welcomed and they are doing a considerable amount of work. I agree with my hon. Friend that it is a welcome change to read that there are shortages of factory accommodation for the expanding businesses in the region. However, that is a problem and we must ascertain what we can do to tackle it. I shall draw to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport the remarks of my hon. Friend about the need to improve the great north road to take the ever-increasing traffic to the booming north-east.
Mr. Nicholas Brown: If the urban development grant has been the success that the Minister claims, why is it being scrapped? Why is he undermining the work of local authorities such as Newcastle city council, which has a good record of co-operation with the private sector, in favour of extending the powers of the colonial government in the north, the urban development corporation? This will mean that new schemes will be development-led rather than planning-led, which leads many of us to fear the return of old-style corruption to the region.
Mr. Clarke: I think that urban development grant has been a considerable success, as was its short-lived successor, urban regeneration grant. The new city grant is a process of deregulation. We are simplifying the procedures for applying for it and we hope to speed up the payment of grant for desirable development, which should he welcomed.
Urban development corporations should not be seen as the imposition of some sort of penalty on areas. They are seen as such only by a few officers in the local planning department. They have a proven track record of success in hastening the clearance of derelict land and introducing new developments. I am sure that my right hon. Friend has done a favour to the north-east by setting up a regional development corporation in the area and that residents will quickly come to appreciate that.
Sir Peter Hordern: Will my right hon. and learned Friend add to the register of unused building land that is owned by local authorities the unused building land and houses that are owned by the Ministry of Defence? Some of the land has lain empty for many years.
Mr. Clarke: I shall draw my hon. Friend's remarks to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence. I am sure that he and I are agreed that it is wrong for any unused land, housing or other sorts of building to stay in the hands of a public body for more than the essential length of time. All our efforts are designed to ensure that all unused land and buildings are put back into productive use as soon as possible.
Mr. A. E. P. Duffy: Is the Minister aware that the announced budget for Sheffield, which will enable a partnership of public and private bodies to revitalise an important but old industrial area, is extremely important, although it is a budget that might have to be re-examined in future? It could have been welcomed by the Sheffield district council and it is unfortunate that that body has been by-passed.
Why must the right hon. and learned Gentleman introduce the UDC? He is aware of the talks that it has had with his Department in recent years and he knows that the council needs only the budget that he has announced. The council has provided leadership and has set the right example. It is willing to co-operate with the private sector and the evidence shows that that sector is responsive, and might be more responsive to the approaches of the city council than to those of the Minister. What response does he expect his civil servants to get from private bodies in Sheffield when they are not sure whether the council will be in a position to continue to provide leadership in what is supposed to be a democratic community?
Mr. Clarke: Urban development corporations can take decisions more quickly and produce results faster than the processes of local government in the cities where my right hon. and noble Friend the Secretary of State has established UDCs. Once Sheffield city council and responsible people in Sheffield give a few moments' thought to the implications of today's announcement, they will realise that it should be welcomed. I am sure that my right hon. and noble Friend will welcome their co-operation in taking forward the work of the Don Valley UDC.
Mr. Robin Squire: The many thousands who use the Al3 each day will welcome my right hon. and learned Friend's announcement of the improvement between Dagenham and Limehouse—perhaps the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) will welcome it too. When does he expect work to start? If it is to start earlier than 1992, can he extend it a hit further, to Rainham?
Mr. Clarke: I agree with my hon. Friend that the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) should be more enthusiastic about something that eases traffic jams between here and Dagenham. One problem is that the success of the London Docklands development corporation has added considerably to congestion on the roads going out to the east. This is an important follow-up to the improvement of the roads by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport.
The timing is a matter for my right hon. Friend, who is confined by the large number of statutory procedures that must be gone through before a road can be built. If the local inhabitants ease the passage of the road and there are not too many pointless objections—there is bound to be a great deal of consultation about the route—it can be built more quickly. I shall draw my right hon. Friend's attention to my hon. Friend's point about the timing.
Mr. Nigel Spearing: In respect of urban development corporations, should not the Chancellor of the Duchy think again? They are unelected centralised quangos.
Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that the London Docklands development corporation, which he
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has mentioned, has suffered a number of spectacular resignations, including that of the chief executive, who resigned after less than a fortnight? Is he aware that the Comptroller and Auditor General is preparing a report for possible presentation to the Public Accounts Committee on the LDDC's accounts? Would it not be wise for him to wait and see what the Public Accounts Committee says before he lays further orders for places such as Sheffield and Leeds?
Mr. Clarke: Like me, the hon. Gentleman remembers what the docklands area of London was like only six or seven years ago, when vast expanses of water lay idle and unused, surrounded by derelict warehouses that were rarely visited by ships and were surrounded by further areas of dereliction. My judgment at the time was that the prospects of rapid progress being made in reviving that area by the combined efforts of the Port of London authority and three local authorities involved were next to nil—
Mr. Spearing: It was being developed.
Mr. Clarke: On a trivial scale.
Of course, the London Docklands development corporation is a public body and must be subject to the PAC. It may have had its administrative difficulties, but if the hon. Gentleman goes to the heart of docklands now and sees how transformed it has been, what a model it is for urban regeneration and what a tribute it is to the work of all those involved, he should perhaps reconsider some of his continual snide criticisms of it.
Mr. Nicholas Bennett: As a former Conservative leader of an inner-London borough, may I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his initiative and assure him that we ignore the ragbag of carping, vacuous comments from the Opposition who have been in power in most of the inner cities for most of the past 50 years? Does my right hon. and learned Friend remember that one of the problems facing the inner cities in the past has been that there has not been enough private housing for those who wish to live there? One of the successes of the LDDC has been the bringing back to the inner city of people who wish to own their homes.
Mr. Clarke: I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. It is desirable that there should be the right mix of housing and population in all the inner cities—of people who have chosen to own their own homes or flats and who have chosen to rent in the private or public sector. That is the tenor of the housing parts of the document that we issued today.
I have already agreed with my hon. Friend's comments about the Opposition. I did not think there would be any specific objections to anything. I am almost tempted to ask my right hon. Friend to take away the urban development corporations from the constituencies of hon. Members who have grumbled—but I do not think I shall do so. They would all change their minds overnight if he did.
Mr. Barry Jones: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman tell the House of new moneys and measures that will affect Wales and Scotland? I challenge him to name one measure that affects Wales. Where are his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales and his right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland? Where is the Governor-General for Wales? Are we to have a statement from him tomorrow?
Mr. Clarke: It is true that the 12 announcements I have made do not include any that were relevant to Wales or Scotland, but there is a page on Wales and Scotland in the document, and a great package of proposals for which my right hon. and right hon. and learned Friends are responsible.
Scotland contains some of the best examples of urban regeneration in this country—particularly in Glasgow. What is being done with the urban development corporation in Cardiff, in Swansea bay, and with my right hon. Friend's proposals for the valleys is equally ambitious. As we have devolved government in this country, those things are the responsibility of my right hon. and right hon. and learned Friends the Secretaries of State for Wales and Scotland.
Mr. Hugo Summerson: Will my right hon. and learned Friend give us his assurance that local authorities will not be permitted to enter into purely artificial schemes with third parties to develop land under which the tenants of the houses subsequently built will not be permitted to exercise their rights to buy under the Housing Act 1980?
Mr. Clarke: My hon. Friend raises a serious point. There is a problem of local authorities seeking to evade the right to buy or the tenants' choice of landlord in future years. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment is anxiously considering this, and I shall refer my hon. Friend's comments to him. No doubt he will consider what proposals to bring forward.
Ms. Diane Abbott: Is the Minister aware that what will cause concern about his statement to those of us who represent and care about the inner cities is what is absent from it? We know only too well that, since 1979, we have lost £7 billion in rate support grant and £8 billion in housing investment programme, which would have built 150,000 houses. This document contains no proposals for any new money, and it insults the people of the inner cities.
Are not large areas of policy that are essential to regenerating the inner city missing from the document? One is transport. What is there in the document to develop and build up public transport?
Finally—
Mr. Speaker: Order. I think the hon. Lady has had a good run. Many other hon. Members wish to ask questions, and I am trying to get them all in.
Mr. Clarke: The hon. Lady is not the first person to produce all those figures about lost rate support grant, housing allocations and so on. Although, fortunately, I do not usually have to face them, I regard them as—on the whole—bogus, based as they are on suppositions about what level of grant would have been paid if certain actions had been taken by local government. We allocate grants to local government according to objective assessment of need. It is true that some local authorities have gone into penalty and lost grant, but that is not a valid comparison to make with the measures announced today.
As for transport, I have mentioned two important roads, but there are other references to transport in the document, which I commend to the hon. Lady. They include references to the London Docklands development corporation's light rapid transit scheme—the railway that goes out to docklands—and to the fact that the
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Government are looking, with Manchester, at a proposal that a similar rail network might be set up in inner Manchester.
Mr. Tony Favell: Does my right hon. and learned Friend's American experience bear out the views of many—that one of the greatest threats to inner cities and to employment in them are out-of-town shopping centres?
Mr. Clarke: In certain circumstances, I have no doubt that that proposition can be argued, but I suspect that my hon. Friend is skilfully trying to draw me into some planning dispute in his locality. I shall draw his views to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, who will no doubt consider them carefully, if indeed my hon. Friend has a proposition on hand in the neighbourhood of Stockport.
Mr. Eric S. Heffer: The glossy document "Action For Cities", which I had to get from friends who are journalists because it was not issued to the House of Commons, says that the new Merseyside development corporation will cover the north docks and Parliament street in Liverpool. What does that mean? Parliament street is a residential area of council houses, which are now about to be pulled down by the present Labour authority in that city and replaced with good council houses. Does it mean that the Labour authority, elected by the people, will now receive enough money from the Government to help it carry out its programme; or does it mean that that land will be taken over by an unelected authority and handed over to private enterprise, which will do a great deal of damage to local people?
Can the right hon. and learned Gentleman also explain what he means when he says that the north docks will also be taken over by this authority because of the great work that has been done by the authority up to now? We are talking about an unelected authority. What great work has it done? It has done some work, but how many jobs and how much industry has it produced, and what has it clone to rehabilitate industry in Merseyside?
Mr. Clarke: I concede that the hon. Gentleman knows more about the exact geography of Parliament street, Liverpool than I do. I shall refer his detailed inquiry to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, who will no doubt give the hon. Gentleman a specific answer. The hon. Gentleman attacked what he called an unelected urban development corporation for Liverpool's docks. His comments were wide of the mark. The redevelopment that has already been done in Liverpool docks by the Merseyside urban development corporation is one of the best things that has happened in Liverpool in many years.
Mr. John Redwood: While I welcome the summary of the Government's actions so far, may I ask my right hon. and learned Friend to look urgently at the question of the supply of industrial space in the north-east? Could he not use the powers that he already has to organise a public auction of land to bring forward suitable factory space? Would it not be more sensible for Factory space to be made available in the north-east at about a third or a half of the rental level in the south-east, given that a much higher proportion of the work force are unemployed in the north-east?
Mr. Clarke: We have not cut at all the activities of English Estates in helping to produce factory accommodation in the north-east. There has not until recently been a shortage of industrial land in the north-east. Obviously, one hopes that as quickly as possible there will be a reaction to the growing demand and that we shall see the necessary factory and office buildings coming on to the market. It is a problem that needs to be tackled by the private and public sectors. I can only reflect that it is a novel problem for the north-east that industrial expansion there is going on so quickly that we are beginning to get the first shortages of land and buildings.
Mr. Robert N. Wareing: Does the Minister realise that his statement will be taken as a sick joke on Merseyside, given that this Government abolished Merseyside county council which did more for private business than the Government have ever done and that the Government robbed the city of over £300 million in rate support grant? Can he say when the Government will enter into real partnership with the real people of Merseyside—its elected councillors? Can he tell us how many disabled people looking for a telephone or adaptations to their homes, people seeking housing repairs and those looking for real jobs will be happy with his statement?
Mr. Clarke: I am interested in what the hon. Gentleman says. People will just have to judge the respective contributions to well-being on Merseyside made on the one hand by Merseyside urban development corporation, and on the other hand by Liverpool city council under its recent Militant control. The announcement I made today, that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment is about to extend the urban development corporation on both sides of the Mersey, should be welcomed by most people in that area. If what the hon. Gentleman says is any sign of a mellowing on the part of Liverpool Labour party towards the private sector and the attracting of new enterprise, it is a welcome sign. If the council could make itself more business-friendly and help redress the bad reputation that it has given to the city in the last few years, that would do a great deal of good.
Mr. Tony Marlow: As the mould of Socialism is dependent for its growth on the feedstock of dereliction and decay, is not the hostility and ill-humour of the party opposite explained by the fact that my right hon. and learned Friend's statement today is a very grave threat to their few remaining strongholds?
Mr. Clarke: There is a mixed bag of motives on the Opposition side, and a mixed bag of responses. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that, at its worst, when one finds real extremists inside the Labour party in some of our cities, they are people who have a personal commitment to making sure that nothing works and who feel that their political base lies in dereliction and decay. At its worst, that becomes quite a serious problem.
Mrs. Rosie Barnes: Does the Minister agree that more and more young people doing valuable and essential jobs — nurses, electricians, postmen, teachers—are being driven out of London because of a lack of affordable housing? Does he further agree that, unless this problem is tackled, inner London will never be regenerated and, sadly, its work force will be depleted? Does he think that his proposals will address that fundamental problem?
Mr. Clarke: I agree with the hon. Lady's assertion. This is an extremely serious problem. That is why we are proposing reforms in housing legislation so as to make sure that there is a variety of housing in London and that the number of organisations and landlords providing private rented accommodation should be greatly extended. We also need to tackle the question of the payment of people in London who perform some of these essential public services compared with payments in other parts of the country.
I am glad to see that the idea of more regional differentiation in the pay of people in these great public services is again a live issue. Today's proposals will make a further contribution, and in all we do we must pay attention to the points that the hon. Lady has made. We need a good mix of housing in London, offering the right choice in order to attract a variety of employed and self-employed people to the city.
Mr. John Marshall: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the inner cities have been the major victim of the doctrinaire policies of extremist local authorities, which have frustrated development by hoarding land, which have destroyed jobs through high rates and whose education policies have failed a whole generation? Does he further agree that the only hope for inner cities lies not in the nostrums of Opposition Members but in the proposals that he has announced, in the uniform business rate and in the Education Reform Bill?
Mr. Clarke: I agree with my hon. Friend. Certainly, some councils deserve all the strictures that he has applied. Our policies are based on the proposition that we need to bring the enterprise economy into the inner cities. That has been successful in reviving the national economy as a whole. It can be a success in the inner cities if the same principles are applied consistently by the Government and by leading people in business throughtout Britain. Following my hon. Friend's analysis, it is obvious that many Opposition Members still have to be converted to his view and need to realise that many of their friends in local government have done far more damage than good.
Ms. Mildred Gordon: Will the Minister allow a public inquiry into improvements on the A13 and, in particular, the proposed docklands highway spine road? Is he aware of the considerable opposition in my constituency to the proposed docklands highway, which will destroy badly needed houses and cause misery to people who will continue to live along the route? My constituents consider that this will be a gift of a huge amount of public money to Olympia and York to bring people into the area from outside to work in the new offices. That money should be used to provide jobs for local people and much-needed houses. Is he aware that my constituents think that the Government's proposals will bring as much benefit to the east end as a plague?
Mr. Clarke: Of course the choice of route for a new road in an urban area is an extremely sensitive matter. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport will go through all the processes of consultation and the statutory procedures as this road is promoted and brought near to being built. I hope that the hon. Lady will play a constructive part in all this. There is a danger that sometimes some of the community activists in the east of

45
London and elsewhere are very clear about what they are against: they are against most things that involve any change in their neighbourhood. There needs to be a positive surge to find solutions to the traffic problems that urban regeneration in east London is causing.
Ms. Gordon: My constituents know what they want. They want houses and jobs.
Mr. Speaker: Order.
Mr. John Fraser: One significant difference between urban development grant and urban regeneration grant is that the latter bypasses local authorities. Will the new grant bypass local authorities? Secondly, much of the bias of the Minister's policy is directed at the development of vacant and derelict land and does not help boroughs such as Lambeth, which have very little such land left.
What specifically is in it for Lambeth? Will there be any compensation for the 13 per cent. cut in the urban development assistance that we had last year, for the doubling of the burden that will come as a result of the poll tax, or for the shocking housing conditions that we have as a result of cuts in housing investment programmes over the last nine years?
Mr. Clarke: Obviously the new city grant will be administered by the Department of the Environment in consultation with local authorities when it considers possible suitable sites for development. It is true that, unlike urban development grant, it will not require local authority consent before it can be given. As the hon. Gentleman is aware, a few local authorities still simply refuse to put forward applications for urban development grant because they are against the Government giving any help to redevelopment in their areas. The hon. Gentleman asked, "What's in it for Lambeth?" There is a great deal of empty and derelict housing stock in Lambeth. I am sure that the Government's proposals on housing policy will have a beneficial effect on that borough.
Mr. Tony Banks: I do not need glossy publications with soft-lighted pictures of "Mama Doc" on page two to inform me about the inner-city problems in Newham. I have to live with those problems daily. They arise directly from Government policies. Newham has lost £127 million in rate support grant since 1979. Poverty and unemployment have doubled since 1979. Those are the root causes of the problems in inner city areas. Why does the Minister not just come clean and tell us that the statement is part of the process of dismantling Labour-controlled local authorities in the inner cities—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, Hear."] Exactly—and turning them over to Tory business men to take decisions behind closed doors? What is more, they will even get free breakfasts for doing that.
Mr. Clarke: I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman is so upset by the pictures. May I commend the words to him? If he reads the words between the pictures, he will discover that his description of the document is something of a parody.
Mr. Max Madden: Is the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster aware that the official unemployment figures show that 16 out of every 100 of my constituents of working age are unemployed and that many of those in work have low-paid, part-time jobs involving night and weekend working and that they include a group of men and women who — it was
46
revealed last week — are earning 12p for every kilo of onions that they peel? Whether they are men and women desperately looking for work or people peeling onions for 12p a kilo, they understand that the city of Bradford has declined as a result of the millions of pounds that have been taken from the local economy through cuts in rate support grant, housing benefit and social security payments. Is he aware that they will not take seriously the Government's promise to regenerate the inner cities until and unless substantial amounts of new money are pumped into Bradford to create new, better paid jobs that offer some promise to the people who have them?
Mr. Clarke: I simply do not agree with the proposition put forward by the hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Madden), and by others, that somehow the inner-city problems have been created by cuts in rate support grant by the Government. The inner-city problems are longstanding and are a reflection of a long-standing industrial and commercial decline in some places. The Member does not do justice to the city of Bradford, which has mainly been affected by the industrial recession and the decline of the textile industry in west Yorkshire, upon which in the past it was too dependent. It is now bouncing hack very well. It has done much to help itself and it will receive added support from the Government through the new city action team that I have announced today, which will he based in Leeds and will serve both Leeds and Bradford.
Mr. Neil Kinnock: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. As we heard earlier, the Prime Minister chaired a press conference at which she presided over at least six of her Cabinet Ministers, one of whom has just provided us with a statement during which, in his replies to questions, he referred to no fewer than 11 of his colleagues to whom he said that he would refer matters raised by hon. Members on both sides of the House.
In anticipation of that kind of problem, efforts were made, as you know, Mr. Speaker, to ensure that the Prime Minister would come to the Dispatch Box to answer the variety of questions about a matter which she is supposed to be co-ordinating. Those efforts were not productive.
However, I read shortly after midday today on the Press Association tapes:
"Later today the Prime Minister faces an emergency Commons question about the initiative".
I know that there is a well-established and entirely understandable convention that you, Mr. Speaker, do riot comment on any possible applications for private notice questions. However, given the completely unsatisfactory nature of the Minister's responses this afternoon and the number of references that he has been forced to make to his right hon. Friends, and the fact that the person who chaired the press conference this morning could not be here to answer questions this afternoon, will you give your view on the advisability of multideparimental press conferences and the failure subsequently to provide the House of Commons with at least the facility offered to the press and broadcasting media?
Mr. Speaker: I had not anticipated that the right hon. Gentleman would raise a point of order. I thought that he was going to put a question to the Minister. I believe that those questions are for the Minister rather than for me.
Mr. Marlow: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Hopefully it will be a more helpful point of order than the one that we have just had. It concerns the hon. Member

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for Dagenham (Mr. Gould). Obviously you are concerned that the rules of the House should not change by precedent. You are well aware, Sir, that page 428 of "Erskine May" states:
"Her Majesty cannot be supposed to have a private opinion, apart from that of her responsible advisers; and any attempt to use her name in debate to influence the judgment of Parliament is immediately checked and censured. This rule extends also to other members of the Royal Family."
Mr. Speaker, you will have heard the hon. Member for Dagenham, in his original question to my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster —probably inadvertently and he would probably like to put it right in the circumstances—state that the Prince of Wales had a point of view which was in conflict with that of the Government. In other words, he was ascribing to the Prince of Wales a private point of view. Further, he was bringing that private point of view or supposed private point of view forward in order to influence debate. I feel that the hon. Member for Dagenham will realise that what he has done is inappropriate, and he may wish to put the record straight.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order.
Mr. Gould: On that matter—
Mr. Speaker: Order. Allow me to rule. I can answer the points made by the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow). It is not in order to use alleged private opinions of members of the royal family to influence a debate. However, where a member of the royal family has expressed opinions publicly on a matter, it is in order to refer to those opinions without, of course, reflecting adversely on the member of the royal family concerned. Nothing out of order has occurred today.
Mr. Graham Allen: Further to the former point of order, Mr. Speaker. Given that the Government have abolished the metropolitan counties and the Greater London council and are now taking more powers away from local democracy, is there not yet more reason to support and defend the parliamentary accountability of the Prime Minister and other Ministers who give press conferences in preference to coming to the House to explain their positions?
Mr. Speaker: I am not responsible for who makes statements from the Front Bench.

Customs and Excise (South Armagh)
4.57 pm
Mr. Harold McCusker: I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 20, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely,
"the complete withdrawal of all British customs and excise services in South Armagh on Saturday 5 March 1988."
The matter is specific because it refers to the complete shutdown of Newry customs clearance station and the 10 customs clearance agencies that operate there. It is important because the Newry customs station is by far the largest and most important customs post on the frontier with the Irish Republic and is responsible for processing the bulk of legitimate trade between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic and for controlling other movements across the border, and for reducing the massive swindles involving smuggling and other EEC procedures. The Newry customs station is normally open every Saturday until 5.30 pm.
The matter is urgent because the withdrawal of customs service occurred as a result of a single telephone call, allegedly from a terrorist or terrorist sympathiser. That telephone call did not contain any identifying code and was not accompanied by any public threat from the IRA, yet it resulted in not one member of the customs service turning up for work last Saturday, the day on which two terrorists were buried who had blown themselves up with their own bomb.
Within the next few days, the bodies of three more terrorists will return to Northern Ireland for burial. Will a number of telephone calls be allowed to bring chaos to Northern Ireland again, or will the Government take a stand against such intimidation? That matter requires to be debated urgently in the Chamber today.
Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman asks leave to move the Adjournment of the House for the purpose of considering a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely,
"the complete withdrawal of all British customs and excise services in South Armagh on Saturday 5 March."
I have listened with care and concern to what the hon. Gentleman said. He knows that in Standing Order No. 20 applications I have to decide whether to give the matter precedence over the business set down for today or for tomorrow. I regret that I do not consider that the matter that he has raised is appropriate for discussion under Standing Order No. 20, and I therefore cannot submit his application to the House.

Electricity (Privatisation)
5 pm
The Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. Cecil Parkinson): I beg to move,
That this House, recognising the importance of introducing competition into the electricity supply industry, the advantages of new rights for customers, and the benefits of privatisation, approves the proposals set out in the Government's White Papers on the privatisation of the electricity supply industry in England and Wales, and Scotland, Cm. 322 and 327.
Mr. Speaker: I have selected the amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition. In view of the late start to this debate, may I appeal for brief speeches, both from the Front Benches and the Back Benches.
Mr. Parkinson: The motion refers to Scotland as well as to England and Wales. I shall cover Scotland in part of my speech, but in the main I shall concentrate on my responsibilities, which are for England and Wales. My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland will deal with Scotland in detail if he is fortunate enough to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker.
I am glad that the House has this early opportunity to debate our proposals. The subject is important and the issues are complex. It is obviously right for the House to comment now that we have taken our decisions on the structure of the industry, but there is much detailed work to be done before legislation can be introduced. The debate will set the scene for our consultations with the industry. In our legislation we can then build on what is said by the House and the industry. The Select Committee report will be an important part of that process. In bringing forward our proposals, we have already consulted widely. We have listened to many people and many views. We shall continue to consult as we develop the detailed legislation. The day after I had made my statement to the House, a copy of the White Paper was delivered to every employee in the industry—all 131,000 of them. We intended that each employee should have a chance to read the proposals, as they will greatly affect his or her future.
I ask the House to approve the White Papers for three reasons. First, our proposals will mean a better deal for the customer; secondly, they will provide wider opportunities and new freedoms for employees; and, thirdly, they will be of real benefit to the economy.
Our proposals are radical in their objectives, but they are also evolutionary. We are not in the business of transforming the electricity industry over night. That would not be possible or desirable. We have at least two years from now to put in place the new structure, and it will preserve what is best about the industry. The new structure will be just the start. It will create a framework in which a modern, competitive industry will develop. It will create a customer-led industry, with the 15 distribution companies free to find the cheapest sources of power for their 22 million customers. A new industry will evolve and will be shaped by the needs of its customers.
Since my statement last week there has been much ill-informed comment from Opposition Members, who talk about a continuing monopoly, rising prices and a bleak future for British coal. One thing is clear about these myths. They are the Labour party's vision of the future; they are certainly not ours. They describe a future for the
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industry under state control, not the prospects after privatisation. The facts are that our proposals will introduce competition into the generation of electricity, give new rights to customers, regulate the monopolies that remain, protect the rights of the employees and allow management to use its initiative.
I have always made it clear that we cannot have two competing light switches on the wall, or two sets of wires in the streets. However, it is nonsense to suggest that there cannot be competition to supply the cheapest electricity into those wires. The fact that there is only one shop in the village does not mean that there has to be only one supplier to that shop. We do not need a monopoly in the power stations just because there is only one set of wires to the customer. Opposition Members do not agree with that. They say, "Pile monopoly on monopoly." That is characteristic of the Labour party, and characteristically nonsensical. At the Conservative party conference last year I pointed out that nine months after the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) took on his present responsibilities he suddenly started to become aware of a few of the problems. It came to him as a great enlightenment that there would be a monopoly in distribution. If he did not know that, he should have given up his job months ago, yet he portrayed it as something that had only recently been discovered.
Mr. Eric S. Heffer: The Secretary of State has just said that there will be only one supplier because one cannot have two wires coming into a house. That means that there will be a monopoly supplier for each area. At the moment the people are getting a good deal. Why do we need a change? The change is being made purely for doctrinaire reasons and has nothing to do with the needs of the people.
Mr. Parkinson: Not for the first time this afternoon, the hon. Gentleman is wrong. As I shall explain, there is a natural monopoly in distribution, and no one has over denied that, but 80 per cent. of the costs of electricity come from generation, and there is nothing natural about a monopoly in generation.
As I was saying, Opposition Members' arguments on this matter are characteristically nonsensical and, when one considers the costs, irresponsible. Last year the Central Electricity Generating Board handed a bill for roughly £7,000 million to its 12 customers, the area boards. That made up about three-quarters of the bill that the area boards passed on to their 22 million customers. Several times that figure of £7 billion could be spent on building the new power stations needed by the end of the century. We have to introduce competition into the power stations to keep the costs clown. Parliament agreed that when it passed the Energy Act 1983, which was meant to encourage competition in generation. It has not worked, because it left the CEGB in control as the dominant monopoly supplier. Our proposals will work because that monopoly will be ended. Companies can compete to build and operate power stations more efficiently.
The distribution companies will be the key to change. With a turnover of between £500 million and £1,500 million each last year, they will be among the largest private sector companies in their region. They will have a strong local identity and a real incentive to strike the best deal for their customers. Our proposals will give them the freedom to use that initiative. They will become a force for

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development in their local economies. They will become real independent companies looking after local interests, not just the distributors of the CEGB's electricity.
Because the CEGB's monopoly will be ended, and because its obligation to supply will be removed, the distribution companies will no longer be obliged to take all their electricity from one supplier. Because the companies will own the grid, they will be able to bring new suppliers on to the system. They will be able to buy in the cheapest electricity and will have plenty of choice. The customer cannot have more than one switch, but the distribution companies can and will have more than one supplier. They will be able to contract for local sources of power supply into their own distribution networks. They will be able to contract from Scotland or France, from the two large generating companies or from the new private generators. A framework will have been created in which a modern competitive industry can develop. Already a number of private sector concerns have expressed interest in generating electricity. The area boards are interested in developing their own local generation. The industry already recognises the need to strengthen the link with Scotland.
Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse: The Secretary of State referred to Labour party fears about the effect that privatisation might have on the coal mining industry. Does he not realise that he could allay the fears by instructing both the coal industry and the electricity industry to enter into a formal binding contract on supplies to the electricity industry before privatisation takes place?
Mr. Parkinson: The Government did not impose the present arrangement on the industry. The CEGB and the National Coal Board entered into it because they believed that it was in their mutual interests. I have no doubt, as I hope to explain later, that a substantial part of the remaining huge demand for coal will continue to be met from the British industry, subject to certain qualifications.
I was talking about strengthening the link with Scotland. The Scottish industry will be a real force in the English market. It has a large surplus of modern and efficient power stations. The Scottish boards will be important competitors in supplying the 12 distribution companies and the generators south of the border, who will also be able to compete in Scotland. My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland will wind up the debate and answer points on his proposals for the Scottish industry. These were clearly set out in his White Paper. They recognise the different circumstances in Scotland. The industry has, for some time, been structured differently in Scotland, and the structure will remain different. The competition between the industry north and south of the border can only benefit the customer.
Mr. George Foulkes: The Secretary of State will be aware that, in preparation for privatisation, a big struggle is taking place between the South of Scotland electricity board and British Coal in Scotland. So far, the Secretary of State for Scotland has refused to intervene. Because of the huge investment of taxpayers' money in British Coal in Scotland, because of the importance of security of coal
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supplies, and because of his responsibility for employment and industry in Scotland, the Secretary of State for Energy has a locus in this matter. Therefore, will he encourage his right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland to intervene and take some action, and at the very least knock the heads of the two parties together and get them round a table so that they can come to some kind of agreement before the coal industry in Scotland is decimated?
Mr. Parkinson: Both my right hon. and learned Friend and I have made it clear that we would like to see agreement between the SSEB and British Coal, but we cannot force that agreement on them. The chairman of the SSEB has another important statutory duty, and that is to supply electricity at the most competitive price. Therefore, we want to see these two industries get together and work out a deal. This is not a by-product or a part of privatisation. The chairman of the SSEB believes that he is fulfilling his statutory duties, and we can only make sure that a modern coal industry is available. We can encourage the parties, but, at the end of the day, this must be a commercial arrangement between them.
Mr. Alexander Eadie: In reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) the right hon. Gentleman made great play of the statutory duties of the SSEB. Has he read the agreement on those duties? I counsel him to do so, because he will see from it that the Secretary of State for Scotland has the power to direct and to intervene if he deems it to be in the national interest. I submit that a Scottish deep-mined coal industry is in the national interest.
Mr. Parkinson: I am sure that my right hon. and learned Friend has heard everything that has been said, and I am sure also that he will deal with this subject. It is important to us all, but I recognise that it is particularly important to Scotland, and it is appropriate that my right hon. and learned Friend should deal with it.
I have heard Opposition Members say that there cannot he competition because there will be regulation. Again, there is confusion. There will be competition in the power stations. Regulation will ensure that the benefits of that competition are passed on to the customer in electricity prices. There will be a clear and effective regulatory system, and the White Paper sets out the principles on which it will be based. The emphasis will be on regulating the prices charged by the distribution companies. This will prevent monopoly profits being taken by any part of the industry. The initial contract put in place for the supplies from existing power stations will also have to be regulated. Detailed proposals can be put to the House only after consultations with the industry. The Government's principal aim is clear, and that will be to promote competition.
The regulatory system will reinforce the distribution companies' incentives to seek the cheapest supplies, but we shall also put competitive pressures on the distribution companies themselves. Neighbouring companies will be free to compete for large customers on their borders, and large customers will be free to buy electricity direct from the generators. The regulatory system will ensure that they can use the grid and distribution systems to do that. It will improve the existing provisions on common carriage in the Energy Act 1983. It will ensure that distribution

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companies do not develop local monopolies in generating electricity themselves. It will prevent them subsidising their high street shops with income from electricity sales.
Mr. Tam Dalyell: A number of us were the guests of the CEGB in the control room in Southwark. What does the Secretary of State say to controllers, such as Edgar McCarthy, who say that if, for example, in the Sundon incident in 1986, they had not had the authority to exercise control, the whole of London would have been in great difficulty within two minutes? The technical arguments of Mr. McCarthy and his colleagues weighed heavily with some of us. What is the Secretary of State's reply to that?
Mr. Parkinson: I noted that the hon. Gentleman asked this question earlier. We believe that the grid control will have the same ability to deal with emergencies under our arrangements as it does under the present ones. At present those arrangements depend upon common ownership, and we believe, on the basis of the contracts struck between the parties, that exactly the same reaction will be possible in a similar emergency.
Let me take it a stage further. In the recent hurricane, although the CEGB suffered some damage, by 11 o'clock that morning it was able to offer supplies to all the regions. The real problems were incurred by the area boards, and they had to sort out the massive job of restoring the low voltage distribution system. They did it extremely well, cooperating with one another and swapping personnel and equipment. That was a good example of how a diverse industry—not an integrated one; once again the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) misses the point—with 12 separate companies can work together for the common good.
Dr. Michael Clark: Will there not be the same continuity of supply whether the information for the merit order comes from internal information, in-house within a massive CEGB, or externally, from several generators, all of whom are supplying useful information to help sustain contracts and get contracts the next time they are for offer?
Mr. Parkinson: As I said earlier, the emergency arrangements will work just as well under this system as they have done in the past.
Mr. Peter Hardy: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Parkinson: This must he the last time for some time.
Mr. Hardy: The Secretary of State overlooks the fact that the various bodies will be commercial undertakings devoted to profit. After the hurricane, constituents from my area went to the south of England where they gave assistance to ensure that electricity supplies were restored as rapidly as possible. In many cases they were restored in a matter of hours. Does the Secretary of State seriously believe that commercial companies will rush to aid one another, thereby diminishing their profits?
Mr. Parkinson: That is just a measure of the hon. Gentleman's basic prejudice against the private enterprise on which this country depends for its prosperity.
Competition in generation will provide the best protection for the consumer, because it will put pressure on three quarters of the cost of electricity. Price regulation
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of the 12 distribution companies will put pressure on the remainder. Customers will not just benefit from competition and regulation. They will be given new rights, too.
Guaranteed levels of service will be set by the regulator, in consultation with the industry. For example, the distribution companies could be required to meet all agreed appointments, to provide new supplies within a reasonable period, to replace meters by an agreed deadline, and so on. When they fail to meet these levels of service, the customer will receive compensation. Where the industry has a monopoly, the consumer will have a right of redress. This will be a novel feature of our privatisation of electricity. We are determined to ensure that the customer benefits from privatisation, not just in price, but in quality of service.
I believe that this scheme will be welcomed by the industry. It builds on a scheme that was introduced by the East Midlands electricity board. It will not just help customers. It will give management useful information on failures of service and an incentive to make improvements. It will be feasible and it will be effective.
Arrangements will also be made to represent consumer interests in the new structure of the industry. The advantages of the existing consumer and consultative councils will be preserved. Employees will also benefit. They will have the right to acquire a direct stake in the industry. There will be attractive provisions to help them to acquire shares. Their national negotiating and consultation machinery will be unaffected by the legislation. Their pension rights will be safeguarded.
Most important, the new structure of the industry will provide more diverse career opportunities. More companies will enter the market, and they will be looking for people with experience. There will be fair competition for the highest positions in the industry. Boards will no longer be chosen by Ministers. They will be filled by those with ability from within the industry, and with a minority of non-executives.
The majority of the employees work for the area boards, which are enthusiastic about the new structure. They are confident that it will provide real benefits for their customers. The chairman of the Electricity Council, the head of the industry, supports our proposals. So, too, does the Electricity Consumers Council. If the Labour party is concerned about the customer, it should listen to those who deal with the industry's customers and to those who represent them. It should not just listen, as it always does, to the producer.
I do not expect the CEGB to welcome the reorganisation. Proposals for change are often taken as criticism, but that is not the case here. The Government have the highest regard for the CEGB and its employees. We are confident that the CEGB will make a success of the new structure. It builds on its strengths. It will preserve the integrity of the grid and the operation of the power stations in merit order. It will preserve the CEGB's nuclear resources intact, ensuring continuity and high standards in managing the nuclear programme. As competition develops, there will be a developing market for the skills of those who know about electricity generation. Those are the facts about privatisation.
I should now like to deal with a few of the myths that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East seems to spend most of his time pursuing. The first of these myths is that privatisation will increase prices. That is not the

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case. My proposals will introduce competition, which will put pressure on costs. The Opposition seem to think that competition is impossible. They argue that the customer is best served by a monopoly. I find that surprising. It is not what their spokesman said last October, when he claimed to understand the theory that a monopoly was
"more inefficient, takes more profit and exploits by charging higher prices."
He also said:
"The industry is also not consumer-sensitive."
That followed his statement that
"The concentration of power in one huge corporation is a questionable aspect."—[Official Report, 21 October 1987; Vol. 120, c. 816.]
The hon. Gentleman now appears to remember that his party has always believed in nationalised monopolies. He has therefore changed his ground.
The industry is facing a substantial investment programme. For years it has had surplus capacity. It has not had to order power stations. Those days are over. Demand is growing. More than 70 per cent. of the CEGB's plant is 15 years old, or more. The CEGB forecasts the need for 13 GW of new capacity by the end of the century — equivalent to about 10 large power stations. Inevitably, that will have an impact on prices. That is why it is important to introduce competition into the industry.
We need competition to make sure that the stations are built efficiently, to time and to cost. If the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East is really concerned about prices, he should argue for competition, which is what I think he believes in, rather than monopolies, for which the unions tell him he must argue.
Another myth about privatisation is that the Government have abandoned the coal industry. That is nonsense. Last year the CEGB spent almost £3,500 million on coal. It bought about 75 million tonnes of coal from British Coal and accounted for three quarters of British Coal's sales to the United Kingdom market. Coal is the major source of fuel for our power stations and will remain so for years to come. About 60 per cent.of our electricity last year came from just a dozen coal-fired power stations. In total, about three quarters of our electricity comes from coal. The existence of those stations provides a solid guarantee of a market for coal.
The Government's commitment to the future of British Coal is not in doubt. More than £6 billion has been invested by the taxpayer since we took office, and about £2 million of taxpayers' money each working day is still being invested to make British Coal a modern industry. Those plans stretch through for the next three years.
The miners can help to make it a modern, competitive industry. They know that strikes and stoppages cost jobs. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Energy said earlier that the loss from the recent overtime ban was about £100 million, the same as the likely investment in Margam—a brand new pit offering 800 new jobs. If British Coal can invest in new pits and adopt modern working practices, it can become a competitive supplier.
The Labour party talks continuously as though British Coal is a no-hope industry. It makes it sound as though the House is being invited to breathe life into a corpse—a most unrewarding occupation. We do not accept that view of British Coal. We believe that if the Labour party worked with us, by encouraging modern working practices to go with modern investment, British Coal
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would have a secure future. I have listened to what Mr. Scargill had to say this morning, and I have to tell the House that I believe he has learnt nothing from his recent experiences and that he has nothing that he really wishes to talk to British Coal about. What he looks forward to is finding yet another excuse for holding yet another ballot about more industrial action. It makes one wonder whether, with friends like Mr. Scargill, the coal industry needs any enemies.
Mr. Alex Salmond: If the Secretary of State is so concerned about the future of British Coal, why is he not prepared to provide a guaranteed market for coal in the same way as he is prepared to provide a guaranteed market to the nuclear industry?
Mr. Parkinson: A proportion of our electricity will be supplied from nuclear power stations, but I have just told the House that three and a half times that amount will continue to be supplied by the coal industry. Three quarters of our electricity will come from coal-fired power stations, way into the future. The amount of electricity supplied by nuclear power stations will remain fairly constant. Whether it is British coal that is used is in the hands of the British miner and British Coal. It is not in the hands of the Government. We are doing our bit, and it is about time that Opposition Members did theirs.
The Opposition have also complained about our policy on nuclear power, but our proposals are an insurance policy for the customer. There are no alternatives to electricity in many of its uses, so security of supply is important. If the Opposition were really concerned about customers, they would realise the folly of relying only on finite fossil fuel resources to generate all our electricity. It takes a long time to build power stations. We cannot wait until the next jump in fossil fuel prices and then decide to build nuclear power stations or large-scale projects for the use of renewable resources. We need diversity if we are to have a secure energy supply.
Our commitment to nuclear power is only one part of that strategy. The obligation that will be placed on the distribution companies is not to ensure that the nuclear proportion grows—that will be up to the market. It is simply to ensure that nuclear or other non-fossil fuels continue to form part of a balanced portfolio. That proportion will be roughly equal to present levels, and the nuclear programme will itself be subject to new competitive pressures.
Mr. Rhodri Morgan: Why cannot nuclear power stand on its own two feet?
Mr. Parkinson: The hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. Morgan) asks why nuclear power cannot stand on its own two feet. It is doing so. It is British Coal that has not stood on its own two feet for years. Earlier this afternoon my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary mentioned the figure of £916 million in deficit grant in a single year. There is a big market for coal, but we need other fuels as well. All sensible people who think about energy recognise that. The 18 per cent. of our electricity that comes from nuclear power now should he maintained at about that level in the future. That is no threat to coal. It offers security of supply, as I have said over and over again.
The Opposition may claim that the privatised industry will cut corners on safety and environment, but there can

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be no question of that. Whether the industry is in the public or the private sector, it will still have to meet the same safety and environmental standards. I am sure that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East has not forgotten that Chernobyl was a state-owned power station. Private ownership will not lower the standards that the industry has to meet.
Opposition Members will go on believing in their myths, because they still believe that public ownership is necessary to provide a public service. However, 3 million new shareholders and more than 1 million new freeholders say that they are wrong. I expect many more new shareholders when the industry is privatised, and I expect many of them to be members of trade unions. The industry will then be properly accountable to the public. I expect more of the employees to take up shares. They will then have a real stake in their performance and in the future of their companies. The industry will be free to raise finance in the private sector, and its investment plans will be subject to commercial tests.
Public ownership means state control. It means monopoly. Privatisation will be of benefit by itself, and this will be the biggest privatisation of them all. In England and Wales it will create 15 new private sector companies, with more than 130,000 employees and a combined income of more than £10,000 million. In Scotland, it will create two new companies, with more than 15,000 employees, and an income of 1,200 million. There will be competition and choice. There will be a new force for deployment in the regions. There will be new, wider share ownership. There will be individual initiative, where there was state-controlled monopoly. There will be new rights for customers. There will be new opportunities for employees. There will be a better deal for the taxpayer, and for Britain.
5.33 pm
Mr. John Prescott: I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:
'rejects the White Papers Cm. 322 and 327 which seek, in the name of a doctrinaire concept of competition, to dismantle a successful publicly-owned and integrated system of electricity supply which has produced a reliable and efficient supply of electricity at a price amongst the lowest of any developed economy; which will create a series of lightly regulated private monopolies and a less secure system, producing high profits for shareholders and high prices for consumers; which will have detrimental consequences for employment in the coal, power plant and other dependent industries; and which ignore the crucial strategic importance of a long-term integrated energy policy, aimed at sensible utilisation of the country's various indigenous fuel resources.'.
The Secretary of State's speech really proved the first criticism that I made of the White Paper—that it was a triumph of ideology over common sense. It was thin on detail, and it told us little about how the right hon. Gentleman's proposals were to be achieved. The White Paper is a statement of intent, a fraudulent prospectus high on promises and low on detail. It is a statement of blind faith that competition equals efficiency and is always beneficial to the consumer, which a good deal of evidence shows not to be so.
This is an unjustifiable, reckless experiment with a very successful public utility. It makes no attempt, as the White Paper makes no attempt, to justify the Government's aim to break up the electricity supply industry, and to replace the present certainty of supply with greater instability and uncertainty in this most important provision.
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The White Paper is full of contradictions. For instance, it suggests that it is possible to abolish the present structure, but retain the advantages that that structure has provided over the past 30 years. The Secretary of State has made clear, in both his speech and the White Paper, that the electricity supply industry has a successful record; he has not gone on to explain why he believes that it has failed the country. That should be the first step in any White Paper.
The White Paper is bereft of detail. It smacks of haste and a lack of thought. I do not know whether the Secretary of State has chosen to read the report of the Plowden committee on the electricity supply industry in 1976. He nods; he will therefore know the difference between the quality and quantity of the analysis engaged in by the Plowden committee, and that of the shabby report that he has presented to the House. The Plowden report at least attempted to examine the different options that are available if the electricity supply industry is to he broken up. The Secretary of State has said that Plowden got it wrong, but at least it is possible to look at the reasons that he gave in the report's recommendations.
The White Paper contains no such substance or detail. It presents no alternative strategies. It is not a real White Paper; it is purely the kind of propaganda that we have learnt to expect from the present Government, masked as a White Paper. It has no contribution to make on the important and radical change that is being proposed—for I fully agree that it is a radical change. That is why it is all the more important that the Government try to justify giving up what we know to be a successful way of supplying electricity.
Mr. John Redwood: If the CEGB and the current industry are so successful, why are they being so slow to bring forward combined heat and power, combined cycle gas turbines and reuse of redundant power stations, which could be so much better at generating cheap power at little fossil fuel cost? Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the private sector might do that job rather better?
Mr. Prescott: The hon. Gentleman has proved that he should wait to hear my criticism before he rises to speak. I shall come to that point later in my speech. I appreciate that he may not know what I am going to say.
The Secretary of State has referred to a point that I made in my speech on the Public Utility Transfers and Water Charges Bill. I made it clear then that ours is the most integrated and secure electricity supply industry in any developed economy. It has not only achieved but exceeded all the profit targets that Parliament gave it. It has trebled its productivity in 30 years and, in the last 50 years, has increased prices by a factor of nine—a sixth of the increase in fuel costs and half that in the cost of living. Can any other private or public industry claim that record? I shall sit down if any hon. Member can cite one.
Mr. Redwood: The private sector computer industry could more than match that record.
Mr. Prescott: That is only over a period of five, six or 10 years during which it has been in existence. I am talking about 50 years of success by a public industry.
The fairest thing would be to compare the industry with other electricity supply industries in the rest of the world. An analysis has been done by the Electricity Council,

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which shows that on prices alone Britain is producing one of the cheapest forms of electricity when compared with the 20 developed countries in the OECD. That is a considerable record.
In the Sunday press, the Secretary of State is quoted as saying that his plans for electricity will cut bills. It does not say that in the article. Is the Secretary of State predicting that his plans will improve the record of the industry? Will they do better than make us the sixth cheapest electricity supplier in the OECD? Will he do better than that? Will he cut the bills?
Mr. Parkinson: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for proving that even after our price increases British electricity will remain competitive. He has spent the past few months saying that that is not the case.
Mr. Prescott: I shall deal with the price increases shortly. However, will the Secretary of State predict that the prices will come down as a result of the changes announced in the White Paper?
Mr. Parkinson: I spent quite a bit of time in my speech pointing out that competition will put pressure on costs, which will force prices down. Therefore, prices will be lower in the private sector than in the public sector.
Mr. Prescott: That is another example of a statement of faith. We are asking the electorate to accept the Secretary of State's belief that competitive forces will do better than the proven record of the past 30 years which, as I have said, has made us the sixth cheapest electricity supplier in the OECD.
We should bear in mind that the industry has carried the burden of the Treasury putting its hand in the till over the past few years. The Treasury has taken £2 billion from the industry in the external financing limits. It has now calculated that it will take another £1 billion in next year's accounts. Therefore, £3 billion will have been taken since the Tories took office, and that will have been financed out of the present price structure. The industry has had considerable money taken away from it by the Tory Government, but still it has a considerable price record.
I pray in aid the work of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, which was set up by the Government. It looked into the operation of the electricity industry and examined transmission and generation. It has made legitimate criticisms, but, in the main, it said that the industry had operated in the best interests of the country. That is a good argument to put for the retention of a publicly owned electricity supply industry.
Of course, there are criticisms of the industry. The Labour party does not stand for the status quo. We want a change and we want improvements. However, we believe that a public sector electricity industry does the job far better than the private sector could, and the record shows that. I shall list some of the criticisms. The generation side of the industry is too powerful. I have suspicions of power when it is concentrated in that form, whether in public or private ownership. The industry has been obsessed with nuclear power and has had too little to do with combined heat and power schemes. It is not sensitive enough to consumer demands and it needs tighter control in the construction of nuclear plants—which, by the way, is done by the private sector—and in its demand forecasts.
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The industry has shown insufficient consideration for conservation and the environment. Nevertheless, it is still one of the most successful electricity supply industries of the developed economies. It has a proven record as a public industry and utility. That is why I restate the Labour party's commitment to retaining such an industry in public control and ownership. It has been of direct benefit to the country, to consumers and to industry. It is worthy of the title of a successful publicly-owned industry.
Our criticism of the White Paper is that it has a confused logic and blind faith. That is shown in the six principles set out on the first page. It says:
"Competition is the best guarantee of the consumers' interests."
That is precisely what the Secretary of State keeps saying.
The right hon. Gentleman made it clear at Question Time today that when he says "consumer" we should read "distribution boards." The distribution boards will receive the advantages of the reduced costs, in which he so blindly believes. How can the Secretary of State be sure that the distribution boards will pass on those advantages—if they take place—to the consumer? It will not be by the operation of supply and demand, but by a regulator; somebody who will intervene in the market. The Secretary of State has discovered that it will be a monopoly, and I am glad that he has discovered that. I happen to believe that this monopoly has worked in our interest by producing electricity more cheaply. That is contained in the report of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. The assumption must not be that monopoly industries cannot achieve economies of scale. One of the advantages is that current prices have been achieved through economies of scale. That is one of the comparisons between the private and public sectors. One must ask whether it is necessary to have that sort of structure in order to achieve those benefits.
It is clear that we are talking about regulation. The Secretary of State seems to be suggesting that by breaking up the CEGB into a big part and a little part—70 per cent. and 30 per cent.—with some piddling little bits on the side, the two parts will be competitive. There are many examples of two or three big companies getting together with all the characteristics of a monopoly. They agree prices. Why does the Secretary of State think that there would be competition? He said that it will be because of contracts between them. All the evidence we have seen from abroad shows that contracts are usually negotiated over long periods of time. Nobody will invest in generation unless a contract is guaranteed. All private and public utilities in the United States want guarantees of long-term supply. It is called a market condition of supply.
Mr. Parkinson: The hon. Gentleman has been carved up by the Leader and deputy leader of the Opposition. Therefore, I can well understand why the hon. Gentleman firmly believes in collusive duopolies. However, we will not have a collusive duopoly in the electricity industry.
Mr. Prescott: The Secretary of State has a justifiable reputation for cheap and nasty comments. I wish he would address himself to the argument. I may have it wrong; he may have it wrong. We are debating the White Paper and a difference of view about the operation of an industry and the experience we have seen in other parts of the world. The Secretary of State has totally failed to take that experience into account in the White Paper. Before arriving at his conclusions, he should have seen how

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privatised electricity industries operate in other parts of the world. If he had done that he might not have had to say, as he did at the beginning of his speech, that a lot more detail has to be faced yet and that there is a lot more to he worked out. Apparently, the Secretary of State arrives at his conclusions without thinking of the details and without looking at other experiences.
Mr. Quentin Davies: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Prescott: I will not give way because I do not have much time.
Mr. Davies rose—
Mr. Prescott: Sit down. The Secretary of State faced the same problem. We have to achieve a balance as to how many people we allow to intervene. Many people want to contribute to the debate. We were asked by Mr. Speaker to try to cut the length of speeches. That is the problem.
Consumers of the regional distribution boards will not have two switches. As the Secretary of State said, they are natural monopolies. He said in the White Paper that the privatised electricity industry will be a consumer-driven organisation. Presumably, the consumer cannot choose between different switches in order to make a choice between electricity hoard A and electricity board B. Therefore, the consumer has to depend on the distributors, in one form or another, passing on any advantage that the Secretary of State's competitive model—that is what he calls it — has achieved. Any advantages in generation will be passed on to the distributors.
How can we be sure that those advantages will be passed on? The Secretary of State said that it would be done by the regulator. Presumably, many of the distribution companies will begin their own generation. Why should they not begin to emulate what has happened in Scotland where they are both generators and distributors? Will they not then become regional monopolies of generation and distribution? The Secretary of State is shaking his head. It does not mention that in the White Paper. Perhaps that is something else that he is thinking about, but about which he has not told us. That shows the difference between the Plowden approach and the shabby White Paper of the Secretary of State.
We are talking about the possibility of the market producing a regional monopoly in generation and distribution. Presumably, even if the regulator wants to intervene, he will have to take account of the fact that the regional boards may have diversified into other investment interests. Those boards will not necessarily remain involved in the production of electricity. The market logic is to diversify. How will the regulator begin to find out how to deal with the cross-subsidisation in a joint company? There is no mention of that in the White Paper. There may be gold-plating of the assets, as happens in America, instead of the advantage being passed on to the consumer. There may he an answer to these points, but they were not even addressed as a problem by the Secretary of State. The board would be the link between the saving on the generator and the consumer, yet the distributor, in desiring to maximise profit, could do all sorts of other things in the private market system. The regulator would have no control over that. There are many questions involved, including the problem of cross-subsidisation.
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The White Paper states that the obligation to supply is to be given to 12 distribution companies. We have an excellent integrated national grid, as the Secretary of State has said, and no one disputes it. Spain is the only country whose national grid is owned by the distributors, and no one is experimenting with that way forward. Because power stations in Britain are owned by the generators, they can be directed, in order of merit, to come on line. The proposal is that contracts will be negotiated and within the terms of those contracts the generators can be brought on line.
In view of the dispute on COAC contracts in Scotland, would anyone believe that was one way of bringing greater security into a grid contract system? What happens if there is an emergency resulting in a blackout and some generators do not comply with their contracts? That happened in a blackout in New York because the contractors supplying the power did not co-operate. Presumably, if that happens here, it will be a point of issue between the generating board or company and the network. That will become sub judice, so hon. Members will not be able to discuss it. What a prospect to face! We have an integrated national network based on merit and efficiency but now contracts are to be introduced. Even if people believe that the new system is good, they must accept that it introduces uncertainty into a system in which certainty is needed. Under the present publicly-owned system, certainty is guaranteed. Competition by contract will bring about greater uncertainty on essential conditions of the market.
The Secretary of State has said in his statements that it will cost quite a lot to break the national grid away from the generators. The people who now operate it say that it will cost £1 billion. I do not know what the costs are, although they have been highlighted in a number of board statements. Presumably, the Secretary of State has accepted that it will cost something, but he says that it will be balanced against the savings which will he made in the industry. We know that it will certainly have a cost in money and uncertainty.
There was no mention in the White Paper or in the statements of the Secretary of State of the savings likely to come from the new system. The logic of the argument is that we cannot tell what those savings are because the market economy determines them. That is supply and demand. The Secretary of State assumes that savings arc guaranteed. I do not accept that or believe that there is a great deal of evidence to support it. There will be greater uncertainty.
Who will manage all the areas and make the system better? How will the Government ensure that the public interest is observed? Apparently the answer is to have some form of regulator. We know that a regulator is required in all privatised systems in order to intervene, but this approach has not been successful in some industries and countries. There are doubts about the system, with its many side effects, in America. There is no one who would argue that the examples of regulators for British Gas and British Telecom are good examples — indeed, the Secretary of State distances himself from that method and calls for a more powerful form of regulation. I should be interested to hear the right hon. Gentleman's comments on that. The Secretary of State will face considerable difficulties, as we know from experiences abroad and from British Gas and British Telecom.

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I had hoped that the Secretary of State would tell us about the extra powers for the regulator. I believe that, even with a publicly-owned facility, there is a role for the regulator to act on the consumer's behalf, to intervene and call on people to justify their actions. That is nothing to do with ownership as such. It is about accountability in one form or another. Although I pay credit to the excellent work of the Select Committee on Energy, its efforts are not sufficient to provide the necessary accountability in the day-to-day running of an industry. In its report on the gas industry, the Energy Committee said that it did not accept the formula for the price controls imposed by the regulator in the gas industry. It appears that the Committee was right. Anyone can read of the factors. The Secretary of State has ignored the fact that the Committee asked for a White Paper, but one that would tell us how the energy market would be dealt with in regulations before any further privatisation. The Committee wanted to know how the regulator would operate. The Secretary of State has totally ignored that request. There is no mention of it in the White Paper. He ignored that justifiable recommendation by a Committee, the observations of which in these matters have been far more useful than the Government's.
The regulator's role is a problem, and I draw in support of that comment a statement from a meeting on 29 February of the Bow Group energy committee, which the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy attended. After the White Paper was published, the hon. Gentleman reported that he was concerned about the safety of nuclear installations, about consumers having to fund the massive industrial investment through price rises, about the effects on the coal industry and about whether private sector competition would be encouraged to enter the market. I liked his statement that he was concerned about
"how the new regulators can sort this out".
The hon. Gentleman asked for comments to be sent to him, since he has to publish a paper on the subject.
Mr. Peter Rost: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Prescott: I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman, because he was present at that meeting
Mr. Rost: In fact, I chaired that meeting. I am not clear where those supposed minutes came from. They certainly have not been approved by me yet and, from what I have heard of the hon. Gentleman's presentation of them, that is a gross misrepresentation of what took place.
Mr. Prescott: I shall accept from the hon. Member who chaired the meeting of the Bow Group energy committee that this is a gross misrepresentation of what went on. There is nothing in the statements of the Secretary of State or the answers of the Under-Secretary of State during Question Time that gives us an inkling that they understand what a regulator has to do. If my information from the meeting is wrong, I shall give the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary of State a chance to show that they know precisely how the regulator will work in respect of the critical matters of price and control.
Mr. Parkinson: I made it clear in my speech that we were debating the structure. I then said that there was an enormous amount of detailed work to do. I said that we
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looked forward to the views of the Select Committee on Energy. There is no secret about this matter. I have discussed it with the unions and the management. I explained the outline of our regulation policy in the White Paper and in my remarks today. There is much detailed work to be done now that the structure is out in the open.
Mr. Prescott: That rather confirms my view about the operation of the regulator. That aspect is critical to the question whether the Government can get the kind of competitive industry about which the Secretary of State talks. This system has not worked before for British Gas and British Telecom. It is not working successfully in America. The Secretary of State is merely confirming the report of the Bow Group energy committee—that if anyone has any ideas, they should be sent to him and his Minister. At least that point must be correct, because the right hon. Gentleman has confirmed it. This confirms that the Secretary of State speaks about the ideology but does not know how it is to be achieved. That is all that the White Paper has presented to us.
Mr. Morgan: This is not so much a White Paper as a suggestions box in which everyone may put ideas.
Mr. Prescott: That is a very good point. It is a pity that the Government did not have the suggestion box out before. They could have taken account of the sound advice that was available before they reached these conclusions. But I do not think that that has anything to do with it. The Secretary of State told the Tory party conference that this is what the people would get. The members at that conference gave him a cheer, and it was a triumph again for him. Frankly, I presume that we are faced with the consequences. We all know the importance of this change. The Prime Minister came in at statement time to hold the hand of the Secretary of State. She must be convinced that the right hon. Gentleman is OK, as he is on his own tonight.
It is a bit rich for the Secretary of State to say that he wants to privatise the industry to stop Government interference because they are for ever pinching money from the electricity supply industry to fund their financial programmes — £3 billion during the past four to six years. The Secretary of State has said, "Please protect me from putting my hand in the till." If that is why we have this White Paper, it is not a justifiable reason.
The Secretary of State also referred to his opposition to Government interference. But he is imposing a 15 per cent. price increase on the industry against all the judgments about whether such an increase is necessary. He has also referred to regulated profits, and whether they will be fair, and to future investment programmes. The Secretary of State did not say anything about the golden share. We heard in the statement a fortnight ago that there will be a golden share in the industry. If there is, I hope that it will be more effective than that of Britoil's which the Secretary of State admitted did not work. The Secretary of State is interfering in nuclear power. He has agreed that strategically we want a nuclear industry and that the electricity supply industry will be forced to buy some nuclear supply. That is considerable Government interference. It is agreed that the Government constantly interfere in oil taxation policies and in cheap gas imports from Norway. Therefore, to assume that there is no Government interference, whether the industry is in the old or new form, is nonsense.

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The only rule of the market will be for the coal industry, which will have to face massive imports and which will be encouraged to do that. Indeed, we can see what is happening in Scotland at present. That is the only area in which the Secretary of State says that we can make savings of about £500 million—[Interruption.] No, I acquit the Secretary of State of that; he does not give us such details. The industry has assessed that it can save £500 million or £700 million costs. What will be the effect on the balance of payments and on prices? Is the future of the coal industry to be determined on the short-run effects of international coal prices? That seems to be the coal industry's future. That will have an effect on many thousands of miners, on pit closures, and on the railways and shipping industries. It has been estimated that it will affect about 100,000 jobs.
I wish that the Secretary of State had given us an indication of what he thinks the effects will be on jobs, instead of lecturing us about how to work harder, especially those in the mining industry, which produces the cheapest deep mine coal in Europe, when he knows that its record in the past few years has shown a considerable changeabout—[Interruption.] For whatever reason, the changeabout has been considerable. We cannot assume that it is just the status quo because there have been considerable changes.
The Secretary of State should he telling us what the coal industry's future is—there must be a future for the coal industry — instead of saying that its future will be determined by price, the results of that, limitations on the balance of payments and imports. Why does the Secretary of State not say, "I am going to ensure a future for nuclear power, so I shall ensure one for coal; I shall develop a plan for coal just as I have for nuclear"? That is precisely what he is doing, but for one reason or another—for the Government's own political prejudices—he wants to sort out the miners, and that will have consequences for their jobs and major costs to the community and the taxpayer.
If the Secretary of State reads his White Paper, he will see that most of the benefits that he claims will be the result of the structural changes could come about whether the industry is owned publicly or privately. The grid could be separated under public ownership. The CEGB could be broken up into the forms that the Secretary of State is talking about with the industry still in public ownership. There could be the competitive yardstick that the Secretary of State says replaces competition; there could be consumer benefits and regulated powers — all under public ownership. More powers could be given to the regulators in line with the Monopolies and Mergers Commission—again, under public ownership.
The reality is that the only difference under the changes in the White Paper is that the Goverment need to sell the industry to get the money. That is an ideological requirement, which has nothing to do with efficiency or the consumer. It is about maximising money for the Treasury so that it can utilise it for tax cuts. If one considers the fattening-up prices—the 15 per cent. price increase — which the CBI has rejected in its Oxford report — [Interruption.] When the Secretary of State argues the case of short-run costs and long-run costs, he should look in detail—
Mr. Quentin Davies: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Prescott: No; I do not have the time.
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The Secretary of State should look in detail at the report. As an accountant, he will see that it makes clear that that price increase is not necessary to justify investment or to increase the rate of return—it increases the value of the assets. By running off capital debts so that the industry is free from capital debt by the end of the decade, the Secretary of State is guaranteeing the maximisation of resources and prices for the selling off of the electricity industry. This is what it is all about — maximising the price to the Government.
When the Secretary of State, at Question Time, said, "The hon. Gentleman" — that is, myself—"apparently realises that money goes to the Treasury and therefore to the benefit of the taxpayers," he missed out two essential points. First, money may go to the Treasury, but, if it is used for tax cuts, it is hardly of benefit to all the people of this country. Secondly, all the people will pay that price because they all pay for electricity. The consumer will pay a privatisation tax for a benefit that will be given to the City, the Treasury and the 3 million shareholders he hopes will invest in the industry. However, there are already over 40 million shareholders in the industry at present, when it is in public ownership, and they are concerned to maintain cheap electricity supplies.
We are faced with an electricity supply industry that, when privatised, requires higher profits and higher finances to attract investment and equity. It is a price far higher than the public sector has to provide because a low-risk industry can provide all the investment and produce lower prices at about half the level of the rate of return, which apparently is 2·5 per cent. at present. The only reason that we are increasing that rate of return—it is why a Labour Government recommended it and increased the rate of return—is primarily to get money for long-term investment. However, as has been pointed out, the Electricity Council, in its report for the industry, says tat all the extra prices that came from those changes in the Labour Government's White Paper are already embodied in the price structure, and investment requirements up to the year 2000, under the Electricity Council, have been catered for.
Therefore, the only reason for these resources is to provide cash for the Treasury. All the organisational changes that the Secretary of State talks about— the benefits to the consumer and the competition that is to come from a regulated monopoly system—are a sham. There is no advantage to the consumer. This measure will not introduce competition into the industry in the form in which the Secretary of State desires it. It will result in greater uncertainty of supply, less integration, higher prices, higher profits, and higher unemployment. The public sector has done far better than that. We shall ensure that the industry is returned to public control if the Secretary of State is successful in privatising it.
6.6 pm
Mr. Mick Buchanan-Smith: The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) accused my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State of indulging in rhetoric, but having listened to the hon. Gentleman I should say that I have rarely listened to so much empty rhetoric as in the past half hour. It was rhetoric without content. I might have a little more respect for the hon. Gentleman if he had addressed the right questions. My right hon. Friend never criticised the record or achievements of the CEGB. What he is seeking to do,

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and what all of us are seeking to do, is to make the industry even more successful in the future than it has been in the past.
It is a bit rich for the hon. Gentleman to accuse the Conservative party and a Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer of taking money out of the industry in higher prices. Does he not remember that probably the most predatory Chancellor of the Exchequer in regard to the energy industry was his right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey), because when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer we saw one of the biggest energy price rises at any one time? The hon. Gentleman would have done better to do his research a little more thoroughly than to come up with such arguments.
I strongly support the privatisation of the electricity industry, specifically on the grounds that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East rejected—the grounds of interference by Government. I served for four years in the Department of Energy. Before entering that Department, which was my first departmental experience of a nationalised industry, I would not have believed the degree of interference with the industry, not only through the Department itself, but through the Treasury and its oversight. Sometimes it made me wonder how anybody with any commercial ability would ever want to serve in high executive office in such industries, given the degree of interference that he would experience.
Having said that I support the privatisation of this important industry, I believe it is critical that we get the privatisation process right. This is important for the Government's policies as a whole—for the policies that we have carried through already, and for the future. It is no use simply legislating now and regretting later if the practicalities of the privatisation do not work out in the way in which many of us would like.
I am glad to note that my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland is present. I believe that the structure plan that he has proposed for Scotland is good. It makes sense and it is extremely welcome to my area and the area served by the North of Scotland hydroelectric board. I hope that the discussions on items still to be decided upon will be carried through vigorously. There is still work to be done on the exchange of generating capacity. Will there be an exchange of territory to try to get a better balance between the two boards? Assurances are also necessary with regard to how — as a result of contracts or otherwise — we will maximise export opportunities for Scottish-generated electricity south of the border.
Mr. Hardy rose—
Mr. Lofthouse rose—
Mr. Buchanan-Smith: I shall not give way, because I wish to be brief as many hon. Members wish to speak.
As a result of examining the issues involved, I am well aware of the difficult questions that my right hon. Friend has had to address with regard to England and Wales. I understand that my right hon. Friend must comply with a fairly tight flotation timetable. Given the split that he is seeking within the CEGB, and between the CEGB and the grid, I wonder whether there will be sufficient time for the track record of the new companies to be established to meet the flotation timetable, which I believe my right hon.
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Friend has set for this Parliament. If the timetable extends beyond this Parliament, I hope that my right hon. Friend will inform us of that when he replies.
I have reservations about the merits of the split of the CEGB and about ownership of the grid. My right hon. Friend was right to pay a lot of attention to the need for competition, but the House must ask whether the competition that is to be introduced will be real or illusory. We must be certain about that. I believe that the only true competition is from Scotland, from France and from other energies, especially gas. My right hon. Friend has acknowledged that.
I acknowledge and understand the political attraction of breaking up the CEGB. However, I believe that it is questionable whether there can be real competition in the generating sector of the industry. For there to be competition there must be surplus capacity. Without that, I do not believe that competition can exist. My right hon. Friend has acknowledged that at present there is no surplus capacity within the CEGB. I believe that there will be no true competition until the least efficient capacity has been phased out and new investment has taken place.
I cannot quite understand, nor has my right hon. Friend explained, how the proposed split at 70:30 has been arrived at. I believe that as a result of such a split certain economies of scale and the attendant benefits to the consumer will be lost. I also question whether the 70 per cent. share left with the CEGB will be big enough to attract the investment that is needed, especially for nuclear power and for the new conventional capacity required. I believe that there is an alternative to that split. My right hon. Friend has said that the evolutionary process is the right one, and I believe that there is a certain evolutionary process that would enable competition to build the new, necessary generation capacity. Such competition could be introduced on the basis of giving opportunity to those who can build new statons most economically and, equally, by encouraging better access to the grid.
I do not undertstand what is achieved by the grid structure proposed by my right hon. Friend. We must realise that, basically, the grid is a utility. Simply to split it does not necessarily achieve the sorts of things that my right hon. Friend has claimed. We must also realise that the grid is not just about transferring megawatts from one part of the country to another. The transmission system is basically unstable because of the nature of electricity, that is, alternating current and voltage. The transmission system is not simply a matter of transferring power. Voltage and frequency must also be kept within acceptable limits to ensure the continued integrity of the supply. Therefore, the system is much more difficult and complex than the simple operation of a merit order system as proposed by my right hon. Friend.
I am concerned that, under the structure proposed by my right hon. Friend, there could be conflicts, inefficiency and also, of critical importance, instability of supply. I agree that there must be access to the grid, but I believe that it is unnecessary to separate the grid from the generating end of the industry to achieve that access. I believe that my right hon. Friend may pay too high a price to achieve it. Access to the grid can be better insured through the use of the regulator, or as a result of the shared ownership of the grid under integrated managment from the generating side. That alternative commends itself to me.

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I know that many hon. Members wish to participate in this debate, and the final subject to which I wish to address my remarks is coal. I believe that coal is of equal importance to this debate. A week ago, when my right hon. Friend made his statement on privatisation, my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr. Stewart) asked about coal, and I believe that its importance is highlighted by the current dispute in Scotland.
In the White Paper my right hon. Friend has singled out nuclear power as requiring special circumstances and considerations. I do not understand why coal has not been singled out to receive similar attention. My right hon. Friend paid tribute to the need for the security of supply and the variety of supply, the merits of which are underlined in the White Paper, particularly in paragraph 46. He was correct to underline those considerations.
We had an analogous situation — not an exact parallel—with the privatisation of British Gas and the import and export of gas. Hon. Members who served on the Committee on that Bill will remember that the Government, as a result of pressure, gave undertakings about the considerations that they would apply to the import and export of gas because it was a natural resource that required such special consideration.
I accept that British Coal must be competitive against imported coal, but the enormous progress that has been made by British Coal must also be considered. In Scotland I am concerned by the somewhat hysterical, emotional outbursts from one individual head of a nationalised board. In such instances, I wonder whether the long-term considerations are taken into account. I believe that it is dangerous to set short-term profit against long-term stability and predictability.
Some facts must be borne in mind. About 4 per cent. of the total steam coal production in the world is seaborne. If the CEGB or its successor enters the world market, it may destabilise that market, which is relatively small in relation to its requirements. Equally, prices on the world market are highly volatile and they follow oil prices.
Mr. Neil Hamilton rose—
Mr. Buchanan-Smith: I would rather not give way at this stage.
The spot availability of coal is uncertain. Examples of that are the current shipping problems from China and the problems in Colombia, one of the major sources in the world market, which appears to have oversold.
The most important matter from the national point of view is that once a deep mine is closed it will not reopen. That worries me, because we risk the loss of an indigenous energy source and, in the longer term, the higher cost in foreign exchange of having to import coal.
I ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to reconsider this before he brings legislation before the House. I was encouraged by the statements that emanated from the Scottish Office at the weekend to believe that more interest is being taken by Ministers in the present position, and I hope that recognition will be given to the longer term as well. I wish my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland well in trying to preserve the position in Scotland, and I hope we can ensure that our indigenous energy resources play a proper and full role in the future.
6.20 pm
Mr. Bruce Milian: The right hon. Member for Kincardine and Deeside (Mr. Buchanan-Smith) started by giving a general welcome to the Government's proposals, but it was a pretty tepid welcome by the end of his speech. Almost everything that he said contained either explicit or implicit criticism of the Government's proposals. The Opposition welcome his remarks about the future and importance of the coal industry, especially in relation to the present crisis in Scotland.
I shall relate my remarks exclusively to Scotland. Last week, the Secretary of State for Energy gave no convincing argument for upsetting the present arrangements and introducing privatisation, but we were at least promised two companies in Scotland. In view of the behaviour of the South of Scotland electricity board during the past few weeks, I am happy that there will be more than one company in Scotland. I would not trust the present SSEB and its leadership with anything.
But we have heard no details. There will be adjustments in generating capacity between the northern and southern companies. The right hon. Member for Kincardine and Deeside mentioned adjustments of geographical areas. That was not discussed in the White Paper, and we do not know whether it will form part of the Government's proposals. There was an odd proposal for the joint ownership of the nuclear industry in Scotland, but the implications of passing the nuclear industry into private hands have not been properly explained by the Government. Indeed, it may pass into foreign ownership, because we have heard nothing about the protection of the national interest.
We have heard completely unconvincing arguments about competition, and the new concept in Scotland of competition by comparison. The ordinary domestic consumer in Glasgow can compare the accounts of the two companies to see which is more efficient, but he will still have to take his electricity from the southern company because of where he lives. What will be the good of his having all that information—which, incidentally, he can obtain now?
Private generation in Scotland would be a non-starter because we have such an excess capacity. The argument that the major industrial users can choose between the two competing companies does not bear serious examination. In Scotland, we shall have an arrangement different from that south of the border. We shall have two private monopolies set up with little regard for the public interest and an undefined role for the regulator on prices and other matters.
The present problem of excess capacity in Scotland will be worsened when Torness comes on stream later this year. In 1978, when I was Secretary of State for Scotland, I gave permission in principle for the building of Torness, although the decision to go ahead with the construction was not made until April 1980 by the former Secretary of State for Scotland, now the Secretary of State for Defence. At that time, there was a good case for deferring its construction for several years, but I shall not make too much of that point, because I have always supported nuclear power as part of our generating capacity. Now that I am outside Government, I shall not change the views

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that I held then, although there are now more public worries about the nuclear generating industry, in the light of Chernobyl and other incidents.
The problem of excess generating capacity in a publicly owned system, with the possibility of selling excess capacity to England, is entirely different from the problems that will arise under these proposals, when we shall have to sell electricity not to the CEGB but to a distribution company south of the border. That will be much more complicated, and I believe that it forms part of the background to the recent extraordinary behaviour of the SSEB. When the industry is privately owned, it will be landed with the problem of excess generating capacity, which is not a problem now, given the fact that there is no excess capacity in England and Wales.
This afternoon, the Secretary of State for Energy had the impertinence to say that it was a myth that the privatisation proposals pose any dangers to the Scottish coal industry. In view of the present crisis in the industry, he would be lynched if he made such a statement at a public meeting in Scotland. Here we have two nationalised industries in a public dispute that has gone to the courts. The SSEB denies that it has received a tender offer from British Coal at the price which British Coal says it has tendered. British Coal accuses the SSEB of telling lies. Last week, Lord Prosser, granting an interdict to British Coal in relation to coal supplies for Longannet and Cockenzie, said that if the SSEB went ahead with its present intention to buy all its coal from abroad, it would be catastrophic and irreversible for the Scottish coal industry.
The chairman of the SSEB, Mr. Donald Miller, says that he will abide by the court decision—that is very generous of him—but that he will evade it as much as he can. Despite what the court has said, he will buy no more coal from British Coal. If necessary, he will use Kincardine power station to its full capacity, burning foreign coal. He will use the maximum amount of oil generating capacity. Indeed, he will do anything rather than use the produce of the Scottish coal industry.
The head of a nationalised industry in Scotland is behaving outrageously, and the Secretary of State for Scotland has stood by and done nothing about it. In this case, standing by is an act of deliberate treachery to the Scottish coal industry. We learn from statements made on Sunday that the Secretary of State is now worried about the matter. When he made his statement in the House last week, and during Scottish Question Time, he was pressed many times to take action to bring the two parties together, find out what was happening and do something to resolve their differences.
Mr. Dick Douglas: The Secretary of State for Scotland should wipe the smile off his face.
Mr. Millan: As my hon. Friend says, the Secretary of State is smiling.
There have been problems before between the SSEB and the coal industry. Difficulties arose in 1977 and the then Labour Government intervened. I was personally involved in negotiations with the SSEB and the National Coal Board in Scotland. The problem was resolved, and long-term agreements resulted from our negotiations and discussions. The contrast between those events and those that are taking place now is that the Secretary of State is standing back and saying that he cannot intervene in a
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commercial agreement between two nationalised boards. He has done nothing. He has made many excuses for doing nothing, and now we are told in a Scottish Office statement—we are supposed to admire him for this—that he is concerned about the demise of the Scottish coal industry. He has behaved abominably, and he should be ashamed of himself.
It is a lie to suggest that these issues have nothing to do with privatisation, that they would have arisen anyway. This is all to do with privatisation. The SSEB is adopting a tough attitude because it is anticipating privatisation under the Government's proposals. It is a scandal and an outrage that this should have been allowed to happen in Scotland. It is a foretaste of what we shall have in Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom under the Government's privatisation proposals, and it is one of the reasons why we shall be voting against them tonight.
6.33 pm
Mr. John Hannam: First, I wish to congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the Department of Energy on producing a White Paper that is clear and understandable, and on getting absolutely right the proposals that are set out within it. Having been involved in energy matters since the early 1970s, I know of the problems that faced my right hon. Friend when he began to study the means of arriving at the declared 1987 general election commitment of a privatised electricity industry.
It is easy to say that we should privatise the industry and introduce competition but not so easy to implement that policy. My right hon. deserves admiration for producing the programme that is set out in the White Paper. It was obvious from the start that the various vested interests — the unions, the CEGB and the Electricity Council—would all have an axe to grind and would be advancing different arguments. It was important to find a method that achieved three basic objectives: first, to create competition; secondly, to protect consumer interests; thirdly, to maintain security and safety of supply.
For many years, the industry has been a huge monopoly involved in the generation and distribution of electricity with the national grid linking the Central Electricity Generating Board and the area boards. I have always believed that transmission and distribution form a natural monopoly because of the impracticability of laying competing cables under the streets of our cities and towns. The generation of electricity is not a natural monopoly. As it represents over 80 per cent. of the costs of electricity to consumers, it was vital to try to find ways of bringing true competition into this massive industry.
With the grid as the common carrier, it should always be possible to generate power in any one place in the United Kingdom and to sell it in any other place. It is obvious that the further that electricity is transmitted the greater the loss and the greater the cost. The 1983 legislation was intended to create opportunities for independent generators to supply through the grid. With the CEGB's restrictive policies of buying-in rates and conditions, and with it being limited by existing statutory tariff and supply requirements, very little progress has been made.
Alternative forms of energy have never been given a real chance. Major industries such as chemicals and oil refining, which already generate for their own needs, should be able to dispose of surpluses to neighbouring

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industries or towns. I welcome the decision to separate the grid and to put it truly into our distribution system with availability to it being open to a wide and new range of small and large generators of electricity.
The argument advanced that the use of the grid as a merit order system will offer better safeguards for the consumer is, I believe, wrong. There is no money or financial risk involved, and therefore no real competition. We find ourselves now with a system that is dependent on huge and expensive power stations that are buying high-cost fuel and using it less efficiently than anywhere else in Europe. These large stations sell only 31 per cent. of the energy that they burn. They waste the other 69 per cent. and deposit huge amounts of pollution throughout the countryside both here and abroad. The energy that is thrown away from our power stations is greater than the whole output of British Gas. The energy that is wasted would heat every home in Britain.
The cost emphasis on large power stations has meant that combined heat and power has not been developed in Britain, unlike other countries. Our most efficient station just about reaches 38 per cent. efficiency, whereas in Holland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Finland there are hundreds of stations reaching 80 per cent. efficiency through CHP and heating over 160 towns. Although we had 150 potential CHP schemes projected in about 50 towns, none was really promoted by the CEGB and we now have a bare five city schemes that are struggling for survival. There were more than 20 in 1981.
In the process of rigid large power station ordering, the wide variety of small and more flexible power generators were squeezed out. Since 1971, 146 power stations have been closed by the CEGB. Their size ranged from 30 MW to 400 MW. Their total capacity was about 20,000 MW, nearly double the replacement programme that we are talking about now. These power stations were replaced by the still uncompleted and not terribly successful AGR programme.
I am not saying that the CEGB has been grossly inefficient and has failed the country. It is the monopolistic structure that has failed the country, by not allowing greater diversity of supply. I believe that, given the constraints that are inherent in a huge nationalised industry, which itself is bound by the huge nationalised coal industry, the CEGB has performed well. To give credit where it is due, it has recently shown a more flexible approach to private generators. It is strange that this has happened shortly before privatisation. The House will recall all the new telephones that appeared shortly before British Telecom was privatised. Unfortunately, we did not create enough competition in that privatisation, and we failed similarly with the privatisation of British Gas. I am pleased to say that in the White Paper we are creating real generating competition, and that is certain to be good for the consumer.
Electricity energy is fast becoming an international commodity like oil and gas. The European electricity grid is developing fast as French nuclear surpluses build up. The Nordic grid has proved to be an efficient trading system, and now Britain will be providing competitive electricity. First, there will be a power pool for generating utilities — two Scottish, two English and 12 area companies. Secondly, there will be the entry of a host of
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industrial and CHP schemes, renovated coal stations, gas-turbine combined cycle generators, fluidised bed schemes and tidal, wind and other alternatives. Thirdly, we shall have competition from abroad.
I have mentioned the diverse methods that are available for the generation of electricity, and I must raise an important query for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to consider that is related to the unfair local rating discrimination that is applied to independent electricity producers. I met some of these producers last week arid I was given details of the various methods of producing cheap electricity that are now being submitted to area boards. Successful waste tip generators are in operation and they could provide substantial amounts of generated electricity for nearby towns. A Meriden firm has completed trials at a landfill site where a waste turbine that is fuelled by waste tip gas is capable of producing 3·7 MW of electricity, which would be enough for 5,000 homes, or a town the size of Warwick.
However, the CEGB as a national industry has a special formula rating which does not apply to private generators, with the result that they face rate bills three times as high as those of the rival CEGB stations. These producers urge that, after privatisation, power stations should be rated on the same basis as any other buildings or manufacturers. There should be parity across the generating industry, from Sizewell B at the top down to the 250 KW wind and water generators. I ask my right hon. Friend to take that on board, as it is vital that there sould be no impediments to the smaller alternative electricity producers.
My hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Mr. Rost) and I have urged for years that this country could produce its electricity far more efficiently and cheaply if we had a system that encouraged a greater diversity of power generation. He and I have been involved in launching various small local CHP schemes in which the diesel or gas-powered engine provides heat and electricity for the hotel, leisure centre, swimming pool or factory, and sell the surplus back to the local grid. They operate at more than 90 per cent. energy efficiency.
On a larger scale, firms such as Hawker Siddeley are building, and can build within 18 months, 300 MW generators, producing much cheaper energy than the huge stations that we are used to. Coal, gas, diesel, wind and wave could all contribute to our future needs and help reduce our dependence on large stations.
We now face increases in electricity prices, which are needed not, as the Opposition say, to fatten the calf for privatisation, but to provide the capital for the generating investment that will be needed in the coming decade to replace older stations that are now coming to the end of their working lives; it will also be needed because of the increased capacity in our expanding economy. Whether that capacity comes from large stations or from a wide range of small and large generators, it will still have to be found. After a decade and a half of no ordering of new power stations, it was obvious that a higher return was needed to finance this building programme.
I should have preferred — I argued this at the time with my right hon. Friend—a three-year phasing in of the higher prices, especially as in the south-west we face a 12 per cent. hike of prices in April. That appears to be due to a larger than average reduction in prices in 1986–87 in the south-west, but even after the forthcoming increase we shall still be at a lower real price level than in 1985. Nevertheless, that sort of increase is a blow to an area with

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lower than average incomes and with more elderly people than elsewhere. I hope that the electricity board can be persuaded to achieve its target return on capital more equitably.
I raise now another problem with which I think my right hon. Friend should deal. Last year, during the Sizewell B pressurised water reactor debates, a general commitment was given for the inclusion of at least two coal-fired stations to be built in the forthcoming programme. West Burton, Fawley and possibly Kingsnorth were those mentioned. These are key orders for our construction companies. While I accept that they must be subjected to all the usual planning procedures, I must point out that companies such as Babcocks and NEI are anxiously awaiting confirmation of orders so that their already depleted work forces can be retained.
Given that there are three or four years before the privatisation of the generating companies, what will happen to those orders in the meantime? I hope that the CEGB will be empowered to proceed as planned with its applications for PWRs at Sizewell and Hinkley Point and also for the two coal-fired stations, provided that it is assured of their place in our new competitive industry—
Mr. Hardy rose—
Mr. Hannam: The hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I continue, as many hon. Members wish to speak.
I ask my right hon. Friend to give details about the position of these orders during the pre-privatisation period. That is necessary to remove the uncertainties which have once again fallen on these large construction firms.
If we look ahead to this time next century, we shall find that the world has come to depend upon safe, nonpolluting nuclear power for its electricity. Fossil fuels will be running out, oil will be replaced by coal as the main industrial feedstock and natural gas will have been replaced by coal gas. Coal will have become too valuable and expensive a commodity to burn wastefully in electricity generation. We have large coal reserves — enough to last into the 22nd century, but that coal will be increasingly expensive and difficult to extract, and the trend in output will continue downwards in the short term.
At the beginning of this century, United Kingdom coal output was 287 million tonnes and we reached a post-war peak of 226 million tonnes in 1952. We are now down to 100 million tonnes, large amounts of which are still wholly uncompetitive with world supplies. We are now a net importer of coal, as compared with pre-1914, when we exported more than one third of our coal output. Since then, rising costs and declining coal markets have put double pressure on the industry. Output could be increased again to meet future rising demand, but only when that demand outstrips the cheaper coal from countries such as the United States, Colombia, South Africa, Australia and Poland.
In the meantime, coal must compete in a fiercely competitive market, as we can see in the current debate in Scotland, where the SSEB is trying to force a more competitive price from British Coal. That has already happened in the CEGB, and it is inevitable, privatisation or no. It is inevitable that British Coal will have to continue on its declared path of reducing production costs and closing uneconomic pits. It is heartening that the
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miners recognise these facts of life—hence their ending of the overtime ban and their spreading acceptance of flexible working hours over six days.
In the longer term, it is to nuclear power that the world will turn, and it is right that the Government are keeping the nuclear option open in the White Paper. Contrary to the views of many, I do not wholly accept that nuclear generation represents some sort of market fudge in the division into the 70 per cent. "Big G" company. I welcome the use of the term "non-fossil fuel generating" because that implies that nuclear power will have to compete with all other alternative systems, such as tidal barrages, wind power, and so on.
It may be a surprise to learn that only three OECD countries have state-owned electricity supply organisations with a monopoly in nuclear power production—Italy, France and the United Kingdom. In the other countries of Europe in which nuclear power has been developed, power stations are owned and operated by a mix of private, private-industrial-municipal groups and the state. In Finland and Sweden, state-owned and private companies own and operate nuclear power stations. In Switzerland, where 40 per cent. of electricity is nuclear, the five operating stations are owned by partnerships in which local electricity supply companies, Swiss Federal Railways and a variety of industrial companies participate.
There are plenty of precedents for privately owned operated nuclear plant. It is the safety and regulatory framework which is important, and ours, which is the best in the world, would apply in any event. Our capital markets are perfectly capable of making a financial risk judgment on price and return, and the Channel tunnel, which is equal to four new Sizewell PWRs, is a good example of what they can do.
I am confident that in this new competitive world of generation, nuclear power will play its full role as a baseload supplier of about 15 or 20 per cent. of our output. With the opening up to private generators, electricity prices will come down as those of gas and oil rise.
I welcome the freedom being given to the new distribution companies to seek competitive electricity contracts as well as to generate themselves. Obviously the detail of the new regulatory system will be all-important, so that all these interests can be interwoven with those of the consumer. The employees in the industry, of whom the bulk are on the distribution rather than the generating side, will benefit from direct share ownership and better career opportunities. Even those well-known employees at the top of the various industries will have no difficulty in accepting the challenges of heading up the companies, which will all rank in the top lists of world industries. The 70 per cent. "Big G" company will be the third largest generating company in the world — I understand — so perhaps Lord Marshall can continue his excellent work in the electricity supply industry heading that company.
I welcome the White Paper and congratulate my right hon. Friend on his skilful and imaginative proposals, and I look forward with great enthusiasm to the new era of electricity supply.
6.49 pm
Mr. Matthew Taylor: When the Secretary of State presented his White Paper, he suggested that it would be of great benefit to the customer and a massive step forward for the industry as a whole. He hails the virtues of privatisation and says it will mean that the customer

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comes first, that benefits are enhanced, opportunities more exploited and the industry made more vital and dynamic. Given that kind of build-up, it seems legitimate to look at the specifics and start to question how those things will happen area by area, stage by stage.
Above all, the Government harp on privatisation. They say that it will increase competition and that benefits will result from that competition. However, 70 per cent. is surely still a monopoly by any schoolchild's textbook of economics. The power of monopoly will still be there in that child of the Central Electricity Generating Board. The White Paper states:
"All who work in the industry should be offered … the freedom to manage their commercial affairs without interference from Government."
If the Government really believe that, they should open up the industry not in a 70:30 split, but by creating many different generators who could be in continuing competition. That would give small-scale producers some kind of opportunity.
For example, if we in Cornwall were to have a 50MW power station, how would it be possible in realistic terms for it to compete on an even keel with 70 per cent. or even 30 per cent. held by the CEGB? Will the small-scale producer who invests in CHP or renewables benefit? I doubt whether such small producers will ever get a look in, because the base load will already be fully catered for and the non-fossil fuel element, about which the Government boast, will already be provided. There will not he the opportunities that the Government predict.
Will the Secretary of State demonstrate his commitment to competition by decreasing the prohibitive rates currently imposed on the small private generator? I suspect it is more likely that he will extend the rates burden to the son and daughter of the CEGB, and yet another price increase will face the consumer. What will be the nature of the contracts between the generators and the suppliers? The 70 per cent. and 30 per cent. son and daughter of the CEGB will demand long-term contracts to allow for forward planning and to ensure a return on investment.
What other producer is likely to benefit from such arrangements? Small competitive producers will be offered only the possibly remote prize of going into the grid when there is a shortfall. The base load will be supplied by the nuclear generators and the big brothers that the Government are creating in the industry. Until we have assurances on those matters there is no doubt that competition cannot be the benefit to be derived from this White Paper. Even if competition were to exist, we can query whether it will have cost benefits. Even if there is competition it can only be on the basis of an increase in capacity. The Electrical Power Engineers' Association says:
"For there to be real competition there will have to be significant excess capacity. This will have to be rather greater than the 22% spare capacity now built into the system … this will he a straightforward cost burden to the system which the consumer will have to bear."
If it is not competition, perhaps the employees will benefit. We were also told that by the Government. However, the overwhelming response so far from the employees is that they will not benefit. Even the employees of British Coal do not look to benefit from these proposals.
My hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) said last week that the coal industry has improved its efficiency. People in his constituency want to know why the Government intend to subsidise the nuclear
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industry when they are not prepared to so the same for the coal industry. If the Secretary of State intends to continue with his scheme of placing the obligation on the distribution boards to supply a minimum level of non-fossil fuel electricity, will he now make a commitment that there will be no stipulation for a certain amount of nuclear generation? Will the Minister stand by what the Secretary of State appeared to say earlier—that there will be an obligation to provide by way of nuclear power the 18 per cent. of generation that is currently provided? Is that the position, or will it be genuine, free competition in the non-fossil fuel sector? If the Secretary of State will not give that commitment, it is quite clear that the Government's policies of attempting to combine the nuclear industry with a competitive industry have completely failed. That cannot happen and we can see that in the way that the White Paper has been created.
The creation of that 70 per cent. big brother of the CEGB owes its existence entirely to the Government's recognition that the nuclear industry cannot stand on its own feet and can only exist as long as it is feather-bedded by a large industrial monopoly of the sort that the Government are planning to create. The Electrical Power Engineers' Association is not against nuclear power. It says:
"The now widely held view of all informed opinion, which we share, is that private generators will not wish to take on the hassle of new nuclear power generation when coupled with the very high initial capital cost and the long pay back period involved."
There are many worrying questions even beyond looking to the benefits of the privatisation of nuclear power, and they remain unanswered. Who will take responsibility for the decommissioning of these power stations? Last week it was announced that the CEGB had pulled out of its multi-million pound research programme into decommissioning nuclear reactors. It is quite clear that the CEGB does not reckon that its successors will have to take on those costs. Who will take the responsibility for that research which is so necessary for public safety?
Another unanswered question is about insurance in the nuclear industry. There is no reference in the White Paper about where that would come from. In the United States no one will provide insurance for the nuclear industry. Will the Government put in the money? If they do, that will it be another hidden subsidy for the nuclear industry, even though the Government will not help the coal industry. Is that another hidden subsidy, or is there something else about which the Government have not told us?
Will the environment benefit from the White Paper proposals? Is there anything there that we can latch on to in the White Paper that the Secretary of State so eagerly presented? It is almost unbelievable that throughout the White Paper the Secretary of State makes no reference to that. That area is crucial to the workings of the electricity supply industry and of the Department of Energy. The electricity supply industry is responsible for over half the acid emissions in the United Kingdom and the majority of nuclear waste, and it produces about 16 million tonnes of fly ash per year, much of which is dumped. By ensuring that there is no protection for our coal industry, the Government take the risk that Britain will import substantial quantities of shallow-mined and surface-mined coal with a much higher sulphur content than the coal that we currently burn in our power stations.

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We all know the cost to the environment of acid rain. It is appalling that the Secretary of State should tell us nothing about what will happen in future. Who will be responsible? Will the Government or the industry be responsible? Who will pay for desulphurisation equipment? If smaller coal-fired power stations are reopened or started up as a result of new competition in the industry, will they be obliged to fit desulphurisation controls in their power stations when they are opened? What are the effects on the environment of the White Paper? Nothing in the White Paper gives us the answer to that and we can only go on the Government's record, which has been wholly inadequate in the past. They are now ducking the issue even more.
Perhaps, if there is no benefit there, we can look to energy efficiency benefits. The Government have often boasted about that, and they came up with Monergy. That was a failure because we used more power in Monergy year than we used the year before. In spite of various recommendations that energy efficiency would massively decrease the need for new power stations, the Secretary of State has nothing to say about that in the White Paper. Hon. Members need not take my word for it. They can look at what the executive vice-president of the world's largest integrated private sector utility, Pacific Gas and Electric, had to say on the subject. They will see in that the benefit of a Government who were more adequately committed to efficiency. He said:
"Conservation programmes are considerably less expensive than the cost of adding new capacity, and are clearly less risky from an investment perspective."
It would cost about £20 billion to build 10 Sizewell B nuclear power stations. However, it is estimated that an investment of only £8 billion or £9 billion would achieve potential energy savings equal to that figure. Of course, a private generator has absolutely no interest in energy conservation. Private generators are interested in selling more and more energy. Indeed, they are interested in less energy conservation. Will the Government maintain their commitment to energy conservation? What obligations will be placed on the industry? Indeed, it has been rumoured that the Department of Energy may cease to exist. That possibility was floated in the Watt report recommendations. If that is the case, who will take the obligations on board?
Similar criticisms can be made about research and development. Anyone who was present last week during the debate on the problems in British science will be aware of the difficulties facing this country over research and development. I have already said that the CEGB has withdrawn its research and decommissioning. Private generators are unlikely to make similar research efforts because they cannot afford to do that. After all, as the Secretary of State continues to tell us, they are subject to competition and the pressures of a competitive industry. They are hardly likely to invest the same level of resources.
Private generators will have to be backed if research is to continue. Perhaps that will be another form of subsidy. Will there be basic Government funding from the Department of Education and Science? Natural Environment Research Council budgets are already being pushed to the nuclear side and are being lost to other areas. Will research and development be left to private companies? Will there be a levy on private companies, as
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exists in America, to fund a research programme? The White Paper contains no answers to those questions. All that we can be certain of is that, without precise answers to those questions, a private, competitive industry is likely to do less than is done at the moment.
Mr. Norman Hogg: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the North of Scotland hydroelectric board supplies 2·5 per cent. of the nation's consumers, covers 25 per cent. of the land mass and returns five Social and Liberal Democrat Members of Parliament? What are his party's views on the proposals for the North of Scotland hydro-electric board?
Mr. Taylor: I was just about to consider Scotland in my remarks. Obviously, Scotland is a very different area and perhaps there will be special benefits for Scotland which the rest of us will not experience. As I represent a constituency at the other end of the country, I am not sure whether I believe that that is a good idea. After all, there is a separate White Paper on the matter, and I am sure the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (Mr. Hogg) will join me in regretting the fact that we have not had the opportunity of a separate debate on the subject of Scottish privatisation. However, looking at the Conservative Benches, I can understand why we have not had a separate debate.
Mr. Neil Hamilton: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Taylor: I will not give way, because I want to make some more points.
The absurdity of competition by comparison highlights the lack of logic or reason for this privatisation. The Secretary of State admits that Scotland has an efficient, well managed and successful electricity industry, and he can produce no real argument for privatisation. He is bowing to the Prime Minister's ideology and the Chancellor of the Exchequer's purse strings. The Scottish consumer will simply make a contribution to future tax cuts.
We are not considering a Scottish solution. Far from it. There are no safeguards that the Scottish industry will remain in Scottish hands. Nothing of that kind has been presented. There is no recognition of the hydro-electric board's unique social commitment. The proposals are a catalyst and will threaten thousands of jobs in Scotland. I believe that the hydro-electric board represents a model that the Government should consider. There is no need for privatisation — we can argue whether that is really needed. The hydro-electric board's example may be applied to other areas of rural need, and my constituency is such an area.
Doubtless the SSEB's decision to put its coal supplies out to tender is a direct consequence of the need to reduce costs and increase profitability as a result of the Government's aim to privatise the industry. Building the Torness nuclear power station meant a £2 billion debt and £240 million of the SSEB's £286 million profits last year went on interest payments. Some 3,000 jobs and the livelihoods of whole communities are threatened by the Government's twin pursuits of uneconomic nuclear power and privatisation. If the Government are looking for savings in those directions, they need not have chosen privatisation. They could have stated openly that they were interested in savings in the state-controlled industry as it exists at the moment.

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The Government claim that consumers will benefit directly. The Secretary of States constant references to the customer are as conspicuous as the absence in the White Paper of any reference to the environmental impact or conservation. It is equally hard to believe that the consumer will benefit directly from the proposed privatisation. With the exception of large customers on the boundaries between one distribution board company and another, the customer will have no choice over the personal supply of electricity.
The Secretary of State has rightly said again and again that electricity supply is a natural monopoly. Will the Secretary of State explain how the individual consumer can make a choice anywhere along the line? Of course he cannot. He has to say that choice will be found through the boards. If the distribution companies are to be forced to choose a minimum level of nuclear power, will the costs incurred in the safe disposal of waste and decommissioning force uneconomic price rises on customers? The total decommissioning costs of more than £2 billion represent an enormous liability for the private sector, yet those costs are essential for public safety.
We have been promised new rights for the customer. Yet those rights could be incorporated by a Government who believe in making the state sector more responsive to the consumer. We advocated all those new rights when Ofgas and Oftel were created and the Government miserably failed to implement them then.
According to a Financial Times editorial:
"The nature of the regulatory system is the biggest question left unanswered by yesterday's White Paper."
Privatisation is supposed to bring the promise of lower prices, but the only tangible impact that we have seen so far from the proposals is a sharp rise in prices—15 per cent. over the next two years. Tariffs are increasing by an average of 9 per cent. in April and 6 per cent. next year. The Government's oft-repeated comments state that the average return is 10 per cent., not 5 per cent., and we may yet see larger increases once the boards enter private hands.
The Financial Times editorial also stated:
"A new entrant building a coal-fired power station will have costs far higher than the average costs of the two CEGB successor companies with their mix of old and new stations."
There is no hope for real competition, for an industry more responsive to the consumer, or that the White Paper will produce any of the glorious promises that the Secretary of State has claimed for it. There will be massive upheaval in the industry, a less efficient system to the detriment of the old and the cold and those who have to pay electricity bills. There will be no benefits of true competition because the White Paper contains no proposals for that. It is high time that the Secretary of State and his colleagues rethought their proposals.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): I remind the House of the need for brief speeches.
7.7 pm
Sir Trevor Skeet: There are three reasons why I intend to support the Government tonight: privatisation will lead to a commercial approach; it will lead the industry to access to the market; and it will involve freedom from political intervention. Those points far outweigh anything else I might say. However, I have some reservations.
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The merit order system ensures that, whenever the level of demand for electricity rises, it will be met by a combination of generating plants with the lowest total costs. Technically, that requires a close relationship to be maintained between the transmission and production of electricity. That may be complex and the directions arbitrary. That process is now to be split. How will generators respond to a national emergency if they have no statutory obligations to supply? There are powerful arguments for the retention of an integrated power generation and transmission system. After all, the present system evolved as it did following the Weir committee report in 1925, which led to a nationally co-ordinated system in 1947.
Vertical integration has been secured for all the distributors, so why has it not been secured for the CEGB? That must be recognised as an anomaly. The distributors have the right to produce and the right to distribute, while the CEGB has the right to produce but has limited marketing power, and no power over the transmission system. With public utilities, it is not so much corn petition that counts—one only has to consider the situation in the United States — as collaboration, with cross-links between all the companies concerned in a very complex chain. In the United Kingdom, that will require a dispensation under the Restrictive Trade Practices Act 1976. That will have to be provided by parallel legislation, if not by a clause in the Bill that emerges from the proposals.
If the distribution companies own the grid and produce their own electricity, what is to prevent them from ensuring preference for their own generating capacity or so maintaining costs of local generation by cross-subsidisation? It will be more difficult to maintain a merit order system with a fragmented industry. Will the voice of the grid triumvirate be heard in the provinces?
To ensure a better balance, it would surely be preferable to permit the grid to be owned by an independent agency. An independent agency would not be controlled by anybody and would therefore not be obligated to anybody. It would perform its task as it saw fit. Alternatively, would it not be preferable to vest the equity of the transmission company 40 per cent. in the CEGB, 40 per cent. in the distribution companies and 20 per cent. in the other participants? When we discussed the Bill dealing with the privatisation of the gas industry, I tabled an amendment providing for an independent transmission company to cover major trunk pipelines. The Government rejected that suggestion, although it would have been very much better had the amendment been accepted. I now recommend exactly the same arrangement for the electricity industry to enable the CEGB to have an interest and to maintain equilibrium.
I further recommend to the Secretary of State for Scotland that the transmission agency cover the 400 and 275 kV lines. The area boards now control 132, 66 and 33 kV lines respectively. Would it not be more prudent to extend the grid to cover the whole system? There would be considerable advantage in that.
I do not see how the interconnectors with Scotland and France can operate if the distribution companies desire to satisfy part of their paragraph 49 commitment by drawing nuclear electricity from France. Will the grid be subject to an overriding strategic guidance when economic logic is likely to supersede the requirements of the coal industry?

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First, the selection of cheaper French nuclear electricity through further cables to France might be economically advantageous. The use of natural gas from the continental shelf on coastal sites with the use of gas turbines might also be attractive, and with the price of oil dropping to $14 a barrel, oil-fired power stations may be at a great advantage in relation to coal-fired power stations. Will the regulator provide a golden card, indicating a strategically important concept laid down by the Government?
I have referred to the reserve capacity of the electricity supply industry which is normally supplied by the CEGB. I dare say that that will now be handed down to all producers of electricity. There will be checks and balances but competition in the market place is unlikely to be the crucial factor. The regulator will himself determine the level of prices.
The hon. Member for Truro (Mr. Taylor) referred to nuclear research — a complicated matter, with which I shall deal in a moment. First, I refer to the coal industry. Coal and electricity should have been considered together, because the industries are interdependent. I should not be at all surprised if British Coal entered the production of electricity, supplying its own coal. That is certainly one reason for treating them as one industry.
The problems of the electricity industry, however, will continue if the Government's policy is to ban coal imports and if that ban is likely to remain. I suspect that the newly founded allowance for imports will be confined to textbook instructions and will be permitted only for minor tonnages required for smaller generators. There may be significant changes in 1992, when all the barriers come down within the Community.
Let me make some suggestions. We could follow the West German example. West Germany has a mix of imports and indigenous coal; the obligation is placed upon the burner of the coal to utilise both indigenous production and a proportion from abroad if he desires it. If the French and Germans can import coal, there is no reason why we should not. There is also the possibility of a reduction in coal production in the United Kingdom of between 80 million and 90 million tonnes. Furthermore, there may be a shift in emphasis away from deep-mined coal to opencast coal, in the range of between 12 and 20 million tonnes. That is another possibility that the industry should face.
Mr. Lofthouse rose—
Sir Trevor Skeet: I see the hon. Gentleman springing up, but I shall not give way.
The leasing of selected coal mines to named generators might also be considered, although the ownership of facilities would remain with British Coal. In determining prices for the consumer, more is likely to be gained by the industry and the public through a rational import policy on coal at international rates and the retention of comparable rates of fuel oil tax than through competition.
Finally, I refer to nuclear electricity. I have a feeling that the arrangements could lead to a scaling down of nuclear power projects in England, although not in Scotland. The historical approach has not been of advantage. Over the past eight years, there have been very few orders. The chief executive of the British Oxygen Company said:
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"We see a real danger that fragmentation will mark the demise of Britain's nuclear programme. We believe this programme is essential for strategic diversity of fuel sources and will for all plausible levels of fossil fuel prices over the life of the plant prove to be commercially correct."
The CEGB has about 3,460 MW of Magnox power, most of which is to be retired by the end of the 1990s. The advanced gas-cooled reactor programme is 4,720 MW. That is considerable, but, in turn, it will have to be retired later. Unless we have new buildings and the engineering facilities of the CEGB are maintained at the scale that has been achieved, it will be extremely difficult for a nuclear programme to continue in the United Kingdom.
The nuclear research and development programme is already in jeopardy. I noticed in The Independent of 3 March a report saying that the research programme for decommissioning has been abandoned. I have also noticed that the CEGB has abruptly withdrawn from building an £18 million new laboratory for microscopic examination of material bombarded by radiation. Why could these programmes not have been continued? Would this proposal have been an incentive for the CEGB to go ahead with its projects, or would it regard itself, because it is to be cut in size, as not having the same incentive to go ahead with its obligations, bearing in mind that its statutory commitment to supply has been taken away?
The paragraph 49 statutory obligation imposed on distribution companies is avoidable. They will have to take nuclear power, but they can take it from Scotland, where there is a heavy preponderance of nuclear power, or from France. They could get together and have a second cable from the continent to draw this power, or they could take it by other means.
The hon. Member for Truro mentioned compensation for nuclear acidents. We have learnt, through questions today, that this is covered by a convention, of which the total liability is £20 million. Then it is over to the taxpayer if any further sums have to be paid. I remind my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State of Chernobyl. The compensation for that great state calamity in 1986 has worked out at £7·56 billion, and that is beyond the capacity of either a large company or a minor country to bear. There is no cash fund to make provision for decommissioning, so there will be a charge on Her Majesty's Government.
With those reservations, I support what has been proposed. It is important that I should make those reservations, while I intend to support the Government, hoping that they will bear in mind the points that I and others have made, and will decide to make modifications. I know that they cannot chop and change too much at this stage, but it is important to keep the grid as one unit, and keep it independent or divided between the CEGB and the distribution organisations. It should be either completely independent or they should all have a share in it. If that happened, it would be more satisfactory as a commercial operation than under the suggested arrangements.
7.23 pm
Mr. Peter Hardy: The hon. Member for Bedfordshire, North (Sir T. Skeet) is an experienced Member, and many of us will have observed that he is attempting to ensure that the Government do not put him on the Standing Committee. If, by some mischance, he is there, we shall table amendments which no doubt will secure his support. We shall have opportunities to follow

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some of the points that he has made, so I shall not attempt to do that now. I shall try to make a short speech, as we have already had far too many long ones.
A number of serious points need to be made, of which Chernobyl is one. It was foolish of the Secretary of State to embark on that, as the principle that he seemed to be enshrining is that nuclear power is all right provided that it is privately owned. One has only to think of what nuclear power would be like in Papa Doc's Haiti or Idi Amin's Uganda to realise that the arguments should be a little more mature and sophisticated.
I sometimes distanced myself from some of the arguments used in criticising nuclear power. There are powerful arguments, and they should be used powerfully and maturely, rather than emotionally. There are both emotional and mature arguments against a system that protects nuclear power while allowing even the most shortsighted operation to bring in imported coal and destroy the mining industry. The Government are destroying that industry, despite enormous public investment in it, and despite all the records being set. This is happening for shortsighted reasons, so that some people can please the Government and secure a decent job in the privatised electricity industry, just as people sought to placate the Government to secure a decent job when the gas industry was privatised.
Lip-service has been paid to the quality and the record of achievement in the electricity supply industry. I hope that Government Members, particularly those from the remote rural areas, recognise that Britain was lit and powered by the electricity industry because it was in public ownership because no private interest would have gone into the thinly populated glens of Scotland or the valleys of the south-west of England. I see that the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. Taylor) has now gone, having inflicted a long speech on us, and there is now not one representative of the alliance parties in the Chamber. We are not unused to seeing that practice.
The record of achievement was made possible by a large public enterprise, and it is now being imperilled. It may not have dawned on some of my hon. Friends that the Government's smokescreen has so far been effective. Why, do my hon. Friends imagine, are there to be 12 separate distribution boards? Why is the CEGB to be split on a 70:30 basis? It is simply because the Government know full well, in the light of the BP fiasco, that they would have the devil's own job to sell off, as a single company, the electricity supply industry, with about £55 billion of net asset value. It is not being sold as one company because the Government would have difficulty in launching it in that way. It is being sold as 12 area boards, and the Government hope to be able to drum up such regional loyalty as will enable them to sell the company for the sum that they have in mind.
I have an idea of the sum that the Government have in mind. If they offer the electricity boards for much more than £22 billion, I shall be surprised. That represents the share in the asset value applied in other privatisations. However, the immensity of this privatisation means that they will be prepared to accept a smaller sum as a proportion of the value of the company that they are selling.
Mr. Douglas: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I apologise to my hon. Friend for interrupting him. However, the House should notice the discourtesty of the
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two Secretaries of State, who are not attending this debate. Furthermore, it is disgraceful that there is not one Minister from the Department of Energy to hear this important debate.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is not a matter for the Chair.
Mr. Hardy: I shall not follow my hon. Friend's point, although I am delighted that he made it, even though it may make my speech look slightly longer than I had planned.
Privatisation will disfigure the industry. It has a good record of achievement and service—the sort of service that I noticed when I visited High Marnham power station not long ago. These people are being sold down the river. I understand that one of the things of which the Government are afraid is that people who work in the electricity supply industry are in a much more powerful position than the Government would like them to believe.
The Secretary of State has promised that there will be no redundancies. He does not want reference to be made to the Henney report, but when the Minister winds up the debate I hope that he will refer to it and say whether the manning figures that are contained in that report will affect the size of the labour force in the privatised electricity supply industry. The Government want the people who are working in the electricity supply industry to be lulled into a sense of complacency, so I do not believe that Ministers and Conservative Members will mention the Henney report. If Conservative Members were to refer to it, the Government Whips might frown in their direction.
The Secretary of State said today that workers in the industry will enjoy exactly the same conditions and pension rights as they now enjoy. That was said about British Steel, but when British Steel workers in my constituency were subjected to privatisation not long ago, at the River Don works — or at the very profitable special steels section of British Steel, which became United Engineering Steels—they round that their conditions of employment and pension rights were not maintained. Those who have been involved in earlier privatisations have not necessarily enjoyed the same conditions and pension rights as they enjoyed in the nationalised industry.
The Government know that if the electricity supply workers were to sabotage their foolish and entirely partisan approach they could threaten the size and the value of the privatisation. The Government also know that since most of the public sector has already been sold off they will have to depend on the £20 billion, £21 billion or £22 billion that they will receive from the sale. When that has gone, the Government will be scratching around perhaps selling off parish clocks.
The Government will not worry unduly about annoying their Back Benchers, most of whom are eager to join in the sale of foreign coal to this country. There are Conservative Members who are involved commercially in that kind of venture. There is a fairly powerful lobby for opencast mining. The hon. Member for Bedfordshire, North told us that he would like there to be much more opencast mining.
In my area pits have been closed, which means that our country's industrial heritage is to be destroyed so that Conservative Members can make a profit. That is what they are after. They are not concerned with rewarding the workers or serving the people. They are not concerned

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about ensuring that there is a guaranteed supply of coal. They want to ensure that some people make a profit. It would be regrettable if the body that illuminated and powered Britain in a way that commands public respect and esteem should be sold off to allow some hon. Members and their foreign friends to make a great deal of money.
Mr. Lofthouse: Is my hon. Friend aware that at a meeting last week, chaired by hon. Member for Bedfordshire, North (Sir T. Skeet), British Coal said that opencast mining could be down to about 7 million tonnes by 1992 unless the planning regulations were relaxed? Does he agree that relaxing the planning regulations for opencast mining would have a disastrous effect on the countryside?
Mr. Hardy: It would have a disastrous effect on the quality of life in areas such as that which I am proud to represent. Furthermore, if the planning regulations were to be relaxed the clamour for opencast mining would grow from the business interests that are represented by Conservative Members. The Government are not concerned about the workers or the national interest. They are not concerned about ensuring that British industry enjoys energy at competitive prices. Their only concern is to ensure that they have enough money to bribe voters and to reward some of their friends, no matter what their nationality.
7.34 pm
Mr. Tony Speller: On behalf of all those who support alternative energy, I warmly welcome the White Paper. Paragraph 32 says:
"The new structure … will give the distribution companies:
The incentive to promote competition in generation.
The ability to connect competing generators to the system.
A wide choice of generators."
The CEGB has given little assistance to alternative energy sources, and until recently that was true of every Government, whatsoever their colour. It is excellent news for those who believe that alternative energy resources—the winds, the waves, solar power and the geothermal "hot rocks" — can come economically to the market place. The hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy) complained bitterly about the Government caring only for profit. There is nothing wrong with a profitable enterprise, especially if it is a clean, profitable enterprise.
Two great industries in this country are in dire danger. One is represented more by the Opposition — the coal industry — while the other, agriculture, is represented more by the Government. Both suffer from the same danger. People say that coal can be bought more cheaply elsewhere or that food can be bought more cheaply elsewhere. However, if we follow that line watch how prices rocket up when our own indigenous industries have been destroyed.
We must support our coal industry. It is agreed by all that 75 to 80 per cent. of our future energy supplies will come from the coal industry. It would be unwise to allow all our pits to close, not because there was no coal there or because there were no men to dig the coal but on some short-term whim.
As for alternative energy sources, until now almost all research and development money has been devoted to
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nuclear research. I am not anti-nuclear as such, but why must all the research money be spent on something that will be of no actual value to us, or to our children or probably our grandchildren? We should conduct research into all forms of energy. It is madness not to conduct research into resources that do not pollute and that are infinitely renewable. If only for that reason, I give a warm welcome to the White Paper.
Recently I have visited Norway and seen wonderful work being done there through the use of tidal power. But here the Norwegians are using British-based technology. Australia and New Zealand both have hydro-electric and solar power schemes. Again, they are doing wonderful work, but it was often pioneered in this country. Many of the wind generators that are used in California were manufactured in this country. At long last the White Paper refers to the generation of power allowing use of alternative energy sources. I do not deride coal or nuclear power, but the CEGB has been unwilling to accept energy from small generating plants, and the price paid has been derisory. Her Majesty's Government give no encouragement to installing a generating plant for one's own home, imposing rates on these home improvements. Even now there are no direct connections to the grid in parts of Exmoor, but at last the time is coming when some heed will be paid to alternative energy sources in areas like my constituency.
If privatisation allows economic non-pollutant, renewable fuel to be supplied to the grid, that will not require billions of pounds' worth of investment and that will be to the benefit of this country. One of the greatest things about alternative sources of energy is that they are clean and renewable. There is no pollution and there is certainly no problem about decommissioning. One just turns the thing off. There would be no spoil heaps, and no nuclear waste dumps. All that is necessary is to harness those elements of the world that have been with us since the world began, and will be with us long after nuclear power is dead and gone—and, I suspect, long after all the fossil fuels have gone.
At long last, this White Paper pushes open a door that has been firmly closed under the monopoly control of generation in this country. That must be a good thing. Whatever our feeling about the preferred kind of generation, we must have choice. With our ability to invent and to improvise, we have everything to gain from going out into the world and saying, "Let us build it for you." There are firms like the Howden Group working on wind power, and many big contracters working on wave energy. We can produce it. The ridiculous thing is that we have been producing it around the world, but have not been allowed to do so here.
On behalf of all the alternative, renewable energies, I welcome this White Paper, and give it my full support.
7.40 pm
Mr. Chris Mullin: The White Paper represents the latest stage in a programme of looting of public assets in which the proceeds are being used to purchase the support of the public through tax cuts without regard to the national interest. It must be folly for a nation sitting on 200 years of coal to go for an energy policy based on coal imports. It is a further example of the merciless application of market forces without regard for the disastrous economic and social consequences.

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The CEGB, in its comments on the White Paper, has been a little restrained, but its advice was rejected. It refers coyly to the present plans as
"not having been attempted anywhere else in the world."
That is putting rather generously what the CEGB must really be feeling. It says:
"Fragmentation of ownership of existing power stations would increase the cost of electricity"—
that contrasts with what the Secretary of State and others have told us — and adds, in my view understating the position, that privatisation
"will throw up some major challenges and problems".
I should like briefly to examine some of those problems. One is the problem of where the investment is to come from. I do not believe that private capital will be willing to invest on the necessary scale. One consistent theme of our financial institutions, and, indeed, of our industrial history, has been the reluctance—nay, the downright refusal—of those who control finance to invest it in socially useful activity, and I shall be very surprised if they are forthcoming with the money in this instance. The other consistent thread has been the remorseless pursuit of the short term, whether it be office blocks, oil paintings or gold candlesticks. Whatever may be said about the electricity industry, there is nothing short term about it, and I do not believe that it will prove of interest to those who control investment funds.
I wonder, in passing, whether the day will come when we have to bail out one or two of these companies that obtain franchises. I note that when it comes to nuclear power not even the Government have confidence in market forces. They have made some special arrangements, because they know as well as everyone else that if market forces were ever let loose on nuclear power it would sink like a stone. That contrasts with their attitude to coal, where market forces have been invited to do their worst.
Another problem that will undoubtedly arise is the effect on the balance of trade. We are now suffering from one of the most adverse trade balances in manufacturing industry that we have ever experienced. Yet we are proposing to spend millions of pounds, perhaps hundreds of millions, of foreign exchange on importing coal and French electricity. I wonder where that will end, particularly as in due course we shall have to go back to the world market to purchase oil.
There is also the problem—other hon. Members have referred to it, so I shall not dwell on it — of foreign investors: what we might call the Kuwaiti factor. Will we wake up one morning and find that our electricity industry has been taken over by some foreign Government or multinational?
What primarily concerns me, as I am sure hon. Members will understand, is the impact on the people of Sunderland, a town which I, among others, have the honour to represent. Paragraph 33 of the White Paper says:
"in future, generating companies will be free to purchase coal and other fuels from the most competitive sources."
Those words spell doom for thousands in my constituency, not only in mining, but in related industries. Sunderland has male unemployment of well over 20 per cent. Hon. Members may have read in the past few days that the Government are planning to pull the plug on the other big industry, shipbuilding. Three days later, here we are discussing pulling the plug on a large part of the coal industry.
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About 2,000 miners work at the Wearmouth pit in Sunderland. They are working 14 miles under the sea in very difficult conditions. Many other miners work at neighbouring pits in Herrington, Eppleton and Westoe. Many, if not all, can in due course expect to find themselves with their livelihood threatened, and with no serious visible alternative available. They are continually exhorted to work harder and to adopt flexible rostering and longer shifts. They have co-operated in great measure, and the result has been a large increase in productivity. But they are not daft. They know as well as anyone that if there is no market, more productivity leads to the dole queue.
In addition, there has been a huge public investment. Mining coal 14 miles under the sea requires such investment. As the right hon. Member for Kincardine and Deeside (Mr. Buchanan-Smith) said, deep mines, once closed, cannot be opened again. They certainly cannot be reopened 14 miles under the sea. As recently as January this year, there was an announcement of new investment of £25 million in local pits. Is all that to be wasted?
The market is already being undermined, deliberately and systematically, by coal imports, which have increased by leaps and bounds. Some is even coming into the port of Sunderland. Everyone knows the phrase about bringing coals to Newcastle, but it is just as ludicrous to bring coals to Sunderland. About 250,000 tonnes were brought into our town last year—a town where, as I have said, many thousands of people work in the mines.
It is now proposed to remove the biggest single market for British coal, with coal from China, the Soviet Union and perhaps—no one really knows—from South Africa and Colombia, and to bring in opencast coal, with which no deep mine can possibly compete. A new coal-fired power station is being built at Fawley, near Southampton. What is the point of building a coal-fired power station near Southampton? It cannot be because it is close to the coalfields. It must be for some other reason. Could it possibly be because Southampton has a deep port that can take imported coal in ships up to 150,000 tonnes deadweight? If that is not a cynical exercise, I do not know what is.
Finally, let me mention an aspect which, I believe, has already been touched upon, and which will affect thousands of my constituents. If this privatisation has anything in common with previous ones, it will lead to many more disconnections. There will be an increase in the ruthlessness with which poor people who cannot afford to pay their bills find themselves cut off.
There is an element of revenge in all this. It is targeted against the coal industry. I do not think that anybody is under any illusion about that. It is all being done without regard to the social or economic consequences. My hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy) asked what will happen when there is nothing left to sell. That is a question that I have often asked myself. One thing of which the Government cannot be accused is not thinking long term. However, I have never heard any Minister explain to us in serious detail what will happen when everything has been sold off.
My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott), our Front-Bench spokesman, said—I saw the Secretary of State agree with him — that £1 billion has been taken out of the electricity industry by the Treasury and that a further £1 billion is likely to be taken out. Presumably, that money helps fund the Health Service and education. What happens when that revenue is no

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longer available? I should like to hear, now or at some other time, a Conservative Member address those questions. What is the Government's long-term plan? Is it that they think they will not be in office when the time comes to clear up the mess? Is it that they think that they will be in the Bahamas or the south of France, or is there some plan of which we have not yet been told?
7.50 pm
Dr. Michael Clark: I should like to say to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, in his absence, that I welcome the proposals in the White Paper. Most people have spoken about generation but I should like to speak about the area boards. Currently, there are 12 area boards and they have the interface with the customer. Between them they have 22 million customers. Each one of these boards is, more or less, the size of a foreign electrical utility. Therefore, they are sizeable entities in their own right. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said in the White Paper that he will ensure that there are 12 area boards for distribution when the electricity supply industry is privatised. I support that proposal.
We know that the supply of electricity into the home is a natural monopoly. That has been agreed by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and by Opposition Members. However, it is strange that the Opposition, who are against breaking up the monopoly of the CEGB, criticise the fact that we have to concede that the two wires into a home are a natural monopoly. It seems that the Opposition would like that to be broken up into competitive suppliers, even though they do not want the CEGB broken up. That seems rather ironic.
If the 12 area boards remain, we can have control of prices and service by comparison between the boards across the country. Is 12 the correct number of area hoards? If we had more than 12, there would be far too many and they would be too small. However, if we had fewer than 12 boards, they would be too large and there would be a massive amount of disruption in terms of assets and people employed within the area boards. Therefore, no number is absolutely right. Perhaps nine area boards would be right or perhaps 15. However, since we have 12, it seems appropriate to stick with that in order to minimise disruption.
It may be that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will propose to float all 12 area boards in one company and break the shares down at a later date. I hope that he will not do that. I hope that he will sell each board separately so that it can be judged on its merits in the market. I hope that service will be taken into account. It is just as important to set up a structure that enables us to compare the service given by each area board as it is to set up a structure that enables us to compare the price charged by each board. Service is as important as price in the electricity supply industry. If we jeopardise service by trying to obtain minimum prices, we shall not be assisting the consumers.
Before the White Paper was published, a debate obviously took place as to how many area boards there should be and whether they should be merged. I dare say that during that debate people said that some of the area boards are not viable, some had boundaries that were unfair or inefficient, some had insufficient assets to make them capable of floating as separate companies and some
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had returns on the capital employed that would make them difficult to sell. It is true that the returns on capital employed vary from 3 per cent. to 4·75 per cent. That is a large variation in percentage terms.
Of course, the area boards will be sold not on the basis of return on assets employed but on the yield on the buying price. If an area board is not producing as good a return on assets as would be liked, the selling price of the board will be lower, and thus the yield could be made to be the same as the yield on other area boards that may be doing better due to features such as geographical size, population density or the amount of industry or number of consumers in its marketing area. There will be problems with selling the boards separately, but I believe that the problems should be overcome rather than brushed aside or pushed under the carpet through merger.
The electricity board in my constituency is the Eastern electricity board. It happens to be the biggest, and perhaps it benefits to some extent by its size. However, it is only marginally the biggest, and it is a credit to the Eastern electricity board that on "added operating costs per customer" it is the lowest. It has the lowest "administration cost per customer" and it has the second highest "net return on capital employed". However, it does not necessarily follow that the biggest area board will have the best figures. The South Eastern electricity board is only the eighth biggest. However, its results are almost as good as those of the Eastern electricity board. The London electricity board, the seventh biggest, has poor results in terms of cost control, although it does not do too badly in terms of profits on assets employed.
I hope that those factors will be taken into account and that the area boards will be encouraged to emulate the best rather than to merge away their difficulties by forming liaisons with other boards.
Mr. Lofthouse: Like myself, the hon. Gentleman is a member of the Select Committee on Energy, which is at present taking evidence on the privatisation of the electricity industry. What influence does the hon. Gentleman think the Select Committee report has on the debate? Does he not think that the debate is useless in advance of the report from the Select Committee? Does he not find it embarrassing to put his views tonight when we are privileged to have such expertise at our disposal and so many eminent people giving evidence? We are only in the early days. Does he not think that the debate is premature, or are the Government cocking a snook at the Select Committee procedure?
Dr. Clark: The hon. Member for Pontefract and Castleford (Mr. Lofthouse) knows my view on that. He was present in the Committee when I voted against the proposal that the Select Committee should look into ways in which the electricity industry should be privatised. I did that because I felt that it would be far better for the White Paper to be prepared and for the Select Committee to look into the White Paper proposals. I understand the hon. Gentleman's point, but he will not be surprised at my answer because I voted that way two or three months ago and I am being consistent with that vote.
There is a need for technical co-operation and for the area boards to have a co-ordinated research effort so that the technical features of electricity supply in this country will move forward in unison. There will also be a need for co-ordination on safety standards, and all boards should

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work to the same high standards. Therefore, it could be proposed that there should be an industry establishment, similar to the Motor Industry Research Association or the Paper Industry Research Association — MIRA and PIRA. It could be known as the Electricity Industry Research Association. There could be a role in that for the rump of the Electricity Council that will be left after privatisation. The expertise in that council could be used to co-ordinate research, technical effort and safety standards.
Will the 12 district boards have any bargaining strength against the mammoth generators? The answer is yes, because there will be several generators—"Big G" and "Little G", France and Scotland and the private generators. The area boards will negotiate on behalf of the customers and will have direct access to the customers. If the area boards decide to generate themselves, as I hope they will—it will mean more power to their elbow—they will have more strength, even if they generate only 10 to 15 per cent. of their needs. I should have thought that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) would agree that, if they generate 10 to 15 per cent. of their needs, while being capable of increasing generation to 20 or 25 per cent. if "Big G" or Little G" does not give them the right price, that would be to their advantage. I hope that the majority of the area boards will consider generating, because that is another way of ensuring that they get the best possible prices and thereby serve their consumers.
If the area boards are to generate, they will need proper access to the grid. I hope that, when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State publishes the terms of access, he will ensure that all area boards and private generators can get ready access to the grid and that there are not terms that make it difficult for small firms to have an input. I hope that the small boards will he encouraged in as many ways as possible to generate electricity, by entering consortia with other area boards or by entering consortia with private capital. I concede that I would not want the area boards to enter into consortia with "Big G" or "Little G", because that would be a return to monopoly.
The smaller boards could give careful thought to small-scale generation of about 300 MW and then transmit straight into their 132 kV transmission lines without having to go into the national grid. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State says in his White Paper that there will be regulation for the distributing boards. I hope that, when he brings about this regulation, he will ensure that there are clauses to make sure that there are comparisons between the 12 area boards on such aspects as controllable and fixed costs, administration costs—bearing in mind differing population densities and geographical areas—and the relationship of manpower efficiency and the effective use of the assets employed. I hope also that there is a comparison of that all-important item, service.
One aspect at present of area boards which will remain as it is unless there is a change through this legislation is the electricity showroom. The service in many showrooms is poor. The prices of many goods are high, and I often wonder why people buy from them. Many of my friends and I who visit showrooms do so to find out what goods are available from a wide range, and then buy more cheaply elsewhere. One must wonder, even though those prices are high, whether the goods are subsidised.
Whether they are subsidised now or not, we must worry about the possibility of cross-subsidisation under
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privatisation. It would be wrong for the white goods in electricity showrooms to be cross-subsidised by the sale of electricity. I invite my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland to say what regulations he will introduce to ensure that the costs and accounts of showrooms are transparent, so that we can be certain that there is no such cross-subsidisation. With 12 area boards, it is essential that they do not become monopolistic in supplying electrical goods and that, if they supply them, they do so at proper commercial prices.
My points are all for the consumer's benefit. The legislation and the White Paper are of benefit to the consumer. I hope, therefore, that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy will take my points into account, bearing in mind that we have the same objectives.
8.4 pm
Mr. Dick Douglas: I have made the point before about the great disrespect to the House caused by the fact that neither of the Secretaries of State responsible for the White Paper — the Secretaries of State for Energy and for Scotland—has seen fit for the past hour to be present in the House. Conservative Members should note the disrespect paid to the whole House by that action. I have been a Member since 1970, with a break between 1974 and 1979. I have always believed in trying to apply the force of argument and to influence the Government of the day by argument. If the people responsible for the greatest piece of privatisation ever, as the Secretary of State for Energy said, do not see fit to attend these debates, how can hon. Members have any faith — it is now a diminishing faith — that our arguments will have any influence on the process of legislation or on Government policy?
I shall not talk about the White Paper for England and Wales, but just comment tangentially on the opening remarks of the Secretary of State for Energy. I challenge the two underlings on the Government Front Bench, supposedly representing Scottish Departments—the hon. Members for Stirling (Mr. Forsyth) and for Galloway arid Upper Nithsdale (Mr. Lang)— because, to the best of my knowledge, they did not hear the speech made by the Secretary of State in opening the debate. I shall give way if they can name one argument deployed by the right hon. Gentleman in support of his policy for England and Wales that applied to Scotland.
The Secretary of State for Energy introduced a phrase which applies to Scotland—"collusive duopoly". That high-flown phrase describes what the two Scottish boards will do if the ideas and concepts in the White Paper for Scotland are carried into practice. There will be no competition in Scotland because the two boards are being joined to form some form of company which will jointly own the nuclear supply. When Torness comes on stream, that nuclear supply will be a growing part of the Scottish total supply but will be a preponderant part of the base supply. I estimate that it will account for 60 per cent. of the base load.
Where is the competition in Scotland? The Minister has the opportunity to tell Scottish consumers from where the competition will come. He may have to have recourse to the Government's great flowery phrase "competition by comparison." Comparison with what? Will it mean comparing the North board's output and supply with those of the South board? How will that be done? The two will be joined in this nuclear holding organisation which

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both will own, although we are not sure in what proportions. We are told that in Scotland there must be some geographical changes—we are not sure which—and some changes in the apportionment of power supplies between the two new companies. This is a hotchpotch.
Part of the industry is of great concern to me. I represent the largest coal-fired power station in Europe — Longannet, and, along the road from it, the Kincardine power station. Earlier today, in answer to an energy question we heard that the Coal Board had invested £60 million in the Castlebridge operation. In terms of production, that £60 million could go nowhere else than Longannet power station. If we pursue what is happening in Scotland now, is it the Government's intention to write off that investment? That is a fair question. Because of the so-called "arm's length" approach, is it the Government's intention to wipe off that capacity and investment for which the consumers will get a zero return?
Those are fair questions and we in Scotland expect answers from the Secretary of State. I am not very hopeful that we will get them but we expect answers from him this evening because we have been told through the press—I believe the Scottish press now and again — that the Secretary of State will answer those questions when he replies to the debate tonight.
Let us consider what has happended to the coal burned from Scottish mines since 1979. In 1979–80, there were 7·58 million tonnes; in 1986–87 that amount had been reduced to 4·5 million tonnes. I submit that all that had been done on an extremely efficient basis. I plead in aid the last report and accounts that are available from the South of Scotland electricity board. Page 8 stated:
"This took into account the need to ensure the longer-term prospects for the Scottish coal mining industry, which will continue to supply the board with a major part of their fuel requirements."
That was what Mr. Donald Miller said in the last balance sheet. In attracting new industry to Scotland the Government praise the new pulp and paper mill at Irvine. I refer again to the report and accounts, which stated:
"The board acknowledge the part played by British Coal and the private mines industry in helping to control costs and thus ensure that adequate and secure supplies of electricity will be available to the mill at competitive cost."
That was a year ago. What has altered Donald Miller's mind? In a word, "privatisation". I do not like criticising someone who cannot reply on the Floor of the House, but if Mr. Miller wants to reply outside, I will repeat this outside. I believe that he has been bought and sold for the expectation of a job in the private enterprise company that will come into being. There is no other explanation.
I shall conclude, because I know that many hon. Members want to participate in the debate. We plead that the two Government Departments—the Scottish Office and the Department of Energy—should get together to solve this problem. It is not good enough for the Secretary of State for Scotland to sit back and say that he has nothing to do with it. I do not necessarily ask Conservative Members to accept my argument, but they should read the editorial of Saturday's edition of The Scotsman. It is not a Labour paper and is not necessarily friendly to Labour's outlook. However, it stated:
"Though the reasons for Mr. Miller's extraordinary behaviour are, on the information available, difficult to discern there can be small doubt that he is acting with the knowledge, if not the sanction, of the Scottish Office."
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Conservative Members, and Ministers, should either contradict and refute that tonight or substantiate it. I believe that Donald Miller would not be acting in that way if he did not have the support of the Scottish Office. That Scottish Office support means the destruction of capital assets that the public have paid for. It means the destruction of 4,000, and more, jobs in Scotland. If hon. Members want to support the Government's policy, they should come to Oakley tomorrow night, to a miners' meeting there, and say that they are the custodians of the Scottish economy. I know what answer they will get from that meeting. The Scottish Office has tried to manipulate the press. It has media and photo-calls every week. Ministers should come to Oakley tomorrow night for a photo-call. I know what they would get if they came.
If Conservative Members had any guts, they would intervene to save jobs. We are arguing not about an old declining industry; we are arguing on the basis of a case that was stated a year ago in a balance sheet. We are arguing on behalf of men who have moved out of pits such as Comrie, Bogside and Seafield into a complex that they thought would give them secure employment for a long time. Scottish Office Ministers cannot and will not intervene, so let them bear the repercussions in Scotland.
I know where I shall be if one lump of foreign coal is burnt in a power station in Scotland. If that happens, every man, woman and child in Scotland should be in uproar against it. Responsibility for that will not rest with the Opposition. It will be because the Scottish Office and Ministers refused to listen to the righteous cries and the clarion call from all the people of Scotland.
8.16 pm
Mr. Mike Woodcock: I join those who have congratulated my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on his ambitious and far-reaching proposals, which will change the industry from being producer-orientated to consumer-driven and ensure a better deal for the consumer. I congratulate him on ensuring that as far as possible competition will be the guiding force of the new industry. I congratulate him also on ensuring diversity of fuels. How prudent he is in ensuring that never again will electricity supplies in this country be threatened by militancy in the coalfields; nor will we be at the mercy of OPEC.
While welcoming the proposals warmly, like many other hon. Members I want to offer some thoughts on the effects of the privatisation of electricity on the coal and nuclear industries. We have heard a great deal from Opposition Members about the so-called threats to the coal industry. Those threats apparently stem from British Coal having to compete on the same terms as many of our other industries. I have listened to those arguments and advise my right hon. Friend that he will do well to ignore them because they are ill-founded and unrealistic. For far too long the taxpayer has paid the price of outdated working practices and inept management in the coal industry. For too long the taxpayer has poured money into the industry at the rate of £2 million per day, and has guaranteed markets for British Coal in the mistaken belief that that will bring forward a more realistic approach to working practices in the industry. However, we have seen a monopoly power abused for economic and political ends. The privatisation of electricity will perhaps do more

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good in bringing home economic realities to the mining industry than anything hitherto, and it should be welcomed for that.
I have quite a lot of sympathy for the domestic and industrial consumers of coal and for those who service and market the coal. The Opposition have shown a great deal of concern for those who work in the industry, but little for domestic consumers, who are probably paying £10 to £15 per tonne more than they need to for their supplies of coal. Domestic consumers pay excessive prices for electricity because of the costs of British Coal. Consumers suffer from the non-availability of some domestic grades of fuel.
Similarly, I have sympathy for industrial consumers who pay too high a price for electricity, partly because of the cost of British coal and partly because the coal lobby in this country has prevented the development of our nuclear industry to its full potential. I also have sympathy for coal traders who, shackled by a producer-dominated industry, are forced to turn more and more, against their will, to imported coal because British Coal cannot come up with the goods in terms of price and availability.
Last week I was in Scotland, and I also listened to representatives from the Scottish coal trade. Understandably, there is great concern about the current disagreement over the supply of British coal for power generation. However, until there is a more realistic approach to working practices within the coal industry it is difficult to have sympathy for the Scottish miners. Nevertheless, I am concerned about the effects on coal merchants and consumers of pit closures in Scotland. It is clear that, unless the major user of coal in Scotland and the major producer of coal in Scotland can agree, the inevitable consequence will be the diminished availability of competitively priced domestic coal.
The question that we have heard repeated so many times is, "Will British Coal be able to meet the threat of the privatised electricity industry?" Another question that we must consider is whether British Coal will be able to continue to supply the domestic market. While the coal industry remains nationalised, without the stimulus of domestic competition, without sensible working practices and without concern for the market and the consumer, it is unlikely to be able to meet that threat or to supply the domestic market fully.
There is one logical conclusion. If the privatisation of electricity is likely to benefit the consumer and the employee as I believe it will, I believe also that the ability of the coal industry to respond to competition in the electricity industry, and through that to continue to meet the demand for domestic fuel, will be enhanced if it is transferred to the private sector. In due time I urge my right hon. Friend to consider the privatisation of the coal industry. That privatisation would offer the best future for the industry's employees and the best future for the domestic and industrial consumers of coal. It would also offer the best deal for the consumer of electricity.
It is right that the Government are seeking to ensure a balance in fuel supply. It is also right that the nuclear industry should have a definite place in the generation of electricity. However, it is sad that our nuclear industry is not more highly developed. We did lead, and should still be leading, the world in nuclear technology. The reason why we are not doing so is largely that the coal lobby is far too powerful. Therefore, I welcome the Government's commitment to the future of the nuclear industry.
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There is a need for those who take investment decisions in the electricity industry to take a long-term view as well as ensuring that the industry does not suffer from any unfair dumping—to a limited extent it is suffering from that practice at the moment. There is also a need for the Government to help in attacking protectionism within the nuclear industry worldwide. Nevertheless, in the long term the best interests of the nuclear industry will be served by free and fair competition with other fuels.
Last week, when my right hon. Friend made his statement about the privatisation of electricity, the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours)—he is not in the Chamber at present—sought an assurance about the continuing public ownership of British Nuclear Fuels plc. Presumably the implication of the question is that BNFL should remain within the public sector. However, the interests of BNFL would be best served in the private sector. As the Government move nuclear generation into the private sector, I urge that they should also consider selling the Government's stake in BNFL, itself a generator and alternative supplier of nuclear power. I believe that such a move would be greatly welcomed by the work force and by the management within that industry.
My comments in no way detract from my general support for the Government's proposals. Those proposals are good for the domestic and industrial consumer of coal, good for consumers of electricity and good for the employees. My plea is that those proposals are taken even further by implementing similar principles within the coal and nuclear industries.
8.24 pm
Mr. Alan W. Williams: I disagree with the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Mr. Woodcock) more than any other speaker in this debate. Britain produces the cheapest coal in Europe. The hon. Gentleman spoke about free and fair competition within the nuclear industry, but the White Paper is all about feather-bedding that industry and exposing the coal industry to the vagaries of the world market. The price of coal in that market can go up just as fast as it has come down in the past two years.
In common with others of my hon. Friends, the theme of my speech is Government standards. The nuclear industry is treated in a highly-protected fashion, but the policy for the coal industry is short-term. The White Paper states that there will be a minimum requirement for non-fossil fuel electricity. I agree with some Conservative Members about renewable sources of energy, but, unfortunately, the White Paper will make no difference to those sources. The White Paper is a straightforward case of coal or nuclear power. The Government expect 25 per cent. of electricity to be generated from nuclear power, regardless of the cost.
Over the decades nuclear power has proved to be far more expensive than coal. A privatised electricity industry would never build nuclear power stations. There is no economic case for the Sizewell PWR — it has been destroyed. However, the Government do not appear to have conceded the economic cost of nuclear power and they have made it a requirement of privatisation.
I am concerned about what privatisation will mean for safety standards within the nuclear industry. This weekend was the anniversary of the Herald of Free Enterprise ferry disaster. That disaster, and the subsequent inquiries,

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showed how the company had cut corners. Of course, the courts found the company not guilty — "They would, wouldn't they?" The courts blamed the captain and other individuals and put the disaster down to human error. However, profit was the dominating factor in the company's operations. The company sought to cut corners, and I believe that the same would apply in a privatised nuclear power station. If fuel rods started to leak, as they do—burst cans, and so on—would they be taken out immediately as is now the requirement? I fear that they would be allowed to stay in place for a few more weeks, as a result the coolant streams would become radioactive, and they would be pumped out into the atmosphere.
How will staffing affect safety requirements? There are dozens of reactor incidents almost every year. At the moment, such an incident would cause a nuclear power station to be shut down. Obviously when the industry is privatised and profit is all-important, such a shutdown would be the last resort because a few weeks of lost operation would mean the loss of many millions of pounds. I fear that safety standards will be compromised throughout.
The Government want a lot of nuclear power to be generated in the future. Earlier, one hon. Member said that, by the next century, we would be all-nuclear, but I believe that he is wrong. If that were to be the case, we would be dependent on plutonium in the next century. The logic of some Conservatives' argument is that, eventually, we would be exporting plutonium to Japan, France, Germany, Idi Amin and Colonel Gaddafi. What would that mean in terms of nuclear proliferation?
Very conveniently, during the past few months the Government have decided that nuclear power stations will not be decommissioned. Trawsfynydd, Hinkley Point and Bradwell will be allowed to remain as they are for the next 100 years. They will be nuclear graveyards. We shall have to protect them and provide high security, not just so that children cannot get into them but because they could become terrorist targets. There is the sinister prospect, in 10 or 20 years' time, of a terrorist car bomb exploding outside one of those disused power stations. The fact that we do not know how to decommission nuclear power stations is another argument against this unsafe source of energy. But the Government insist on going ahead. It is a case of compromising safety and the economics of nuclear power going out of the window.
In sharp contrast is what is likely to happen to coal. The Government are willing for British coal, which is the cheapest deep-mined coal in the world, to compete against coal from South Africa, Colombia and Australia. We know why South African and Colombia coal is cheap—non-existent or repressed trade unions and child labour—but such morality does not apply to the Government. Provided that the price is right, they will ask no questions.
The world coal market is a very unsafe market on which to depend for our future energy supply. World trade in coal accounts for only 4 per cent. of world coal consumption, so very little coal is traded. If, in five years' time, when many of the pits are closed, oil prices start to climb again as oil becomes scarce, coal prices will follow rapidly and we shall become dependent upon imports. Another problem with Government policy is the short-termism which threatens the future of the industry. If we
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were planning now for the year 2000—that is what the Japanese do — we would want British coal to be the basis of our electricity production, because it is economic compared with other coal produced in the world.
We heard a great deal from the Secretary of State for Energy in opening this debate and in the statement on the White Paper about competition in generation. He accepts that there is no competition in distribution and that that is a natural monopoly, but he tries to argue that there is competition in generation. We know that that is nonsense. In generation, the 70 per cent. company and the 30 per cent. company will share the market. They will not build surplus power stations to introduce competition because power stations are far too expensive. They will spend £1 billion on the construction of a power station only if they are guaranteed a market.
I believe that the privatisation will be a flop anyway. The stock market collapse last October means that people will not have the same taste for privatisation, and we should not forget the BP fiasco. The distribution companies may be saleable because they will be able to name their price for electricity. The 30 per cent. company, "Little G", may be saleable because it does not have the handicap of nuclear power, but the 70 per cent. company, "Big G", is saddled with the albatross of nuclear power. Let us consider what it will inherit: first, the clapped-out Magnox reactors, which no one in his right mind would want; secondly, the advanced gas-cooled reactors, which were a bigger economic disaster than Concorde; and, thirdly, the pressurised water reactor programme with which the Government insist on lumbering the industry.
My feeling is that the "Big G" will not take off and that the proposed privatisation could be the biggest flop of all. It is not in the national interest, nor is it in the consumers' interest. The Government will be able to make the proposal saleable by fattening up the industry before privatisation, but that will lead to a terrible 15 per cent. increase in electricity prices. The proposed legislation is immoral and dangerous and would go against the national interest.
8.40 pm
Mr. Malcolm Moss: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State outlined as strongly as possible in his opening remarks that decisions about the supply of electricity should be driven by the needs of customers. We have not heard much from Opposition Members about the needs of customers.
I took the trouble to read some of the submissions made by consumer councils on privatisation. The National Consumer Council put forward seven conditions for what it considered to be an ideal solution and structure for maximising competition and simplifying regulation: first, there should be a split into three major operating activities—local distribution, bulk transmission and generation; secondly, there should be more than one major distribution company; thirdly, there should be more than one major generating company, fourthly, there should be one bulk transmission company; fifthly, the generating market should be open and there should be nondiscriminatory access to consumers for all participants. Every one of those submissions has been incorporated in the proposals outlined in the White Paper. We have not yet agreed with the sixth and seventh submissions in terms of priorities, but the first five major priorities of the consumer councils have been fulfilled.

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The Electricity Consumers Council has said that the
"present structure of the electricity supply industry is unsatisfactory. The CEGB not only has a monopoly over generation but also over decision-making in a sector which affects and/or accounts for 80 per cent. of electricity prices."
It continued:
"The main advantage from privatisation is that unhelpful Government intrusion into the industry should cease."
In the council's view, it is essential that management is strengthened. The public's expectations of a privatised industry are increased and accountability to shareholders is a very different regime — and one completely misunderstood by Opposition Members—from accountability to Government.
Anyone would think that Opposition Members were spokespersons for the CEGB. They tell us how wonderful it has been over the past 40 years, but the electricity supply industry did not grow up as one unit, despite the claims of Labour Members and the CEGB. Before nationalisation the grid served independent generating enterprises, and served them well. Compared with overseas industries, the CEGB's capital costs have been unduly high. Its forecasting has been woefully inadequate. Its coordinating role, by which it sets such store, is really unnecessary, hearing in mind what is taking place in the rest of Europe and America. The CEGB's argument that competition raises prices and that monopolies lower them is a view that is no longer shared in the Kremlin, let alone on the Opposition Benches. It was the CEGB's monopolist symbiosis that laid the basis for the NUM monopoly. National security of supply requires the breaking up of this cosy and convenient relationship.
The issue of security of supply has been raised during this debate. Under normal demand patterns there is no real problem in producing contracts between the grid and the generators, but questions have been asked about the new privatised enterprise coping with abnormal conditions. It is said that if the grid-generation system cannot he optimised it could lead to increased costs and a reduction in security of supply. But the grid must take on the financial risks of operation and we must introduce an arbitration mechanism to settle disputes about compensation. There is no reason why we should not have a consumer compensation or protection fund.
Much has been said about economies of scale, and the merit order system has been portrayed as the saviour of the present security of supply. The variable costs of generation will determine that merit order. The technical criteria for merit order could be replaced with some form of a financial order. Least-cost plant, yes, but also least-cost mix of plant which will come in time. There is no apparent reason why contracts between the grid and generators cannot accommodate price competition in both the areas that I have outlined. That would result in both merit order working and price pressure to optimise the mix of power station types.
The Opposition and the CEGB say that there is a danger of losing security of supply in a fragmented structure of generation. The CEGB has said that the fragmentation will cost about £1 billion a year—about a 10 per cent. increase in costs—but I see nothing in the CEGB's case to justify that figure; nor have we any evidence in the debate to show where those figures come from.
The Energy Act 1983 has patently failed to encourage any competition in electricity generation. It is still only one quarter of 1 per cent. On present trends there is no
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evidence that the potential identified by Sir Frank Layfield in the Sizewell inquiry—the equivalent of five Sizewells by the year 2000—is anywhere near to being achieved. There are two reasons for failure. The CEGB is asked tor a 3 per cent. return on its assets, but the independent producers need a return of at least 10 to 15 per cent. The Act made the electricity boards the judge and jury in setting prices for their competitors. That price decreased further this year, and it is still between 20 per cent. and 38 per cent. less than the price at which the boards sold their electricity.
The 1987 price reduction resulted from making a major change in the bulk supply tariff. Since 1983 the CEGB has twice raised the fixed charge proportion of its hulk supply tariff. The hoards do not include that proportion in the price that they pay to independent producers. This has meant a decrease of about 25 per cent. in the price paid to independent producers.
In April last year, when the CEGB announced a new structure in its 1987–88 review, the Department of Energy suggested that the Electricity Council should commission a report on those charges, and it called in Price Waterhouse. The report was published at the end of 1987, but it has not yet seen the light of day. In the Select Committee hearings the chairman of the Electricity Council refused to make it available. Perhaps it has not come to light because it suggested that the pricing structure to the independent producers was contrary to the 1983 Act.
Mr. Rost: My hon. Friend should know that today the Electricity Council has made available a summary report to the Select Committee on Energy, but it was given to us in confidence. Although I have read it and would love to talk about it, I am under an obligation of confidentiality.
Mr. Moss: I think that my argument is still valid that the report being under wraps since the end of 1987 suggests that it goes against the interests of the independent producers.
In December the CEGB announced further changes in its bulk supply tariff for 1988–89, and, although it restored some of the cuts that it had announced before, no consultation was entered into consultation which is required by statute—with either the Electricity Council, the Electricity Consumers Council or the Department of Energy. Why, at the end of 1987, was there a sudden change of heart as the privatisation proposals began to be firmed up? By shielding its full cost structure from the competition the CEGB is insulating itself from the full discipline of market forces, to the disadvantage of consumers.
For area boards to be saleable they need to have long-term contracts. The 70 per cent. CEGB and its 30 per cent. competitor will have the advantage of operational generating plant, and if they are allowed to establish bulk supply tariff agreements with high fixed cost elements in the immediate period after privatisation this will keep out independents for a long time to come. Therefore, it is vital that a regulatory authority is brought into being before privatisation to oversee pricing and terms of trade in electricity.
Rates have already been mentioned in the debate. The rates for independent producers are up to 40 times as high as those for the CEGB. In 1986 the Government promised

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to bring the rating of independents in line with that of the CEGB. This is long overdue and vital for real and fair competition in future.
I turn next to conservation, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. Taylor). In the present nationalised monopoly there has been a conflict between the coal industry, which has wanted more coal mines, and the CEGB, which has wanted more generating plant, and the campaign to save on energy costs. Under the Government's Monergy campaign, a target of 20 per cent. savings was set. Only 2 to 4 per cent. has been achieved so far, so there is a great deal to do. The target saving of £7 billion is equivalent to six Sizewell B plants. We need to press forward with these conservation measures.
Once the distribution companies are able to purchase electricity free from the CEGB's monopoly they may change their attitude to measuring success in terms not of how much electricity they can sell but how they can serve the best interests of their customers. They could enter into advice on energy savings, insulation schemes and cheaper long-term tariffs, and enter into contract energy management schemes to reduce wastage and share resulting benefits.
Finally, I turn to the recent report on energy conservation in the north-west region, which the March Consultation Group brought out at the end of 1987. Much has been said about imminent prices increases in electricity for industrial users, but the Opposition do not take into account findings that are set out in reports such as that produced by the March Consultation Group. It states that in the industrial and commercial sector there is scope to save 15 per cent. of final energy demand from measures that would use existing technology, with paybacks in two years or less. This is worth £250 million a year to the northwest regional economy. It would provide a welcome boost to profits and to employment. Secondly, it concluded that in many instances top management was not convinced that energy efficiency was worth while. Either energy costs are not a major area of concern for them—and that would drive a coach and horses through the argument advanced by Opposition Members—or the case for investment has been badly presented.
The electricity supply industry, unlike most other industries, but like many other utilities, is faced with a situation where all its shareholders will be its customers. These people will have a focal point. There will be an occasion at which they will be able to make known their views, and that is the annual general meeting. Shareholders will, as a result, have higher than normal expectation of performance. Profit at the expense of service will not be acceptable in future.
8.49 pm
Mr. Alex Salmond: I want to address some of the arguments put forward in the reasoned amendment tabled in the names of my hon. Friends and myself. Of the two amendments on the Order Paper this is the one that addresses not only the principles involved in electricity privatisation but the distinct and individual issues raised by privatisation in Wales and England on the one hand and Scotland on the other.
First, I shall discuss privatisation in England and Wales. The great challenge facing anyone proposing such a foolhardy policy would have been to find a structure
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which, by introducing competition, would have outweighed the technical disadvantages and extra cost of breaking up the CEGB's hold on generation and transmission. Those costs were estimated by the CEGB as being about £1 billion, or 10 per cent. on electricity prices. Has the Secretary of State found such a competitive structure? The answer is an unambiguous no. He has entirely given up trying to introduce competition for distribution. He said on 25 February:
"The distribution and transmission of electricity are largely natural monopolies.—[Official Report, 25 February 1988; Vol. 128, c. 454.]
The right hon. Gentleman said something similar when opening the debate this evening.
What about generation? The Secretary of State for Energy betrays a complete lack of understanding of the central difficulty in introducing a competitive structure into electricity generation in England and Wales, where there is undercapacity in the system. One cannot have effective competition in a structure in which there is undercapacity. If there is undercapacity, any generator, "Big G," "Little G" or one of the PGs, can generate safe in the knowledge that its electricity will be used, and that it can price it, regardless of generation costs, at the cost of the marginal producer of electricity.
This basic problem of introducing competition into generation has been well aired in the evidence before the Select Committee on Energy. It is a great pity that the Secretary of State for Energy did not allow that evidence to run its full course before producing his White Paper. He was faced with a choice — to produce a technically efficient structure with no competition or a pseudo-competitive structure that was technically inefficient. He chose the second, the chic solution. That is hardly surprising — he could hardly have done anything else. Having told the Conservative party conference that he was going to introduce the privatisation of electricity, he could hardly have gone back to a future conference and announced that he was not going forward with that policy. But if the problem had been looked at with an unjaundiced eye, the inescapable conclusion would have been that the industry in England and Wales belonged to the public sector because no effective competition could be introduced.
If the Secretary of State for Energy produced a botched job for the electricity privatisation for England and Wales, it was as nothing compared with the pig's breakfast produced by the Secretary of State for Scotland. He is dealing with, arguably, the most efficient electricity generation industry in western Europe. It is significant that, in the illustrations and comparisons produced by the Central Electricity Generating Board before the Select Committee on Energy, the only international comparison with which it did not compare favourably was the Scottish example.
The one failing of the Scottish system has been the incredible build-up of over-capacity — 6,000 MWs of demand at peak load but with generating capacity, after Torness, of about double that. When Torness comes on stream, 60 per cent. of Scottish electricity generation could be met by nuclear baseload—a ridiculous percentage in a country with such diversified potential from oil, gas, hydropower and wind and wave renewables.
Mr. Morgan: I believe that that gives the lie to the justification given by the Secretary of State for the 15 per cent. price rises in England and Wales compared with the

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much smaller rise in Scotland. The justification given for increasing electricity prices by 9 per cent. this year and 6 per cent. next year in England and Wales is to increase the rate of return above the 2·75 per cent. — or to take money off the electricity consumer in order to buy nuclear power stations that he does not want, which is even worse. The idea is to increase the rate of return. It should apply more strongly than in Scotland, where prices will rise by only 2 per cent.
Mr. Salmond: The hon. Gentleman is right in that many and various reasons will he given in electricity price rises over the next few years if these proposals go through.
The weakness in the Scottish system has been the buildup of over-capacity. There is nothing endemic to a publicly controlled system which produces over-capacity. The build-up has been because of specific and foolish decisions made by successive Governments.
There are five major failings in the White Paper proposals for electricity privatisation in Scotland. It was an enormous job to boil down, given the incredible lack of specific proposals in the White Paper, to only five major problems. The first major failing is that, having arrived at the privatisation of the Scottish electricity industry, with its enormously valuable assets, where should the proceeds go? Paragraph 42 of the Scottish White Paper says:
"all of Scotland's electricity consumers have contributed to these assets".
Instead of going on to make the obvious point that all Scotlands electricity consumers should therefore benefit from the sale of these assets if privatisation goes ahead by having the benefits distributed by way of a free share issue, the White Paper arrives at the incredible conclusion that somehow Hydro board investors are desperately anxious to obtain a share of the nuclear capacity of the SSEB, which is to be jointly owned. If Scotland's electricity consumers have paid, through their bills, for the build-up of this capacity, why are they not receiving the benefit from the sell-off? Why is the Treasury receiving the benefit? Why are Scottish customers being mugged by the Treasury?
Consumers will also he mugged by the privatisated boards; this represents the second problem. The Hydro board already concedes that, in the private sector, it will see a doubling of the effective rate of return from 5 per cent. to 10 per cent. in real terms. That can only come from the bills of the Scottish electricity consumer who, after paying to build up the assets of the Scottish electricity consumer, who, after paying to build up the assets of the Scottish electricity system, will now have to pay dear for the prices charged in the private sector.
The third major weakness is that the Secretary of State made no commitment last Wednesday to the ownership structure of the Scottish electricity system, in marked contrast to the Secretary of State for Energy who, on 25 February, was able to say that something more effective than a golden share would be introduced to the system to ensure that the various elements of English and Welsh privatisation remained autonomous. No such guarantee was given by the Secretary of State for Scotland. Why the difference? Perhaps it is a case of the ringmaster, in the form of the Secretary of State for Energy, and the performing horse, in the form of the Secretary of State for Scotland.
The fourth major disadvantage is that there is no attempt to introduce competition into the Scottish
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electricity system. The only competitive element in the Scottish proposals is not to introduce competition in Scotland but to introduce it in England and Wales. The rejigging of assets in the Scottish system is designed in such a way that the two Scottish boards will compete to sell electricity in cut-throat competition to the English distribution boards. They will not face a market from individual distribution boards. We already know that from evidence given to the Select Committee. The English distribution boards will combine to make the Scottish boards sell to the grid, and the Scottish boards will face a monopsony buyer.
The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Malcolm Rifkind): The hon. Gentleman's argument is somewhat confusing. Could he say whether it is his view and the view of his party that if privatisation takes place there should be a single Scottish company rather than the two companies that the Government propose?
Mr. Salmond: The Secretary of State should have contained himself. I was coming to the fifth failing in his proposals. The competition introduced into the Scottish system will not be for the benefit of the Scottish consumer, but to benefit competition in the English and Welsh systems. That is the sole element of competition in the Secretary of State's proposals. Failing No. 5 deals specifically with the point that the Secretary of State makes. If he had bothered to read the reasoned amendment tabled by myself and my colleagues he would have seen the answer to his question.
We welcome the fact that the Hydro board will remain independent. However, what kind of Hydro board will it be if it is stripped of its social clause and the obligation to perform for the economic welfare of the Highlands and Islands and the rural areas of Scotland? The only guarantee that Hydro board consumers are being given is that there will not be differential tariffs and prices. What about reconnections and repairs to lines in the rural areas? Will the rural areas eventually face the same problems that they already face from British Gas, which treats them quite disgracefully? What guarantees will Hydro board consumers have in the private sector and what guarantee will they have that the Hydro board will remain independent?
My final point underlines the central difficulty in these proposals. It is about whether these privatised boards will operate in the public interest. Just now we have in Scotland a working example in the dispute between the SSEB and British Coal that illustrates these problems. We can explore the policy issues involved in the current dispute. The Government position was expressed on 15 February by the Minister of State for Energy. It was repeated today and it is that the impasse
"has nothing to do with … privatisation —[Official Report, 15 February 1988; Vol. 127, c. 694.]
I have here a letter written by Donald Miller, the chairman of the South of Scotland electricity board. It is a letter to British Coal and is dated 6 January. In the letter, he makes a point about why he is rejecting British Coal's price offer. The letter says:
"One difficulty that I find in reconciling your statement, that you expect to match world long term coal prices … from the Scottish coalfield by the time we are privatised in some two years or so, with your refusal to make any significant move towards these prices at the present time. I am sure that you will appreciate that, to have any credibility with

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investors, we must be able to demonstrate these cost trends in a convincing way and that can only be done with a significant price movement in the 1988/89 financial year."
It is quite clear from that letter that the nub of the disagreement, the reason for the impasse, is that the SSEB is looking towards privatisation. In the face of the evidence contained in that letter, would the Secretary of State like to repeat his claim that the impasse, the breakdown in relationships, has nothing whatever to do with his policy of privatisation? Let him get to his feet and say how he can deny the evidence of that letter. On the one hand, the SSEB is scared stiff of privatisation and is looking to its role in the private sector. On the other hand, British Coal, as was made clear in the evidence to the Select Committee on Energy, is looking over its shoulder to see what will happen with the CEGB if British Coal concedes anything to the SSEB.
It is inescapably clear that the Government's policy of privatisation has produced the present chaos in the Scottish industry and is threatening the entire future of deep-mined coal in Scotland. I will not accept a tentative intervention by the Secretary of State for Scotland. If he is to do his job at all, he will need to make a definite and full intervention in order to knock heads together and save the Scottish coalfield.
This is an example of a privatisation which is without principle. It is deficient in theory and will be disastrous in practice. In England, Wales and Scotland we have utilities that by international comparison, by "emulation" and by "yardstick competition" are the best in the world. They are the birthright of us all and should not be sent into the private sector.
9.3 pm
Mr. Peter Rost: In welcoming the White Paper I want to confine my remarks to dealing with the main and persistent criticism by the Opposition. They say that there will not be any competition in generation and that, even if there is, it is unlikely to benefit the consumer. I have news for the Opposition and for the critics of our privatisation programme. Competition is already happening.
Mr. David Lambie: Where is it?
Mr. Rost: If the hon. Gentleman will contain himself I shall tell him. Offers from private generators are already coming forward to the area boards. Contracts are already being negotiated at prices per unit of electricity that are lower than the prices that the area boards presently pay to the CEGB. There is evidence not only that competition is coming forward, but that the prices at which electricity is offered to the boards are lower than the boards pay at the moment.
Competition is building up from many sources, and hon. Members have referred to some of those already. New capacity is coming from independent producers, some of whom are buying old power stations which the CEGB no longer wants. They are refurbishing those power stations and using coal as fuel. Major companies are also producing new capacity. For example, Hawker Siddeley has been waiting to market its combined-cycle technology in this country, but the CEGB was not interested. Therefore, Hawker Siddeley had to rely on the export market. The company will now have an opportunity to
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prove that it can generate cheaper electricity by its method than the CEGB can produce in its traditional large power stations.
Opposition Members have consistently tried to remind us this evening that British Coal is down and out or about to go under. However, British Coal has announced that it intends to enter the business of electricity production to prove its fluidised bed technology, in which the nationalised electricity monopoly was not interested. That technology is well established in other countries which are in competition with us. Of course, it is our technology, but it has not been established in this country because the monopoly ignored it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Devon, North (Mr. Speller) spoke elaborately about the opportunities that would arise for renewables if they can compete. They will be able to plug into the grid because it will be open. Combined heat and power production is being developed and much more will be developed. I understand that the Department of Energy is undertaking a study that is likely to reveal that the equivalent electricity production of three major power stations is waiting to be used from stand-by generators in hospitals, Government offices and even in this place. Those generators simply need a little conversion so that heat can be used and they will also produce surplus electricity far cheaper than the construction of a 1,000 MW power station.
Probably the most important source of new and cheaper electricity is industry itself. Industry will generate more of its own electricity. British industry is bottom of the European league for industry generating its own power. No wonder the Confederation of British Industry whinges about high energy prices. It has not had the opportunity to generate its own electricity in the way that German industry and industry elsewhere generates its own energy.
Mr. Morgan: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Rost: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, but I have only a few minutes left.
Industry in other countries generates far more of its own energy. I have seen an interesting memoranda from ICI which proves this point. At the moment ICI uses about 650 MW of electricity. It produces half itself in cooperation producing processed heat and electricity. It must import the other half — in fact, about 350 MW are imported. It has carried out feasibility studies on its plants, which show that it could have converted them to cogeneration and produced cheaper processed heat and electricity if it had been offered a fair price for the export of that electricity. It would have done that if the nationalised monopoly had not abused its powers by not offering a fair price for the surplus. The ICI study showed that it is likely to turn its present level of imports into exports of about 700 MW. In other words, one company could swing from being a major electricity importer to being a major electricity exporter. That electricity could be offered at a lower price than area boards now pay for electricity from the national grid.
Mr. Redwood: Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government should also take an interest in the terms and conditions of the sale of redundant power stations as there have been problems over the speed and conditions of sale and many more power stations could be used profitably?
Mr. Rost: My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

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There are one or two other ways in which privatisation will allow the private sector to prove that it can generate electricity more cheaply. One of them is the use of municipal refuse as a fuel. We are bottom of the European league in using our refuse. We still dump it in holes.
Mr. Lambie: What about Scotland?
Mr. Rost: I wish the hon. Gentleman would belt up so that we can get on with the debate.
We are bottom of the league in using our municipal refuse. We prefer to dump it in holes rather than put it into power stations, produce electricity and heat cities with it. A very good scheme in Edmonton uses some of London's refuse to produce electricity. There is also a very good scheme in Nottingham to produce district heating and electricity. However, we have not tapped the huge potential that exists for producing cheaper electricity and heating, simply because the nationalised industry—the CEGB—has not wanted to develop the technology.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr. Hannam) said, there is enormous potential for producing far more cheap electricity by developing city district heating. Electricity from city district heating is a byproduct and is therefore much cheaper. The reason why Denmark, Sweden and Finland have the cheapest electricity in Europe—it is much cheaper than ours—is that much of their electricity is a by-product of heating. They have combined heat and power city district heating. Thanks to the enterprise of a private consortium and the East Midlands electricity hoard, a scheme is under way in Leicester. A similar scheme in Sheffield is supported by the Yorkshire board and the Eastern area board is also likely to develop schemes. Each of the schemes will produce only 100 or 200 MW of electricity but, as a by-product, that electricity will be very cheap—certainly cheaper than the electricity that the boards buy from the grid at present. If we develop more city district heating, we shall top up our electricity capacity as well as getting rid of our fuel poverty.
Other hon. Members may wish to contribute, and I therefore conclude by reminding the House that evidence is now coming forward to show that electricity can be produced more cheaply from all sorts of sources. We are now to give ourselves the opportunity to prove that by allowing competition. Because the area boards will now have the opportunity to shop around for their power supplies, instead of having to buy from one captive supplier, the CEGB, all sorts of exciting things will happen. Undoubtedly, the competition that will result will lead to a surge of new capacity, to lower-priced electricity and to a better deal for the consumer.
9.13 pm
Mr. Graham Allen: I agree with one thing that the Secretary of State has said today—that his announcement will be widely welcomed, and it will. In Poland, General Jaruzelski cracked open a bottle of vodka to celebrate when he realised that he would be able to export yet more coal to this country. No doubt, the Broederbond and president Botha started to jump up and down when they realised that the coal produced on slave labour wages in South Africa will soon have a market in this country. The child exploiters in South America will also he happy about the announcement made by the Secretary of State. I am sure that the Secretary of State can
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suggest even more people who will be delighted about this announcement, including those who run the French nuclear industry. Those nuclear power stations on the other side of the Channel sit like a row of Roman candles waiting for 5 November.
This announcement will be welcomed worldwide. The only place it will not be welcomed is in this country, and particularly in Scotland, which is acting as a guinea pig for something that will happen to the rest of us soon after. Not only is the Government's proposal morally wrong, but it does not work in terms of their own economics. No risk-taking or entrepreneurial thrust is necessary to make a success of this. It has been gifted. Our electricity industry is being handed over to friends of the Tories without the necessity for those people to take risks.
The Opposition's responsibility is to make sure that our people realise that they will be paying for privatisation. The taxpayers and all people who pay electricity bills have paid for previous investment. That investment is now to be confiscated for the Tories and their friends in the City. We shall pay further because tax revenue, which used to be relatively easy to come by, will no longer be milked from the CEGB. That revenue will have to come from other sources.
A 15 per cent. increase in the price of electricity is in the pipeline, and people will have to pay that as well. There will be the usual debt write-off that we see before any privatisation to make sure that people are prepared to take on the new company. People will have to pay further so that the Tories can make a better job of floating this company than they have with others for which the price has been so low that a massive killing has been made by the City rather than by the taxpayer and the Treasury.
Every way we look at it, taxpayers and individuals will pay. I hope that the Secretary of State will come clean and say how much money the Government will be asking for the electricity industry when they put it on the market. Perhaps he will again leave it to his permanent secretary to explain the matter to the Public Accounts Committee, where he will certainly be cross-examined when this matter comes before it.
Furthermore, there are balance of payments implications. If we import cheap coal, another £1 billion will be added to the £14 billion deficit that we are now running. The heaviest price will be paid by those who make a direct living from the coalfields, not least those in Nottinghamshire. Again, I ask for an absolute guarantee that the planned coal-fired power stations will go ahead. That must include the West Burton coal-fired station.
The economic theory that all this demand can be met from the international coal market flies out of the window, because stock market prices will be changed as soon as demand from this side of the water increases. The major problem will be that the social effects of this proposal will be met by miners, by their families and by people who depend upon the mining industry. Privatisation has come about partly because of the Government's obsession with the mining industry and in particular with breaking the National Union of Mineworkers.
The Secretary of State said that one of the reasons for diversity of supply is the abuse of monopoly power that certain elements of the coal industry have demonstrated that they enjoy using. Those are the politics of personality. Arthur Scargill is the butt of this privatisation proposal. It is not governed by economic or social sense; it is merely a desire to get back at the miners and break their power.

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That is evident from the leaked Cabinet minutes of 1979. The long-term planning of this Government is a lesson for my right hon. and hon. Friends when we are returned to power.
The Opposition need to say to the people of Britain that they will have to pay for the City's bonanza, but that we shall return the industry to public ownership, though not in the old form and not with the old faces, as when we first nationalised the coal industry. Nevertheless, the Opposition will ensure that the people of this country are never again robbed of assets that are theirs.
9.20 pm
Mr. Donald Dewar: When the Secretary of State for Scotland introduced his White Paper on privatisation he proclaimed that the electricity industry was efficient, well managed and successful. I do not dissent from that statement, but the question arises as to why we are about to plunge it into a period of unprecedented uncertainty because of the Government's crazy scheme. I can think of a number of reasons, none of which is entirely honourable.
There is the possibility of political calculation—the rather insulting suggestion that anybody who owns shares automatically votes Tory. There is also the cash temptation. It has been said that £27 billion may be raised by the sale of these assets. However, the nation will be flogging off its future to finance tax cuts. There is also the argument that the sale will earn brownie points for the Secretary of State for Scotland who has been trying of late—with some success, I am afraid—to live down his past. None of these arguments holds water in terms of the industry, the consumer and the national interest.
The Opposition are opposed to privatisation. There is no case for replacing a public utility with private monopolies. The Secretary of State for Energy told us in his statement that it is unacceptable to create a single monopoly, but I do not follow the logic of the argument that it is all right to create two monopolies that are harnessed in tandem. We in Scotland do not even have the split between generation and distribution that perhaps gives a figment of respectability to the competition argument south of the border. In Scotland, not even that argument, for what it is worth, stands up. Each board in Scotland will be a monopoly for the vast majority of consumers in its area. To talk about competition by comparison is a mockery. The argument was greeted with derision in the House and in the country; nobody takes it seriously.
The consumer is entitled to be very sceptical about this scheme, which appears to be founded on the market principle. It hands over a basic utility to profit-driven companies whose legal duty is to maximise the return on their capital for their shareholders. Then, desperately, the Government try to regulate the process and prevent companies from acting according to the logic of the scheme. It is an unhappy marriage; it is not in the public interest; and I do not believe that it will work.
There is a cautionary tale to which I shall draw the attention of the Secretary of State for Energy. An analysis of gas disconnections was carried out recently by the Gas Consumers Council. I do not have time to go into it at great length, but the simple tale is that disconnections of gas consumers increased by 35 per cent. in the first nine
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months of 1987. It reminds us that there is very little room for social conscience when a company with commercial priorities looks at bad debt control and the need to encourage its cash flow.
People are entitled to say that they do not want the same painful experience with electricity. It is because we are conscious of that fact that I have a great deal of sympathy for and will support the proposal that we should retain the traditions of the hydro-electric board and, if necessary, on the basis of a separate and distinct company. I want to stress that our opposition to the whole scheme is total, and that we are merely commenting on what seems the best way of minimising the damage that will result from a very bad option.
Even if the hydro-electric board survives, it is important that it survives in a workable framework. The Opposition are not yet convinced that all the details have been worked out in a way that establishes the practicality test. After all, we heard talk about population transfers in the Secretary of State's statement, and there is also talk of the possibility of plants being transferred. There is a rumour, for example, that Kincardine will go, to the North board to give it some share of the coalburn—although that seems almost a fanciful suggestion, in view of the scenario now developing in Scotland.
We must also consider the question of the joint nuclear capacity. We do not know whether this will he a wholly-owned company, shared by the two boards. We know, however, that the Secretary of State, for reasons that are not yet clear, has decided to go to considerable lengths to avoid what has happened in England, where, on the generating side, there is a "green option". Of course, at present there is a pooling of costs between the SSEB and the hydro-electric board on roughly a 25:75 per cent. basis. That kind of co-operation can work well in the public sector, but in my judgment—which I am sure is widely shared — there will be problems when the commercial interests of two separate companies begin to diverge.
For instance, there are the decommissioning costs and the problem of the accumulated capital debts—over £2·5 billion between the two companies. We shall want to hear what the Secretary of State proposes in that regard. There is also the potential problem, probably towards the end of the century, of new plant. There may be disagreement, for instance, about whether it uses PWR or AGR. The elements of conflict when there are different priorities, different needs and two independent commercial companies are self-evident.
The solution begins to look curiouser and curiouser. It is a mish-mash of prejudice and expediency, and I do not believe that it is good for anyone. It is interesting to note that even the Government, looking at what they are creating, have begun to have doubts about the market theory. We know that the Secretary of State has decided that there should be special protection for the nuclear industry south of the border. That, I should have thought, is an implicit recognition that commercial judgment might well kill the nuclear dream if given an unfettered opportunity. But, although the dangers are now all too evident, there has been no such consideration for the coal industry in Scotland.
The Scottish coalfield is fighting for its very life, but decisions are now being taken that threaten thousands of jobs and the future of entire communities. The substitution of imported coal has far-reaching implications for national

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policy, and for security of supply in the electricity industry. It is extraordinary that the Scottish Office has remained a passive spectator as the drama has unfolded.
Judging by press speculation, heavily trailed over the weekend, the Secretary of State for Scotland is to break his silence in a few minutes' time. The Secretary of State smiles. I hope that my optimism is not unfounded. The reports speak of the Minister's grave concern and of his reluctance to go down in history as the man who supervised the demise of the coal industry in Scotland. The Secretary of State, it is said, is intervening to urge the parties to get round the negotiating table and thrash out a solution. We shall know in a minute or two exactly what the right hon. and learned Gentleman is going to propose. I must tell him that any sign of conscience in Dover house is welcome, but pious hopes of resumed negotiations are not enough.
It is clear that, sadly, there has been a total breakdown of trust between British Coal and the SSEB. The SSEB has abided by the letter of the Court of Session judgment and the interdict, but it seems to have set out to breach it in spirit. The board will not buy foreign coal for Cockenzie and Longannet, but neither will it burn Scottish coal. The trick seems to be to substitute oil and to use coal imports in other plants such as Kincardine. As reported in the daily press, Lord Prosser has talked in his judgment of the catastrophic and irreversible effects of buying foreign coal, but the SSEB is clearly not paying any attention to that. In those circumstances the Secretary of State for Scotland must do more than eloquently mouth expressions of concern.
The key issue is the SSEB's claim that imported foreign coal will result in savings of £50 million or a 5 per cent. cut in electricity tariffs. It is a calculation that British Coal regards as incredible, in the full meaning of the word. It is something that simply cannot be believed. The Scottish Office has a duty to examine and evaluate those competing claims.
We know that the price of coal has come down by 25 per cent. in real terms since 1985. We know that a deal has been offered through to the year 2000 which will mean further cuts in prices over the next one or two years. I am told that the cuts will be 5 or 6 per cent. in cash terms and close on 10 per cent. in real terms. We recognise that there are enormous arguments about security of supply and the likely impact of shopping around for temporary advantage in the spot market to find the cheapest form of coal. Spot markets, by definition, can come under pressure and price rises will appear with demand. Recent history is littered with miscalculations and misjudgments by management about energy prices. Calculations of temporary advantage are no sure or sensible foundation for long-term strategy.
If the SSEB's figures do not stand up to careful and impartial scrutiny by the Scottish Office, the case for saving Scottish coal is immeasurably strengthened. If the Secretary of State evaluates the figures and finds that there are savings of the sort about which the SSEB has spoken, presumably he will be able to give us assurances that the equivalent of the 5 per cent. saving in tariff will be passed on in price cuts to the consumers. If he accepts the figures, he owes us that at least.
The important thing is that the impression left with us by the Minister of State at our recent meeting was that the Scottish Office was a spectator and was not involving itself in the argument. It is essential that we get from the
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Secretary of State a retreat from that hands-off position and an agreement that he will at least look at the figures and decide what is in the public interest.
I understand that the Secretary of State for Scotland said on Radio Forth this morning that he could not interfere with the price to be paid for coal.
Mr. Neil Hamilton rose—
Mr. Dewar: 1 will not give way. Some Conservative Members might have a valuable contribution to make to the debate.
As I have said, the Secretary of State argued on Radio Forth that he could not interfere with the price to be paid for coal. He suggested that the Government have no more right to oblige the SSEB to buy Scottish coal than they have to force individuals to buy a British car if it is more expensive than one made abroad. It is quite wrong to liken a private citizen's right to consumer choice when buying one unit in a mass market with a Government decision, or non-decision, that may decide the fate of a strategic industry.
Unless moderated, the SSEB's policy will, in effect, sack 3,500 Coal Board employees at a cost of nearly £60 million in redundancy payments. In effect, it will write off the £60 million spent in the past two or three years at Castlebridge, which was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, West (Mr. Douglas). It will write off the £60 million development planned for Bilston Glen and, despite what the Secretary of State for Energy said in his opening remarks, it will greatly restrict the activities of private sector contractors in opencast mining. My hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson) knows that from his constituency experience. The stakes are high and the Secretary of State cannot walk away from his responsibilities.
In 1987 the SSEB, in reply to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission report, argued that the purchase of foreign coal was not in the interests of its consumers. I have its reply with me. It said:
"Although the Board will continue to monitor the price of imported coal it is not considered to be in the long term interests of the Board's customers to import foreign coals in present circumstances."
That was only one year ago. The single decisive change is the advance of privatisation, which inevitably invites the board to put profit before public interest. The Secretary of State and his policy are responsible for that position.
On 25 February, the Secretary of State for Energy told the House that a principal condition for maintaining security of supply in the electricity supply industry was use of a diversity of fuels to generate electricity. He gave an assurance that coal will still be the biggest single source of power south of the border. He boasted—that is not too strong a word—that this safeguard was "built into the system". If that is so, why should the Scottish Office allow the coal industry in Scotland to be murdered? Do not the same sensible priorities apply? The Secretary of State will not be forgiven if he ducks his self-evident responsibilities. His policies have done much to create the present problem. His duty is to act now before imminent catastrophe becomes reality and social and economic damage are made irreversible.
It is ludicrous to pretend that these events are unconnected with privatisation. The South of Scotland electricity board has a profit margin that is eaten by interest charges. It has a substantial debt as a result of

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building Torness. If it is to be successfully fattened for the market, the kind of policies which we are now seeing are, no doubt, thought to be essential, but they are not in the public interest.
The right hon. Member for Kincardine and Deeside (Mr. Buchanan-Smith), in what was in many ways a courageous and persuasive speech, talked about the "hysterical and emotional" approach—I think that those were his words, although I did not write them down exactly — in relation to the policies of the South of Scotland electricity board. I beg to differ. I wish that I could agree, but I do not think that they are hysterical and emotional. They are probably totally defensible if the chairman of a public board decides to act as the chief executive of a private company with the new priorities—profit oriented and profit driven — which are then involved. Because that will happen increasingly, the story of Scottish coal over the past few months is a cauutionary one, a tale for our times, and a powerful case against the White Paper and all that it stands for.
There are many unanswered questions. I do not apologise to the House for the amount of time that I have spent on talking about the coal crisis because it is central to the concerns of all of us in Scotland. There are many unanswered questions. Doubtful half-truths litter the Government's case. I mention only two. One is the problem of nuclear safety. Of course I understand the case that the Government argue — that the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate will still be in place—but we must think about the public reaction. Even those who are totally committed to the proliferating family of PWRs must be concerned about the public's deep anxiety over nuclear safety and what is likely to happen if it becomes the charge of a group of directors of private companies who have forgotten the priorities that I have discussed. It is fundamentally misconceived to move in that direction, and that is a major argument against the proposals.
There is also the point, which was made most recently by the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond), about the independence of these companies, and again I think especially in Scottish terms. The Secretary of State for Scotland shook his head vigorously when that point was made. It is true, and there is no denying it, that the independence will be hard to defend when privatisation comes. I am not clear how we can withstand a determined predator, what guarantees can be given and what those guarantees would be worth after the Britoil fiasco. On 25 February, the Secretary of State for Energy said:
"Yes, Britoil has shown that there are weaknesses in that arrangement"—
the golden share—
"but there are other versions that can be put in place just as easily."—[Official Report, 25 February 1988; Vol. 128, c. 459.]
I hope that the Secretary of State will give us an insight into what those other arrangements
"that can be put in place just as easily"
are likely to be. I hope that he will fill the startling void to which the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan referred. There is no assurance from the Secretary of State for Scotland of action in this way.
This is a fundamental debate, and I return to the point made by the right hon. Member for Kincardine and Deeside. He complained about political interference and said that he was surprised that senior executives in the
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electricity industry put up with it. I suppose that they are one group that is likely to benefit from the Government's plans. Indeed, I do not think that there is any doubt about it. However, they are a narrow group and do not command my sympathy.
The important thing—the right hon. Gentleman drew attention to this by implication — is that Government after Government have accepted that there is a public interest in the supply of energy and in the fuels that our generating capacity burns. Whether by the gas levy—a tax to depress the demand for that particular form of heating — or the regulatory machinery built into this White Paper, successive Governments have accepted the need for security of supply on a broad base of fuel consumption, which is an essential prerequisite of that security of supply.
There is growing resentment and fury, mixed at times with dismay and despair, about the way in which the coal industry in Scotland has been dealt with and the likely hazards and dangers that lie ahead because of privatisation. Those points were made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Millan) and by my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, West. There is an edge of anger to our rejection because this is not an academic matter. This is not a parliamentary or economic equivalent of war games at staff college; this is for real. This is about jobs and people, and the fate of communities. They should not be sacrificed to what I fear is no more than the dogma of this Government.
9.40 pm
The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Malcolm Rifkind): This debate, as was perhaps inevitable in any debate on privatisation, has been conducted at two levels: at the level of principle — about the principle of privatisation — and at the level of the detailed and technical questions as they relate to the electricity industry.
So far as the principle is concerned, we have heard the traditional view from the Labour party, that industries—especially the great industries of this country—should be controlled by the state and that ultimately it is the Government who can best take the decisions on fundamental questions of investment and other matters that are relevant to the industries. Clearly, the Government's view—it has been the Government's view for many years—is that while Governments of whatever political complexion may be good at governing, they are rarely good at running industry. It is infinitely to the national interest, and to the interest of the general public as consumers, that an industry should he run and administered by those within the industry itself.
We have been asked to state what benefits will flow from privatisation. The first point that I should make to the hon. Members for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar)—it has been made by some of my hon. Friends already during the debate; indeed, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kincardine and Deeside (Mr. Buchanan-Smith) began his speech with this—is that inevitably any industry controlled by Government is subject to interference from Government. We know that the electricity industry, whether under this Government or the previous Labour Government, has had its major investment decisions changed on the basis of the general economic strategy of the Government of the day. Each year when public expenditure is being surveyed and when the public sector borrowing requirement is being

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considered, the Chief Secretary of the day, whether Labour or Conservative, takes a detailed interest in matters that properly should be the affair of the industry.
I advise the hon. Member for Garscadden and his hon. Friends that it must be in the interest of the electricity industry, north and south of the border, that the crucial decisions affecting its investment and other such matters should be determined by the industry itself. If that is true of manufacturing industry and the rest of British industry, there is no good reason why it should not be true of the electricity industry as well.
Mr. Nigel Griffiths rose—
Mr. Rifkind: No, I shall not give way.
The second point that I should make to the hon. Member for Garscadden is that he and his hon. Friends have sought to make a mockery of the arguments used about competition. I must advise those hon. Members that they start from a false premise, so it is not surprising that they reach a wrong conclusion. They start from the false premise that the Government are somehow maintaining that it is possible to achieve classical standards of competition in the electricity industry. The Government have never maintained that. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy made it clear that, in transmission and distribution, we are dealing with natural monopolies.
Opposition Members fail to understand the real world because they seem to argue that, because it is not possible to achieve perfect competition, we should therefore make no attempt to introduce into the electricity industry such competition as is possible and attainable. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend pointed out that—[Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker: Order. The House heard the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) in silence. I ask the House to give a fair hearing to the Secretary of State.
Mr. Rifkind: My hon. Friends the Members for Bedfordshire, North (Sir T. Skeet) and for Erewash (Mr. Rost) mentioned the extent to which we are already seeing the benefits of the Government's privatisation policy with regard to the sale of electricity to other areas of the country. When they said that, the hon. Member for Cunninghame, South (Mr. Lambie) said, "What about Scotland?" Such sales are relevant to Scotland because, only last week, BNFL reached an agreement with the Chapelcross power station in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro). In the past, that station supplied the SSEB, but it no longer has the same need for that power. Therefore, in future, that power will be sold to the North West authority in England. That is an excellent example of how the export of Scottish power to those parts of England that need it is in the interest of the consumer, the public and the industry.
It is significant that if I give a specific, concrete example to Opposition Members, they do not like it because it conflicts with their prejudices. [Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker: Order. It is intolerable that the Secretary of State is being shouted down in this fashion.
Mr. Rifkind rose—
Mr. Harry Ewing: On a point of order Mr. Speaker. [Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker: Order. I cannot even hear the point of order.
Mr. Ewing: The important point is that 4,000 mining jobs and another 10,000 ancillary jobs are at stake in Scotland, The Secretary of State for Scotland is simply refusing to acknowledge that some 14,000 jobs are at stake and is refusing to answer that charge.
Mr. Speaker: I ask the House to give the Secretary of State the opportunity to do so.
Mr. Rifkind: I shall come to that matter, but I shall come to it in my time and not in the hon. Gentleman's time.
The hon. Member for Garscadden, in his usual indirect way, complimented the Government on one decision. He and his hon. Friends have made it clear that if privatisation is to take place, they applaud the Government's proposal that, in Scotland, there should be two separate boards and that a single company representing the electricity industry in Scotland should riot be created. We are delighted that, in addition to that support, the hon. Member for Garscadden and his hon. Friends have made it clear that when shares in the electricity industry are offered to the public in Scotland they will respond well. I thank the hon. Member for Garscadden for making that point.
Mr. Dewar: I did not say that.
Mr. Rifkind: Well, the hon. Gentleman may say that, but I had the benefit of listening to him when he was interviewed on Radio Scotland on Friday morning. [Interruption.] I could not believe my ears and so, to be certain, I got a transcript of what he said. When the hon. Member for Garscadden was asked about the privatisation, he replied:
"Well, I think initially a lot of Scots will buy and if we're going down the privatisation road, then clearly I would prefer to see a widely spread share ownership very strongly based in Scotland".
Well, better a sinner that repenteth. I thank the hon. Gentleman for the endorsement that he has given.
Let us now consider the other matter which dominated the speech of the hon. Member for Garscadden, and which is, I accept, a matter of genuine concern in Scotland and throughout the country. First, let me deal with the question whether the current dispute between the SSEB and British Coal is a consequence of the Government's privatisation proposals. They hon. Gentleman and the House will be aware that the SSEB is under a statutory obligation to ensure the lowest tariffs for its consumers. It would have to face that responsibility even if the Government had no proposals for privatisation. The SSEB maintains that it must pay much more for the coal that it acquires from British Coal than it would for coal that it could obtain on the world market. Labour Members will appreciate that that creates problems that cannot be summed up in the somewhat emotional response that we have heard from some quarters.
The outcome of the dispute will determine the price of electricity that will have to be paid by Scottish consumers, including Scottish industry, during the next few years. The current gap between the price of British Coal's product and the prices obtainable on the world market is said to represent at least 4 per cent. on electricity tariffs. Scottish industry needs to pay as little as possible for its electricity if it is to enjoy growth, export potential and a continuing reduction in unemployment.
Of course, I acknowledge that there are implications for the deep pits and the jobs that they provide in the Scottish

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coalfield. Those pits are important, although they do not represent the entire coal industry in Scotland, as is often suggested. Half the coal mined in Scotland is opencast, and there has been a major expansion of opencast coal production during the past 10 years.
In recent days, the SSEB and British Coal have expressed a willingness to resume negotiations to try to bridge their remaining differences. I encourage them to do so. Agreement is less likely to be reached if either side refuses to show any flexibility. However, if the SSEB and British Coal approach the matters in a genuine constructive desire to reach agreement, there is no reason to believe that agreement will not be achieved. The next stage is for the SSEB and British Coal to get round the table again and explore how much or how little they must move to realise a satisfactory outcome. I trust that they will do so.
Mr. Dewar: The Secretary of State appears to be saying that he hopes that negotiations will reach a successful conclusion, but that he will do nothing to achieve that result. Is he simply watching again from the sidelines? If so, is that not a shameless abdication of his responsibility?
Mr. Rifkind: If the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that the Government of the day should determine the price that an electricity board pays for the coal that it receives from British Coal, I must tell him that that standard is not applied in any other feature of our industrial structure; nor is it an approach that makes any sense.
Mr. Salmond: Given the contents of the letter from Donald Miller to British Coal rejecting its offer on the basis of credibility with his investors, does the Secretary of State seriously maintain that the breakdown between the SSEB and British Coal has nothing to do with the Government's privatisation policy?
Mr. Rifkind: The difference of view between the two boards is that, for understandable reasons, the SSEB wants to pay as little as possible and, for equally understandable reasons, British Coal wants to charge as much as possible for the coal that it supplies. If the boards would approach these matters constructively, there is no reason why agreement could not be reached.
Mr. Millan: The Opposition want to know what the Secretary of State is going to do about it. So far, he has done nothing and he has told us nothing this evening. We know that the SSEB is already placing orders for foreign coal. What is the Secretary of State going to do about the collapse of the Scottish coal mining industry?
Mr. Rifkind: The right hon. Gentleman appears to be more concerned about the deep pits in Scotland than he is about the health of the steel industry in Scotland. [Interruption] As he rightly knows—
Mr. Dewar: Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mr. Rifkind: As the right hon. Gentleman knows—
Mr. Dewar rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. If the Secretary of State does not give way, the hon. Gentleman must resume his seat.
Mr. Rifkind: The right hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Millan) knows—[Interruption.] Opposition
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Members do not like to listen. Barracking does not impress the people of Scotland any more than people in other parts of the United Kingdom. [Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker: Order. These are important matters of great concern to the country and the Secretary of State must have a chance to respond to the debate.
Mr. Rifkind: I shall try to answer the questions that have been asked if I am enabled to do so.
The right hon. Member for Govan knows that Ravenscraig is the largest individual purchaser of electricity from the SSEB. Is he seriously suggesting that the Government should intervene to ensure that Ravenscraig and other industrial users of Scottish electricity should pay more than can be properly negotiated between the SSEB and British Coal? We have a responsibility to the whole of Scottish industry, and we intend to adhere to it.
Mr. Dewar: I want to understand the Secretary of State's position. Anyone who has had contact with either side in the dispute knows that the chances of a settlement seem now to be remote. Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman saying that, even if his hopes are unfounded and no settlement is coming, he will see the pits close, the loss of about 4,000 jobs and all the social dislocation and problems to which that will give rise, and ignore his clear statutory responsibility under the 1979 legislation?
Mr. Rifkind: I repeat that, if there is flexibility on the part of both British Coal and the SSEB, I have every reason to believe that an agreement can be reached. If the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends spent as much of their time impressing upon the SSEB and British Coal the need for flexibility in the manner that I have just done, they would be making a constructive contribution.
This debate—[Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker: Order. The Secretary of State must be given a fair hearing.
Mr. Rifkind: This debate about the privatisation of the electricity industry has arisen because the Government firmly believe that throughout the United Kingdom there are enormous benefits to be achieved for the consumer, for industry and for all those who depend upon electricity for their prosperity. It is—[Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker: Order. It is intolerable for the Secretary of State—[Interruption] Order!
Mr. Rifkind: I am well aware that the Opposition have a deep-seated hostility to any attempt to return the electricity industry to the British public. I am well aware also—[Interruption.] We see now a substitute for reason on the part of the Opposition. They resort to barracking —[Interruption]
Mr. Speaker: Order. This is not the way to behave in the House of Commons.
Mr. Rifkind: It is the only way that they know how to behave, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Harry Ewing: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It is understandable that you, Mr. Speaker, and the Secretary of State for Scotland — it is especially understandable that you should be in this state of mind, Mr. Speaker, because your job is reasonably secure—should be calm, but it would not be understandable if about 50,000—[Interruption.] The Secretary of State is deliberately betraying—[Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker: Order. This is a place in which we all give each other a fair hearing.
Mr. Rifkind: It is on this basis that I invite the House to give its verdict on the principle of privatisation and on the benefits of what we are doing for the Scottish people and the people of the United Kingdom as a whole.
Question put, That the amendment be made:—
The House divided: Ayes 219, Noes 329.

Division 203]

[10.00 pm

AYES

Abbott, Ms Diane

Fearn, Ronald

Adams, Allen (Paisley N)

Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

Allen, Graham

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

Anderson, Donald

Fisher, Mark

Archer, Rt Hon Peter

Flannery, Martin

Armstrong, Hilary

Flynn, Paul

Ashdown, Paddy

Foot, Rt Hon Michael

Ashley, Rt Hon Jack

Foster, Derek

Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

Foulkes, George

Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)

Fyfe, Maria

Battle, John

Galbraith, Sam

Beckett, Margaret

Galloway, George

Benn, Rt Hon Tony

Garrett, John (Norwich South)

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

Garrett, Ted (Wallsend)

Bermingham, Gerald

George, Bruce

Bidwell, Sydney

Godman, Dr Norman A.

Blair, Tony

Golding, Mrs Llin

Blunkett, David

Gordon, Mildred

Boateng, Paul

Graham, Thomas

Boyes. Roland

Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

Bradley, Keith

Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

Bray, Dr Jeremy

Grocott, Bruce

Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)

Hardy, Peter

Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)

Harman, Ms Harriet

Brown, Ron (Edinburgh Leith)

Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

Buchan, Norman

Healey, Rt Hon Denis

Buckley, George J.

Heffer, Eric S.

Caborn, Richard

Henderson, Doug

Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

Hinchliffe, David

Campbell, Ron (Blyth Valley)

Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

Campbell-Savours, D. N.

Holland, Stuart

Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

Home Robertson, John

Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

Hood, Jimmy

Clay, Bob

Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

Clelland, David

Howell, Rt Hon D. (S'heath)

Clwyd, Mrs Ann

Hughes, John (Coventry NE)

Cohen, Harry

Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

Coleman, Donald

Hughes, Roy (Newport E)

Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)

Cook, Robin (Livingston)

Illsley, Eric

Corbett, Robin

Ingram, Adam

Corbyn, Jeremy

Janner, Greville

Cousins, Jim

John, Brynmor

Cox, Tom

Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside)

Cryer, Bob

Jones, Ieuan (Ynys Môn)

Cummings, John

Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S W)

Cunningham, Dr John

Kennedy, Charles

Dalyell, Tam

Kilfedder, James

Darling, Alistair

Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil

Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

Lambie, David

Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

Lamond, James

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

Leadbitter, Ted

Dewar, Donald

Leighton, Ron

Dixon, Don

Lestor, Joan (Eccles)

Dobson, Frank

Lewis, Terry

Doran, Frank

Litherland, Robert

Douglas, Dick

Livingstone, Ken

Duffy, A. E. P.

Livsey, Richard

Dunnachie, Jimmy

Lofthouse, Geoffrey

Eadie, Alexander

Loyden, Eddie

Eastham, Ken

McAllion, John

Evans, John (St Helens N)

McAvoy, Thomas

Ewing, Harry (Falkirk E)

McCartney, Ian

Ewing, Mrs Margaret (Moray)

McCusker, Harold

Fatchett, Derek

Macdonald, Calum A.

Faulds, Andrew

McFall, John

122

McGrady, Eddie

Robertson, George

McKelvey, William

Robinson, Geoffrey

McLeish, Henry

Rogers, Allan

McNamara, Kevin

Rooker, Jeff

McTaggart, Bob

Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

McWilliam, John

Ruddock, Joan

Madden, Max

Salmond, Alex

Mahon, Mrs Alice

Sedgemore, Brian

Mallon, Seamus

Sheerman, Barry

Marek, Dr John

Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

Short, Clare

Martin, Michael J. (Springburn)

Skinner, Dennis

Martlew, Eric

Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

Maxton, John

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

Meacher, Michael

Snape, Peter

Meale, Alan

Spearing, Nigel

Michael, Alun

Steinberg, Gerry

Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

Stott, Roger

Michie, Mrs Ray (Arg'l & Bute)

Strang, Gavin

Milian, Rt Hon Bruce

Straw, Jack

Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)

Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

Moonie, Dr Lewis

Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

Morgan, Rhodri

Thomas, Dr Dafydd Elis

Morley, Elliott

Thompson, Jack (Wansbeck)

Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

Turner, Dennis

Mowlam, Marjorie

Vaz, Keith

Mullin, Chris

Wall, Pat

Murphy, Paul

Wallace, James

Nellist, Dave

Walley, Joan

Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

O'Brien, William

Wareing, Robert N.

O'Neill, Martin

Welsh, Andrew (Angus E)

Parry, Robert

Welsh, Michael (Doncaster N)

Patchett, Terry

Wigley, Dafydd

Pendry, Tom

Williams, Rt Hon Alan

Pike, Peter L.

Williams, Alan W. (Carm'then)

Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

Wilson, Brian

Prescott, John

Wise, Mrs Audrey

Quin, Ms Joyce

Worthington, Tony

Radice, Giles

Wray, Jimmy

Randall, Stuart

Young, David (Bolton SE)

Redmond, Martin

Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn

Tellers for the Ayes:

Reid, Dr John

Mr. Frank Haynes and

Richardson, Jo

Mr. Allen McKay

Roberts, Allan (Bootle)

NOES

Adley, Robert

Bowden, A (Brighton K'pto'n)

Aitken, Jonathan

Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

Alexander, Richard

Bowis, John

Alison, Rt Hon Michael

Boyson, Rt Hon Dr Sir Rhodes

Allason, Rupert

Braine, Rt Hon Sir Bernard

Amery, Rt Hon Julian

Brandon-Bravo, Martin

Amess, David

Brazier, Julian

Amos, Alan

Bright, Graham

Arbuthnot, James

Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

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

Arnold, Tom (Hazel Grove)

Bruce, Ian (Dorset South)

Ashby, David

Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon Alick

Aspinwall, Jack

Buck, Sir Antony

Atkins, Robert

Budgen, Nicholas

Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Valley)

Burns, Simon

Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

Burt, Alistair

Baldry, Tony

Butcher, John

Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

Butler, Chris

Barnes, Mrs Rosie (Greenwich)

Butterfill, John

Batiste, Spencer

Carlisle, John, (Luton N)

Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

Bellingham, Henry

Carrington, Matthew

Bendall, Vivian

Carttiss, Michael

Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)

Cartwright, John

Benyon, W.

Cash, William

Biffen, Rt Hon John

Chalker, Rt Hon Mrs Lynda

Blackburn, Dr John G.

Channon, Rt Hon Paul

Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter

Chapman, Sydney

Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

Chope, Christopher

Boswell, Tim

Churchill, Mr

Bottomley, Peter

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

Bottomley, Mrs Virginia

Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

123

Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)

Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

Colvin, Michael

Holt, Richard

Conway, Derek

Hordern, Sir Peter

Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)

Howard, Michael

Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

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

Cope, John

Howarth, G. (Cannock & B'wd)

Cormack, Patrick

Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

Couchman, James

Howell, Ralph (North Norfolk)

Cran, James

Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)

Critchley, Julian

Hunt, David (Wirral W)

Currie, Mrs Edwina

Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

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

Hunter, Andrew

Davis, David (Boothferry)

Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas

Day, Stephen

Irvine, Michael

Devlin, Tim

Irving, Charles

Dickens, Geoffrey

Jack, Michael

Dorrell, Stephen

Jackson, Robert

Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

Janman, Tim

Dover, Den

Jessel, Toby

Dunn, Bob

Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

Durant, Tony

Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

Eggar, Tim

Jones, Robert B (Herts W)

Evans, David (Welwyn Hatf'd)

Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine

Evennett, David

Key, Robert

Fairbairn, Nicholas

King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)

Fallon, Michael

Kirkhope, Timothy

Farr, Sir John

Knapman, Roger

Favell, Tony

Knight, Greg (Derby North)

Fenner, Dame Peggy

Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)

Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)

Knowles, Michael

Finsberg, Sir Geoffrey

Knox, David

Fookes, Miss Janet

Lamont, Rt Hon Norman

Forman, Nigel

Lang, Ian

Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

Latham, Michael

Forth, Eric

Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel

Fowler, Rt Hon Norman

Lee, John (Pendle)

Fox, Sir Marcus

Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)

Franks, Cecil

Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

Freeman, Roger

Lightbown, David

French, Douglas

Lilley, Peter

Gale, Roger

Lloyd, Sir Ian (Havant)

Gardiner, George

Lord, Michael

Garel-Jones, Tristan

Luce, Rt Hon Richard

Gill, Christopher

Lyell, Sir Nicholas

Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian

McCrindle, Robert

Glyn, Dr Alan

Macfarlane, Sir Neil

Goodhart, Sir Philip

MacKay, Andrew (E Berkshire)

Goodlad, Alastair

Maclean, David

Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles

McLoughlin, Patrick

Gorman, Mrs Teresa

McNair-Wilson, M. (Newbury)

Gorst, John

McNair-Wilson, P. (New Forest)

Gow, Ian

Major, Rt Hon John

Gower, Sir Raymond

Malins, Humfrey

Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

Mans, Keith

Greenway, John (Ryedale)

Marland, Paul

Gregory, Conal

Marlow, Tony

Griffiths, Sir Eldon (Bury St E')

Marshall, John (Hendon S)

Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)

Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

Grist, Ian

Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

Ground, Patrick

Mates, Michael

Grylls, Michael

Maude, Hon Francis

Hamilton, Hon Archie (Epsom)

Mawhinney, Dr Brian

Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick

Hanley, Jeremy

Mellor, David

Hannam, John

Miller, Hal

Hargreaves, A. (B'ham H'll Gr')

Mills, Iain

Hargreaves, Ken (Hyndburn)

Miscampbell, Norman

Harris, David

Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

Haselhurst, Alan

Moate, Roger

Hawkins, Christopher

Monro, Sir Hector

Hayes, Jerry

Montgomery, Sir Fergus

Hayhoe, Rt Hon Sir Barney

Moore, Rt Hon John

Hayward, Robert

Morris, M (N'hampton S)

Heathcoat-Amory, David

Morrison, Hon Sir Charles

Heddle, John

Moss, Malcolm

Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael

Moynihan, Hon Colin

Hicks, Mrs Maureen (Wolv' NE)

Neale, Gerrard

Hicks, Robert (Cornwall SE)

Neubert, Michael

Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

Newton, Rt Hon Tony

Hill, James

Nicholls, Patrick

124

Nicholson, David (Taunton)

Stanbrook, Ivor

Nicholson, Emma (Devon West)

Steen, Anthony

Onslow, Rt Hon Cranley

Stern, Michael

Oppenheim, Phillip

Stevens, Lewis

Owen, Rt Hon Dr David

Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)

Page, Richard

Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)

Paice, James

Stewart, Ian (Hertfordshire N)

Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil

Stokes, John

Patnick, Irvine

Stradling Thomas, Sir John

Patten, Chris (Bath)

Sumberg, David

Patten, John (Oxford W)

Summerson, Hugo

Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

Tapsell, Sir Peter

Pawsey, James

Taylor, John M (Solihull)

Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman

Porter, David (Waveney)

Thatcher, Rt Hon Margaret

Portillo, Michael

Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)

Price, Sir David

Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

Raffan, Keith

Thorne, Neil

Raison, Rt Hon Timothy

Thornton, Malcolm

Rathbone, Tim

Thurnham, Peter

Redwood, John

Townend, John (Bridlington)

Renton, Tim

Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)

Rhodes James, Robert

Tracey, Richard

Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

Tredinnick, David

Riddick, Graham

Trippier, David

Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas

Vaughan, Sir Gerard

Ridsdale, Sir Julian

Viggers, Peter

Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm

Waddington, Rt Hon David

Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)

Wakeham, Rt Hon John

Roe, Mrs Marion

Walker, Bill (T'side North)

Rossi, Sir Hugh

Walker, Rt Hon P. (W'cester)

Rost, Peter

Waller, Gary

Rowe, Andrew

Walters, Dennis

Rumbold, Mrs Angela

Ward, John

Ryder, Richard

Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

Sackville, Hon Tom

Wells, Bowen

Sainsbury, Hon Tim

Wheeler, John

Sayeed, Jonathan

Whitney, Ray

Scott, Nicholas

Widdecombe, Ann

Shaw, David (Dover)

Wiggin, Jerry

Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

Wilkinson, John

Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

Wilshire, David

Shelton, William (Streatham)

Winterton, Mrs Ann

Shephard, Mrs G. (Norfolk SW)

Winterton, Nicholas

Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

Wolfson, Mark

Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

Wood, Timothy

Shersby, Michael

Woodcock, Mike

Sims, Roger

Yeo, Tim

Skeet, Sir Trevor

Young, Sir George (Acton)

Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

Younger, Rt Hon George

Soames, Hon Nicholas

Speed, Keith

Tellers for the Noes:

Spicer, Sir Jim (Dorset W)

Mr. Robert Boscawen and

Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

Mr. Peter Lloyd.

Squire, Robin

Question accordingly negatived.
Main Question put:—
The House divided: Ayes 326, Noes 218.

Division No. 204]

[10.17 pm

AYES

Adley, Robert

Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

Aitken, Jonathan

Batiste, Spencer

Alexander, Richard

Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

Alison, Rt Hon Michael

Bellingham, Henry

Allason, Rupert

Bendall, Vivian

Amery, Rt Hon Julian

Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)

Amess, David

Benyon, W.

Amos, Alan

Biffen, Rt Hon John

Arbuthnot, James

Blackburn, Dr John G.

Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter

Arnold, Tom (Hazel Grove)

Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

Ashby, David

Boswell, Tim

Aspinwall, Jack

Bottomley, Peter

Atkins, Robert

Bottomley, Mrs Virginia

Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Valley)

Bowden, A (Brighton K'pto'n)

Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

Baldry, Tony

Bowis, John

125

Boyson, Rt Hon Dr Sir Rhodes

Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

Braine, Rt Hon Sir Bernard

Greenway, John (Ryedale)

Brandon-Bravo, Martin

Gregory, Conal

Brazier, Julian

Griffiths, Sir Eldon (Bury St E')

Bright, Graham

Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)

Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

Grist, Ian

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

Ground, Patrick

Bruce, Ian (Dorset South)

Grylls, Michael

Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon Alick

Hamilton, Hon Archie (Epsom)

Buck, Sir Antony

Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

Budgen, Nicholas

Hanley, Jeremy

Burns, Simon

Hannam, John

Burt, Alistair

Hargreaves, A. (B'ham H'll Gr')

Butcher, John

Hargreaves, Ken (Hyndburn)

Butler, Chris

Harris, David

Butterfill, John

Haselhurst, Alan

Carlisle, John, (Luton N)

Hawkins, Christopher

Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

Hayes, Jerry

Carrington, Matthew

Hayhoe, Rt Hon Sir Barney

Carttiss, Michael

Hayward, Robert

Cash, William

Heathcoat-Amory, David

Chalker, Rt Hon Mrs Lynda

Heddle, John

Channon, Rt Hon Paul

Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael

Chapman, Sydney

Hicks, Mrs Maureen (Wolv' NE)

Chope, Christopher

Hicks, Robert (Cornwall SE)

Churchill, Mr

Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

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

Hill, James

Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)

Holt, Richard

Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)

Hordern, Sir Peter

Colvin, Michael

Howard, Michael

Conway, Derek

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

Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)

Howarth, G. (Cannock & B'wd)

Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

Cope, John

Howell, Ralph (North Norfolk)

Couchman, James

Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)

Cran, James

Hunt, David (Wirral W)

Critchley, Julian

Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

Currie, Mrs Edwina

Hunter, Andrew

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

Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas

Davis, David (Boothferry)

Irvine, Michael

Day, Stephen

Irving, Charles

Devlin, Tim

Jack, Michael

Dickens, Geoffrey

Jackson, Robert

Dorrell, Stephen

Janman, Tim

Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

Jessel, Toby

Dover, Den

Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

Dunn, Bob

Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

Durant, Tony

Jones, Robert B (Herts W)

Eggar, Tim

Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine

Evans, David (Welwyn Hatf'd)

Key, Robert

Evennett, David

King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)

Fairbairn, Nicholas

Kirkhope, Timothy

Fallon, Michael

Knapman, Roger

Farr, Sir John

Knight, Greg (Derby North)

Favell, Tony

Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)

Fenner, Dame Peggy

Knowles, Michael

Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)

Knox, David

Finsberg, Sir Geoffrey

Lamont, Rt Hon Norman

Fookes, Miss Janet

Lang, Ian

Forman, Nigel

Latham, Michael

Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel

Forth, Eric

Lee, John (Pendle)

Fowler, Rt Hon Norman

Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)

Fox, Sir Marcus

Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

Franks, Cecil

Lightbown, David

Freeman, Roger

Lloyd, Sir Ian (Havant)

French, Douglas

Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

Gale, Roger

Lord, Michael

Gardiner, George

Luce, Rt Hon Richard

Gill, Christopher

Lyell, Sir Nicholas

Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian

McCrindle, Robert

Glyn, Dr Alan

Macfarlane, Sir Neil

Goodhart, Sir Philip

MacKay, Andrew (E Berkshire)

Goodlad, Alastair

Maclean, David

Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles

McLoughlin, Patrick

Gorman, Mrs Teresa

McNair-Wilson, M. (Newbury)

Gorst, John

McNair-Wilson, P. (New Forest)

Gow, Ian

Major, Rt Hon John

Gower, Sir Raymond

Malins, Humfrey

126

Mans, Keith

Shelton, William (Streatham)

Marland, Paul

Shephard, Mrs G. (Norfolk SW)

Marlow, Tony

Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

Marshall, John (Hendon S)

Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

Shersby, Michael

Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

Sims, Roger

Mates, Michael

Skeet, Sir Trevor

Maude, Hon Francis

Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

Mawhinney, Dr Brian

Soames, Hon Nicholas

Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick

Speed, Keith

Mellor, David

Spicer, Sir Jim (Dorset W)

Miller, Hal

Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

Mills, Iain

Squire, Robin

Miscampbell, Norman

Stanbrook, Ivor

Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

Steen, Anthony

Moate, Roger

Stern, Michael

Monro, Sir Hector

Stevens, Lewis

Montgomery, Sir Fergus

Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)

Moore, Rt Hon John

Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)

Morris, M (N'hampton S)

Stewart, Ian (Hertfordshire N)

Morrison, Hon Sir Charles

Stokes, John

Moss, Malcolm

Stradling Thomas, Sir John

Moynihan, Hon Colin

Sumberg, David

Neale, Gerrard

Summerson, Hugo

Neubert, Michael

Tapsell, Sir Peter

Newton, Rt Hon Tony

Taylor, John M (Solihull)

Nicholls, Patrick

Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman

Nicholson, David (Taunton)

Thatcher, Rt Hon Margaret

Nicholson, Emma (Devon West)

Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)

Onslow, Rt Hon Cranley

Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

Oppenheim, Phillip

Thorne, Neil

Page, Richard

Thornton, Malcolm

Paice, James

Thurnham, Peter

Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil

Townend, John (Bridlington)

Patnick, Irvine

Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)

Patten, Chris (Bath)

Tracey, Richard

Patten, John (Oxford W)

Tredinnick, David

Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

Trippier, David

Pawsey, James

Vaughan, Sir Gerard

Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

Viggers, Peter

Porter, David (Waveney)

Waddington, Rt Hon David

Portillo, Michael

Wakeham, Rt Hon John

Price, Sir David

Waldegrave, Hon William

Raffan, Keith

Walker, Bill (T'side North)

Raison, Rt Hon Timothy

Walker, Rt Hon P. (W'cester)

Rathbone, Tim

Waller, Gary

Redwood, John

Walters, Dennis

Renton, Tim

Ward, John

Rhodes James, Robert

Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

Wells, Bowen

Riddick, Graham

Wheeler, John

Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas

Whitney, Ray

Ridsdale, Sir Julian

Widdecombe, Ann

Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm

Wiggin, Jerry

Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)

Wilkinson, John

Roe, Mrs Marion

Wilshire, David

Rossi, Sir Hugh

Winterton, Mrs Ann

Rost, Peter

Winterton, Nicholas

Rowe, Andrew

Wolfson, Mark

Rumbold, Mrs Angela

Wood, Timothy

Ryder, Richard

Woodcock, Mike

Sackville, Hon Tom

Yeo, Tim

Sainsbury, Hon Tim

Young, Sir George (Acton)

Sayeed, Jonathan

Younger, Rt Hon George

Scott, Nicholas

Shaw, David (Dover)

Tellers for the Ayes:

Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

Mr. Robert Boscawen and

Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

Mr. Tristan Garel-Jones.

NOES

Abbott, Ms Diane

Battle, John

Adams, Allen (Paisley N)

Beckett, Margaret

Allen, Graham

Benn, Rt Hon Tony

Anderson, Donald

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

Archer, Rt Hon Peter

Bermingham, Gerald

Armstrong, Hilary

Bidwell, Sydney

Ashdown, Paddy

Blair, Tony

Ashley, Rt Hon Jack

Blunkett, David

Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

Boateng, Paul

Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)

Boyes, Roland

127

Bradley, Keith

Galbraith, Sam

Bray, Dr Jeremy

Galloway, George

Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)

Garrett, John (Norwich South)

Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)

George, Bruce

Brown, Ron (Edinburgh Leith)

Godman, Dr Norman A.

Buchan, Norman

Golding, Mrs Llin

Buckley, George J.

Gordon, Mildred

Caborn, Richard

Graham, Thomas

Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

Campbell, Ron (Blyth Valley)

Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

Campbell-Savours, D. N.

Grocott, Bruce

Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

Hardy, Peter

Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

Harman, Ms Harriet

Clay, Bob

Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

Clelland, David

Healey, Rt Hon Denis

Clwyd, Mrs Ann

Heffer, Eric S.

Cohen, Harry

Henderson, Doug

Coleman, Donald

Hinchliffe, David

Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

Cook, Robin (Livingston)

Holland, Stuart

Corbett, Robin

Home Robertson, John

Corbyn, Jeremy

Hood, Jimmy

Cousins, Jim

Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

Cox, Tom

Howell, Rt Hon D. (S'heath)

Cryer, Bob

Hughes, John (Coventry NE)

Cummings, John

Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

Cunningham, Dr John

Hughes, Roy (Newport E)

Dalyell, Tam

Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)

Darling, Alistair

Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

Illsley, Eric

Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

Ingram, Adam

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

Janner, Greville

Dewar, Donald

John, Brynmor

Dixon, Don

Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside)

Dobson, Frank

Jones, Ieuan (Ynys Môn)

Doran, Frank

Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S W)

Douglas, Dick

Kennedy, Charles

Duffy, A. E. P.

Kilfedder, James

Dunnachie, Jimmy

Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil

Eadie, Alexander

Lambie, David

Eastham, Ken

Lamond, James

Evans, John (St Helens N)

Leadbitter, Ted

Ewing, Harry (Falkirk E)

Leighton, Ron

Ewing, Mrs Margaret (Moray)

Lestor, Joan (Eccles)

Fatchett, Derek

Lewis, Terry

Faulds, Andrew

Litherland, Robert

Fearn, Ronald

Livingstone, Ken

Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

Livsey, Richard

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

Lofthouse, Geoffrey

Fisher, Mark

Loyden, Eddie

Flannery, Martin

McAllion, John

Flynn, Paul

McAvoy, Thomas

Foot, Rt Hon Michael

McCartney, Ian

Foster, Derek

McCusker, Harold

Foulkes, George

Macdonald, Calum A.

Fyfe, Maria

McFall, John

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McGrady, Eddie

Robertson, George

McKelvey, William

Robinson, Geoffrey

McLeish, Henry

Rogers, Allan

McNamara, Kevin

Rooker, Jeff

McTaggart, Bob

Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

McWilliam, John

Ruddock, Joan

Madden, Max

Salmond, Alex

Mahon, Mrs Alice

Sedgemore, Brian

Mallon, Seamus

Sheerman, Barry

Marek, Dr John

Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

Short, Clare

Martin, Michael J. (Springburn)

Skinner, Dennis

Martlew, Eric

Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

Maxton, John

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

Meacher, Michael

Snape, Peter

Meale, Alan

Spearing, Nigel

Michael, Alun

Steinberg, Gerry

Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

Stott, Roger

Michie, Mrs Ray (Arg'l & Bute)

Strang, Gavin

Millan, Rt Hon Bruce

Straw, Jack

Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)

Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

Moonie, Dr Lewis

Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

Morgan, Rhodri

Thomas, Dr Dafydd Elis

Morley, Elliott

Thompson, Jack (Wansbeck)

Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

Turner, Dennis

Mowlam, Marjorie

Vaz, Keith

Mullin, Chris

Wall, Pat

Murphy, Paul

Wallace, James

Nellist, Dave

Walley, Joan

Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

O'Brien, William

Wareing, Robert N.

O'Neill, Martin

Welsh, Andrew (Angus E)

Parry, Robert

Welsh, Michael (Doncaster N)

Patchett, Terry

Wigley, Dafydd

Pendry, Tom

Williams, Rt Hon Alan

Pike, Peter L.

Williams, Alan W. (Carm'then)

Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

Wise, Mrs Audrey

Prescott, John

Worthington, Tony

Quin, Ms Joyce

Wray, Jimmy

Randall, Stuart

Young, David (Bolton SE)

Redmond, Martin

Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn

Tellers for the Noes:

Reid, Dr John

Mr. Frank Haynes and

Richardson, Jo

Mr. Allen McKay.

Roberts, Allan (Bootle)

Question accordingly agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House, recognising the importance of introducing competition into the electricity supply industry, the advantages of new rights for customers, and the benefits of privatization, approves the proposals set out in the Government's White Paper on the privatisation of the electricity suppy industry in England and Wales, and Scotland, Cm. 322 and 327.

Wages (Northern Ireland)
10.29 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. Peter Viggers): I beg to move,
That the draft Wages (Northern Ireland) Order 1988, which was laid before this House on 10th December, be approved.
The Order, which was laid under the Northern Ireland Act 1974, sweeps away a mass of complex and outdated legislation and replaces it with modern provisions. If I may borrow a simile that the late Lord Diplock used in a different context, the present law is a maze, not a motorway. It emanates from the days when the terms "master" and "servant" were commonly used, and when horse and cart or hansom cab were the means of transport. Now that we are in the age of the motorway, it is surely time that our legislation was correspondingly modernised.
The order contains provisions analogous to those enacted in Great Britain by the Wages Act 1986, except that it does not deal with changes to redundancy rebates, where equivalent Northern Ireland legislation is already in place. The central purpose of the Wages Act and the order is to reduce burdens on business and to help to promote employment, especially for young people. The order will not only help employment prospects and encourage industrial efficiency, but will give all workers rights to ensure that they receive the wages due to them. It will also help to break down lingering barriers of status and conditions between manual and non-manual workers, and will contribute to a reduction in opportunities for crime.
Mr. Dave Nellist: The Minister has just said that one of the prime aims of the order is to increase employment among young people. Does he recall the answer that he gave me two weeks ago, on 25 February, when I asked him what estimate he had made of the effect of the order on employment levels in the north? He told me that he was
"not aware of any studies which quantify the number of jobs which will arise from the specific reforms which are proposed".—[Official Report, 25 February 1988; Vol. 128, c. 321.]
How can the Minister say tonight that there will be more jobs for young people if the under-21 rate is abolished, with the wages councils going, when two weeks ago in a written answer he said that he had no evidence for making that assertion?
Mr. Viggers: In Northern Ireland we took the view taken in Great Britain, which was that it would not be sensible or productive to carry out extensive studies of the promotion of job opportunities among younger people because of the abolition of the wages councils. Clearly, however, if young people under the age of 21 are restricted to a minimum requiring them to be paid the same as adults, removing that restriction and enabling them to be employed at lower rates can only improve their job prospects.
Northern Ireland has its own separate legislative and administrative framework for the regulation of wages, but in general we have followed closely the law of Great Britain. Currently, the legislation falls under two heads: the Truck Acts (Northern Ireland) 1831 to 1940, and the Wages Councils (Northern Ireland) Order 1982.
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The main Truck Acts, those of 1831 and 1896, date back to the last century, but their antecedents are more ancient. The Truck Act 1831 was a general Act that repealed and replaced some 18 earlier Truck Acts dating back to 1465, relating to specific trades.
Mr. Eric S. Heffer: As so many Acts are being repealed by the order, and as it contains 27 articles and six schedules, can the Minister explain why not one sentence in it can be changed? Why was it riot presented in the form of a Bill, so that we could discuss and amend it, and obtain opinions before reaching this stage?
Mr. Viggers: The hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that the legislative procedures for Northern Ireland allow for orders to be placed before the House and debated For one and a half hours. The Government are scrupulous in ensuring that proper consultations take place before this stage is reached. The hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do that if Bills were placed before the House to replicate every order placed before it, that would impose an intolerable burden on the House. These matters have been — and frequently are — discussed whenever orders relating to Northern Ireland are placed before the House. The hon. Gentleman knows the answer as well as I do.
It is amazing that we still have in place legislation designed to deal with abuses that were prevalent not just in 1831, but four centuries earlier. Those abuses no longer exist, but the Truck Acts are still a barrier to the use of modern non-cash methods of payment.
Of course, there is the security aspect. In large factories there is the needless expense of arranging for a security vehicle to bring cash to the site. In smaller establishments the money has to be collected from the bank by someone from the wages office at some personal risk. Workers on their way home with large pay packets also run a risk. Exceptions to the 1831 Act consist of certain benefits for which deductions can be made by the employer. However, the 1831 Act did not forbid deductions from wages by way of fines or misconduct and bad workmanship. With the aim, therefore, of bringing order into the operation of deductions, the Act of 1896 was passed.
It is surely right, and many would say long overdue, that the order which we are considering should repeal he old provisions in the Truck Acts relating to deductions and introduce modern controls. The Truck Acts apply only to manual workers, apart from section 1 of the 1896 Act, which also applies to shop assistants. In contrast, the new provisions relating to deductions would apply to all employees and give special protection to those in retail employment such as supermarket till operators, petrol station forecourt attendants and others of that kind.
The order will also bring reforms to the wages council system. The Wages Councils (Northern Ireland) Order 1982, which was a consolidation of previous wages council legislation, provided for minimum wages, holidays and holiday pay in certain industries to be fixed by wages councils and enforced by a wages inspectorate. Again, until the reforms introduced in Great Britain by the Wages Act 1986, there were no significant differences between wages councils legislation in Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
However, the wages council legislation was also introduced in, and designed for, another era. For its origins I have to refer the House back to before the first world war, indeed to the House of Lords Select Committee

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of 1888–90. It reported on the "sweating system" and enumerated three outstanding features of the so-called "sweated trades"—unduly low rates of wages, excessive hours of labour and the insanitary state of the workplace.
However, it was not until trade boards, subsequently termed wages councils, were established by the Trade Boards Act 1909 that statutory relief was provided. The boards were empowered to fix minimum rates of wages, in selected trades, which became enforceable when ratified by the Minister. Separate boards were established for Ireland, but, following the Government of Ireland Act 1920, the legislation applied to and was administered from Northern Ireland. Thus, while Northern Ireland has its own separate body of legislation, it has followed closely Great Britain law in this transferred area of legislation.
Against that common background, it is not altogether surprising that the present draft order reflects the same consideration which informed the Wages Act and consequently has similar provisions. As is customary, and as I told the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Helfer), we fully consulted interested parties in Northern Ireland.
Consultations in respect of truck legislation and its possible replacement by more modern provisions produced no local peculiarities warranting special consideration. The majority of those consulted welcomed the proposals, although the trade union movement expressed opposition to change. There was separate consultation on wages councils when the options of abolition or reform, in terms of a simplification of wages orders and the removal of young people from the scope of wages councils, were canvassed. The majority of respondents favoured retention, albeit with various suggestions for reform.
Having considered the views expressed, the Government are satisfied that parity in wages regulation should be preserved. Accordingly, part II of the draft order deals with the abrogation of the Truck Acts 1831 to 1940, and associated legislation, and its replacement by modern provisions for the protection of workers in relation to the payment of wages. Part III effects considerable reforms to the wages councils system and removes young people under 21 from the scope of their operation.
Part II will replace Truck Acts legislation, which requires manual workers to be paid in cash, with new provisions applying to all employees. It is the Government's belief that with a very limited exception the Truck Acts are archaic and obsolete. The exception is the control of deductions by employers from employees' wages. As I have mentioned, those Acts, which date back to 1831, were passed to protect manual workers from abuses which no longer exist and are unlikely to reappear. The legislation is not only outdated but a positive obstacle to desirable change towards cashless pay and runs counter to the well-established principle that terms and conditions of employment, including the mode of payment of wages, are essentially matters to be determined contractually rather than by legislation.
Cashless methods of paying wages, such as automated credit transfer and cheques, bring important benefits to employers, employees and the community as a whole. Employers gain directly from reduced costs and hence improved competitiveness, which in turn improves job
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prospects. Employees benefit through the reduced risk of theft or loss of the cash in pay packets, while the community benefits by a reduction in the scope for robbery and theft, which can often involve arms and other forms of violence.
In Northern Ireland this is an important dimension, given the risk of armed robbery by paramilitary organisations. A move towards greater use of wage systems based on non-cash payments would make an important contribution to reducing this risk. It is important, however, to emphasise here that this part of the order does not take away any existing contractual right to payment in cash; nor does it force an employer to change to non-cash payment systems if he does not wish to do so.
The Truck Acts also include statutory control of deductions from wages. The Government have concluded that this aspect should be brought up to date. The new system set out in the order contains three basic elements: first, deductions are unlawful unless provided for by statute, by the employment contract or by written agreement of the worker; secondly, there are special controls on deductions related to cash shortages and stock deficiencies; and, thirdly, a worker can appeal to an industrial tribunal if he or she thinks that an unlawful deduction has been made.
Consultations on the proposals revealed little evidence in Northern Ireland that deductions from wages are a cause of general difficulty. However, the order introduces a special provision to meet a particular problem—that is, where deductions are related to cash shortages and stock deficiencies experienced by certain workers in retail employment, such as petrol station forecourt attendants, where deductions must not exceed 10 per cent. of their wages.
Mr. Bob Cryer: What protection exists for a worker who is safeguarded against unauthorised deductions only by his employment contract? An employee usually does not receive an employment contract until several weeks after he starts work. The employer may make deductions —statutory deductions being one of the three alternatives mentioned by the Minister—but they are not authorised in the contract. The worker may find out about that only when he gets the contract two or three months later. What can he do about it?
Mr. Viggers: I think it would be dangerous for a Minister standing at the Dispatch Box to speculate on the exact legal circumstances that apply in an individual case. I suspect that if the worker had reason to know the terms on which his contract would be awarded, if it were the same for other workers in exactly the same circumstances, the conditions applying generally in that firm would apply. However, the hon. Gentleman raises a specific point and I shall seek to get him a specific answer during the debate.
Part III effects reforms to the wages council system. Northern Ireland has less distance to go to limit the bureaucratic impact of wages councils than had Great Britain prior to the enactment of the Wages Act 1986. The number of wages councils in Northern Ireland is more restricted, with only nine wages councils, compared to 26 in Great Britain. Their coverage extends to only 7 per cent. of the labour force, compared to the 11 per cent. then applying in Great Britain. The reforms which will be effected by part III are aimed at simplifying the

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requirements that wages councils impose on industry and are consistent with the Government's policy of deregulation which we think will be of benefit to the industry as a whole and to jobs.
Part III will exclude young people under 21 from the scope of the wages councils; here I come to the point raised by the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist).
Mr. James Kilfedder: What industrialised countries in the Western world have removed the legal minimum wages for persons under 21?
Mr. Viggers: Again, 1 would rather give the hon. Gentleman a detailed reply, which I shall certainly do.
Mr. Nellist rose—
Mr. Kilfedder rose—
Mr. Viggers: I give way to the hon. Member for North Down (Mr. Kilfedder).
Mr. Kilfedder: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way again. I and my colleagues are in an extremely difficult position. We have a very limited amount of time in which to debate the order and expect the Minister to give answers. He must have arrived at his decision on the basis of arguments before he produced the order. If he does not know the answer to that important question, I ask him to take the order away and let us debate it on another occasion.
Mr. Nellist rose—
Mr. Viggers: The hon. Gentleman knows that there were wide consultations before this order and before the Bill which became the Wages Act were placed before the House of Commons.
Mr. Nellist rose—
Mr. Michael Foot rose—
Mr. Viggers: I give way to the right hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Foot: The answers that the Minister has given illustrate that this is a hopeless way in which to put through an order of this kind. This is an elaborate piece of legislation and it is unfair of the Minister to say that he had consultations with particular bodies and that that is a substitute for a proper examination of a major piece of legislation.
Surely the fact that the hon. Gentleman, perhaps through no fault of his own, is incapable of answering any questions means that the only way to deal with the order is for him to take it away and for the Government to consider how they should properly bring major legislation on Northern Ireland before the House, so that all Members of the House can debate and discuss the way in which it will operate in Northern Ireland and how it will affect this country.
Mr. Viggers: The right hon. Gentleman is known to all hon. Members as a great parliamentarian, a man to whom one is delighted to listen, but the tune that he sings when sitting on the Government Benches is different from the tune he sings when sitting on the Opposition Benches. After all, the right hon. Gentleman is the great parliamentarian who although when in opposition opposes guillotine measures, came to the House of Commons and put five guillotine motions before the House in one day—
Mr. Nellist rose—
Mr. Foot rose—
Mr. Viggers: If I may complete my point, I put it to the right hon. Gentleman that he and other right hon. and hon. Members know that for many years the way in which Northern Ireland business has been carried through the House has been by way of order. One takes care to consult in advance of the order, and the manner in which the orders are carried through is well known to the right hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members.
Mr. Nellist rose—
Mr. Foot rose—
Mr. Viggers: I give way to the right hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Foot: I thank the Minister for giving way again, I should like to illustrate the point that I put to him. I am fully aware of the way in which Northern Ireland legislation and business is dealt with, but I also know that hon. Members representing Northern Ireland constituencies complain about it all the time, saying that it should be dealt with in a different way.
I defy the hon. Gentleman to produce any measure of such an elaborate character as this being put through as one order, because it is a major piece of legislation, affecting a whole range of people in Northern Ireland. It is an order to which it is necessary to table amendments. The hon. Gentleman cannot produce any precedent for trying to push through a measure of this elaborate nature that will affect so many people in Northern Ireland. If he could produce such a precedent, he might have an excuse, but he cannot do so.
Mr. Viggers: As to the enormous number of individuals who are affected, I am totally unrepentant about the Truck Acts, because I believe that we are sweeping away archaic legislation that well deserved to be put into the knackers' yard of parliamentary archives.
With regard to the wages councils—we were talking specifically about the wages councils when the right hon. Gentleman intervened—we are talking about 7 per cent. of workers in Northern Ireland, comprising about 37,000 workers, and one fifth of those would be a comparatively small number. I do not believe that this is sweeping legislation that would justify a Bill.
Mr. Nellist rose —
Mr. Viggers: With respect to the hon. Gentleman, I have given way to him already, and to all other hon. Members who have sought to intervene, and it might be more appropriate if the hon. Gentleman seeks to make his point later in the debate.
Mr. Nellist: Of 94 countries, none, except the United Kingdom, have withdrawn from ILO convention 26.
Mr. Viggers: The hon. Gentleman chooses to ignore parliamentary convention and make his contribution from a sedentary position.
Mr. Nellist: I have tried to make it from a standing position, but the hon. Gentleman will not give way.
Mr. Viggers: I am advised that a number of countries are contemplating such a measure, and that would, indeed, be consistent with the way in which legislation and proposals for privatisation in the United Kingdom have been taken as a model throughout the world as the way in which to develop industry.

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Part III will exclude young people under the age of 21 from the scope of wages councils. The high minimum rates set by councils for young people in relation to often more experienced adult workers prejudice their employment prospects. This reform will assist young people in getting their first foothold in employment. This is important, in that it will enable employers to offer employment at rates that they can afford. Employers should not be expected to offer employment at wages unrelated to the economic value that the young worker can contribute to the business.
This part of the order also reforms and simplifies the wages council system, requires wages councils to take into account the employment consequences of decisions they take, and streamlines the procedures for abolishing a council or for varying its scope. This will provide a more flexible system capable of adapting more readily to changes in the industries affected, as the need arises.
The reforms introduced by this order are a further step in this Government's well-established policy of deregulation and the stimulation of enterprise and employment. It is our intention to help young people find their first employment, thus enabling them to gain the experience and skills required to become productive and valued members of the workplace. This order will help to realise this objective. It will also reduce rigidities and red tape in the labour market and thus help to promote employment for people of all ages. It provides new protections against deductions from pay where there is known abuse, to ensure that workers receive what is rightly due to them without a large proportion of their pay packets disappearing in deductions.
The order affords an excellent vehicle for employers to agree with their workers a system of wage payments that suits everyone. This is good legislation for employment, especially for young people seeking work. It is particularly good for small businesses, which are so vital to the Northern Ireland economy.
10.51 pm
Mr. Kevin McNamara: The proposals in the order are not new. They have been the subject of some, and in our view inadequate, consultation by the Government and they follow similar legislation dealt with in the House in relation to this island. They are not new in what they reveal about the Government and their philosophy: to screw out of the desperately poor greater wealth for the already rich.
We opposed the Wages Act 1986 in the strongest terms. Having seen the Act in operation, we feel justified in that opposition and we can only oppose, equally strongly, the proposed legislation before us tonight.
The draft order has two main objectives: the repeal of the Northern Ireland Truck Acts, which have governed the payment of wages since 1831, and the restriction of the operation of wages councils in Northern Ireland. The measures expose—again not for the first time—the hypocrisy that has characterised Conservative rule since 1979. The Government claim to support the family and call for a return to Victorian values. The legislation will force young people in Northern Ireland back into sweated labour, poverty wages and unsafe and unhealthy working conditions.
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The Opposition refuse to recognise the dream world of the Victorian era as set out by the Government. However, we recognise that one of the great achievements of the Victorians was to begin to control the unbridled capitalism of their time—a capitalism that regarded workers as commodities, as beasts of burden, out of which life, energy and health were squeezed before being tossed aside on to the industrial scrap heap.
Tonight the Government seek to take another piece out of the framework of our laws, so carefully constructed by the Victorians to protect working people and, in the end, capitalists too, from the results of unbridled exploitation. This Government of Victorian values want to take one more step towards toppling one of the most valuable of all the edifices that we inherited from our Victorian forebears.
The Government would have us believe that they care about equality of opportunity and are opposed to the unequal treatment of and discrimination against women. However, after young working people, it is working women who will suffer most if the draft order becomes law. Some 62 per cent. of workers currently protected by wages councils in Northern Ireland are women. Women in Northern Ireland are already more likely to be found in the lowest paid, least organised and most stressful sectors of employment. Quite how reducing incomes, increasing stress and worsening conditions for women workers in Northern Ireland will help the family is beyond us.
The restriction of wages councils is the most controversial part of the draft order, but the abolition of the Truck Acts will contribute to the further impoverishment and reduced protection from ruthless employers of the most vulnerable workers in Northern Ireland. Under the guise of removing supposedly unnecessary restrictions on capital and building a free market, the Government are shifting the expense and dangers associated with pay day on to workers instead of employers. Workers will now pay bank charges instead of employers paying them, and none of this has been done as a result of any great outcry by employers. My hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, South (Mr. Marshall) will deal with those matters in more detail later, Mr. Deputy Speaker, if he catches your eye. Our general proposition is that we deplore what is happening.
The Government have used the weapon of deflation to squeeze unprecedented numbers of people out of jobs. Now, under the guise of recreating some of the jobs that they destroyed, they propose to use unemployment to force down the already inadequate incomes of those at the bottom of the incomes league. That is the purpose of part III of the draft order.
Before I deal with that, I wish to make some general points about the way in which the Government have introduced this legislation. They have done no more than go through the forms of consultation. It is wrong for the Minister to say that they have consulted in any meaningful way in Northern Ireland. Consultation on the two substantive parts of the order was carried out separately, and the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions was highly critical, in both cases, of the half-hearted way in which the Department of Economic Development carried out the process.
I shall quote what the Northern Ireland committee had to say about the so-called consultation on the wages system:
"The Department of Economic Development have circulated for comment a copy of the consultative paper on

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Wages Councils prepared by the Department of Employment in Britain, together with a brief covering note. The latter note fails to provide the relevant detailed information in respect of Northern Ireland which is available in the Department of Employment document as regards the situation in Britain. A few examples will serve to illustrate the point.
The Northern Ireland document does not give a breakdown between full-time and part-time employees, whereas the Department of Employment document indicates that two-thirds of the Wages Councils' labour force are part-time workers compared with one fifth of the economy generally.
The appendix to the GB document lists the number of establishments and the number of workers covered by each of the Wages Councils, whereas this information is not given for Northern Ireland.
The arrangements for monitoring and enforcement are spelt out for Britain, whereas the DED's paper merely summarises this information in a mere couple of sentences.
Even where the information is provided, which shows that there arc significant differences between the situation in Northern Ireland and that in Britain, no comment is made nor any explanation offered."
So much for consultation.
The committee went on:
"In Britain, the Trades Union Congress are critical of the Department of Employment's paper. It is their view, and that of the Northern Ireland Committee, that the Department's main intention is to go through the motions of consultation so that it will then be procedurally in order to denounce ILO Convention No. 26."
That was the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist).
"The fact the DED have not made any serious attempt in their paper to analyse the situation in Northern Ireland strongly reinforces the view of the consultative paper."
So much for consultation by the Minister and his Department.
Some months ago, I questioned the commitment of the Department of Economic Development in Northern Ireland to religious equality of opportunity. I was roundly told off by the Secretary of State and the Minister concerned, who stood by their civil servants, as they should. I said that I looked forward to be proven wrong. I still do so. But, as that quotation shows, I am not alone in having queried the bona fides of the Department of Economic Development.
It is time that Ministers responsible for the Department began working to persuade people that when they ask for views on legislative plans they genuinely want them and will genuinely take them into account instead of going through a charade. The solution to Northern Ireland's problems requires greater confidence in Government, not greater cynicism about it. The latter is what has happened in the trade union movement in Northern Ireland in relation to the Government and these proposals.
I shall now discuss some of the specific measures contained in part III of the draft order. Article 13, after repealing the Wages Council (Northern Ireland) Order 1982, provides that henceforth the functions of wages councils shall not be exercised in relation to workers under 21 years of age. The consultative paper termed this
"pricing young people into jobs."
The paper admitted that even among employers a substantial number believed that deregulation could be harmful. How right they were. For small employers especially, wages councils have provided forums for wage negotiations, hut, above all, they have provided protection against competitors seeking to undercut them by paying even lower wages.
It is clear that the wage levels that the Government seek to reduce to price young people into jobs are already at
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poverty level. In 1984, in the sectors covered by the nine wages councils in Northern Ireland, the minima set ranged from £62 a week for laundry workers to £85·81 a week for road haulage workers. Those are hardly princely sums.
Both the Northern Ireland committee of ICTU, and the Irish region of my union, the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers Union, challenged the Government's argument that lower wages would lead to more jobs in their response to the consultation document. As the submission of the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers Union observed, male and female manual rates in Northern Ireland were respectively 7 per cent. and 3 per cent. below prevailing rates in the next worse region on the mainland of the United Kingdom. Unemployment was the highest of any region in the United Kingdom. If there were any validity in the contention that lower wages automatically lead to more jobs, as the Northern Ireland committee of the ICTU said, Northern Ireland should have the lowest level of unemployment, not the highest.
For unemployment to increase in the non-export sectors covered by wages councils, there would have to be an increase in domestic demand. Would shoes need replacing sooner because there was a marginal decrease in the cost of cobbling? The likelihood is that there would be a slightly lower increase.
In 1985 the Financial Times reported that Department of Employment research showed that where wages councils had already been abolished there was no evidence of any increase in the total number of jobs in industry. At the same time, there was significant evidence of an extension of low pay. The studies of the independent Low Pay Unit as long ago as 1983 convincingly refuted the correction between low pay and an increase in unemployment. A more specific study cited in my union's response found that the relative earnings of young people had little to do with variations in young unemployment.
Between 1979 and 1984, when wages for the under-18s decreased from 39·7 per cent. to 34·9 per cent. of adult wages for men, and from 56 per cent. to 48·3 per cent. for women, we saw the most dramatic rise ever in youth unemployment in Northern Ireland. According to the Government's arguments, we should have seen increases in employment, not in unemployment.
Article 14 of the draft order gives the Department of Economic Development the power to abolish or vary the scope of wages councils. Article 24 provides for this to be done by negative resolution, except where a wages council is abolished and none of the workers previously within its scope is transferred to another council, in which case an affirmative resolution is required in both Houses. We do not think that this is adequate. We regard as highly contentious the present proposal to remove workers under 21 years of age from the provisions of the legislation, and would regard as equally contentious any further restrictions on wages councils.
Only where a wages council is abolished altogether are the Government prepared to have the affirmative order procedure. Wages councils in Northern Ireland cover nine sectors and 31,000 workers—7 per cent. of the work force — compared with 26 sectors and 2·75 million workers in Britain. Trade unions in Northern Ireland have been calling for the extension rather than the curtailment of the wages council system to cover further low-wage sectors. They want to see more councils, as do many employers, such as hairdressers.

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It is interesting that the most recent edition of Industrial Relations Review and Report states that where wages councils have been abolished in the United Kingdom, the unions and employers have come together to replace them. They recognise the necessity of them.
Among the Government's original proposals for Northern Ireland was one for the complete abolition of wages councils. We are pleased that, in the face of strong opposition, it was not pursued directly. However, we believe that there will be creeping abolition.
We are suspicious of the powers contained in articles 14 and 24 for the further curtailment of wages councils. Article 14 provides for abolition and the restriction or variation of the scope of existing councils. It does not confer powers for the extension of the wages council system as called for by the trade unions. We are suspicious that, having concluded that it would be too contentious merely to sweep away the councils in one piece of legislation, the Government intend a process of creeping abolition through a series of negative orders which they hope will either not be noticed or not be sufficiently broad in scope to attract great opposition.
I have drawn the attention of right hon. and hon. Members to the likely effect of this draft order on workers generally, and on young workers in particular. But there are other groups on whom it would have a disproportionate impact. Women constitute 62 per cent. of the 31,000 workers covered by wages orders in Northern Ireland and are already. as I have said, over-represented in the worst jobs. In some industries covered by wages councils, almost all employees are female; 93·6 per cent. of shirt makers, for instance, are women.
What is the point of having equal opportunities legislation if what the Government give with one hand they take away with the other? The proposed Sex Discrimination (Northern Ireland) Order 1988 would seriously undermine the position of many women workers, removing a range of statutory protections. If, in addition to that, the Government weaken the wages councils, that will constitute a double blow to the position of the most vulnerable women in the worst-paid jobs.
In the light of the likely impact of the draft order on women, the Equal Opportunities Commission (Northern Ireland) has made known its views on what would be most in the interests of women in Northern Ireland. They are remarkably close to those of the trade unions. It calls for the extension of the numbers and scope of wages councils, rather than their restriction, to protect women. It rejects the exclusion of the under-21s, particularly to protect women. It calls for increased protection for the largely non-unionised home workers and for most part-time workers—again, mostly women. It expresses a particular concern about article 15(6)(a) and (b), which it fears could he interpreted in such a way that women employees end up being paid less than men. That would, of course, be in conflict with the Equal Pay Act 1970.
Exclusion of under-21s from the wages set by wages orders, in so far as that had any impact on youth unemployment, would do so at the cost of increased adult unemployment. The Department of Employment calculated that in Britain eight out of 10 new jobs created for young people were at the expense of older workers.
Finally, the Government have argued that wages councils are unnecessary because
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"there is extensive legislation to protect the rights of individual employees."
That is incorrect and misleading. Eighty per cent. of employers covered by wages orders in Northern Ireland run small enterprises to which such employment protection legislation does not apply. Four thousand establishments, for instance, have fewer than 10 employees, the cut-off point proposed for the Government's new measures on religious equality of opportunity in employment.
Both NIC-ICTU and the ATGWU have accused the Government of seeking to denounce ILO convention 26, and have pointed out that by doing so they are moving against the trend in Europe and the world. It was interesting that, when challenged, the Minister could not mention one Government proposing to follow the same route as ours. The vast majority of Western Governments are among the 95 which had ratified the convention by 1985. Eight member states of the European Community had done so. The Government cannot argue that they need to renege on the convention because their competitors have done so. There is no excuse for their attempts to remove protections which have been enjoyed by workers for generations.
Instead of this punitive order, designed to penalise young people, women and, in the end, all of the most vulnerable workers in Northern Ireland, the Government should heed the calls for the extension of the wages council system in Northern Ireland and for the establishment of minimum wage legislation. As NIC-ICTU has argued, existing councils should be retained to protect those low-paid workers, including the under-21s, who are currently covered. New councils should be created to cover those low-wage sectors that are currently excluded in Northern Ireland. The powers and scope should be increased to bring them in line with best practices outside Northern Ireland. The available resources and staffing for the wages inspectorate should be increased. There should be vigorous enforcement of the law, and stiffer penalties for employers who break it.
On Second Reading of the 1986 Wages Bill, my hon. Friend, and neighbour, the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott), on behalf of her Majesty's Opposition, said:
"We will oppose this Bill without hesitation. It is a piece of Tory legislation which talks about the rhetoric of rights and the increase of jobs. It is concerned with reducing those rights and reducing employment opportunities … The Bill will reduce the rights of employees and tilt the balance in favour of the employer."—[Official Report, 11 February 1986; Vol. 91, c. 807.]
The operation of the Wages Act 1986, as we have seen it, has upheld the assessment made by my hon. Friend two years ago. It is argued that the order will produce a moonlighting, risk-taking, health-damaging and poverty-enhancing economy. Those who suffer will be the most poorly paid and the most vulnerable in Northern Ireland society. The profit margins of the very small employer will be further reduced and overall demand curtailed.
The Draft Wages (Northern Ireland) Order 1988 will lead to worse conditions for all workers in Northern Ireland. It will damage particularly the interests of young people and of women. It will lead to lower wages and will not create a significant number of new jobs. It will penalise people in Northern Ireland simply to gratify the appetite

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of the Government for further deregulation. It is an iniquitous piece of legislation to which we are utterly opposed. That is why we have applied a three-line Whip.
11.10 pm
Mr. Harold McCusker: There is now much less than an hour for hon. Members to comment on the order. That is itself is a serious commentary on the way in which Northern Ireland is governed. This is a lengthy and complex order. The two Front-Bench spokesmen will sum up and other hon. Members will have 30 or 40 minutes to comment on the order. Therefore, I shall not take too long.
My time for participating in this charade is over. In a few days it will be 16 years since this House accepted the responsibility for governing Northern Ireland. Under the Northern Ireland Act 1974 the House consolidated this procedure for governing Northern Ireland. For many of the years since then, my colleagues and I have done our best to improve the system. We have discussed orders such as this for two and half hours in Committee and then discussed them in the House for an hour and a half. We have convinced the Government to produce a step before the draft order—proposals for a draft order. We have discussed the proposals and then discussed the order for an hour and a half on the Floor of the House.
In all that time, we seldom changed one dot or comma in the orders, let alone any of the intentions. All we did was pull the wool over the eyes of the people and somehow convince them that was a democratic way to deal with their affairs in the House. Therefore, we are guilty of perpetuating this fraud on our supporters. It would not be so bad if the Minister or his colleagues had sought a mandate from the people of Northern Ireland for governing in this fashion or for introducing legislation such as this. However, I cannot make too much of that, because an Englishman is now governing Wales. At least his party sought a mandate there to govern the Welsh people in the way that the Government are doing. The Conservatives did not seek a mandate in Northern Ireland for what they are doing.
Let no one accuse me of being an integrationist or someone who wants to cast his lot totally with this House. I have learnt enough in the past 14 years to know that the only place that I or the people that I represent will get a fair deal is in a Parliament of our own in Northern Ireland. I am in favour of having a Parliament back in Northern Ireland, but until that day comes I am in favour of a democratic process for dealing with Northern Ireland affairs.
So successful have we been in working this system that when the Minister is challenged on the essentially undemocratic nature of the order and the procedure in Council, he says that that is the way that it has always been done—as if the way in which it has always been done somehow or other justifies it. Of course, he might have used the other excuse, that we must maintain the integrity of the Northern Ireland statute book. It contains statutes from before 1920, statutes that were passed in the Northern Ireland Parliament between 1920 and 1972 and statutes passed in this Parliament between 1920 and 1972. It contains orders, Orders in Council and Acts passed in the House since 1972.
I notice that the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) is not totally opposed to Bills for dealing with Northern
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Ireland business, because when we dealt with the new fair employment legislation, I think that the hon. Gentleman went on record as demanding a Bill to deal with that very important legislation. If he were consistent, he would demand Bills to deal with all the legislation of this type.
As I have said, my days of perpetuating this fraud are finished. When the Minister began, he said that the order swept away legislation that came from an age when "master" and "servant" were terms in daily use. There is a part of this kingdom where those terms are still in daily use. The Minister and his Front Bench colleagues are the "masters" and my colleagues and I and the people whom we represent are still the "servants". The Minister was most offensive when he chastised the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist). He accused the hon. Gentleman of abusing parliamentary convention. How in the name of heaven could anyone defend the order as being parliamentary convention?
We are here to con and fool the people of Northern Ireland. The Minister's press statement has already been issued to the Northern Ireland media. There will be telling reports in the press tomorrow morning and afternoon about what happened in the Chamber. The Minister's actions will be publicised as if they are right. That is no longer right for me; it is no longer right for my colleagues, and I hope that it is no longer right for the people of Northern Ireland.
11.15 pm
Mr. Seamus Mallon: I offer the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. McCusker) the opportunity of not having to endure the kind of humiliation to which he referred. He rightly gave vent to his anger. I want to offer him the opportunity to shake the dust of this place off his feet and ours. After the events of the past month and of today, I find it difficult to restrain my frustration and anger. I look forward to the day when the traditional enemies, those hon. Members who occupy the Official Unionist Bench in the House, and myself will be able to show the confidence and courage to walk out of this place and build a new future for ourselves.
I agree with the hon. Member for Upper Bann that there is no future for the North of Ireland on the Floor of the House of Commons. We will remain optional extras, no matter which party is in government, and whatever the political complexion of the House. Listening to the hon. Member for Upper Bann, I felt for the first time the stirrings within Unionism for the kind of wish that is deeply held by my constituents and the people my party represents — to take ourselves with dignity from this place and rule and organise our lives in such a way that we can make our own mistakes and go through the teething pains. At least Unionists and Nationalists would not have to live with the humiliating circumstances that the British connection gives us on a constant, almost daily, basis.
It is impossible to discuss this order unless it is placed in the Northern Ireland context. We have the highest level of unemployment in Great Britain, if not within Europe. We certainly have the lowest wages in Great Britain. Without a doubt we have the highest cost of living; we pay more for food, coal and electricity, and we have no gas left. We have the highest social security dependence of arty region in Great Britain and, significantly in terms of the

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order, we have the highest number of young people in Europe. We must consider the enormity of this terrible piece of legislation.
This is part of a twin-track approach. The order should be considered only in conjunction with the Social Security Bill. The twin-track approach involves a terribly flawed premise—that if we can force people into work by reducing social security benefits and then reduce wages to such an extent that more jobs are created, somehow or other the employment position will be improved.
That is brutal nonsense. As the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) pointed out, we have disproved that theory. We have had low social security payments and the lowest spending power imaginable and we have the lowest wages. Has that done anything to ease unemployment? Of course not. Once created by artificial means, such as this, unemployment will simply snowball, and the order will not have the desired effect.
I shall not call this a policy, because it is not a policy. It is not even a strategy. It is a cynical and brutal attempt to recycle poverty—to take people out of one poverty trap and put them into another. It will take away the lowest social security benefit and give people instead the lowest form of employment with the lowest wages.
The order is an attempt at job creation by social oppression. As I said, the Northern Ireland experience has proved conclusively that such tactics do not work. We have experienced low benefits, low spending power and low wages, and we still have the highest unemployment in Great Britain.
The effects of the order will be felt deeply. As has been clearly pointed out, it will affect mainly young people and married women, who are often the only breadwinners in their families — I should amend that to crust-winners, which is what they will be if the order is passed. Those are the people that the order will hurt — the most vulnerable, those least able to help themselves. Look at the scandal of the wages that are already being paid to young people in the catering industry and in the retail industry. The situation has already been abused. Look at the way in which young people in part-time and full-time employment are treated. Look at how vulnerable the married woman—the part-time worker—becomes when legislation such as this prevents any protection of her wage structure.
Can the House imagine what will happen in areas where the area boards are being told by the Government to cut social services and education? Where will the boards start? It will not be with higher, middle or lower management but with part-time school cleaners and the ladies working in the school kitchens. That is where the Government's policy will hurt. The order represents a flawed tactic based on a flawed philosophy.
Inherent in the order, too, is a cruel paradox. There is a complete contradiction in the Government's approach. Incentive after incentive—in taxes and in grants — is provided for wealth creation, but no such incentives are to be provided for poorly paid workers. By contrast they are offered low benefits, low wages and a low quality of life.
Surely the Government will eventually understand that their position is contradictory and realise that, especially in the Northern Irish context, the order cannot be considered an experiment; it is something for which the
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people of Northern Ireland will pay dearly. We have already watched the cruel paradox working in Great Britain. During the last Session of Parliament we had a debate on the divided nation. I remarked then that it was not a divided but an ill-divided nation. That is just as appropriate to this legislation, which will affect a Northern Ireland already affected by depression.
What will this legislation do to young people and women in part-time jobs? It will force them into the new poverty trap of the lace-curtain poor, even though they may be in employment. It may artificially create a few more jobs, which I doubt. Once they get into that trap, they will not benefit from social security or from the wages they are paid, because the legislation opens the door to a low-wage structure.
The legislation is an attempt to divide the spoils. Instead of one poor person, there will be two poor people. In my constituency, £21 million was allocated under the social fund for an area where, in 1986, £38 million was required even to get by. In Newry, in 1988–89, we shall have 58 per cent. of what was required in 1986. In Armagh, we shall have 54 per cent. Strabane, with the highest unemployment in the whole of Europe, will have 38 per cent. of what was required to keep bread on the table in 1986.
This tactic, when allied to the new social security arrangements, is a blueprint for emigration, because young people will not stay under these circumstances. It is a blueprint for exploitation, because young people and the vulnerable will be exploited. It is a blueprint for the cynical recycling of poverty, for the creation of poorly paid jobs by social and economic depression at a time, during the latter part of this century, when one would have hoped that there was some hope and visionary thinking, rather than going back to the practices of the past. I regret this legislation. The Government, and those who support them, will come to regret it too.
11.27 pm
Mr. James Kilfedder: I do not intend to take very long, because I know that the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist), who has a special grasp of this subject, wishes to speak, and I am anxious that he should have a say.
The Minister said that there had been consultation in this matter, but it has been limited consultation, as was pointed out by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara). I do not accept the Minister's suggestion that that limited consultation was in any way an alternative to full and close examination of the order by Parliament.
We live in a parliamentary democracy, but what democracy is being offered to the people of Northern Ireland? This is complex legislation, and it would probably take an hour and a half to read it. Yet we are limited to one and a half hour's debate. The right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) has been described by the Minister, and is accepted by everyone, as a distinguished parliamentarian. As he said, Parliament cannot amend the order. That is an affront to democracy. It is no use the Minister saying that this is the way that we have been doing these things for years. On that basis, the Truck Acts would be maintained. We do not accept the present system. We want a full and proper parliamentary system for all legislation that affects Northern Ireland.

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When I intervened during the Minister's speech, I asked him to take away the order to enable us to have a further debate and close and proper examination of the legislation. I repeat that request to him. This order is being introduced against the background in Northern Ireland of ever-increasing unemployment among school leavers and other young persons. That creates great frustration among the young. Wherever there is frustration there is always the danger that young people will go astray in one way or another.
If the Minister is right, the order may create more jobs, but at what cost to the young persons involved? It may provide more part-time jobs, or jobs at wage levels that create great difficulties for young employees. When the Minister replies to the debate, I should like him to tell the House how rates of pay for young people in Northern Ireland compare with those of young people in other countries in the Western world.
This order will have an adverse effect on many women workers who may be further exploited by their employers. I am worried about the effect that the order will have on those who work in the catering industry and in the licensed and hotel trades. It may put greater pressure on workers, with lower rates of pay and worse conditions for young workers. That would run counter to the need to improve living and working standards in Northern Ireland and throughout the United Kingdom as a whole.
The order will limit the activities of those wages councils that survive to the setting of a single minimum hourly rate in respect of basic hours and a single overtime rate. That simplistic approach is extraordinary at a time of complexity in wage negotiations.
I fear that the order, which the House has had no opportunity to digest, will drive down wages for women and young people. The wages of school leavers have dropped in real terms over the past few years while youth unemployment in the Province has increased. The order will result in more young people being forced to leave Northern Ireland to seek work and a life elsewhere, perhaps in the United Kingdom or abroad. The hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) said that Unionists should shun London, but more than half the young unemployed from the Irish Republic, where conditions are terrible, have sought sanctuary in London.
I fear that the order will have an adverse effect on the living standards of the poorest workers in Northern Ireland. I cannot support it, and I intend to vote against it.
11.33 pm
Mr. Dave Nellist: Other hon. Members have mentioned that for the Government to allocate one and half hours to this order, which will have such a great impact on young workers in Northern Ireland, shows their contempt for democratic values and democratic discussion.
I was a member of the Standing Committee that considered the Wages Bill in 1986. That Bill covered England, Scotland and Wales. We could not discuss Northern Ireland because the Bill did not extend to Northern Ireland. For the last three months I have been a member of the Standing Committee discussing the Social Security Bill, which does not extend to Northern Ireland. Clause 17 precludes any discussion of Northern Ireland. However, in the weeks and months ahead, the Minister will no doubt bring before the House orders under what
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will become the the Social Security Act that can be discussed for only one and a half hours, in just the same way as he has moved this order.
I have no time to deal with parts I, II or IV, except to say that the Minister has been extremely glib in passing off the impact of the abolition of the Truck Acts and the deduction from workers' wages. Nor have I time to deal with the effect of part III on adult workers, although it extends beyond the single hourly rate that will be left after the order is passed and abolishes all rights to minimum holidays, shift pay, weekend pay, premium rates and so on. Time allows me to comment only on how it will affect young workers.
The principle of the legislation has nothing to do with the Minister's arguments about increasing jobs, helping young people into work and the rest of the claptrap that he came out with half an hour ago. It is about cutting the wages of 6,000 young people so that the benchmark drops in Northern Ireland and forces down the wages of other young workers in sectors not now covered by wages council orders.
I asked the Minister in an intervention for the evidence that new jobs would come. He had no answer. There are two possibilities: either he does not know, or he does not care. A third possibility is a combination of the first two. When I asked him a parliamentary question two weeks ago, he admitted that there was no evidence, and that, of course, is the case.
We have heard a good deal about the matter in the past three years. The present Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, when he was Secretary of State for Employment in 1985, spoke of 50,000 to 100,000 jobs being created in Britain and Ireland by measures such as this. Three years before that, in 1982, he said — it was quoted in the Lords — that the abolition of wages council rates for young people would only result in
"a very marginal increase in jobs … largely at the expense of full-time adult jobs."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 6 June 1986; Vol. 475, c. 1212.]
That is where the change will come. It will not be in the increase in net new jobs for young people. Even the Department of Employment's own research paper No. 42, by Mr. Wells, admitted that, according to the Department's research, eight out of every 10 jobs that stand a chance of being affected by the legislation will be substitutions — older workers losing their jobs, and younger people coming in because they are cheaper labour.
Even if 300 new jobs are created in Northern Ireland and even if every statistic produced by the Treasury and the Department of Employment comes true—there is no evidence that that has happened in Britain so far—it will be at the expense of workers. Workers of 55 and older will be told, "The age spectrum for unemployment is being shifted. To buy a bit of social peace among the youth, we are chucking out some of the older workers." That will be the effect of the order, if it has any effect on the number of jobs in Northern Ireland.
According to the Minister, youth wages in the wages councils sector are too high—£55 for a 16-year-old, and £62 for a 17-year-old. If the order goes through, there will still be a legal minimum wage in Northern Ireland— £28·50, under the youth training programme. By freezing that allowance and not properly increasing it in nine years, the Government have prevented it reaching the level that it would have reached if the Labour Government's

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introductory rate of 1978 had kept pace with earnings or inflation. It should be over £50 today. The Government are robbing youngsters in Northern Ireland of £21·50 a week. Of course, this is the same Government who intend to cut the top rate of tax for the top 5 per cent., probably from 60 to 40 per cent.
I shall make a prediction. In a week's time the Minister will see a response from the youth of Northern Ireland, as in the streets of this country, against these plans and the cuts in supplementary benefit to all 16 to 17-year-olds in Britain. My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) mentioned a recruiting ground for sectarianism and paramilitaries in the North. This will emerge from the twin tracks of repression and the poverty that is exacerbated by the present Government.
What will also be seen in the weeks ahead, particularly around Monday 14 March, is a recognition by young people in this country and Northern Ireland that what really divides working people in a capitalist society under a Tory Government is not so much race or religion, as poverty and wealth. A Government who have created 17,000 new millionaires since 1979 are telling youngsters on £50 and £60 a week that they are pricing themselves out of work.
We should expect that from a Minister who is Commodore of the House of Commons yacht club. He knows a lot about living on fifty quid a week. This is a man who cannot live on one job: he has had about 12 in the past five years. He is an underwriter at Lloyd's. People need £60 a week for the fees to get into Lloyd's, and £100,000 liquid assests in the bank before they can be let through the door. Obviously, the Minister is an expert on what it is like on £50 or £60 a week as a youngster, or £80 or £90 a week as an adult worker.
The DHSS admits that the single most common cause of poverty among non-pensioner households in this country is low pay. That is doubly true in Northern Ireland. The order exacerbates those conditions of poverty. To answer the Minister, no country but Britain pulled out of International Labour Organisation convention 26, which was signed by 95 countries. That is how extreme the Tory Government are. They talk about extremism in Northern Ireland, but when it comes to economic measures, poverty and repression, many lessone can be learnt from the extremism of the Tory Government.
The order cannot be taken in isolation. Young people in Northern Ireland already have to undergo two years on youth training programmes. If the order is passed there will be a further three years, with no legal minimum wage. A conveyor belt of young people in the north are being given no future by the Government. There will be no net new jobs for the youth of the north as a result of the order. There will be an increase in the exploitation of the young by unscrupulous employers the day after the order is passed. We have seen it in Britain in pubs, clubs, bars, restaurants and in clothing and catering establishments where, after the Wages Act 1986, employer after employer told workers that their £2 an hour was no longer a legal requirement and put their wages down to £1·50 or £1·25 an hour. That is what will happen in Northern Ireland.
The Minister and his Government will reap the harvest of the seeds that they are sowing tonight among the young. It will not be only the paramilitaries who will go to the disaffected young and try to argue their poison case about
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taking a certain form of action. The labour and trade union movement will do what Winston Churchill feared in the pre-war days when the wages councils were set up in this country. He said that unless we had wages councils the unions would argue for national minimum wages and the unions would organise workers.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions in Northern Ireland has a great task on its hands. When the order is passed, 37,000 workers will no longer have the full legal protection of wages councils. There should be a major recruitment campaign, aimed particularly at the young. Instead of letting the paramilitaries get hold of the young, the labour and trade union movement should get hold of what will undoubtedly be a new generation of class fighters in Northern Ireland when they see the extremes to which the Tory Government are prepared to go.
11.42 pm
Mr. Eddie McCrady: I rise to add my voice in protest against the manner in which such complex legislation is put before us. The time of day and the limited amount of time for speeches does not allow one to make any real in-depth comment on such a complex Order in Council.
Part II of the order is entitled "Protection of Workers", but that is a misnomer. In fact, it is an employers' charter in whatever sector one cares to look. It speaks of employees' rights when shortages have been deducted in either cash or kind. How many employees in Northern Ireland will ever know of those rights? Every employer will be fully aware of what is in the legislation, and it will be a non-starter in terms of the protection of workers.
On the matter of wages for young people, I do not think that anyone here really knows what happens in Northern Ireland among our young people or about the abuses that already exist on many Government-sponsored schemes. For young people the wages are well below an average living wage. Young people are being exploited, even when training under Government sponsorship. We should consider how great that exploitation will be when the employers are not under any control. This is a policy for creating a low wage structure in Northern Ireland and that policy is starting from a point of low wages anyway.
There is the "magnanimous" section dealing with the fact that an employer may not deduct more than 10 per cent. from an employee's wages to cover cash or stock shortages. A 10 per cent. deduction would mean a difference between being able to live and not being able to live. There is no chapter asking the employer to prove that the employee is responsible for cash or stock shortages. This is a charter for employers. It in no way protects Northern Ireland's young employees, as has been mentioned by many more prominent and eloquent speakers than me, or women and others in low-paid jobs. It is they who will suffer.
The timing of the legislation is significant. It must be on the Northern Ireland statute book before 1 April, before the new Social Security Bill comes into operation. If it is not, the actions of the right hand will make nonsense of the actions of the left hand. Between the social security depression and the low-wage depression which will occur if this legislation is passed, people will be living well below poverty level. The conditions in Northern Ireland will deteriorate further. Young people will not be able to emigrate, because there will be nowhere for them to go, They will be unemployed or, if they are lucky enough to

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be employed, they will bring home a derisory wage. They will be at the mercy of the various paramilitaries, who can put an extra tax-free tenner or £30 in their hands at the end of the week for doing a deed that is illegal and that will bring them into conflict with the criminal law. This is the legislation that will put more of our young people into the already bursting gaols of Northern Ireland.
11.46 pm
Mr. Jim Marshall: Although this has been only a one-and-a-half-hour debate, no one can deny that, given its constraints, it has been wide-ranging. The unanimity on both sides of the House on the uselessness of the order for the Northern Ireland economy has been significant. The hon. Member for South Down (Mr. McGrady) summed up the order correctly by referring to it as an employer's charter which shows the desire to have even lower wages in the Province. That point was made also by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist).
There is a danger for youngsters on both sides of the divide in the Province. As my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South-East pointed out, the order offers no hope to young people. It diminishes their hope by the pursuit of some miracle concept of economics called Thatcherism—a concept which has patently not worked in curing the problem of low pay in Great Britain and is obviously doomed to failure in the north of Ireland.
The hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) painted a picture of the background in Northern Ireland — the highest unemployment, the greatest poverty and the lowest wages in the United Kingdom. The Government's only answer to the declining economy is to seek to drive wages even lower in the pursuit of further employment. The Opposition believe that that is a recipe for further economic decline in the north of Ireland and further disappointment and lack of hope among all people seeking a job.
The hon. Members for Upper Bann (Mr. McCusker), who is no longer present, for South Down and for North Down (Mr. Kilfedder) referred to the lack of time in which to debate these complex pieces of legislation. We share that concern, but remind them that the remedy lies in their own hands. If they were prepared to accept a consensus over a devolved assembly in the north of Ireland, sufficient and adequate time could be found in the Province to discuss such legislation. That is the course of action that we would urge on the hon. Members for North Down, for South Down and for Upper Bann.
Mr. Mallon rose—
Mr. Marshall: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will agree that, as I have only two or three more minutes left, and both he and his hon. Friend the Member for South Down have had a decent innings this evening, I should continue.
I should like to refer briefly to the Minister's opening remarks. I found it patronising when he referred to replacing complex and outdated legislation, which he says needs to be updated. It is patronising because he is talking about a euphemism for removing existing workers' rights in the north of Ireland. He referred in passing to the Truck Acts. However, what he forgot to mention is that 40 per cent. of the work force in the north of Ireland is still paid in cash.
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The order seeks to impose on that work force a unilateral decision, made by management, to replace the present cash payment system with a cashless system. In a society in which there is a trend towards more bank accounts and where, inevitably, with the passage of time, more and more people will accept a cashless payment, such changes should be brought about by negotiation, not by the unilateral action of managers of industry.
The Minister also referred to the wages councils. However, he failed to mention that low pay is endemic in the north of Ireland, and the order is likely to make that situation worse.
We shall vote against the order because, in our view, the Government have failed to advance any convincing arguments for the need for this draft order. It is a continuation of the Government's policy of undermining the existing rights of workers. Part III, which deals with wages councils, is an attempt to cut further the wages of the poorest workers in the north of Ireland, who also happen to be the poorest workers in the United Kingdom. It will not create more jobs; it will simply create more poverty. It is a mean-minded measure that is based on dogma. For those reasons, and for the reasons outlined by all my hon. Friends, we shall oppose the order in the Lobby this evening.
11.52 pm
Mr. Viggers: With your leave, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall seek to deal with as many as possible of the points that have been raised during the debate. This is the kind of debate in which there is a clear philosophical divide and on which the House will not agree. On the one hand, there have been several speeches— o doubt deeply felt—urging controls which hon. Members feel will assist workers. On the other hand, the Government are urging deregulation, flexibility and competition leading to growth, prosperity and, we believe, more jobs.
One constitutional point with which I should like to deal has been raised by several hon. Members, notably by the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. McCusker). Of course we recognise the concerns expressed in the debate from hon. Members of different parties, that legislation for Northern Ireland by Order in Council is unsatisfactory.
We do not pretend that that method of legislation is perfect, and it is for that reason that our existing procedures provide for extensive consultation in Northern Ireland, which has taken place on this occasion. We appreciate the difficulties posed by unamendable Orders in Council. I totally agree with the hon. Member for Leicester, South (Mr. Marshall) that the problem may best be addressed in the context of discussions about the future government of Northern Ireland. We are willing to talk about the issues to all interested parties, and to consider constructive suggestions.
The hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) raised a particular point about a worker who joins a company but fails to receive a contract of employment. The answer to his question is that, when such a worker learns of the deductions from his pay, he can appeal to an industrial tribunal. It is obviously important for workers to know their conditions. The right that is now introduced is a new right for employees, in that all workers, not just manual workers, can now appeal to an industrial tribunal, instead of having to take civil action in tort.
The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) asked about the protection of female

151
workers. We refute any suggestion that the proposed reform of wages councils could indirectly discriminate against women, who constitute the majority of wages council workers. If wages council protection currently favours women in preference to men, any reduction in that inequality of protection cannot possibly be discrimination. There will also be separate legislation dealing with sex discrimination. The Equal Opportunities Commission in Northern Ireland is funded proportionately higher than that in Britain.
The hon. Gentleman also asked about consultation on the order. There were preliminary consultations, which were followed by publication of a proposal for a draft order that set out the Government's plans in detail. The consultative document was fully considered and reported by the then Northern Ireland Assembly. The hon. Member for North Down (Mr. Kilfedder) asked about consultations. I am sure that he will remember that the consultations took place under his Speakership of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
There is clear evidence from studies in the United Kingdom and internationally that there is a link between pay and jobs, especially for the young. Several studies of the employment effect of the wages council system contain evidence that those councils inhibit employment.
The hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) raised a number of points about social security legislation. The House must realise that the proposals in the wages order apply only to 7 per cent. of workers in employment and are quite distinct from the social security implications. Some 5,000 young workers will be taken out of the scope of the wages councils, compared with 40,000 employees under the age of 21 who are not subject to a statutory minimum wage and therefore will not be affected.
The hon. Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist) asked about the recent studies. I refer him to a question that he asked in the debate in February 1986 when my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster pointed out that the effect of wages councils was to set a 16-year-old's wage rate at 65 per cent. or more of the adult rate and that that compared with about half of 16-year-olds who received in excess of the 60 per cent. of the adult rate where wages councils did not apply. That clearly suggested that wages councils set wages that tend to increase the wages of younger people, and that is why we believe that it is important that such a restriction should be removed.
Mr. Nellist: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Viggers: The hon. Gentleman has made more than one intervention, and I have two minutes in which to answer a number of other points. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, but I must continue.
The answer to the hon. Member for South Down (Mr. McGrady) is that there is not the slightest evidence that employers have seized on the reforms as a method of indulging in mass exploitation.
The order brings the law up to date. It recognises that we are now in the computer age and light years away from the tommy-shop and other abuses that necessitated the passing of the Truck Acts in the Victorian era to ensure that manual workers were paid in cash.
152
We need to accommodate the modern, electronic age and to encourage workers to receive their wages in cashless forms. We need to encourage the use of automated credit transfers and other methods of pay that are quite commonplace elsewhere in the United Kingdom and, indeed, on the continent. The hon. Member for Leicester, South was correct to point out that a high proportion of workers in Northern Ireland receive their pay in cash, and it is important that we do what we can to encourage them to move to cashless pay.
The legislation deals with the wages councils and the Truck Acts. It is a matter of great pride to me that, on 16 February 1983, I introduced a ten-minute Bill entitled the Truck Acts (Abolition) Bill. That Bill pointed out that the Acts were archaic and anachronistic and needed to be replaced.
Mr. Nellist rose—
Mr. Viggers: It is a source of great pride that I can now stand at the Dispatch Box and urge the House to do exactly that in Northern Ireland.
Question put:
The House divided: Ayes 258, Noes 195.

Division No. 205]

[11.59 pm

AYES

Adley, Robert

Carttiss, Michael

Aitken, Jonathan

Cash, William

Alexander, Richard

Chalker, Rt Hon Mrs Lynda

Alison, Rt Hon Michael

Channon, Rt Hon Paul

Allason, Rupert

Chapman, Sydney

Amess, David

Chope, Christopher

Amos, Alan

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

Arbuthnot, James

Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)

Arnold, Tom (Hazel Grove)

Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)

Ashby, David

Colvin, Michael

Aspinwall, Jack

Conway, Derek

Atkins, Robert

Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)

Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

Baldry, Tony

Cope, John

Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

Couchman, James

Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

Cran, James

Bellingham, Henry

Currie, Mrs Edwina

Bendall, Vivian

Davis, David (Boothferry)

Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)

Day, Stephen

Benyon, W.

Devlin, Tim

Biffen, Rt Hon John

Dickens, Geoffrey

Blackburn, Dr John G.

Dorrell, Stephen

Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter

Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

Dover, Den

Boscawen, Hon Robert

Dunn, Bob

Boswell, Tim

Durant, Tony

Bottomley, Peter

Evans, David (Welwyn Hatf'd)

Bottomley, Mrs Virginia

Evennett, David

Bowden, A (Brighton K'pto'n)

Fairbairn, Nicholas

Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

Fallon, Michael

Bowis, John

Farr, Sir John

Boyson, Rt Hon Dr Sir Rhodes

Favell, Tony

Brandon-Bravo, Martin

Fenner, Dame Peggy

Brazier, Julian

Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)

Bright, Graham

Finsberg, Sir Geoffrey

Brittan, Rt Hon Leon

Fookes, Miss Janet

Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

Forman, Nigel

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

Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

Bruce, Ian (Dorset South)

Forth, Eric

Buck, Sir Antony

Fox, Sir Marcus

Budgen, Nicholas

Franks, Cecil

Burns, Simon

Freeman, Roger

Burt, Alistair

French, Douglas

Butcher, John

Gale, Roger

Butler, Chris

Gardiner, George

Butterfill, John

Garel-Jones, Tristan

Carlisle, John, (Luton N)

Gill, Christopher

Carrington, Matthew

Goodhart, Sir Philip

153

Goodlad, Alastair

Patmck, Irvine

Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles

Patten, Chris (Bath)

Gorman, Mrs Teresa

Patten, John (Oxford W)

Gow, Ian

Pawsey, James

Gower, Sir Raymond

Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

Porter, David (Waveney)

Greenway, John (Ryedale)

Portillo, Michael

Gregory, Conal

Price, Sir David

Griffiths, Sir Eldon (Bury St E')

Raffan, Keith

Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)

Raison, Rt Hon Timothy

Grist, Ian

Redwood, John

Ground, Patrick

Renton, Tim

Grylls, Michael

Rhodes James, Robert

Hamilton, Hon Archie (Epsom)

Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

Riddick, Graham

Hanley, Jeremy

Ridsdale, Sir Julian

Hannam, John

Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)

Hargreaves, A. (B'ham H'll Gr')

Roe, Mrs Marion

Hargreaves, Ken (Hyndburn)

Rossi, Sir Hugh

Harris, David

Rowe, Andrew

Hayes, Jerry

Sackville, Hon Tom

Hayhoe, Rt Hon Sir Barney

Sainsbury, Hon Tim

Hayward, Robert

Sayeed, Jonathan

Heathcoat-Amory, David

Scott, Nicholas

Heddle, John

Shaw, David (Dover)

Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael

Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

Hicks, Mrs Maureen (Wolv' NE)

Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

Hicks, Robert (Cornwall SE)

Shelton, William (Streatham)

Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

Shephard, Mrs G. (Norfolk SW)

Hill, James

Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

Holt, Richard

Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

Hordern, Sir Peter

Shersby, Michael

Howard, Michael

Sims, Roger

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

Skeet, Sir Trevor

Howarth, G. (Cannock & B'wd)

Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

Howell, Ralph (North Norfolk)

Soames, Hon Nicholas

Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)

Speed, Keith

Hunt, David (Wirral W)

Spicer, Sir Jim (Dorset W)

Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

Hunter, Andrew

Stanbrook, Ivor

Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas

Steen, Anthony

Irvine, Michael

Stern, Michael

Jack, Michael

Stevens, Lewis

Jackson, Robert

Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)

Janman, Tim

Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)

Jessel, Toby

Stewart, Ian (Hertfordshire N)

Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

Stokes, John

Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

Sumberg, David

Jones, Robert B (Herts W)

Summerson, Hugo

Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine

Tapsell, Sir Peter

Key, Robert

Taylor, John M (Solihull)

Knight, Greg (Derby North)

Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman

Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)

Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)

Knox, David

Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

Lamont, Rt Hon Norman

Thorne, Neil

Latham, Michael

Thurnham, Peter

Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

Townend, John (Bridlington)

Lightbown, David

Tracey, Richard

Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

Tredinnick, David

Lord, Michael

Trippier, David

Maclean, David

Vaughan, Sir Gerard

McNair-Wilson, M. (Newbury)

Viggers, Peter

McNair-Wilson, P. (New Forest)

Waddington, Rt Hon David

Major, Rt Hon John

Waldegrave, Hon William

Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

Walker, Bill (T'side North)

Mates, Michael

Waller, Gary

Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick

Ward, John

Miscampbell, Norman

Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

Morris, M (N'hampton S)

Wells, Bowen

Neale, Gerrard

Wheeler, John

Neubert, Michael

Whitney, Ray

Newton, Rt Hon Tony

Widdecombe, Ann

Nicholls, Patrick

Wiggin, Jerry

Nicholson, David (Taunton)

Wilshire, David

Nicholson, Emma (Devon West)

Winterton, Mrs Ann

Onslow, Rt Hon Cranley

Winterton, Nicholas

Oppenheim, Phillip

Wolfson, Mark

Page, Richard

Wood, Timothy

Paice, James

Woodcock, Mike

154

Yeo, Tim

Tellers for the Ayes:

Young, Sir George (Acton)

Mr. Richard Ryder and

Mr. Kenneth Carlisle.

NOES

Abbott, Ms Diane

Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

Allen, Graham

Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

Anderson, Donald

Grocott, Bruce

Archer, Rt Hon Peter

Hardy, Peter

Armstrong, Hilary

Harman, Ms Harriet

Ashley, Rt Hon Jack

Haynes, Frank

Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

Healey, Rt Hon Denis

Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)

Heffer, Eric S.

Battle, John

Henderson, Doug

Beckett, Margaret

Hinchliffe, David

Benn, Rt Hon Tony

Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

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

Holland, Stuart

Bermingham, Gerald

Home Robertson, John

Bidwell, Sydney

Hood, Jimmy

Blunkett, David

Howarth, George (Knowsley Nj

Boateng, Paul

Howell, Rt Hon D. (S'heath)

Boyes, Roland

Hughes, John (Coventry NE)

Bradley, Keith

Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

Bray, Dr Jeremy

Hughes, Roy (Newport E)

Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)

Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)

Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)

Illsley, Eric

Brown, Ron (Edinburgh Leith)

Ingram, Adam

Buchan, Norman

Janner, Greville

Buckley, George J.

John, Brynmor

Caborn, Richard

Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside)

Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S W)

Campbell, Ron (Blyth Valley)

Kilfedder, James

Campbell-Savours, D. N.

Lamond, James

Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

Leadbitter, Ted

Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

Leighton, Ron

Clay, Bob

Lestor, Joan (Eccles)

Clelland, David

Lewis, Terry

Clwyd, Mrs Ann

Litherland, Robert

Cohen, Harry

Livingstone, Ken

Coleman, Donald

Lofthouse, Geoffrey

Cook, Robin (Livingston)

Loyden, Eddie

Corbett, Robin

McAllion, John

Corbyn, Jeremy

McAvoy, Thomas

Cousins, Jim

McCartney, Ian

Cox, Tom

McCusker, Harold

Cryer, Bob

Macdonald, Calum A.

Cummings, John

McFall, John

Cunningham, Dr John

McGrady, Eddie

Darling, Alistair

McKay, Allen (Barnsley West)

Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

McKelvey, William

Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

McLeish, Henry

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

McNamara, Kevin

Dewar, Donald

McTaggart, Bob

Doran, Frank

McWilliam, John

Duffy, A. E. P.

Madden, Max

Dunnachie, Jimmy

Mahon, Mrs Alice

Eadie, Alexander

Mallon, Seamus

Eastham, Ken

Marek, Dr John

Evans, John (St Helens N)

Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

Ewing, Harry (Falkirk E)

Martin, Michael J. (Springburn)

Fatchett, Derek

Martlew, Eric

Faulds, Andrew

Maxton, John

Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

Meacher, Michael

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

Michael, Alun

Fisher, Mark

Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

Flannery, Martin

Millan, Rt Hon Bruce

Flynn, Paul

Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)

Foot, Rt Hon Michael

Moonie, Dr Lewis

Foster, Derek

Morgan, Rhodri

Foulkes, George

Morley, Elliott

Fyfe, Maria

Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

Galbraith, Sam

Mowlam, Marjorie

Galloway, George

Mullin, Chris

Garrett, John (Norwich South)

Murphy, Paul

Garrett, Ted (Wallsend)

Nellist, Dave

George, Bruce

Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

Godman, Dr Norman A.

O'Brien, William

Golding, Mrs Llin

Parry, Robert

Gordon, Mildred

Patchett, Terry

Graham, Thomas

Pendry, Tom

155

Pike, Peter L.

Snape, Peter

Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

Spearing, Nigel

Prescott, John

Steinberg, Gerry

Quin, Ms Joyce

Stott, Roger

Radice, Giles

Strang, Gavin

Randall, Stuart

Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

Redmond, Martin

Thompson, Jack (Wansbeck)

Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn

Turner, Dennis

Reid, Dr John

Wall, Pat

Richardson, Jo

Walley, Joan

Roberts, Allan (Bootle)

Warden, Gareth (Gower)

Robertson, George

Wareing, Robert N.

Robinson, Geoffrey

Welsh, Michael (Doncaster N)

Rogers, Allan

Williams, Rt Hon Alan

Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

Williams, Alan W. (Carm'then)

Ross, William (Londonderry E)

Wilson, Brian

Ruddock, Joan

Wise, Mrs Audrey

Salmond, Alex

Worthington, Tony

Sedgemore, Brian

Wray, Jimmy

Sheerman, Barry

Young, David (Bolton SE)

Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

Short, Clare

Tellers for the Noes:

Skinner, Dennis

Mr. Don Dixon and

Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

Mr. Allen Adams.

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

Question accordingly agreed to.
Resolved,
That the draft Wages (Northern Ireland) Order 1988, which was laid before this House on 10th December, be approved.

Customs Duties
12.9 am
The Minister for Trade (Mr. Alan Clark): I beg to move,
That the Customs Duties (ECSC) (Quota and Other Reliefs) (Amendment) Order 1988 (S.I., 1988, No. 185), dated 10th February 1988, a copy of which was laid before this House on 12th February, be approved.
The purpose of this order is to amend the Customs Duties (ECSC) (Quota and Other Reliefs) Order 1987, so that certain iron and steel products originating in the Republic of Korea will no longer benefit from exemption from customs duties. I propose briefly to review the background to this issue.
The decision by the European Community to suspend Korea's benefits under the generalised scheme of preferences came in response to the Korean Government's refusal to extend to member states concessions already given to the United States on intellectual property matters.
New Korean legislation took effect from 1 July 1987 which provided improved protection of intellectual property rights in copyright and patent protection. That, together with Korea's accession to international conventions such as the universal copyright convention and the Geneva phonogram convention, was welcomed by the United Kingdom and other member states. However, the Korean Government had already entered, in July 1986, a separate bilateral arrangement with the United States, which gave United States patent and copyright holders certain special concessions on retroactive protection, as well as allowing them to convert pending applications for process patents for chemical and pharmaceutical products to the more secure product patents.
When it became clear that the Korean Government had no intention of extending these same concessions to their other trading partners, the United Kingdom and the European Community made it clear that such discriminatory action, and the resultant material disadvantage to our firms, was wholly unacceptable. The matter was raised repeatedly with the Korean Government. At the high-level talks in April last year between the Community and the Korean Government, the Koreans declared that
"equal, if not identical, treatment"
to that accorded to the United States would be extended to the Community. Clarification of exactly what that meant was promised later in the year.
Following the Anglo-Korean trade talks held in London in September and a visit to Seoul by senior officials from the Commission in November, the Korean Government confirmed that, although they were prepared to extend to European firms the concessions on retroactive protection, they could offer no such equality on the conversion of pending process parients.
Continued discrimination in this area in favour of the United States will have a substantial adverse effect on Community exports of chemicals and pharmaceuticals. The United Kingdom industry estimates that it could cost it $100 million in terms of lost sales in the Korean market alone, and three to four times that amount in sales to third markets. Given such material disadvantage, as well as the fact that an important principle was being contravened, we were left with no option but to carry through the proposal, of which the Koreans were first warned in April 1987, to suspend Korea's benefits under GSP until a satisfactory conclusion was reached.

157
In our view, failure to take positive action at this stage would have undermined the credibility of the Community and left the door open for more bilateral arrangements of a similar kind, to our further disadvantage. The suspension was approved by the Council of Ministers on 18 December and came into effect from 1 January 1988. The Government's support for this measure took into account the likely effect of suspension both on British manufacturers and on British consumers, importers and distributors.
As the House is aware, the overall purpose of GSP is to help developing countries through promotion of their export earnings, industrialisation, and rate of economic growth. It is, however, a totally autonomous instrument, and we are fully entitled to withdraw privileges from a beneficiary country if that country is applying discriminatory treatment that runs counter to our and the Community's interests. Under the scheme, it is estimated that Korean goods to the value of £172 million per annum enter the United Kingdom duty free.
The current position is that we await an indication from the new Korean Government that they are prepared to return to the negotiating table in order to reach a satisfactory resolution of this issue. We hope that the removal of discrimination on intellectual property matters and the subsequent restoration of Korea's EC GSP benefits will be examined urgently by the new Administration. I am confident that the House will agree with the review, and I invite it to support the motion.
12.16 am
Mr. Austin Mitchell: When the Minister talks of suspending South Korea's benefits, he makes it sound as if we are dealing with some kind of international workfare. However, we are dealing with a basic matter of industrial policy; with an order which is unimportant in itself but which involves important principles. We have the full attention of this packed and tumultuous House, and the presence of a Minister who was a protectionist until he entered the Department of Trade and Industry and, therefore, went into the advertising industry. We still have hopes of the Minister, because when people in the Department ask to see the beef, they see the Minister. When they ask, "Where is the bull?" they are directed to his senior Minister, the noble Lord Young of Graffham, Saatchi and Saatchi and J. Walter Thompson and Co. Ltd. The Minister for Trade is the beef because he has a concern for all industry.
The problem is that South Korea has a rapidly growing steel industry that is a potential threat to our industry and to the industries of others. The figures are quite alarming. In contrast to the steel industries of most European countries, which have cut production in the last few years, South Korea has gone from the production of 8,558,000 tonnes in 1980 to 16,780,000 tonnes in 1987. That is an estimate, but the figures show an increase of 96 per cent. in steel output. That can be compared to a fall in production in Britain and, indeed, in every other country in the European Community. The South Korean steel industry is becoming extremely powerful.
The most important of the six major producers in South Korea is Pohang Iron and Steel, or Posco. It is Government-controlled and has 67 per cent. of the total crude steel output. It has plans for a rapid and substantial expansion, and its new plant on the south coast, which I visited, is alarmingly efficient. The ore in vessels comes in
158
at one end of the plant, goes round the bay in a circular process and finished steel is taken out in vessels at the other end. It is an extremely efficient, integrated unit of production that added 2·7 million tonnes to the company's overall capacity. It has plans to take production to 20 million tonnes as early as 1993, and that in an industry whose wage rates are about one third less than the average rate in the EEC. It will be an extremely competitive industry.
We are now withdrawing developing country status from that industry because of what the Minister described as something that cannot help but seem a somewhat silly but fortuitous row. In other words, we are using the excuse of an argument over intellectual properties to do something that we should have done anyway to protect our steel industry and steel industries in the rest of Europe, where there is over-production of about 20 million tonnes.
The removal of a generalised system of preference status is a small bite. The cost to Korean exporters in extra duties will be only about £34 million in higher EEC customs duties. That is an extra cost on the deficit in trade with South Korea that is rising very rapidly. In 1986, there was a deficit of £815 million, and it is estimated that the 1987 figure will reach $2 billion. The deficit is big, and it is growing, and the order will not have much impact on that.
It is crucial that we stop the rapid drive to major steel production status. Korea's output is now only slightly smaller than that of the British steel industry. That is inevitable. A developing, newly industrialising country will build up a steel industry as the basis for its manufacturing sector. The steel industry, along with car manufacturing —the plants are close to each other—will be the basic drive motor of expansion in South Korea. This expansion is occurring at a time when there is world over-capacity in steel of nearly 100 million tonnes.
There will be a major challenge. It is unrealistic to argue, as some people do, that South Korean steel is of inferior quality. I have heard steel importers in this country say that Korean steel is cheap but the quality is not as consistent or as good as ours. That may have been true some years ago. It is true that Korea is weak in special steels, but the quality is improving all the time.
Why should the EEC not operate a concerted policy of denying hope to the expanding market? So long as there is the prospect of sending those exports to Europe or the United States — the United States is taking action through quotas and voluntary restrictions—the Koreans will continue to invest in their steel industry and expand it. They will continue to build up capacity in a world in which there is over-capacity.
We shall face a challenge unless we take action not to close the market, but to deny the easy prospect that our market has been offering the Koreans to continue to invest and build up their steel industry. I do not like restrictions, but we must think about British industry and jobs. I wish that the Government would think more seriously and more continually about British industry and the effects of this type of international agreement on jobs in this country.
Did our Government urge the withdrawal of the system of preferences from South Korea? We know that the French Government were strenuous in their attempts to urge the EEC to seize the opportunity of the argument over intellectual properties to withdraw GSP status. It is alarming that it took that row to achieve the necessary

159
withdrawal that is an important protection for our industry and for Europe, where there is such overcapacity.
The one thing that characterises the EEC facing this type of threat from developing countries is that we must realise that today's developing country is tomorrow's newly industrialising country and the day after tomorrow's Japan. The rate of development is very rapid, nowhere more so than in South Korea.
In July 1986 Sir Robert Scholey reported to the Select Committee on Trade and Industry:
"It seems that the future is going to be very competitive still for steel. We were recently told by Mr. Narjes, Vice President, who is in charge, as you know, of industrial matters in the Commission, that we could not really look for much, if any, peripheral protection for European steelmakers from Third World penetration; whatever protection there might be afforded to it would have to be found under the Tokyo Round of the GATT negotiations. That, in a way, is rather cold comfort. He then goes along"—
Mr. Narjes, that is—
"and says, 'Well, of course, these Third World countries all are owing the Western wealthier countries a lot of money. How are you expecting them ever to pay off their debts if you don't help them to sell in your market whatever they're making?' Again, that is rather cold comfort."
It is cold comfort indeed for a European industry that has over-capacity.
A nation is building up a powerful industrial economy predicated on continued access to European market and growing competition with European steel producers, and we need a policy to deal with that. We need a measure of protection for basic industries such as steel. It is ludicrous not to be able to expand the European economies collectively because of the danger that imports will come pouring in. If the Government will not co-operate with industry—if their stance is "Hands off"—we need EEC protection even more, because it is right that jobs should come first.
The measure provides slight protection from a competitor that is growing more powerful and efficient all the time and will very shortly out-distance our steel industry in capacity. However, it is ludicrous that that has been arrived at by this back-door process. This happy accident is result of a somewhat trumped-up row rather than a matter of considered policy. It makes it look as though Europe staggers into change by accident —indeed, as though it staggers from accident to accident: some of them, including this one, benign but many of them malign.
We would like the Minister to declare in ringing terms that the Government will push for a policy of considered protection for basic industries such as steel, so that developing countries are not offered the prospect of limitless access to our markets to threaten our industry. We would like that to be a basic strategy, whereas we have arrived at this order by accident. If we had that, the Common Market would be doing something useful for Britain instead of bleeding this country white.
12.27 am
Mr. Ian Gow: I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will not think it presumptuous of me if I congratulate him on a characteristically lucid and excellent speech. This important debate takes place in the absence of a single member of the Social and Liberal Democrats
160
—a fact that was noted by the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell). I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to confirm in his reply that in this case—if not with other recent events in the European Economic Community — it remains for this House to decide whether to act on recommendations and decisions made in Brussels. It will come as a relief to many of my hon. Friends if my hon. Friend can assure the House that we are not acting under instruction from Lord Cockfield or anyone in the Commission.
I warmly welcome the order, because it is putting right what was a manifest injustice. We are debating the order because of the wrongdoing of the Government of the Republic of Korea. To put right something that is wrong is characteristic of my hon. Friend the Minister for Trade.
I have a couple of short points to put to my hon. Friend. Why is it that in the heading, although we are clearly talking about a single statutory instrument, the wording is in the plural? That will be misleading to those who are students of our proceedings.
Secondly, my hon. Friend and I are both deeply suspicious—and my right hon. Friend the Patronage Secretary will no doubt think that we are suspicious with good reason—of retrospective legislation. What do we find in the preamble of the order commended to the House? Is not today 8 March, and are we not told that it comes into force on 15 February? Is that not retrospective legislation, and have not my hon. Friend and I, in days gone by, spoken out strongly against such legislation?
Mr. Austin Mitchell: Vote against the order.
Mr. Gow: No. I have said that I approve of the order, and I have only a couple of modest points to make to my hon. Friend about the drafting of the document.
I have to confess to a sin on my part. Here we find the initials ECSC. I think that I can work out the first two, although my hon. Friend may say that I have got this wrong. I assume that they stand for European Community. I will give way if I have got this wrong.
Mr. George Foulkes: I believe that the initials stand for European Coal and Steel Community, but I might be wrong.
Mr. Gow: I am grateful for that information. I just want to assist those who are students of the European Community. Would it not be easier for those who will be studying this document in every classroom and public library in the land, after it has been issued, no doubt with the Conservative briefing papers with our weekly issue on Thursday or Friday, if we had a full stop after each of the initials? I commend that thought to my hon. Friend for when he brings forward his next order.
This has been an illuminating debate. We have been enriched by the eloquence and elegance of my hon. Friend the Minister for Trade.
12.33 am
Mr. Alan Clark: I shall answer to the best of my ability the closely detailed questions raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow). There was one point, before the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) came to my help, when I was reminded of a singularly disagreeable experience that I once had in a Committee, when I was challenged as to the identity of the initials in the acronym GM BATU, while we were debating some employment legislation. I made

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several attempts to suggest what they might stand for, and made one or two slight errors. That will not he repeated this evening because the hon. Gentleman has already enlightened the House. "E" stands for European, "C" stands for Community.
Mr. David Harris: No, for coal.
Mr. Clark: No, I will brook no argument. "E" stands for Europe. "C" can stand for both Community and coal. My hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris) is arguing with me. Is my hon. Friend saying that "C" does not stand for Community? "C" can stand for both Community and coal, and "S" can stand for steel.
Mr. Foulkes: Is there not a common misunderstanding in the United Kingdom that there is one European Community, whereas there are a number of European Communities? One is the European Coal and Steel Community; another is Euratom; the third is the Economic Community. Together they are known as the European Community. If all hon. Members understood that fact, they would not fall into the trap into which the hon. Member for Eastbourne fell during this debate.
Mr. Clark: I do not think that my hon. Friend fell into a trap, because he, like me, is steadfastly convinced that the word Community begins with a "C"—
Mr. John Maxton: So does coal.
Mr. Clark: Yes, so does coal.
The dispute to which the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) referred was not trivial. It was a fundamental matter of principle and it led to the drafting of this order. The Koreans conducted a separate deal with the United States. Bilateral deals of that kind are deeply destructive of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and it was perfectly proper for the Community to respond as it did.
The hon. Gentleman's wider question regarding Korea's eligibility for the general scheme of preference, and the damage that that may continue to do to our economy, if it persists, is central to the GATT round that is under way. It is described as the integration and graduation of the newly industrialised countries, but many people believe that Korea has already reached the point, in terms of both its income per capita and its industrial development, at which it is no longer eligible for the GSP. Korea's eligibility for the GSP, as well as that of Taiwan and Singapore, has already been removed by the United States. It is also a strong candidate for removal during the current negotiations on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
The House appears to be very much of the same mind, and I am sure that it will approve the order.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the Customs Duties (ECSC) (Quota and Other Reliefs) (Amendment) Order 1988 (S.I., 1988, No. 185), dated 10th February 1988, a copy of which was laid before this House on 12th February, be approved.

Bypasses (Ayrshire)
12.37 am
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Boscawen]
Mr. George Foulkes: I am grateful for the opportunity to debate this matter. When I met the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton) face to face, it was like coming up against a brick wall. I mean that in no personal pejorative sense, but that was his response to the points that were put to him. I hope that I shall receive a more constructive response from him tonight.
The start of this sorry saga was on 19 May 1987, when Tory fortunes were flagging in the general election campaign. The Secretary of State for Scotland was desperate to make one specific pledge which he hoped would hit the headlines and rescue those flagging fortunes. The scheme that he hit on was to upgrade the main highway to England, the A74. It certainly hit the headlines, but the general election result showed that his party's fortunes in Scotland were beyond saving. The number of Tory seats was reduced by half.
On 20 May, the Glasgow Herald recorded the pledge to upgrade the A74 without any qualification whatsoever and welcomed it in its leader column, as we all did. Such a commitment to additional public expenditure by the Conservatives is very rare and, when it comes, it must certainly be welcomed. Everybody assumed that the Secretary of State meant that additional money would be provided for the A74, otherwise why make a statement about this new, great project? Without the pledge of additional funds it would have been a very hollow pledge indeed if the rest of a vital trunk road programme had to suffer as a result.
It now looks as though there was double talk and deceit when that promise was made. I invite the Under-Secretary of State and his adviser, the other Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, the hon. Member for Stirling (Mr. Forsyth) —who has slunk in, as usual—to explain the position. It appears that no extra money had then been secured by the Secretary of State for the upgrading of the A74 and that, to say the least, the Secretary of State was being economical with the truth in his election promises. Alternatively, any hope or expectation that he had of extra money at the time was one of the main victims of subsequent cuts that the Scottish Office had to make.
Whatever the explanation, the sad truth began to become evident by December 1987, when officials of Strathclyde region were given details of postponements to a catalogue of road improvements. When I met the Under-Secretary of State we had one of the most barren dialogues, that it has ever been my misfortune to experience. On that occasion, and in his subsequent statement, he contended that the A74 upgrading would not be achieved at the expense of other programmes.
The hon. Gentleman based that statement on one simple argument. He said in his letter of 3 February that they were never more than the earliest possible starting dates. I understand and accept why he said that, but according to my understanding and that of Cumnock and Doon Valley district council and its officers, of Kyle and Carrick district council, and councillors of both political persuasions and none — although they seem to be

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drifting back to one—and, above all, of the chairperson of the Strathclyde regional council roads committee and all the officers concerned in the region, the dates given for Auchinleck and Cumnock, New Cumnock and Maybole were definite. In the case of the Girvan bypass, it was understood that the start merely awaited the beginning of the detailed feasibility study—like the feasibility study that the Minister tells me is now under way for the A74.
The Minister should know better than anyone. On 18 February Mr. Howitt, the deputy chief executive of Strathclyde regional council, wrote to the secretary of the Scottish Development Department listing delays to no fewer than 34 road schemes within the region. I am sure that the Minister will confirm that. Mr. Howitt said in his letter:
"arising out of discussions in the Trunk Road Programme which officials of the Department of Roads had with your officials during December 1987, the enclosed list showing previously understood start dates compared with what the new start dates are likely to be"—
they are not provisional; there is no qualification; they are previously understood starting dates—
"was prepared and submitted to the Committee on 4 February."
Mr. Howitt continued:
"At that meeting the Committee expressed its concern about any delay to the schemes and agreed to seek a response as a matter of urgency".
In the list attached to the letter, which included the 34 schemes, the Cumnock-Auchinleck bypass was shown as due to start in May 1988—a definite start—and was then postponed until June 1991. The new Cumnock bypass is shown as delayed from August 1988 to May 1991, Maybole is shown as delayed from April 1990 to September 1992 and Girvan from September 1991 to September 1993. In addition, other vital schemes in south Ayrshire on the A77 south of Ballantrae and at Bennane Hill are also postponed for three and two years respectively.
One wonders what can cause such a wholesale postponement of road programmes, which were presumably carefully planned and designed to fit in with the cash available. What happened between June and December 1987? I know that in the case of the schemes in my constituency there have been no delays in statutory or other procedures. Indeed, Strathclyde region confirmed that the Cumnock-Auchinleck bypass was ready to go to tender. I hope that the Minister will confirm that that is the case. Therefore, that cannot be the reason for the delay. There is no delay in the statutory procedures in my constituency, and I suspect that that is the case with the other 34 schemes.
Has there been a sudden and unexpected reduction in the total money available for road construction? To get the answer I looked to the 1988 commentary on expenditure from 1990 to 1991. That confirms that, although the provision for 1988–89 for motorway and trunk roads was £129 million—about 6 per cent. below the previously planned level—the provision for 1989–90 and 1990–91 is planned to be £140 million in each year. That does not seem to warrant such a sudden and dramatic postponement of so many schemes already in the pipeline. Indeed, it should mean the reverse. That modest increase should
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allow one or two more schemes to go ahead, or it should allow an advancement of schemes rather than postponement.
Mr. Allan Stewart: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, north of the schemes that have been mentioned, the A77 Ayr road route is crucial, not only to his constituents, but to mine and to the constituents of the hon. Members for Glasgow, Rutherglen (Mr. McAvoy) and for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Maxton), who are in the Chamber? Would it not be helpful if the Minister gave the House an indication of the position on the A77?
Mr. Foulkes: I should welcome that statement from the Minister. The Strathclyde list shows that the A77 Ayr route has been postponed from February 1990 to January 1991. That is not as big a postponement as some of the other schemes, particularly the Ayrshire bypasses, but it is an unfortunate postponement. I agree with the hon. Member for Eastwood (Mr. Stewart) that the Ayr road route is important for access to Ayrshire, from Ayrshire to the motorway system, and for access to Prestwick airport. I know that the hon. Gentleman would want to do everything he can to improve access to that airport.
I have given two possible reasons for postponement, but neither seems to have any validity. Therefore, the inescapable conclusion is that the schemes are being delayed to prepare for the A74 upgrading so that that can be paid for out of the normal roads programme. If other schemes were to be started now, they would be in progress when the A74 upgrading is due to start. Those schemes would have taken up too much of the available funds to allow the A74 upgrading to go ahead.
We know that the A74 improvement will cost about £200 million over 10 years. If any credence is to be given to pledges by the current Secretary of State at the election which we know will be held about three years from now, the A74 upgrading will have to be under way by then. If it is not, people will say, "You promised and nothing has happened."
I should make it clear—I think that I am speaking on behalf of all my hon. Friends — that we do not oppose the improvements to the A74. Indeed, we all welcome the Secretary of State's promise. However, we welcome it on the understanding that extra funds will he provided to pay for it, and not that the existing roads programme will be slashed.
On 6 February, in its main leader, the Glasgow Herald said:
"Our welcome last year was predicated on the belief that the upgrading of the A74 would be funded by new money".
The leader added:
"Mr. Rifkind should come clean on his intentions. Will the M74 project attract additional funding or not?"
That is my key question to the Minister. We shall all study his answer carefully. As the same leader said:
"No one forced Mr. Rifkind to make his promise about the A74. He should redeem it without dipping into the rest of the roads budget. To do otherwise would devalue the currency in which politicians trade."
At my meeting with the Minister I advanced the argument for the Ayrshire bypasses on the ground of road safety. His answer showed that there were more serious accidents and deaths on the A77—which bears out the point made by the hon. Member for Eastwood (Mr. Stewart)—than on the so-called killer road, the A74.
I also advanced the argument for environmental improvements in the towns concerned. I recently received

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additional evidence to support my case from Mr. Sievwright from Maybole. He has been corresponding with Strathclyde regional council about the juggernauts that go through the centre of Maybole. He has received confirmation that the recommended distance between the edge of a pavement and the wall of houses or shops should be at least 2 m to allow wheelchairs and prams to be pushed along. In one area of Maybole the pavement is 25 in wide, so people have to put prams and wheelchairs on the road to get up through the main street.
I also advanced the argument for the bypasses on the ground of improving the infrastructure of industrial development in an area which has the highest unemployment in Britain. I advanced all those arguments to support the need for the bypasses to be constructed on schedule, as promised. I understood from the Minister's comments that he readily accepted those arguments. Since then, the two district region have condemned the M councils in my area—I include Conservative councillors—and the inister for the delay. They all support me in the campaign to get him to stick to his promises. I have had letters and telephone calls from people in Girvan, Maybole, Cumnock, New Cumnock, and Auchinleck, including candidates in the district election, such as Helen Kelly and Ian Picken, in Girvan, who will be councillors after the next election. They have strongly argued for the Girvan bypass. Many people have asked me to press the Minister on this matter.
It is still not too late for the Minister and his boss to restore credibility to the Government. I sometimes wonder whether the boss is the Secretary of State or whether it is the wee Under-Secretary of State—the hon. Member for Stirling—who has been whispering in the ear of the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West. The interesting question is who runs matters in the Scottish Office. It is still not too late for a Scottish Office Minister to restore some credibility to the Government.
I understand that the 1988–89 programme is not yet finalised. I hope that tonight the Minister will take some responsibility into his hands and confirm that the Ayrshire bypasses will go ahead as planned. If that does not happen, the whole House, like the leader in the Glasgow Herald —I am sorry if I quote from it regularly; I know that some people do not like it, but it was an exceptionally good leader—will smell a rat scurrying across the tarmac for cover. I hope that the Minister has some guts and courage and that he will bring back some credibility to the Government by restoring their pledges and bringing the Ayrshire bypasses into their proper place in the roads programme.
12.54 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton): A public local inquiry into the A77 road project will be held, starting on 23 March, and progress will depend on the inquiry's outcome.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) on securing this Adjournment debate and on the spirited way in which he has put forward the interests of his constituents. The hon. Gentleman's representations on behalf of his constituents will be kept in mind when we consider the possible scheme starts in each financial year.
Strathclyde regional council is the Secretary of State's agent authority for trunk roads in Ayrshire, and its
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officials must, as a matter of necessity, be given broad indications of timing of trunk road schemes to enable them to schedule the preparatory work. These dates change from time to time; for example, because of difficulties over statutory procedures or following the kind of periodical review carried out at the end of last year. Given that Strathclyde and its predecessor county councils have acted as agents for many years, they well understand the qualifications that apply to any dates quoted and the variety of factors which can cause delays.
Mr. Foulkes rose —
Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: If I may, I should like to continue because I have a great deal to answer in my speech.
As the hon. Gentleman has suggested, there may have been correspondence between professionals that did not mention all the conditions arid caveats, but the fact that the dates were never more than the earliest possible dates is well understood.
Mr. Foulkes: Will the Minister confirm that there have been no delays in the statutory or other procedures so far as the four Ayrshire bypasses are concerned?
Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: I accept that those procedures have gone forward, but I should also make clear to the hon. Gentleman precisely what I have already said—that the dates were never more than the earliest possible dates.
I have listened carefully to what the hon. Gentleman said and have noted the points he has made in favour of advancing proposed trunk road bypasses in Ayrshire. The hon. Gentleman's problem is that he sees the trunk road programme in a very narrow context, whereas I, as the Minister responsible for trunk roads in Scotland, must of necessity consider the trunk road network in a wide national context. I do not for a moment criticise the hon. Gentleman for fighting for the interests of his constituents. Indeed, he would be derelict in his duty if he did not. What I do criticise is his refusal to get such matters in their proper perspective.
The hon. Gentleman well knows that the trunk road network is a network of national—I emphasise the word "national" — through routes. These are the routes for longer distance traffic and are therefore of more than regional importance. Important though local needs often are, there can be no argument that national interests must come first. Therefore, decisions on priorities for action on the trunk road network have to be taken on a wider than regional basis and it is beside the point to seek to make distinctions as to how well one region or sub-region compares with another in terms of the money spent on improving trunk roads.
Within the national context there is also the important matter of route priorities. Although the country has trunk roads traversing it in all directions, there is no doubt that some perform a more important function than others. Perhaps the most obvious of the various criteria which might together determine route priorities are traffic volumes. While I accept that some local sections of routes —for example, around large towns and cities—might be congested, again the situation must be seen in the context of the route as a whole rather than of a particular small part of it. The trunk routes through Ayrshire do not carry particularly high traffic volumes.

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The hon. Gentleman made the point that the A77 through his constituency has an unusually high accident record, but the fact is that when fatal and serious injury figures are broken down between north and south Ayrshire, it becomes clear that the concentration of accidents—some 70 per cent. or more of the total— occurs north of Ayr towards Glasgow, not in the area of the towns which the hon. Gentleman seeks to have bypassed. While it is true that accidents on the A77 are more numerous than might be expected from the traffic flows, there does not appear to be a great problem on the part of the road which runs through the hon. Gentleman's constituency. This is not to say that I am unconcerned about accidents. On the contrary, they are an important part of the equation in determining priorities.
As I have said earlier, the other criteria that go to determine route priority include, in terms of industrial and economic strategy, for example, the north-east of Scotland, to which assumed priority has been given in recent years, and that will continue to be so because of considerations relating to the oil and fishing industries. The A75 is given a measure of priority because it is a designated Euroroute, part of a national and international network of through routes, and links to Ireland.
Tonight and in the past the hon. Gentleman has mentioned—and has made great play about it — the proposed upgrading of the A74 to motorway standard. That will connect the motorway network of central Scotland to the English motorway network. There is no doubt that the A74 is a strategic route, and that is why the Government have attached priority to its upgrading.
Mr. Foulkes: Where is the money coming from?
Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: I will deal with that in a moment.
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the A74 is the main trunk route between England and Scotland. The hon. Gentleman likes to appear to discredit the initiative of the Secretary of State, even when my right hon. and learned Friend has the strongest support of the Scottish travelling public. The hon. Gentleman seeks to suggest that the upgrading of the A74 is the reason for changes in "earliest possible start dates"—that is his suggestion— for other proposed trunk road schemes in Scotland. I can understand his disappointment that bypass schemes in south Ayrshire have been put back. However, I would strongly emphasise that that has nothing to do with the upgrading of the A74 to motorway standards.
Mr. Foulkes: Will the Minister give way?
Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: No. Let me answer the argument.
It will not be until I get the results of three major feasibility studies covering the 60 miles or so to be upgraded—I expect those results around the end of the year—that I shall be able to plan the upgrading. The onset of the M74 schemes and their consequences for the Scottish forward programmes will be assessed in the light of the circumstances pertaining at the appropriate time. The regular reviews of the forward programmes that will take place will provide adequate scope for such assessment. Whether there will be extra funds for the M74 is a consideration that will be taken in the context of the annual public expenditure surveys.
Mr. Foulkes: If the Minister is seriously wanting us to believe that it is not the result of money being diverted to the A74 that the other bypasses are postponed, could he give the House precise reasons why they have been postponed, given that the Minister was aware of the capital programme available earlier in the year?
Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: The capital programme for this year is given on page 57 of the Scottish public expenditure paper and the hon. Gentleman can look that up.
Mr. Foulkes: I know; I quoted it.
Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: The hon. Gentleman quoted it wrong. He should look up that page to learn the correct figures.
The hon. Gentleman has had protracted correspondence with Scottish Office Ministers for many years. The dates that were given for the timing of proposed schemes were never more than the earliest possible dates — I emphasise the word "possible". Those dates have always been subject to the availability of finance, to the satisfactory completion of statutory procedures, which must provide for public consultation, and to the relative priority of the particular schemes against competing claims from the rest of the Scottish trunk road network.
The recent date changes that have upset the hon. Gentleman do not emanate from the influence of the M74 schemes, which are no more than vague shapes on the horizon.
In his letter to my right hon. and learned Friend on 29 December, the hon. Gentleman said:
"It is for Ministers to decide priorities within the overall programme."
Before departing from a meeting with me, the hon. Gentleman put it to me that our priorities had surely not changed between about six months ago and the present time. I acknowledge that, as regards overall route priorities, that is correct. However, I point out the difficulty that comes about when so many of the road schemes that have been proposed across the country turn out, on close appraisal, to be worth while on economic, environmental or road safety grounds—sometimes on all three. Quite simply, we had far more schemes in the programme than could be accommodated in a short period of time.
Schemes have been postponed in many other regions of Scotland, and the hon. Gentleman should not imagine that his constituency is the only one that has suffered. The effects are felt across the length and breadth of Scotland. Schemes have had to be adjusted in as fair a manner as possible.
Mr. Foulkes: Why?
Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I will answer him. I have only four minutes left.
Let us consider finance. The hon. Gentleman may not think that element of the equation important. I agree that it would be wonderful if we could wave a magic wand and bypass every trunk road community in the country. That would be Utopia. However, from time immemorial demand has outstripped capacity, so difficult choices have had to be made within the resources available.
It has been suggested that the postponement of schemes in Strathclyde results from cuts in Government funds

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available for trunk roads. I am happy to have the opportunity to set the record straight tonight. It is a fact that, in this financial year, funds for trunk roads have grown to their highest level in real terms for many years. That has enabled a record number of new projects to start in this financial year, but the hon. Gentleman must remember that that creates an especially large commitment in forward years. I should still caution that trunk road funds are necessarily finite. More might have been available had it not been for the generous settlement last June on local authority current expenditure.
As the hon. Gentleman will have seen from our commentary, it has been necessary to hold trunk road spending for 1988–89 at its current level. That can be seen from page 57.
On south Ayrshire, I repeat the position stated in correspondence about the four bypasses. For New Cumnock and Cumnock-Auchinleck on the A76, draft line of road and side road orders have been published and the objections received have been resolved. Draft compulsory purchase orders for both schemes have yet to be published. The earliest possible start dates envisaged for both schemes is May 1991. As for the Maybole bypass, no draft orders have yet been published, but it is hoped to publish the draft road orders during the year. The earliest possible start date envisaged is August 1992. Finally, a feasibility study on a possible Girvan bypass is in preparation, and I do not wish to comment on it until it has been completed.
As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, the A77 Balsalloch to Balcreuchan scheme is seen as having priority in view of the slope stability problems adjacent to the A77. My Department has been making considerable efforts to resolve the sole outstanding objection to the scheme. It is hoped that the objection will be withdrawn shortly to allow the making of the statutory orders,
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negotiation of entry to land and preparation of the works contract, with a view to starting work by the autumn on this £4·2 million scheme.
With regard to the A76 Mauchlinc bypass, work on preliminary site investigation will start soon, and Strathclyde region, as agent, has been asked to prepare material for the draft statutory orders. Subject to the usual qualifications about availability of funds, completion of statutory procedures and relative priority in the network, the earliest possible start date envisaged is November 1992. In relation to the A77 Ayr road route, I have said that the inquiry will begin on 23 March.
In conclusion, I should report that, before this short debate, trunk road bypasses in Ayrshire have been the subject of prolonged exchanges with the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley. I give him credit for being a persistent Member on behalf of his constituents. I echo his disappointment that the commencement dates have had to be put back, but I urge him to try to see the matter in national perspective. The needs of his constituents have not been forgotten. All the points that he has made about schemes in his constituency and about trunk roads generally will be fully borne in mind as we come to consider the possible scheme starts in each financial year.
But, of course, there are other schemes in Ayrshire. The Government have accepted the case for a bypass of Ardrossan, Saltcoats and Stevenston and included the project in the forward trunk road programme. It is proposed to provide 6·4 km of dual carriageway at an estimated cost of about £15 million to relieve traffic congestion and improve the flow of trunk road—
The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock on Monday evening and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
Adjourned at seven minutes past One o'clock.

HOME DEPARTMENT

  Radio Authority
  Mr. Fisher
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether it is his intention to use the radio division of the IBA as a planning nucleus during the transition period to the new Radio Authority.

  Mr. Renton
  The IBA will continue to be responsible for carrying out the duties with regard to local radio laid on it by the Broadcasting Act 1981 until relieved of them by new legislation. In the meantime, we shall welcome advice and assistance from the IBA's radio branch in preparing for the new structure of radio broadcasting.

  Departmental Buildings
  Mr. Cran
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list the location and status of all buildings within his Department located in London and the annual cost of rents, rates and maintenance of each.

  Mr. Hurd
  The Department's office, storage and specialised accommodation is held in the name of the Secretary of State for the Environment and administered by the Property Services Agency, which makes an accommodation charge instead of direct payment for rent, rates, maintenance and minor works. That charge includes the agency's associated administration costs. The Home Office occupies all or part of 21 buildings in the London area on this basis. The total accommodation charge for these buildings, which are listed below, is £23,931,049 in 1987–88.

  The seven prison service establishments in London—Her Majesty's prisons: Brixton, Holloway, Pentonville, Wandsworth and Wormwood Scrubs; Her Majesty's Remand Centre, Ashford; and Her Majesty's Youth Custody Centre, Feltham—are held in the name of the Secretary of State for the Home Department. No rent is paid for them; the total cost of their rates and maintenance for 1986–87 was £3,081,700.

  The building occupied by the Police National Computer Organisation at Hendon is held in the name of the Secretary of State for the Home Department. The total cost of the building's ground rent, rates and maintenance for 1986–87 was £225,000.

  Building

  Predominant Use

  Accommodation Charge 1987–88 to PSA £

  Abell House John Islip Street London SW1P 4LH

  Office

  3,204,153

  Africa House 67–78 Kingsway London WC2B 6BW

  Office

  72,055

  2

  Building

  Predominant Use

  Accommodation Charge 1987–88 to PSA £

  Avondale Gardens Hounslow Middlesex TW4 5HX

  Storage

  44,929

  Bourne Avenue Hayes Middlesex UB3 1RF

  Storage

  63,453

  Cleland House Page Street London SW1P 4LN

  Office

  2,365,476

  Colnbrook-By-Pass Bath Road Harmondsworth Middlesex UB7 0HB

  Specialised

  308,289

  Clive House Petty France London SW1H 9HD

  Office

  1.064,666

  Greycoat House Greycoat Street London SW1P 2QF

  Storage

  68,808

  Heathrow Airport Terminal 1 Hounslow Middlesex

  Office

  90,742

  Heathrow Airport Terminal 2 Hounslow Middlesex

  Office

  108,339

  Heathrow Airport Terminal 3 Hounslow Middlesex

  Office

  226,815

  Heathrow Airport Terminal 4 Hounslow Middlesex

  Office

  311,542

  Heathrow Airport (Queen's Building) Hounslow Middlesex

  Office

  45,995

  Isis House 67–69 Southwark Street London SE1

  Office

  121,486

  Headstone Drive Wealdstone Harrow Middlesex HA1 4TZ

  Specialised

  352,427

  Horseferry House Dean Ryle Street London SW1P 2QF

  Office

  2,159,789

  Lunar House 40 Wellesley Road Croydon CR9 2BY

  Office

  3,193,568

  50 Queen Anne's Gate London SW1H 9AT

  Office

  9,995,209

  60–66 Rochester Row London SW1

  Office

  71,640

  St. Christopher House Southwark Street London SE1 0TE

  Office

  14,018

  3

  Building

  Predominant Use

  Accommodation Charge 1987–88 to PSA £

  London Road Stanmore Middlesex

  Office

  47,650

  Departmental Staff
  Mr. Cran
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many members of staff within his Department are located within each region outside London; what percentage this constitutes of staff within his Department; and what were the comparable figures, in absolute and percentage terms in 1979.

  Mr. Hurd
  Non-industrial staff serve in the Home Office at the following places:

  Region

  As a percentage of all staff in the Home Office

  South-East (excluding Greater London)

  6,223

  17·2

  South-West

  2,796

  7·7

  East Anglia

  1,665

  4·6

  East Midlands

  2,784

  7·7

  West Midlands

  2,811

  7·8

  North-West

  4,195

  11·6

  Yorkshire and Humberside

  2,485

  6·9

  North

  2,022

  5·6

  Wales

  882

  2·4

  Scotland

  128

  0·4

  Northern Ireland

  23

  0·1

  Greater London

  10,091

  27·1

  Total

  36,105

  100·00

  Comparable figures for 1979 are not readily available.

  Data Protection
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many representations he has received concerning the workings of the Data Protection Act; whether he has any plans to seek to amend the Act; and whether he will make a statement.

  Mr. Renton
  Since 11 November 1987, when the Data Protection Act came fully into force, we have received 15 representations from hon. Members and members of the public of which 11 were requests for information. We have undertaken to review the working of the Act after a reasonable period of experience of its operation, and are considering the form and timing of such a review.

  Inner City Crime
  Mr. Greg Knight
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what further steps he is taking to combat crime in inner city areas.

  Mr. Hurd
  I have today announced an important initiative, the "Safer Cities" programme, which will support the Government's policies for the regeneration of inner city areas with strong new action against crime. Twenty safer city projects will be established in inner city areas over the next three years. Their effect will be to promote an active partnership between the police, local authorities and concerned individuals in a well targeted 4
  programme of effective action against locally identified crime problems. The programme is more fully described in a note, copies of which I have placed in the Library of the House.

  Passport Office, Peterborough
  Mr. Latham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the capacity for handling telephone calls from the public at the passport office in Peterborough; and what is the current average time after dialling and ringing that a caller is answered and connected to a member of staff to assist his or her query.

  Mr. Renton
  A new 24 exchange line telephone system was installed at the Peterborough passport office in July 1987. The time callers have to wait before being connected first to the operator and subsequently to the required extension varies according to the volume of calls at the particular time and the equipment does not have the capability to monitor response times. Planned modifications to the system, which will enable callers to be routed to a recorded message giving the answers to most general enquiries, should be completed within the next few weeks.

  Mr. Latham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the current number of passport applications awaiting action at the passport office in Peterborough; and what is the average time within which the documents are issued to the applicant, assuming the application form has been correctly completed.

  Mr. Renton
  Correctly completed non-urgent applications are being dealt with within 20 working days. Urgent applications are given priority. Applications are now being received at a rate of about 22,000 a week and it is estimated that a total of some 77,000 are now at the various stages of processing within the office.

  Mr. Latham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the current staff of the passport office in Peterborough; what is the authorised establishment; and when the last staff inspection took place.

  Mr. Renton
  The authorised permanent complement is 169 and there are now 208 staff in post, 43 of whom are casuals. The last formal staff inspection was in 1979. As I said in answer to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess) on 4 February, at column 687, work is well advanced on the computerisation of passport issuing in the United Kingdom. The computerised system will be installed at the six passport issuing offices over the next two years and staffing levels will be reviewed when the new system is operational.

  La Belle Discotheque
  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will call for a report from the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis on the advice offered by Scotland Yard officers to the West Berlin public prosecutor, Dettlev Mehles, in connection with his inquiry into the La Belle discotheque bombing.

  Mr. Hurd
  No. I encourage co-operation and liaison between our police forces and foreign police forces in counter-terrorism matters including the investigation of specific terrorist incidents. I see no need to call for reports whenever such co-operation or liaison takes place.

  Police Statistics
  Rev. Martin Smyth
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many(a) chief constables, (b) superintendents, (c) chief superintendents and (d) sergeants in police forces in England and Wales are (i) members of ethnic minorities and (ii) women; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  The position as at 31 December 1987 is as follows:

  Rank

  Ethnic minorities

  Women

  Chief constable

  —

  —

  Chief superintendent

  —

  8

  Superintendent

  —

  27

  Sergeant

  61

  725

  Mr. John Byrne and Mr. Stan Hathaway
  Mr. Mullin
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) when Mr. John Byrne, a former member of the British armed forces in Northern Ireland, was sentenced to life imprisonment; what was his crime; and if he has been released;

  (2) when Mr. Stan Hathaway, a former member of the British armed forces in Northern Ireland, was sentenced to life imprisonment; what was his crime; and if he has been released.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  At Belfast Crown court in January 1981, Stanley Hathaway, then a serving soldier, pleaded guilty to the murder of two civilians while on patrol duty in October 1972. On the same date, John Byrne, also a serving soldier, pleaded guilty to one of the murders. Both men were sentenced to life imprisonment and were subsequently transferred to England to serve their sentences. Neither has been released.

  Firearms (McKay Report)
  Mr. William Ross
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when and by whom the McKay report on firearms was commissioned; and when the inquiry was announced or made known to the House.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  Sir John McKay's working party was commissioned to review firearms controls in December 1970 by the then Home Secretary. The review was first announced in the other place on 15 December 1970.

  Mr. William Ross
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether any undertaking was given that the McKay report on firearms would be published, or a copy placed in the Library.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  I am not aware of any such undertaking.

  Mr. William Ross
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will now place a copy of the McKay report on firearms in the Library.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  No. The report of Sir John McKay's working party on the control of firearms, prepared in 1972, was an internal document. Its main conclusions and recommendations were incorporated in the 1973 Green Paper, "The Control of Firearms in Great Britain", Cmnd. 5297.

  Canon Kevin Byrne
  Mr. Frank Field
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he has received representations from Canon Kevin Byrne of St. Lawrence's, Birkenhead, in the form of sermon delivered on 7 February, relating to Her Majesty's Government's policy on capital punishment, sexual offences reform, the media, racial discrimination and other related matters; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Hurd
  Canon Byrne sent me a copy of his sermon for Sunday 7 February. His address discussed the theme of social cohesion which I had raised in a speech to the Peel Society on 5 February and which I returned to at a fringe meeting of the General Synod of the Church of England on 10 February. Mr. Byrne made a number of criticisms of successive Governments. A reply was sent from my office on 24 February.

  Social Services (Employee Vetting)
  Mr. Rowe
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many prospective employees of local authority social service departments have been referred to the Metropolitan police for checks under his Department's circular (86)44 since July 1986; and how many checks were still outstanding at 31 January.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  I am informed by the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis that up to 29 February 1988 15,042 prospective employees of local authority social services departments have been referred to the Metropolitan police for checks since the arrangements announced in Home Office circular (86)44 came into force; 703 enquiries were outstanding on that date.

  Mr. Rowe
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will publish a table showing(a) the number of applicants to local authority social services departments who have been referred to each local police authority for checks under the terms of his Department's circular (86) 44 and (b) the average delay in each authority.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  The information requested is shown in the table. The latest figures available are for the period 17 July 1986 to 31 August 1987.

  Police force

  Number of enquiries received from social services departments

  Total number of enquiries received from all sources

  Average response times (days)

  Avon and Somerset

  4,850

  9,800

  4–10

  Bedfordshire

  1,118

  1,437

  7–10

  Cambridgeshire

  3,426

  4,911

  3–14

  Cheshire

  6,578

  7,208

  14

  City of London

  7

  7

  14–21

  Cleveland

  3,084

  4,964

  7

  Cumbria

  484

  512

  2–7

  Derbyshire

  43

  477

  21

  Devon and Cornwall

  3,586

  5,944

  4

  Dorset

  2,567

  2,662

  14

  Durham

  2,312

  5,049

  2

  Dyfed-Powys

  924

  1,625

  21

  Essex

  2,011

  4,545

  42–56

  Gloucestershire

  2,180

  2,341

  2

  Greater Manchester

  1—

  8,628

  14

  Gwent

  1,142

  2,013

  10

  Hampshire

  1—

  2,844

  10

  Hertfordshire

  1—

  128

  7

  Humberside

  1,653

  2,045

  14

  Kent

  1,165

  7,963

  28–42

  Lancashire

  4,626

  5,670

  14

  Leicestershire

  957

  1,010

  7

  Lincolnshire

  2,163

  4,317

  3

  7

  Police force

  Number of enquiries received from social services departments

  Total number of enquiries received front all sources

  Average response times (days)

  Merseyside

  3,557

  10,088

  14–28

  Metropolitan

  1,684

  3,971

  35–42

  Norfolk

  2,901

  2,946

  10

  Northamptonshire

  2,462

  2,497

  14

  Northumbria

  1,890

  5,930

  14

  North Wales

  1—

  2,173

  3–4

  North Yorkshire

  804

  832

  14–28

  Nottinghamshire

  0

  29

  1

  South Wales

  1—

  5,365

  7–10

  South Yorkshire

  1—

  3,268

  2

  Staffordshire

  2,327

  3,168

  2

  Suffolk

  1,169

  2,489

  14

  Surrey

  748

  1,711

  14

  Sussex

  4,010

  6,375

  2

  Thames Valley

  3,552

  5,189

  14–21

  Warwickshire

  2,631

  2,766

  7–10

  West Mercia

  1,388

  2,096

  10

  West Midlands

  6,317

  9,025

  3

  West Yorkshire

  3,298

  3,700

  3–28

  Wiltshire

  158

  1,558

  10

  1 These forces do not keep separate records of inquiries from social services departments.

  Mr. Rowe
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if his Department has received any representations on delays in recruitment to local authority social service departments caused by police checks under his Department's circular (86)44; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  We have received 11 representations from, or on behalf of, local authorities about delays in recruitment caused by police checks under the arrangements announced in Home Office circular (86)44. We are discussing the points raised with the police and the local authority associations.

  Councillors (Statistics)
  Rev. Martin Smyth
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what information he has as to how many local councillors in England and Wales are members of ethnic minorities and as to the total number of local councillors in England and Wales.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  There are 22,775 county, district and borough councillors and about 65,000 parish and community councillors in England and Wales. Up-to-date information about the number of councillors who are members of ethnic minorities is not available.

  Under-age Drinking
  Sir Dudley Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many young people under the age of 18 years have been prosecuted for obtaining or attempting to obtain alcoholic drink over the past 10 years up to the latest date for which figures ar available.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  [pursuant to his reply, 18 February 1988, c. 712]: I regret that the figure given for 1986 was incorrect. The table should have read.

  Persons found guilty of offences under section 169(2) of the Licensing Act 1964

  England and Wale

  Number of Persons

  Year

  Total found guilty

  1979

  4,091

  1980

  3,954

  8

  Year

  Total found guilty

  1981

  2,647

  1982

  1,862

  1983

  1,577

  1984

  1,095

  1985

  744

  1986

  885

FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

  Torture
  Sir Bernard Braine
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what are the reasons for the delay in ratifying the United Nations convention against torture.

  Mr. Eggar
  The position has not changed since my answer of 16 November to the hon. Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell), at column 397. It remains our intention to introduce legislation to allow ratification of the convention as soon as possible.

  Information Research
  Mr. Livingstone
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many civil servants were engaged in the information research department of his Department in each year since 1971.

  Mr. Eggar
  The staff establishment of the information research department in each year from 1971 until disbandment in May 1977 was 117, 99, 91, 91, 88, 85 and 85.

  Mr. Livingstone
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many members of the armed forces and civil servants were engaged in the information research department of his Department in Northern Ireland in each year since 1971.

  Mr. Eggar
  No member of the armed forces served in the information research department. One IRD officer served in Northern Ireland on secondment from November 1972 to December 1973.

  West Berlin
  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will discuss with the American Government(a) the implications for President Reagan's policy towards Libya of recent West Berlin police discoveries regarding Christina Endrigkeit and (b) the implications of these discoveries for the joint management by the allies of police in West Berlin.

  Mr. Mellor
  We are in constant and close contact with the United States authorities as well as the German authorities in Berlin about all aspects of the bombing of La Belle discotheque on 5 April 1986. It is not our practice to comment on cases, such as this, which are still subject to judicial inquiry.

  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs on what grounds the allied Kommandatura exercised their right to instruct the Berlin authorities to remove from the western sector persons identified as posing a threat to the population of Berlin in April 1986; how such persons were identified; and whether their names are known to him.
  9
  Mr. Mellor
  The decision referred to was taken for the safety and security of the city. The people concerned were identified as posing a threat on the basis of information available to the allied and German authorities.

  Syria
  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations he has made to the Syrian Government about the alleged supply to terrorists of Semtex bombs by the Syrian embassy in London prior to 1987.

  Mr. Mellor
  We broke diplomatic relations with Syria in October 1986 because of official Syrian involvement in the attempt to blow up an E1 Al aircraft with a Semtex bomb.

  Falkland Islands (Exercise)
  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to his answer to the hon. Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) on 2 March, what representations he has received from the Organisation of American States on the forthcoming military exercise in the Falkland Islands; if he will list the individual Governments who have expressed concern; what response he has made to the Organisation of American States' representations; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Eggar
  We have noted the resolution passed on 1 March by the Organisation of American States of which the United Kingdom is not a member. A number of Governments of states which are members of the Organisation of American States have expressed concern to us about the exercise.

  La Belle Discotheque
  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (1) what communications were received by the British military government, West Berlin, from the United States military police regarding the likelihood of a terrorist attack in West Berlin during the hours before the attack at La Belle discotheque on 5 April 1986; what response was made; and if he will make a statement;

  (2) what information has been made available to the British military government, West Berlin, on the type of explosive used to bomb the La Belle discotheque on 5 April 1986;

  (3) whether the allied authorities made any inspections, under paragraph 8 of BK10/58/3, of police information relating to the La Belle discotheque in April 1986; and if he will make a statement;

  (4) whether, in accordance with paragraph 6 of BK10, the Berlin police president reported to the Kommandantura the timing of any alerts in relation to events surrounding the bombing of the La Belle discotheque;

  (5) whether, in accordance with paragraph 9 of BK10/58/3, the possibility of issuing direct instructions to the police in relation to the La Belle discotheque bombing was discussed by the allied Kommandantura with the West German authorities in April 1986; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Mellor
  We have throughout the period in question kept in close touch with the American and French 10
  authorities, and with the German authorities in Berlin. I have nothing further to add to the many statements we have made on these matters.

  East Berlin
  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what communications there were in April 1986 between the allies and the Soviet authorities about the alleged use of embassies in East Berlin for promoting terrorist activities.

  Mr. Mellor
  The allies were in close contact with the Soviet authorities in April 1986 regarding their joint rights and responsibilities for the security of Greater Berlin.

  Human Rights (Soviet Union)
  Mr. Mullin: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will list the human rights issues in the United Kingdom raised by the Soviet Union during his recent visit to the Soviet Union.

  Mr. Mellor
  During my right hon. and learned Friend's discussion of human rights, Mr. Shevardnadze raised alleged violation of human rights in the United Kingdom and handed over a list of so-called "political prisoners" in Northern Ireland. We have so far established that, of the eight individuals on the list, seven have been duly convicted of murder and one of attempted murder.

TRADE AND INDUSTRY

  Beers and Lagers
  Mr. Steinberg
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what information he has on the relative retail prices of(a) alcoholic and (b) non-alcoholic beers and lagers; if he has any plans to refer the price differential to the Office of Fair Trading; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Butcher
  My Department does not have information on the relative retail price of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beers and lagers. The Director General of Fair Trading referred the supply of beer in the United Kingdom for retail sale on licensed premises to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission on 4 August 1986. The commission is due to submit its report to my right hon. and noble Friend the Secretary of State by 3 August 1988.

  Data Protection
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster how many subject access requests under the terms of the Data Protection Act his Department has received; what was his estimate of this number; whether he is reconsidering the subject fee charged by his Department as a result; and whether he will make a statement.

  Mr. Butcher
  My Department has received three requests for subject access under the terms of the Data Protection Act. This is in keeping with the low level of applications which was anticipated. The subject access fee has been set at a level which will cover the cost of providing access and I am not reconsidering it.

  Airbus
  Mr. Hayward
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster if he will make a statement on recent developments in the Airbus programme.

  Mr. Kenneth Clarke
  I met my ministerial colleagues from France, Germany and Spain in Paris on 1 March to review recent developments in the Airbus programme.

  We noted with satisfaction the continuing commercial success of the products of the Airbus consortium, particularly the A320. The A320 received its certification from the airworthiness authorities of France, the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands on 26 February, and we congratulated the manufacturers on the fact that this major milestone had been achieved on schedule and that the first A320s would enter airline service at the end of this month. We also noted with satisfaction the continuing commercial success and technical development of the A330/A340 programmes.

  My colleagues and I also gave Airbus Industrie and its partner companies a mandate to pursue expeditiously the negotiations begun with McDonnell Douglas about possible collaboration. These will be undertaken with the aim of reaching an agreement that would be beneficial to both parties.

  We reviewed the position reached in the trade talks with the United States on civil aircraft in the context of the GATT, and expressed a wish that these discussions should reach an early and satisfactory conclusion in accordance with the principles and objectives agreed with United States Trade Representative Clayton Yeutter on 27 October 1987.

  Inner City Policy
  Mr. Thurnham
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what steps are being taken to co-ordinate the Government's inner city policy more effectively.

  Mr. Kenneth Clarke
  The 16 Government task forces co-ordinate the programmes of all Government Departments in the small core districts of the cities they serve and initiate projects of their own on behalf of the whole Government.

  City action teams pull together and focus the efforts and resources of the Departments of Trade and Industry, Environment and Employment over wider urban areas in Birmingham, Liverpool, London (Hackney, Islington and Lambeth), Manchester-Salford, and Newcastle-Gateshead and the county of Cleveland. Apart from improving the effectiveness of Government programmes, the teams have a major role in encouraging the involvement of companies in urban regeneration. In view of their success, the Government are setting up two new city action teams, to cover Nottingham, Leicester and Derby, and Leeds and Bradford. The three Departments concerned will be spending over £1 billion in the areas covered by the CATs in 1988–89.

  I have also been asked by the Prime Minister to help her to co-ordinate the Government's policies on inner cities. As part of that task, I will launch on 13 April in Newcastle a series of Government working breakfasts with Ministers and senior industrialists and business men to promote more co-operation with the local leaders of business in urban regeneration. Other cities to be visited
  12
  will include Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool and London and I intend each working meeting to lead to increased efforts in each city concerned.

  The Government have also set up a central free telephone link (0800 181518) so that businesses can find out from a single contact point in our action for cities unit how they can play their part.

  Managed Workshops
  Mr. Thurnham
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what progress has been made in providing more managed workshops in inner city areas.

  Mr. Kenneth Clarke
  English Estates is to be the focus for a major new DTI-funded programme to bring the public and private sectors together to provide managed workspaces for business start-ups in inner cities. Up to £11 million of public funding will go into the programme in the first year through English Estates which has set up a new subsidiary company to spearhead the programme. Companies are being invited to adopt workshops in the town or city of their choice by investing directly in the projects or by providing land, buildings or experienced managers to give business support on site. English Estates is looking for as much private sector involvement as possible and is already working up projects in Manchester, Rochdale, Preston, Nottingham, Doncaster, Middlesbrough, Hartlepool, Spitalfields, Hackney and Peckham.

  Rover Group
  Mr. Cryer
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what representations he has received, other than from the management of British Aerospace, asking for British Aerospace's negotiations for the acquisition of Rover Group to be conducted on an exclusive basis; what consultations he undertook before deciding to accede to such requests, and with whom; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Kenneth Clarke
  My right hon. and noble Friend the Secretary of State consulted the chairman of Rover Group, Mr. Day, who advised that the Rover Group board considered exclusive negotiations with BAe should be pursued. The Government have accepted this advice, provided that negotiations are concluded by the end of April.

  Investment
  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what proposals the British Venture Capital Association has to increase investment in small enterprises in the Houghton and Washington area.

  Mr. Butcher
  The British Venture Capital Association is a private sector body for which there is no ministerial responsibility. I have drawn the hon. Member's question to the attention of the chairman of the British Venture Capital Association.

  Insider Dealing
  Mr. Campbell-Savours
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster whether he has now received the report from the stock exchange surveillance department
  13
  into alleged insider dealing in the shares of Matthew Brown prior to the takeover by Newcastle Breweries; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Maude
  [holding answer 4 March 1988]: It is not the practice to reveal in particular cases whether reports about possible insider dealing are under consideration.

  Number of Sheep Farmed in each County in Wales

  1975

  1980

  1983

  1986

  Breeding Flock

  Clwyd

  457,738

  512,999

  574,938

  622,078

  Dyfed

  597,824

  704,677

  775,955

  860,415

  Gwent

  159,581

  171,701

  186,767

  200,516

  Gwynedd

  717,331

  779,560

  859,021

  926,011

  Mid Glamorgan

  144,608

  154,829

  168,136

  170,412

  Powys

  1,262,929

  1,445,758

  1,560,250

  1,640,040

  South Glamorgan

  19,692

  23,371

  24,729

  26,479

  West Glamorgan

  64,806

  73,308

  75,203

  83,529

  Wales

  3,424,509

  3,866,203

  4,224,999

  4,529,480

  Total Sheep and Lamb

  Clwyd

  915,362

  1,076,281

  1,203,619

  1,320,390

  Dyfed

  1,165,187

  1,445,363

  1,584,948

  1,788,670

  Gwent

  314,345

  344,048

  373,633

  405,417

  Gwynedd

  1,376,008

  1,579,960

  1,727,800

  1,889,871

  Mid Glamorgan

  254,885

  292,752

  318,736

  325,910

  Powys

  2,553,537

  3,019,463

  3,253,353

  3,451,847

  South Glamorgan

  41,344

  52,517

  53,995

  57,911

  West Glamorgan

  113,585

  136,358

  140,653

  163,250

  Wales

  6,734,253

  7,946,742

  8,656,737

  9,403,266

  Note: These figures are for main holdings only.

  Source: June Agricultural Census.

OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT

  Council of Europe
  Mr. Hood
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what support Her Majesty's Government are giving to the European campaign for interdependence and solidarity of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

  Mr. Chris Patten
  The Government support the aims of this campaign. Last November I announced a grant of up to £70,000 to the campaign: £40,000 for the United Kingdom National Organising Committee and £30,000 for the European Organising Committee (EOC). Since the inception of the campaign the Government have also met the expenses of the British representative to the EOC. On 15 February this year I addressed a round table on developing country debt organised as part of the campaign.

  UNICEF (Global Immunisation Programme)
  Mr. Chapman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a further statement on UNICEF's global immunisation programme and on the United Kingdom's contribution to it.

WALES

  Sheep
  Ms. Quin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will give the number of sheep farmed in each county of Wales in the following years., 1975, 1980, 1983, 1986 and 1987.

  Mr. Peter Walker
  The number of sheep farmed in each county in Wales for the years requested is given in the following table. 1987 figures are not yet available.

  Mr. Chris Patten
  I have no new information to add to the answer I gave my hon. Friend on I February at columns 460–61.

  Social Welfare Indicators
  Ms. Mowlam
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what is Her Majesty's Government's policy towards the use by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank of social welfare indicators to measure the impact and viability of structural adjustment programmes on the poorest groups in developing countries: and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Chris Patten
  We fully support the policy of the IMF and the World Bank to take account of the impact on the poorest groups in developing countries when helping to design structural adjustment programmes. We regard it as important in this process to use appropriate indicators of social welfare. Such indicators are, however, not always readily available in the countries in question. We therefore support the World Bank's recent initiative to help monitor living standards and improve statistical information on the condition of the poorest groups in African countries.

AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

  Environmentally Sensitive Areas
  Mr. Ron Davies
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what arrangements have been made in accordance with the requirements of section 18(8) of the Agriculture Act 1986 to monitor the effect on wildlife and the landscape of agreements concluded with the farmers in the environmentally sensitive areas already operative in England; whether he will make details of these arrangements available in the Library; and whether he will make a statement.

  Mr. Gummer
  A programme has been established to monitor the environmental effects of designation in all environmentally sensitive areas in England. Monitoring will be based on surveys of land use, landscape, ecology, and farming practice in each area. I expect to publish a first report, as required by section 18(8) of the Agriculture Act 1986, before the end of the summer. This report will include the information requested.

EDUCATION AND SCIENCE

  Headmasters
  Mr. Hayward
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what representations he has received about his plans to give greater control over schools to headmasters; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Dunn
  My right hon. Friend has received a large number of representations about the proposals for the management of schools included in the Education Reform Bill. The proposals would increase substantially the powers of school governing bodies and enhance the role of head teachers. The principle of greater delegation has been welcomed by many.

  School Subjects
  Mr. Fallon
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what recent representations he has received regarding subjects outside the core curriculum.

  Mr.. Rumbold
  Since the Second Reading of the Education Reform Bill on 1 December, over 800 letters have been received commenting on the Government's proposals for a national curriculum. A number of these have mentioned subjects other than those defined as core and other foundation subjects in the Bill.

  City Technology Colleges
  Mr. Holt
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will make a further statement on the progress in the number of city technology colleges to be instituted.

  Mrs. Rumbold
  Sponsorship for five city technology colleges has now been announced. The Kingshurst CTC will open in September and the Nottingham CTC next year. We are making good progress in discussions with a number of other prospective sponsors.

  Mr. Devlin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what representations he has received on city technology colleges; and if he will make a statement.
  16
  Mrs. Rumbold
  I refer my hon. Friend to the reply I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford (Dr. Clark) on 19 January 1988, at column 620.

  Business Links
  Mr. Bellingham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what further plans he has for encouraging closer links between schools and businesses.

  Mrs. Rumbold
  I would refer my hon. Friend to the answer which I gave on 1 December to my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Mr. Favell), at columns 755–56.

  National Curriculum
  Mr. Dunnachie
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what steps are being taken to ensure adequate staffing levels to cope with the subjects of the national curriculum.

  Dr. Reid
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what steps he is taking to ensure that there are enough qualified teachers to teach all the subjects of the proposed national curriculum.

  Mrs. Rumbold
  I refer the hon. Gentleman to the answer I gave to the hon. Member for Leeds, Central (Mr. Fatchett) on Monday 11 January, at column 53 and to the answer my right hon. Friend, gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke (Mr. Bennett) on 19 January, at columns 629–30.

  Mr. Fatchett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he has any further indication as to when the whole of the national curriculum will be available for teaching purposes; and if he will make a statement.

  Mrs. Rumbold
  The date of full implementation remains dependent on actions and decisions which have still to be taken. Amongst such decisions are included when the remaining subject working groups will be established. My right hon. Friend hopes to set up those for English and technology shortly after Easter.

  School Reorganisation Plans
  Mr. Fatchett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science how many school reorganisation plans have been with his Department awaiting a decision for more than six months; and if he will list them.

  Mr. Dunn
  My right hon. Friend has before him 26 proposals under sections 12 to 15 of the Education Act 1980 which were published over six months ago. These are shown in the table below. The list includes a number of proposals which affect only one school, and some which are held in abeyance for reasons beyond the Department's control.

  Current proposals over six months old (as at 1 March 1988)

  LEA and proposal

  Date of publication

  Brent: Establishment of the Islamia Primary School.

  25 April 1986

  ILEA: Change of status of Yesodey Hatorah Primary from Independent to Voluntary Aided School.

  2 January 1987

  17

  LEA and proposal

  Date of publication

  Suffolk: Closure of Little Bealings Primary School.

  19 January 1987

  Suffolk: Closure of Charsfield CE Primary School.

  19 January 1987

  Barnet: Establish Hasmonean Preparatory School as a Voluntary Aided School.

  12 February 1987

  Berkshire: Change of character of St. Bernards Convent School from single-sex to co-educational.

  25 March 1987

  Devon: Amalgamation of Colyton Grammar and Axminster Secondary Schools.

  3 April 1987

  Hertfordshire: Amalgamation of Bishop Hatfield Secondary School and Hatfield School.

  3 April 1987

  Hertfordshire: Amalgamation of Marshalwick and Wheathampstead Secondary Schools.

  3 April 1987

  Hertfordshire: Amalgamation of Margaret Dane and Hadham Hall Secondary Schools.

  10 April 1987

  Staffordshire: Reorganisation of Secondary Schools in Burntwood.

  30 April 1987

  Shropshire: Closure of Ightfield CE Primary School.

  20 May 1987

  Shropshire: Closure of Acton Burnell CE Primary School

  20 May 1987

  Lancashire: Closure of Preston Talbot RC Primary School.

  8 June 1987

  Oxfordshire: Amalgamation of St. Blaise CE Primary and Milton Heights Primary Schools.

  11 June 1987

  Kent: Closure of Highfield Secondary and amalgamation of Warren Woods Boys and Girls Schools.

  12 June 1987

  Merton: Reorganisation of County, Primary, Middle and Secondary Schools.

  12 June 1987

  Hampshire: Closure of Weyhill CE Primary School.

  19 June 1987

  Dorset: Enlargement of St. Mary's RC Combined School.

  3 July 1987

  Lancashire: Establishment of a new sixth form centre and change of age-range of Blackpool Collegiate and Blackpool Greenlands High Schools.

  17 July 1987

  Hampshire: Amalgamation of Hill and Richard Taunton Sixth Form Colleges

  30 July 1987

  Staffordshire: Rationalisation of Primary Education in Stoke-on-Trent

  30 July 1987

  Staffordshire: Rationalisation of Secondary Schools in Stoke-on-Trent

  30 July 1987

  Somerset: Closure of Chilcompton Infants, Chilcompton Juniors and Stratton-on-the-Fosse CE Primary Schools and establishment of a new CE Primary School.

  7 August 1987

  Wiltshire: Amalgamation of Westmead Infant and Junior Schools.

  7 August 1987

  Hampshire: Change age-range of Purbrook Park County Secondary School.

  24 August 1987

PRIME MINISTER

  Security (Trade Unions)
  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Prime Minister what consideration has been given to banning trade unions from the Defence Intelligence Service.

  The Prime Minister
  None.

  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Prime Minister what is Her Majesty's Government's policy towards trade union membership in those sections of(a) the Home Office, (b) the Ministry of Defence and (c) the Foreign and
  18
  Commonwealth Office which deal with security matters or which handle highly classified information; and if she will make a statement.

  The Prime Minister
  Apart from members of the Ministry of Defence Police, civil servants in these Departments are free to join trades unions irrespective of whether they deal with security matters or handle classified information.

  Psychological Warfare
  Mr. Livingstone
  To ask the Prime Minister how many civil servants were trained in psychological warfare in each year from 1972 to 1987 in England, in the United States of America, or in both.

  The Prime Minister
  One civil servant received two weeks' training in England in 1983. Records are not available before 1982.

  Security Services (Northern Ireland)
  Mr. Livingstone
  To ask the Prime Minister which Minister was responsible for the security services in Northern Ireland(a) from 1974 to 1979 and (b) from 1979 to the current date.

  The Prime Minister
  The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland is responsible for all aspects of security policy in Northern Ireland. The position before 1979 is not a matter for me.

  General Sikorski
  Mr. Alfred Morris
  To ask the Prime Minister if she has received any representations about the repatriation to Poland of the remains of General Sikorski; what reply she has made; and if she will make a statement.

  The Prime Minister
  Representations have been received from various quarters both in Britain and in Poland. The Polish Foreign Minister raised with me last December the long-standing desire of the Polish authorities that the remains of General Sikorski be transferred to Poland. I told him that this was a delicate and difficult matter which divided the Polish people, and that the time had not yet come when we could agree to the transfer.

  NHS Review
  Mr. Fatchett
  To ask the Prime Minister if, further to her reply at 1 March,Official Report, column 813, she will list those district health authorities which, as part of the Government's National Health Service review, had told her that they are satisfied with their current level of funding.

  The Prime Minister
  The hon. Gentleman will be aware from press reports and in other ways that many district health authorities have budgeted effectively within the resources allocated to them, and have provided full and comprehensive health care to those needing it. Since the review was announced a large number of submissions have been received dealing with the experiences of many health authorities. It would not, however, be appropriate to publish information which may have been given in confidence.

  War Widows
  Mr. Ted Garrett
  To ask the Prime Minister whether Her Majesty's Government are now in a position to remove the differences which currently exist between the pension entitlements of pre-1973 and post-1973 war widows.

  The Prime Minister
  All war widows receive pensions under the war pension scheme administered by the Department of Health and Social Security at the same standard rate regardless of when the husband served or died. Differences in total entitlement arise from changes made in the armed forces occupational pension scheme in 1973. These changes improved the provision made for widows where the husband gave service on or after 31 March 1973 and died from causes attributable to his service. It was recognised at the time that in accordance with normal superannuation practice, and in view of the very great costs which would have been involved, the new provisions could not he applied retrospectively. That position has not changed.

CIVIL SERVICE

  Efficiency Unit Report
  Mr. Favell
  To ask the Minister for the Civil Service if he will make a statement on the implementation of the Efficiency Unit report on "Improving Management in Government: The Next Steps".

  Mr. Luce
  I have nothing to add to what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said on 18 February. I hope to make a further announcement to the House in due course.

  Training College, Sunningdale
  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  To ask the Minister for the Civil Service when he last visited the Civil Service training college at Sunningdale.

  Mr. Luce
  On 9 November 1987.

  Civil Service Applicants (Background)
  Mr. Butler
  To ask the Minister for the Civil Service whether he is satisfied with the diversity of background of applicants for Civil Service posts; and what guidance he gives the Civil Service Selection Board in this respect.

  Mr. Luce
  Applications for Civil Service posts are welcome from all qualified individuals, irrespective of background. Publicity arrangements are specifically designed to attract as wide a field of candidates as possible.

THE ARTS

  Arts Council
  Mr. Menzies Campbell
  To ask the Minister for the Arts what representations he has received regarding the future funding of the Arts Council in the light of recent grant announcements.

  Mr. Luce
  There has been general recognition that three-year funding through the Arts Council offers a firm basis to arts bodies on which to plan their future.

  Incentive Funding
  Mr. Knapman
  To ask the Minister for the Arts what information he has received from the Arts Council as to its intended application of moneys set aside for incentive funding.

  Mr. Luce
  My office has discussed with the council the detailed arrangements for its incentive funding scheme. A summary is given in the council's brochure "Better Business for the Arts", copies of which have been placed in the Library.

  Mr. Patrick Thompson
  To ask the Minister for the Arts whether(a) small and (b) innovative arts organisations will quality for incentive funding under the Arts Council's scheme.

  Mr. Luce
  The Arts Council published "Better Business for the Arts", containing full details of its scheme on 24 February.

  The minimum grant will be £5,000. To qualify for this an organisation will be required to increase its income from outside sources by £10,000 in the third year of a business plan. A major criterion for all incentive funding awards will be the artistic excellence of the programmes; innovation is an important feature.

  National Museum of Popular Music
  Mr. Wareing
  To ask the Minister for the Arts whether he will give financial support to establish a national museum of popular music.

  Mr. Bill Michie
  To ask the Minister for the Arts whether he will give financial support to establish a national museum of popular music.

  Mr. Luce
  Any initiative in this area might look first to the entertainment industry for financial and practical help.

  Arts and Employment (National Plan)
  Ms. Short
  To ask the Minister for the Arts whether he has had discussions with regional Arts associations on developing a national plan for the arts and employment.

  Mr. Battle
  To ask the Minister for the Arts whether he has had discussions with regional Arts associations to develop a national plan for the Arts and employment.

  Mr. Luce
  No, but I meet regional arts associations regularly and see the contribution that they are making. I do not think a national plan is required: the initiatives must arise locally. Some of them are referred to in the inner cities document launched by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister this morning.

  Heritage Preservation
  Mr. Key
  To ask the Minister for the Arts what assessment he has made of the extent to which plural funding can aid the preservation of Britain's heritage.

  Mr. Luce
  I expect the heritage to continue to be supported by a mixture of public and private funding. Objects saved with the help of the national heritage memorial fund almost always attract private contributions. In addition, the Government indemnify many privately sponsored exhibitions.
  21
  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Minister for the Arts whether he will conduct an audit of national museums to identify the potential for further regional development.

  Mr. Luce
  I have no plans to conduct such study.

  "Arts and the Inner City"
  Mr. Sedgemore
  To ask the Minister for the Arts what was the cost of the Office of Arts and Libraries' report entitled "Arts and the Inner City".

  Mr. Tony Banks
  To ask the Minister for the Arts what was the cost of the Office of Arts and Libraries report entitled "Arts and the Inner City".

  Mr. Luce
  £5,900 for research fees, travel and subsistence costs.

  Mr. Fisher
  To ask the Minister for the Arts what was the cost of the Office of Arts and Libraries' paper "Arts and the Inner City".

  Mr. Luce
  [holding answer Friday 4 March 1988]: I refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave to the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore) earlier today.

  West Midlands
  Mr. Turner
  To ask the Minister for the Arts whether he has had discussions with the West Midlands Arts Association about the potential for developing employment in the arts in the west midlands.

  Mr. Luce
  I have not had specific discussions with the west midlands arts associations, but I am aware of negotiations between WMAA and various local authorities, including Birmingham city council, Shropshire county council, and Dudley and Wolverhampton borough councils, covering employment initiatives within the field of the arts.

  Arts Projects (Equal Opportunities)
  Ms. Abbott
  To ask the Minister for the Arts what discussions he has had with regional arts associations about the use of funds available for developing equal opportunities policy in implementing arts projects.

  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Minister for the Arts what discussions he has had with regional arts associations about the use of funds available for developing equal opportunities policies in implementing arts projects.

  Mr. Luce
  I have not discussed this matter with regional arts associations, but the Arts Council has an equal opportunities policy covering employment practices, and an action plan committing 4 per cent. of the council's expenditure to ethnic minority arts within two years. These policies are supported by regional arts associations.

  Touring Companies
  Mr. John Greenway
  To ask the Minister for the Arts what are the criteria for the distribution by the Arts Council of money set aside for touring companies.

  Mr. Luce
  The criteria for touring companies are similar to those for all arts companies. They take into 22
  account the company's artistic performance and standards, its strategic role and the quality of its management. The Arts Council is making a particular effort to expand regional touring over the next three years and I have made increased funds available for the purpose.

  Financial and Marketing Skills
  Mr. Jessel
  To ask the Minister for the Arts what assessment he has made of the financial and marketing skills of arts bodies; and whether the Arts Council is providing advice on these skills.

  Mr. Luce
  In assessing its clients the Arts Council has regard to management ability as well as to artistic excellence. The council's new marketing department has embarked on a full programme of marketing support. I am also giving direct encourgement to marketing and recently announced support for two new measures: a distance learning package and training courses for top management.

  Regional Departmental Staff
  Ms. Primarolo
  To ask the Minister for the Arts whether he has had discussions with the regional arts associations about the provision of Office of Arts and Libraries officers in the regions.

  Mr. Luce
  I am satisfied with the present arrangements, which provide for consultation whenever necessary between my officials and regional arts associations. There is no requirement for an OAL presence in the regions.

  Arts Council Grants
  Mr. Harry Greenway
  To ask the Minister for the Arts what assessments the Arts Council makes of the costs of individual productions by subsidised theatre companies in deciding its level of grant; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Luce
  In assessing its clients the Arts Council takes full account of their performance, both artistic and managerial.

  Attendance Figures
  Mr. Simon Coombs
  To ask the Minister for the Arts what information he has on total annual attendance figures at(a) London theatres, (b) provincial theatres, (c) London concerts, (d) provincial concerts, (e) London opera and (f) provincial opera.

  Mr. Luce
  The most recently available and comparable figures (1984) are as follows:

  thousands

  (a)

  10,471

  (b)

  5,557

  (c)

  1,118

  (d)

  1,348

  (e)

  565

  (f)

  474

  The figures at (c) and (d) refer to "symphony concerts".

  British Library
  Mr. Menzies Campbell
  To ask the Minister for the Arts what are the estimated capital costs of the new British Library at St. Pancras in each year from 1987–88 to 1990–91.

  Mr. Luce
  Provision for the estimated capital costs of the new British Library at St. Pancras for these years is as follows:

  £

  1987–88

  24,500,000

  1988–89

  33,088,000

  1989–90

  41,549,000

  1990–91

  46,159,000

  The figures given are in respect of the construction and resource costs for stage 1A, apart from £500,000 included within the 1988–89 figure, which is earmarked towards the design work for the completion stage.

  The figures are larger than those which I announced on 5 November because they include additional amounts transferred from the British Library's grant-in-aid in respect of savings in rents previously paid by the British Library to the Property Services Agency now reallocated to the project.

  Ethnic Arts
  Mr. Butler
  To ask the Minister for the Arts what discussions he has had with the Arts Council with regard to the funding of ethnic arts within London and the appointment of black directors to arts bodies; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Luce
  I discuss funding matters with the chairman and secretary general on a regular basis. Employment practices, the composition of boards of directors, and the application of the council's equal opportunities policies are among the council's criteria for the assessment of its clients.

  Royal Opera House
  Mr. Butler
  To ask the Minister for the Arts if he has any plans to seek powers to enable him to require the Royal Opera House to stage an appropriate proportion of black or ethnic arts.

  Mr. Luce
  No. It would be inappropriate for me to intervene in the artistic programmes of the Opera House, or any other funded theatre.

  Arts Council Minority Arts Unit
  Mr. Fisher
  To ask the Minister for the Arts what has been the budget for the Arts Council minority arts unit in 1986–87 and 1987–88; and what is the proposed budget for 1988–89.

  Mr. Luce
  [holding answer 4 March 1988]: The council had no separate budget for a minority arts unit in 1986–87. For the two succeeding years, budgets for the unit, including a grant to the minority arts advisory service, in figures are:

  £ thousand

  1987–88

  50·5

  11988–89

  65·0

  1 Projected.

ENERGY

  North Sea Oil
  Mr. McAllion
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what new steps he is taking to promote increased activity by oil companies in the North sea.

  Mr. Parkinson
  The licensing and fiscal arrangements for companies wishing to develop the resources of the United Kingdom continental shelf have encouraged a very high level of activity in recent years. Whilst activity fell as a result of the oil price collapse in 1986, it has since recovered strongly, which is further evidence of the success of the Government's approach to the North sea.

  Oil-fired Power Stations
  Mr. Ronnie Campbell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what consultations he has had with the chairman of the Central Electricity Generating Board regarding the conversion of oil-fired power stations to coal.

  Mr. Michael Spicer
  The CEGB keeps the possibility of conversion from oil to coal-fired power stations under constant review. I understand that the board has concluded that such conversion would be uneconomic at present.

  Electricity Industry
  Mr. Matthew Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he has now decided whether to produce a White Paper on privatisation of the electricity industry; and if he will make a statement.

  Dr. Reid
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if will make a further statement on progress in preparing plans to privatise the electricity supply industry.

  Mr. Simon Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what proposals he is considering for the control of the national grid after privatisation of the electricity industry.

  Mr. Frank Cook
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what progress he has made regarding the proposed publication of a White Paper on electricity privatisation.

  Mr. Parkinson
  I refer the hon. Members to my statement to the House of 25 February 1988.

  Mr. Barron
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy when he last met the chairman of the Central Electricity Generating Board to discuss the privatisation of the electricity supply industry; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Parkinson
  I meet Lord Marshall frequently. I refer the hon. Member to my statement to the House of 25 February 1988.

  Mr. Dykes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what plans he has to meet hon. Members to discuss various aspects of the Government's electricity privatisa-tion proposals.

  Mr. Parkinson
  I am always ready to discuss electricity privatisation with hon. Members. I refer my hon. Friend to my statement to the House of 25 February 1988.
  25
  Mr. Darling
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what representations he has received with regard to the extent of non-United Kingdom ownership of the electricity industry in the event of its being privatised.

  Mr. Michael Spicer
  I have received a large number of representations on many aspects of electricity privatisation.

  Miss Widdecombe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what cost savings have been achieved in the electricity industry since 1979; and what are the cost saving targets for 1987–88 and 1988–89.

  Mr. Michael Spicer
  Operating costs of electricity supply per unit sold fell in real terms by 10·3 per cent. between 1979–80 and 1986–87. The present performance aim is a reduction of 6·1 per cent. in controllable costs between 1983–84 and 1987–88. The performance aim for the next two financial years is under discussion.

  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what assessment he has made of the implications for his decision on the future structure of the electricity supply industry of the role played by the integrated grid system in maintaining power supplies following the lightning strike on the Sundon substation in May 1986, which resulted in the tripping of seven supergrid circuits; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Michael Spicer
  The Government recognise that national grid control must continue to direct the use of power stations to ensure that secure supplies are maintained. The future structure of the electricity supply industry provides for this. Nothing in the Government's proposals would affect the ability of the grid to deal with a similar incident to that at Sundon.

  Mr. Wallace
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what recent representations he has received from the Confederation of British Industry on the rate of return required by the electricity industry; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Parkinson
  I refer the hon. Member to the answer given to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) today.

  Mr. Livsey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what discussions he has had with the chairman or representatives of British Coal concerning privatisation of the electricity industry.

  Mr. Parkinson
  I meet the chairman of British Coal at regular intervals to discuss all aspects of the coal industry.

  Independent Oil Sector
  Mr. Salmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy whether he has any plans to review policy towards the United Kingdom independent oil sector; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Parkinson
  The Government's policy has been and continues to be to provide opportunities for active participation by independents in offshore and onshore exploration and development.

  Oil Demand
  Mr. Knapman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what is the projected level of demand for oil in the 26
  United Kingdom over the next three years; and what proportion of this will be met by output from the United Kingdom's own fields.

  Mr. Parkinson
  In 1987 the level of oil demand in the United Kingdom was 75 million tonnes. Over the next three years, we do not expect the level of demand to be very different. At this level, last year's production was 64 per cent. higher than self-sufficiency. On current estimates of future oil production, the United Kingdom is likely to remain self-sufficient well into the 1990s.

  Coal Industry
  Mr. Brandon-Bravo
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy when he next expects to meet the chairman of British Coal to discuss productivity.

  Mr. Andrew Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy when he next expects to meet the chairman of British Coal to discuss working practices in the coal mining industry.

  Mr. Hardy
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy when he last met the chairman of British Coal; and what subjects were discussed.

  Mr. Parkinson
  I regularly have meetings with the chairman to discuss all aspects of the coal industry.

  Mr. John Marshall
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy how much public funding support is being provided for British Coal in the current year.

  Mr. Michael Spicer
  I refer my hon. Friend to the answer given to the hon. member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. King) earlier today.

  Mr. Forth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what has been the improvement in productivity in the coal industry since March 1985.

  Mr. Baldry
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what has been the improvement in productivity in the coal industry since March 1985.

  Mr. Michael Spicer
  Productivity in 1984–85 was, of course, affected by the miners strike. Deep-mined revenue output per man shift for the week ended 20 February was 3·52 tonnes, an increase of some 67 per cent. on the average of 2·11 tonnes for April 1985.

  Opencast Mining
  Dr. Michael Clark
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy how many tonnes of opencast coal were produced by licensed operators in the last financial year.

  Mr. Neil Hamilton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy how many tonnes of opencast coal were produced by licensed operators in the last financial year.

  Mr. Michael Spicer
  I am advised by British Coal that output of licensed opencast coal during 1986–87 was 1·8 million tonnes.

  Power stations (Scottish Coal)
  Mr. Douglas
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he will make a statement on the amount of coal from Scottish miners burnt in power stations from 1979 to the latest date for which figures are available.
  27
  Mr. Michael Spicer
  Coal consumed in SSEB power stations from Scottish mines from 1979 has been as follows:

  Year

  Million tonnes

  1979–80

  7·58

  1980–81

  7·28

  1981–82

  7·55

  1982–83

  4·65

  1983–84

  4·64

  1984–85

  2·39

  1985–86

  6·25

  1986–87

  4·50

  19871

  4·45

  1April to December.

  Figures for Scottish coal burn in other United Kingdom power stations, and abroad, are not readily available.

  Energy Supplies (Wales)
  Mr. Win Griffiths
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he has any plans to visit Wales to discuss future investment in energy supplies.

  Mr. Parkinson
  The Government's approach to energy policy is a national one. I am satisfied that the energy needs of Wales are being fully met.

  Energy Efficiency
  Mr. Andrew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he will give his Department's current estimates of the cost of wasted energy as a result of the poor standard of insulation in domestic housing in the United Kingdom; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Parkinson
  Energy waste due to inadequate insulation in the housing sector is estimated at around £1 billion per year. it is in all our interests to minimise this waste. The Government, through the community insulation projects and the homes insulation scheme, are enabling over 300,000 households to be insulated annually. I hope that householders, local authorities, housing associations and building professionals will also continue to take advantage of my Energy Efficiency Office's information and advice service.

  Mr. Chapman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what recent representations he has received on his Policy on energy efficiency in buildings.

  Mr. Parkinson
  I receive a regular flow of representations from those who occupy, own or manage buildings, from the energy efficiency and heating industries, and from building professionals.

  Nuclear Power
  Sir Trevor Skeet
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what further proposals he has for the development of nuclear power.

  Mr. Parkinson
  I refer my hon. Friend to the reply I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) on 17 December 1987, at columns 6 9–40, and to the statement I made to the House on 25 February 1988.

  Plutonium
  Mr. Alan W. Williams
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what is the maximum velocity of impact that flasks carrying plutonium from Sellafield to Japan will withstand.

  Mr. Michael Spicer
  British Nuclear Fuels plc is developing and testing a suitable container for transport-ing plutonium by air from Sellafield to Japan. The container will meet the most stringent international standards.

  CEGB Chaplains
  Mr. Oppenheim
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy when he last met the Central Electricity Generating Board chaplains; and what subjects were discussed.

  Mr. Parkinson
  No such meetings have taken place.

  Electricity Prices
  Mr. Cummings
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he has met the Confederation of British Industry on the subject of electricity pricing.

  Mr. Parkinson
  I refer the hon. Member to the answer given today to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott).

  Mr. Yeo
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what further representations he has received from industrial consumers about electricity prices.

  Mr. Michael Spicer
  I have received a number of representations from industrial consumers.

  Nuclear Safety
  Ms. Ruddock
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he will raise the recent Health and Safety Commission report on "The Tolerability of Risk from Nuclear Power Stations" at his next meeting with the commission.

  Mr. Michael Spicer
  The HSC will be considering the HSE paper, along with any comments received by 6 May 1988.

  Joint European Torus
  Mr. Simon Coombs
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he will make a statement on the future of the Joint European Torus.

  Mr. Parkinson
  The JET joint undertaking was originally established for a duration of 12 years beginning on 1 June 1978. Some of the scientific problems which JET was designed to explore are taking longer to solve than was originally hoped. To enable JET to complete its original objectives, an extension to the end of 1992 is currently under consideration in Brussels along with a proposed new community programme and R and D in the field of thermonuclear fusion.

  Energy Prices and Consumption
  Mrs. Mahon
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy whether he plans to review his policies on energy pricing and consumption, in the light of the March
  29
  Consultation Group report on energy consumption patterns in the north-west, a copy of which has been sent to him; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Michael Spicer
  I welcome this study in so far as it shows the enormous scope for improved energy efficiency in the north-west and in the country as a whole. The Energy Efficiency Office will continue to pursue sound policies to help consumers benefit from this potential. For this it is essential that energy prices should be determined within a competitive environment.

  Offshore Fabrication Contracts
  Mr. Kennedy
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he has any plans to change the criteria employed by the Offshore Supplies Office in assessing the percentage of United Kingdom content in oil and oil-related fabrication and construction contracts; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Michael Spicer
  No

  Energy-Saving Measures
  Mr. Thurnham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what recent representations he has received about energy saving; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Parkinson
  I have received numerous recent representations on energy saving, many of which have been in the context of the work currently being undertaken on the future development of the Energy Efficiency Office's programmes.

  Departmental Staff
  Mr. Cran
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy how many members of staff within his Department are located within each region outside of London; what percentage this constitutes of staff within his Department; and what were the comparable figures in absolute and percentage terms in 1979.

  Mr. Parkinson
  The table below shows regions where 10 or more staff are currently located; there are also 28 staff in nine other regions. Comparable figures for 1979 are not available except for Strathclyde and East Midlands.

  1988

  1979

  Number

  percentage

  Number

  percentage

  Strathclyde

  74

  7

  110

  9

  East Midlands

  43

  4

  56

  4

  Grampian

  21

  2

  —

  —

  North-West

  21

  2

  —

  —

  Private Opencast Mining
  Mr. Steinberg
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy who polices the tonnage of coal taken from opencast sites in the private sector.

  Mr. Michael Spicer
  Compliance with the licensing arrangements for private opencast mining operations is a matter for British Coal.

  Data Protection
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy how many subject access requests under the terms of the 30
  Data Protection Act his Department has received; what was his estimate of this number; whether he is reconsidering the subject access fee charged by his Department as a result; and whether he will make a statement.

  Mr. Parkinson
  My Department anticipates very few subject access requests and none has so far been received.

  I have no plans to reconsider the subject access fee set out in my reply of 29 October 1987, at column 375, to the hon. Member.

  Bulk Consumers (Efficiency)
  Mr. Cran
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what evidence he has as to increased fuel efficiency on the part of bulk consumers; how this compares with the practice of other consumers, domestic and industrial; and what plans he has to encourage further such efficiency.

  Mr. Parkinson
  During the period 1979 to 1984 energy purchased per unit of production fell over 35 per cent. in the paper industry, 40 per cent. to 65 per cent. in basic chemicals, and over 70 per cent. in the aluminium industry. The figure for manufacturing industry as a whole was 25 per cent.

  No comparable figures exist for the domestic sector but, for example, about 90 per cent. of homes with lofts which can be insulated have been insulated.

  Building on this success, I have asked the Energy Efficiency Office to target its work on the economically most attractive areas, and to examine how the contribution of those who benefit from its industrial and commercial programmes can be increased.

  Opencast Executive
  Mr. Gareth Wardell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what information he has as to what percentage of(a) the profits and (b) the income of the Opencast Executive in South Wales was spent on site restoration in each year since 1984.

  Mr. Michael Spicer
  This is a matter for the British Coal Corporation, and I have asked the chairman to write to the hon. Member.

  Electricity Generation
  Mr. Salmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy (1) if he will publish what information he has regarding the proportion of electricity generation in each of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development members states which are currently met by(a) nuclear, (b) coal-fired, (c) oil fired, (d) hydro and (e) other power stations;

  (2) if he will publish what information he has regarding the proportion of electricity generation in each of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member states which are expected to be met in 1988 by (a) nuclear, (b) coal-fired, (c) oil fired, (d) hydro and (e) other power stations.

  Mr. Michael Spicer
  The proportion of total electricity production by OECD member states estimated by the IEA for the years closest to those required by the hon. Members is as follows:
  31

  1986

  1990

  TWh

  Per cent.

  TWh

  Per cent.

  Coal

  2,424·5

  40

  2,707·9

  40

  Oil

  523·8

  9

  509·1

  8

  Gas

  521·9

  9

  611·9

  9

  Nuclear

  1,319·7

  23

  1,598·8

  24

  Hydro/Geothermal

  1,167·7

  19

  1,303·2

  19

  Other

  22·4

  0

  37·0

  0

  Total

  5,980·0

  100

  6,767·9

  100

  The IEA publication "Coal Information 1987", a copy of which has been placed in the Library of the House, provides detailed information for each member state.

  Department of Energy Programme Expenditure

  £million Cash1

  £million 1986–87 Prices1

  Year

  Fast Reactor

  Fusion2

  Thermal Reactor

  Radioactive Waste Management3

  Fast Reactor

  Fusion2

  Thermal Reactor

  Radioactive Waste Management3

  1975–76

  49·1

  5·7

  12·8

  —

  136·3

  15·8

  35·5

  —

  1976–77

  53·2

  6·7

  15·3

  —

  130·5

  16·4

  37·5

  —

  1977–78

  60·3

  7·3

  20·8

  6·4

  129·9

  15·7

  44·8

  13·8

  1978–79

  77·9

  10·9

  17·0

  3·8

  151·6

  21·2

  33·1

  7·4

  1979–80

  76·4

  13·0

  17·2

  5·8

  127·2

  21·6

  28·6

  9·7

  1980–81

  90·8

  14·8

  22·8

  5·3

  127·5

  20·8

  32·0

  7·4

  1981–82

  98·2

  22·5

  35·7

  13·0

  125·6

  28·8

  45·7

  16·6

  1982–83

  96·4

  21·6

  36·0

  8·4

  115·0

  25·8

  42·9

  10·0

  1983–84

  114·9

  22·1

  30·5

  8·9

  131·0

  25·2

  34·8

  10·1

  1984–85

  102·5

  25·6

  25·6

  9·8

  112·0

  28·0

  28·0

  10·7

  1985–86

  102·0

  21·1

  29·1

  14·4

  105·1

  21·7

  30·0

  14·8

  1986–87

  99·4

  18·9

  15·6

  14·0

  99·4

  18·9

  15·6

  14·0

  1987–884

  75·8

  20·8

  16·7

  22·1

  72·7

  20·0

  16·0

  21·2

  1 Department of Energy expenditure through the UKAEA.

  2 The figures also include the contribution to the JET project, where appropriate.

  3 Figures for 1975–76 and 1976–77 are not readily available.

  4 Estimate.

  £ million cash

  £ million 1986–87 prices

  Year

  Renewables

  Energy Efficiency

  Renewables

  Energy Efficiency

  1975–76

  0·5

  —

  1·4

  —

  1976–771

  1·0

  0·3

  2·5

  0·7

  1977–781

  2·5

  1·2

  5·4

  2·6

  1978–791

  3·6

  2·1

  7·0

  4·1

  1979–801

  8·2

  0·3

  13·6

  0·7

  1980–81

  11·3

  5·1

  15·9

  7·2

  1981–82

  17·3

  9·8

  22·1

  12·5

  1982–83

  14·7

  14·6

  17·5

  17·4

  1983–84

  11·7

  12·4

  13·3

  14·1

  1984–85

  14·9

  18·1

  16·3

  19·8

  1985–86

  13·2

  27·9

  13·6

  28·7

  1986–87

  12·0

  24·5

  12·0

  24·5

  1987–882

  13·7

  24·5

  13·1

  23·5

  1 Energy efficiency expenditure shown for 1976–77 to 1979–80 is for publicity only: separate figures for energy efficiency R & D in these years are not available.

  2 Provision.

  Central Electricity Generating Board
  Mr. Wigley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy when he last met the chairman of the Central Electricity Generating Board; and what matters were discussed.

  Mr. Parkinson
  I meet Lord Marshall frequently, and we discuss a range of matters.

  United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority
  Mr. Matthew Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy, pursuant to his reply of Monday 15 February,Official Report, columns 516–18, if he will specify the funding provided in each of the table columns by year for (a) fast breeder reactor research, (b) fusion research, (c) thermal reactor research, (d) radioactive waste management, (e) renewable sources of energy and (f) energy efficiency.

  Mr. Michael Spicer
  The following table gives my Department's programme expenditure in the areas requested from the financial year 1975–76. Figures for the breakdown of the nuclear programme before 1975 –76 are not readily available; and the renewables and energy efficiency programmes did not begin until that year.

  Sellafield (Discharges)
  Dr. Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he will list, aside from quantities discharged to the sea or atmosphere, the forms of(a) refined uranium, (b) refined plutonium, (c) intermediate uranium

  33
  contaminated waste and (d) intermediate plutonium waste that leave British Nuclear Fuels plc, Sellafield, under full Euratom safeguards.

  Mr. Michael Spicer
  [holding answer 5 February 1988]: All material leaving Sellafield which is destined for civil use is under safeguards and is in the form of oxides.

  Power Stations (Emissions)
  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy how much limestone will be required per annum for the flue gas desulphurisation equipment presently being installed on coal-fired power stations.

  Mr. Michael Spicer
  The CEGB plans to install flue gas desulphurisation equipment on 6,000 MW of existing coal-fired generating plant over the period 1988 to 1997.

  Each 2,000 MW coal-fired power station using FGD equipment would use about 300,000 tonnes of limestone per year when operating at high load factors. This represents about 0 ·3 per cent. of annual United Kingdom limestone production.

  Mr. Flynn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he will make a statement on Her Majesty's Government's policy on the reduction of sulphur dioxide emissions from(a) Central Electricity Generating Board power stations and (b) privately owned power stations.

  Mr. Michael Spicer
  All new coal-fired power stations operated by both the public and private sector will be fitted with FGD equipment to the requirements of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Pollution. In addition, the CEGB plans to retrofit 6,000 MW of existing generating capacity over the period 1988 to 1997.

  Electricity Supplies
  Mr. Harry Greenway
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what is the ratio of electricity provided from(a) coal, (b) oil, (c) nuclear and (d) other sources; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Parkinson
  The amount of electricity provided by the Central Electricity Generating Board in the financial year 1986 –87 amounted to 238 TWh. Of this, 75 per cent. was generated by coal-fired power stations, 16 per cent. from nuclear, 5 per cent. oil and 4 per cent. from other sources.

EMPLOYMENT

  Docklands
  Mr. Leighton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will give an account of the history, staffing and activities of the Manpower Services Commission's docklands liaison group.

  Mr. Nicholls
  The London docklands liaison group involving officials of the Department of Employment and the Manpower Services Commission was established in June 1987.

  The docklands liaison group provides a focal point for the consideration of employment and training issues related to the development of the London docklands.

  Urban Development Corporation
  Mr. Leighton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment when the Manpower Services Commission will submit the evidence requested by the Employment Committee for its inquiry into urban development corporations particularly in relation to the Manpower Services Commission's docklands liaison group; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Nicholls
  Evidence from the Manpower Services Commission for the Select Committee into urban development corporations and the London docklands liaison group was sent to the Committee on 3 March 1988.

  Officials of the Manpower Services Commission are scheduled to give evidence to the Select Committee on 9 March 1988.

  Community Programme
  Ms. Short
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what was the number of community programme projects and places, by type of project and type of sponsor, at the most recent available date.

  Mr. Nicholls
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply given by my Friend the Minister of State to the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher),Official Report, Wednesday 9 December at columns 183 –86.

  Enterprise Allowance Scheme
  Mr. David Porter
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will make a statement on the take-up and progress of the enterprise allowance scheme in Waveney.

  Mr. Cope
  Information Js not available in the form requested. Since its national launch in August 1983, the enterprise allowance scheme has helped over 7,500 people to start their own business throughout Norfolk and Suffolk, including Waveney. Almost 2,400 people are currently receiving the allowance in these areas.

  Departmental Buildings
  Mr. Cran
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will list the location and status of all buildings within his Department located in London and the annual cost of rents, rates and maintenance of each.

  Mr. Lee
  The Department of Employment Group, including the Advisory, Conciliation Arbitration Service, the Health and Safety Executive and the Manpower Services Commission, occupies accommodation in 224 locations in the London area ranging from its main headquarters building, Caxton house, Tothill street, London, SW1, down to small jobcentres and unemploy-ment benefit offices. Civil accommodation for Government Departments is held in the name of the Secretary of State for the Environment and managed by PSA. Property for the Manpower Services Commission is in part held in its own name and the HSE holds the lease for its headquarters at Baynards house, London, W2. Some properties are held freehold; the rents of leasehold buildings are determined on a strictly commercial, and therefore confidential, basis. The total annual rent, including services charges paid to landlords for DE Group occupied properties in London in 1986 –87, the last
  35
  complete year for which figures are available, was £17 million. Comparable figures for rate payments, and maintenance charges paid to PSA for those properties managed by them, are £8·2 million and £1 ·9 million respectively.

  Labour Statistics
  Mr. Simon Coombs
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what were the 10 latest categories of

  Numbers and Percentage of Employees in Employment1 in the Ten Industry Classes with the Largest Numbers of Employees in Swindon Travel To Work Area

  Classes of the Standard Industrial Classification 1980

  September 1981

  September 1984

  Number (thousands)

  Percentage

  Number(thousands)

  Percentage

  32

  Mechanical engineering

  3·3

  4·0

  34

  Electrical and electronic engineering

  3·9

  4·7

  5·1

  5·8

  35/36

  Manufacturing of motor vehicles and other transport equipment

  2—

  2—

  2—

  2—

  50

  Construction

  4·7

  5·8

  4·3

  5·0

  61

  Wholesale distribution

  6·7

  8·2

  6·6

  7·7

  64

  Retail distribution

  8·9

  10·9

  10·5

  12·1

  66

  Hotels and catering

  3·4

  4·2

  3·2

  3·7

  83

  Business services

  4·1

  4·7

  91

  Public administration and defence

  3·3

  4·0

  3·6

  4·2

  93

  Education

  6·2

  7·6

  6·1

  7·0

  95

  Medical, other health and veterinary services

  4·8

  5·9

  4·2

  4·8

  1 The figures exclude the self-employed and members of Her Majesty's Forces.

  2 Figures for these industries cannot be given without disclosing confidential information relating to individual firms.

  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what is the total number of people unemployed in Houghton and Washington who are(a) 18 to 21 years of age, (b) 22 to 25 years of age, (c) 26 to 30 years of age, (d) 31 to 35 years of age and (e) over 36 years of age; and what percentage of each group this represents.

  Mr. Lee
  The following information is in the Library. Unemployment figures are not available in the exact age bands requested, but the following table shows the number of unemployed claimants in the Houghton and Washington parliamentary constituency on 14 January 1988, for the age bands which most closely correspond with those requested. Unemployment rates by age are not calculated below national level.

  Houghton and Washington Constituency—14 January 1988

  Age

  unemployed claimants

  18–19 years

  642

  20–24 years

  1,339

  25–29 years

  1,003

  30–34 years

  867

  35 years and over

  3,065

  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many people in Houghton and Washington have been unemployed for longer than a year; and what percentage of the working force this total represents.

  Mr. Lee
  The following information is in the Library. On 14 January 1988 the numbers of unemployed claimants who had been unemployed for one year or more in the Houghton and Washington parliamentary constituency was 3,142. The smallest areas for which unemployment rates are available are travel-to-work areas.
  36
  employment in the Swindon jobcentre area in 1976, 1981 and 1986; how many were employed in each category; and what percentage of the work force these represent.

  Mr. Lee
  The available information on a comparable basis is given in the table. The figures are taken from the censuses of employment and relate to the Swindon travel-to-work area, as defined in 1984. Conparable jobcentre area information for 1981 and 1984 and travel-to-work area information for years prior to 1981 is not available.

  Rev. Martin Smyth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what information he has as to the rate of male unemployment among(a) black and (b) white people in Brixton, Tottenham, Liverpool, Birmingham and Bristol; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Lee
  Information on unemployment by ethnic group is available only at regional, metropolitan county and national level.

  Industrial Tribunals
  Mr. Holt
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many awards were made against claimants for frivolous or vexatious cases at industrial tribunals in each year since 1982; and what was the average value of these claims.

  Mr. Nicholls
  Details of all cases in which costs were awarded are readily available only for the last two years. There were 287 such cases in the 12 months to 31 March 1986 with a median award of £92. The corresponding figures for the 12 months to 31 March 1987 were 294 and £285, respectively. A breakdown between applicants and respondents is not readily available but in practice the vast majority of cost awards are against applicants.

  Mr. Batiste
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what representations he has received concerning the effectiveness of pre-hearing assessments in industrial tribunals.

  Mr. Nicholls
  I am aware that criticisms have been made of the pre-hearing assessment procedure, most recently by Justice in its report on industrial tribunals. I am considering these criticisms in conjunction with the presidents of the industrial tribunals.
  37
  Mr. Batiste
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what proportion of applications to industrial tribunals in each of the last three years for which figures are available have been subject to a pre-hearing

  12 months ending

  Proportion of applications subject to pre-hearing assessment Per cent.

  Number of costs warnings issued

  Number of applications withdrawn or settled after costs warning

  31 December 1984

  9·4

  1,266

  1,004

  31 March 1986

  3·7

  672

  640

  31 March 1987

  3·9

  517

  500

  Mr. Batiste
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many awards of costs have been made by industrial tribunals during the most recent three years for which figures are available in respect of unfair dismissal cases; how they have been divided between awards against applicants and awards against respon-dents; and of all such awards how many did not follow a warning as to costs in a pre-hearing assessment.

  Mr. Nicholls
  Information on the number of cost awards in cases of unfair dismissal is readily available only for the two years ending 31 March 1987. The numbers are as follows:

  12 months ending 31 March 1986:

  185

  12 months ending 31 March 1987:

  229

  I regret that the remaining information requested is not readily available and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  Unfair Dismissal
  Mr. Batiste
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what is the average size of awards of compensation for all unfair dismissals made is each of the last three years for which records are available; and what is the average for awards against companies employing fewer than 20 people.

  Mr. Nicholls
  The median award of compensation for unfair dismissal cases was:

  12 months ending 31 December 1984:

  £1,345

  12 months ending 31 March 1986:

  £1,674

  12 months ending 31 March 1987:

  £1,805

  I regret that information on awards against companies with fewer than 20 employees is not available.

  Mr. Batiste
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many applications for unfair dismissal have been made in each of the last three years for which records are available; and how many relate to companies employing fewer than 20 employees.

  Mr. Nicholls
  The number of unfair dismissal applications registered was:

  12 months ending

  Number

  31 December 1984

  28,052

  31 March 1986

  27,632

  31 March 1987

  29,392

  I regret that information on the number of complaints relating to companies with fewer than 20 employees is not available.
  38
  assessment; in how many of such cases a warning as to costs was issued; and following such warning how many applications were withdrawn.

  Mr. Nicholls
  The information is as follows:

  Inner Cities
  Dr. Goodson-Wickes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what plans he has to strengthen schools-industry links in inner city areas.

  Mr. Fowler
  I propose to deploy the resources of the Department of Employment Group to encourage the development and implementation of 12 employer-school compacts within inner city target areas. The basic aim of these compacts will be for employers to guarantee a job with training to young people from inner city schools who meet agreed standards of achievement and motivation, and for this to be set down in an agreement between employers and schools. In return, schools will commit themselves to bringing then pupils up towards these agreed standards.

  I have asked the Manpower Services Commission to give financial and organisational support to the 12 compacts for their first four years and I am setting aside £3 million a year for the next four years for this purpose. The scheme will be operated in full co-operation with the Department of Education and Science and the Department of Trade and Industry.

  Mr. Knapman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what steps he intends to take to strengthen training and improve job prospects for inner city residents.

  Mr. Fowler
  My Department already spends over £l 1 billion in inner cities target areas providing unemployed people with skills, helping them find jobs and encouraging small businesses which are a prime source of new jobs. In intend to build on this work to focus our support on those who most need help. In particular, the following new initiatives are being introduced.

  More than 100 specialist staff will work in local communities giving information and advice about the Government's training programmes, building on the help already being provided through 500 jobcentres and unemployment benefit offices.

  People living in inner cities will be given more immediate access to information on jobs arid training programmes, for example in community centres or libraries, in some cases using new technology.

  Training in literacy, numeracy and English as a second language will be included in the Government's new training for employment programme. Special restart assessment courses will be set up for people lacking these basic skills.
  39
  A campaign to recruit more employers as training providers, particularly for the new programme, will be mounted.

  The Manpower Services Commission will encourage employers to provide more training places and collaborate in planning inner city training programmes.

  Small Businesses (Inner Cities)
  Mr. Knapman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what steps he is taking to encourage small businesses in the inner cities.

  Mr. Fowler
  Small businesses make a central contribution to the development of inner city areas and to the generation of new jobs. My Department already provides substantial support to encourage self-employment and to help small businesses to start up, prosper and grow.

  I am now introducing new measures to extend our support within the inner city target areas.

  Six additional inner city offices manned by the small firms service are to be set up, improving access to
  40
  business advice and counselling. Specialist counsellors will be appointed, to work in the local small business community, particularly with ethnic minority businesses.

  A new fund of £600,000 per annum has been established, to be used to match private sector contributions to local enterprise agencies' projects specially designed to help inner city firms.

  More encouragement, better training and advice for would-be entrepreneurs will be offered through more "enterprise days" in inner city jobcentres and a new training enterprise allowance scheme.

  The flow of finance to inner city business will be encouraged by increasing the guarantee to banks for the loans they make to small businesses under the Government's loan guarantee scheme. This will be raised from 70 per cent. to 85 per cent. in the 16 inner city task force areas.

  Greater emphasis on the option of self-employment will be included in YTS and the new training for employment programme.

  Special Aids
  Mr. Ashley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if the special aids to employment scheme will be available on the new adult training scheme; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Nicholls
  Yes. The special aids to employment scheme will be available on the new adult training programme. This was one of the recommendations included in the Manpower Services Commission's report and we have accepted its report in full.

  Bridging Allowance
  Mr. Strang
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment on what basis the proposed bridging allowance was calculated for young people at £15 per week; and whether he has any plans to increase the amount to the same rate as that payable under income support.

  Mr. Cope
  The proposed YTS bridging allowance has been set at £15 per week in order to provide short-term help for young people who have to wait for a few weeks for a YTS place after leaving a job or a previous YTS place. The allowance will be paid for a maximum of eight weeks, during which time the offer of a YTS place will be made. The allowance is more than twice the level of child benefit.

  The allowance is not a form of income support, nor is it intended to support young people in any way over a long period of time. We shall, of course, keep the level of the allowance under review.

  Mr. Strang
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment whether a young person discharged from a YTS place through no fault of her or his own will be entitled to a bridging allowance under the Employment Bill 1988 of more than eight weeks if they had completed 18 months of a YTS placement and still had six months before their 18th birthday and were unable to obtain another suitable YTS place.

  Mr. Cope
  The YTS bridging allowance will be limited to a maximum period of eight weeks in any year for all young people except registered disabled people.

  All young people under 18 are guaranteed a place on YTS. This includes young people who have left a previous YTS place. The current rules preventing those with limited YTS entitlement from re-entering YTS will be changed to ensure that they can re-enter YTS and complete their training right up to their 18th birthday.

  Mr. Strang
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will ensure that bridging allowance for young people under the Employment Bill 1988 will be paid immediately their parents cease receiving child benefit.

  Mr. Cope
  No. The child benefit and YTS bridging allowance payments are designed for different groups of young people and are not intended to run consecutively. The new YTS bridging allowance is for young people who are already in the labour market who apply for YTS after having left or lost a job or previous YTS place.

  Mr. Strang
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment whether bridging allowance, under the 42
  Employment Bill 1988, will be paid for more than eight weeks if a suitable YTS place cannot be found for a young unemployed person.

  Mr. Cope
  From September 1988 all young people under 18 years of age will be guaranteed a YTS place before their child benefit entitlement or YTS bridging allowance runs out.

  We have guaranteed that a suitable YTS place will be found for all young people under 18 including those who are disabled who want one before these payments run out.

  Special arrangements will be made for young registered disabled people, who may require special training facilities, to receive the YTS bridging allowance for longer than eight weeks if this proves necessary.

  Mr. Strang
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment whether a young person in receipt of bridging allowance under the Employment Bill 1988 will be penalised if she or he refuses an unsuitable YTS place.

  Mr. Cope
  There will be no change to the present arrangements for placing young people on to suitable YTS schemes.

  The new bridging allowance is for young people looking for a YTS place after leaving or losing a job or previous YTS place. If young people in this position refuse suitable YTS places consideration will be given to whether the bridging allowance should be suspended.

  YTS (Houghton and Washington)
  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many people are currently on YTS schemes in Houghton and Washington; and if he will provide a table delineating 1 he totals from 1979 to the latest available date.

  Mr. Cope
  The YTS programme began in 1983. The following table gives numbers on schemes in Houghton and Washington at 31 January for the past four years. Earlier data are not available.

  Number

  31 January 1985

  504

  31 January 1986

  484

  31 January 1987

  828

  31 January 1988

  829

  Jobcentres (Advertisements)
  Mr. Madden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will instruct jobcentres to accept job vacancy advertisements only in those cases, where jobs are advertised at legal minimum rates set by wages councils, where details of the job are given and where hours to be worked are clearly stated; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Lee
  Jobcentres have existing instructions that, where vacancies are notified for occupations affected by wages orders, rates must be riot less that those specified.

  Mr. Madden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will prepare standard job vacancy advertisements, reflecting good practice in terms of offering legal rates of pay, details of work to be undertaken and hours to be worked, for display in jobcentres; and if he will make a statement.
  43
  Mr. Lee
  Vacancies for display in jobcentres are recorded in a standard format. I am satisfied with existing arrangements.

SOCIAL SERVICES

  Hospital Charges
  Mr. Anderson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services what sums were collected by each health authority from non-United Kingdom residents for hospital charges in 1985–86 and 1986–87; and what is the estimated net sum after deduction of costs of administration.

  Mrs. Currie
  The table shows the income under section 121 of the National Health Service Act 1977 recorded in the annual accounts of health authorities for 1985–86 and 1986–87. This income is shown net of any sums written off in the relevant year, including those due from earlier years; in some cases the result is a negative figure (figures shown in brackets in table). Such figures represent adjustments to the accrued income reported in prior years and not actual outflows of funds.

  No deduction has been made for the cost of administration. The Department has no specific overall information on the administrative costs of collecting section 121 income which will vary from authority to authority.

  The table does not include income received under sections 65 and 66 of the Act from overseas residents treated as private patients.

  Income from overseas visitors (under section 121 of the National Health Service Act 1977)

  District health authorities

  1986–87

  1985–86

  £

  £

  Northern Region

  Hartlepool

  26

  —

  North Tees

  —

  —

  South Tees

  7,181

  8,749

  East Cumbria

  4,796

  5,023

  South Cumbria

  4,213

  10,209

  West Cumbria

  844

  1,002

  Darlington

  5,688

  1,580

  Durham

  1,196

  5,128

  North West Durham

  (83)

  1,112

  South West Durham

  (250)

  1,537

  Northumberland

  805

  7,688

  Gateshead

  2,088

  1,480

  Newcastle upon Tyne

  54,854

  65,748

  North Tyneside

  3,730

  1,847

  South Tyneside

  1,247

  345

  Sunderland

  533

  1,667

  Total

  86,868

  113,115

  Yorkshire region

  Hull

  979

  3,771

  East Yorks

  710

  495

  Grimsby

  2,720

  4,935

  Scunthorpe

  (152)

  386

  Northallerton

  2,512

  386

  York

  3,700

  31,271

  Scarborough

  (88)

  2,532

  Harrogate

  2,054

  6,619

  Bradford

  18,552

  7,098

  Airedale

  1,618

  3,874

  Calderdale

  1,657

  12

  Huddersfield

  5,120

  592

  Dewsbury

  13

  387

  Leeds Western

  25,407

  9,361

  Leeds Eastern

  22,383

  16,153

  44

  District health authorities

  1986–87

  1985–86

  £

  £

  Wakefield

  11,874

  993

  Pontefract

  —

  4,033

  Total

  99,059

  92,898

  Trent region

  North Derbyshire

  872

  2,802

  South Derbyshire

  6,312

  2,158

  Leicestershire

  19,606

  20,959

  North Lincolnshire

  —

  275

  South Lincolnshire

  1,460

  1,614

  Bassetlaw

  2,834

  411

  Central Nottinghamshire

  2,012

  918

  Nottingham

  10,942

  15,194

  Barnsley

  1,998

  —

  Doncaster

  85

  (1,391)

  Rotherham

  1,510

  1,503

  Sheffield

  41,134

  40,673

  Total

  88,765

  85,116

  East Anglian Region

  Cambridge

  51,919

  48,132

  Peterborough

  929

  1,557

  West Suffolk

  1,536

  6,562

  East Suffolk

  4,513

  (1,154)

  Norwich

  9,424

  7,988

  Great Yarmouth

  9,454

  282

  West Norfolk and Wisbech

  212

  712

  Huntingdon

  3,694

  3,972

  Total

  81,681

  68,051

  North West Thames Region

  North Bedfordshire

  5,455

  5,753

  South Bedfordshire

  7,362

  12,842

  North Hertfordshire

  5,673

  3,601

  East Hertfordshire

  1,583

  1,081

  North West Hertfordshire

  156

  8,918

  South West Hertfordshire

  —

  —

  Barnet

  2,980

  21,322

  Harrow

  3,873

  6,643

  Hillingdon

  53,656

  24,902

  Hounslow and Spelthorne

  9,978

  21,436

  Ealing

  1,349

  6,142

  Brent

  6,677

  22,044

  Paddington

  150,949

  199,717

  Riverside

  203,997

  180,914

  Total

  453,688

  515,315

  North East Thames Region

  Basildon and Thurrock

  5,090

  4,736

  Mid Essex

  373

  12,650

  North East Essex

  1,987

  2,861

  West Essex

  1,052

  9,298

  Southend

  1,690

  4,726

  Barking, Havering and Brentwood

  1,435

  3,427

  Hampstead

  33,721

  73,755

  Bloomsbury

  45,778

  150,170

  Islington

  6,192

  9,020

  City and Hackney

  779

  13,088

  Newham

  (606)

  3,692

  Tower Hamlets

  12,283

  9,318

  Enfield

  626

  2,978

  Haringey

  9,190

  6,510

  Redbridge

  (3,691)

  6,684

  Waltham Forest

  4,494

  5,399

  Total

  120,393

  318,312

  South East Thames Region

  Brighton

  (2,255)

  33,437

  Eastbourne

  3,935

  4,987

  Hastings

  889

  4,701

  South East Kent

  9,177

  14,785

  45

  District health authorities

  1986–87 £

  1985–86 £

  Canterbury and Thanet

  6,688

  12,153

  Dartford and Gravesham

  864

  1,596

  Maidstone

  503

  779

  Medway

  5,431

  5,369

  Tunbridge Wells

  3,767

  5,530

  Bexley

  5,583

  (458)

  Greenwich

  16,701

  14,261

  Bromley

  1,625

  5,008

  West Lambeth

  29,418

  32,307

  Camberwell

  65,302

  (2,802)

  Lewisham and North Southwark

  47,894

  32,179

  Total

  195,522

  163,832

  South West Thames Region

  North West Surrey

  5,471

  125

  West Surrey and North East Hampshire

  —

  14,175

  South West Surrey

  15,057

  11,973

  Mid Surrey

  5,093

  32

  East Surrey

  37,958

  19,155

  Chichester

  1,904

  5,833

  Mid Downs

  6,773

  18,163

  Worthing

  3,698

  5,739

  Croydon

  6,969

  4,363

  Kingston and Esher

  5,503

  7,473

  Richmond, Twickenham and Roehampton

  8,634

  22,016

  Wandsworth

  52,604

  36,260

  Merton and Sutton

  4,118

  2,207

  Total

  153,782

  147,514

  Wessex Region

  East Dorset

  19,215

  31,948

  West Dorset

  4,412

  3,143

  Portsmouth and South East Hampshire

  4,411

  6,015

  Southampton and South West Hampshire

  8,007

  15,719

  Winchester

  4,317

  2,173

  Basingstoke and North Hampshire

  2,760

  754

  Salisbury

  6,122

  25,143

  Swindon

  6,659

  4,798

  Bath

  3,845

  1,077

  Isle of Wight

  —

  —

  Total

  59,748

  90,770

  Oxford Region

  East Berkshire

  16,699

  10,599

  West Berkshire

  1,356

  5,764

  Aylesbury

  1,571

  17,508

  Wycombe

  5,688

  4,105

  Milton Keynes

  360

  125

  Kettering

  3,002

  2,231

  Northampton

  2,085

  2,312

  Oxford

  20,812

  64,330

  Total

  51,573

  106,974

  South Western Region

  Bristol and Weston

  10,528

  11,962

  Frenchay

  6,173

  6,905

  Southmead

  4,564

  3,573

  Cornwall

  2,188

  7,180

  Exeter

  29,085

  3,516

  North Devon

  652

  1,480

  Plymouth

  7,384

  11,339

  Torbay

  7,756

  18,546

  Cheltenham

  5,595

  8,617

  Gloucester

  372

  664

  Somerset

  5,394

  7,599

  Total

  79,691

  81,381

  46

  District health authorities

  1986–87

  1985–86

  £

  £

  West Midlands Region

  Bromsgrove and Redditch

  1,107

  230

  Hereford

  —

  2,662

  Kidderminster

  3,823

  800

  Worcester

  3,240

  7,866

  Shropshire

  3,587

  4,516

  Mid Staffordshire

  810

  —

  North Staffordshire

  2,728

  1,799

  South East Staffordshire

  399

  2,079

  Rugby

  476

  1,503

  North Warwickshire

  1,130

  —

  South Warwickshire

  6,809

  10,340

  Central Birmingham

  30,277

  38,610

  East Birmingham

  13,306

  5,557

  North Birmingam

  3,148

  9,754

  South Birmingham

  (15,825)

  41,002

  West Birmingham

  17,978

  25,150

  Coventry

  19,870

  17,279

  Dudley

  14,335

  5,261

  Sandwell

  4,710

  12,487

  Solihull

  17,652

  3,298

  Walsall

  6,539

  9,348

  Wolverhampton

  7,864

  7,477

  Total

  143,963

  207,018

  Mersey Region

  Chester

  16,845

  6,698

  Crewe

  1,450

  15,170

  Halton

  142

  51

  Macclesfield

  —

  —

  Warrington

  675

  1,590

  Liverpool

  7,100

  16,800

  St. Helens and Knowlsey

  1,976

  50

  Southport and Formby

  5,623

  8,496

  South Sefton

  12,629

  16,164

  Wirral

  2,909

  2,790

  Total

  49,349

  67,809

  North Western Region

  Lancaster

  2,045

  3,809

  Blackpool, Wyre and Fylde

  3,418

  2,037

  Preston

  11,887

  5,048

  Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley

  6,911

  1,831

  Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale

  5,773

  4,648

  West Lancashire

  1,084

  1,156

  Chorley and South Ribble

  —

  343

  Bolton

  49

  512

  Bury

  (411)

  832

  North Manchester

  13,268

  1,616

  Central Manchester

  18,755

  10,510

  South Manchester

  2,967

  23,083

  Oldham

  (1,934)

  10,081

  Rochdale

  2,416

  982

  Salford

  2,103

  7,354

  Stockport

  2,032

  1,018

  Tameside and Glossop

  1,095

  (1,711)

  Trafford

  627

  759

  Wigan

  1,660

  2,479

  Total

  73,745

  76,387

  Special Health Authorities for the London Postgraduate Teaching Hospitals

  Hospital for Sick Children

  —

  17,787

  National Hospital for Nervous Diseases

  17,064

  2,124

  Moorfields Eye Hospital

  —

  —

  Bethlem Royal Hospital and Maudsley Hospital

  (27,984)

  27,984

  47

  District health authorities

  1986–87 £

  1985–86 £

  National Heart and Chest Hospital

  10,556

  14,884

  Royal Marsden Hospital

  21,993

  7,927

  Hammersmith and Queen Charlotte's Hospitals

  49,048

  71,257

  Eastman Dental Hospital

  —

  —

  Total

  70,677

  141,963

  Leicester General Hospital (Renal Extension)
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will list representations received on the partial opening of the renal extension at Leicester general hospital.

  Mrs. Currie
  I have received no representations other than those from the hon. Member. The new kidney unit at Leicester general hospital is expected to open later this year. The opening was always intended to be staged. Twenty-four of the 30 available beds should open initially as soon as the district is able to recruit the necessary staff; the others will follow according to workload demand. Trent RHA, of which Leicester is a part, already provides a higher level of renal service than the national guidelines recommend. No separate representation has been received.

  Hospital Beds
  Dr. Owen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services what is the proportion of all hospital beds occupied by patients who are(a) over 65 years and under 75 years and (b) over 75 years.

  Mrs. Currie
  The estimated figures requested for National Health Service hospitals in England in 1985—the latest year for which information is available—are(a) 18 per cent. and (b) 34 per cent. respectively. Further information on the use of National Health Service resources by age group is available in DHSS Statistical Bulletin 4/87, a copy of which has been placed in the Library.

  Iatrogenic Illness
  Dr. Owen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services how many people in England and Wales were admitted to hospital as a result of iatrogenic illness in the latest year for which figures are available.

  Mrs. Currie
  The information requested about iatrogenic illness is not collected centrally. Such figures as are available, which relate to discharges or deaths are given in the attached table.

  Estimated number of discharges (including deaths in hospital) of in-patients with diagnosis as shown, NHS hospitals, England 1984–85

  1984

  1985

  Post-operative infection—main diagnosis

  7,120

  6,890

  Post-operative infection—subsidiary diagnosis

  9,090

  8,720

  Aplastic anaemia—main diagnosis

  3,290

  2,820

  Road Accident Casualties
  Dr. Owen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will list for each year since 1979 the number of road accident casualties admitted to hospital, the average length of hospital stay, and the cost to the National Health Service.
  48
  Mrs. Currie
  The total cost to NHS hospitals of treating casualties arising from all road traffic accidents is estimated to be £121 million for 1985. I regret that accurate figures for previous years are not available. The other information requested is given in the table.

  Estimated number of in-patient discharges1 and mean duration of stay of road traffic accident cases in NHS hospitals, England, 1979 to 1985

  Year

  Estimated number

  Mean duration of stay (days)

  1979

  66,750

  212·4

  1980

  65,070

  212·6

  1981

  63,090

  211·9

  1982

  63,690

  12·0

  1983

  59,710

  12·0

  1984

  59,190

  11·6

  1985

  55,870

  12·5

  1Including deaths in hospital.

  2Data relates to cases in England and Wales.

  Local Office Project
  Mr. Robin Cook
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services what is the additional cost to the Government of contracting out work on the local office project to private consultants; and what information he has on rates of pay of those employed by Computer Sciences Corporation and Arthur Andersen and Company by reference to those of equivalent staff of his Department.

  Mr. Portillo
  The cost of the development work on the local office project being performed by private consultants is being met from within the Department's existing budgets. Although scales of fees have been negotiated between the Department and the two firms, it is not possible to provide meaningful comparisons with Civil Service scales, because of insufficient Civil Service staff with equivalent skills and ability to deliver to the same timescale, and the different terms of service which will apply.

  Mr. Robin Cook
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services what steps have been taken, or will be taken, to ensure that the work carried out by the Computer Sciences Corporation and Arthur Andersen and Company will be of the required quality to meet the needs of his Department.

  Mr. Portillo
  All local office project work performed by Computer Science Corporation and Arthur Andersen is subject to the established quality assurance procedures. These are designed to ensure that every product is delivered according to prior specification and will meet the user's requirements.

  Mr. Robin Cook
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services what consultations have taken place with the Civil Service unions on the contracting out of work on the local office project.

  Mr. Portillo
  Civil Service unions have been regularly consulted and informed on contracting out work on the local office project at both departmental and local level.

  Maternity Services
  Ms. Harman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services which health authorities have implemented the recommendations of the Maternity Services Advisory Committee.

  Mrs. Currie
  The reports of the Maternity Services Advisory Committee made a number of recommendations. Most districts have implemented the advice given or have plans to do so. Where districts have not fully implemented the recommendations, they have concluded that existing practices are already working well.

  Following publication of the reports in 1985, the Department sought information from health authorities on a number of issues arising from the reports with a view to establishing a base from which to measure progress on implementation through the accountability review process. A copy of the findings of this exercise has been placed in the Library.

  Data Protection
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services how many subject access requests under the terms of the Data Protection Act his Department has received; what was his estimate of this number; whether he is reconsidering the subject access fee charged by his Department as a result; and whether he will make a statement.

  Mr. Portillo
  Up to 1 March 1988, 270 subject access requests had been received. It had been estimated that the Department might receive some 200,000 requests per year. At present the Department does not charge a fee.

  Hospital Car Service
  Sir Peter Emery
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will list those health authorities which reimburse drivers in the hospital car service at a rate below that agreed by the General Council for National Health Service staff.

  Mrs. Currie
  This information is not held centrally.

  Alarms
  Mr. Jack
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will introduce a Bill to enable local authorities to charge a fee to private residents for the connection of their private alarms to local authorities control centres; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Portillo
  No. Local social services authorities already have powers to charge for the connection of private alarms to their control centres. The powers of housing authorities to charge for connection in these circumstances are a matter for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment.

  One-Parent Families
  Mr. Jacques Arnold
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services what was the number of one-parent families in the United Kingdom recorded by the most recent statistics; and what was the number recorded in 1971.

  Mr. Portillo
  Comparable information for the whole of the United Kingdom is not available. But within Great 50
  Britain there were an estimated 940,000 one-parent families in 1984 which is the lastest year for which the statistics are available. The estimated number in 1971 was 570,000. The definition used, and other particulars, are contained in an article in "Population Trends No. 45 (Autumn 1986)", a copy of which is in the Library.

  Attendance Allowance (Orkney and Shetland)
  Mr. Wallace
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services (1) how many people in(a) Shetland and (b) Orkney receive a retirement pension combined with the higher rate attendance allowance;

  (2) how many people in (a) Shetland and (b) Orkney receive widow's benefit combined with a higher rate attendance allowance.

  Mr. Scott
  I regret that the information is not available.

  Mr. Wallace
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services how many people in(a) Shetland and (b) Orkney receive invalidity benefit combined with higher rate attendance allowance.

  Mr. Scott
  Two and five, respectively, at 2 March 1988.

  Abortions
  Mr. Amos
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will give a breakdown of the numbers of abortions performed in the Northern regional health authority at gestation of(a) 18, (b) 19, (c) 20, (d, 21, (e) 22 and (f) 23 or more weeks, by the district health authority in which they were performed; and if he will express the figures as a rate per thousand women in their main child-bearing years in that district health authority.

  Mr. Newton
  No. Abortion statistics by district health authority of termination are not released for reasons of maintaining confidentiality.

  Single Payments
  Mr. Robin Cook
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services what was the average monthly expenditure on single payments between August and October 1985.

  Mr. Portillo
  The average monthly, that is four-weekly, expenditure on single payments in the 12-week period ending on 22 October 1985 was £24,473,644.

  Mr. Madden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will provide for each office of his Department in west Yorkshire, grouped according to the main conurbations, information on single payments for the years 1983 to 1988 in the form of his reply of 15 February,Official Report, columns 503–504.

  Mr. Portillo
  [holding answer 29 February 1988]: I have placed in the Library tables giving the information requested.

  Cook-chill System (Wakefield)
  Mr. O'Brien
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he has considered the request of Wakefield district health authority for an investigation into the value for money exercise on the introduction of cook-chill system for providing food; and if he will make a statement.

  Mrs. Currie
  Wakefield health authority's resolution asks the Secretary of State
  51
  "to institute a public enquiry into the lengthy decision making process prior to the implementation of the cook-chill system of catering in Wakefield".

  Its request is still under consideration.

  Mr. O'Brien
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services what information he has received relating to(a) the transportation of solid meal components in a refrigerated state and (b) fluids being transported warm, to wards in the Wakefield health authority area under the cook-chill system; if any assessment has been made as to whether this practice conforms to the procedures recommended by his Department; and if he will make a statement.

  Mrs. Currie
  I have received no information of the type suggested. Any assessment as to whether such practices conform to the principles contained in the Department's guidelines is primarily a matter for the Wakefield health authority advised as necessary by the Yorkshire regional health authority.

  Mr. O'Brien
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he has received the report of Wakefield district health authority on the annual deficit of £263,000 arriving from the introduction of the cook-chill system; if he will make provision to cover this deficit; and if he will make a statement.

  Mrs. Currie
  I have received no such report. There is no question of central funding being made available to meet the costs of the introduction of cook-chill. That is a matter for local management.

  Regional Secure Units
  Mr. Bermingham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services whether the research study on the regional secure units funded by his Department has been completed; and if he will make a statement.

  Mrs. Currie
  A survey of regional secure services funded by the Department has been carried out. A report is being prepared.

  Marta Owen
  Mr. Tony Lloyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services what recent steps he has taken to monitor the progress of the closure of Swinton house hospital, Salford, and of the provision of care for Marta Owen; and if he will make a statement.

  Mrs. Currie
  Arrangements for the closure of Swinton house and the relocation of its patients, including Marta Owen, are a matter for the Salford health authority in conjunction with the North Western regional health authority. Where appropriate, interim provision will be made for patients leaving Swinton house until long-term arrangements for their care are settled.

  Housing Benefit
  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services what is the percentage loss in income in the Houghton and Washington area due to housing benefit reductions for those households earning(a) £60 per week, (b) £80 per week and (c) £150 per week.

  Mr. Portillo
  I regret that the information is not available.
  52
  Sir Brandon Rhys Williams
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services, further to his reply to the hon. Member for Kensington,Official Report, 4 February, columns 737–42, and to the figures for the lone parent earning £60 per week in table 'D', whether one-parent benefit is to be excluded from set income for the new housing benefit calculation; and what rate of lone parent premium was used for his calculations.

  Mr. Scott
  I regret my reply given to my hon. Friend on 4 February at columns 737–42 should be amended as follows: Table D showing the new system from April 1988 for a single person with gross weekly earnings of £60 and children aged 4 and 6 gross should indicate £81·95 in net weekly spending power with no rent or rate rebates.

  One parent benefit is taken into account for calculating housing benefit. The lone-parent premium used was £8·60.

  NHS Staff
  Rev. Martin Smyth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will publish a table showing how many(a) district general managers, (b) consultants, (c) nursing staff and (d) domestic staff in the National Health Service are (i) members of ethnic minorities and (ii) women in each district health authority in England and Wales; and what is the total number of people in each category.

  Mrs. Currie
  Information about the numbers of staff employed in each health district in England in the groups and categories mentioned is not readily available and to provide it would entail a special exercise which would be disproportionate in terms of cost. The NHS is an equal opportunities employer and health authorities have the obligation of ensuring that policies to this end are implemented.

  Hospitals (Ministerial Visits)
  Mr. Rooker
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services how many hospitals in Birmingham have received official visits from Ministers since 11 June 1987.

  Mrs. Currie
  None. An invitation has been accepted and a visit is planned to take place later this spring.

  Emphysema
  Mr. Lofthouse
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he has now received the Industrial Advisory Council's report on its investigation into the cause of emphysema among coal miners; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Scott
  We have received the report of the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council's investigation into bronchitis and emphysema. It is receiving careful consideration and a statement will be made shortly.

  Benefits
  Sir Brandon Rhys Williams
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services what is his latest estimate of the expenditure savings(a) during 1988–89 and (b) after the end of transitional protection, as a result of the benefit changes to be implemented in April; and if he will also show how much of the savings is due to (a) the 20 per cent. minimum rates contribution, (b) housing benefit changes,

  53
  (c) the new capital rule for housing benefit and family rebate and (d) the replacement of single and other payments by the social fund.

  Mr. Scott
  We estimate that the structural changes to the benefit system in April 1988 will involve additional public expenditure in 1988–89 of some £430 million compared with a straight uprating of the old schemes; there will also be a saving of some £490 million on rate rebates, which are not classified as public expenditure. It is not possible to make realistic estimates of the effect after the end of transitional protection, which will not be for several years.

  The saving from requiring householders to pay 20 per cent. of their domestic rates bill, net of the cost of the compensation for this liability built into the income support, housing benefit and family credit rates, is some £80 million. The overall saving from the housing benefit changes is some £650 million; of this, roughly £80 million is attributable to the new capital rule.

  Gross expenditure on loans and grants from the social fund will be broadly in line with expected outturn on single payments in the current year.

  Eye Tests
  Dame Jill Knight
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services what is the average cost of an eye test for a hospital ophthalmic out-patient.

  Mr. Newton
  I regret that this information is not collected centrally.

  Electorates
  Mr. William Ross
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will give the average number of electors per constituency in(a) the United Kingdom, (b) England, (c) Scotland, (d) Wales and (e) Northern Ireland at the latest available date.

  Mrs. Currie
  The information requested is as follows:

  Area

  Total number of electors on the 1987 register

  Average number of electors per constituency

  United Kingdom

  43,666,375

  67,179

  England

  38,393,203

  69,585

  Scotland

  3,994,893

  55,485

  Wales

  2,175,168

  57,241

  Northern Ireland

  1,103,111

  64,889

  Mr. William Ross
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will list in the Official Report those constituencies in the United Kingdom which have electorates greater than 75,000 and those which have electorates less than 40,000 at the latest available date, showing in each case the number of electors.

  Mrs. Currie
  The information requested is as follows:

  Parliamentary constituency

  Electors on 1987 register

  Constituencies with electorate greater than 75,000

  Isle of Wight

  99,760

  Milton Keynes

  98,215

  East Berkshire

  88,884

  Eastleigh

  88,664

  East Hampshire

  87,476

  Horsham

  87,229

  54

  Parliamentary constituency

  Electors on 1987 register

  Huntingdon

  87,195

  Devizes

  87,145

  Swindon

  87,140

  Wokingham

  86,587

  Westbury

  85,708

  South Colchester and Maldon

  85,302

  Peterborough

  85,244

  Cirencester and Tewkesbury

  85,181

  Crosby

  85,099

  North West Surrey

  84,295

  Ryedale

  84,205

  The Wrekin

  83,796

  Chelmsford

  83,696

  Woking

  83,453

  North Colchester

  83,391

  South Suffolk

  83,143

  Waveney

  82,920

  Dudley West

  82,884

  South West Cambridgeshire

  82,692

  Stroud

  82,340

  Stratford-on-Avon

  82,255

  Feltham and Heston

  81,999

  Chichester

  81,862

  Harrow East

  81,842

  Aldershot

  81,791

  Mid Bedfordshire

  81,697

  North Wiltshire

  81,670

  Mid Worcestershire

  81,581

  Portsmouth North

  81,350

  Brigg and Cleethorpes

  81,214

  Mid Sussex

  81,138

  Hornsey and Woodgreen

  81,122

  Bridlington

  81,072

  South Derbyshire

  81,041

  Billericay

  80,588

  Grantham

  80,366

  South Staffordshire

  80,338

  Windsor and Maidenhead

  80,272

  Richmond (Yorkshire)

  80,255

  Central Suffolk

  80,204

  Langbaurgh

  80,201

  Romsey and Waterside

  80,179

  York

  80,159

  Cheltenham

  80,121

  Faversham

  80,062

  Beverley

  79,958

  South West Bedfordshire

  79,927

  West Hertfordshire

  79,886

  North Hertfordshire

  79,689

  Northavon

  79,610

  Chorley

  79,514

  Arundel

  79,468

  Meriden

  79,436

  South Norfolk

  79,359

  South Hams

  79,356

  Basingstoke

  79,116

  West Gloucestershire

  78,982

  Halesowen and Stourbridge

  78,979

  Rutland and Melton

  78,921

  Solihull

  78,355

  Houghton and Washington

  78,821

  Guildford

  78,783

  North Shropshire

  78,240

  Blaby

  78,155

  Bosworth

  78,131

  South Worcestershire

  78,129

  Braintree

  78,025

  Tonbridge and Malling

  77,956

  Honiton

  77,942

  Lincoln

  77,939

  Aylesbury

  77,933

  Fareham

  77,910

  Gloucester

  77,899

  Harwich

  77,827

  Worthing

  77,719

  Rugby and Kenilworth

  77,640

  55

  Parliamentary constituency

  Electors on 1987 register

  Bury St. Edmunds

  77,615

  Winchester

  77,527

  Poole

  77,481

  Wallsend

  77,465

  Havant

  77,412

  Erewash

  77,381

  Woodspring

  77,255

  Warrington, South

  77,245

  Sheffield, Hillsborough

  77,236

  Tunbridge Wells

  77,205

  Weston-Super-Mare

  77,172

  West Lancashire

  77,054

  Rochford

  77,048

  Salisbury

  77,045

  Macclesfield

  77,018

  Northampton, South

  76,948

  Canterbury

  76,931

  Portsmouth, South

  76,814

  Tottenham

  76,713

  Harrogate

  76,607

  Suffolk Coastal

  76,547

  South West Hertfordshire

  76,535

  Warrington, North

  76,517

  Sunderland, North

  76,503

  Hertford and Stortford

  76,470

  Witney

  76,221

  St. Albans

  76,206

  Dudley, East

  76,154

  Newbury

  76,145

  Stockton, South

  76,136

  Wansdyke

  76,108

  Boothferry

  76,084

  Exeter

  76,053

  Bournemouth, East

  75,906

  Rossendale and Darwen

  75,894

  New Forest

  75,780

  Sunderland, South

  75,762

  Harborough

  75,686

  Ealing, Southall

  75,660

  Scarborough

  75,628

  Blackburn

  75,586

  Don Valley

  75,452

  Torridge and West Devon

  75,373

  Batley and Spen

  75,334

  Staffordshire Moorlands

  75,318

  Bournemouth, West

  75,290

  North Luton

  75,270

  Tynemouth

  75,180

  South West Norfolk

  75,152

  Taunton

  75,035

  Stoke-on-Trent, North

  75,029

  North East Cambridgeshire

  75,026

  Constituencies and electorates less than 40,000

  Tweedale, Ettrick and Luaderdale

  38,283

  Meirionnydd Nant Conwy

  31,972

  Caithness and Sutherland

  31,519

  Orkney and Shetland

  31,332

  Western Isles

  23,685

  Mr. William Ross
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Service if he will list the 12 largest constituencies by area in the United Kingdom, showing their electorates at the latest available date.

  Mrs. Currie
  The information requested is as follows:

  Parliamentary constituency

  1Hectares

  Electors on the 1987 register

  Ross, Cromarty and Skye

  954,680

  52,808

  Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber

  870,708

  67,336

  Caithness and Sutherland

  788,297

  31,519

  Argyll and Bute

  681,362

  49,272

  56

  Parliamentary constituency

  1Hectares

  Electors on the 1987 register

  North Tayside

  485,104

  54,464

  Galloway and Upper Nithsdale

  441,883

  53,994

  Penrith and Border

  327,984

  71,930

  Western Isles

  308,717

  23,685

  Brecon and Radnor

  301,269

  49,936

  Fermanagh and South Tyrone

  265,463

  69,997

  Kincardine and Deeside

  261,106

  64,219

  Mid Ulster

  257,098

  68,341

  1These figures relate to land and inland water.

  NI Fund
  Mr. Madden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services what is the most recent advice he has received from the Government Actuary as to the minimum target balance of the national insurance fund as a proportion of annual benefit expenditure.

  Mr. Portillo
  The Government Actuary stated in 1983 that the national insurance fund's minimum target balance should be one sixth of the year's estimated benefit expenditure. (Report on the draft Social Security Benefit Up-Rating Order 1983. Cmnd. 8969.) This has never been a fixed target, but a prudent limit below which the balance should not be allowed to fall.

  Poverty Levels
  Rev. Martin Smyth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services what information he has as to the number and percentage of people in ethnic minorities who are below the poverty level; what are the comparable figures for those who are not members of ethnic minorities; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Portillo
  This Government, like Governments, do not accept that a poverty line can be drawn. No information on ethnic minorities is contained in the national census, the annual family expenditure survey or DHSS administrative statistics.

  Income Support Scheme
  Mr. Gordon Brown
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services whether, further to his answer of 15 February to the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East,Official Report, column 492, he will break down the £420 million extra expenditure under the income support scheme in 1988–89 into expenditure incurred by transitional protection and expenditure not incurred by transitional protection; and in each case how much of this expenditure is attributable to compensation for the 20 per cent. rates contribution.

  Mr. Scott
  [holding answer 3 March 1988]: Of the £420 million, extra expenditure on transitional protection will be £200 million and that on structural changes £220 million.

  Extra expenditure on income support in 1988–89 to compensate for the 20 per cent. rates contribution will be £280 million. This relates entirely to the structural effect. However, in calculating the amount of benefit payable at the point of the change to income support, compensation for the rates contribution is also to be built into the supplementary benefit levels. But for this the cost of

  57
  transitional protection would have been reduced by £70 million and the total additional expenditure in 1988–89 would have reduced from £420 million to £350 million.

  Brighton Health Authority
  Mr. Tony Banks
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services what was the number of student and pupil nurse training places in the Brighton health authority; and what level of expenditure was allocated for training purposes for each year since 1979.

  Mr. Newton
  [holding answer 4 March 1988]: I am sorry that I cannot give the hon. Member the information he seeks, since it is not held centrally. Details about the number of student and pupil nurse training places and the level of expenditure for training purposes for each year since 1979 should be available from Brighton health authority, and the hon. Member may wish to contact the district chairman.

  Myalgic Encephalomyelitis
  Mr. Tony Banks
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services (1) what steps have been taken to ensure that officials of his Department have an adequate awareness of myalgic encephalomyelitis when assessing appropriate benefit claims:

  (2) what training is given to staff in his Department to help them to identify myalgic encephalomyelitis sufferers claiming sickness or other benefits to which they may be entitled.

  Mr. Scott
  [holding answer 4 March 1988]: For incapacity benefits, entitlement depends on a medical opinion that a claimant is incapable of work; for disability benefits there are medical criteria which are related to the effect of the disabling condition rather than its cause. People can thus qualify for these benefits even if the specific cause of their symptoms cannot readily be identified and the Departmental officials who deal with their claims are not therefore required to have a knowledge of particular diagnostic conditions.

DEFENCE

  Services (Recruitment Guidelines)
  Mr. Hume
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what rules or guidelines govern recruitment to the armed services in respect of persons(a) with convictions, (b) convictions of murder and (c) on parole.

  Mr. Freeman
  When considering applications from individuals who have been convicted of an offence the services are bound by the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. The Act lays down, according to sentence passed, those convictions which can and cannot be deemed to be "spent" under the Act and if the designated period of time has elapsed since the individual was convicted it is not necessary to advise the recruiting staff of it. Therefore, a candidate could quite legitimately enter the armed forces having at some time in the past been convicted of an offence.

  Even in cases where a conviction is not spent, entry is not automatically refused. Recruiting staff many, after giving due consideration to the offence committed, the individual's conduct since and any other relevant
  58
  information they have before them, decide to accept the candidate. However, if the individual is still subject to any form of supervision order, it is unlikely he or she would be accepted; this would include an individual who had been convicted of murder and was released on licence.

  Members' Visits
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will publish in the Official Report the rules governing visits to sites within his responsibility by right hon. and hon. Members; when they were last updated; and why.

  Mr. Freeman
  Right hon. and hon. Members may by mutual agreement with local armed forces units visit defence establishments within their constituency; and similar arrangements may be made for Front Bench defence spokesmen in respect of defence establishments outside their constituency. Hon. and right hon. Members may also visit defence establishments as part of all-party parliamentary groups whose plans are drawn to the attention of hon. and right hon. Members.

  These arrangements are intended to assist hon. and right hon. Members in the conduct of their parliamentary duties, while minimising disruption to the normal conduct of military activities and maintaining the political impartiality of the armed forces.

  Fylingdales
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make it his policy to organise within the next few months a parliamentary visit to Fylingdales; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Freeman
  I am always prepared to consider suggestions from hon. Members for visits to defence establishments by groups of parliamentarians. I shall bear the hon. Member's interest in mind.

  D Notice Committee
  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to his answer of 12 February,Official Report, column 387–8, what action has been taken as a result of the permanent under secretary in his Department drawling the letter from the vice chairman of the D Notice Committee, Mr. J. M. Ramsden, dated 21 January, to the attention of those in the Government concerned with the relevant matters; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Younger
  My ministerial colleagues and I have noted the contents of Mr. Ramsden's letter of 2 February. We are pleased that the media side of the Defence Press and Broadcasting Committee had decided to continue to participate in the D Notice system, on which the Government place great value.

  Administrative and Executive Grades
  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence which administrative and executive grades are in receipt of special pay additions; where they are located; and what are the total numbers by grade at each location.

  Mr. Sainsbury
  Special pay additions for administrative and executive grades have been introduced at AWE Aldermaston and Burghfield. The grades involved are administrative assistant, administrative officer, executive
  59
  officer and higher executive officer. It is not the practice to discloe details of the number or deployment of staff employed in these areas.

  Psychological Warfare
  Mr. Livingstone
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many members if the armed forces and civil servants from his Department were engaged in psychological warfare in Northern Ireland each year from 1972 to 1987.

  Mr. Freeman
  It is not the policy to comment on operational matters.

  Mr. Livingstone
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many members of the armed forces and civil servants from his Department were trained in psychological warfare in each year from 1972 to 1987 in England, in the United States of America, or in both.

  Mr. Freeman
  The Ministry of Defence no longer uses the term "psychological warfare". In common with the rest of NATO, the Ministry of Defence uses the term "psychological operations" and runs courses intended to familiarise Ministry of Defence personnel with the background to and the concept of psychological operations. Records of Ministry of Defence personnel attending psychological operations training courses are only held from 1983. The figures for those personnel attending such courses in the United Kingdom are as follows:

  Year

  Numbers Attending

  1983–84

  111

  1984–85

  12

  1985–86

  14

  1986–87

  9

  1987–88

  10

  1 Including one civil servant

  A small number of armed forces personnel have also attended psychological operations training courses run in the USA. Records of numbers of such personnel exist from 1982 only, and are shown below:

  Year

  Numbers Attending

  1982

  2

  1983

  1

  1984

  0

  1985

  0

  1986

  1

  1987

  3

  Mr. Colin Wallace
  Mr. Livingstone
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence in what capacity Mr. Colin Wallace served in the Ulster Defence Regiment whilst a senior information officer in Northern Ireland.

  Mr. Freeman
  Mr. Wallace served as a part time 2nd lieutenant in 1 (County Antrim) UDR.

  Captain Fred Holroyd
  Mr. Livingstone:
  To ask the Secretary for State for Defence whether Captain (retired) Fred Holroyd was
  60
  offered any other post in military intelligence in Northern Ireland or elsewhere before he was medically downgraded in July 1975.

  Mr. Freeman
  It is not our normal practice to discuss the postings of individual officers.

  Mr. Livingstone
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence on what basis Captain (retired) Fred Holroyd was referred for medical examination at the military wing of the Musgrave Park hospital, Belfast, in 1975, and later transferred for medical examination at the Royal Victoria hospital, Netley, Southampton, in 1975; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Freeman
  It is not my Department's policy to discuss the details of individual medical cases which are medical in confidence.

  Mr. Livingstone
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to his answers of 11 December,Official Report, columns 311 and 312, what representations have been received from Captain (retired) Fred Holroyd, his legal representative, or from his civilian doctors, for access to his medical records; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Freeman
  I have nothing further to add to the reply I gave to the honourable member on 11 December 1987, at column 312.

  Vanguard (Lost Components)
  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to the answer of 26 February,Official Report, column 378, (1) how each of the various pieces of Vanguard submarine lost overboard on 5 to 6 February were secured to the deck of the ship;

  (2) what progress has been made in the attempts to recover the five Vanguard submarine sections lost on 5 to 6 February; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Sainsbury
  Until the results of the inquiry into the incidents are known, I have nothing to add to my statements to the House on 15 and 26 February, at columns 448–9 and 378–80 respectively.

  Complaints (Redress of Grievance)
  Mr. Ashley
  To ask the Secretary of Defence how many complaints seeking redress of grievance have been made in each of the last five years; how many have been successful; how many complaints related to injustice; and in how many of the cases there was a request for a payment because of injuries for which a legal action might have been brought but for section 10 of the Crown Proceedings Act 1979.

  Mr. Freeman
  Submissions for redress of grievances made under the terms of the service discipline Acts may be dealt with by commanding officers, or at any of the higher levels of command, the service boards of the Defence Council. No central records are kept of the total number of submissions made. However, information relating to submissions considered by the service boards is as follows:

  Year

  Number of submissions considered

  Number in which redress was granted in whole or in part

  1983

  21

  5

  1984

  33

  8

  61

  Year

  Number of submissions considered

  Number in which redress was granted in whole or in part

  1985

  61

  25

  1986

  62

  13

  1987

  83

  10

  1988 (to date)

  6

  —

  Notes:

  1. Figures only available from 1985 for submissions to the Admiralty Board.

  2. Five submissions are still under consideration.

  All complaints relate to what the complainant considers to be be injustice. As far as can be established from available records, four submissions considered by the service boards in the last five years have requested payments in circumstances where, but for the operation of section 10 of the Crown Proceedings Act 1947 a legal action might have been pursued.

  Cemeteries
  Mr. Tony Banks
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence ( 1 ) when the War Graves Commission last inspected the graves in the Woodgrange Park cemetery in the London borough of Newham; and how many complaints have been directed by the commission to the cemetery owners;

  (2) what measures are adopted by his Department to ensure that cemetery owners acting as agents of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission maintain proper standards of care;

  (3) if he will list those cemeteries in London which charge for maintaining war graves and those cemeteries which do not;

  (4) if any charges have been paid to the current owners of the Woodgrange Park cemetery for maintaining war graves; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Freeman
  These are matters for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and I have asked the director general to write to the hon. Member.

  Ex-Marine Martin Kettrick
  Mr. Ashley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will outline the procedure that was followed regarding the complaint of ex-Marine Martin Kettrick for redress of grievance; who assessed the complaint; and how the opinion of Martin Kettrick was presented.

  Mr. Freeman
  As an ex-member of the Royal Marines, Mr. Kettrick submitted his complaint directly through the Department of the Commandant General Royal Marines. In accordance with normal practice, information concerning the complaint, its origins, and all relevant circumstances was assembled by the relevent secretariat division for presentation to the Admiralty Board. The opinion of Mr. Kettrick, as expressed in the full text of his complaint, formed part of that presentation. The case was considered at length by the Admiralty Board and a decision then taken on behalf of the Defence Council.

  Mr. Ashley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence whether, in the consideration of the case of ex-Marine Martin Kettrick, the fact that section 10 of the Crown Proceedings Act 1947 has now been abolished was taken into account; what assessment was made of the actuarial level of the pensions that Martin Kettrick received from 62
  the Army in relation to what he might have received had he been successful in a civil court; and if there was any assessment of the possibility that Martin Kettrick's injuries arose from the negligence of others.

  Mr. Freeman
  The Crown Proceedings (Armed Forces) Act 1987 is non-retrospective and section 10 of the Crown Proceedings Act 1947 remains a bar in Mr. Kettrick's case to a civil action in the courts in which questions of negligence and level of damages would otherwise have been determined. Nevertheless, in considering Mr. Kettrick's case full account was taken, and assessments made, of these and all other relevant factors including the value of the pension and other benefits which he continues to receive under the no-fault system available to members of the armed forces.

  Maritime Tactical Nuclear Weapons
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence (1) if Britain's maritime tactical nuclear weapons are all assigned to NATO; and whether they can be withdrawn from NATO command to be used under national command;

  (2) what is the strategy for employment of Britain's maritime tactical nuclear weapons.

  Mr. Ian Stewart
  All the United Kingdom's nuclear forces are committed to NATO, in support of the strategy of flexible response, although they remain at all times under the control of the British Government and are capable of being employed independently when supreme national interests are at stake.

  National Joint Ocean Surveillance Information Centre
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence (1) if the National Joint Ocean Surveillance Information Centre is designed to be capable of operating as a back-up to the United States ocean surveillance information system;

  (2) when the National Joint Ocean Surveillance Information Centre first became operational;

  (3) what is the number of (a) Royal Navy personnel, (b) United States military personnel, (c) United States civilian personnel and (d) British civilian personnel assigned to the United Kingdom National Joint Ocean Surveillance Information Centre.

  Mr. Ian Stewart
  I have nothing to add to the answer I gave the hon. Member on 14 December 1987, at column 411.

  Eurogroup Defence Ministers
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence when and where the next meeting of Eurogroup Defence Ministers is scheduled to take place; if he is planning to attend the meeting; and if he will make a statement on the agenda for the meeting.

  Mr. Ian Stewart
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence will attend the next Eurogroup meeting which takes place on 25 May. A range of items will be discussed.

NATIONAL FINANCE

  Income Tax
  Mr. Gordon Brown
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what would be the cost of reducing the higher tax rate of 60 per cent. to(a) 50 per cent., (b) 45 per cent., and (c) 40 per cent. in 1988–89.

  Mr. Norman Lamont
  The direct revenue costs, in a full year at 1988–89 levels of income, of reducing the higher tax rates to the levels specified are given in the table below:

  Top rate of tax Percentage

  revenue cost £ million

  50

  530

  45

  1,000

  40

  1,650

  The estimates are based on projections of the 1984–85 survey of personal incomes in line with the forecasts in the Autumn Statement and are therefore provisional. The costs assume indexation of the current income tax bands and allowances to 1988–89 levels according to the statutory provisions. The estimates assume that the wife's earnings election is made where it is beneficial, but no other allowance is made for possible changes in taxpayers' behaviour.

  Personal Ownership
  Mr. Andrew Mitchell
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on the growth of personal ownership in Britain since 1979.

  Mr. Norman Lamont
  I refer the hon. Gentleman to the answer which I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mr. Fallon) on 29 October, at column 435.

  VAT
  Mr. Heddle
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what information he has as to the date by which the final verdict of the European Court is likely to be known in respect of the case between the European Commission and the United Kingdom Government in respect of value added tax zero-rating policy on domestic and non-domestic construction work.

  Mr. Lilley
  The European Court of Justice has not yet given an indication of a likely date for delivery of its judgment; best estimates suggest that it may not deliver judgment before April or May at the earliest.

  Forestry
  Mr. Simon Hughes
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what representations he has received on tax incentives for forestry.

  Mr. Norman Lamont
  My right hon. Friend has received a number of representations.

  Shareholders
  Mr. Butler
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what information he has regarding the number of shareholders within the United Kingdom.
  64
  Mr. Norman Lamont
  I refer the hon. Gentleman to the answer which I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mr. Fallon) on 29 October, at column 435.

  Luncheon Vouchers (Civil Servants)
  Mr. Galbraith
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is his estimate of the annual cost of providing weekly luncheon vouchers of(a) £5, (b) £6 and (c) £7 per employee for each civil servant in the London pay area; and what is his estimate of the cost of similar services for all civil servants outside London.

  Mr. Brooke
  The table below gives estimates, excluding administrative costs, based on the numbers of civil servants at 1 January 1987.

  £ million

  Weekly luncheon vouchers

  Pay area

  £5 per employee

  £6 per employee

  £7 per employee

  London

  32·3

  38·8

  45·3

  Outside London

  124·1

  148·9

  173·8

  Mr. Galbraith
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will consider providing luncheon vouchers as a means of topping up any pay offer in response to the 1988 pay claim by the National Union of Civil and Public Servants; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Brooke
  No.

  Britoil
  Mr. David Shaw
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will publish in the Official Report the text of his letter of 29 February to the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) about Britoil, referred to in the Official Report, column 1168, on 3 March.

  Mr. Lawson
  The text of the letter is as follows:"In my statement to the House on 23 February I said that the details of the arrangement which the Government had reached with BP were set out in an exchange of letters between BP and the Treasury, and that I was placing copies of those letters in the Library. In response to your subsequent question, I referred you to the letter written by BP
  After my statement, you raised a point of order to the effect that the undertakings to which I had referred were not set out in the documents. You suggested that this was a gross abuse of the House. Your point of order referred only to the letter from Sir Peter Middleton and not to the letter from Sir Peter Walters, which was of course the letter to which I had referred in my reply to you and which contained BP's undertakings. Both letters were, in fact, deposited in the Library at the same time, and I assume that you overlooked the letter from Sir Peter Walters when you went to inspect the documents.
  I recognise that your accusation of 'Ministerial abuse of the House' was made in good faith; but it was a very serious charge indeed and one wholly without foundation. I am sure you will recognise that it is only proper that you should set the record straight, in Hansard, by a further point of order."

  Taxation
  Mr. Nigel Griffiths
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, in the manner of the answer given on 1 July 1986,Official Report, column 509, he will publish a table showing his estimate for the current financial year of the numbers of people who will be liable to pay income tax, higher rate tax and employee's contributions to

  65
  national insurance, divided into the main categories on the basis of the combined rates of deduction from income for which they will be liable.

  Mr. Norman Lamont
  [holding answer 15 February 1988]: The table gives estimates of employees liable to income tax and national insurance contributions (NIC) in 1987–88 by the combined marginal rate of tax and NIC. Cases where the main source of income derives from self-employment have been excluded. Estimates are derived

  Employees liable to income tax and NIC by marginal rate

  Combined Tax and NIC Marginal rate

  No. of employees

  1Taxable Income

  Earnings of individual

  per cent.

  Thousands

  £ per annum

  £ per annum

  5

  600

  0

  39–65

  7

  100

  0

  65–100

  9

  100

  0

  100–295

  27

  600

  1–17,900

  Under 39

  32

  1,400

  1–17,900

  39–65

  34

  2,400

  1–17,900

  65–100

  36

  12,100

  1–17,900

  100–295

  227

  1,100

  1–17,900

  above 295

  340

  400

  17,901–20,400

  all ranges

  345

  300

  20,401–25,400

  all ranges

  350

  100

  25,401–33,300

  all ranges

  355

  100

  33,301–41,200

  all ranges

  360

  100

  above 41,200

  all ranges

  All

  19,400

  —

  —

  1 For married couples taxable income is the combined income of the husband and wife except where there is a wife's earnings election, when the wife's earnings are treated separately as her taxable income.

  2 Above the upper earnings limit (£295 per week) for National Insurance contributions, the marginal rate of NIC is zero.

  3 For higher rate taxpayers the marginal rate of NIC is zero, except for a few cases where the wife's earnings are below the upper limit or much of the income comes from investments.

  Revenue Contributions
  Mr. Gordon Brown
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will estimate the annual receipts derived from payment of(a) income tax, (b) capital gains tax, (c) natonal insurance and (d) value added tax paid by the top (i) 1 per cent. and (ii) 5 per cent. and (iii) 10 per cent. of earners and the bottom (1) 1 per cent. (2) 5 per cent. and (3) 10 per cent. of earners.

  Mr. Norman Lamont
  [holding answer 23 February 1988]: I regret that information is not available in the form requested and could be produced only at disproportionate cost. However, the Central Statistical Office published an analysis of the distribution of taxes and benefits by households in the July 1987 edition of "Economic Trends."

  Licensed Premises (Sports Centres)
  Mr. Wigley
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what incentives are offered through tax rebates and tax concessions to licensed premises within sports centres both in the public and private sector to encourage the reinvestment of profits in enhanced sporting facilities; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Norman Lamont
  [holding answer 3 March 1988]: There are no special reliefs or concessions for licensed premises within sports centres and normal tax rules apply.
  66
  from projections of the 1984–85 survey of personal incomes which does not contain details of NIC. These have been imputed from earnings levels on the simplifying assumption that all employees are contracted in to the earnings-related part of the national insurance scheme and do not pay the reduced rate for married women optants. Other estimates could only be produced at disproportionate cost.

  Sole Traders
  Mr. Corbett
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will take steps to waive the earnings limit for 714s certificates for those sole traders starting a business with assistance from the enterprise allowance scheme.

  Mr. Norman Lamont
  [holding answer 3 March 1988]: The 714s certificate was introduced in 1982 to enable those who did not qualify for a full exemption certificate because of a history of unemployment to obtain limited exemption from deduction at source on their earnings. It is difficult to see why the recently unemployed who receive financial assistance under the enterprise allowance scheme should be given a further advantage over the recently unemployed who do not.

  Mr. Corbett
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer when the earnings limit of £150 a week, excluding the cost of materials, was set in relation to sole traders applying for a 714s certificate; what the figure would now be if it had been increased in line with rises in average earnings; and what plans he has to raise the limit.

  Mr. Norman Lamont
  [holding answer 3 March 1988]: The £150 limit came into effect on 1 December 1982 and, if increased in line with average earnings, would now stand at £215. I have no plans at present to raise the limit.

NORTHERN IRELAND

  Irish Army Air Corps
  Mr. Beggs
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how often Irish Army Air Corps aircraft have
  67
  landed at Aldergrove airport in each of the last three years; what are the reasons for these landings; and to what extent this practice has developed as a result of the Anglo-Irish Agreement.

  Mr. Stanley
  It is not the practice to give details of flight movements at military establishments.

  However, use of Aldergrove airport by the Irish Army Air Corps is essentially in the context of the Anglo-Irish Agreement.

  Ian Richard Thain
  Mr. Hume
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland on what date his Department learned that Ian Richard Thain had applied for or was being offered parole, and by what agency his Department was informed.

  Mr. Stanley
  My Department was first informed by the Ministry of Defence on 13 February 1986 that Private Thain's petition for early release on parole had been lodged by his solicitor.

  My Department was informed by the Home Office on 13 November 1986 of Private Thain's forthcoming release from prison.

  RUC (Photographs)
  Mr. Livingstone
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will place in the Library any guidelines issued to the Royal Ulster Constabulary concerning the release of official photographs for media use.

  Mr. Stanley
  I understand that the instructions on the use of official photographs are contained in the RUC code, an internal document for police use only. Any question of releasing these instructions would be a matter for the Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

  Statistics on security Part I—Statistics of terrorist activity Yearly figures: 1971–1987

  1971

  1972

  1973

  1974

  1975

  1976

  1977

  1978

  1979

  Shooting Incidents1

  1,756

  10,628

  5,018

  3,206

  1,803

  1,908

  1,081

  755

  728

  Explosions

  1,022

  1,382

  978

  685

  399

  766

  366

  455

  422

  Bombs Neutralised

  493

  471

  542

  428

  236

  426

  169

  178

  142

  Weight of explosives in lbs2

  Explosions

  10,972

  47,462

  47,472

  46,435

  13,753

  17,596

  2,839

  5,343

  11,181

  Neutralised

  3,001

  19,978

  32,450

  27,094

  11,159

  16,252

  2,188

  5,860.5

  4,530

  Armed Robberies

  437

  1,931

  1,215

  1,231

  1,201

  813

  591

  442

  434

  Amount stolen

  303,787

  790,687

  612,015

  572,951

  572,105

  545,497

  446,988

  232,650

  568,359

  Malicious Fires3 4

  —

  —

  587

  636

  248

  453

  432

  269

  315

  Deaths:

  Civilian

  115

  321

  171

  166

  216

  245

  69

  50

  51

  Army/UDR

  48

  129

  66

  35

  20

  29

  29

  21

  48

  RUC RUC 'R'

  11

  17

  13

  15

  11

  23

  14

  10

  14

  Injuries:

  Civilian

  1,838

  3,813

  1,812

  1,680

  2,044

  2,162

  1,027

  548

  557

  Army/UDR

  390

  578

  548

  483

  167

  264

  188

  135

  153

  RUC/RUC 'R'

  315

  485

  291

  235

  263

  303

  183

  302

  165

  1 Figures in ( ) refer to shots heard only and not included in the total.

  2 Estimated weight only.

  3 Consolidated figures not available for earlier years.

  4 No figure for April-June 1981.

  68

  Security Statistics
  Mr. McNamara
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if security statistics for Northern Ireland for the second half of 1987 are now available, together with details of persons charged with terrorist-type offences and convictions for scheduled offences for the year.

  Mr. Stanley
  [holding answer 2 March 1988]: Yes, the statistics together with those since 1971 are as follows:

  Statistics on Security

  PART I

  Statistics of Terrorist Activity

  Yearly totals for 1971–1987

  Statistics for terrorist activity comprise the following:

  (i) Number of shooting incidents.

  (ii) Number of explosions.

  (iii) Number of bombs and devices neutralised.

  (iv) Weight of explosives in bombs and devices neutralised.

  (v) Number of armed robberies and amount stolen.

  (vi) Number of malicious fires.

  (vii) Number of deaths and injuries of RUC/RUC 'R', Army and civilians.

  PART II

  Statistics of Security Forces' Activity

  Yearly totals for 1971–1987

  Statistics for security forces' activity comprise the following:

  (i) Number of houses searched.

  (ii) Number of weapons, pounds of explosives and rounds of ammunition found.

  (iii) Number of people charged with terrorist type offences (murder, attempted murder, explosives offences, firearms offences, armed robbery and other offences relating to the security situation, for example, arson, membership of illegal organisation and so on.

  PART III

  Statistics of Persons Convicted of Scheduled Offences

  Yearly totals for 1983–1987
  69 70

  Part I—continued

  1980

  1981

  1982

  1983

  1984

  1985

  1986

  1987

  Shooting incidents1

  642

  815

  382

  290

  230

  196

  285

  489

  (327)

  (165)

  (134)

  (104)

  (41)

  (107)

  (185)

  Explosions

  280

  398

  219

  266

  193

  148

  172

  236

  Bombs neutralised

  120

  131

  113

  101

  55

  67

  82

  148

  Weight of explosives in lbs2

  Explosions

  9,059

  9,261

  11,199

  6,923

  8,545

  11,711

  11,309

  5,767

  Neutralised

  6,405

  9,168

  7,300

  7,503

  6,114

  7,715

  9,463

  8,818

  Armed robberies

  412

  587

  580

  622

  627

  459

  724

  858

  Amount stolen

  496,825

  854,929

  1,392,202

  830,258

  701,903

  655,690

  1,207,152

  1,900,098

  Malicious fires3 4

  275

  536

  499

  528

  840

  740

  906

  506

  Deaths:

  Civilian

  50

  57

  57

  44

  36

  25

  37

  66

  Army/UDR

  16

  23

  28

  15

  19

  6

  12

  11

  RUC/RUC 'R'

  9

  21

  12

  18

  9

  23

  12

  16

  Injuries:

  Civilian

  530

  878

  328

  280

  513

  468

  773

  780

  Army/UDR

  77

  140

  98

  88

  86

  33

  55

  104

  RUC/RUC 'R'

  194

  332

  99

  142

  267

  415

  622

  246

  1 Figures in ( ) refer to shots heard only and not included in the total.

  2 Estimated weight only.

  3 Consolidated figures not available for earlier years.

  4 No figure for April-June 1981.

  Statistics on security Part II—statistics of security forces' activity Yearly figures: 1971–87

  1971

  1972

  1973

  1974

  1975

  1976

  1977

  1978

  1979

  Houses searched1

  17,262

  36,617

  74,556

  71,914

  30,092

  34,939

  20,724

  15,462

  6,452

  Finds

  Firearms

  717

  1,264

  1,595

  1,260

  825

  837

  590

  400

  301

  Ammunition (rounds)

  157,944

  183,410

  187,399

  147,202

  73,604

  70,306

  52,091

  43,512

  46,280

  Explosives

  2,748

  41,488

  38,418

  26,120

  11,565

  21,714

  3,809

  2,108

  1,996

  Persons charged with terrorist type offences2

  31972

  1973

  1974

  1975

  1976

  1977

  1978

  1979

  Murder

  13

  71

  77

  138

  120

  131

  60

  45

  Attempted murder

  16

  85

  76

  88

  121

  135

  79

  39

  Firearms offences

  242

  631

  545

  460

  353

  301

  225

  177

  Explosives offences

  86

  236

  161

  100

  215

  146

  79

  40

  Theft Act

  111

  186

  239

  314

  188

  203

  151

  159

  Other

  63

  205

  276

  97

  279

  392249

  210

  Total

  531

  1,414

  1,374

  1,197

  1,276

  1,308

  843

  670

  1 Includes occupied and unoccupied houses searched.

  2 These figures are not available in consolidated form for earlier years.

  3 31 July to 31 December.

  Part II—Continued

  1980

  1981

  1982

  1983

  1984

  1985

  1986

  1987

  Houses searched1

  4,106

  4,104

  4,045

  1,497

  1,282

  812

  1,273

  1,523

  Finds

  Firearms

  203

  409

  317

  200

  197

  238

  215

  267

  Ammunition

  28,078

  47,127

  41,452

  32,451

  27,211

  13,748

  29,061

  19,796

  Explosives

  1,810

  7,536

  5,066

  3,762

  8,534

  7,373

  5,386

  12,974

  Persons charged with terrorist type offences2

  Murder

  63

  48

  50

  75

  41

  24

  12

  28

  Attempted Murder

  59

  72

  96

  60

  68

  52

  28

  21

  Firearms Offences

  112

  155

  173

  150

  155

  105

  128

  132

  Explosives Offences

  39

  39

  41

  48

  21

  37

  31

  22

  Theft Act

  128

  158

  130

  119

  94

  65

  70

  109

  Other

  149

  446

  196

  161

  149

  239

  386

  156

  Total

  550

  918

  686

  613

  528

  522

  655

  468

  71 72
  1Includes occupied and unoccupied houses searched.

  2These figures are not available in consolidated form for earlier year

  Notes on the Tables:

  1. The offence classifications are based on those used by the Crown and Peace Office in its annual return.

  2. The tables relate to persons convicted at the Belfast Crown Court. This covers all scheduled offences tried on indictment.

  3. Some jury trials are included in cases where the Attorney-General certified out of the scheduled mode of trial, that is non-terrorist serious offences.

  4. Where a person had been convicted of more than one offence only the most serious or that which received the longest sentence is recorded in the statistics.

  Convictions for scheduled offences

  Number convicted

  Sentence (January-December 1987)

  Offence

  1983

  1984

  1985

  1986

  1987

  Non-custodial sentence

  Young offenders centre training schools

  Less than 5 years

  5 years and less than 7 years

  7 years and less than 10 years

  10 years and less than 15 years

  15 years and less than 20 years

  20 years and over

  Life

  Murder

  14

  11

  38

  26

  10

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  10

  Attempted murder

  14

  13

  20

  7

  11

  0

  0

  1

  0

  1

  6

  2

  1

  0

  Conspiracy to murder

  7

  10

  10

  17

  15

  1

  1

  1

  1

  2

  6

  3

  0

  0

  Manslaughter

  3

  5

  2

  9

  2

  0

  0

  0

  1

  0

  1

  0

  0

  0

  Wounding with intent to do grevious bodily harm

  7

  1

  8

  19

  8

  5

  0

  1

  1

  0

  1

  0

  0

  0

  Causing grevious bodily harm

  7

  3

  2

  13

  10

  6

  1

  3

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Assault occasioning grevious bodily harm

  18

  11

  6

  5

  13

  7

  3

  3

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Causing explosion

  9

  6

  13

  5

  7

  1

  0

  0

  1

  4

  0

  1

  0

  0

  Placing explosives

  0

  0

  1

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Possessing explosives with intent

  12

  20

  16

  20

  21

  4

  0

  0

  2

  1

  2

  7

  5

  0

  Other explosives offences

  5

  2

  6

  5

  3

  2

  0

  0

  1

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Possessing a firearm with intent

  28

  37

  55

  46

  81

  34

  8

  13

  11

  3

  6

  5

  1

  0

  Possessing a firearm

  0

  8

  53

  20

  16

  14

  0

  2

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Carrying a firearm with intent

  22

  15

  18

  19

  12

  11

  0

  0

  1

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Other major firearms offences

  53

  4

  6

  6

  5

  3

  0

  0

  1

  1

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Minor firearms offences

  0

  0

  3

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Robbery

  191

  132

  160

  156

  159

  55

  13

  52

  29

  6

  4

  0

  0

  0

  Aggravated robbery

  0

  1

  4

  1

  2

  0

  0

  2

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Membership of illegal organisations

  14

  11

  8

  3

  2

  2

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Attempted robbery

  0

  11

  20

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Soliciting support for proscribed organisation

  0

  3

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Unlawful collection of information

  7

  2

  4

  5

  8

  5

  1

  1

  0

  1

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Illegal training

  0

  0

  0

  0

  1

  1

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Kidnapping

  2

  1

  8

  9

  1

  1

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Blackmail

  0

  0

  0

  0

  3

  0

  0

  0

  1

  2

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Contributing to resources of a proscribed organisalion

  5

  1

  1

  1

  2

  2

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Burglary

  0

  10

  16

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Aggravated burglary

  0

  0

  3

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Hijacking

  45

  37

  28

  41

  56

  43

  8

  5

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Attempted hijacking

  0

  1

  1

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Arson

  32

  17

  32

  59

  74

  52

  7

  10

  4

  0

  1

  0

  0

  0

  Possession of an offensive weapon

  4

  1

  2

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Petrol bomb offences

  21

  20

  88

  64

  79

  52

  14

  13

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Escape offences

  5

  1

  0

  0

  1

  0

  0

  1

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Criminal damage

  1

  0

  2

  5

  20

  10

  2

  8

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Intimidation

  2

  0

  1

  2

  16

  4

  3

  9

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Assisting offenders

  6

  2

  1

  4

  3

  2

  0

  1

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Withholding information

  12

  1

  3

  9

  6

  6

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Possessing prohibited articles

  1

  13

  2

  3

  9

  6

  0

  1

  2

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Conspiracy to arm terrorists

  2

  0

  1

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Common law riot

  1

  19

  3

  5

  23

  17

  3

  3

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Total

  550

  430

  645

  584

  679

  346

  64

  130

  56

  21

  27

  18

  7

  10

  RUC Special Branch
  Mr. Livingstone
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what has been the total number of police officers and civilians serving in, or responsible to, the RUC special branch in each year from 1968 to to the latest available date.

  Mr. Stanley
  [holding answer 29 February 1988]: In the particular operational circumstances of Northern Ireland this information is confidential.

  Diplock Courts
  Mr. Andrew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many prisoners currently serving sentences in Northern Ireland have been convicted in Diplock courts; and how many(a) Catholics and (b) Protestants have been convicted and acquitted in Diplock courts.

  Mr. Stanley
  [holding answer 26 February 1988]: The only information readily available indicates that on 1 February there were 1,155 prisoners in Northern Ireland who had been convicted of scheduled offences, although in a proportion of cases, where there was no connection with terrorism, they would have been dealt with by normal jury trial. Five hundred and eighty six of these gave their religion as Roman Catholic; and 549 as Protestants. There were 20 "others".

  Figures are not available showing the religious persuasion of all those convicted in the Diplock courts, or of those who were acquitted.

  Firearms
  Mr. William Ross
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will list in the Official Report such information as is available to him as to (a) the make, (b) the type and (c) the calibre of the firearms used by terrorist organisations in Northern Ireland during the last five years.

  Mr. Stanley
  [holding answer 26 February 1988]: The following information can be made available:

  Types of weapon used by terrorist organisations in Northern Ireland in the last five years

  Pistols

  Revolvers

  Rifles

  Heavy machine guns

  Sub machine guns

  General purpose machine guns

  Shotguns

  Most common calibres of the firearms used by terrorist organisations in Northern Ireland in the last five years

  1. ·22 LR (Long Rifle)

  2. 7·65 mm

  3. 9 mm Short

  4. 9 mm Parabellum

  5. ·380

  6. ·38 Smith and Wesson

  7. ·38 Spl (Special)

  8. ·357 Magnum

  9. ·30 M1 Carbine

  10. 7·62 × 39 mm

  11. 7·62 NATO

  12. 12 Gauge Shotgun

  13. ·223 (5·56 mm)

  Mr. William Ross
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many legally held(a) shotguns, (b) rifles, (c) handguns and (d) other firearms were
  74
  stolen from their civilian owners in Northern Ireland in each of the last five years, where the owners were not members of the part-time Ulster Defence Regiment or Royal Ulster Constabulary Reserve; and if he has any information as to how many were stolen by paramilitary and terrorist organisations.

  Mr. Stanley
  [holding answer 26 February 1988]: Information in the form requested is not readily available and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  Mr. William Ross
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many persons are known to have been killed in Northern Ireland in each of the last five years by persons who were using(a) a shotgun, (b) a hand gun, (c) a rifle and (d) another firearm which was legally held by the person using it, not being a member of the security forces; and of these deaths how many (i) were the victims of a relation or (ii) died during the commission of another crime.

  Mr. Stanley
  [holding answer 26 February 1988]: The information requested is not readily available and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

ENVIRONMENT

  Nottingham (Housing Waiting List)
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) further to his answer of 22nd February, what changes have been necessitated in the calculation of indicators for Nottingham as a result of the changes in Nottingham's housing waiting list;

  (2) when he expects discussions between his Department and the Housing Corporation regarding changes in the Nottingham housing waiting list to he completed; and if he will make a statement as to the likely effects.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  As I explained in my earlier answer, waiting list figures are not used in the housing needs index. Discussions of the calculations and other indicators for Nottingham have, however, been concluded and the city's latest housing needs index score has been increased. The corrected figures will be taken into account in future decisions about the allocation of the Housing Corporation's programme; the error had no bearing on allocations to be made for 1988–89.

  St. George's Hospital, Hyde Park
  Mr. Chapman
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, pursuant to his reply to the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet,Official Report, 23 February, column 125, why it is no longer his policy that the former St. George's hospital building, Hyde Park, should be restored and used in accordance with the decision expressed by his predecessor in December 1982; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  As with all planning permissions, that given on appeal in 1982 in relation to St. George's hospital was an indication that the proposed works and use of the site were acceptable in planning terms. A planning approval is not an indication that other uses or works are unacceptable provided they, in turn, receive permission. As stated in my previous answer, it is for the owner of the site to decide which, if any, planning permissions and listed building consents should be implemented.

  Palace of Westminster (Lavatories)
  Mr. Harry Greenway
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will take steps to improve the standards of cleaning and maintenance of lavatories in the Palace of Westminster and associated buildings; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Chope
  If my hon. Friend is aware of any particular lavatory in the Palace of Westminster and associated buildings where he considers the standard of cleaning and maintenance to be inadequate, he should report this to the House authorities who carry out a daily inspection.

  Inner Cities
  Mr. Heddle
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what plans he has to encourage further investment in inner city revival.

  Mr. Ridley
  A new streamlined grant, city grant, will replace urban development grant and urban regeneration grant from 2 May. It will also incorporate private sector derelict land grant within the 57 urban priority areas.

  City grant will be paid directly by my Department and will have simplified procedures aimed at giving quicker decisions. It will encourage developers to invest in projects providing jobs and homes in inner areas.

  A consultation document inviting views on aspects of city grant is being issued today. I am placing copies in the Library.

  Idle Land
  Mr. Baldry
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what progress has been made in bringing idle land owned by public bodies back into use.

  Mr. Ridley
  Since the registers of unused and underused land were first compiled in 1981, some 50,000 acres of this land has been removed from the registers because it has been sold or brought into use by the owners. This has been achieved through publicity, financial discipline and the use of the power to direct disposal. These measures will continue to be applied; and provisions to improve their effectiveness are contained in the Local Government Bill.

  I consider that publication of information by the public bodies themselves about the unused and underused land they own would provide a significant incentive to the efficient management of land assets, which the recently published Audit Commission report indicated was needed in the case of local authorities. And it would contribute to the public accountability of the bodies concerned.

  I therefore intend that public bodies should regularly publish this information and as a first step I will be consulting the local authority associations on how local authorities are to do so.

  Landlord and Tenant Act 1987
  Mr. Heddle
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when he proposes to implement parts II, III and V of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  We intend to bring parts II, III and IV of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 into force during April, and to bring part V into force by the summer recess.

  Urban Development Corporations
  Mr. Patnick
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what plans he has for new urban development corporations.

  Mr. Ridley
  I propose to establish a new urban development corporation in the lower Don Valley, Sheffield, and to extend the remit of the Merseyside development corporation to cover further areas of land in Liverpool and the Wirral. These proposals will be subject to parliamentary approval of the necessary orders.

  The lower Don Valley has recently been studied by consultants. The UDC would cover approximately 2,000 acres to the north-east of the city centre and account for public expenditure of about £50 million over seven years. I shall bring forward specific boundary proposals shortly and reach decisions in the light of the view of local interests.

  I shall appoint consultants to look at areas identified on Merseyside and to advise on their development potential and boundaries. The areas would cover approximately 800 acres and expenditure could be between £50 million and £90 million over eight or nine years. Decisions on boundaries will be taken in the light of the results of the consultants' study and of the views of local interests.

  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will list for each urban development corporation the parliamentary constituencies contained within or overlapped by it.

  Mr. Trippier
  The constituencies contained within or overlapped by each UDC in England are as follows:

  Black Country Development Corporation

  West Bromwich West

  West Bromwich East

  Walsall North

  Walsall South

  Warley West

  Warley East

  London Docklands Development Corporation

  Bethnal Green and Stepney

  Bow and Poplar

  Newham South

  Southwark and Bermondsey

  Merseyside Development Corporation

  Birkenhead

  Bootle

  Liverpool Riverside

  Wallasey

  Teeside Development Corporation

  Hartlepool

  Redcar

  Middlesbrough

  Stockton North

  Stockton South

  Trafford Park Development Corporation

  Stretford

  Worsley

  Davyhulme

  Salford East

  Eccles

  Tyne and Wear Development Corporation

  Tyne Bridge

  Newcastle upon Tyne East

  Wallsend

  Tynemouth

  77

  Jarrow

  South Shields

  Sunderland North

  Sunderland South

  Housing Condition Surveys
  Mr. Andrew Welsh
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many housing condition surveys have been completed in England and Wales since 1970; what has been the cost of each at 1988 prices; and when he expects the next survey to be carried out.

  Mrs. Roe
  Four house condition surveys have been completed in England since 1970, but the sizes of sample and other arrangements have differed considerably in successive surveys. The extra-mural expenditure incurred in each survey was, at 1988 prices:

  £

  1971

  120,000

  1976

  431,000

  1981

  468,000

  1986

  1,533,000

  We plan to hold the next English house condition survey in 1991. House condition surveys in Wales are a matter for my right hon. friend the Secretary of State for Wales.

  Dog Licences
  Miss Fookes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many representations he has received on dog licences.

  Mr. Chope
  Since publication of the Local Government Bill on 26 June 1987, some 1,700 letters have been received from hon. Members and others. In addition, the Department has received some 8,700 printed postcards or letters prepared by organisations concerned with dogs.

  Crown Suppliers
  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) pursuant to his reply to the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Hamilton),Official Report, 9 February, column 126, if an employee of the Crown Suppliers will receive all pension rights under the principal Civil Service pension scheme, including benefits payable in respect of premature retirement, in the event of the sale of the Crown Suppliers; and if he will make a statement;

  (2) pursuant to his reply to the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Hamilton), Official Report, column 126, what specific steps will be taken to ensure that Crown Suppliers employees in any privatised regime will have pensions comparable with those which they now possess; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Chope
  Work on how best to effect the sale of the Crown Suppliers is at an early stage, and it is too soon to specify the precise steps which will be taken to give staff pension rights broadly comparable to those which they now possess.

  Chapels (Listed Buildings)
  Mr. Beith
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many applications he has recently received for demolition or alteration of non-conformist 78
  chapels or former chapels which are listed buildings; and whether Brunswick Methodist chapel, Macclesfield, and Preston Unitarian chapel have been the subject of any such application.

  Mr. Moynihan
  Applications for listed building consent are made initially to local planning authorities, but must in certain circumstances be referred to the Department if the authority proposes to grant consent so that the case can be considered for call-in for decision by my right hon. Friend. All applications by local planning authorities themselves are automatically referred to the Department for decision.

  Since 1 August 1987, 17 applications for listed building consent for the demolition (total or partial), alteration or extension of listed non-conformist chapels or former chapels have been referred to the Department. In 10 of these cases we decided not to intervene; this category included an application to convert the Brunswick Methodist chapel, Macclesfield, to office and residential purposes. In a further five cases we are still considering call-in; and two local planning authority applications are currently before us for decision.

  In addition to the above applications, my right hon. Friend refuesed consent in January 1988, following a public inquiry, for the total demolition of he Old Methodist chapel, Swineshead, near Boston, Lincolnshire. This application was made in April 1987. The Preston Unitarian chapel was the subject of a local planning authority application for total demolition in February 1986. The authority was asked to investigate the possibility of selling the chapel on the open market as the Department was not satisfied that sufficient thought had been given to this possibility. Efforts to sell the building have not been successful to date.

  Fishing Rates
  Mr. Onslow
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what is his latest estimate of the total annual product of fishing rates in England and Wales.

  Mr. Chope
  I regret the information is not held centrally and could be collected only at disproportionate cost.

  London Docklands
  Mr. Heddle
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will publish in the Official Report details of the sequence of events which have caused him to delay his decision in the matter of the London Docklands East Docklands Compulsory Purchase Order 1985; and if he will now publish his decision.

  Mr. Trippier
  The order covers an unusually large number of plots owned by a wide diversity of local authority, statutory undertakers and private interests. It has been necessary for the Department to consult other Government Departments under the Acquisition of Land Act 1981 and to seek agreement from the parties affected on the dimensions of those plots where compulsory acquisition is to be confirmed in part. My right hon. Friend's decision is expected imminently.

  Pollution (Archaeological Sites)
  Mrs. Ray Michie
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment whether the policy that the polluter should
  79
  pay for the cost of removing pollution applies to anyone developing an archaeological site; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Moynihan
  Whilst I think the analogy with the "polluter pays" principle is false in this context, both the Department and English Heritage encourage developers to contribute towards the cost of archaeological investigation in advance of development. A code of practice prepared nearly two years ago by the British Archaeologists and Developers Liaison Group has been a valuable stimulus to this successful voluntary approach. In addition, the Government contribute some £6 million a year in grants towards rescue archaeology projects through their heritage agency, the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission. Local planning authorities can impose conditions on planning permissions affecting land considered to be of archaeological interest to ensure that access is given to archaeologists, and a similar requirement is often a condition of consent to development affecting scheduled monuments.

  Water Supplies (Nitrate Levels)
  Mr. O'Brien
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what information he has on private water supplies where the nitrate levels are above recommended levels.

  Mr. Moynihan
  I refer the hon. Member to the answer given to the hon. Member for Bootle (Mr. Roberts) on 12 February, at columns 382–83, by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mrs. Roe).

  Office Development (Ruthin)
  Mr. Martyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when the office development already funded to replace the present agricultural department accommodation in Ruthin will proceed.

  Mr. Chope
  The intention is to provide a new Crown building, including accommodation for the Welsh Office Agricultural Department, in Ruthin, but a date for the start of construction had not yet been decided.

  New Towns
  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will publish the proposed or actual wind-up dates for all the new towns.

  Mrs. Roe
  In England, firm wind-up dates have been set for the new town development corporations at:

  Aycliffe and Peterlee 31 March 1988.

  Washington 31 March 1988.

  Peterborough 30 September 1988.

  Target wind-up dates, which will be reviewed with the relevant local authorities nearer the time, for the remaining corporations are:

  Warrington and Runcorn 30 September 1989.

  Telford 30 September 1991.

  Milton Keynes 31 March 1992.

  My right hon. Friend has no responsibility for new town development corporations in Scotland or Wales.

  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will publish in the Official Report the names, profession, and salary of people appointed to each urban development corporation.
  80
  Mr. Trippier
  Board membership for each English urban development corporation is as set out, together with information on each individual's other interests. The remuneration of chairmen and deputy chairmen is shown alongside the names of each: payments reflect the time commitment made. Members of the London Docklands development corporation receive a flat rate of £4,535, and members of all other corporations £3,625.

  Black Country Development Corporation

  Mr. Bill Francis (Chairman £9,117). Former Director, Trafalgar House and Gas Ltd.

  Mrs. Jean Denton (Deputy Chairman £12,376). Counsellor, Burson-Marseller.

  Mr. Joe Adams. Councillor, Sandwell MBC.

  Mr. Eric Alison. Councillor, Walsall MBC.

  Mr. Roger Carey. Chief Executive Director, Slough Estates plc.

  Mr. Charles Darby. Chairman and Managing Director Bass Mitchels and Butler.

  Mr. Roy Kettle. Chairman, CI Group plc.

  Mr. Graham MacKenzie. Chairman, T1 Group Specialised Tube Business Area.

  Mr. Ray Partridge. Councillor, Sandwell MBC.

  Mr. Paul Sabapathy. Finance Director, IMI Refiners Ltd.

  Mr. Michael Worley. Chairman and Managing Director, William King & Sons Ltd.

  London Docklands Development Corporation

  Sir Christopher Benson (Chairman £27,226). Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, MEPC plc.

  Mr. Alan Benjamin. Director CAP Group plc.

  Sir Andrew Derbyshire. Chairman, Robert Mathew, Johnson-Marshall London Ltd.

  Sir Christopher Foster. Commercial Advisor, British Telecom.

  Sir John Garlick. Former Permanent Secretary, Department of Environment.

  Mr. Jonathan Mathews. Councillor, Tower Hamlets BC.

  Mr. Lewis Moss. Senior Partner Moss and Partners

  Mr. Wyndham Thomas. Chairman and Chief Executive Inner City Enterprise. Former General Manager, Peterborough New Town.

  Merseyside Development Corporation

  Mr. Philip Carter (Chairman £18,234). Former Managing Director, Littlewoods Organisation. Chairman Everton FC, President The Football League, Chairman Merseyside Tourism Board.

  Mr. John Smith (Deputy Chairman £6,188). Chairman, Sports Council, Chairman, Liverpool FC.

  Professor Graham Ashworth. Professor of Urban Environmental Studies, Salford University.

  Mr. Brian Thaxter. Local Director of Barclays Bank plc. Liverpool.

  Professor Patrick Minford. Professor of Applied Economics, Liverpool University.

  Mr. Clive Lewis. Senior Partner, Clive Lewis and Partners.

  Mr. Thomas Glover. Councillor, Sefton BC.

  Mr. John Hale. Councilor, Wirral BC.

  Dr. John Ritchie. Chief Executive of the Development Corporation.

  Teesside Development Corporation

  Mr. Ron — Norman (Chairman £18,234). Chairman and Director, R. Norman Ltd.

  Lord Dormand (Deputy Chairman £6,188). Former MP for Easington.

  Mr. Michael Carr. Councillor, Middlesborough BC.

  Mr. Alan Cherry. Managing Director, Countryside Properties Ltd.

  Mrs. Dianna Eccles. Director, Sainsbury's Ltd.

  Mr. Bryan Hanson. Councillor, Cleveland CC.

  Mr. Roger Kingdon. Chief Executive, The Davy Corporation.

  Mr. Andrew Russell. Director, Casco Property Ltd.

  Mr. John Sutcliffe. Chairman. North Housing Trust Ltd.

  Mr. Laurie Wild. Councillor, Stockton-on-Tees BC.

  Trafford Park Development Corporation

  Mr. Peter Hadfield (Chairman £18,234). Former Chairman and Managing Director, Bass North West Ltd.

  Mr. Anthony Russell (Deputy Chairman £6,188). Former

  81
  Chairman Lankro Chemicals Group.

  Mr. Barry Brotherton. Councillor, Trafford BC.

  Mr. Peter Collins. Chairman and Managing Director Petros Development Company.

  Mr. William Moores. Councillor, Salford BC.

  Mr. Hugh Richards. Former Senior Partner W. H. Robinson & Co.

  Mr. Hamish Stewart. Personnel Director, Carborundum Abrasives plc.

  Mr. Colin Warbrick. Councillor, Trafford BC.

  Tyne and Wear Development Corporation

  Mr. Paul Nicholson (Chairman £13,676). Chairman and Managing Director, Vaux Group.

  Mr. John Ward (Deputy Chairman £6,188). Regional Director, Barclays Bank plc.

  Mr. Graeme Anderson. Executive Deputy Chairman, Northern Engineering Industries.

  Mr. John Barnsley. Senior Partner, Price Waterhouse.

  Mr. John Donnelly. Councillor, Sunderland BC.

  Mr. John Hall. Managing Director, Cameron Hall Developments.

  Dr. Ralph Iley. Director Group Development, Cookson Gp plc.

  Mr. Joe Mills. Regional Secretary, Transport and General Workers Union.

  Mr. Bert Moore. Councillor, Newcastle City C.

  Mr. Septimus Robinson. Councillor, South Tyneside BC.

  Phoenix Initiative
  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what proposals the Phoenix initiative has rendered for the Tyne and Wear Development Corporation regarding its future in terms of private sector investment.

  Mr. Trippier
  None.

  Rating Reform
  Mr. Canavan
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what is his latest estimate of the total number of people who will not pay the poll tax.

  Mr. Howard
  I do not believe evasion will be a serious problem, and I have explained why on a number of occasions to the Standing Committee considering the Local Government Finance Bill. The most recent was on 25 February at columns 1000–1.

  Inner City Renewal Project, Bow
  Mr. Simon Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when his Department will grant the necessary approval to permit work to proceed on the inner city renewal project for the Monteith estate in the Bow neighbourhood of the London borough of Tower Hamlets.

  Mr. Trippier
  This project requires a number of consents. These are being considered urgently by the Department and a letter will be sent to the London borough of Tower Hamlets shortly.

  Windsor Castle
  Mr. Heddle
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what discussions the Property Services Agency has had regarding the structural condition of Windsor castle; with whom; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Chope
  In January this year some cracking occurred in the north-west quadrant of the Round Tower 82
  at Windsor castle, which houses the Royal archives. It is possible that the recent period of exceptionally heavy rainfall increased pressures within the earth mound which supports the tower giving rise to movement. Engineers of the Property Services Agency and specialist consultants have been monitoring the situation closely since the occurrence and no further movement has taken place. A comprehensive geo-technical survey, including borehole investigation, has been planned and will beging this week. Preliminary results will be available during May and I will write to my hon. Friend at that time.

  The Royal Household is being kept closely in touch with developments.

  Model Yacht Sailing Association and London Archers
  Mr. Tracey
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment whether suitable equivalent new premises have been found for the Model Yacht Sailing Association and the London Archers as a result of the necessary demolition of the old ones.

  Mr. Moynihan
  A new clubhouse will be built at the north end of the Paddock area in Kensington Gardens to house both of these long-established clubs. Work should start on 1 April and the new premises be completed and ready for occupation by 1 June. I aim to minimise any disruption of the clubs' normal summer activities.

  Crown Suppliers (Fuel Branch)
  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will produce a table in the Official Report showing the savings to the Government for each of the last five years from the activities of the Crown Suppliers fuel branch.

  Mr. Chope
  [holding answer Friday 4 March 1988]: Over the last five years TCS prices for liquid fuel have been below the average in an independent index comprising prices among large fuel buyers. On this basis the savings on liquid fuel purchased were as follows:

  £ million

  1987

  11·2

  1986

  7·8

  1985

  5·7

  1984

  3·8

  1983

  2·5

SCOTLAND

  Soroya (Monofilament Nets)
  Mr. Austin Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what action he proposes to take against the Grimsby vessel Soroya for carriage of monofilament nets pending his appeal against the court decision on the illegality of this regulation; and how many other vessels he has proceeded against since the court decision.
  83
  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  A report is shortly to be submitted by the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for Scotland against the skipper of the vessel concerning the alleged carriage of these nets. The matter will be referred to the procurator fiscal in Aberdeen for consideration of proceedings. The Lord Advocate has decided that all appropriate cases involving monofilament gill nets will be proceeded with notwithstanding the appeal which the Crown has lodged against the decision of the sheriff at Stranraer.

  As far as other vessels are concerned, the numbers of those proceeded against are not centrally held and cannot be obtained except at disproportionate cost.

  Training Exercise
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will name the Home Defence training exercise held in Scotland in 1986 to train regional government staff for wartime duties; what number and grades of officials from each Department participated in the exercise; and which local government staff, public and private utility staff and staff from other agencies with designated war appointments took part in the exercise.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  No such exercise was held in Scotland in 1986.

  Roads (Fife)
  Mr. Menzies Campbell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what has been the amount of Government expenditure on the construction, maintenance and repair of motorways and trunk roads in Fife since 1979; and what is the estimated expenditure for these purposes in each of the next five years.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  The information requested for expenditure in Fife since 1979 is shown in the table. The White Paper on public expenditure (Cm. 288-II) gives details of the Government's proposals for Scotland for the period to 1990–91, but no decisions have been taken on how planned trunk road expenditure should be allocated by scheme or by region.

  Expenditure (£ million)

  Financial year

  New construction and improvements

  Maintenance (including structural maintenance)

  1979–80

  1·139

  0·686

  1980–81

  2·304

  0·604

  Total sheep in Scottish Islands areas and regions (June census, thousands)

  1975

  1980

  1983

  1986

  1987

  Islands Areas

  Shetland

  234

  243

  261

  286

  248

  Orkney

  75

  77

  92

  116

  116

  Western Isles

  199

  201

  198

  201

  135

  Regions

  Highland

  1,215

  1,175

  1,201

  1,287

  1,261

  84

  Financial year

  New construction and improvements

  Maintenance (including structural maintenance)

  1981–82

  3·789

  0·914

  1982–83

  3·857

  1·165

  1983–84

  5·303

  1·894

  1984–85

  6·014

  1·099

  1985–86

  6·164

  1·221

  1986–87

  4·030

  1·708

  1987–88 estimate

  2·010

  1·258

  Forfar Bypass
  Mr. Bill Walker
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many drivers have been charged with road traffic offences following incidents or accidents on the Forfar bypass since it was opened to traffic; how many of those charged have been brought before the courts; and how many of those appearing in court were over 70 years of age.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  I regret that the information requested is not available.

  Clothing Grants
  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what guidance he gives to local authorities on the frequency of clothing grants.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  Assistance with clothing under section 54 of the Education (Scotland) Act 1980 is available only where a pupil is unable to take full advantage of the education offered because of the inadequacy or unsuitability of his clothing. This is a matter for decision by education authorities in the circumstances of individual cases and no central guidance has been issued.

  Sheep
  Ms. Quin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will give the number of sheep farmed in each county of Scotland in the following years: 1975, 1980, 1983, 1986 and 1987.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  The total number of sheep recorded in the annual June agricultural census for each of the Scottish local government islands areas and regions is set out in the table. After the 1986 census, 6,000 very small scale holdings with a total of 203,000 sheep were excluded from subsequent annual censuses.
  85

  1975

  1980

  1983

  1986

  1987

  Grampian

  563

  586

  644

  662

  702

  Tayside

  732

  726

  744

  799

  807

  Fife

  106

  103

  102

  101

  104

  Lothian

  240

  237

  244

  237

  248

  Borders

  1,190

  1,250

  1,263

  1,303

  1,347

  Central

  354

  355

  377

  397

  410

  Strathclyde

  1,553

  1,623

  1,668

  1,774

  1,835

  Dumfries and Galloway

  1,074

  1,145

  1,230

  1,354

  1,387

  SCOTLAND

  7,536

  7,720

  8,024

  8,515

  8,600

  Note:

  Individual figures may not agree with totals due to rounding.

  Housing Condition Survey
  Mr. Andrew Welsh
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if his Department has any plans to carry out a housing condition survey in Scotland; if he will estimate the cost of such a survey; and if he will make a statement.

  Lord James Douglas Hamilton
  Local authorities have ample powers to carry out surveys of their areas to establish housing conditions. We are keeping the possibility of a national house condition survey under review but we are not, as yet, convinced of its merits. In particular, it is unlikely that such a survey would yield results at below district level unless the sample size was large, and consequently expensive. Our best assessment is that a national survey would cost over £5 million.

  Rates (Aberdeen)
  Mr. Robert Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will publish in the Official Report the amount of rates paid in Aberdeen by non-domestic ratepayers in the current financial year, the amount of rates to be paid by non-domestic ratepayers in the first year of the community charge, and the proportion of such payments which will be available to Aberdeen city district council.

  Mr. Lang
  The amount of rates paid in Aberdeen by non-domestic ratepayers in 1987–88 is estimated at £73 million. It is not possible to calculate the amount of rates to be paid by non-domestic ratepayers in the first year of the community charge as this will depend on decisions not yet taken and information not yet available. For the same reason it is not possible to calculate the proportion of such payments which will be available to Aberdeen city district council; but the proportion for 1987–88 is estimated at 25 per cent.

  Capital Spending (Aberdeen)
  Mr. Robert Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what criteria he used in allocating the capital spending of Aberdeen city district council for the forthcoming financial year; and if he will review the position in the light of representations received.

  Mr. Lang
  The allocation of resources for capital expenditure by local authorities, including Aberdeen city district council is determined, within the resources available, on the basis of their relative needs. In the light of the financial plans they submit each year, the relative needs of authorities are assessed taking account of a number of factors, including the capital costs of individual projects, their current expenditure consequences, the 86
  previous spending patterns and performance of the authorities and their forecasts of capital receipts. Account is also taken of the provisional allocations previously issued; it is, in general likely to be disruptive to depart very far from them but there can often be a need to adjust them to reflect particular changes in circumstances.

  The resources available for distribution as capital allocations for 1988–89 are finite. They were allocated in full with the Scottish Office finance division letter of 22 February 1988.

  Hospital and Community Health Services
  Mr. Robin Cook
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what expenditure in Scotland on the hospital and community health services was, in each year since 1982–83, adjusted by the hospital and community health services pay and prices deflator.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  No separate price index is maintained for hospital and community health services in Scotland.

  NHS (Contracting Out)
  Mr. McLeish
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what discretion has been give by him to health boards in Scotland on implementation of his circular on the contracting out of ancillary services.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  The Scottish Home and Health Department's letter of 11 December set boards a specific programme of competitive tendering within a specified timetable. All boards are expected to carry that out.

  Mr. McLeish
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will place in the Library a copy of the letter received from Fife health board in response to his circular on the contracting out of ancillary services.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  No. Correspondence between the Scottish Home and Health Department and health boards is not normally made available to other parties.

  Mr. McLeish
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on the consultations held with each health board prior to the placing of the advertisement in The Scotsman on behalf of the Scottish Health Service in which notice of information about tendering for in-house ancillary services for health boards was given.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  The advertisement was placed by health boards acting jointly. No consultations by the Scottish Home and Health Department were involved.
  87
  Mr. McLeish
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will give details in the Official Report of any external, management, financial or marketing consultants advising him on privatisation or contracted-out programmes.

  Mr. Rifkind
  The only firms of this nature currently advising me are the following. Their advice is being sought in connection with the privatisation of the electricity supply industry or of the Scottish Transport Group:

  Quayle Munro Ltd., Merchant Bankers.

  Barclays de Zoete Webb Ltd., Merchant Bankers.

  British Linen Bank Ltd., Merchant Bankers.

  Merz and McLellan, Consulting Engineers.

  Coopers and Lybrand, Chartered Accountants.

  McGrigor Donald, Solicitors.

  Mr. McLeish
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will give an estimate of the savings he envisages from the contracting out of ancillary services in each health board for 1988–89, 1989–90 and 1990–91.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  It is impossible to predict accurately the level of savings likely to be achieved through competitive tendering. This will depend on the levels of bids submitted.

  Mr. McLeish
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland when he next plans to meet the Scottish Trades Union Congress and Health Service unions to discuss the contracting out of health board ancillary services.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  I will be replying shortly to an invitation from the Scottish Trades Union Congress to meet to discuss a number of matters including competitive tendering for support services.

  Mr. McLeish
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list in the Official Report the responses from Scottish health boards to his circular on the contracting out of ancillary services.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  I refer the hon. Member to my reply of 24 February, at column 231, to the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudon (Mr. McKelvey).

  Mr. McLeish
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what action he will take against any health board refusing to contract out their ancillary services.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  The question does not arise, since no board has declined to proceed with the programme of competitive tendering for certain ancillary services.

  Mr. McLeish
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will give the cost of placing the advertisement in The Scotsman on behalf of the Scottish health service in which information about tendering for in-house ancillary services for health boards was given.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  The cost of placing the advertisement in The Scotsman was £277.

  Mr. McLeish
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list in the Official Report the companies which have shown an interest in competing for ancillary service contracts.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  This information is not available centrally.

  Mr. Gordon Brown
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland on what basis his Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State responsible for health announced on Radio Scotland on 27 February that all Scottish health boards have agreed to invite tenders for in-house services.
  88
  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  All health boards accept that they must implement the programme of competitive tendering on which my right hon. and learned Friend has decided.

  Acute Beds (Fife)
  Mr. McLeish
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will detail his reasons for adopting option D as the basis for acute bed provision in Fife.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  In deciding on option D I took a view of what was best for patients throughout Fife, taking account of travelling time, the location of population, cost and the demands on the Scottish hospital building programme.

  Mr. McLeish
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how much expenditure is required for the acute bed proposals in Fife contained in option D; and if he will make available this level of expenditure.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  At present the only expenditure at issue is the Dunfermline development of option D, the cost of which is estimated at £27 million.

  The question of substantial capital funding will not arise for a year or two. If approval in principle is granted, that will indicate a firm intention of finance expenditure.

  Mr. McLeish
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what timetable he now envisages for(a) the submission of Fife health board's option D proposals for acute bed provision in Fife, (b) ministerial decision, (c) agreement of financial allocations and programme and (d) implementation at local level.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  I have asked Fife health board to make a new submission for approval in principle to the Dunfermline development of option D and expect the board to do this as soon as possible, to facilitate an early decision. Allocation of capital funds for the development would then be considered in the context of the capital building programme.

  It would be for the health board to progress the implementation of projects within the procedures subsequent to approval in principle.

  Fife Health Board
  Mr. McLeish
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland why Fife health board has not yet appointed a new general manager to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Mr. Lee; and whether the post will be redesignated.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  This is a matter for Fife health board. I understand that the board is making every effort to find a suitable person to fill the vacant post of general manager.

  Mr. McLeish
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list in the Official Report the meetings held between the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State responsible for health, the hon. Member for Stirling (Mr. Forsyth) and the chairman of Fife health board since 1 July 1987 to the present, including dates and subjects discussed.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  I have had two meetings with the chairman of Fife health board since 1 July 1987—on 15 October 1987 and 1 February 1988. On both occasions we discussed a range of matters affecting the Health Service.

  Health Boards
  Mr. McLeish
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list in the Official Report the membership of each health board, detailing names, nominating body, date appointed and known political affiliation.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  I refer the hon. Member to my reply of 24 July 1987 at columns 427–32, to the hon. Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden (Mr. Galbraith) and my reply of 3 November 1987 at columns 685–9, to the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (Mr. Hogg).

  Mr. McLeish
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list in the Official Report any chairman or members of Scottish health boards who have direct pecuniary or other interests in private health care.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  Such information is not collected or held centrally. The general obligation of chairmen and members to declare any interests related to specific contracts is set out in the National Health Service (Health Boards: Membership, Procedure and Payment of Subscriptions) (Scotland) Regulations 1975.

  Hospitals
  Mr. McLeish
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will publish capital expenditure amounts for hospital building programmes for each of the health boards in 1988–89, 1989–90, and 1990–91.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave on 3 March at column 667, to my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) about 1988–89. Capital expenditure figures are not published for the two following years though health boards are given indicative provisional allocations for planning purposes.

  Seals
  Mr. Strang
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he will institute a study of the number of grey and common seals killed annually on the east coast of Scotland; and whether he will consider seeking to amend the Conservation of Seals Act 1970 to secure the indigenous grey and common seal populations.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  My right hon. and learned Friend has no plans to put in hand such a study. It would be expensive and the results likely to be unreliable. There is no legal requirement on the public to report the number of seals shot outwith the close season, during which shooting can only take place under licence or to prevent seals causing damage to fisheries.

  My right hon. and learned Friend does not consider that the available evidence would justify an amendment to the Conservation of Seals Act for the purpose proposed. It is estimated by the Environment Research Council that the size of the Scottish population of grey seals is expected to be 92,500, an annual increase of 5 per cent. over the period 1985 to 1987. The minimum size of the common seals is estimated to be some 18,100 animals.

  Mr. Strang
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many salmon netting stations are located around the east coast of Scotland; how many seals are shot around these stations; and how many seals are killed around all fish farms annually.
  90
  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  Comprehensive information on the numbers of salmon netting stations around the Scottish coast and annual records of the number of seals killed around netting stations and fish farms are not kept centrally.

  Mr. Strang
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what is the current population of common seals on the east coast of Scotland.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  The Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for Scotland obtains advice from the Natural Environment Research Council as to estimates of seal populations.

  The most recent estimates obtained from the council in respect of common seals were provided by surveys carried out by the sea mammal research unit in 1984. These showed a minimum total population in that area of some 1,000 animals.

  Sheep (Radioactivity)
  Dr. David Clark
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland under what authority unmarked sheep were allowed to be moved in August 1986 from the restricted areas of Scotland.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  Consents were given on my right hon. and learned Friend's behalf by the Department. of Agriculture and Fisheries for Scotland under section 2(1) of the Food and Environment Protection Act 1985.

  Dr. David Clark
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, pursuant to the answer of 12 February,Official Report, column 371, how many (a) rams, (b) ewes and (c)lambs were allowed to be moved from the restricted areas of Scotland following the Chernobyl accident in each month from June 1986 to April 1987.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  The information requested is as follows:

  1986

  Rams

  Ewes

  Lambs

  June

  nil

  nil

  nil

  July

  nil

  nil

  nil

  August

  7

  nil

  8,404

  September

  79

  nil

  nil

  October

  50

  nil

  nil

  November

  nil

  nil

  nil

  December

  nil

  nil

  nil

  1987

  January

  nil

  nil

  nil

  February

  nil

  nil

  nil

  March

  nil

  nil

  nil

  April

  nil

  nil

  nil

  Rating Reform
  Mr. McAllion
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what is his estimate of the cost of publishing and delivering an explanatory booklet on the community charge to every household in Scotland.

  Mr. Lang
  The cost to my Department of preparing, printing and distributing the explanatory booklet for the current community charge information campaign is £246,367.

  Ships and Piers (EC Aid)
  Mr. Macdonald
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what levels of European Economic Community
  91
  aid and have been available for ship replacement and pier construction undertaken by the Scottish Transport Group in the past five years; and if he will list the specific projects for which such aid has been received, together with the amounts involved in each case.

  Mr. Rifkind
  Since 1 January 1985 assistance from the EEC's European regional development fund for ferry

  Year

  Location

  Project

  Award (£)

  Percentage of cost

  1984

  Uig/Tarbert/Lochmaddy1

  New ferry vessel and conversion of terminals to roll-on/roll-off

  3,280,000

  40

  1985

  Tobermory

  Pier improvements

  110,000

  50

  1985

  Gourock

  Pier improvements

  175,000

  50

  1985

  Rothesay

  Pier improvements

  37,000

  50

  1985

  Oban

  Pier improvements

  750,000

  50

  1985

  Largs/Cumbrae, Fishnish/Lochaline

  Two new ferry vessels

  850,000

  50

  1986

  Lochranza/Claonaig

  New ferry vessel

  425,000

  50

  1987

  Lochaline

  Extension of slipway

  43,000

  50

  1987

  Colintraive/Rhubodach

  New ferry vessel

  425,000

  50

  1987

  Oban/Mull/Colonsay

  New ferry vessel

  3,300,000

  50

  1 Terminals at Uig and Lochmaddy owned by Highland regional council and Western Isles islands council respectively.

  Skoal Bandits
  Mr. Harry Ewing
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list in the Official Report the Ministers in his Department, together with their responsibilities, at the time of the decision to give financial assistance to United States Tobacco for the manufacture of Skoal Bandits.

  Mr. Rifkind
  In November 1984, when the offer of assistance was made, the Secretary of State for Scotland was my right hon. Friend the Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger). The other Ministers, and their responsibilities, were:

  Rt. hon. Lord Gray of Contin.
  Responsibilities: Agriculture; fisheries; forestry; the Highlands and Islands Development Board; Scottish Tourist Board; and the co-ordination of Government action in relation to the Highlands and Islands.

  The hon. Member for Eastwood (Mr. Stewart).
  Responsibilities: Industrial and regional development; manpower services; matters relating to oil development; new towns; education including primary, secondary and higher education, hut excluding universities; public libraries; youth and community services; sport and recreation; and the arts.

  The former hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr. MacKay).
  Responsibilities: Health boards and the Common Services Agency; hospital services; general practitioner services; community health services; ambulance services; health education; services for the elderly, children, the disabled and the mentally handicapped; list D schools; children's hearings; and the after-care of offenders.

  The former hon. Member for Edinburgh, South (Mr. Ancram).
  Responsibilities: Police and fire services; civil law and criminal justice; prisons; Scottish courts administration; local government; town and country planning; housing; roads and transport; water, sewage and pollution; urban renewal; building control; and ancient monuments and historic buildings.

TRANSPORT

  Severn Bridge
  Mr. Butler
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if, pursuant to his answer to the hon. Member for Warrington, South of 24 February,Official Report, column 203, on the second Severn bridge, he will revise the
  92
  vessels and infrastructure has been available at 50 per cent. of the gross cost of the project concerned. Prior to that date the standard rate was 30 per cent. but this was varied on occasion depending on the nature of the project. Since 1983 the Scottish Transport Group's subsidiary, Caledonian MacBrayne Ltd., have been awarded assistance from the fund as follows:

  forecast in his answer of 14 December, Official Report, columns 421–22, of the level of tolls required to meet the objective of the Severn Bridge Act 1965 to take account of the forecasts of the division of traffic flow.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  When we decide that forecast traffic growth warrants the construction of the second bridge, and how it is to be financed, we shall have to consider their implications for the finances of the present crossing.

  Enforcement Officers
  Mr. Butler
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how many enforcement officers he employed in(a) 1979 and (b) the latest available year; and whether he has any plans to increase their numbers.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  The Department employed 1,401 enforcement officers in 1979 and 1,560 in 1987. These officers are:

  1979

  1987

  Traffic examiners

  241

  235

  Vehicle examiners

  327

  352

  VED enforcement officers

  833

  973

  There are no plans to increase the numbers of enforcement officers.

  Mr. Butler
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how many prosecutions were brought by enforcement officers in each year from 1979 to the latest available year.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  The number of prosecutions brought by the Department's traffic area offices between 1978–79 and 1986–87 in enforcing heavy goods and passenger operator and vocational driver licensing and other requirements relating to road safety were as follows:

  Number

  1978–79

  10,700

  1979–80

  14,100

  1980–81

  13,500

  1981–82

  12,500

  93

  1982–83

  Number

  1982–83

  14,900

  1983–841

  9,300

  1984–85

  13,500

  1985–86

  15,000

  1986–87

  16,300

  1 The period of the reporting year was changed resulting in a six-month report.

  The number of prosecutions sought by the Department between 1979 and 1987 for vehicle excise duty offences including those settled out of court were as follows:

  Number

  1979

  172,000

  1980

  210,000

  1981

  169,000

  1982

  198,000

  1983

  253,000

  1984

  291,000

  1985

  305,000

  1986

  343,000

  1987

  348,000

  Departmental Buildings
  Mr. Cran
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will list the location and status of all buildings within his Department located in London and the annual cost of rents, rates and maintenance of each.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply given on Wednesday 2 March 1988, at column 584, to his question referring to the Department of the Environment. The Department of Transport occupies accommodation in 58 buildings in the Greater London area, ranging from the main HQ building at 2 Marsham Street down to driver testing centres.

  Accident Statistics
  Mr. Robert B. Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will set out a table listing(a) the percentage of total motorway traffic represented by and (b) the percentage of vehicles involved in motorway accidents which are (i) heavy goods vehicles and vehicles drawing a trailer and (ii) buses and coaches.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  The information requested, based on road accident injury statistics for GB in 1986, is as follows:

  Heavy goods vehicles Percentage

  Buses and coaches Percentage

  Percentage of motorway traffic

  15·9

  0·8

  Percentage of vehicles involved in motorway accidents

  14·1

  0·8

  Heavy goods vehicles include articulated vehicles and goods vehicles drawing a trailer. The percentage of vehicles involved in motorway accidents, which are heavy goods vehicles or other vehicles drawing a trailer, is 15·4. However, traffic figures are not available, separately, for other vehicles drawing a trailer.

  Mr. Robert B. Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport whether he will list for each of the first six months for 1987(a) the number of buses and coaches involved in accidents on motorways and (b) the number which were travelling in the fast lane at the time.
  94
  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  The number of buses and coaches involved in accidents on motorways in GB in the first six months of 1987 is as follows:

  Number

  January

  6

  February

  3

  March

  7

  April

  4

  May

  12

  June

  6

  The lane in which the vehicle was travelling at the time of the accident is not recorded on the police road accident report form.

  Mr. Simon Coombs
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will list the road death rates of each of the countries in the EEC, expressed as deaths per 100,000 population, for the latest available year; and if he will list the equivalent figures for 10 years earlier.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  The information is as follows:

  EC comparisons of road deaths1 per 100.000 population

  1976

  1986

  Belgium

  25

  20

  Denmark

  17

  315

  Federal Republic of Germany

  24

  15

  France

  28

  22

  Greece

  14

  16

  Irish Republic

  17

  11

  Italy

  17

  313

  Luxembourg

  28

  22

  Netherlands

  18

  11

  Portugal

  35

  326

  Spain

  17

  18

  United Kingdom

  212

  10

  1 In accordance with the commonly agreed international definition, most countries define a fatality as being due to a road accident if death occurs within 30 days of the accident. The official road accident statistics of some countries, however, limit the fatalities to those occuring within shorter periods after the accident. Deaths and death rates in the table have been adjusted according to the factors used by the Economic Commission for Europe and the European conference of Ministers of Transport, to represent standardised 30-day deaths.

  2 Great Britain only.

  3 1985 Data.

  Data Protection
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how many subject access requests under the terms of the Data Protection Act his Department has received; what was his estimate of this number; whether he is reconsidering the subject access fee charged by his Department as a result; and whether he will make a statement.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  By 1 March the Department had received 1,197 subject access inquiries, 1,185 were inquiries made of the Driver and 'Vehicle Licensing Centres' 78 million driver and vehicle licence records held there on computer. 270,000 transactions are handled each day at the centre. No prior estimate had been made of the number of subject access inquiries. We have no plans to reconsider the levels of fees charged.

  Transport Safety
  Ms. Primarolo
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport with which institutions he has discussed the voluntary improvement of transport safety standards during the last month.

  Mr. David Mitchell
  Safety standards are one aspect of most of the discussions I and my hon. Friends have with outside bodies.

  Mr. Frank Cook
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he intends to bring forward new guidelines for transport safety; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  We keep safety standards in transport regularly under review and will continue to develop proposals when the need arises.

  King's Cross and St. Pancras
  Mr. Dykes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he has had recent discussions with representatives of British Rail and British Rail Properties Limited on the outline plans to redevelop the King's Cross and St. Pancras station complexes.

  Mr. David Mitchell
  No. This is a commercial matter for British Rail.

  Traffic Law Review
  Mr. Cran
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport when he expects the team set up by his Department to review traffic law to announce its findings; and what priority he attaches to achieving a change in the law relating to road traffic offences.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  We expect to receive Dr. North's report of his road traffic law review very shortly. We shall give urgent consideration to its recommendations.

  Ferry Safety
  Mrs. Mahon
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport when he last met representatives of ferry staff to discuss safety standards.

  Mr. Channon
  I have had no recent meetings with ferry staff on this subject.

  Mr. Meacher
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what assessment he has made of the health and safety implications of longer shift patterns aboard British ferries.

  Mr. Channon
  Working arrangements on board United Kingdom-registered ferries operating out of United Kingdom ports vary considerably, according to the companies and routes involved. I understand that proposals for new working arrangements for certain routes are now under discussion between the seafarers trades unions and the company concerned. Whatever arrangements may result will, of course, need to comply with the statutory officers manning requirements and with the statutory requirement that the watch system shall be such that the efficiency of watchkeepers is not impaired by fatigue.

  Near Misses
  Dr. Reid
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what representations he has received seeking an inquiry into the near misses of aircraft recently occurring over United Kingdom airspace.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  We and the Civil Aviation Authority (which is responsible for air traffic control and air safety) have received a number of representations about recent airmisses. The chairman of the CAA asked the Department's chief inspector of accidents to investigate the airmiss over Kent on 6 February. The CAA is itself investigating that and other air misses under its usual procedures.

  My right hon. Friend also asked the chairman to review urgently the procedures for investigating and reporting airmisses and the chairman reported to him on 3 March 1988. I refer the hon. Member to the answer given to the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. McCrindle) the same day.

  Mr. Dunnachie
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what representations he has received seeking an inquiry into the recent near misses of aircraft in United Kingdom airspace.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State received a number of representations following the recent reports of airmisses and asked the chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority to review urgently the arrangements for reporting and investigating them. I draw the hon. Member's attention to the reply given by my right hon. Friend on 3 March 1988 to the member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. McCrindle) setting out the chairman's response.

  Regional Airports
  Mr. Wareing
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what information he has on whether non-London airports are operating at their full potential.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  Passenger traffic statistics suggest that a number of non-London airports are operating below their capacity, although others, such as Manchester and Birmingham, are close to the capacity of their present passenger terminals.

  Speed Limiters
  Mr. Squire
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport whether he intends to bring forward legislation requiring speed limiters to be fitted to heavy goods vehicles.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  Such limiters would have to be set at 60 mph — the motorway speed limit for heavy goods vehicles of over 7·5 tonnes gross weight. The latest national speed survey has shown an encouraging reduction in lorry speeds on motorways. If this trend continues it will reduce the need to consider the fitting of speed limiters.

  Channel Tunnel
  Ms. Mowlam
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what action he is taking to ensure that regions north of London are able to benefit fully in terms of transport infrastructure, from the Channel tunnel project.
  97
  Mr. David Mitchell
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply that I gave to the hon. Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) on 2 March, at column 599–600.

  Smoke Hoods
  Mr. Colvin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport when he last met the chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority to discuss the establishment of an internationally agreed specification for airline passenger protection smoke hoods.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  My right hon. Friend met the chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority in December 1987 to discuss the authority's decision not to introduce regulations requiring the mandatory carriage of passenger smoke hoods. He informed my right hon. Friend then of the international collaboration on this matter between the Civil Aviation Authority and other leading aviation authorities. That collaboration is continuing and may in time lead to an internationally agreed specification.

  Drinking and Driving
  Mrs. Clwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what representations he has received seeking a reduction in the blood alcohol level for drinking and driving offences; and what response he has made.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  We are pressed at different times to reduce the permitted blood alcohol content to various levels including nil below the present limit of 80 mg of alcohol in 100 ml of blood.

  With more than half of all drinking and driving offenders convicted at around twice the existing limit, the current priority is to secure greater compliance with the law as it stands.

  British Transport Police
  Mr. Evennett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport when he last met members of the British Transport police authority, and what subjects were discussed.

  Mr. David Mitchell
  My right hon. Friend has not had any meetings with the British Transport Police Committee.

  Vehicle Excise Duty
  Mr. French
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport (1) pursuant to his reply of 29 June 1987,Official Report, column 35, to the hon. Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. Stern) if he will make a statement on the effectiveness of the intensive local campaigns to discourage the evasion of vehicle licence duty;

  (2) pursuant to his reply of 29 June 1987, Official Report, column 35, to the hon. Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. Stern) for the most recent date for which figures are available, how many successful prosecutions have been brought by police following the intensive local campaigns against evasion of vehicle licence duty during 1987–88.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  The evidence shows that campaigns are an effective way of deterring VED evasion. Eleven campaigns have so far been held in the financial year 1987–88. Four more are under way.

  Checks of DVLC's computer register show that 172,000 vehicles recorded as unlicensed before the 11 campaigns
  98
  were launched were licensed afterwards. This represents £12·8 million revenue which might otherwise have been lost.

  So far, some 3,000 of the 5,286 evaders who ignored the warnings given during the campaigns have been successfully prosecuted, yielding a further £380,000 in fines, back-duty orders and costs.

  Seat Belts (Coaches)
  Mr. Cran
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport whether any estimate has been made as to the number of lives that may have been saved over the last five years had passengers in motor coaches been required to wear seat belts; and if he has any plans to require coach manufacturers to fit seat belts in their vehicles.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  The Department has not made such an estimate. The available information on coach accidents could not support more than a broad indication of the numbers and types of casualty that might have been avoided by wearing seat bells.

  From 1 October 1988 seat belts must be fitted in new coaches to seats most at risk, such as the front seats. The Department is investigating the possibility of extending this requirement to existing modern coaches.

  Airport Charges
  Mr. McTaggart
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will give a list of the landing and take-off charges for a Boeing 727 at each airport in Britain; and whether there are different scales for British Airways and other operators.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  Information on charges is not compiled in this form. Detailed data for most airports will shortly be published in the Aerodrome Owners Association 1988 handbook, a copy of which will be placed in the Library. All the larger airports operate under public use licences, which require the aerodrome to be available to all persons on equal terms and conditions.

  Nuclear Materials (Flasks)
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will place in the Library a full copy of the report by the Central Electricity Generating Board's consulting engineers Ove Arup about the safety of flasks used for carrying nuclear materials; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. David Mitchell
  Any such reports are the property of the Central Electricity Generating Board and it is for it to decide whether or not they can be made available.

  Car Telephones
  Mr. Pike
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what recent reports he has received regarding the use of car telephones; and if he will introduce new regulations regarding their use.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  None. We have no plans to introduce legislation controlling use of in-car telephones. Existing legislation already places the responsibility on drivers to have proper control of their vehicles at all times. A motorist who fails to do so as a result of distraction or lack of concentration is liable to prosecution. The revised
  99
  Highway code advises drivers not to use a hand held telephone while their vehicles are moving, except in an emergency.

  Roads (Expenditure)
  Mrs. Maureen Hicks
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he has any plans for further road investment.

  Mr. Channon
  I am adding two new major projects to my road programme:

  —a £50 million grant for the construction of a new road through the Black Country, linking the Black Country development corporation area to the M5 and M6: and

  —a £59 million scheme to improve the A13 between Limehouse and Dagenham to assist the redevelopment of Docklands and east London and linking in to the London Docklands Development Corporation's docklands highway.

  These new schemes will provide better transport links to stimulate new enterprise and jobs in these two inner-city areas. They are in addition to the £2 billion of schemes — two fifths of the total — already in my trunk road programme, which will directly assist the regeneration of inner cities throughout the country. More such schemes will follow.

  Mr. Jack
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will publish in the Official Report the numerical criteria used to determine the proportion of local authority block grants allowed for expenditure on roads.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  Local authorities receive support for roads expenditure through two grants, which form part of aggregate exchequer grant (AEG). The criteria for determining AEG are set out in section 54(4) of the Local Government Planning and Land Act 1980.

  Capital expenditure on roads of more than local importance is supported by transport supplementary grant (TSG). TSG is allocated on the basis of accepted estimated expenditure selected from bids included in highway authorities' annual transport policies and programme (TPPs). Criteria used include cost/benefit analyses and previous years' plan progress.

  Like most other local authority spending, transport current expenditure and the financing costs of capital expenditure not financed by TSG are supported through block grant. This is distributed according to the expenditure of each authority in relation to its grant related expenditure assessment (GRE). GREs are built up from components for each service including roads. The roads maintenance GRE formula contains a number of factors, including road lengths and traffic volume. Details are published in the "Rate Support Grant Report (England) 1988–89" (HC. 163) and in the Department of Environment's "Technical Handbook of Grant Related Expenditure 1988–89".

  Transport Supplementary Grant
  Mr. Jack
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will list in the Official Report the amount of transport supplementary grant per head of the population for each of the county and metropolitan borough councils for the years 1986–87 to 1988–89.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  The table lists values of transport supplementary grant (TSG) per head of population in 100
  1986–87, 1987–88 and 1988–89 for each local highway authority in England. TSG is awarded on the relative merits of each authority's proposed programme of highway improvements not on the basis of population.

  Transport Supplementary Grant Metropolitan districts

  (£) per capita

  Authority

  1986–87

  1987–88

  1988–89

  Bolton

  0·34

  7·85

  5·13

  Bury

  4·37

  1·92

  5·85

  Manchester

  6·59

  5·04

  6·97

  Oldham

  0·41

  1·23

  5·09

  Rochdale

  1·33

  121

  1·38

  Salford

  6·26

  13·75

  16·07

  Stockport

  6·45

  0·98

  0·62

  Tameside

  2·09

  1·15

  1·44

  Trafford

  7·42

  6·64

  2·97

  Wigan

  7·39

  5·38

  7·55

  Knowsley

  1·17

  0·86

  1·48

  Liverpool

  5·43

  4·61

  2·56

  St· Helens

  0·42

  0·80

  3·38

  Sefton

  0·40

  0·69

  0·57

  Wirral

  0·94

  1·12

  3·67

  Barnsley

  3·17

  2·12

  1·80

  Doncaster

  1·42

  0·78

  1·63

  Rotherham

  0·91

  0·66

  0·88

  Sheffield

  4·48

  3·91

  0·71

  Gateshead

  0·33

  3·84

  9·62

  Newcastle upon Tyne

  3·77

  6·08

  8·12

  North Tyneside

  0·34

  2·18

  1·98

  South Tyneside

  8·69

  6·15

  2·29

  Sunderland

  4·90

  3·68

  5·30

  Birmingham

  3·89

  3·88

  3·89

  Coventry

  2·86

  5·21

  6·26

  Dudley

  0·41

  2·14

  2·30

  Sandwell

  1·61

  1·96

  3·05

  Solihull

  0·34

  1·36

  2·52

  Walsall

  5·51

  5·21

  6·03

  Wolverhampton

  9·30

  11·23

  13·74

  Bradford

  7·12

  9·88

  3·64

  Calderdale

  0·33

  0·63

  1·09

  Kirklees

  3·56

  2·05

  3·50

  Leeds

  0·29

  0·78

  2·14

  Wakefield

  0·45

  0·58

  0·85

  Shire Counties

  Authority

  1986–87

  1987–88

  1988–89

  Avon

  1·81

  2·09

  4·55

  Bedfordshire

  3·77

  5·06

  6·24

  Berkshire

  4·62

  4·28

  3·66

  Buckinghamshire

  1·28

  3·38

  1·15

  Cambridgeshire

  2·73

  7·20

  3·55

  Cheshire

  3·11

  2·02

  1·44

  Cleveland

  5·40

  3·95

  5·67

  Cornwall

  2·78

  3·35

  5·06

  Cumbria

  0·58

  1·60

  2·88

  Derbyshire

  1·60

  0·82

  0·74

  Devon

  2·75

  3·22

  3·50

  Dorset

  8·19

  8·57

  6·77

  Durham

  2·58

  4·01

  3·23

  East Sussex

  1·72

  1·41

  3·08

  Essex

  3·56

  5·35

  5·77

  Gloucestershire

  1·69

  1·84

  2·08

  Hampshire

  3·66

  2·79

  2·69

  Hereford and Worcester

  2·99

  2·60

  3·02

  Hertfordshire

  4·49

  1·83

  3·14

  Humberside

  2·43

  2·31

  5·32

  Isle of Wight

  8·00

  7·18

  5·83

  Kent

  2·97

  3·89

  6·17

  Lancashire

  3·46

  4·62

  3·39

  Leicestershire

  4·31

  5·07

  5·65

  Lincolnshire

  1·69

  3·12

  2·01

  Norfolk

  1·48

  3·00

  2·95

  Northamptonshire

  9·42

  7·98

  5·84

  101

  Authority

  1986–87

  1987–88

  1988–89

  Northumberland

  3·73

  3·58

  1·81

  North Yorkshire

  5·15

  5·10

  2·75

  Nottinghamshire

  1·72

  1·84

  2·02

  Oxfordshire

  0·92

  1·42

  1·24

  Shropshire

  3·77

  3·32

  4·46

  Somerset

  3·01

  2·88

  7·15

  Staffordshire

  3·20

  2·95

  2·76

  Suffolk

  4·14

  1·44

  2·79

  Surrey

  2·48

  3·02

  2·21

  Warwickshire

  2·59

  3·04

  3·63

  West Sussex

  5·31

  4·49

  3·93

  Wiltshire

  2·70

  2·64

  0·66

  London Boroughs

  Authority

  1986–87

  1987–88

  1988–89

  City of London

  78·70

  93·92

  38·13

  Barking and Dagenham

  0·66

  5·38

  19·15

  Barnet

  0·55

  1·58

  131

  Bexley

  7·83

  2·06

  2·95

  Brent

  1·99

  1·22

  1·71

  Bromley

  0·86

  1·44

  13·07

  Camden

  0·30

  0·59

  0·71

  Croydon

  0·30

  0·63

  0·73

  Ealing

  5·59

  6·54

  6·56

  Enfield

  13·82

  27·97

  42·41

  Greenwich

  3·62

  9·16

  3·75

  Hackney

  1·22

  1·07

  2·28

  Hammersmith and Fulham

  1·06

  0·78

  0·43

  Haringey

  5·29

  7·49

  18·67

  Harrow

  6·17

  7·98

  17·72

  Schemes accepted for transport supplementary grant (TSG) where first year rate of return or net present value is known

  Authority

  Scheme

  Accepted for TSG

  First year rate of return (per cent·)

  Net present value1(£ million)

  Length (Km)

  Barking

  Al24

  Barking Town Centre/Northern Relief Road

  1987–88, 1988–89

  35

  —

  1·5

  Bromley

  Bromley High Street Relief Road—Section 2

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  105

  4·8

  1·6

  Sutton

  A232

  Croydon Road/B272 Hilliers Lane Junction Improvement

  1988–89

  29

  2·5

  0·6

  Sutton

  A24

  London Road/A2043 Malden Road Junction Improvement

  1988–89

  25

  1·3

  0·6

  Bolton

  A666

  St. Peters Way Extension/Topp Way Dualling

  1987–88, 1988–89

  12

  1·6

  1·8

  Bury

  A665

  Blackburn Street Diversion, Radcliffe

  1988–89

  4

  -0·6

  1·0

  Manchester

  Man/Sal Irr E Section (Redhill Street-Fairfield Street)

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  26

  3·9

  1·3

  Manchester

  A665

  Man/Sal Irr (Cheetham Hill Road-Jubilee Street)

  1988–89

  1

  -2·0

  0·4

  Manchester

  Man/Sal Irr (Regent Road-Chester Road—Phase 1

  1987–88, 1988–89

  11

  4·4

  1·2

  Manchester

  Man/Sal Irr (Regent Road-Gore Street)

  Manchester

  M56

  Airport Access Road Stage 1 (Outwood Lane/M56 Spur Road)

  1988–89

  83

  3·3

  0·5

  Oldham

  A62

  Manchester Street/Manchester Road Improvement

  1988–89

  26

  8·9

  2·6

  Salford

  A57

  Regent Road Improvement (M602-Water Street)

  1987–88, 1988–89

  10

  2·7

  1·8

  Salford

  A6042

  Man/Sal Irr Gore Street-Regent Road

  1987–88, 1988–89

  11

  4·4

  0·6

  Salford

  A5063

  Trafford Road Improvement (M602-The Quays)

  1988–89

  19

  1·1

  0·9

  Tameside

  A635

  Manchester Road-Stockport Road-William Street Gyratory, Ashton

  1988–89

  25

  3·1

  1·3

  Wigan

  Bradshawgate Diversion, Leigh

  1987–88, 1988–89

  —

  0·6

  0·9

  Liverpool

  A561

  Park Road Relief Road-Phase 1

  1988–89

  10

  3·7

  5·5

  St· Helens

  A570

  St Helens Inner Ring Road-Phase 4

  1988–89

  21

  2·4

  1·1

  Gateshead

  A695

  Ryton Crawcrook Bypass

  1987–88, 1988–89

  29

  6·1

  5·9

  Gateshead

  A692

  Redheugh Bridge Southern Approach Road Flyover

  1988–89

  26

  3·9

  0·4

  Sunderland

  Al231

  Inner Ring Road

  1987–88, 1988–89

  —

  2·7

  0·8

  Coventry

  A46

  Far Gosford Street Relief Road

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  5

  —

  1·4

  Coventry

  A444

  Foleshill/Holbrooks Bypass

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  7

  —

  2·5

  Dudley

  A461

  Queens Cross Improvements

  1987–88, 1988–89

  42

  —

  0·8

  Sandwell

  A461

  Ocker Hill Roundabout, Sandwell

  1987–88, 1988–89

  80

  —

  0·1

  102

  Authority

  1936–87

  1987–88

  1988–89

  Havering

  7·65

  5·38

  1·34

  Hillingdon

  21·96

  10·42

  8·44

  Hounslow

  2·67

  3·19

  3·89

  Islington

  0·30

  0·61

  0·43

  Kensington and Chelsea

  2·87

  1·90

  0·50

  Kingston upon Thames

  26·64

  35·38

  2·47

  Lambeth

  0·53

  1·18

  1·01

  Lewisham

  0·30

  1·29

  4·18

  Merton

  7·14

  16·53

  15·35

  Newham

  6·03

  5·58

  1·67

  Redbridge

  1·18

  4·60

  1·77

  Richmond upon Thames

  1·39

  1·27

  1·15

  Southwark

  6·56

  3·40

  4·62

  Sutton

  2·95

  4·97

  4·61

  Tower Hamlets

  0·30

  1·15

  0·45

  Waltham Forest

  4·02

  5·05

  2·29

  Wandsworth

  8·94

  9·44

  2·15

  Westminster

  2·79

  2·14

  1·19

  Mr. Jack
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will list in the Official Report for each highway authority (a) the value of the first year return, (b) the total net present value and (c) the length of each road project which qualified for transport supplementary grant, in each year from 1986–87 to 1988–89.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  The table lists all local road schemes supported with transport supplementary grant (TSG) in 1986–87, 1987–88 and 1988–89 for which either a net present value or a first year rate of return is availablie. A number of other schemes for which economic costs and benefits are not available is also supported with TSG.
  103

  Authority

  Scheme

  Accepted for TSG

  First year rate of return (per cent.)

  Net present value1 (£ million)

  Length (Km)

  Sandwell

  A41

  Holloway Bank Canal Bridge

  1988–89

  11

  —

  0·3

  Sandwell

  A461

  Great Bridge Relief Road Phase 1

  1987–88, 1988–89

  50

  0·2

  Solihull

  A34

  Stratford Road, Monkspath, Dualling

  1987–88, 1988–89

  14

  —

  1·9

  Wolverhampton

  A4150

  Wolverhampton Ring Road Section 6A

  1986–87, 1987–88

  15

  —

  0·9

  Wolverhampton

  A449

  Stafford Road Improvement—Section 3A&3B

  1986–87, 1987–88

  10

  —

  1·8

  Wolverhampton

  A4150

  Wolverhampton Ring Road—Section 6B

  1986–87, 1987–88

  10

  —

  1·3

  Wolverhampton

  A449

  Stafford Road Improvement—Section 3C

  1987–88, 1988–89

  13

  —

  0·4

  Wolverhampton

  A4124

  Wednesfield Bypass Junction Improvements

  1988–89

  38

  —

  0·4

  Wolverhampton

  Black Country Route—Sections 3, 4, 5A, 5B

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  19

  7·9

  3·3

  Bradford

  Bradford City Ring Road—Stage III

  1988–89

  —

  4·4

  1·0

  Bradford

  A6037

  Bradford Canal Road—Stage I

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  —

  0·7

  0·7

  Leeds

  Leeds Inner Ring Road—Stage V

  1988–89

  46

  17·4

  0·4

  Avon

  A4032

  Newfoundland Street, Bristol

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  —

  4·5

  0·8

  Avon

  Avon RR (1A)-Hambrook-Badminton Road

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89 1987–88, 1988–89

  16

  5·4

  3·3

  Avon

  Avon RR (IB1)—Badminton Road-Westerleigh Road

  Avon

  Avon RR (III)-A420 Warmley-Marsham way

  1988–89

  14

  26·1

  1·9

  Avon

  A370

  M5-Town Centre Link, Weston-Super-Mare

  1988–89

  14

  4·7

  0·5

  Bedfordshire

  A505

  Luton-Dunstable Relief Road

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  —

  8·1

  4·5

  Bedfordshire

  A507

  Shefford/Clifton/Henlow Bypass

  1988–89

  —

  4·6

  7·0

  Buckinghamshire

  A413

  Amersham Bypass

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  15

  —

  3·7

  Cambridgeshire

  A605

  Elton-Chesterton BP

  1988–89

  24

  5·0

  5·9

  Cheshire

  Chester Western BP—Phase 1

  1988–89

  —

  4·5

  2·1

  Cheshire

  A49

  Diversion (Phase 2), Warrington

  1987–88, 1988–89

  —

  1·1

  1·2

  Cleveland

  A66

  South Bank Link Road

  1987–88, 1988–89

  —

  3·0

  2·4

  Cleveland

  A177

  Durham Road Bypass

  1988–89

  16

  3·3

  1·6

  Cornwall

  A30

  Penzance Primary Distributor

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  8

  1·2

  4·6

  Cornwall

  A392

  Newquay Gannel Link Road

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  19

  1·8

  0·5

  Cornwall

  A39

  Truro-Devoran 1 (Carnon Downs Bypass)

  1987–88, 1988–89

  6

  0·2

  1·4

  Cumbria

  A591

  Staveley Bypass

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  8

  0·7

  2·8

  Derbyshire

  A610

  Ripley Bypass

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  8

  0·1

  1·9

  Derbyshire

  A619

  Tapton Bypass Chesterfield—Stages 1 and 2

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  —

  3·1

  2·5

  Derbyshire

  A6007

  Ilkeston Inner Relief Road

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  —

  5·3

  1·3

  Devon

  A3064

  Plymouth-St. Budeaux Bypass

  1987–88, 1988–89

  12

  4·5

  1·7

  Devon

  A380

  Thorns Cross-Eagle Farm 1 (Olchard Lane-Eagle Farm)

  1988–89

  —

  0·7

  1·8

  Dorset

  A37

  Dorchester Western Bypass

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  —

  0·1

  2·0

  Dorset

  B3081

  Gillingham Internal Relief Road

  1988–89

  6

  0·7

  1·6

  Durham

  A688

  Canney Hill Bypass

  1988–89

  72

  4·8

  1·1

  East Sussex

  A22

  Maresfield Bypass

  1988–89

  —

  6·0

  2·8

  East Sussex

  A267

  Mayfield Bypass

  1988–89

  —

  1·0

  1·8

  Essex

  A414

  Maldon Bypass

  1988–89

  —

  2·6

  2·4

  Gloucestershire

  B4066

  Berkeley-Sharpness—Stage 2A (Berkeley Bypass)

  1986–87, 1987–88

  7

  0·2

  1·1

  Hampshire

  B3349

  Hook Bypass Underbridge

  1988–89

  21

  2·6

  0·0

  Hampshire

  Blackwater Valley Route (North)

  1987–88, 1988–89

  8

  4·5

  6·5

  Hereford and Worcester

  A422

  Worcester Southern Link

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  39

  1·3

  4·6

  Hereford and Worcester

  A456

  Bewdley Bypass

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  16

  8·4

  5·2

  Hertfordshire

  A414

  Stanstead Abbotts to Harlow

  1988–89

  —

  2·6

  3·8

  Hertfordshire

  A4008

  Watford M1 Link and Southern Junction System

  1987–88, 1988–89

  —

  27·9

  3·4

  Humberside

  A180

  Grimsby West Marsh Relief Road

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  —

  13·3

  2·2

  Humberside

  A1173

  Stallingborough Interchange to Kiln Lane

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  —

  1·0

  1·7

  Humberside

  A1165

  Hull Stoneferry Road 1

  1987–88, 1988–89

  —

  0·2

  0·8

  Humberside

  A1173

  Immingham Kiln Lane to Kings Road

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  —

  4·0

  1·7

  Humberside

  A165

  Hull North Orbital Road

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  —

  4·9

  1·2

  104 105

  Authority

  Scheme

  Accepted for TSG

  First year rate of return (per cent.)

  Net present value1(£ million)

  Length (Km)

  Humberside

  A1163

  Hull Drypool Link 1986–87,

  1987–88, 1988–89

  —

  0·7

  0 6

  Humberside

  A165

  Ganstead Diversion

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  —

  1·0

  1 5

  Humberside

  A165

  Long Riston Bypass

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  —

  0 4

  1·0

  Humberside

  A16

  Grimsby New Baxtergate

  1987–88, 1988–89

  —

  0–6

  0 8

  Humberside

  A1163

  Hull Wilmington Link

  1987–88, 1988–89

  —

  5·4

  1·1

  Humberside

  A1165

  Hull Stoneferry Bridge

  1988–89

  —

  0·4

  0 3

  Humberside

  A1033

  Hedon Bypass

  1988–89

  —

  2·6

  2 4

  Humberside

  A164

  Castle Hill to Bentley

  1988–89

  —

  0·4

  4 6

  Kent

  A228

  West Malling Bypass

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  6

  0·3

  3·1

  Kent

  A253

  Ramsgate Harbour Approach

  1987–88, 1988–89

  21

  2·0

  2 4

  Kent

  A249

  Albion Place/Mote Road

  1988–89

  50

  22·1

  1·5

  Kent

  A206

  Dartford Northern Bypass

  1988–89

  74

  32·8

  3·0

  Kent

  A293

  Thanet Way Dualling

  1987–88, 1988–89

  9

  1·6

  28·0

  Kent

  A253

  Lord of the Manor

  1988–89

  22

  1·0

  0·2

  Lancashire

  A65

  Nelson-Colne (Main Works)

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  23

  32·8

  1 7

  Lancashire

  A6068

  Shuttleworth Hall Link Road

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  37

  10·5

  1·7

  Lancashire

  A56

  North Valley Link Road, Colne

  1987–88, 1988–89

  48

  9·3

  1·2

  Lancashire

  Burnley Inner Relief Road—Phase II

  1988–89

  28

  4·6

  0 7

  Leicestershire

  A6006

  Asfordby Bypass

  1987–88, 1988–89

  15

  0·8

  0·7

  Leicestershire

  Leicester Southern Distributor III

  1988–89

  26

  —

  1·7

  Lincolnshire

  A52

  Bicker Bypass

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  8

  0·3

  2·3

  Lincolnshire

  A46

  Dunholme Bypass

  1987–88, 1988–89

  12

  0·1

  1·9

  Lincolnshire

  A52

  Donington Bypass

  1988–89

  8

  0·2

  1·7

  Norfolk

  A143

  Kirby Cane/Geldeston Bypass

  1988–89

  —

  -0·3

  3·2

  Norfolk

  A1101

  Outwell Bends

  1988–89

  5

  0·0

  2·1

  Norfolk

  A146

  Trowse Bypass

  1988–89

  —

  0·5

  1·4

  Northumberland

  A1068

  Ellington Bypass and Potland Link

  1987–88

  —

  0·0

  3 6

  North Yorkshire

  A658

  Harrogate Knaresborough Southern Bypass

  1987–88, 1988–89

  —

  9·7

  10·2

  North Yorkshire

  A59

  Green Hammerton Bypass

  1988–89

  —

  0·3

  3·0

  North Yorkshire

  A59

  Far Laithe to Pacegate

  1988–89

  —

  0·2

  1·2

  Shropshire

  A49

  Reabrook to Telford Way Link

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  18

  9·2

  2·2

  Shropshire

  A591

  English Bridge Gyratory

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  51

  3·0

  0 4

  Somerset

  A358

  Ashill to Southfields Roundabout (A303)

  1988–89

  3

  0·7

  4·4

  Staffordshire

  A525

  Keele Bypass

  1988–89

  20

  0·8

  1·8

  Staffordshire

  A460

  Cannock Eastern Bypass

  1988–89

  38

  9·6

  2·5

  Suffolk

  A143

  Ixworth Bypass

  1986–87, 1987–88

  2

  -0·4

  4·0

  Suffolk

  Al2

  Saxmundham Bypass

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  8

  0·4

  5·5

  Suffolk

  Al2

  Kessingland Bypass

  1987–88, 1988–89

  10

  0·9

  2 5

  Suffolk

  A144

  Halesworth Relief Road

  1988–89

  5

  0·0

  1·0

  Surrey

  A22

  Godstone Road Whyteleafe Junction

  1988–89

  33

  1·1

  0·5

  Surrey

  St· Johns Bypass

  1987–88, 1988–89

  —

  1·1

  0·5

  Warwickshire

  A4390

  Stratford Southern Relief Road

  1987–88, 1988–89

  44

  4·8

  1·4

  Warwickshire

  A429

  Wellesbourne Bypass

  1988–89

  20

  0·4

  2·1

  West Sussex

  A264

  Horsham Northern Bypass

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  —

  4·2

  5·7

  West Sussex

  A24

  Farthings Hill

  1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89

  6

  0·1

  1·3

  West Sussex

  A24

  Dial Post

  1987–88, 1988–89

  7

  0·1

  1·7

  West Sussex

  A272

  Cuckfield Bypass

  1987–88, 1988–89

  7

  0·6

  1·8

  West Sussex

  A264

  Bewbush

  1988–89

  9

  1·5

  1·1

  1 1979 prices discounted to 1979.

  Road Improvements
  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what programmes are being initiated to improve road quality standards throughout the United Kingdom; and if he will provide a table listing expenditure figures for all regions from 1979 to the latest available date.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  We have initiated a greatly enhanced programme of structural maintenance on national roads. Maintenance of other roads is a matter for 106
  local authorities. Where authorities continue to under-spend we will be looking urgently for ways of improving the situation, in consultation with the local authority associations.

  Rural Transport (Cornwall)
  Mr. Matthew Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what recent representations he has received concerning rural transport in Cornwall; and if he will make a statement.
  107
  Mr. David Mitchell
  No recent representations have been received about rural transport services in Cornwall. Deregulation passed off smoothly there with services broadly maintained at reduced cost to the county. There are minibuses in many towns and the consequent increase in bus mileage overall has been of benefit to the people of Cornwall.

  Train Drivers (Statistics)
  Rev. Martin Smyth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what information he has as to how many train drivers employed by British Rail are(a) members of ethnic minorities and (b) women; and what is the total number of train drivers on British Rail's network.

  Mr. Channon
  I do not have this information. I am asking the British Railways Board to write to the hon. Member.

  Motor Industry (Safety Standards)
  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what plans and programmes are being considered to enhance and promote safety standards in the motor industry.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  Many improvements to vehicle safety are under consideration in the European Commission's working group of governmental and motor industry experts. Introductory dates are agreed only when new or amending directives are adopted. For example, last November agreement was reached to require anti-lock brakes on new heavy articulated vehicles and coaches, registered from 1 October 1991.

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

UDCs: Private Investment
Baroness Lane-Fox Baroness Lane-Fox asked Her Majesty's Government:
How much private investment has been attracted into inner city areas as a result of the public money invested in the various urban development corporations.
The Minister of State, Department of the Environment (The Earl of Caithness): My Lords, private sector investment of more than £2.25 billion has been attracted to the two urban development corporation areas designated in 1981; and considerable private sector interest has already been stimulated by the four UDCs that my right honourable friend designated last year.
Baroness Lane-Fox: My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for his encouraging reply. Can he give the House some report on the urban development corporation in the Black Country?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, yes; there has been substantial progress in that area. More than 20 projects involving £2.5 million have been approved and many are for highway improvement and environmental work. I am pleased to be able to tell my noble friend that today my right honourable friend the Prime Minister announced investment of some £50 million in a spine road to open up the area further.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, is the Minister aware that in 1981 —the date to which he referred—when the Docklands Scheme in London was set up, it inherited eight and a half square miles of absolute complete and utter devastation? There was dereliction every-where; there was not even a toilet to be found. Furthermore, as a result of that development, there is today over £2 billion worth of private enterprise invested there because people see that it has a future. Is this not a pattern to be followed? First the Government must find money for the purchase of land and for the putting in of the infrastructure. Secondly, having done that, they should then let private enterprise have a go.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, the noble Lord is right. He will know better than I do that after losing 10,000 jobs in the four years prior to 1981 alone, 660 companies have been attracted to the area. Thus some 10,000 jobs have been created. A considerable amount of housing work has been undertaken for people living in the area. I am pleased to tell the noble Lord that today my right honourable friend the
422
Prime Minister announced a further two UDCs. That shows how right we were to implement the programme in 1981, and furthermore what a success it has been.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: My Lords, can the noble Earl give the figures for Middlesbrough?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I must ask the noble and learned Lord which figures he has in mind.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: My Lords, I want the figures concerning public investment in the Middlesbrough Urban Development Corporation. I should also like to know what private interest has been shown in consequence of that investment.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, that is a new UDC. I understand that some £20 million has been provisionally allocated for it next year. There are already signs that the private sector is becoming interested as a result of the Government's pump priming.
Lord Dormand: My Lords, although the Question concerns public money, does the Minister agree that in fact none of that public money is so-called new money? I should perhaps declare that I am the Deputy Chairman of the Teesside Urban Development Corporation. While I readily acknowledge that so far there has been no restriction on the money available—although the Minister has said it is early days—does he agree that if new money was put into the urban development corporations, they would then be much more successful?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, more money is being afforded to the development corporations. As the noble Lord knows, there will be a further £20 million allocated next year for Teesside. Indeed, it is the concentration and how one spends the money that is important; that is where it has been such a success.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, does the Minister recall that a short time ago, in a debate in this House, I drew the Government's attention to the concern being expressed by private investors about the slowness in processing the scheme? At the time my information was that no additional staff had been recruited to process those schemes in a general sense; they were in fact progressing at an unbelievably slow pace. Can the Mininster give us any information as to whether additional staff have now been recruited to deal with the schemes, thus making the progress more meaningful than it has been up until now?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I cannot give the noble Lord the answer that he requires. The question relates to private investment in the inner-city areas. However, I shall of course look into the matter for him.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: My Lords, as regards the Black Country urban development, can the noble Earl tell the House whether building has already commenced under derelict steelwork sites?

423
Furthermore, are the roads that the Minister mentioned a continuation of the plans that were laid by the West Midlands county authority before abolition?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I am afraid that I do not have the necessary details to enable me to answer the noble Baroness's last question. Perhaps I may write to her on the matter.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, can my noble friend the Minister explain, in this context, what is the distinction between the so-called new money and old money?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, the new money to which my noble friend refers is money that has been committed by the Government in their White Paper. That has been allocated and targeted to various areas, details of which were announced this morning.
Baroness Lane-Fox: My Lords, does the group of leading construction companies which is now forming an urban development company known as BUD count as new money?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I do not know.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, when responding to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Mellish, the Minister appeared to agree that the London Docklands Development Corporation was an example for all inner cities. Is it not the case that 10 per cent. only of new jobs in the Isle of Dogs, for example, have gone to people who live in the Isle of Dogs and a further 10 per cent. to those who live in Tower Hamlets? That is not an especially good example. With regard to the new urban development corporations, is it not the case that £68 million in block grant has been taken away from those areas since 1981?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, the UDCs have helped considerably within, in particular, docklands where one quarter of those who purchased homes on UDC sites were former local council tenants. They have now become owner-occupiers, which is a good thing. One third of the purchasers of homes built on LDDC sites were people from the docklands area.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, the noble Earl is very properly answering a Question on urban development corporations. As I understand it, in another place Mr. Kenneth Clarke, of the Department of Trade and Industry, will be answering a question about the plans announced this morning by the Prime Minister. Who will have responsibility for the operation of the so-called new policies announced by the Prime Minister? As I understand it, she had a large number of Cabinet Ministers surrounding her this morning. The House and the country will wish to know who will carry the can.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, as the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition knows, interest
424
in the inner cities varies across government. The co-ordinating Minister is my right honourable friend Mr. Kenneth Clarke.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, further to the question asked by the Opposition Front Bench about London docklands, is the Minister aware that the trouble is that the Isle of Dogs forms only a small part of the East End of London, and it is about time some of them did their homework?

Care in the Community: Advance Planning
2.45 p.m.
Lord Allen of Abbeydale Lord Allen of Abbeydale asked Her Majesty's Government:
When they intend to bring into force Section 7 of the Disabled Persons (Services, Consultation and Representation) Act 1986 relating to forward planning for persons discharged from hospital after treatment for at least six months for mental disorder.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Lord Skelmersdale): My Lords, officials of the Department of Health and Social Security have opened discussions with local authority representatives on Section 7 as part of a continuing dialogue on implementation of the Act. It will be necessary to involve health authority representatives later as the section places obligations on them as well. Officials are seeking to agree a timetable as soon as possible for bringing Section 7 into force.
Lord Allen of Abbeydale: My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Lord for that Answer, which is slightly more encouraging than I had expected. The Act, which was supported on all sides of the House, received the Royal Assent on 8th July 1986. Here we are almost in sight of a time when two years have elapsed before we have a firm date. Does the Minister accept that, if a mentally ill or mentally handicapped person is to be discharged from hospital, an essential part of any policy of care in the community must be that plans should be made in advance for that person? Does he further agree that the present position up and down the country is rather patchy and highly unsatisfactory?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, to put a slightly different gloss on the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, since the noble Lord asked a Question of the Government Front Bench on 2nd March last year, six sections of the Act have been implemented. As I say, discussions are under way to bring into force Section 7. The Government have consistently made it clear that the provisions of the Act would have to be introduced gradually, and so that will come as no surprise to the House.
On the other point, Ministers have repeatedly emphasised the importance that they attach to professional teams agreeing individual care plans with each long-stay patient. I made the point in the House last week in answer to a Question from my noble friend Lord Mottistone. Individual care plans are essential for each long-stay patient including,

425
where appropriate, with their families at the time of discharge from hospital.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, the progress made to enable people with mental disorders to live in the community is welcome. But does my noble friend agree that care and supervision are needed in case of possible relapse and to arrange, if necessary, for return to hospital?
Lord Skelmersdale: Yes, I must certainly agree with my noble friend. A measure of our concern for effective after-care is that we plan to issue detailed guidance about that in two or three months in relation to mental illness. In relation to mentally handicapped people, the problem is much better known and much more widely understood. In terms of the supplementary question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Allen, the situation is not nearly so patchy.
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that to achieve good community care there must be a sound relationship between health and social services? Does he agree that the training of social workers is vitally important? Will more money be available for the training of social workers?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, yes, I most certainly agree with the premise advanced by my noble friend Lady Faithfull. A £10 million training award was announced recently by my right honourable friend the Minister for Health.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, in view of the increasing number of hasty discharges and the all too frequent re-admissions of those discharged too early, do the Government accept the urgent need for the implementation of the section? Are resources a reason for further delay and, if so, what sort of sums are involved?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, so far as the sums are concerned, this is something which we are discussing with the local authority organisations. It has been suggested in certain quarters that we are talking about up to £25 milion but I would not put too much reliance on that. As regards the general premise of after-care, as I said in my original answer, this is a joint operation between social services departments and district and sometimes regional health authorities. This is another point on which discussions will have to be pursued.
Lady Kinloss: My Lords, is the Minister aware that in 1986, 25,000 people were admitted to hospital with schizophrenia and 90 per cent. of those were readmissions? Can he say whether there was adequate care for them in the period between their admissions? Is it the responsibility of the health authority, or whose responsibility is it?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, no, I could not say that there was adequate care in 100 per cent. of those cases. I should have to look at the individual cases to establish whether there was. Ultimately it is the responsibility of the district health authority.

Riverside Health Authority Proposal
2.51 p.m.
Lord Ennals Lord Ennals asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will call in for consideration the proposal of the Riverside Health Authority to re-organise hospital and community services including the closure of the Westminster Hospital and the Westminster Children's Hospital.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, at present we have no plans to call in the Riverside proposal. However, any major capital scheme for a new Westminster and Chelsea Hospital proposed by Riverside Health Authority would need the approval of Ministers.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, is the Minister satisfied with a plan for a massive new 655-bed hospital in traffic-jammed Fulham, leaving no hospital services at all in Pimlico, Victoria, Westminster, Belgravia and Mayfair for residents, the working population or indeed visitors? Secondly, is he satisfied with the quite inadequate costings of this project?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, since my right honourable friend has as yet made no decision to call in the proposal, I think it would be a mistake for me to answer the noble Lord directly. However, this matter is out to consultation. I have no doubt that the community health council for the Riverside Health Authority will establish in its own mind the validity of what the noble Lord has just said.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, is the Minister aware that his noble friend the Minister for Health has twice been publicly referred to as having given his approval to this proposal? That is why I asked the Minister whether he would call it in.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I can give a categoric assurance that no formal approval has been given by the Government.
Lord Northfield: My Lords, can the noble Lord say what is supposed to be wrong with the Westminster Hospital that we now have? It is not an old building; it was built just before the Second World War. A new wing was built recently, which cost a lot of money; it has a fine reputation for research and a fine reputation for teaching. In every sense it is one of the best hospitals in the country. Why is there a proposal to close it?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, the Riverside Health Authority has established that it no longer meets present-day criteria and that in the authority's view it is in the wrong place. That is the substance of the consultation paper: to reformulate the provision of hospitals within the health authority area.
Lord Wallace of Coslany: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that any proposal to close Westminster Hospital will be met with considerable anger and resentment by all sections of the Palace of Westminster? Many of us have received its services and no doubt look forward to continuing to have its support.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, there is clearly intense interest in the hospital among Members both of your Lordships' House and of another place as well as among the staff of the Palace of Westminster, although they may not be the most numerous of the people served by it. The health authority is very well aware of that and I understand that the implications of any change are being discussed with the relevant officers of both Houses.
The Earl of Selkirk: My Lords, is my noble friend quite sure that the Riverside Health Authority does not want the money from selling that piece of land?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, the authority has produced a large scheme which affects three hospitals. There is no doubt that this money is included within the total cost of those hospitals.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, is the Minister saying that the money from the sale of those hospitals will come to the district health authority automatically for its expenditure? Is he satisfied with the consultative arrangements by which only one plan is put out for consultation and no others are considered?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, as far as one plan is concerned, it is quite normal for a district health authority to make up its mind what it wants to do and then to put the matter out to consultation. The procedure is just the same now as it was in the noble Lord's day.
Baroness Phillips: My Lords, bearing in mind that the hospital is sited in the borough which sold cemeteries for 10p—I am sorry, I overstated the amount; for 5p—would it not be wise for the Government to consider whether much revenue will be gained before it disposes of this very valuable hospital?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I was not aware of the value which the local authority presumably, rather than the district health authority, put on cemeteries in the area. However, I would make the point that Riverside has three district general hospitals: Charing Cross in the east; St. Stephens, Fulham and Westminster in the west. The district health authority considers that only two district general hospitals are needed. That is the rationale for putting this plan out to consultation.

Abernethy Forest RSPB Purchase
2.56 p.m.
Lady Saltoun of Abernethy Lady Saltoun of Abernethy asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has given any undertaking with regard to stalking and wildfowling in the Abernethy Forest following its recent purchase of the estate.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, we approved the Nature Conservancy Council's offer of grant towards the purchase of Abernethy Forest by the RSPB only
428
after receiving assurances that shooting would be allowed to continue at levels which were compatible with conservation on this important site. We understand that the RSPB will lease back the deerstalking and grouse shooting rights on the open moor to the current owners for 30 years in the first instance. There is no significant wildfowling interest on the site
Lady Saltoun of Abernethy: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Earl for that very satisfactory Answer. Since there is considerable concern among neighbouring farmers and estates lest the RSPB's purchase of Abernethy Forest will lead to a proliferation of vermin, can he say what the RSPB regards as vermin and whether it will control such pests as foxes, rabbits, rats, mink, black game and birds of prey?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I think that the RSPB's interpretation of "vermin" will be in accordance with the requirements of the wildlife and the countryside legislation. But it will depend also on the area, because the area is in two parts. First, there is the SSSI and the national nature reserve where there will have to be control of red deer in order to allow natural regeneration of the forest. On the open hill, where the RSPB will be the owner and therefore responsible for vermin, I am sure that it will take account of the fact that it will be its responsibility as a good neighbour to keep down the foxes, hooded crows, etc.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, since assurances have been given with regard to the wildfowling and stocking interests, may I ask the Minister whether similar protection is being given to the people who earn their living on the estate—foresters and others who have to work in the area—or is it strictly for the birds?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, there will be a management agreement for the SSSI between the Nature Conservancy Council and the RSPB which will involve a certain number of forestry workers, as the noble Lord knows. But the mere fact that the RSPB has leased back the shooting rights on the open hill, and quite rightly so, will allow employment to take place.
Lord Morris: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend, in accordance with the Answer to the original Question, how the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds reconciles that role with its determination to encourage the shooting of grouse?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, there is no doubt that there is a natural link between conservation and shooting. Indeed, those who do shoot often prove to be the very best conservationists.
Lord Grimond: My Lords, is the Minister aware that up to now experience at any rate in Orkney shows that the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is not the keenest to keep down hooded crows? Has the Minister received any specific undertaking that the society will keep down such things as hooded crows in this area or is he only hoping for the best?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, on the matter of the management of the National Nature Reserve (which will be a matter between the Nature Conservancy Council and the RSPB) we do have a bit more locus than we do with an ordinary landowner. I am sure that we should like landowners to behave in a responsible way, but we should not care to interfere with their rights in perhaps the way that the noble Lord and his party would like to.

Business
3 p.m.
Lord Denham: My Lords, it may be for the convenience of the House if I announce that the Committee stage of the Employment Bill will be adjourned at approximately 7 p.m. for approximately one hour and that during this adjournment the Committee stage of the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries (Amendment) Bill will be taken.

Procedure of the House
3.1 p.m.
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Aberdare): My Lords, I beg to move that the Second Report of the Select Committee on Procedure of the House be agreed to.
In the debate last November on the working of the House it was pointed out that there are no procedural rules to cover privatised industries. In Item 1 of this report the Committee recommends guidance which would limit the tabling of questions on privatised industries to those matters for which the Government have retained responsibility.
In Item 2 the Leave of Absence Committee has recommended and the Procedure Committee has endorsed a proposal which would greatly simplify the leave of absence scheme. It will operate from the next Parliament on the principle that leave of absence should be granted only to those Peers who ask for it and not by default.
With regard to Item 3 the Committee has twice deliberated on the recommendation by the informal group on the working of the House that the digits of the Clock should turn red after 15 minutes. There is clearly a deep division of opinion in the House and the Committee recommends that this proposal should not be proceeded with for the moment. I hope that otherwise the report speaks for itself. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Second Report of the Select Committee be agreed to.—(The Chairman of Committees.)
Following is the report referred to:
1. STARRED QUESTIONS ON THE PRIVATISED INDUSTRIES
The Committee have considered whether questions on privatised industries are desirable and in order. Procedural rules have existed since 1978 governing the tabling of questions to the Government on nationalised industries (First Report of the Procedure Committee 1977–78, item 1), but up to now no procedural rules have been devised to give guidance about privatised industries.
Since 1979 the Government have followed a privatisation programme which has involved either legislation (in the case of the
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statutory public corporations) or a simple disposal of shareholdings and other interests acquired otherwise than by statute. Privatisation has not followed any consistent pattern, and the method of disposal chosen and the extent of Government interest in controls have depended on the circumstances of the industry concerned. For this reason, the extent of Ministerial responsibility for privatised undertakings is very variable. Where undertakings have been disposed of to the private sector there is no further Ministerial responsibility but where the Government or parent corporation retains an interest in the undertaking, usually in the form of a power to give directions or a shareholding, there remains a degree of responsibility. In some companies, the Government retain a "special" or "reserve" share to protect them from a foreign takeover, or otherwise to protect the national interest.
In the light of these considerations, the Committee recommend that the following guidance in regard to the tabling of questions on privatised industries should be observed:—
"The tabling of questions on privatised industries is restricted to those matters for which the government has retained responsibility. For instance, statutory power may be retained by Ministers to give directions either directly or indirectly through a regulatory body or to exercise rights conferred by a "special" shareholding. Questions on the day-to-day administration of privatised concerns do not fall within government responsibility and are therefore undesirable."
2. LEAVE OF ABSENCE
The Leave of Absence Committee have considered the operation of the leave of absence scheme, following experience of administering the scheme at the beginning of this Parliament. They noted that, when the scheme was initiated some 30 years ago, the proportion of Lords who took advantage of the scheme was higher than it is today, when the activity of the House and numbers who attend regularly have risen sharply. An elaborate administrative machinery exists for the purpose of identifying those Lords who should be granted leave of absence. For the majority of Lords, the inquiry whether they do or do not wish to be granted leave establishes what is already self-evident.
The Leave of Absence Committee have concluded that in modern circumstances the scheme is of marginal relevance and does not require a general trawl of Lords, which takes months to complete and which, in the current Session, produced the result that of the 162 Lords who applied for leave, 124 were already on leave at the end of the last Parliament.
However, the Committee recognise that the scheme does give to those Lords who take seriously the demands of their Writ of Summons, but who, for whatever reason, cannot attend, the opportunity to have their position regularised. For this reason, the Committee do not recommend that the scheme be abolished but, instead, propose that it be reformed to operate on the principle that leave of absence should be granted only to those Peers who ask for leave and that it should not be granted by default.
The Committee accordingly recommend that in future:

(a) At the beginning of each Parliament the Clerk of the Parliaments should write to those Lords who were on leave at the end of the previous Parliament asking them if they wish to apply for leave for the new Parliament. Leave will be granted only to those Lords who so apply;

(b) To ensure that all Lords are made aware of the leave of absence scheme, the Dissolution Notice, which is sent to all Lords giving details of the opening of a new Parliament and the procedure for taking the Oath, will include the following notice:

"Leave of Absence
Letters asking all Lords whether they wish to apply for leave of absence are being sent only to those Lords who were on leave at the end of the last Parliament. Other Lords who wish so to apply are asked to communicate with the Clerk of the Parliaments.";
(c) Details of the scheme will be included in the "new Peers' Kit" of general information which is given to Lords on their introduction and to hereditary Lords when first taking their seat.
3. CLOCKS
The Committee returned to the subject of clocks, and the suggestion made by the Group on the Working of the House that the digits of the clocks should turn red after fifteen minutes. They received further technical advice that a clock as recommended by the Group would be less practicable and economical than one with hours and minutes and a flashing colon. After lengthy deliberation, they came to the conclusion that there was a deep division of opinion in the House on the subject and recommended that no action be taken at present.
4. PUBLIC BILL COMMITTEES
The Committee have reviewed the procedure for Public Bill Committees, in the light of the Pilotage Bill experiment, the Report by the Group on the Working of the House (paragraphs 21–28), and views expressed in the debate on the Group's Report on 4 November.
The Committee have considered:

(a) whether Public Bill Committees in future should sit in the mornings; and

(b) the method of holding divisions in Public Bill Committees.

Time of Sittings
Under existing procedure as stated in the Companion, Public Bill Committees normally sit between 3.15 and 5.45 pm, except on Thursdays, when they sit from 3.45 to 6.15 pm. The Committee adjourn for eight minutes during divisions in the House. The majority of those taking part in the Pilotage Bill Public Bill Committee experiment thought that morning sittings would have been more convenient, but opinion was divided whether the sittings should last only 2½ hours, or longer. This change would allow Public Bill Committee participants to attend business on the Floor of the House, and would not face conscientious members with a conflict; but, on the other hand, it would require members and staff to give additional time to the House.
The Committee recommend that the times of sitting should in future be left at large to be decided by the Committee itself in each case.
Divisions
At present, when there is a division in the Committee, the doors are locked two minutes after the question has been put and challenged. A majority of those taking part in the Pilotage Bill believed that a delay of longer than two minutes was desirable.
The Committee recommend that six minutes would be a reasonable time to allow, unless all members were present within that time. They also suggest that a division in a Committee should be broadcast on the TV screens, to summon members of the Committee from other parts of the House.
5. POSTPONEMENT OF BUSINESS
In the First Report, Session 1984–85, the Committee proposed the introduction of a procedure to enable business to be postponed without notice in certain circumstances. The Committee recommended that the procedure should be introduced, in the first instance, on an experimental basis, which was to be reviewed. Accordingly, the Committee have reconsidered the matter.
On 29 April 1985, the House agreed "That, notwithstanding the terms of Standing Order 37, business may be postponed without notice with the unanimous leave of the House until further order …". The procedure has since been used only once, on 19 May 1986. On that occasion, the procedure did not work entirely smoothly. In accordance with this Committee's recommendation, it was necessary for the Bill, which it was desired to postpone, to be called on by the Clerk before the motion to postpone it could be moved. This fact, however, was not fully understood in the House at the time, and some confusion resulted. Furthermore, when the postponement motion was moved, no reference was made to the right of any noble Lord to object and thereby to prevent the motion from being moved.
The Committee recommend that the experiment should continue, and that it would be premature to recommend a permanent change to Standing Order 37.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Employment Bill
3.3 p.m.
The Minister of State for Defence Procurement (Lord Trefgarne): 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 Trefgarne).
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [Right to a ballot before industrial action]:
The Chairman of Committees: My Lords, in calling Amendment No. 1 I have to point out that if this amendment is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment No. 2:
Lord Trefgarne Lord Trefgarne moved Amendment No. 1:
Page I. line 9, leave out from ("endorsed") to end of line 15 and insert ("any industrial action in which members of the union (including that member) are likely to be, or have been, induced by the union to take part or to continue to take part").
The noble Lord said: In rising to move Amendment No. 1, I wish to speak at the same time to Amendments Nos. 4, 98 and 104. Those amendments are necessary to clarify the original intention behind the clause; namely, that a member should have the right to restrain his union from inducing members, including himself, to take industrial action without majority support for the action from a proper secret ballot.
Clause 1 would now give a union member the right to restrain his union from inducing him and others to take any kind of industrial action without a proper secret ballot. Union members will not and should not need to establish whether the union's inducement involves any breach or interference with the performance of employment contracts or any kind of tort.
One (and a sufficient) reason why the member needs to be able to seek a court order regardless of the tortious nature of any act of his union done or likely to be done without the support of a proper ballot is that the member's job is potentially at risk whatever the nature of the industrial action concerned. The Faust case, with which I feel certain Members of the Committee opposite will be familiar, established that an employee can face dismissal and loss of right to claim unfair dismissal for taking industrial action involving no actual breach of his employment contract.
It may be suggested that the widening of Clause 1 to require a ballot where any industrial action is proposed is a significant extension which demonstrates again the Government's antagonism towards trade unions. But that would not be correct. Industrial action would fall within Clause 1 as it stands at present in the very large majority of cases.
It is surely far better that unions and their members should know that a ballot is needed whenever industrial action is proposed than that they should be left in a state of uncertainty as to whether a ballot is needed when certain forms of industrial action are proposed. To leave the clause in its present form would create that uncertainty and that would not be in the interests of either unions or their members.
Trade unions can avoid the risk of a court order against them by simply making sure that they do not induce members to take industrial action of any kind without the support of those members in a proper secret ballot. A proper ballot which produces majority support for the union's inducement will protect a union from legal action either under Part II of the 1984 Act or under Clause 1 of this Bill.
I shall touch briefly on Amendments Nos. 98 and 104 which are proposed to Clause 16 and which have

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a bearing on this matter. These amendments are simply consequential to the amendments that I have now spoken to. In themselves they make no change to the effect of the clause as it stands in the Bill. I beg to move Amendment No. 1.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: We can thank the Minister for his explanation. He would not be surprised if my noble friends and I said that we felt that we had never seen such an elegant proposal for clarification by way of amendments that are so obscure.
The new amendments in fact present the Committee with a new version of the Bill. We are not only presented with a new version of this Bill but, as the Members of the Committee will see when they come to Schedule 3, we are presented with a new version of the 1984 Act as well and a new system in respect of the demand for ballots. Our disagreements in respect of ballots are very often centered—quite apart from the fact that we see no reason why the employers should be enabled to enforce them—upon just this issue of how they are to be drafted and enforced.
In broad terms, new Clause 1 and many of the amendments that go with it—although they cannot, as the noble Lord has said, be all debated at once—reshape and widen the areas in which a dissident member or an employer, as we come to him, can demand a ballot. One of the things we are saying is that by taking that area beyond the boundaries of that which is in any way unlawful, the Government place an unreasonable and quite unjustifiable limitation upon the action of the majority.
In terms of the practicalities, we say that far from clarifying the position, this new Bill with which we are presented confuses the issue. I pause to say that it is quite clear that we shall have to come back to all this on Report because the amendments were put down last Thursday as I understand it at 12 o'clock. The Government have had since last October to find out that their Clause 1 was so fundamentally inept that it now needs uprooting from its fundamentals. Indeed, the 1984 Act has been in force since that year and the Government now see that that Act was wrong all the time.
We can discuss this Bill in Committee. But if this is a revising Chamber then if ever there were a case for having further consideration of a Bill on Report surely this is it. The noble Lord and I have debated these matters before, and I know that we agree that one of the problems is the technicality of the area of law itself. Therefore in terms of the practicalities rather than the technicalities, we say that the Bill is so wide and vague with these amendments that a trade union, workers, and in some ways employers, will never know what must be done. We say that the Bill will produce a situation in which a union official—a general secretary, for example—who comes out of negotiations and says that the employer's offer is unacceptable will not know whether he ought immediately to hold a ballot.
I shall try to spell out a few of the points in detail, as one must try to do in Committee. First, the old Bill, as the noble Lord has said, spoke of a trade union authorising an act which was or would be an
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inducement to its members to break their employment contract or to interfere with the contract. We shall come to consider interference later in the Faust case, and perhaps in a few other cases as well. However, that was reasonably clear; it is a well-known legal formula
The new Bill speaks of the need for a ballot when the union is authorising industrial action in which members are likely to be induced by the union to take part in industrial action. It is in respect of the word "likely" that the first problem arises. A statement that the wage offer from the employer is unacceptable has to be judged against likelihood, and "likely", in the words of Lord Justice Salmon in 1970:
"is just one of those words that have a wide range of meanings which vary according to the context in which they are used and which have been subject to considerable differences of judicial opinion".
For example, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, decided 15 years ago that in one context "likely" meant "it may well be", and in a different context—that of whether a worker was likely to be dismissed—Mr. Justice Slynn said in 1978:
"In this context it means a 51 per cent. probability".
I ask the noble Lord whether or not that is what it means here. Do union officials now have to calculate whether what they are saying as a statement of union policy carries a 51 per cent. probability that someone may be induced to engage in industrial action?
That would be difficult enough. But the clause, when we read on, will include the first half of the present subsection (5), which I invite the Committee to look at on some occasion. It says that an inducement includes a reference to an inducement which is or would be ineffective. It used to say that the likely ineffectiveness should be disregarded. However, that will be repealed by another of the noble Lord's amendments, as I understand it. That is to mount a Pelion of perplexity upon an Ossa of obscurity. If a businessman were to be surrounded by a web of mystery of this character, he would appeal to the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graf ham, and say that it was a burden on business. And he would be right.
That is bad enough. However, there is a further point early in the amendment which I mention briefly. The phrase that used to be there, which referred to action taken in the course of an actual proposed strike or industrial action, was understandable because the words "in the course of" have a clear meaning. Now we have a phrase which tells us that the test is to be whether it induces or is likely effectively to induce action in which the worker takes industrial action. There are problems there which I hope the Minister will explain during the Committee stage.
Thirdly, I ask the Minister whether I am wrong in thinking that no amendment has been put down and whether one will be put down in respect of Section 10(3) of the 1984 Act. Section 10(3), if it is not amended, will cause a test to be placed on the obligation to hold a ballot if the employer goes to court which is different from the test which the amendments would insert if a union member goes to the courts for an order. Such points are not mere technical details of drafting. Cases are won or lost on

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the difference between phrases such as "in the course of" or "in which" and on such words as "likely".
Perhaps I may pass to the amendment to page 2, line 1. We find there an equal if not a worse case. When the court is approached, the amendment says that it:
"shall make such order".
One would have thought that, with the amount of problems that have already been introduced, the court might be allowed a discretion. The Government do not give courts any discretion. They tell the courts that they must make an order. They must do that to ensure that no further inducement of the members to continue the action takes place. On that point the logic of the Government is quite understandable. However, it is not understandable that the amendment then states:
"that no such member engages in any conduct after the making of the order by virtue of having been induced before the making of the order to take part or to continue to take part in the action".
I ask the noble Lord why the words "any conduct" are used. An order that the member should not continue to take part is understandable, at least on the Government's logic. But why are the words "any conduct" used? Many different types of conduct can be induced by a statement.
Perhaps I may give a final and practical illustration. In such consultation with trade union and other colleagues as I have been able to make since last Thursday at 12 o'clock—I register again that that is the point at which the Government placed before the Committee a rewrite of the Bill—some examples were put to me which were perplexing. The draftsmen in the union TASS, or the MSF as it is now, were the first, I believe, to invent the form of industrial action that students sometimes adopt—that of working without enthusiasm. However, today there is an example of what some people have called "thinking action". When unions meet macho management which tries to get them to do more and more without recompense, one of the things which happens is that the flow of ideas that skilled workers of that sort so often keep sending to management and on which management often relies tends to slow up. That has been known to be encouraged by those who speak for the union.
If that sort of thing happens, presumably it needs a ballot. We shall come later to the definition of all forms of industrial action in an amendment which I shall speak to at a later time. However, the noble Lord says that all forms of industrial action are covered. Therefore, the member—or indeed the employer, because they will be equated in the procedures—goes to the court. The court sees that there has been some encouragement of "thinking action". Therefore, what is the order to be? Will it be to tell the union that they must not take part and engage in any such conduct? The union is to be ordered by the High Court to ensure that its members think.
There is a similar situation with other forms. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Donaldson, said in one of his judgments many years ago, the forms of industrial action, like real life, are infinite or are only
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bounded by human ingenuity, which is almost the same thing. Is the High Court to be asked to make orders to abstain from all the types of varieties of conduct which may have been likely to be ineffectively induced by the statements made?
That is a first shot at understanding what the clauses mean. However, we know they mean one thing. A court is to tell a union to do something to its members. That is another example of what Lord Devlin called, in his well-known inquiry into the port industry in 1965, asking trade union leaders to be policemen. He said then that trade union leaders cannot be asked to be policemen and they cannot be called in by employers to enforce the law. The mechanism which is now being set up makes that mistake all over again. Perhaps one might say that at the very best that will produce unofficial actions and a rash of actions for which one has no officials to bring in for negotiations and to conclude an agreement.
The fragile Meccano set which was put together in the first Bill that we saw in the debate on Second Reading has begun to fall apart because its nuts and bolts were not very good. What is being attempted is to stick in some Lego that makes no contact with the machinery or in many ways with real life. I know that we shall not agree on that conclusion but I ask the Minister to answer some of the specific questions that I have raised, such as that relating to Section 10 of the 1984 Act. I give notice that so far as we can see at the moment we shall be opposing this and the consequent amendments.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: Perhaps I may say a word in support of Amendments Nos. 1 and 4 and the other grouped amendments. The structure of Clause 1, which incidentally is to be opposed as standing part of the Bill, is of crucial consequence. The access which it affords to the courts is affected by Clause 2. It impinges to some extent on Clause 3 as implemented by Clauses 4 and 5 as regards unjustifiable expulsion and disciplinary penalties, also incidentally to be opposed as standing part of the Bill.
As Amendments Nos. 98 and 104 acknowledge, it has to be construed in context with Clause 16 concerning ballots before industrial action intended to prevent manipulation of the vote for selective industrial action. That provision was not canvassed in the Green Paper but is wholly justified in the light of experience. However, that is also to be opposed as standing part of the Bill. Is it not rather idle to talk about Lego or Meccano? What we are considering is a hull-down opposition to the principle of the Bill.
It is not realistic to consider the government amendments to Clause 1 or to speak to other clauses without bearing in mind the impact of Clause 1 on the other clauses of the Bill. With the greatest respect to the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, well known legal formulae tend at times to outwork themselves, turning into unreal and unworkable distinctions or proving wholly inappropriate for the establishment and the protection of a new right. This Bill seeks to establish and protect a new right, a new freedom, and the discretion of the court must be wide if it is to be able to protect that freedom.

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Clause 1 is a key provision of the Bill. Therefore, Amendments Nos. 1 and 4, seen in their true perspective, are also key provisions having particular regard to the fact that Clause 16 amends Sections 10 and 11 of the Act of 1984 to require a trade union intending to organise industrial action to conduct separate ballots at each place of work where the members are entitled to vote. It is not an easy patchwork but it is intelligent. In turn, Clause 16 is affected by Clause 14. I hope that when we come to it Amendment No. 93 will commend itself to the Committee.
Clause 1 and Amendments Nos. 1 and 4, in context with the other implementing clauses to which I have referred, are designed to establish and protect by appropriate legal process this new fundamental freedom of a member of a trade union to apply to the courts to restrain his trade union from authorising or endorsing any industrial action unless there has been support for such action in a ballot.
As there is clearly opposition in principle, it is right that the Committee should remember that this provision was canvassed in the Green Paper at paragraph 2.24. Comments were sought and 41 out of the 55 were in favour. It is however fair to say that the unions were equally divided—not totally opposed. In a MORI poll 70 per cent. of trade union members, 64 per cent. of them Labour-voting, were in favour. In the 1987 Labour Party manifesto a right for union members to have secret ballots on decisions relating to strike action was promised. Any form of hull-down opposition would be contrary to the thinking then in the Labour Party and to the thinking, in the past at all events, of many Labour-voting trade unionists.
These governments amendment are much to he welcomed because of the drafting of the Bill in its present form. Without the amendments the Bill lacks the requisite clarity and precision. It reflects the archaic and wholly unrealistic distinction between breaking a contract of employment and interfering with the due performance of a contract of employment. That distinction was recognised as unrealistic and irrelevant a long time ago—in 1969—when the noble Lord and I were on opposite sides in a certain case which involved a blockade of oil supplies by the Transport and General Workers Union at the Imperial Hotel in Torquay. It was a common law decision in which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, delivered the leading judgment. It is arcane, out of date and irrelevant to the creation of this new right.
That form of drafting in relation to a proposed strike or actual strike is limited by the use of the word "strike" to a withdrawal of labour but then extended without limitation to other industrial action. As my noble friend Lord Renton no doubt will explain authoritatively, this is very unsatisfactory because the judicial interpretation could be limited quite unreasonably to a form of limited ejusdem generis construction.
In plain terms, is it not right that we should establish a ballot before industrial action? Should we not enable a trade union member to complain to the courts if any industrial action is called without a
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ballot? Is it not right that the courts should be able to protect this right of a trade union member, if infringed? Such is the essence of the matter. If these three things can be done, surely it can only enhance the status of trade unions generally and reverse the decline in membership. I hope that we shall not hear the cry of "union bashing". On this side of the Chamber we believe in the process of collective bargaining which only trade unions can afford. Without that one can never achieve cost predictability.
These provisions sweep aside archaic legal technicalities which reflect the development of the law since 1906. They sweep aside conflicting legal decisions as to whether there is, or is not, any such thing as a political strike. They sweep aside questions as to whether a political strike can be a trade dispute as defined by the Act. The proposal in plain terms is that any industrial action authorised or endorsed by a union without a ballot may be subject to complaint by a member of the union. That is a broad, realistic approach; it is certainly sound and I hope that it will appeal to the Committee.
3.30 p.m.
Lord Molloy: I have listened carefully to the contribution that we have had from the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, and I have been deeply touched by it. Never before in my life had I believed that the Tory Party was deeply in love with the freedom-loving British trade union movement. Every piece of official legislation passed in the British Parliament that has impeded the trade union movement or in any way helped to discredit it has always been introduced by a Conservative Government. When one realises that the endeavours of Toryism have been mimicked by Fascists in Europe—
Lord Vinson: Oh no, no.
Lord Molloy: Oh yes. The first thing that the Fascists of Europe had to do was to destroy the trade union movement. Many trade unions—the French, the Belgian and the German—based themselves on the British trade union movement. I for one am very proud of the fact that it was the British trade union movement that faced up to that challenge.
When one looks at the Taff Vale dispute one feels particularly ashamed of what has happened in the British Parliament as it has affected the mass of ordinary working men and women who are members of trade unions. When he comes to reply I want the Minister to say quite clearly that when this Bill becomes an Act, if all the conditions, including those in his amendment, are adhered to, employers must accept the fact that trade unions which adhere to these rules and regulations through their ballots will be strenuously supported by Parliament. I hope that he will make it transparently clear and say without any doubt whatsoever that if these rules are adhered to the trade unions will receive the full support of the British Parliament.
There is another answer that I want from the Minister. If, for example, a number of free Britons who are not members of any trade union or

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employees' association in this free land of ours decide to withdraw their labour, will he confirm that in as much as they are in no way members of any trade union the provisions of this Bill when it becomes an Act will in no way have an effect on them? I believe that free working men and women who do not happen to belong to any trade union and who desire to withhold their labour should be able to do so without being harassed through the provisions of this Bill when it becomes law.
I believe that these matters have to be made transparently clear. There have been many instances in the distant and recent past in which governments have completely misinterpreted the desires of the trade union movement. There have been occasions when some people in the trade union movement who have not properly understood the principle of freedom in the trade union movement have abused that principle also. Generally speaking, however, the British trade union movement has an exceptionally good record for civilised and decent behaviour in the defence of freedom and democracy. It may well be that on occasion—and there have been occasions—extremist trade unions have reacted to extremist Right-wing Tory Governments and one has to take note of that. That is part of history.
Lord Vinson: May I interrupt—
Lord Molloy: In a moment—I have a few things to say first. In a few moments the noble Lord will be much more angry even than he is now. I want to say this. I want it to be quite clear when the Minister replies that he will acknowledge that there are bands of Britons, British men and women, who may not feel too safe with any trade union movement at present but who band themselves together without calling themselves a trade union, and that if they take any action whatsoever to ensure that their point of view is fully understood by their employers and the people of this country, then those people will in no way be harassed by a Bill which refers to trade unions or trade unionists. The Minister must acknowledge that there will be complete and total freedom for those people to take whatever industrial action they like without being harassed by the provisions of this Bill. I hope that when he replies he will make that transparently clear.
Lord Vinson: Before the noble Lord sits down perhaps he would clarify one point. I understood that the full name of the Nazi Party was the National Socialist Party. Was that not the case?
Lord Molloy: Of course it was the case. The Nazis lied about everything. Even their title was a lie, was it not? They lied about my nation, did they not? They lied about Europe. They lied about the Jews, did they not? Everything was a lie. Does not the noble Lord agree with that or does he believe that sometimes they were in fact what they said they were? That is a matter for his conscience. My conscience knows that in 1936 the British trade union movement marched against a Right-wing fascist party in this country. We marched in the East End of London. We wanted to make the
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British people understand how passionately opposed we were to every principle—if such they may be called—that upheld the Fascist movement.
I deeply regret that the harassment of Jews by Fascists causes a smile to appear on the face of the noble Lord. I find it very distasteful. I am very proud to have spoken out againt the Nazis of Germany when there were a number of Right-wing people in this country who tried to imitate them. British trade unions, particularly those in Wales—
Lord Campbell of Alloway: If I may—
Lord Molloy: Just a moment. British trade unions —dockworkers, coalminers and steelworkers—marched to London to oppose the principles of Nazism which some people were trying to advance in this nation of ours. I am very proud that we did. I am very proud that we won.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: I rise only in the hope that we can cool the temperature of this debate and return to the principles of the very important measure which we ought to be discussing. The charge of harassment so far as trade unions are concerned against the party to which I belong, repeated I believe six times by the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, is not a charge to which I plead guilty. I am one of those who believe that one of the reasons why the Conservative administration subsists today is the trade unions' efforts.
Lord Renton: I hope that my old friend the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, will not take it amiss if I return to the amendments. However, before I do so, perhaps he would just allow me to follow up something that my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway has just said and remind him that in our election manifestoes of 1979, 1983 and 1987 we gave a very clear and good forecast of what we intended to do to modernise trade union legislation, and indeed to ensure that an element of real democracy was brought into that legislation in the sense of restoring to union members the power which should belong to them over the decisions taken in their name. If the noble Lords want to have the most recent example of that, no doubt over the weekend he will have heard of the decision, taken by ballot, of the National Union of Mineworkers to end the overtime ban which Mr. Arthur Scargill, and other trade union leaders no doubt, wanted to continue.
If I may now return to the amendments, I have to confess that although I was in the Chamber on Friday I did not pick up the amendments that by then had been tabled and did not see these amendments until this afternoon. That of course is my own fault. However, having seen the amendments perhaps I may make a suggestion which I hope will help my noble friends on the Front Bench in the future. Plainly, when one gets down to it, two of the amendments, Amendments Nos. 4 and 5, replace the two existing subsections, subsections (2) and (3), that are in the Bill; but they are wrapped up and presented in such a way that a slow old mind like mine takes a few minutes to understand exactly what has happened.

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Let us therefore realise that we are now discussing two new subsections as well as the amendment to subsection (1) and indeed a very small amendment to subection (4). It is only a matter of presentation and of assisting Members of the Committee. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway for his exposition of the effects of Clause I and of these amendments as he sees them. He tried to involve me in an elaboration of the ejusdem generic rule for the benefit of the Chamber. However, I am afraid that I must disappoint him because I think that his explanation was quite sufficient.
Clause 1 is surely fundamental. If we are to have trade union democracy we must make sure that the members have the right of ballot before striking—and striking is very serious, not only for the country but perhaps especially for individual members. If we are to have a provision of that kind it is only right that we should have the only sanction that is effective in legislation of this kind—resort to the courts.
Having considered new subsections (2) and (3), I prefer their drafting to that of their predecessors. It puts the matter perfectly plainly. There is no need for me to elaborate.
I tried as hard as I could to follow the rapid speech of the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, who always speaks with great knowledge of the law. However, I did not understand how two of his points fitted into the amendments. He said that the flow of ideas between management and trade union members that is of such great benefit very often to management and to the concern, whether it be public or private, in which the people are working should be allowed to continue. This flow of ideas has depended until now, and will depend in future, upon the good relations between management and the men and women in the trade unions. I cannot think that it would make for had relations if we had a provision whereby before vital decisions are taken the men shall be consulted. We have heard it said so often that before employers make important changes that affect their workforce there should be consultation. We are writing into this clause that there should be consultation with the workforce.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: I am obliged to the noble Lord. I agree very much with some of the points that he has just made. The example that I gave involved a different question. What sort of order would the court make when approached under these amendments in the case that he repeated? Would the court order the men to work, the trade union to make them work or the trade union to make them think? What sort of orders will be put forward?
Lord Renton: I hope that I am not begging the question that the noble Lord has quite rightly put when I say that the nature of the order must depend upon the circumstances. It must depend upon, for example, the distinction that my noble friend made: an actual breach of contract or an inducement to breach of contract. It must depend upon that to some extent and the court can take cognisance of that. There is no problem there.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: Hear, hear!
Lord Renton: However, what has that to do with impeding the flow of ideas? I do not understand.
The noble Lord also said that we were asking trade union officials to be police. That is something that Lord Devlin some 22 years ago in a most interesting and valuable report quite rightly said that the trade union official should not be expected to do. But there is nothing about that here. There is nothing that arises here in the nature of their being turned into police. It could be said that implicit in the clause is that the trade union official shall not become an agent provocateur: but that is an entirely different situation.
I do not wish to weary Members of the Committee with the various points that—so far as I could glean them because he spoke so fast—the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, made. I simply return to this point. This clause, and these amendments to it, are fundamental to trade union democracy. Fundamental to this application of trade union democracy is the right of effective application to the court and effective power on the part of the court to make such order as may be needed.
3.45 p.m.
Lord Sefton of Garston: I was rather intrigued by the dispute between my noble friend Lord Molloy and other Members of the Committee. It seems to me that my noble friend Lord Molloy tried as best he could to establish a principle connected with this amendment. The principle was that the amendments and this clause deal only with trade unions. I do not think that anybody on the other side of the Chamber, any employer in this country, or any student of history over the past 150 years, will not accept that the trade union movement has been a very essential part in maintaining the stability of our infrastructure. If anybody disputes that, they should be honest. They should stand up and say so.
If they do not dispute that, then certain logical matters follow. There are two instances in the history of this country that stand out quite clearly in my mind. I am old enough to remember both of them. One was the general strike of 1926; and the other was the last great war, and to some extent—although I do not remember that so much—the First World War. This country was protected from what could have been a revolutionary situation in the last war and in 1926. We had a well-established, recognised trade union movement that organised the working class.
When the issue became the internecine battle between the working class and the employing class—let no one forget it, in particular those who were smiling and besmirching their faces when reference was made to the trade union movement's fight against Fascism—this country, a Tory Government, and the employing classes of this country, were thanking God for the existence of an organised trade union movement that had for some of us become part of the establishment.
The principle that the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, was trying to point out was that nothing in this clause deals with what, in the First World War, was called

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the shop steward movement; nor does it deal with the same movement's actions in the general strike; nor does it deal with the shop steward movement that nearly wrecked the trade union movement in this country during the last war.
Nowhere does the clause, so far as I can see, propose any action or give anyone redress in the courts against an organised movement which is not registered as a trade union. Thus we arrive at this situation. If the Bill is to go ahead without those references, it will put a premium on people in our society who are coming to the view that the establishment does not meet their needs for a decent society and therefore a plague on both your houses—the trade union movement, and the employing class and Parliament.
I ask the Committee not to be misled. Within our society there are movements which want to disrupt society. It was Karl Marx who said that the trade union movement would be the bastion and the defender of a capitalist society. That was what he meant.
Let me conclude by asking the Government to think again. Over the years and throughout the development of our kind of industrial society, the trade unions have had a stabilising effect on society. I see that the Minister on the Front Bench is amused by that. But pushing them too far will break the loyalty that exists between the working class in our society and the trade union movement. If we arrive at that situation, it bodes very ill for the future of our nation.
One simple question was asked by my noble friend Lord Molloy. Will the Bill be brought into effect if an unofficial strike is called in a certain factory by people who are not trade unionists? Will the Bill act against them, or will it not? That is a simple, straight question and within it is contained a very important principle. I believe that the Government have set out on this course without thinking it through properly. They have set out with prejudices against the trade union movement. By and large, the Government want to return to what they consider to be the halcyon days when the poor man was at his garden gate; they want to make damn sure that he stays there.
Lord Rochester: At Second Reading I said that my noble friends and I would consider the main provisions of the Bill on their merits. As has already been said, the principle underlying Clause 1 is that individual union members should be enabled to take legal action to restrain their union from authorising or endorsing industrial action which has not been supported by ballot.
In the debate on the Green Paper initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, last April, I said that we sympathised with the view that such a right should be seen as a natural development of those already accorded to employers, to customers and to suppliers under the 1984 Act. I start, therefore, with a predisposition to support what the Government have in mind in this instance. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, has said, it was only last Thursday that the Government tabled a whole series
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of new amendments, of which Amendments Nos. 1 and 4 are two. I therefore find myself in a quandary. In my view, it would have been preferable—instead of obliging the Committee to accept or reject these amendments today—if the Government had given us a little more time in which to form a considered view upon them.
Lord Trefgarne: I am very much obliged to the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, for his considered intervention with regard to the amendment and indeed to other noble Lords who have spoken. The noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, is a considerable practitioner in this area, but I fear that it sometimes is the case that experienced practitioners—I dare say that I have done this myself in those few areas where I have any expertise at all—have fallen into the trap of failing to see the wood for the trees. The basic thrust of what is proposed in the Bill (amended as I now suggest by what is before your Lordships) is that there should be no industrial action without a ballot. That is to say that trade unions who seek to persuade their members to take industrial action of whatever kind should first ascertain their views. The corollary, if I am to believe noble Lords opposite, is that there may be occasions when trade unions would like to induce their members to take industrial action, maybe against their views or certainly without ascertaining their views; and that that is desirable. I do not agree.
The noble Lord went on to say that there might be some difficulty in defining what is industrial action. He referred to some difficulty about the flow of ideas. If, for example, the flow of ideas dried up, would that constitute industrial action? I suppose it might, but that would have to be determined by the courts and not be me. That is exactly why we have to have a provision that the appropriate court is consulted when there is difficulty. It is no good just expressing the pious hope that unions will consult their members before inviting them to take industrial action. We have to write into the legislation a provision for enforcing it by reference to the appropriate courts.
The noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, asks about the tests in Section 10(3) of the 1984 Act. They are designed to achieve the same ends as those in Clause 2(3) of the Bill and the Government are persuaded that that is what is achieved. Indeed the Bill does not fundamentally restructure Sections 10 and 11 of the 1984 Act as he suggested. They continue to require a ballot only to preserve immunity in tort. The Bill requires a ballot of those who are likely to be induced to take part in industrial action.
I touch on the point made, if I may say so, at some length by the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, and, at equal length, by the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, about the freedom of individuals to withdraw their labour. Of course, that freedom is not affected by the Bill. Clause 1 requires a ballot where a trade union organises official action. It in no way diminishes the rights of individuals as noble Lords may have feared. All that reference to the Nazis before the war is not appropriate in this case.
Lord Sefton of Garston: I am sorry if I am being long winded, but that was not the question that was posed.
Baroness Phillips: Exactly.
Lord Sefton of Garston: The question posed was quite simple. The amendment deals only with trade unions. If a majority of people employed by a certain individual organise themselves but do not become a trade union, can the Bill be used against them?
Lord Trefgarne: The noble Lord answered that question in the first sentence that he uttered. The Bill relates to the actions of trade unions not to the actions of individuals. In respect of this amendment the basic proposition that I bring before the Committee is that no one should be induced by his union to take industrial action unless his views have first been determined. I believe that to be a wholly unobjectionable proposition. I invite the Committee's agreement to it.
4 p.m.
Lord Molloy: Before the noble Lord sits down, will he try to understand clearly that many people have suffered from anti-trade unionists within the trade union movement; the extremists. What will happen when members of a trade union are induced to try to take industrial action by the actions of an expelled member who has been an extremist? Will they then be supported by the legislation? What will be the position if an expelled extremist trade unionist induces members of the union to take action which cannot be regarded as trade union action? Is it right that this Bill will not apply to those extremists!
Lord Trefgarne: I repeat that the proposition is that no member of a trade union should be invited or induced to take industrial action unless his views have first been determined. I do not believe that the noble Lord's question arises from that simple proposition. I again invite the Committee's agreement to my amendment.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
[Amendment No. 2 not moved.]
Baroness Turner of Camden Baroness Turner of Camden moved Amendment No. 3:
Page 1, line 16, after ("may") insert ("on giving no less than three days notice to the trade union save where the court gives leave for shorter notice").
The noble Baroness said: This is a simple amendment. I do not wish to add to the excellent arguments put forward by my noble friend Lord Wedderburn in dealing with Clause 1. The Committee knows the feeling of Members on this side about the clause. The Bill as it stands allows a member of a trade union to apply to the court for an order if he believes that an attempt is being made to induce him to take action in defiance of what will be the law if the Bill is passed. In tabling the amendment we are seeking to ensure that the union has no less than three days' notice of the intention so to do. We believe that notice to be good and reasonable. The
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union has a right to know in advance that an application is being made to the court. Three days seems to be a reasonable, if rather short, period to allow, and the amendment proceeds to state:
"save where the court gives leave for shorter notice".
I hope that the Government will consider this to be a reasonable amendment and will accept it. It would be most unfortunate that a member should have access to the courts without first indicating to the union that that was being done. The union could then investigate and perhaps put matters right before the case came before the court. I commend this reasonable amendment to the Committee.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: I should have liked to be able to support the amendment, because its sentiments are reasonable. It accepts that the court can shorten the notice. My knowledge is at one remove, unlike that of the noble Baroness. I have appeared only for employers and trade unions in courts and have not had the privilege of being a distinguished trade union official. However, having made that concession, I fear that this amendment could give rise to victimisation and to pressure being put on the individual. I speak personally in saying that I find it difficult to support the amendment.
The Earl of Dundee: I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving her explanation of the amendment. I agree with my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway that the sentiments contained in it are reasonable. From the terms of Clause 22 of the Bill it is apparent that the Government believe that, on an application under Clause 1, the court needs the power of ex parte injunctions and to grant such interlocutory relief—which in Scotland would be an interim order—as it considers appropriate pending the full trial of the action. I do not believe that there is any reason to put a restriction on the ability of the court in respect of its entirely proper discretion to grant relief on, for example, an ex parte application where it deems it right to do so.
If a member seeks an order from the court under Clause 1, he must establish a number of facts concerning the inducement, or possible inducement, by his union without a proper ballot of breach or interference with employment contracts. For example, he must show that that has happened, or is in prospect, and that he was, or should have been, accorded entitlement to vote in any such proper ballot. In the circumstances of a strike, or pending strike, it may be vital that the union member can activate his right to seek a court order with the minimum possible delay. In deciding whether to award interlocutory relief, the courts weigh the strength of the case before them and the balance of convenience between the two parties concerned.
It is possible that in an action under Clause 1, heard on an ex parte basis, the court will decide that the applicant had not made a sufficient case for it to issue an injunction against the union. There is no need to impose, or any justification for imposing, any special requirement in terms of notifying the union of an intention to apply to the court or of an application to the court. The Government have faith in the ability of the courts to do their job properly.

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The amendment tabled by the noble Baroness appears to attempt to put an arbitrary figure of three days' notice into effect but then undermines that by providing that the court may somehow give leave for a shorter period to apply. Is it seriously intended that an applicant should go to the court especially to obtain leave for a shorter period to apply? That would be a rather convoluted and contradictory process. In view of the reasons that I have given, I wonder whether the noble Baroness will see fit to withdraw her amendment.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: Before the Minister sits down I should like to clarify one point. I understood him to say that a member would obtain an order—as it is called in Scotland and rather more sensibly so than an "injunction"—if he showed an actual threatened inducement to breach his contract or an inducement to him to interfere with his contract. I wonder whether I heard the Minister correctly because, when speaking to the last amendment, his noble friend took a long time to tell the Committee that it would no longer be necessary to prove such legal matters. One would merely need to show industrial action in which he had been induced to take part. Will the Minister help as regards that point? Is it not the case that remedies will flow from the old "legalisms", as they have been called, or from the new language?
The Earl of Dundee: I am grateful to the noble Lord for asking that question. The position will be that the member must convince the court that there has been an irregularity which was to induce members to behave in a way which is not permitted without a proper ballot.
Baroness Turner of Camden: I do not intend to press the amendment at this stage.. However, I must say that I am disappointed with the response of the noble Earl. In the real world it often happens that there may be a local action where a member feels that he is being induced to take part in a dispute at local level. The National Executive Council may know nothing about that matter. If he can push off to the court and there seek an injunction or relief without first going to the union, he may be involving himself and the public purse in quite unnecessary expenditure of time and money. If I have read the Bill correctly, it appears that individual members will have access to public funds in respect of some issues. On the other hand, if he had first gone to the union and given notice, a court case might not have been necessary because the union might have brought its activities into line with the law. For that reason I believe that it would have been reasonable to have accepted the three days' notice that we have suggested. In view of the fact that the Minister does not feel able to do so, I shall withdraw the amendment. However, we may consider the matter further at the Report stage. Those were the reasons that I advanced.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Trefgarne Lord Trefgarne moved Amendment No. 4:
Page 2, line I, leave out from ("satisfied") to end of line 13 and insert—
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("(a) that a trade union has, without the support of a ballot, authorised or endorsed any industrial action;

(b) that (whether or not the action has already commenced) members of the union are likely to be, or have been, induced by the union to take part or to continue to take part in that action; and

(c) that the members of the union who are likely to be, or have been, so induced include the applicant,

the court shall make such order as it considers appropriate for requiring the union to take steps (including the withdrawal of any relevant authorisation or endorsement) for ensuring that there is no, or no further inducement of members of the union to take part or to continue to take part in that action and that no such member engages in any conduct after the making of the order by virtue of having been induced before the making of the order to take part or to continue to take part in the action.").
The noble Lord said: I spoke to this amendment earlier. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Trefgarne Lord Trefgarne moved Amendment No. 5:
Page 2, line 15, leave out from ("endorsed") to ("is") in line 28 and insert ("any industrial action if there has been—

(a) such an authorisation or endorsement of an act which has been done for inducing any member of the union to take part or to continue to take part in that action; or

(b) such an authorisation of any proposed act for inducing such a member to take part or to continue to take part in that action,

as requires that member, or if the act were done would require that member, to be treated for the purposes of this section as induced by the union to take part or, as the case may be, to continue to take part in that action.
(3A) For the purposes of this section a person shall be treated as induced by a trade union to take part or to continue to take part in any industrial action if he is subjected to such an inducement to take part or to continue to take part in that action as is or (if it constituted an inducement to break a contract of employment or to interfere with the performance of such a contract) would be taken, for the purposes of any such proceedings as are mentioned in subsection (2) of section 15 of the 1982 Act (liability of unions for official action), to have been done by the union.
(4) for the purposes of an application under this section an authorisation or endorsement by a trade union of any industrial action").
The noble Lord said: As before, I have already spoken to this amendment. I beg to move.
4.15 p.m.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton Lord Wedderburn of Charlton moved, as an amendment to Amendment No. 5, Amendment No. 6:
Subsection (3A), at end insert ("provided that the act has not been repudiated in accordance with that section by the time the application is made.").
The noble Lord said: It is important to have the procedure right and I apologise for hesitating as to the right procedure. Unless the Minister has any objection, with the leave of the Committee, I will move the amendment and also address a few words which are interlinked with the clause.
The particular problem which is envisaged in the amendment may be put in this way but in view of what the noble Lord, Lord Renton, said, I am trying to meet his point by making my points rapidly while speaking slowly. I shall do my best to please him in that regard.
Lord Renton: That is an admirable way for the noble Lord to proceed.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: I am much obliged and hope that we can reach agreement on some later points in the same way.
Two matters puzzle those of us on this side of the Committee, and the Minister may care to help us on them at a convenient point. First, we always feel that it is very odd for us to be lectured about ballots. The British Labour Movement has been having more ballots during the last century than this Government have had hot dinners. The British Labour Movement knows about ballots and is far from being opposed to them. However, it has ballots in particular forms. The issue before the Committee today is not a Second Reading point of principle on ballots but is directed to this form of ballot on these new rules which were pin down last Thursday. You cannot appeal to some general principle of being in favour of ballots and say, as the Minister and other members of the Committee appear to be doing, that the amendments are therefore correct. It is rather like saying that you are against sin and then saying that that proves that you should not drink particular types of drink. There would be disagreement about the second and not much disagreement—in most places anyway—about the first.
The Green Paper, which is relevant to the amendment, stated that union members should have a new form of right in respect of ballots in regard to industrial action, but it also stated:
"They should have a right to a ballot being called to take industrial action in breach of the contract of employment".
Of course, that is what the Green Paper was about. That is why last Thursday's amendments constitute a new Bill, because they run away from that point which workers can understand and managers can understand. This amendment asks the question: why do the Government, as they did in the old Bill and do in these new amendments in a new form, tie in union responsibility for inducements to the principles laid down in Section 15 of the 1982 Act? That section writes a new code of vicarious responsibility for trade unions different from the common law tests. The 1982 Act laid down the people for whom and when the union would be liable, and that definition was different from the normal rules of law. That test being in operation, the Government apply it here so that the general secretary's statements, if they are a likely although an ineffective inducement, will always be binding on the union whereas a shop steward's statements will be binding only if he has authority. I ask the Government whether it is clear that the principles of repudiation in Section 15 are also included in the new language of the Government's amendment?
This is a matter of no little importance because Section 15 of the 1982 Act allows a certain type of act and statement to be repudiated by those in certain categories; for example, senior officers and the National Executive Committee. It is not abundantly clear that the wording of the first part of Amendment No. 5 incorporates that notion. I appreciate that it is not clear that it does not do so but I wonder whether or not the Minister would be happier with this amendment if it were made quite clear that that were so.
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The wording in the amendment to which this amendment is directed—Amendment No. 5— adds to the strangeness of the matter. I could not speak to it before and will do so now. The difficulties amount to this: that people are entitled to know when they ought to have a ballot under the law. Leave it to the rule book and they can decide for themselves. That is quite a sensible thing to do for the most part. However, if a law is passed, it must be made clear. As we have seen in the first amendment, it is certainly not clear and there is an added obscurity here because subsection (3A) refers to a person being treated as induced by a trade union to take part in the action if he is "subjected to an inducement". Why does that not read, "If he is induced"? There must be a difference between "Subjected to an inducement" and "induced" otherwise it would have read "induced". The Government are very cautious in many ways but they also like economy and do not like to waste print; it is bad for business. I suspect and some of my noble friends suspect that this is meant to cover a case—remember that the inducement may be ineffective—where the member is not reached in any real way. I give an example. If the union issues a pamphlet saying that members should not work without safety helmets on constructions sites where two people are killed every week, does there have to be a ballot before they can issue the pamphlet or before the workers read it? Are they "subjected to an inducement"? The wording is very strange. I am sure that the Minister will explain it. I raise the point with him in moving the amendment, which I beg to move.
Lord Renton: At first sight, this amendment has something to commend it because obviously nobody wants to go to the trouble, expense and delay of court proceedings if it is found that there have been second thoughts by those in the union who were responsible for the act complained of. It is worth noting that in the original version of subsection (3) which we arc replacing with subsection (5) the possibility of repudiation is mentioned; that is to say, on page 2, line 20, it states:
"would fall to be so taken if it were done without being repudiated for the purposes of that section before being done".
Therefore, the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, has a point which requires very careful and earnest consideration.
However, there is more to it than appears on the face of this amendment. In particular, it would be important to know before accepting this amendment or something on these lines at what stage the repudiation has to take place. If the repudiation takes place very soon after the act complained of, then that would be what we have in mind. It would make court proceedings quite unnecessary. On the other hand, if the repudiation does not take place until the court is just about to make an order saying that the act complained of should not have taken place, that is an entirely different matter. As I have brought that point to the attention of the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, he may care to explain his intentions before my noble friend on the Front Bench replies.
There is a further uncertainty that arises on this amendment. It is rather important to know by whom the repudiation has to be made. The clear case would

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be if it were made by the person who did the act complained of; made the inducement, or whatever it may be. That would be the straightforward case. Of course, if it were the resolution of the management committee of the union, the executive committee, the responsible governing body of the union, that would be a plain case where the original act complained of is by that body and repudiation is made by it.
I hope I am not being oversubtle if I suggest that repudiation could be by a relatively minor official of the union and that his colleagues on the executive committee of the union may not agree with it. That would be an entirely false situation. Therefore, that is another point to which I invite the attention of the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn. However, I consider the question of repudiation should seriously engage our attention.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: Before the noble Lord sits down—I hope I have managed to intervene before he does so—is he aware that there are two reasons why I hope that he will join us in this amendment? First, coming at the end of new subsection (3A), as it would, it ties in with Section 15 of the 1982 Act. That Act has clear and rigid rules about who can repudiate and when. Obviously those rules would apply. Secondly, the amendment is clear about the time; namely, that repudiation has to take place by the time the application is made to the court. I hope that in the light of those two points the noble Lord will join us in asking his noble friend to treat this amendment seriously.
Lord Renton: Subject to what my noble friend may say, I consider that the noble Lord has given answers to each of the questions; and they may be the right answers.
Lord Trefgarne: Very likely they may be. I hope that during the course of my few remarks I can persuade the Committee, in particular the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, that the amendment is unnecessary and would add nothing of substance to the effect of the clause.
The clause gives a union member the right to apply to the court if his union has induced, or is likely to induce, him and other members to take industrial action without proper secret ballot. It is clearly necessary to have a definition of what constitutes an act of inducement by the union, and Clause I, as the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, said, is therefore linked for this purpose with the provisions of Section 15 of the 1982 Act.
Section 15 sets out, in subsection (3), the circumstances in which an act is to be taken as authorised or endorsed by a union. Subsection (4)(b) makes clear that if an act is repudiated by the principal executive committee or by the president or general secretary it shall not be taken to have been authorised or endorsed.
Subsections (5) and (6) lay down further and proper conditions that must be satisfied to establish whether an act is to be treated as repudiated.
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The precise detail of Section 15 is a somewhat technical matter but the basic point is a simple one. If a union repudiates an act, in accordance with the provisions of that section the member will not have grounds for applying to the court under Clause 1 of the Bill. I believe, therefore, that the amendment, while no doubt well-meaning, in fact adds nothing to the effects of the clause, and I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw it.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: I still think that there is an ambiguity, but I am so pleased to be on common ground with the noble Lord about being well-meaning that I ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment to Amendment No. 5, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Amendment No. 5 agreed to.
The Earl of Dundee The Earl of Dundee moved Amendment No. 7:
Page 2, line 30, leave out from ("of) to end of line 32 and insert ("that action:").
The noble Earl said: With the leave of the Committee I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 8, 9 and 10. We have already discussed the amendment which extends the scope of the clause to cover any industrial action, and these amendments are consequential. They are designed to ensure that the balloting requirements of the clause are framed to cover any industrial action organised or endorsed by a trade union. I beg to move.
Lord Renton: The only point I wish to make is one that I have already made in a minor way; it relates to presentation. It seems to me that this large batch of amendments in the name of the Minister are all amendments to Clause 1. They replace a great deal of what is already in Clause 1. It would be much easier for us all to follow if, instead of their being tabled as individual amendments, we were simply asked to leave out Clause 1 and insert a new clause. We would then all know far better where we sat instead of having to put metaphorical wet towels around our heads.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: The degree of agreement between myself and the noble Lord, Lord Renton, is becoming quite alarming. The point that he makes is one I intended to make to the Minister. In fact, our position is that we wish not to make what I am afraid are the many points on this part of the new draft because we are not sure that we have the sticking and pasting and the details quite right. Threfore, we will come back on Report. On that basis, and partly because there is one more major issue to come in Amendment No.11, to which we have an amendment, we think that it would perhaps be the view of the Committee that we concentrate now on what we think is clear to us and that we should come back to the issues in Amendments Nos. 7, 8, 9 and 10 when we reach Report stage.
The Earl of Dundee: Perhaps I should say by way of reassurance to the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, and my noble friend Lord Renton that while I have sympathy with the points they have made I hope that

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when we see the reprints of the Bill incorporating the amendment we will be less unclear, or clearer, as the case may be.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Trefgarne Lord Trefgarne moved Amendment No. 8:
Page 2, leave out lines 40 to 43 and insert—

("(i) in the case of action which consists in a strike, to a question (however framed) which requires the person answering it to say, by answering "Yes" or "No", whether he is prepared to take part or, as the case may be, to continue to take part in a strike;

(ii) in the case of action which consists in action short of a strike, to a question (however framed) which requires the person answering it to say, by answering "Yes" or "No", whether he is prepared to take part or, as the case may be, to continue to take part in such action;

(iii) in the case of action which consists in action to which both of the questions mentioned in sub-paragraphs (i) and (ii) above are applicable, to the questions or questions applicable to that part of the action in which the applicant is likely to be, or has been, induced to take part or to continue to take part;

and").
The noble Lord said: We have already spoken to this amendment. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Trefgarne Lord Trefgarne moved Amendment No. 9:
Page 2, line 44, leave out from ("that") to ("at") in line 47 and insert ("industrial action and in the case of any action which has been authorised rather than endorsed, the commencement of the action occurred or is likely to occur"),
The noble Lord said: My noble friend has already spoken to this amendment. With permission, I should like to move Amendments Nos. 9 and 10 together.
The Principal Deputy Chairman of Committee (Baroness Serota): As we are at the Committee stage of the Bill the amendments will have to be moved separately. The question is that Amendment No. 9 be agreed to.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Earl of Dundee The Earl of Dundee moved Amendment No. 10:
Page 2, line 48, leave out from ("date") to end of line 6 on page 3.
The noble Earl said: I have already spoken to this amendment. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees: In calling Amendment No. 11 I should point out to the Committee that if this amendment is agreed to I cannot call Amendment No. 13.
Lord Trefgarne Lord Trefgarne moved Amendment No. 11:
Page 3, line 10, leave out from ("reason") to ("nothing") in line 23 and insert—
(' (5A) In this section—
"date of the ballot" has the same meaning as in Part II of the 1984 Act;
"industrial action" means any strike or other industrial action by persons employed under contracts of employment;
"strike" means any concerted stoppage of work.
(5B)").
The noble Lord said: I beg to move.
4.30 p.m.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton Lord Wedderburn of Charlton moved, as an amendment to Amendment No. 11, Amendment No. 12:
Line 7, leave out ("under") and insert ("in breach of their").
The noble Lord said: I feel a certain element of common struggle to get through this in the right way. I hope that we have now reached the point of Amendment No. 12 as an amendment to Amendment No. 11. I fear that what I have to say will break the thin crust of common agreement which was building itself.
This is a key matter. It is expressed, having taken out, I understand—with great respect to the noble Earl—the test as to when a court will enforce a ballot or an order in respect of any conduct, in a very draconian way. We shall come back to that at Report stage. The test of deciding whether it is a tort of inducing a breach of contract or inducing interference was taken out and replaced by whether it is likely to be an inducement, effective or ineffective, to members to take part in industrial action. That would be a strike or industrial action. I say no more about the definition of "strike" because it is not that which will cause the difficulty. In the discussions within my own party and in the Labour movement there has always been great clarity in debates and ballots about strikes because people know roughly what is involved.
In the British system of law it involves a breach of the contract of employment. Under a Bill of this kind it is important for the individual worker, whether he is a trade union member or not, to know. Whether there is to be a ballot or not will affect the unionist and non-unionist. The minority or majority of union members, the union, and of course the employer, will all want to know.
The common-law test was for the most part clear. I say "for the most part" because, as the Minister has said, the issue was of interference with contracts of employment. That had some obscurity. To stand on this ground if one is having a Bill of this kind has always seemed to us to be reasonable. Where people were going to do something they were not legally entitled to do, one could expect some kind of procedure or penalty. But where all were going to do something they are legally entitled to do, then other people—third parties and persona in the drama of industrial relations—really did not have much right to ask that they go through procedures to do what they were entitled to do.
That was, and is, different from a breach of the employment contract which, I readily admit, most forms of industrial action are. It is sometimes said that only abstention from overtime when it is voluntary rather than obligatory—a clear case of, in common parlance, industrial action—is not a breach of the contract of employment. There are other instances which are not clear. What we say in this amendment is that the breach of the workers' obligations should be the test of whether the procedure should be gone through. If that is not so, then not only do the workers not know where they stand, but the union, the employer, the non-unionist and the rest do not know where they stand.
In saying, "Before you decide not to take that step that you are entitled to take"—it may be not to do overtime you have been offered but are not obliged to take it—it has to be remembered that what happens on the factory floor, or perhaps today one should begin with the office desk, depends upon good will. A certain amount of good will will be contractual because there is a duty to co-operate. But there will be other species of good will which no one would regard as a contractual obligation. Everyone knows what really happens when industrial relations' difficulties arise is that people begin to withdraw co-operation. The management becomes more difficult, the worker gets more difficult. And at some point the line of breach of contract is perhaps crossed.
Until that point is reached it is quite ludicrous to say that every form of industrial action must be subject to a ballot—every time someone from the office floor says, "We are fed up with this macho management and we are going to withdraw a bit of good will," and the shop steward says, "I think you have a point." It is necessary to remember that he has only to induce them ineffectively; so it does not matter if they are already convinced. The Minister did not speak about ineffective inducement; I hope, one day, he will. I suspect that "ineffective inducements" are to cover the situation where workers were quite clear from the start what they intended to do. Therefore the statements from the union made no difference.
In the example I have given, does the Minister really think that that should to be a case where either the union member—let us also remember that this occurs in Schedule 3—or the employer can demand a ballot on pain, in the first case, of an order of the court of unknown proportions? Presumably it will be an order of conduct that good will is restored. I believe that judges would be hard put to it to frame such an order. I understand the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Renton, that each order is suited to the circumstances of the case. I ask him whether he can really imagine the High Court framing an order that tells the trade union, as would be necesseary under this Bill, to ensure that its members restore good will. There is also a principle of the High Court that it will not make an order which is brutum fulmen and which it cannot supervise. I should have thought that was pre-eminently within that category.
It sounds great to say, "Let us get rid of old legalisms." If we say it from this side of the Committee we are always called law breakers; if it is said from the other side, that is called common sense. It sounds great here to say, "Let us get rid of all those old law books inducing breach of contract. That was just something that people wrote about years ago. Let us get on to every form of industrial action."
The argument that it is needed because the state of the statute book is such that every form of industrial action—although the extent is not very clear —displaces the jurisdiction of the industrial tribunals in a case of dismissal which is alleged to be unfair, really beggars belief. First of all the Government can change that position if they do not like it. I can assure the Minister that we would.
Secondly, the Minister knows as well as I that "strike" and "industrial action" are defined differently for different purposes in different parts of the employment legislation. In terms of the continuity of the employment of employees, it is defined in Schedule 13, paragraph 24 (which I am sure is rarely absent from the Minister's mind) in a way quite different from anywhere else. In Section II of the 1984 Act "strike" is defined differently. This is not uncommon in systems of labour law. But the definitions of "strike" and "industrial action" tend to vary from one place to another. Not only is it rather pointless to quote Faust v. Power Packing in 1983 as though it proved the case here, but also, in parenthesis, if the Minister looks at the case of Express and Star Limited v. Bunday in 1987 he will find the matter put differently. Those comparisons can be made on Report.
There is no case there by appealing to precedent. This is the point: there is an attempt to win an argument. I will put it in the nicest possible way and with no aggravation meant. It is an attempt to win the argument lost in 1984. The Government are bringing back through the window what was kicked out of the front door in 1984. In that year they went through the whole Committee process in another place trying to have a ballot provision tied to interference with employment without breach. The Government got into such a muddle that on 2nd April 1984 at col. 683 of the Official Report, the Minister, Mr. Gummer, came to the House at Report stage and capitulated. He introduced breach of contract into both of the questions.
I do not particularly like the breach of contract test, but if you are going to have a test then have a test that people can understand. Breach of contract of employment is a test that people can understand. It has its difficulties in application, but we know where we are. The only alternative is to say, as the Government are planning here, that all forms of industrial action are covered. Are they surprised that we are rather suspicious when they cannot tell us anything other than that?
I put an example to the Minister, and what does he tell me? He tells me that the courts will have to decide. When you ask the Government whether this or that is industrial action, we never get, as we never got in another place, a clear answer. My honourable and right honourable friends put many examples of overtime bans, work-to-rule, thinking action and working without enthusiasm. They asked which of those would be industrial action and when would they be industrial action. The Government always replied that the courts would have to decide. The Minister has given that reply again today.
That is not good enough. Citizens of a free country have a right to know when it is that they can band together, and discuss something and decide to do something which is lawful. The Minister has made it quite clear that what is entailed in industrial action will not necessarily be unlawful. All of this is aimed at Schedule 3. The Minister is saying that in order to impose this very specific type of regulation the employer will be able to enforce an order or an injunction in any form of industrial action. That is the more serious aspect of the matter.
The Government have tied the two together and they are trying to prevent workers, through their trades unions, jointly discussing industrial problems and taking action which is not in breach of any obligation that they have assumed. In a free society that is improper. If they break contracts of employment, I see the argument and we can argue about the form; but with this sort of definition of industrial action the Government are going over the top. I beg to move.
Lord Renton: I am afraid that I cannot support the noble Lord on this amendment. In the first place he ought to consider the drafting a little further, if I might suggest it. If this amendment is accepted, instead of,
"strike or other industrial action by persons employed under contracts of employment."
which is how it reads at the moment, we would have,
"any strike or other industrial action by persons employed in breach of contracts of employment".
That is a rather strange proposition. It might have been better if the amendment had been drafted in this way: "strike or other industrial action by employed persons in breach of their contracts of employment". That would have put it right, but that is not what we have before us. So much for the drafting, I hope I have been helpful and constructive for once.
Let us go to the substance of the matter. The noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, has conceded that voluntary overtime is generally not part of a contract of employment. In its terms it cannot be part of a contract of employment because it is voluntary. If industrial action—let us leave aside the word "strike"—is suggested by the union to stop voluntary overtime, one wonders where the rights of individual workers will be if they want to continue with voluntary overtime.
Voluntary overtime often has the advantage of very good wages of time and a half or weekend working at double time. Therefore the individual worker who does not want to be deprived of voluntary overtime just by an order by his union might feel at a disadvantage. I must confess that I cannot think at the moment of other occasions when industrial action involves no breach of contracts of employment. A more imaginative and experienced person than myself could perhaps think of other examples. It may be that there are Members opposite who could do so. However, to accept the noble Lord's amendment, even when it has been put right in the way that I suggest, would amount to a limitation of the definition of industrial action. I cannot think that it would be in the interests of individual workers that the definition of industrial action in this context should be limited in that way.
4.45 p.m.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: What I cannot understand is why the Government at this stage in the consideration of the Bill are seeking to loosen the meaning of the words "industrial action". The term "industrial action" is almost meaningless when one comes to examine it. It is euphemistic. It is not even a term of art. It is something which trade unions have
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used because they have not liked the real terms that can be applied to some of the actions they are taking. My union, a public service union, did not like the word "strike". It did not like the words "working to rule". None of the things which by tradition were included in the scope of industrial action were by themselves either enough or acceptable as they stood. I am surprised that this vague phrase or term, which is not a definition, should now be incorporated in the law.
The Minister is taking refuge in a manner that we are tending to adopt in drafting our legislation: finding the most comprehensive and vaguest term and then saying that it is for the courts to decide what it means.
One of the principles of English law—and the noble Lord, Lord Renton, is surely an authority on this—is that it should be clear and unambiguous; it should do its best to say what it means. Therefore, one goes to the courts only in an extreme case or in the act of splitting words to resolve some dispute. Here it seems to me that one will have to go to the courts right way in many cases to find out the meaning of "industrial action". I have been pondering this since the beginning of the debate.
In three places in Clause 1 the Government have removed, as my noble friend Lord Wedderburn said, the test of the industrial action upon which a ballot has to be taken or a court action can be taken in default of a ballot. That is what we are talking about. This clause concerns what is to be done if a strike or other industrial action as it says is called, without a pre-strike ballot and a member wishes to stop the union in its tracks. However, we have not so far got down to what we mean by "industrial action" I thought we had made an attempt to do so in Clause 1 as it stood before amendment. The words were,
"to break their contracts of employment; or to interfere with the performance of their contracts of employment".
That is specific. Now it is to be removed. We are told in Amendment No. 11 that:
" 'industrial action' means any strike or other industrial action by persons employed under contracts of employment".
It does not say that they are to be in breach of anything. It does not say that they are in breach of their obligations, or that they propose to withdraw some of their normal duties. It says nothing. I doubt whether the unions have got close enough to the definition of "industrial action" themselves to know what it really means.
What about teachers? That is an example which comes to mind. They are not regarded as under an obligation—certainly not under contract—to perform certain duties in connection with the service of school meals. On an occasion they even decided to withdraw their voluntary services to extend to other works out of school hours—other duties which they did not regard as an obligation—and yet they are an important part of the totality of their work. That has played an important part in the decisions of the unions when they have been involved in a dispute with the employing authorities. But is that aspect included?
There are some contracts of employment, some obligations of employment, that do not include the

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obligation of working overtime. In my time, at least in one department of state, we regarded the working of overtime as purely voluntary. It was only when voluntary means failed that the department would seek to impose such an obligation on people to do it. Those people who are voluntarily doing overtime may decide to cease to do so. The union may then say, "Let's withdraw voluntary overtime".
It is probably sufficient to withdraw something which is voluntary because of its effect on the state of the work. How does that issue stand? It seems to me that an attempt should be made to extend the tail of this kite so that we can recognise more clearly what the term means. Otherwise I think, as my noble friend pointed out, that the employer may say, "What you are proposing to do is going to be such an inconvenience to me and will have an effect on the state or work or output of production; therefore I want a ballot taken". Alternatively, a member of a union may say, "I am affected by what it is proposed to do".
I have discovered in my time that there has been a heavy involvement in overtime for the benefit of the remuneration which it brings. Indeed, in some firms or works, applicants for jobs ask whether there is any overtime, and when they are told that there is not they say, "Well, I want overtime; I shall go to a place where there is overtime". Therefore there is considerable interest in the availability of overtime in some places. Let us then suppose that the union say that they will stop it. A member may subsequently say, "This has an effect on me. I want to take proceedings. I want a ballot". All those matters provide difficulties.
It may be that the Minister will say, "How can we spell out all those hypothetical cases or examples in the legislation?" I certainly do not think that the alternative is to have no attempt whatsoever at definition. Surely the only conditions under which a ballot should be required by law—certainly action to be taken in the courts under the legislation—must be breach of contract, or breach of the performance of a contract. That seems to me to be a basis which is clear enough, because anyone can tell what is in the terms of their employment and what may interfere with their obligations under the terms of such employment. I think we should give attention to that matter.
I conclude by saying that I think that having Committee stages on Mondays has one great drawback: one does not see the important amendments until one comes to the middle of the day. That is not good enough. This is a key amendment. I cannot undertand why it is introduced at this stage of the Bill's progress. The Bill is supposed to have gone through the mincer in another place, but here we are altering it very substantially. That consideration has to be borne in mind when we are asked to deal with key amendments—this is certainly one of them—at very short notice.
Lord Renton: Before the noble Lord sits down, he may be interested, and perhaps reassured, to know that the term "industrial action" appears in Section 62 of the Employment Protection (Consolidation)
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Act 1978, as amended by Section 9 of the Employment Act 1982. Therefore it would be wrong to say that it is no longer a statutory term. It is a statutory term, and to that extent it is a term of art.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: I do not walk about with Acts of Parliament in my pocket all the time. That is yet another drawback of our procedural methods. Why then is it necessary to interfere with what the Government have put into the Bill, and have stuck to right through all the stages in another place? Here it is again, in Clause 1, where they propose to amend it. I ask: why?
Lord Campbell of Alloway: I shall try to deal with the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby. It is true that this term "industrial action" was used in a previous statute; but it is equally true, so far as I am aware—I shall be corrected, no doubt, if I am wrong—that its meaning has never been clearly defined. The nearest we ever came to a definition was that in the old Act of 1971 of an unfair industrial practice, and so forth. The answer as to why it ought not to be defined, with respect, lies in Amendment No. 1; whereas if you seek to define the phrase in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, suggested, you would limit it to breaches of contract. That would be far too narrow a definition. One would have to extend it beyond breaches of contract to the archaic distinction of threatening to induce interference with the performance of a contract, and that would not do.
What about picketing? Surely that is industrial action. In other words, it is safe to leave industrial action to the courts to decide as it arises, in accordance with the circumstances of each case. I am not trying to pick at the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, but merely to show that, however you try to define the term, such interpretation will not meet all the circumstances. This new right requires the protection of the courts. We must leave the courts to protect the right.
Lord Trefgarne: We discussed this matter at considerable length in relation to Amendment No. 1, a few minutes ago. Therefore I do not wish to labour the point. Of course the noble Lord is entitled to return to the subject, in the guise of another amendment, should he think fit.
The arguments in support of the noble Lord's amendment appear to revolve around the proposition—if I am to listen with care, as I always do, to all those who have spoken in support of the noble Lord—that industrial action can ony be defined as a breach of contract of employment. I endeavoured to explain, when I moved the earlier amendment, that it was not as simple as that. We preferred a rather wider definition. I happen to think that trade unionists are sensible people. Indeed, I am one myself. I have long been a member of a trade union and am proud to be so today. I think that trade union members are well able to understand the essential meaning of the words "industrial action".
Of course at the extremities of the definition there will be one or two occasions, such as those referred to

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by the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, where it is not clear whether a proposed course represents industrial action. Frankly I cannot see that that would present any difficulty to trade unions. If they are in any doubt all they have to do is have a ballot. Then they are properly covered.
The essential proposition that we bring before the Committee in this clause, incorporated in the amendments that I have suggested today, is that there should be no industrial action save when the members have first been consulted. For the life of me I cannot see the difficulty with that proposition. In the light of those arguments and the ones deployed on the earlier amendment, I hope that the noble Lord will see tit not to press the amendment.
5 p.m.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: Before we reach Report I am sure the Minister, as I will, will read the debate and derive a great deal from it. First, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Renton, that I am happy with the style of the amendment, but no doubt we could discuss that later. I think that it works. Secondly, surely my noble friend Lord Houghton gave a large number of good examples of the way the failure to define—that is what it is—amounts to everything that is inconvenient to the employer, not necessarily things that are incovenient to the individual union member. That is what is so important about the link between this clause and the new Bill on employer-enforced ballots.
Industrial action is normally understood—certainly in the cases to which the noble Lords, Lord Renton and Lord Campbell, referred—to involve pressure aimed at the employer. Everything that is inconvenient to the employer will be included in the phrase "industrial action". What kind of lopsided system of industrial relations law is that supposed to be? These cries—I might almost say strangled cries —of "Leave it to the courts" or "Sensible people will know what it means on the day" are the mottoes of a slovely legislature that either does not care to get it right or wants to include everything that the Government want to include. I believe that the debate will show that the second is true.
The Government know perfectly well what they are doing; they do not want to meet the point about the teachers. They have already abolished collective bargaining for them anyway. Of course they want to catch the teacher who shows good will for a couple of weeks and with his colleagues organises sports outside the contract of his employment. The teachers then say, "Well, in view of what the employers have done, we do not think we will do that any more". They must have a ballot. It they do not the employer will obtain an injunction. Why should they have to do that? Their wives want them home. They will say, "There is that good will in the sports ground for an hour after school every day. We want to see you home". A man has a right to decide that.
A man and a woman have the right in a free society to discuss together that they will jointly not take certain action because they are not bound by contract. Why should they have to go through the Minister's ballot? This is authoritarian. It is worse
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than authoritarian. The Minister always smiles when he does not know the answer, but the answer is that the requirement is authoritarian. To make people go through one's procedures is the first stage towards making them go to one's destination. The Government have done that with the teachers. They have shown them where the door is. It is not to collective bargaining. They have legislated that out; and so the system begins to make sense. We begin to see it for what it is.
I shall not press the amendment because we have to look at the clause as a whole; but it is an amendment which has brought out the core of the meaning of this clause and the clauses that go with it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Noble Lords: No.
The Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees: The Motion is, That the amendment be withdrawn.
Lord Trefgarne: I believe that it needs the consent of the Committee to withdraw the amendment.
The Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees: Is it the Committee's pleasure that the amendment be withdrawn?
Lord Trefgarne: No.
The Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees: The Question is, That the amendment be withdrawn. As many of that opinion will say Content?
Noble Lords: Content!
The Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees: To the contrary, Not-Content?
Noble Lords: Not-Content!
The Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees: I think that the Contents have it.
Lord Trefgarne: I believe that the correct
procedure is—I am sure that I shall be corrected if I am wrong—that if the Committee has not agreed to the withdrawal of the amendment, the Question should be, That the amendment be agreed to?
The Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees: The Question is, That the amendment be agreed to? As many of that opinion will say Content?
Noble Lords: Content!
The Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees: To the contrary, Not-Content?
Noble Lords: Not-Content!
The Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees: I think that the Not-Contents have it.
On Question, amendment to Amendment No. 11 negatived.
On Question, Amendment No. 11 agreed to.
[Amendment No. 13 not moved.]
On Question, Whether Clause 1, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord McCarthy: We gave notice that we wished to oppose the Question, That the clause shall stand part of the Bill, because we rather suspected that we should end the day without passing any amendments to improve it. That is the case. The Government have argued throughout, in this place and in another place, that all they are doing is something which they said they would do at the time of the general election and at the time of the publication of the Green Paper. They are merely giving to trade union members that which they gave to employers in Part II of the 1984 Act—the right to stop a strike not subject to an authorised ballot under the terms of the 1984 Act.
If that were all that the Government were trying to do, and if in addition they would put in place of a clause which gave that right to union members something which they put in Part II of the 1984 Act for employers, we should not be debating the clause. We should be prepared to accept it. But the Government are putting the clause in in addition to Part II of the 1984 Act. We have always argued, and we argue still, that whether a union is entitled to a particular area of industrial action and to do something for which it is immune from action should not be left to employers. It should be left to the law or to the individual worker.
If all that the Government had done was to put in place of Part 11 of the 1984 Act provisions along those lines—for example, if they had said that the individual union member had that right in his contract of employment with the union and that the courts were able to read into the union rule book such a provision—we should have no objection to the clause. But we have objected to it. We have sought to put on the Marshalled List a series of amendments, because the closer we looked at the clause, the worse it became. The clause was bad enough when it came out of the other place, but when it was changed by the series of amendments moved this afternoon by the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, and when we look at the changes wrought by those amendments, I am afraid we must oppose the clause in it original form and even more in its amended form.
We have tried to put down a series of amendments which we hoped would improve the operation of the clause. None of those amendments has found favour in this place, and therefore we have a clause worse than it was when it came from the other place. My noble friend Lord Wedderburn has sought to argue how the clause creates all kinds of uncertainties, partly because of the use of vague terms such as "interference"; partly because it introduces all kind of additional concepts, such as "industrial action" and "ineffective inducement", which are undefined; and with unions told that they must take various steps which are undefined. We have tried to give
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examples of how we feel that this vague, unsettling provision would have deleterious effect upon trade union organisation and solidarity. We have not succeeded.
All our amendments have met with the usual dichotomy of view from Members opposite that they are either unnecessary or unacceptable. If they are not unacceptable then they are unnecessary and whatever it is, it cannot be done. What the Government wish to do is to create a penumbra of doubt around the use of industrial action. As my noble friend Lord Wedderburn said, all these additional provisions will be read back into the rights of employers under the 1984 legislation as a result of the schedules. The Government want to give to trade unionists, to dissidents and to employers all kinds of vague powers to create a penumbra of doubt around the use of industrial action. For that reason we oppose this clause.
Baroness Seear: We on these Benches had originally intended to support the Government on Clause 1. However, for two reasons regretfully we find ourselves unable to do so unless the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, will say that he will look again at some of the controversial points which have been raised this afternoon.
As the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, has pointed out, the Government's amendments have come very late and have given little time for consideration of matters which change this clause in certain important particulars. We are very unhappy about the Government's reaction to Amendment No. 12, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, explained I think very convincingly, would put a limit on trade union ability to take action quite regardless of and outside the question of contract which in our view would hamper proper trade union activity. Because of this, unless the Government say that they will give more time for consideration of government amendments and will look again at Amendment No. 12, I fear we shall have to vote against the clause standing part of the Bill.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: I oppose this clause because the Government have widened its purpose. I do not think they are justified in doing that at this stage in the consideration of the Bill; I do not think that it is necessary.
I also want to reply to what the Minister said a few moments ago. I hope I give a fair account of what he said. It was that trade union leaders are sensible people, they are well aware of the world in which they live and work and they know quite well what industrial action is. There should be no difficulty about that, he said, but if there is, when in doubt let them take a ballot. That is not good enough. They do not know all the time what is industrial action within the law. It has not been necessary for it to be dealt with in this way before.
Moreover, the Minister must bear in mind that this controversial legislation is being thrust on the unions very much against their will. I do not go so far as my noble friend Lord Molloy in his description of the Bill; I think that that is carrying it much too far. Nevertheless, it is a Bill which has been met with

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some very bitter comments and some very large demonstrations. The noble Lord cannot assume that either the trade unionists or the trade union leaders will necessarily be sympathetic to its provisions when it becomes an Act of Parliament. There may be some quite bitter disputes as to the meaning of the words "industrial action".
My final words are these. It is all very well to say when in doubt take a ballot, but let us consider what the Bill will do about ballots—how much more expensive it will make them, how much more elaborate the conditions under which they are held. These are probably important points and I am all in favour of holding foolproof ballots, if you hold them at all. But with that in mind, with large memberships and postal ballots, let us not minimise the cost to the unions of taking a ballot. It is not the sort of thing yew do just to settle a doubt; it is something you do because you must do it under the law or under the rules of the union. This casual way of disposing of the enlargement of the scope of Clause 1 is scarcely justified in the circumstances.
5.15 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: Without repeating anything that has been said on this clause, if the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, were totally frank he would agree that it would have been opposed by Members opposite in its original form. It is now opposed in its amended form. Would it not be fair to assume that even in some further amended form in principle it would also be opposed? It is concerned with the right of ballot for industrial action. The noble Lord said that he might have accepted it if it were part of some mandatory rules. But he knows as well as I that it is wholly impractical to achieve statutory model rules for the trade unions without being guilty of a serious form of interference or oppression. He and I would probably have joined forces to oppose the imposition of statutory mandatory rules on trade unions. Like him, that is something which I do not think is correct.
Taking another point, I understand the noble Lord to say he might not have opposed this if it had been part of the contract of employment with the employer. But on reflection what on earth has this to do with the employer? It is a matter for us, the members, the trade union and with the establishment of the new freedom for the trade union member vis-à-vis his union, not vis-à-vis his employer. It would be wrong to re-enter the arena on industrial action, but when the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, says that this is a casual approach, I feel, with the greatest respect, that there is nothing casual about it. True, it may be empiric, but the situation warrants an empiric solution if you are going to protect this right.
Lord Trefgarne: I think it goes without saying that industrial action, however you define it, is designed to cause damage to the employer. The noble Lord referred to it as "inconvenience" to the employer, but whether or not it represents a technical breach of the contract of employment of the employee, very often it brings serious damage to the employer. Sometimes that damage is so serious that the very livelihood of the employees is at stake. The whole future of the firm is called into question.
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It seems to me therefore a reasonable proposition that before the trade union is authorised to pressurise or induce trade unionists to take such action it ought to seek the views of those involved. I cannot see what causes Members of the Committee such difficulity in that proposition.
The noble Baroness, Lady Seear, said that her difficulty was that we had now widened the definition of the sorts of cases that needed a ballot and that this changed her from supporting the clause to opposing it. But under the earlier arrangements what was proposed was that a ballot was necessary only when a contract of employment was to be broken or where inducement was going to take place for that effect. But I think that in the minds of trade unionists and even in the minds of the more sophisticated and senior trade union officials there might well be difficulty in knowing whether the action proposed was or was not a breach of the contract of employment.
We now propose, and I invite the Committee's agreement to this, that any industrial action suggested should be preceded by a ballot to determine the views of those who were directly involved not only in taking the action that was proposed but possibly in something affecting their very livelihoods. I venture to suggest that it is right and proper that before trade unionists are asked to embark upon this course they should have their views consulted and taken into account. They may vote against, but if the majority are in favour of the action it is protected as we propose under this legislation. That is the simple proposition contained in Clause 1. I believe that it should remain part of the Bill and I invite the Committee to agree to that.
5.20 p.m.
On Question, Whether Clause 1, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 131; Not-Contents, 89.

DIVISION NO. 1

CONTENTS

Allenby of Megiddo, V.

Coleraine, L.

Allerton, L.

Colnbrook, L.

Ampthill, L.

Cottesloe, L.

Arran, E.

Cox, B.

Auckland, L.

Craigavon, V.

Bagot, L.

Craigmyle, L.

Bauer, L.

Crickhowell, L.

Beaverbrook, L.

Davidson, V. [Teller.]

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Deedes, L.

Beloff, L.

Denham, L. [Teller.]

Belstead, L.

Dundee, E.

Bessborough, E.

Eccles, V.

Blatch, B.

Elibank, L.

Boyd-Carpenter, L.

Ellenborough, L.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Faithfull, B.

Broadbridge, L.

Ferrers, E.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Fraser of Kilmorack, L

Butterworth, L.

Gainford, L.

Caithness, E.

Glenarthur, L.

Cameron of Lochbroom, L.

Gray of Contin, L.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Greenway, L.

Campbell of Croy, L.

Gridley, L.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

Grimthorpe, L.

Carnock, L.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

Charteris of Amisfield, L.

467

Halsbury, E.

Nelson, E.

Hardinge of Penshurst, L.

Newall, L.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Harvington, L.

Orkney, E.

Havers, L.

Orr-Ewing, L.

Hemphill, L.

Oxfuird, V.

Henley, L.

Peyton of Yeovil, L.

Hesketh, L.

Pym, L.

Hives, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Holderness, L.

Renton, L.

Home of the Hirsel, L.

Renwick, L.

Hood, V.

St. Davids, V.

Hooper, B.

Saltoun of Abernethy, Ly.

Hunter of Newington, L.

Sandys, L.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Selborne, E.

Ironside, L.

Selkirk, E.

Jenkin of Roding, L.

Shannon, E.

Johnston of Rockport, L.

Sharples, B.

Joseph, L.

Skelmersdale, L.

Kaberry of Adel, L.

Somers, L.

Killearn, L.

Stockton, E.

Kinloss, Ly.

Strange, B.

Kitchener, E.

Sudeley, L.

Lane-Fox, B.

Swansea, L.

Long, V.

Swinton, E.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Terrington, L.

Lurgan, L.

Teviot, L.

Lyell, L.

Teynham, L.

Mackay of Clashfern, L.

Thomas of Gwydir, L.

Manton, L.

Thurlow, L.

Margadale, L.

Trafford, L.

Marley, L.

Tranmire, L.

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

Trefgarne, L.

Merrivale, L.

Trumpington, B.

Mersey, V.

Vaux of Harrowden, L.

Milverton, L.

Vinson, L.

Morris, L.

Ward of Witley, V.

Mottistone, L.

Wise, L.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Wolfson, L.

Munster, E.

Wyatt of Weeford, L.

Napier and Ettrick, L.

Wynford, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Airedale, L.

Hatch of Lusby, L.

Amherst, E.

Hirshfield, L.

Ardwick, L.

Houghton of Sowerby, L.

Attlee, E.

Hunt, L.

Aylestone, L.

Jacques, L.

Basnett, L.

Jay, L.

Birk, B.

Jeger, B.

Blease, L.

John-Mackie, L.

Boston of Faversham, L.

Kilbracken, L.

Bottomley, L.

Kilmarnock, L.

Callaghan of Cardiff, L.

Lawrence, L.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Listowel, E.

Carter, L.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, B

Chapple, L.

Longford, E.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Lovell-Davis, L.

Cocks of Hartcliffe, L.

McCarthy, L.

Cudlipp, L.

McGregor of Durris, L.

David, B.

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Davies of Penrhys, L.

McNair, L.

Dean of Beswick, L.

Mason of Barnsley, L.

Diamond, L.

Mulley, L.

Dormand of Easington, L.

Murray of Epping Forest, L.

Elwyn-Jones, L.

Northfield, L.

Ennals, L.

Ogmore, L.

Ewart-Biggs, B.

Oram, L.

Falkender, B.

Paget of Northampton, L.

Fisher of Rednal, B.

Peston, L.

Foot, L.

Phillips, B.

Gallacher, L.

Pitt of Hampstead, L.

Galpern, L.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L. [Teller.]

Glenamara, L.

Graham of Edmonton, L. [Teller.]

Rea, L.

Ritchie of Dundee, L.

Grey, E.

Rochester, L.

Hampton, L.

Seear, B.

Hanworth, V.

Sefton of Garston, L.

Hart of South Lanark, B.

Serota, B.

468

Stedman, B.

Underhill, L.

Stewart of Fulham, L.

Wallace of Coslany, L.

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Walston, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Wedderburn of Charlton, L

Taylor of Blackburn, L.

Whaddon, L.

Taylor of Gryfe, L.

White, B.

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

Wigoder, L.

Tordoff, L.

Willis, L.

Turner of Camden, B.

Resolved in the affirmative, and Clause 1, as amended, agreed to accordingly.
5.30 p.m.
Clause 2 [Right not to be denied access to the courts etc]:
Baroness Turner of Camden Baroness Turner of Camden moved Amendment No. 14:
Page 4, line 17, at end insert—
("(4A) The court shall dismiss any proceedings with respect to a relevant matter where the rules of the union require that matter to be determined in accordance with those rules and the person instigating the proceedings has unreasonably declined or failed to be determined under the rules of the union.")
The noble Baroness said: The object of the amendment is to attempt to ensure that union rules are complied with by dissident members. As I am sure the Committee will be aware, all unions have rules under which individual members who have a grievance may have that grievance aired and dealt with. In my union, we have a very elaborate process in which everything possible is done to ensure that the individual receives a fair hearing and that the case is dealt with in accordance with the rules of natural justice.
First, there is a hearing on the spot which is conducted by an investigating committee of members of the executive council who have not previously been involved. There is then an opportunity for a full hearing by the national executive council. If the decision is not acceptable to the individual, there is a further right of appeal to a separate appeal body which does not include officers or executive council members but consists of other members holding no other national office whose sole function is to listen to appeals by individual members and decide on them. The individual member may be accompanied and has every opportunity of stating his case.
That is the kind of procedure which applies in many unions. The proceedings are scrupulously fair—so much so that no decision has ever been successfully challenged outside the union for at least the last 30 years. There seems to be no reason why an individual member should have the right to go to a court without going through union internal procedures where they exist and where the member has decided that he does not want to avail himself of them.
If there is concern that a dispute has been ordered without a ballot, the individual member in my union and in many others would have immediate access to the national executive council who would have the obligation to investigate. To allow a union member, possibly with public funds—that is what the Bill is about—to go to court without going through the procedures to which he is a party through acceptance of the union's rules and to have the court determine the issue without reference to whether the union had

469
had an opportunity through its own procedures to deal with the issue seems to be quite inequitable. It is also undoubtedly a waste of public time and funds in some instances. It is another instance of unwarranted interference with the internal affairs of unions. Unions have procedures which have been established over a long period of time and the mass of members have given consent to them because the rules of the union must be decided by rules conferences which are representative of members as a whole. I beg to move.
Lord Mottistone: In view of the first line of subsection (1) of Clause 2, it seems to me that the proposed amendment directly contradicts that line. I do not understand why the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, does not remove the words:
"Notwithstanding anything in the rules of any trade union"
in order to make it consistent with her amendment.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: The noble Baroness has given a wholly objective account of the general domestic procedure under the rules of trade unions. However, in the case of Leigh v. National Union of Railwaymen, which was decided before the Act of 1971 and in which I appeared for the union, it was decided that although the courts have an overriding discretion to decline to entertain such proceedings, if there is an alternative remedy under the rules, they are not bound to exercise their discretion one way or the other.
The amendment to the clause, if carried, would seek to fetter the discretion of the courts after six months in the circumstances of Clause 2(1)(a) to (c). With respect, that does not appear to be a sensible and realistic provision to ensure that access is not denied to the courts in such cases which, in effect, reflects the reasoning and the decision of the court in the Leigh case.
The objection to the amendment is that it seeks to put the authority of the trade union rules above the authority of the High Court and to alter the common law procedure dramatically in favour of trade unions in that regard if the member has unreasonably failed or declined to have the matter determined by the union. That qualification seeks to fetter the exercise of judicial discretion which, as a rule, is exercised in favour of accepting the complaint and jurisdiction.
That fetter is not only unacceptable; it would be impractical. We come again to the question of model rules. There are no such model rules in general application; nor can or should there be. The rules as such and the circumstances in which they have been administered or in which it is feared by a member that they may be administered are all in point. It is also in point to mention the domestic appellate procedures according to the rules within the union, especially when, within the domestic procedure the decision that the member wishes to bring to the attention of the High Court is made contrary to natural justice, contrary to breach of rules or containing some other error of law. Those are the only ways in which the court could have jurisdiction.
In those circumstances, we have only to look at Rule 29 of the 1985 edition of the National Union of Mineworkers:
470
"No member or person claiming under these Rules shall make any application to any court until the procedure established by these Rules is exhausted".
In effect, what warrant is there to put the authority of the rulebook above the authority of the High Court? That could well be the effect of the amendment.
The Earl of Dundee: I agree entirely with the noble Baroness concerning the principle that members' first resort should be to the union's internal grievance procedure. However, the amendment is unnecessary to achieve that as subsection (1)(b) ensures that the clause applies only where members have already submitted a valid application to the union for a grievance to be resolved. Where no such application has been made, the courts retain their powers to dismiss, stay or adjourn an application.
If the intention of the amendment was to go so far as to override that discretion, as my noble friend Lord Campbell suggested it might where a member has declined to use internal procedures, it would be too sweeping. I do not believe that the noble Baroness intended that. However, if one takes the amendment literally, one would have to say that that is its effect.
Members may have good reasons for not following internal procedures. For example, they may have evidence that a fair hearing will be denied to them. In such cases it is only proper that courts should have discretion as to whether or not they will hear a case. In the large majority of cases, the courts will decline to hear a case if the member has made no attempt to use the internal procedures available. With that explanation, perhaps the noble Baroness will see fit to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Turner of Camden: t note that the Minister says that the amendment is unnecessary because the wording of the proposed legislation provides for it in another way. However, the intention was not to override the discretion of the courts, as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, seemed to indicate. We refer clearly in the amendment to a member who has "declined". In other words, the procedures were there and available for the member and he has unreasonably declined to utilise them. We had thought that our wording coped with that situation, just as we thought that the authority for this clause rested with the fact that the member himself in joining the union has accepted the union's rules and those rules have been arrived at as a result of the democratic decision of the members. However, in view of the statement by the Minister 1 shall not press the amendment at this juncture. I beg leave to withdraw it.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Clause 3 [Right not to be unjustifiably disciplined]:
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton Lord Wedderburn of Charlton moved Amendment No. 15:
Page 4, line 36, at beginning insert ("For the purposes of this section").
The noble Lord said: This amendment seeks to place at the beginning of subsection (1) the words:
"For the purposes of this section".

471
Clause 3 creates a new wrong of unjustifiable discipline, as it clearly states in subsection (1). In our submission there is an ambiguity in the subsection which needs to be cured. I trust that the Minister will not say that it is not necessary.
The subsections that follow provide a definition of unjustifiable discipline with a subsequent remedy in the industrial tribunal. Indeed, subsection (2) begins with the words,
"For the purposes of this section".
obviously to govern all of that machinery and definition. Subsection (1) as it stands appears to be wider. It is arguable at least that it might be used to found a wrong in the High Court on which others could rely.
It is well known that breaches of statute sometimes allow persons who are not pursuing the remedies set out in the statute to bring an action—usually an action in tort—against a defendant on the ground that he has used the unlawful means of the statute to damage that plaintiff. Here it would not be beyond the boundaries of imagination to see circumstances in which an employer or some other third party who had suffered damage by reason of subsection (1) relating to the unjustifiable discipline would bring such an action.
In my submission there are two points to add, although if that argument is right plainly those words are necessary in order to qualify the whole of Clause 3 as subsection (2) and the following subsections appear to be qualified. First, the argument is not answered by reference to subsection (7), which provides that the only remedies for infringement of the right conferred by this clause are those in the tribunal; that is to say, the action for compensation which might be brought in the tribunal by the union member. There are many precedents to show that even though a clause sets out a particular remedy—and the only remedies for the infringement of the right conferred by the clause are set out—the right of the clause is inherent in the disciplined member. The third party plaintiff would not be relying upon the right given by the clause but on the wrong established by subsection (1).
Secondly, it is true that in the decision of the Judicial Committee of your Lordships' House in 1982 in the case of Lonrho v. Shell their Lordships made it clear that a plaintiff who brings an action of that kind, which I may perhaps call damage caused to him by way of unlawful means established by contravention of a statute, must show that it was the intention of Parliament that he be allowed such an action. Parliament's intention is one of the main crutches on which lawyers win their cases, although often in our debates I wonder just where that intention lies.
This is a problem which has arisen many times before. When I thought of examples I thought that it would be appropriate to give a bipartisan example. The old prices and incomes or counter-inflation legislation (now of course not the kind of legislation which this Government espouse) in the Labour Government's Act of 1966 and the Conservative Government's Act of 1972 included sections which
472
were almost exactly the same, albeit that the statute provided for criminal penalties for contravention, which made it clear that breaches of those sections created no liability in tort so long as there would be no difficulty with that particular principle.
In view of the fact that as the main principle the Judicial Committee expressly relied upon the fact that it had to seek the intention of Parliament on this matter, I urge the Minister to look at this amendment with a kindly eye because it could save litigation and therefore save cost and a great deal of time and trouble. I beg to move.
5.45 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: Apart from the Act of 1980 which to some degree applies in a closed shop situation, as regards expulsion from the union in the ordinary way the courts cannot entertain any complaint by a trade union member of unjustified expulsion or of disciplinary action unless there has been either a breach of rules or breach of the principles of natural justice.
In this day and age, having regard to the establishment of the new right and the new freedom, this is a wholly unsatisfactory situation. It is a situation which in the past has led to a measure of victimisation, abuse and intimidation. The proposals for Clause 3 were canvassed in the Green Paper (paragraph 2.10 and following paragraphs). In the MORI poll 75 per cent. of voters (and 60 per cent. of Labour voters) were in favour of protection against union discipline for not striking. It is true, however, that that view was not taken on the new form of drafting.
At one stage there was a measure of justified concern, which is met in the tailpiece to subsection (3) As that affects trade unions and their relations with their members, it is right to state roundly that Bridlington is in no way disturbed by Clause 3. Protection is still afforded for any trade union member expelled by his union for failing to comply with a TUC ruling on the Bridlington principles. For those reasons, this amendment is not open to the objections advanced by the noble Lord.
Lord Trefgarne: I must confess that when 1 first saw the noble Lord's amendment I was somewhat puzzled about exactly what it meant. To be perfectly honest, I am not very much clearer now having listened to the noble Lord. The problem is mine, however, and not his. Therefore, if the noble Lord will give me an opportunity to study what he has said I shall undertake that the matter will be looked into in case there is a problem of the kind that he has identified. At first blush, I do not think that there is; but I may be wrong. I should like an opportunity to look into the matter further, and on that basis I invite the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: I am very grateful to the Minister. I hope that when he reads Hansard it will be a little clearer. If not, perhaps I may adopt the practice used by him and his colleagues and write to him to make it even clearer. On that basis I am very happy to beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees: Before calling the next amendment I should point out to the Committee that if Amendment No. 16 is agreed to I cannot call Amendment No. 17.
[Amendment No. 16 not moved.]
Lord Rochester Lord Rochester moved Amendment No. 17:
Page 4, line 47, after ("(a)") insert ("(i)'').
The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 17 I should like to speak also to Amendment No. 20 which has the same purpose as Amendment No. 16, which the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, has not now moved. I hope that means that he will support Amendment No. 20.
For the convenience of the Committee I hope that it will be generally agreed that we can have a broad debate on a subject which, I think I am right in saying, was judged by all sides of the House at Second Reading to relate to the most important clause in this Bill. Under Clause 3 the Government now propose that an individual union member should be protected from being disciplined by his union if he refuses to join in industrial action even when that action has been endorsed by a prior secret ballot.
At Second Reading, speaking on behalf of my noble friends, I opposed that clause partly because of practical problems which I then instanced to which it would give rise in the case of employers but much more because in our view the introduction of this clause would invalidate the balloting process itself. Against that argument it was said at Second Reading by a number of noble Lords opposite that in considering whether to join in industrial action, a union member had to take account not only of his loyalty to his union but also of loyalties to his family and to his employer. Inherent also in the Government's case is the proposition that where there is a conflict between individual and collective rights the right of an individual to go to work should be allowed to take precedence over the right of his union to discipline him for refusing to take part in industrial action, even when it has been endorsed by ballot.
I can see the force of those counter-arguments but also know from experience that increasingly industrial success now has to do with the management of change and that if change is to be managed effectively it must be done by persuasion rather than imposition. To bring that about it is desirable that the law should strike a balance between the interests of representatives of management (employers) and of those who are managed (trade unions). However, the position in this country, unlike that in other countries, is that there is no collective right to strike and if there is a strike the employment contract is terminated. It is not suspended; it is judged to be broken. To cap everying, despite the fact that under this Bill the closed shop is now to be made unenforceable in all circumstances, the Government are insisting on introducing this clause. Therefore, so far from there being a balance in these matters the scales are being weighted very heavily—in my view much too heavily—against the unions.
All I can do—but in doing it I am backed by almost every reputable organisation of employers and
474
employees in the land—is to warn the Committee against the possible consequences of agreeing to the inclusion of the clause in the Bill. It will not only prove damaging to the balloting process, it will undermine the authority of responsible union officials and be detrimental to our industrial competitiveness. I beg to move.
6 p.m.
Lord McCarthy: This side of the Committee withdrew Amendment No. 16 so that we could participate in support of Amendments Nos. 17 and 20 tabled in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Rochester. I hope that on this amendment we can find very widespread agreement on all sides. As the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, said, there is widespread agreement outside the Chamber and outside the confines of the Government in areas where the Government can normally expect to find support; namely, the CBI, the BIM, the Institute of Directors, the Institute of Economic Affairs and even the Conservative Trade Unionists' Association.
There is widespread concern about the consequences of this clause should it form part of the Bill as it stands. The Industrial Society said:
"We are very concerned that if the individual union member has a legal right to circumvent a properly taken majority decision and thus may be held to have no responsibility towards his/her union, there will be no reason why anyone should take the balloting process seriously. The likely consequence is that the value of the beneficial measures already introduced will be lost".
The IPM said:
"The Green Paper appears not to accept that a trade union (when properly run) is a body, which, no less than a commercial organisation, disciplines people behind a legitimate purpose. The use of the law to deny such a body any opportunity to discipline members when they infringe rules which go to the heart of the contract between the union and its members is coming close to denying the body any legal standing. This is a far cry from action to ensure that trade unions are democratically run".
Finally, the Confederation of British Industry stated:
"The principal argument against the proposal is that it could undermine the balloting process itself, so productively encouraged by the 1984 Trade Union Act insofar as it was seen to provide a form of statutory protection for those refusing to be bound by the results of such a ballot. It is a measure of the importance that employers attach to the proper pursuit of balloting procedures that the CBI believes it would be right, for the time being at least, to take this proposal no further".
It seems to us that in fact there are four arguments to adduce against this clause. First, as the Institute of Personnel Management rightly argues, all voluntary organisations, all democratic institutions and all institutions and bodies which claim to be democratic claim the right to have rules. They claim the right to consider the behaviour of their members by reference to those rules, and if members sufficiently disobey those rules, breach them or go against the collective policy and collective decisions of those organisations, in the last analysis they claim the right to discipline and even to expel them. It is not just a feature of clubs and girl guides' organisations. It is a feature of employers' associations and professional associations; and under this clause it continues to be a feature of every other sort of association except trade unions. We do not think that that is justified.
Secondly, as the CBI points out and as is so evidently the case, the only way to preserve coherence

475
and unity in a voluntary organisation is by the principle of majority decisions, the principle of majority rule. That is why the employers are so worried about this clause. If there is no right to discipline the minority who remain at work, what validity is there in disciplining the minority who in other circumstances refuse to go back to work, or the minority who refuse to wait for a ballot? I know what the Minister will say. At least he would have said it if I had not said that he would say it. He will say that they are not taking that right away. But that does not make the clause any more acceptable in our eyes, or in the eyes of many other people.
How can it be fair to say that you give the union the right to discipline people who will not go back to work, or who strike without the sanction of the union, but you do not give the union any right to discipline people who take no notice of a majority decision and a legal ballot to come out on strike? What kind of justification can be found for that?
As the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, said, the third reason we give is on the argument that Members opposite may put forward about the abuse of trade union power, about people being excluded from unions and dismissed from their jobs because of the operation of the closed shop. The Government have acted in a series of legislation since 1980 to make that unlawful. There were provisions in the 1980 Act; there are further provisions in the Bill to which we shall be coming later tonight, that make the closed shop completely unlawful. Already, unreasonable expulsion from a union can be caught, placed before an industrial tribunal, and compensation can be given. Therefore if any argument based upon the abuse of trade union power had any conviction, meaning and plausibility, the Government have taken it away.
Finally, the Government do not propose to do anything about the disciplinary sanctions of the employer. This Government introduced selective dismissal rights in the 1982 Employment Act. This Government have taken out of any protection from unfair dismissal all workers with less than two years' service. If the employer is to retain his disciplinary sanctions, if he can now dismiss instantly—as he can—for all forms of industrial action that breach the contract, how can we say that it is fair and right to prevent the trade union from having a sanction which in practice is bound to be much weaker than that? In any circumstances where it might be at least as strong as that, the Government have taken it away by what they have done about the closed shop.
We say that if one looks at the circumstances and the facts one cannot find any examples today of the abuse of trade union power in the use of its disciplinary sanctions. Certainly one cannot find anything of the size or scope to justify legislation of this kind. I know that the Government in the Green Paper give a few examples of individual unions which have imposed discipline on their members, such as the National Union of Railwaymen and the Confederation of Health Service Employees with specific offences in their rule books to discipline strikers. There are the 1,200 members of the National
476
Union of Mineworkers who in 1982 were disciplined or fined. In addition, the Transport and General Workers Union and the National Union of Journalists at various times are said to have imposed severe fines upon their members. In my experience these fines are hardly ever carried out. In the Green Paper, as the Government say quite rightly, where those sanctions are carried out in a draconian way, the union lives to regret it.
The Government say in the Green Paper that the National Union of Mineworkers' expulsions contributed very decisively to the growth of the Union of Democractic Mineworkers. That is why most people in the trade union movement consider that it was extremely ill advised. As the Green Paper said, the National Union of' Railwaymen's penalties, never severe, led to a very large number of resignations, and in Unity House they have drawn the right conclusions.
Unions today, especially as a result of what the Government have done about the closed shop, use their penalties very scarcely and very carefully. Nevertheless, if they are to march into the world of endless ballots that this Government wish to place around them, they must have some chance, some opportunity, to create some unity, solidarity, and a measure of control among their members. That is why not only we on this side, but also some in other parts of the Chamber, and a very large number of employers outside, do not wish to see this clause put into the Bill.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: Members of the Committee discussed this issue at some length during the Second Reading of the Bill. Indeed, some of us expressed the view that it was one of the important aspects of the Bill from the point of view of its major policy of restoring power to the individual trade unionist as against the leadership of the unions. It is obviously very relevant to that because it involves some redistribution of power within a union.
The noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, simply brushed aside the position of the individual trade unionist who finds that his union, after a ballot, has decided upon strike action. Whichever way the individual trade unionist has voted in that ballot—and I do not think that the issue is very much affected by whether he voted for or against it—he is faced with an individual and a personal problem. If he comes out on strike or takes other industrial action, he is liable to be dismissed by the employer and to lose his job without any legal rights, as I understand it, to compensate him.
For that individual, in particular if he happens to be a family man with dependants, it is a very serious matter. I do not think that it is to be assumed that his loyalty to his union necessarily, and in all circumstances, must take precedence over his duty to look after his wife and family. Moreover, he may also have a loyalty— as I am glad to say many people in this country have—towards his employer. He may feel—as, for example, someone who works for the Rover company may feel at this moment—that industrial action will endanger the stability and continuance of his employer and therefore the chance

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of himself and his colleagues continuing in good and well-paid jobs. He may well feel that the continuance and continued prosperity of his employer is at least as important as his loyalty to the union.
I am not saying that anyone faced with these difficult problems has necessarily a very easy decision to make. I do not think he has. He is in a difficult position. However, the purpose of the Bill, as I understand it, is to leave that decision to him so that he, as a responsible citizen, can decide without fear of punishment or victimisation whether to take part in the action that the union is taking or, on the other hand, to continue to work and to help preserve his employer's business and his own rights in supporting his family.
For that reason this is a very important matter. The noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, rather brushed aside the penalties that are apt to be imposed by a union on those who do not take part in its action.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: Will the noble Lord give way?
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: Yes, though it is not a very convenient moment, but I have such an admiration for the noble Lord that of course I shall give way.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: I am grateful to the noble Lord. He makes the case for the minority members of a union in a dispute who lose their argument and find themselves in a minority. We are arguing about the right of a trade union to discipline such people. How would the noble Lord react to people in a minority working for the employer by, for example, taking payment or giving out leaflets encouraging the members of the union to work? Will the noble Lord say how he would view the right of a trade union to discipline its members in such circumstances?
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: That is not a point that arises on the amendment. The point that arises on the amendment is that the union member should be protected if, notwithstanding the decision of the union to take industrial action, he continues to work. I have suggested that there may be factors in his mind which will weigh in favour of so doing. The noble Lord asks a fascinating question: what happens if the union member goes further and takes action against his union as he describes? That raises an interesting matter, but it is not a question which arises on the amendment. With great respect to the noble Lord, I propose to stick to the amendment.
The noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, sought to dismiss the penalties that unions impose and said that very often they are not enforced. He may remember—indeed it was quoted on Second Reading—that during the Wapping dispute the National Union of Journalists imposed fines of 1,000 on 95 of its members who had, in the view of many of us, put their loyalty to their newspaper and their loyalty to their jobs ahead of their loyalty to their union.
Lord McCarthy: May I suggest—
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: Just wait a moment. I shall give way of course. Those members made that a priority and the union imposed the substantial fines. Now the noble Lord may intervene if he wishes.
Lord McCarthy: Does the noble Lord agree that the best way to have protected the workers at Wapping would have been to protect both sides? Would it not be better if the Government were to protect the worker against the employer who sacked thousands of people at Wapping because they broke their contracts and at the same time protect the workers against the union? The trouble with the Government is that they want it one way and not the other.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: Again, the noble Lord is trying to widen the scope of the amendment which he is supporting. I hope he will not mind if I bring him firmly back to this amendment. The issues he raises are fascinating. They may well arise on other amendments. They do not arise on this one. On the present amendment I am quoting the Wapping case against what he said—that is, that the penalties are very often not enforced. In that particular case substantial fines were imposed on members of that union who had, in the view of many of us, properly decided to support their newspapers against a wholly irresponsible and foolish strike—
Lord Renton: Will my noble friend allow me?
Lord Boyd-Carpenter:—and one which, as the noble Lord may remember, ended in failure for the union.
Lord Renton: May it not be that some of those members who did not comply with their union's request paid great attention to the freedom of the press and that that was why they decided to take the action that they did?
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: That may well he. It certainly adds to the view that some of us take that they acted more responsibly as well as more sensibly than their union in the course of a very foolish and unsuccessful industrial action.
We have now to consider the issues between the power of the union—which admittedly may be weakened a little by these provisions—and the rights of the individual, which will be very much strengthened by these provisions. This is a matter of judgment. During the Second Reading debate it was suggested that we need not worry about the position of the individual because he could always leave the union altogether if he did not like what it was doing. I do not think on reflection that that is a very valid argument because many union members desire to remain members of their union. They have a respect for it. They find it useful. They may well be involved in its welfare and other activities and there is no reason for them to be driven out of the union because the union takes action of which they do not approve.
It seems to me that the Bill as it stands is a sensible and deliberate readjustment of power in favour of the individual against union leadership. I personally am very much in favour of that.
6.15 p.m.
Lord Wyatt of Weeford: My Lords, I am sorry to have for once to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, but I feel that the Government will be making a bad mistake if they do not accept the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, and supported by the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy. We are now moving into an area which strikes at the very heart of what trade unions are all about; collective action. So far the Government have done very well in their legislation. They have proceeded carefully to make the unions thoroughly democratic in the election of officers and in the right to have a ballot before a strike. That is fine. I am all in favour of that, but once one starts saying that when a majority in a properly conducted ballot has voted for a strike, but nevertheless the minority can take no notice of it, one begins to make that union ineffective in any sensible way whatsoever.
During the miners' strike I was in frequent contact with the working miners. Again and again they assured me that if Mr. Scargill had allowed a properly conducted ballot, as provided for in NUM rules, and if that ballot had agreed that there should be a strike, they would all have supported it because that is the nature of union loyalty. That is what unions are all about. It is a justifiable tradition, because otherwise they can be defeated and scattered too easily. I want unions to be strong and democratic. I have only ever opposed unscrupulous trade union leaders who manipulated votes or caused false elections to take place or who took power which union members did not really want them to have.
I also want to make sure that union members are in charge of their own decisions. I believe it is possible and that it would be right to have in strike ballots a secret postal ballot as well as in all other ballots. It might delay the starting of a strike. But that would be a good thing for it would provide a cooling-off period. If a secret postal ballot can be held for all other elections it makes sense to have a secret postal ballot to decide whether to strike.
However, I feel that the Government, in not accepting the amendment or in acting in such a way that the amendment has to be voted on, are going over the top and are missing the point of what trade unions are all about. They will start risking the support of those trade union members who so far have been very enthusiastic about the reforms which have given them the power to elect their own leaders and to make their own decisions.
Baroness Seear: I should like to ask the Minister four questions. Do the Government believe that good industrial relations are essential to the economic development of the country and of companies? Does the Minister believe that responsible trade unionism and responsible trade unions are essential for good industrial relations? Does he believe that responsible trade unions, playing their part in industrial relations, require that there should be an equilibrium between the power of the employers and the power of the union, not unduly weighted on one side or the other? If he believes that, does he believe that the clause will not upset that equilibrium, taking into
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account the extent to which other Government legislation is already biasing the balance of power in favour of the employer?
Lord Mottistone: I should like to intervene because I was quoted by the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, on a couple of occasions. At Second Reading I suggested that this clause should remain part of the Bill and that the objections to it were not as valid as they may have been in the past. I shall not repeat what I said on that occasion. The important point is that the CBI has been quoted as being on the side of those who are against the clause. After I had spoken against it I received a letter from the CBI stating that my views on Clause 3 were shared by a substantial number, albeit a minority, of CBI members. I should like to get that in proportion.
Finally, in answer to these questions, I should like to say that the disciplining can be fierce. Members of the Committee know very well that in earlier times it has been fierce in threat if not in fact. The majority of the bodies of people who join together do not have fierce rules and the ability to penalise their members who do not agree with them. For example, if I make many speeches against the noble Lords among whom I sit, my only ultimate penalty will be an invitation to sit on the Cross-Benches. Some of the laws of some of the unions are considerably more fierce than they ever need to be.
I honestly do not believe that the objections raised against the clause are as real as they are thought to be. The clause will not upset industrial relations throughout the land. People are perfectly capable of running their industrial relations satisfactorily with the clause enacted. The clause has been greatly exaggerated, not only by noble Lords opposite, from whom one can understand it, but also by noble Lords sitting on the Liberal Benches, if I may call them that. They are attaching much more importance to the clause than in practice will be found to be the case in industrial relations terms.
Lord Prior: I crave the indulgence of the Committee. I had no intention of making a maiden speech during the Committee stage of a Bill. Nor, when I came into the Chamber this afternoon, did I intend making a speech. However, this subject has interested me for a number of years. I have listened to the debate and I think that it is probably a proper occasion for me to say something which I hope will not be regarded as too controversial but which will, according to the rules, give Members who follow me an opportunity to say that they hope to hear me again on some future occasion.
In some ways I feel a responsibility for the course taken by the Government over the past eight years in industrial relations law. I believe that the step-by-step approach of the Government in gradually introducing law into trade union affairs has been absolutely right. I strongly support what my right honourable and honourable friends in the other place have sought to do.
I have always felt that at the end of the day there must be a balance. I believe that this clause goes over the top as regards balance. I believe that it prevents

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trade union leaders who are seeking to do their job—and, let us face it, there are bad trade union leaders but there are many good ones—from exercising the kind of discipline which is sometimes necessary. I accept what the noble Lord has said. Some of the discipline is harsh and extremely stupid, and it has generally resulted in the trade union and its leaders being brought into disrepute. That certainly happened in the case of the National Union of Mineworkers and also, I suspect, in the case of the National Union of Journalists. In the case of the NUJ, it merely resulted in many journalists leaving the union and joining the Institute of Journalists or not joining a union at all. To that extent I believe that there must be some disciplines.
In other legislation the Government have instituted a whole range of secret ballots. Generally speaking, I was in favour of voluntary secret ballots and not particularly in favour of compulsory secret ballots. However, we now have compulsory secret ballots, which seem to be working tolerably well. Therefore I believe it to be right that if a secret ballot, conducted in a proper way, goes against certain people they must obey the verdict of the majority.
Above everything else, I want this legislation to work. I believe that it has brought about a considerable improvement in the conduct of our industrial relations over the years. I should not like a clause in the Bill to start the process of undoing an immensely successful and important part of recent legislation. I urge the Government to think the matter through again. It is not that certain people or organisations are for or against it. I can well understand that there are mixed views within the CBI, and there are probably mixed views within a number of other organisations. I believe that it is a matter of where one seeks to draw the balance. I believe that the balance is in favour of the secret ballot and in favour of accepting the fact that when the verdict is one way that is the way in which other people must also honour it.
Lord Murray of Epping Forest: I suspect that there will be considerable competition for what is indeed the privilege and the honour of congratulating the noble Lord on his maiden speech. I am sure that those congratulations would have been offered had he made a speech of a different kind. His speech has reflected the experience, wisdom and judgment which have always shaped his attitude towards industrial relations. If I may be partisan for a moment, I should like to say that I believe that has also reflected his common sense and wisdom acquired through his previous experience of legislating. I am quite sure that we shall hear the noble Lord often. I hope that I shall always agree with him as I agree with much of what he has said today. However, whatever the noble Lord says we shall always listen to him with respect and affection.
In the discussions today we have heard much about ballots. In that context the Minister has emphasised the rights of the members and we are told that this provision is designed to improve those rights. Indeed, it enhances to a point the rights of certain trade union members, not against some mythical faceless trade union boss but against fellow members. It enhances
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the right against those who, with him and his predecessors, have after a period of time designed the conventions, practices and rules of that union. I find odd the claim that the right to work of this group of people should in some way be superior to his responsibility to the rest of his fellow members in abiding by the results of a ballot in which they have jointly engaged. From the point of view of the employer, if I were an employer I should not particularly welcome fellows engaging in that kind of activity. This clause will favour the worst kind of employee: an employee who ignores ballots; an employee who disregards his responsibility towards his fellows. Therefore—and here I wholly share the view expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Seear—I do not believe it will be conducive to the good industrial relations which both sides of this argument purport to be seeking. I find this offensive in trade union terms.
If I may stray somewhat from the amendment, I find it even more offensive in democratic terms. I remember arguments—and there were arguments caused by the noble Lord who has just spoken—with people coming to me and calling for the trade union movement to ignore laws that had been passed, describing them as Tory laws, offensive laws and laws which did not command respect. My argument to those people was: "I do not like the laws either; I do not like the motives behind them. However, those laws have been carried by an elected Parliament. The way to deal with this is to go to a further election, get rid of the people who carried the laws and change the laws". The answer is not to ignore the law. It is not to fight against the law with disruption and violence.
If this clause is carried, that argument will not hold one drop of water against people who go to trade union leaders in the future and urge that acts of that sort should be taken. It will cut the ground from underneath those who seek, however much they dislike it, to uphold law and order and the rule of law and order.
6.30 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: Surely, it is really a question of balance on which one cannot dogmatise? Many Members of the Committee including myself believe that the Government have it right. The question is: is it right to continue to expose trade union members to these substantial penalties? Let us not minimise them. There have been not only the problems at Wapping and the events concerning the NUM. The Committee will know the nature of the penalties involved, albeit—if the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, says so I accept it—seldom imposed. Why should they be seldom imposed? Why should they be imposed at all? Is it necessary, to maintain the status of the great trade union movement, that unions should be able to impose these penalties?
One hopes that we shall hear my noble friend Lord Prior speak again on many occasions. It is somewhat embarrassing for me to say this. Although we part company tonight on a question of policy, we parted company many years ago also on a question of policy. But we have always remained close personal friends.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: I hate strikes; I hate coercion or intimidation in any form designed to ask people to change their minds. However, we must bear in mind the history of the trade union movement and the deeply entrenched loyalties which membership of a trade union requires. Why does a person join a union in the first place unless he is prepared to accept the obligations of his membership? One of those obligations, in many cases, is to obey a strike call if it is lawfully given in the name of the union. In Parliament we have imposed conditions on unions which have to be satisfied to make that strike call lawful. Therefore, we have strengthened the position of the individual member of the union against irresponsible, unrepresentative and unlawful calls upon his services.
In those circumstances, the loyalty of the member to his union is stronger than when he joined it. He is now protected to an extent that the rules did not give him. Therefore, he is now under a stronger obligation than he used to be. The difficulty about divided loyalties is sometimes in failing to sort them out at the start. If one joins a trade union, one has declared a loyalty. And that loyalty is within the rules of the union and the obligations of membership. By a voluntary decision to join a union, a member has placed that loyalty very prominently in his behaviour. If he joined a union because he was coerced afterwards or became a reluctant member of a closed shop, he probably did not decide what his loyalties were at the proper moment. I believe that you cannot submit yourself to the coercive disciplines of a union when you join it and then repudiate them later on. I believe that the time to make the choice of loyalty is on joining the union.
There is no worker more despised in the eyes of many wives than a husband who does not support his mates at a time of crisis. Many times men have gone forward in strike action because their wives have said, "We must not give in. We will bear whatever has to be borne at home. The kids will not go short. We will have to do our best". That spirit has been behind strike action many times in the past and, indeed, quite recently too. In those circumstances we cannot put the choice of loyalties of a person first at this time. We cannot allow him to put it first either. He has to be loyal to the choice he made when he joined. That is a simple question of loyalties.
Many Members of the Committee have never been members of unions. They have never been through this; they have never had to endure the conflicts of mind and personal interests that are involved. Great sacrifices are involved in strike action. In those circumstances, it has to be conceded to those of us who have spent our lives in the trade union movement when we say that this is so fundamental that if the Committee rejects the amendment, it will make the gravest error. There will be nothing but chaos in many workshops afterwards. Another Bill will be needed to rectify the mistake.
Members of the Committee on the Benches opposite probably do not realise and cannot understand how deeply felt is this matter. 1 urge the Committee to accept the amendment and to accept the logic and the sincerity of the noble Lord, Lord Prior, who, from this side at any rate, we warmly
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congratulate for the courage and temperate approach he has shown towards a difficult matter over many years.
Viscount Massereene and Ferrard: Perhaps I may point out that one of the reasons a man joins a union is that if he is trained in a certain trade and he does not join that union, then he cannot find a job. I once owned a small factory, so I know something about the matter. I just wanted to make that point.
Lord Callaghan of Cardiff: Like the noble Lord, Lord Prior, I had not intended to speak. However, I feel that I cannot let this occasion go without expressing how profoundly wrong I believe the Government are in this matter. I believe that I should state my view. I always understood that the view of successive governments was to hold the balance fairly between the employer and the employee. Because of what has happened in recent years, the Government have felt impelled to take action.
There have been occasions when the balance has fallen one side or the other with the decisions taken and the new legislation put on the statute book. On this occasion I want to say to the Committee with as much sincerity as my noble friend that the Government are hopelessly wrong. They are tipping the balance far too much on the side of the employer. They are tipping it against good, viable trade unions.
I do not know whether my noble friend is right to say that there will be chaos and anarchy; often when one prophecies that, it does not happen. It may or it may not happen. I do not know whether there will be chaos as a result of this measure, but I do know that millions of trade unionists will believe that the Government are operating unfairly against them. They will believe that the Government have tipped the scales in favour of the employer and against them in such a way the Conservative Party will now be departing from an attitude that it has taken ever since trade unions were first formed.
The Government have made a very serious decision and I suppose that Members of the Committee opposite will follow it. If I may say so, I should have thought that the Government would take note when such staunch supporters of Government legislation—I do not mean of the Government—as the noble Lord, Lord Wyatt, or someone with the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Prior (whom we should all congratulate on his maiden speech, whatever our views on it) take the same view as someone like myself to whom perhaps the Committee does not listen so much. The Government Benches should be influenced by what has been said by people who are taking this view, perhaps for the first time in public, having supported the Government so far.
The Government will convince a great many trade unionists—not necessarily the rank and file, but active, good, patriotic trade unionists who want the best for their country and for their unions and who are in no sense militants—that the Government are operating against them, and operating unfairly against them. If the Government pursue this clause they will sow the seeds of discontent in the same way

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as the Trades Disputes and Trade Union Act 1927 did after the General Strike, because it was penal in its operation. It sowed the seeds of discontent until it was repealed in 1946. I say to the Government that that will happen again. I do not know how long it will take but if the Government pursue this clause I promise that is what will happen.
6.45 p.m.
Lord Joseph: Like my noble friend Lord Prior, who, of course, we shall all want to hear again and again, 1 did not intend to speak when I came into the Chamber today, and I have not heard the whole of the debate. However, I want to pick up an assumption that the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, implicitly laid before us. He spoke as if an individual has to choose, when joining a union, whether his loyalty is to be to his union or to his employer.
I believe that that assumption, which may conceivably have been justified in the remote past, has been one of the causes of this country's relative economic decline. Of course we all think (do we not?) that the real interests of the worker is for the trade unions' perceptions and the employers' perceptions to be the same—to serve the customer, who, after all, provides the jobs, effectively. I therefore do not think that we should follow the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, who if I may say so, generally talks such extraordinary robust good sense, in the assumption he laid before us that the unions and employers are, as it were, permanently in a relationship of conflict. It is from that assumption that so much of our trouble has come in this country.
We all know that behind the strike lie the customers and behind customers lie jobs. It is possible, as we have seen in the case of Wapping, that the judgment of the unions was very damaging to the future prospects of its members. I am passionately in favour of a high earning, low cost, fully employed economy. I do not see that this particular clause goes against that prospect.
Lord Trefgarne: I shall start by dealing with the specific amendment before us and then perhaps saying a few words rather more widely about the clause itself because I fancy that the Committee, having had such a full debate on this amendment, will not wish to dilate at such length when we reach clause stand part. However, that is not to prevent Members of the Committee from intervening when they think if right to do so; but Members may agree to proceed in that way.
Members of trade unions which organise industrial action have a number of conflicting obligations: to their employer, their union, their family and to those affected by their work, whether the firm's customers or people dependent on their services. That proposition has been the theme of many of the speeches we have heard this evening. The individual surely has the right to decide for himself which of these must take priority.
A strike ballot is of direct benefit only to the union. It must hold one to retain its privileged position of immunity from legal proceedings. The result of a ballot gives the member a useful indicator of the
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opinion of other employees, but the decision whether to strike is, necessarily, a decision for each individual. The ballot does not affect what the employer is entitled to do if the member does strike: it does not (nor should it) protect the member against dismissal or legal action by his employer.
In addition, a member could be in some doubt as to whether a ballot satisfied the 1984 Act. In the final analysis, this could rest on a court case; the member's protection under the clause should not depend on the outcome of other potential legal proceedings. In practice, people may change their minds after voting in a strike ballot. If they do, the only way they may have to express this is to "vote with their feet" by returning to work. Moreover, the circumstances shift constantly; the situation when the member makes his decision will hardly ever be the same as it was at the time of the ballot.
A member who belongs to a union which organises industrial action but declines to take part in it himself is not in an inherently self-contradictory position. What is peculiar is the assumption that all those called to take action must do so on pain of discipline. This total view of union solidarity is not shared by unions in many other civilised countries. As it is, the individual alone must decide which of the conflicting obligations to honour and whether or not to strike. It would be unreasonable to protect against union discipline only those who did not join an unballoted strike.
Doubts have been expressed about the need for the protection offered by this clause. Because we have quoted only a few occasions of union disciplinary action the impression appears to have taken hold that the Government arc motivated by ideology rather than by the existence of an abuse requiring correction. I shall come to the principles in a moment.
Perhaps I may remind the Committee of the famous NUR case, which involved 12,000 members—a staggering figure. The National Communications Union is reported to have expelled 1,000 members and to be currently considering disciplinary action against a further 1,300. One of the teachers' unions is said to have expelled 500 members, with as many again resigning just before they were expelled. The NUM disciplinary action after the miners' strike involved several hundred miners.
Nor are they the only cases. I remind the Committee of one or two others. In May 1984 the NGA chapel of the West Country plant of a printing group directed its members to withdraw their labour in support of workers taking industrial action in a different part of the group. Nearly one-third of the members took the view that, as it probably constituted unlawful secondary action and as no ballot had been held, they ought not to stop work. The general secretary of the NGA then wrote to the non-strikers suggesting that the dispute was a primary one of concern to the whole group and implied that if they joined the industrial action at that point their branch would not institute disciplinary proceedings against them. In the light of that the non-striking members ceased working and only resumed when the dispute was over. However, the

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NGA took disciplinary action against the members and they were each fined £2,000. I agree that that figure was later somewhat reduced, but in addition to the fine the union penalised the members by excluding them from overtime for 200 hours, which amounted to approximately £1,200 per person.
There was also a Mr. C—I shall not identify him personally—
Lord Howie of Troon: Does not the Minister agree that the law has been changed somewhat since 1984 and that the example he has just given is wildly out of date and not relevant to the debate?
Lord Trefgarne: No, I have been careful to choose cases which are relevant and which might cause continuing problems had we not brought forward the proposition contained in this clause. I give your Lordships another example.
Lord McCarthy: Is it true that the case about which the noble Lord spoke would have been covered as unreasonable exclusion under the 1980 Act?
Lord Trefgarne: That is what the members thought. Unfortunately they were fined £1,000 and then excluded from overtime at the cost of another £1,200.
There was then the case of a Mr. C who was a member of the TGWU. He was employed at the main depot of a bus company. In October 1985 his local branch decided to support the call of the union for a 24-hour stoppage of work. After much reflection Mr. C, who had been hired out as a driving instructor to another bus company at the time, decided to go into work on the day in question. The reason he did so was that he felt under an obligation to commence the training of the three new bus drivers who had been formerly unemployed. He was later fined £30, which was the maximum penalty under the rules of the union for failing to comply with the decision of the branch to strike. He was also threatened with expulsion from the union if he did not pay. This might have led to the loss of his job, which was at that time within a closed shop.
Members of the Committee may wonder with me how unions can consider it to be in their best interests to operate in this way. Even more surprising is the argument that union members having found themselves in disagreement with their union should voluntarily withdraw. Are the unions so flush with members that they can view losses on this scale with equanimity? Even if unions can withstand such a voluntary outflow that does not justify forcibly expelling members who disagree. That has connotations of a witch-hunt and could have the effect of leaving the union movement manned with yes-men and women who are too scared to stand up for their own view of what is right.
The Committee may well agree that members who consistently find themselves in a small minority opposed to a majority view have no long-term future in an organisation. What I find extraordinary is that unions should wish to make an issue of every disagreement even where in some individual cases
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known to the Government to which I have referred the person has a long history of loyal and active service to the union.
Many of the arguments of principles have focused on contracts and obligations. It would be inappropriate to rehearse the legal points about conflict and priority of contracts. As we have said before, the Government accept that an individual contracts to abide by the rules of the union. We do not say that his contract of employment should automatically take precedence over his obligations to his union. We are not attacking the legitimacy of industrial action although examples put forward by some Members of the Committee seem to assume that we are. The question that we have to face is this. Can it be right for participation in industrial action to be an obligation enforceable by the union? We say that it is not. Some unions are resolved not to strike; many unions do not strike, and in most countries unions operate quite effectively without forcing their members to strike.
There is an important point here which I believe has been obscured by much of the discussion and through many of the analogies which have been used. We do not accept any of them. Unions are unique and have been long recognised as such. Nevertheless it is worth pointing out that most organisations or societies take binding decisions which do not oblige their members to support or participate in what has been decided. I use the analogy of the golf or tennis club. How many clubs discipline their members for failure to participate in club tournaments or even for failure to play at all?
Some Members of the Committee have made much of what they think is an embarrassing situation for the Government protecting a member against discipline for not complying with the result of a ballot in favour of striking. The Government have no hesitation in saying that such a person should be protected. Is the right to dissent to be extinguished, however remote the act of the individual from the circumstances of the ballot? Circumstances change quite rapidly and the position will never be absolutely identical at the time of the ballot when the union member has to make his choice.
This argument is strengthened when one considers the situation of the individual union member who has actually gone along with the majority decision and come out on strike. Suppose that the strike goes on for two or three weeks and the employer makes a new offer but the union executive, for reasons of its own, decides that it wishes to continue with the dispute. What if the individual member (and perhaps others) decides that the offer made is a fair and reasonable one? Surely it cannot be suggested that if those members vote with their feet and go back to work they should be subject to the discipline of the trade union.
In the last resort it comes down to a fundamental issue of political philosophy. As the Government's manifesto made clear, we place a high priority on the freedom of the individual to decide for himself. It has been said more than once that a ballot before industrial action resolves the conflict of loyalties or obligations which an individual may face. If this means that when a majority of my fellow members

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have put their pay claim above the survival of my firm, the interests of my patients or the welfare of my family I am to be obliged to do the same, then I have to reject the proposition.
Trade union members are free adults and we intend that they should be treated as such. This proposition was contained in the Green Paper published last year; it was contained in the manifesto put to the people in June of last year. It was passed by honourable Members in another place and I now invite your Lordships to agree to it as well.
Lord Rochester: It is my privilege to wind up this debate and I feel that it is a privilege. I should like to thank all Members of the Committee who have taken part and perhaps I may mention a few by name. In particular I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wyatt of Weeford, an independently-minded Member. What he had to say came over with all the more force on that account.
The noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, questioned whether this clause would have such an undesirable effect on industrial relations as some of us on this side of the Committee were suggesting. The people in the best position to judge that are those practitioners who are members of the Institute of Personnel Management. The view of that institute is that another round of major union legislation, including in particular this clause, would prove to be inappropriate, counter-productive and unnecessarily controversial. It was that theme which my noble friend Lady Seear took up and I do not believe that the Minister adequately answered her question.
I also wish to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Prior, on his maiden speech. I greatly admired the first step which he took in a step-by-step approach to union legislation. That was reflected in the attitude which my noble friends and I took in supporting the Government in the Act of 1980. As he said, this is a matter of balance. He believes that the Government have gone over the top and that by introducing this clause they are going a step too far.
Perhaps I may also mention the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, who, like the noble Lord, Lord Prior, had not intended to speak. However, he felt obliged to intervene because of the importance of this clause in his view. He believed that it was a wrong action which the Government were in danger of taking. I do not need to remind the Committee that the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, is a man of wisdom and experience.
The noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, was able to quote a number of cases where it may be that the power of the unions has been abused. In the last resort—and it has been the theme of the debate throughout—it is a matter of balance, judgment and wisdom. I believe that there may be a number of Members opposite who, although they may vote with the Government tonight, will feel uncomfortable in doing so in view of the way in which this debate has proceeded. I hope that in the Division which I am now proposing some will have the courage of their convictions.
7 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 17) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 80; Not-Contents, 121.

DIVISION NO. 2

CONTENTS

Airedale, L.

Kilbrackcn, L.

Attlee, E.

Kilmarnock, L.

Barnett, L.

Kirkhill, L.

Basnett, L.

Listowel, E.

Birk, B.

Llewclyn-Davies of Hastoe, B

Blackstone, B.

McCarthy, L.

Blease, L.

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Bottomley, L.

McNair, L.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Mason of Barnsley, L.

Callaghan of Cardiff, L.

Milner of Leeds, L.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Molloy, L.

Carter, L.

Mountevans, L.

Chapple, L.

Murray of Epping Forest, L.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Nicol, B.

Cocks of Hartcliffe, L.

Ogmore, L.

David, B.

Oram, L.

Davies of Penrhys, L.

Peston, L.

Dean of Beswick, L.

Phillips, B.

Diamond, L.

Pitt of Hampstead, L.

Dormand of Easington, L.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L.

Elwyn-Jones, L.

Prior, L.

Ewart-Biggs, B.

Rochester, L. [Teller.]

Feversham, L.

Seear, B.

Foot, L.

Sefton of Garston, L.

Gallacher, L.

Serota, B.

Galpern, L.

Stedman, B.

Glenamara, L.

Stewart of Fulham, L.

Graham of Edmonton, L. [Teller.]

Stoddart of Swindon. L.

Strabolgi. L.

Grey, E.

Taylor of Blackburn, L.

Hampton, L.

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Thurlow, L.

Hart of South Lanark. B.

Turner of Camden, B.

Henderson of Brompton, L.

Underhill, L.

Hooson, L.

Walston, L.

Houghton of Sowerby, L.

Warnock, B.

Howie of Troon. L.

Wedderburn of Charlton, L.

Jacques, L.

White, B.

Jay, L.

Wyatt of Weeford, L.

Jeger, B.

Young of Dartington, L.

John-Mackie, L.

NOT CONTENTS

Allenby of Megiddo, V.

Faithfull, B.

Allerton, L.

Ferrers, E.

Ampthill, L.

Glenarthur, L.

Arran, E.

Gray of Contin, L.

Bauer, L.

Greenway, L.

Beaverbrook, L.

Gridley, L.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Grimthorpe, L.

Beloff, L.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

Belstead, L.

Bessborough, E.

Hardinge of Penshurst, L.

Birdwood, L.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

Blatch, B.

Harvington, L.

Boyd-Carpenter, L.

Havers, L.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Hemphill, L.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Henley, L.

Butterworth, L.

Hesketh, L.

Caithness, E.

Hives, L.

Cameron of Lochbroom, L.

Holderness, L.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Home of the Hirsel, L.

Carlisle of Bucklow, L.

Hood, V.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

Hooper, B.

Carnock, L.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Colnbrook, L.

Jenkin of Roding, L.

Colwyn, L.

Johnston of Rockport, L.

Cottesloe, L.

Joseph, L.

Crickhowell, L.

Kaberry of Adel, L.

Davidson, V. [Teller.]

Killearn, L.

Deedes, L.

Kinnoull, E.

Denham, L. [Teller.]

Kitchener, E.

Dilhorne, V.

Lane-Fox, B.

Dundee, E.

Lindsay, E.

Eden of Winton, L.

Lindsey and Abingdon, E.

491

Long, V.

St. John of Bletso, L.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Sanderson of Bowden, L

Lurgan, L.

Sandford, L.

Lyell, L.

Sandys, L.

Mackay of Clashfern, L.

Selkirk, E.

Margadale, L.

Shannon, E.

Marley, L.

Sharpies, B.

Marshall of Leeds, L.

Skelmersdale, L.

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

Stockton, E.

Merrivale, L.

Strange, B.

Mersey, V.

Strathclyde, L.

Morris, L.

Sudeley, L.

Mottistone, L.

Swansea, L.

Munster, E.

Swinfen, L.

Napier and Ettrick, L.

Swinton, E.

Nelson, E.

Terrington, L.

Newall, L.

Thomas of Gwydir, L.

Norrie, L.

Trafford, L.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Tranmire, L.

Orkney, E.

Trefgarne, L.

Orr-Ewing, L.

Trumpington, B.

Oxfuird, V.

Vaux of Harrowden, L.

Peyton of Yeovil, L.

Vinson, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Ward of Witley, V.

Rees, L.

Westbury, L.

Reigate, L.

Whitelaw, V.

Renton, L.

Wise, L.

Renwick, L.

Wolfson, L.

Rugby, L.

Wynford, L.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
The Earl of Dundee: The Committee may feel that we have reached a suitable moment at which to break in order to return to the subject in an hour's time, at 8.10 p.m. If that is so, I beg to move that the House do now resume.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.

Betting, Gaming and Lotteries (Amendment) Bill [H.L.]
7.10 p.m.
Lord Newall: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Newall.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[THE EARL OF LISTOWELL in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [Charges to bookmakers on licensed tracks]:
Lord Newall Lord Newall moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 1, line 8. leave out ("seventy") and insert ("fifty-five").
The noble Lord said: I beg to move the first amendment set out on the Marshalled List. As is the custom, I must declare my interest as chairman of the British Greyhound Racing Board. When I moved the Second Reading of the Bill I indicated that it related entirely to an amendment to Section 18 of the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Act 1963, which was concerned solely with the sport of greyhound racing.
That provision, which was in the 1934 Act, provides that an on-course bookmaker at a
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greyhound racecourse need only pay a maximum of five times the price of the admission charge for the enclosure in which he operates.
However, many bookmakers have seen the injustice of such a low figure, which produces only £10, or less, per bookmaker for each race meeting. So they had been making voluntary payments. Those bookmakers are of course extremely concerned with the redevelopment of the greyhound racecourses which is now taking place. Approximately 50 greyhound racecourses have closed since 1961 and, regrettably a further one has closed since my Second Reading speech. Greyhound racing is obviously unable to earn the profits which are commensurate with the capital value of the land where those racecourses are situated, so consequently they are being redeveloped for other purposes.
This amendment will now provide for the proposed multiple of 70 to be reduced to 55, which is equivalent to the total sums presently being paid by way of statutory and voluntary payments by all bookmakers at all racecourses. The average price of admission is about £2 per meeting. The multiple of 55 will represent the maximum that can be charged. Naturally it is up to the individual managers to set any lower fees should they wish to do so, having regard to local circumstances.
Perhaps I should mention that greyhound racing does not enjoy the benefit of the support of a levy on off-course bookmakers, and therefore it can only stand or fall on the commercial arrangements it can make to promote the sport on the track and keep it at the highest possible standards.
The purpose of the amendment is to embrace within a formula the present statutory and voluntary arrangements, which are clearly unsatisfactory from any point of view. It is quite wrong that a racecourse promoter has to rely on voluntary payments which can and are withdrawn at bookmakers' whim. It is much better to recognise that there should be proper and open funding by bookmakers whereby they can be admitted to a racecourse and operate their business. The old multiple of five times is clearly outdated. The amended multiple merely recognises the present structure which bookmakers themselves have agreed. I beg to move.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: The noble Lord, Lord Newall, has put forward a good case for the amendment; and after having thought about it, I give it my support. On Second Reading the noble Lord made the case that the sport needed extra funding. He has now reassessed that need even more by quoting how many racetracks have had to close on account of the shortage of such funding.
He also made the point, which most impressed me, that as many as 4 million spectators attended greyhound racing in 1987, which is slightly more than the number of people who went to horseracing. That figure is one that is not generally known. As an industry greyhound racing employs over 5,000 people; and so, as the noble Lord said, this is an important matter in that their jobs are at stake.
On Second Reading there was concern when the noble Lord proposed to increase the statutory

493
multiple charge to bookmakers from five times to 70 times the public admission charge. There was worry that it was a rather steep increase and also that the noble Lord seemed to have made a rather arbitrary decision because that figure was not based on anything in particular.
However, the noble Lord has now suggested a multiple of 55 times the normal admission price. That figure rests on much firmer ground because it represents, as he said, more or less the present nationwide voluntary contribution to the tracks made by the bookmakers. It is therefore clear that the bookmakers realise the necessity for additional investment into this popular sport. I hope that they will accept this new formal measure which will ensure that the sport continues.
There is a worry that the noble Lord does not appear to have reached definite agreement with the National Association of Bookmakers. However, as I said, I hope that as they have paid this sum voluntarily up until now, they will accept the new payment in a more formal way.
The Earl of Arran: As the noble Lord, Lord Newall, has explained, at present bookmakers pay voluntary contributions to the management of greyhound tracks, in addition to the charges made under Section 18(1) of the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Act 1963. Like my noble friend, we understand from the British Greyhound Racing Board that the effect of the amendment would be to produce overall an income for the managements comparable in amount to the total of the voluntary payments and the current changes combined. By contrast, Clause 1 as it stands would enable the managements to require bookmakers to pay more than they do at present.
As I said during the Second Reading of the Bill, the Government would favour a reform of the current arrangements, should that be agreed by the parties concerned. As we understand the position, the amendment, like the clause which it would amend, is not agreed by the bookmakers. Whether the reform which the amendment proposes is right is a question for Parliament to judge. For our part, we are ready to accept the amendment, if all sides of the Committee are content.
Lord Newall: I am grateful to the noble Baroness and to my noble friend for their remarks. I do not think that there is any point in going any further. There is nothing more to be said. Therefore I commend the amendment to the Committee.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 1, as amended, agreed to.
Lord Newall Lord Newall moved Amendment No. 2:
After Clause 1, insert the following new clause:
("Amendments to maximum charge.
.—(1) The Secretary of State by order made by statutory instrument, further amend the said section 18(1) by deleting "fifty-five" and substituting such multiple as he may determine.
(2) A statutory instrument containing an order under this section shall he subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.").
The noble Lord said: In view of the previous amendment just passed, it seems wrong and
494
unnecessary to continue to bring small Private Members' Bills to this Chamber in order to amend parts of this long and complicated Act.
The controls which were imposed in 1934 are to a large degree out of date and unnecessary in 1988. There is a strong feeling that the Secretary of State should have the power to alter Section 18 if he thinks fit so to do. I can see the day when he may be persuaded to abolish Section 18 altogether. In my view that would be a satisfactory state of affairs. It would enable the organisations running greyhound racing—and probably horseracing too—to get on with their job without many controls. However, I gather he is not prepared to do so at present. But, if he is unable to do so now, I should like him to have the power to make changes to avoid the necessity of having further Bills.
It may be felt invidious that the Government should have to intervene at all in the marketplace. However, they have already done so by passing Section 18 and controlling the negotiations in regard to both dogs and horseracing; so there is a precedent in this. I hope that the Government will see a possibility of allowing the amendment to go through. I beg to move.
The Earl of Arran: We cannot commend the new clause to the Committee. I take the argument to be that it could be easier and better in future to vary the multiple of the ordinary public admission charge which bookmakers may be required to pay by order than by primary legislation. We do not believe that to be so.
As a preliminary observation, we should say that the clause seems defective technically. The drafting of subsection (1) is such that the power to make an order could be exercised only once. The power would be spent once an order substituting another figure for that of 55 had been made. We doubt whether that is the intention of my noble friend, Lord Newall. But even were that defect remedied, the order-making power would be beset with difficulty.
That is because it provides no safeguard or guidance as to the circumstances in which the Secretary of State should exercise the discretion to vary the multiple. It is our clear view that a necessary condition would need to be that the interested parties were agreed that a variation was desirable and on what the varation should be. It is extremely difficult to envisage on what other criterion my right honourable friend the Secretary of State could decide whether or not to make an order and justify that decision to Parliament. The new clause does not provide for this prior agreement between the operators of greyhound tracks and the bookmakers; and it would be wrong for my right honourable friend otherwise to determine that he would not make an order in the absence of such an agreement. If he did he could be judged to have fettered his discretion.
If on reflection my noble friend wished to propose a power the exercise of which was explicitly contingent upon a prior arrangement with the interested parties, we should be ready to consider it and give our views by the Report stage.
Lord Newall: I am most grateful to my noble friend for explaining his reasons. The amendment gives the Secretary of State the power to lay an order under the Bill. I gather from legal advice that the power to do something means power to do it from time to time. That is according to strict legal interpretation. Therefore in my view the Government are incorrect to say that the Secretary of State can only exercise it once; he can exercise it more than once.
On my noble friend's second point, the Secretary of State is always entitled to consult whomsoever he wishes. It does not have to be put into the Bill. Sometimes persons to be consulted are written into a statute but more usually they are not. I can find no precedent for naming the parties to be consulted. Of course even if he has consulted people and does not come to a decision, he may or may not wish to alter the figure. I merely want the Secretary of State to have the power.
Does my noble friend accept the principle of using secondary legislation by an order rather than heavy-handed primary legislation to amend the Act if the multiplier becomes out of date? That seems to be a much more expedient way to go about it. In my experience the wording is similar to that of other Acts which give power to the Secretary of State. Will my noble friend answer that point?
The Earl of Arran: My noble friend has suggested that there is a precedent for an order-making power contained in Schedule 5 to the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Act 1963. With respect, I do not think that the analogy holds. Schedule 5 enables my right honourable friend the Secretary of State by order to vary the percentage which Tote operators may deduct from bets laid with them. That power has been exercised following representations from the track operators, but the circumstances of that power and that proposed in the new clause differ in the important respect that bookmakers are hardly likely to object to requests for increases in the percentages taken from bets laid with their competitors. In contrast, bookmakers could be expected to want, and deserve, an explicit say in charges levied on them. I must repeat that if my noble friend wishes to propose a power the exercise of which was explicitly contingent upon the prior arrangement of the interested parties we should be ready to consider that and give our views by the Report stage.
Lord Newall: If the Government always tried to get both parties to agree, half the legislaton on the statute books would not be there. That makes it clear to me that there are many times when the Government will not make a decision. However, in view of what my noble friend has said, I am prepared to withdraw the amendment on the understanding that after further legal advice and discussions with the appropriate bodies we may bring forward an amendment in a slightly different guise on Report. I therefore beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Remaining clause agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported with an amendment.
Lord Hesketh: I beg to move that the House do now adjourn during pleasure until 10 minutes past eight o'clock.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
[The Sitting was suspended from 7.26 to 8.10 p.m.]

Employment Bill
House again in Committee on Clause 3.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton Lord Wedderburn of Charlton moved Amendment No. 18.
Page 4, line 50, leave out ("such").
The noble Lord said: No doubt over the dinner break the Government have been reflecting upon their victory on the major matter which the Committee was debating on the last amendment. We hope that the Government will reflect further and we therefore put to them this much more refined amendment. I shall speak, if I may, to Amendments Nos. 18 and 19 together.
The fact that the clause, as the House has now seen fit so far to approve it, places limitations of unjustifiable discipline even in a case where a member refuses to join his fellows after a majority vote in industrial action does not in our view necessarily carry the rest of the paragraph to which these amendments relate—that is, Clause 3(3)(a) in its last two lines. The clause refers not merely to someone who fails to participate in the industrial action but to someone who indicates opposition to, or lack of support for, a strike or industrial action. We ask the Government to consider the rider to that latter phrase that the stike is not supported by a majority in a ballot. For this reason, if it be accepted that the individual is not forced to join it, it does not necessarily follow that, without any consequences in the union which he has chosen to join and chosen not to leave, he should be able to do anything and everything by way of opposition and expressing lack of support.
It surely does not follow that a dissentient member, being outvoted by 99 per cent. of his colleagues, should escape from what are still the lawful union rules. If he goes on television and blackens their character, if he discloses confidential union business in terms of his indiscriminate opposition to what every single one of his fellow members except him has decided to do, how does it follow that all forms of opposition should exclude the union rules?
In that respect, with a view to the Report stage as much as to the Committee stage, I wish to put two specific questions to the Minister. First, what is the relationship between "opposition" in this paragraph and the assertions in paragraph (c) to which we come later? Do any limitations connected with the assertions in paragraph (c) apply, as surely they should, to assertions by way of opposition in paragraph (a)? Secondly, and I do this because I do not wish to interrupt the Minister in full flow—No, that is not true. Of course I wish to interrupt the Minister in full flow, but I thought perhaps it would not be sensible or polite to do so—
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: Nor wise.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: It would not be sensible or polite or even wise, as the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, says. I should have had no hesitation about interrupting the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, but I did not wish to do so with the Minister.
The noble Lord referred to the position in other countries. I think he mentioned certain other civilised countries where, he said, members of unions did this kind of thing. We were then debating the refusal to join in lawful union action. He said that in those countries the trade union had no right to discipline, or I think he said no power to discipline, but I shall read Hansard to see which it was. I should like to know which countries and what are the laws which limit that right. I think the Committee is entitled to know that, and I say it with no disrespect to the Minister, because, if I may say so, he contravenes this proposition less than some of his colleagues. I think it is not right that this House as a legislative body should be given these vague illustrations without a clear and exact designation of the laws to which they refer. Those are two questions to the Minister, one about assertions, the other about foreign countries.
I suspect that if one wanted to make a judgment based on comparative labour law in other European countries, one would find that our amendment would be regarded as not particularly objectionable in the vast majority of such countries. I am prepared to spell out what I think that vast majority is. I do not think it would be objectionable in France, Italy, Sweden or most of the major industrial countries.
What this amendment says to the Government is, "All right, you have won for the moment". One of my noble friends, Lord Callaghan, said that it would probably not last forever. The amendment suggests: "You have unwisely won your major battle on this subsection. But for the second half of it, should you not reconsider? Would you not put some limit on the type of opposition to which the lawful union rules would not apply?" I beg to move.
8.15 p.m.
Lord Trefgarne: We debated the principle of the proposition behind the noble Lord's amendment at length before dinner and your Lordships reached a conclusion on it. I do not wish to weary your Lordships unduly by repeating all the arguments that I put forward then. Nor would I wish to draw further on the great reservoir of cases that I have in my brief explaining the background as to how the Government came to this view. The great reservoir of cases of abuse of their position which the trade unions have, I fear, to some extent—
Lord McCarthy: Would the noble Lord allow me to intervene? Could he pass us this reservoir through the usual channels? We should love to see it.
Lord Trefgarne: I think I should unduly detain your Lordships by dilating on that. However, I shall be very happy perhaps at the next stage, when no doubt the noble Lord will table more amendments, to deploy one or two more of these black examples for the noble Lord's delectation.
498
The noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, has asked me some serious points particularly about the countries to which I referred at an earlier stage where the position is as I described it. Rather than wade through my brief and find that information, I wonder whether the noble Lord will allow me to write to him with it. I should be happy to do that in good time for the next stage. I hope on that basis that the noble Lord will not wish to pursue this any further.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: I am a little taken aback because, with the greatest respect to the noble Lord, I do not think he has addressed my amendment. I am very happy that the Minister should write to me with the specific laws of specific countries. I hope that he will also send me and my noble friends at least an abstract of this reservoir of factual instances upon which he is relying. If I may say so, to have a few more presented when we come to the Report stage will not be entirely satisfactory, especially if they are presented in a similar fashion. I happen to know about the case of Mr. C, and would have a certain amount to add to what the noble Lord said. Although I am not suggesting that he misrepresented it, I think there are further features to it. But if they are presented anonymously it makes things rather difficult.
I suggest that the Minister sends to Members of the Committee who are interested or, better still, puts in the Library the countries and the reservoir of instances that he mentioned. The Library is big enough. It will take it all, however large the brief may be. We should be most grateful if the Minister would place it there.
Frankly, I do not think that the Minister addressed the amendment. Let us be quite clear what I am saying. Even if the union cannot apply its discipline to a member who fails to join industrial action after a ballot which decided in favour, there should be cases where the union is permitted to apply its lawful rules which are voluntarily accepted by that member who is in the minority. In that case the union must be allowed to apply its discipline to opposition, at any rate, of certain kinds.
The Minister did not address himself to that point at all. He seemed to think that the first half of the paragraph carried the second. As he did not answer the point, we shall consider ourselves entitled—unless, on reading his remarks, we think otherwise—to return to this matter on Report. I think that that is normal practice. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 19 to 21 not moved.]
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton Lord Wedderburn of Charlton moved Amendment No. 22:
Page 5, line 5, at end insert ("where that requirement was imposed on a date before the commencement of the strike or other industrial action to which the failure relates").
The noble Lord said: This is an even more modest amendment. I cannot believe that the Government will not at least answer it or say something about it. However I should not like to bet on that.
The Government wish us to accept the concept of the privilege of the dissenting individual member. It

499
is often said in government circles and so often repeated in another place that the individual is paramount. By that the Government mean that the individual is paramount over the union. He is not considered ever to be paramount over his employer. If he takes priority even over his own contracts this is a very special doctrine of freedom of contract. I hope that the Committee will notice that. The doctrine is well known in the writings of a particular ideology.
But the Government consider that where one has anything to do with a trade union one can break the rules. The Government think that the individual should be in that position. They supplement that idea in this clause. The idea is quite straightforward. The Government propose that a union cannot discipline a member where the act required of him is one which would require him to contravene a term of his employment contract. Just to be sure that the Government have covered every possibility, the clause further states:
"or any other agreement between that individual and a person for whom he works or normally works".
We say that if the privilege goes that far—the major debate before dinner carried the Government largely over the hurdle and we must accept that—then there is a further point. Let us suppose that that requirement or obligation arises not under the individual's normal contract of employment or under an agreement which already exists at the time of the strike but because the employer says, after the strike or industrial action commences, "I want your help to beat the strike." That is a strike in which the individual concerned voted with his fellows in a ballot and was beaten.
The employer says to the individual, "Come on. Move over from the usual work you do." Perhaps the individual concerned is a foreman. One can imagine that in certain areas it would be a rather grave breach of union rules for a foreman to go back on a bench or to do other work normally carried out by employees. The employer may say to that individual, "Come on. I shall pay you another £50 a week if you keep it going for me on the bench." Let us assume, not extravagantly, that the individual concerned is a union member. Many people retain union membership. I do so myself and I was glad to hear the Minister say earlier this evening that he also did. That makes at least one bond between us. If the union rules prohibit this manifest strike-breaking, how can the Government deny the union rules their application?
Under the clause as its stands the employer could even say to a worker, "You are a member of the union. You have the branch minutes. Let us have a look at them. I shall pay you £50 a week for every minute book you bring in." The employer would make it part of the contract of employment because he perhaps read law at the London School of Economics and therefore keeps up with his legislation.
Why should that not happen? The Government say that that is all right. There is nothing that the union can do about that. It cannot discipline the individual involved at all. There is a point at which the
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unfairness becomes so extreme that one wonders what more one can say. On all the Government's assumptions and accepting all that has gone before tonight, however much, as Lord Diplock once said about certain labour laws, they "stock in my gorge", surely this little amendment, which states that after a strike starts individuals must stay where they are and that any new obligations they take are not within the purview, can be accepted. I beg to move.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: I very much hope that the Minister will accept this as being a very modest amendment. No doubt the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, will recognise that perhaps this is the appropriate moment at which I ought to have raised the issue that I inadvertently raised earlier. I look forward very much to hearing his observations now as he was inhibited about making them earlier.
The issue is a very simple one. If a union is going to be legally constrained from fulfilling its own rules and the situation arises whereby a member of a union, in effect, has turned coat, has been bought or has engaged in activities which are blatantly contrary to the rules, the Minister is inviting us to say that there are different rules for all kinds of organisations.
I seem to recall his earlier pleading in aid of, ludicrously, a golf club. The Minister said that a golf club has certain rules. I recall within the past day or two a report in the newspapers of a lady who wore shorts at the golf club. She caused a great deal of distress. The rules of the golf club decreed that she could not be a member of that club. In other words apparently a golf club can have rules which it can apply. The lady took the case to court and lost. The club was right. Therefore, a golf club is apparently able to exercise such a power.
I seem to recall that the lady in question set a great deal of store upon the value to her social life of membership of the golf club. But apparently a trade union is not able to exercise its own rules. That goes against the basic tenets of democracy and it certainly goes against what I would call justice.
Members opposite by the weight of their vote may very well impose their will and they may consider that they know what they are doing. I believe that the Government are bringing the term "democracy" and the ability of the leadership of a union to be seen to have some power, some status and some standing—not only in the union but in the community locally and nationally—into disrepute.
A great deal has already been said about balance and fairness. I honestly think that the Government have an opportunity in this modest way to recognise that if they are determined to strip away from a union executive its right not just to interpret its rules but also to apply them, then it is a very dangerous road down which they are going.
Lord Renton: I hope that the noble Lord will not mind if I attempt to answer his point about the lady and the golf club, which is quite different from the position of a union member.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: I agree.
Lord Renton: I am glad that the noble Lord acknowledges that. She does not have the same loyalties to a family and she is not dependent upon membership of the golf club for her employment or for her livelihood. She is not performing a service for children as teachers are and as nurses may do. These examples could be multiplied by others. That is an entirely different situation and, if I may say so, it is a false analogy.
8.30 p.m.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: Perhaps I may add to what my noble friend Lord Renton has said. The analogy with the golf club and the charming lady in shorts is a false one for this reason. Trade unions are bodies given substantial privileges by law, the major one being not to be liable to be sued in tort in respect of industrial action. When you have bodies such as that which are favoured by the legislature with privileges of that sort, it necessarily goes with that that they must be subject to rather more obligations than bodies such as golf clubs, which have no such privileges.
Lord Dormand of Easington: The question of other loyalties is raised from time to time, and indeed the two Members of the Committee who have just spoken have said that. They have mentioned, entirely properly, the responsihilty of an employee to his family, the teacher to his pupils and nurses to their patients. One could continue with such illustrations. However, perhaps Members who have spoken will feel that this is a legitimate point. The people in all of the categories which we have mentioned are aware on joining a union that any action, whether industrial or of any other kind, will almost automatically mean that their charges (be it family, pupils or patients) will be affected. In other words, joining a union is a premeditated act. They know that that will happen.
In those circumstances, it seems to me that there are two alternatives although it is often said that there are no alternatives. The first is not to join a union; secondly, there is always the possibility of joining a union which does not strike. I mention the teachers' union, the PAT, which, as the Minister will know, will not strike in any circumstances. Will Members opposite not agree that that is a factor which must be taken into consideration by people when they join a union; and therefore when action is taken they ought to be a party to it on the strength of arguments made many times from these benches?
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: The noble Lord says that people do not need to join a union. That is not always true. From a practical point of view, even with the reductions which I am glad to say are now being made in the closed shop, there is still a considerable number of cases where a man simply is not going to get a job if he is not a member of a union. Therefore it is quite wrong and quite inaccurate to say that a man does not have to join a union; he may well have to.
The second point is that I do not believe that when a man joins a union he is saying: "Right, I am prepared to put the interests and wishes of the union and its well-being before all other rights and interests
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in which I am involved. I will be prepared to put the union before my wife and family; I am prepared to put the union before my employer; and I am prepared to put the union before those whom I serve at work". I do not believe that the ordinary man on joining a union takes that view at all.
Lord Dormand of Easington: In view of the kind of case put forward by the noble Lord and the kind of members we are talking about, perhaps he will accept that when an increase in wages, shorter hours or longer holidays are negotiated, those members will not say to themselves, "I am not fully behind the union in certain circumstances; I had better not accept the advantages which the union has just negotiated".
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: The noble Lord says that. Of course that is a wholly unreal approach and he knows that perfectly well. He knows that if an employer, for whatever reason, offers increased wages, it is likely that the ordinary human being will take them. That is nothing whatever to do with being prepared to give the union and its activities priority over the other interests, duties and obligations which he has. The noble Lord knows that perfectly well.
Lord Trefgarne: Perhaps I may say again that I do not intend to run through all the arguments which we deployed before dinner on the general issue. However, I shall address the amendment moved by the noble Lord. Frankly, the logic of the amendment is rather clearer than that of some of the earlier ones, but I am afraid 1 still cannot agree with it.
All employees who repudiate their employment contracts by taking strike or other industrial action face dismissal. That is so irrespective of when they started work. Protection against union discipline, therefore, equally needs to apply irrespective of when the individual started work. Employers cannot be expected to keep open for an indefinite period the jobs of those who have chosen to break their employment contract. Such a requirement would be likely to turn a shut-down into a permanent closure.
It is an employer's right to offer jobs to whomever he wishes, subject to the legislation on sex and race discrimination. On occasion he may need to recruit employees to counter the effects of a dispute. Any such employee is entitled to expect protection from union discipline for choosing to do a job offered to him.
It is not the job of the Government to intervene in individual disputes but rather to establish a sound legal framework in which employers and employees can shoulder their own responsibilities. The independent Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, for example, stands ready to provide assistance to the parties when there is any dispute. A question of whether to take industrial action is for employees to decide. Strike action has always put jobs at risk, either immediately or in regard to the longer-term damage which it does to the company.
I believe that the Government have now made clear the thrust and the logic behind the propositions contained in Clause 3, and I hope that the Committee will agree to it without the amendment which is proposed.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: This has been, for me at least, a more important debate than I had expected. Not only has it revealed the Government's opposition to the amendment, which I expected, in that it has revealed that they mean to have their full fill here; the clause has got the unions and they know it. It will be effective and it will make things difficult. It will harass them. They mean to have the lot. I did not expect anything else.
However, I did not expect one or two other points to be made in the way they were. For example, the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, said that the trade unions had the privilege of not being sued in tort. With respect, that privilege was repealed by Section 15 of the Employment Act 1982. There have followed six years in which that has not been true.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: Of course the noble Lord is right about that section. But there still remains very substantial privilege as regards industrial action and being sued in respect of it. The noble Lord knows that as well as anyone.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: I know nothing of the kind. With great respect, privilege I know not for the union because it now stands with other defendants. That is not the way I would put it in any case. There are a few areas in primary disputes where the so-called immunity, which the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, would, I imagine, call a privilege, from the liability of common law still applies to the union or to any other person in the land who induces, furthers or contemplates a trade dispute. Perhaps on some other occasion we can debate just what that area is. With great respect to the noble Lord, in view of the way in which he originally put the point, I think that perhaps his view is not entirely coincidence in view of the current state of legislative play.
The more important point is that made by the noble Lords, Lord Boyd-Carpenter and Lord Renton. I shall not follow into the area of golf clubs, although I say to Members of the Committee that I know of certain families and other people who feel just as strongly about their loyalties to the golf club as some do about trade unions. However, I shall keep to the matter of the unions.
It is said that a golf club is different because you are dependent on trade union membership for employment. That is true in only two situations. One is where there is a union membership arrangement, some kind of closed shop or union security, the enforceability of which the Government are removing with this Bill. The second, which is the one to which I think the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, might be referring, although it was not clear to me, is where the employer decides to hire only non-unionists. It was curious that in the debate on this very Bill in another place the Governnment made it absolutely clear time and again that they were not placing any limit upon the discretion of employers as to whom they should hire. I imagine that the second situation is not objectionable to the Government and they are removing the first. It baffles the imagination how that is a justification for this type of clause.
A further point came up, of which the Government should be warned. My noble friend Lord Dormand
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raised the question of people who took scabbing in strikes to the extent of helping the employer to defeat the strike for extra pay. One could say to the Government that that is likely to affect industrial relations subsequently, and I am not sure that many employers would take the position that the Government have adopted. Most employers who know that they have to live with their workforce would not be very pleased if this happened and it could happen without senior management knowing. I am not sure that they would always want the union discipline rules to be put aside.
Be that as it may, my noble friend asked why the free-rider who does that kind of thing should benefit from collective bargaining. It was said that every sensible employer applies the benefits of collective bargaining to all employees within the range of the agreement. That has been the British way and it has been the British trade union way.
If one looks ahead—if the Government can look ahead—it should not be thought that that situation will continue for ever. I do not predict it, but this sort of legislation could produce a very undesirable drift towards bargaining for members only. With competitive unionism and bargaining for members only the Government would produce an even worse jungle than in some places now exists partly as a result of their legislation and partly because of much more important economic factors. One should never overrate the importance of law or, come to that, of lawyers.
It seems to me that no reason has been given against this amendment except that the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, says that all those on strike must face the possibility of lawful dismissal. As the law stands he is right. But that is only right because the Government will not change the law. That is only right because they have made the law on unfair dismissal worse. They seem to regard it as law carved upon tablets of stone that every striker can be dismissed. Now they want it carved on another bit of stone—against the strikers, the union and the majority—that the minority can be protected. I come back to my first words, even this tiny amendment is too big for the Government to swallow. It is quite extraordinary and I hope that the record will show just how the Government replied. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
8.45 p.m.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton Lord Wedderburn of Charlton moved Amendment No. 23:
Page 5, line 41, leave out ("if it is shown") and insert ("where")
The noble Lord said: In speaking to Amendment No. 23 I believe that I can speak—and this is a great pleasure—to Amendments Nos. 24, 25, 26, 27 and 28.
This amendment concerns another paragraph in the same subsection which perhaps we might call the "assertions" paragraph. When the Government first drafted the Bill they said that a member who made any assertion that the union, or trustees or a union representative—I shall refer to the union—contravened or proposed to contravene any rule of the union, agreement or rule of law (in other

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words, to act unlawfully) should not be subject to union discipline.
An extraordinary thing happened at the Committee stage in another place. It was pointed out to the Government that the clause as drafted allowed the member without fear of unjustifiable discipline to make assertions that were false or in bad faith or to make defamatory assertions; there was no limit. An extraordinary thing happened; the Government made a concession. I am hoping that tonight the Minister will follow that great precedent of his predecessor in another place and make a further concession.
The concession related to subsection (4) and it is to that subsection to which the list of amendments is directed. Perhaps I may summarise them briefly for the Committee. As it stands the subsection means that the union has to show the reason for the disciplining and that there was no other reason for disciplining the Member. It is not entirely clear in paragraph (a) where the burden of proof lies, but I put that aside. That should cause no difficulty in the normal case. The real problem lies in paragraph (b). On the basis of the Government's draft it seems to me, and the Minister will correct me if I am wrong, that the union must show that the assertion was false and that in making it or assisting someone else to make it the member acted either in the belief that it was false or in bad faith. The union must show that he is a fraud.
I say that that is the wrong burden of proof, or at any rate it is a burden of proof which is placed too heavily solely on the union. Therefore our amendment—which I hope will do the job that we intend but the Minister may perhaps dislike a couple of the words, as I do myself now, but the point is to put the principle to the Government—provides that if the union cannot show that the assertion is false and the member is a fraud then he must show that at the time of making the assertion at least he had reasonable grounds for saying that it was true.
I keep moving more and more modest amendments. The difficulty is that instead of growing higher, as should be the case when one is more moderate, my spirits get lower. I beg the Minister to consider whether some obligation should not be placed upon the person who is in this extraordinarily protected position that at least he should show not that what he said was true but that at the time that he said it he had reasonable grounds for believing it to be true. If the Government did that, at least it could be argued that they were protecting the genuine case. If the Government do not do that the fraudsters are protected. As any counsel knows, to prove that someone has said something false and knew it to be so is the worst burden of proof in the world to have to take on. That is what the clause makes the union take on under paragraph (b).
With a flicker of hope, I ask the Minister to make this paragraph cover the genuine case and not cover the fraudster. I beg to move.
Lord Renton: The situation created by this group of amendments is rather interesting from the legal point of view. As I read it, under the clause as it stands the
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burden of proof will be upon the trade union throughout. Indeed, it is quite clear from the amendments which the noble Lord has moved that he intends the burden of proof to be shifted not only in relation to Amendment No. 27, which to his mind introduces a new factor (with which I shall deal in a moment), but to be shifted altogether. If he had not attempted to move the burden of proof by means of Amendment No. 23, we should have had the rather strange position that the burden of proof would be upon the union throughout, except with regard to the factor raised in Amendment No. 27, and that on that factor the burden of proof would be upon the member of the trade union.
That is altogether a rather confused situation, but in the statute we must get it perfectly clear where we expect the burden of proof to lie. If in line 41 the words "if it is shown" are omitted and we replace them simply by the word "where", we are not imposing a burden of proof on either party, as I understand it. We are simply leaving it to the court to decide by means of an objective test.
However, courts like to know where Parliament thinks that the burden of proof should lie, and in nearly all cases that is made abundantly plain. I am very doubtful whether it is right to destroy the burden of proof requirement entirely and to have no burden of proof. That is the first difficulty that I find in this group of amendments.
However, even if that were the case, I am not quite sure that Amendment No. 27 adds a new factor. In the Bill as it stands we find the fact that,
"that assertion was false … or … that individual acted either in the belief that it was false or otherwise in bad faith",
is very close to stating that he cannot show that he had reasonable grounds for believing it was true. In other words, as I understand it, we are doing a little hair-splitting. If I have misconceived the position, perhaps I may be forgiven because it is a slightly confusing one.
Lord Trefgarne: I was sorry to hear just now from the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, that his spirits were beginning to flag because of these matters, particularly in the context of this amendment. As he rightly pointed out, during the proceedings in another place the Government made a significant concession, and the clause as presently drafted represents that concession.
My honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State accepted during the Committee stage in another place that individuals who had acted in bad faith or maliciously should not be protected from union discipline, and he introduced a government amendment to address that point. The Government, however, consider it important that a union member should be able to point out that his union proposes to break or has broken its own rules or the law without fear of disciplinary action being taken against him. Protection from such discipline is essential if members are to be in a position to ensure that unions behave as they should. It must therefore be right for the burden of proof to be upon the union to show that a member has made a false assertion or has otherwise acted in bad faith.

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The clause as it is presently before the Committee represents, as I have said, a significant concession by the Government. I am afraid that I cannot agree that we should go further, and I hope that the noble Lord will not press us to do so.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: The nature of the Minister's reply has brought up my spirits from any point of flagging, because it is really quite absurd. However, perhaps I may first say something in regard to the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Renton. I think that the noble Lord appreciated that when I said that I was not entirely happy with the wording of the amendments, my unhappiness was concerned with the point about the burden of proof. I accept that there could be better drafting, as he said.
However, the amendment was drafted in the short compass that it took on the normal assumption that he who asserts must prove. As the Bill stands, it seems as though the burden of proving everything lies on the shoulders of the union —that is what the Minister seemed to say—although the wording even now is not wholly clear.
I part company with the noble Lord, Lord Renton, in saying that, although what the Minister calls a significant concession was made in another place, that concession was simply that the unjustifiable discipline doctrine should not apply if it turned out and could be proved that someone had been telling lies. For the Government to regard as a significant concession the fact that their doctrine should not apply to liars hits a new low in government standards. I say that quite frankly. At least that is my view.
Having obtained that concession, the question that was put by the noble Lord, Lord Renton, then arises. He said that the trade union should prove that the allegation was false. I ask the noble Lord to consider with me the real situation. Obviously there is some dispute within the union because such things always happen when tempers are hot; and when the member looks back perhaps he realises he did not mean to do what he did; we often do not.
However, the man goes on television and makes a series of charges about union officers, all of whom are honourable men. One must also remember that many of them are people who operate the branch in their own time—and we all know that if it were not for volunteers many British trade unionists would find life much more difficult. So these officials are maligned in a way in which the falsity is very difficult to prove. Indeed, by the time these statements have gone out on television and appeared in certain newspapers the next day or over the weekend—newspapers for which certain Members of this Chamber write—the damage to these individuals has been done and it is damage of the most extraordinary kind.
The Government continually talk to us about families. What about the branch chairman's wife who breaks down because of what has been said about her husband? It is said that in that kind of situation, when the union branch has its meeting, say, on the following Monday, it can take no action (which it may have full power to do under the rules) unless it can prove that the statement was false and that the
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man did not believe it. I say that that is not fair. In such a situation it is at least for him to say, "Well, I see it may not be entirely true but I had reasonable grounds to believe it at the time". That is all that this amendment seeks—nothing more than that. It does not require that he proves that it must be true. It simply says that he must show that there are reasonable grounds.
I begin to feel that I do not speak in a legislative Chamber of the United Kingdom but in an Alice in Wonderland world if that argument does not convince the Minister that this matter should be looked at again before we come to Report stage. I want him to take that example home with him tonight. The noble Lord smiles. I am afraid that I take the matter seriously. This matter concerns real branches of the union and real people. These people are individuals—just individuals who run the branch—and the man has made charges against them. They will find it very hard to find the proof that the statement was false. Surely the union's rules should then be applied.
I hope that the Minister will give us some comfort, but if he does not I shall have to beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Trefgarne: I fear that I have no comfort to offer the noble Lord. He has referred at length to the pressures that may be brought to bear on the families of trade union officials who had been wrongly criticised by a member. If we talk about pressures being brought to bear on people in the past few years we seem to have heard a great many stories of pressures not being brought to bear upon the officials of trade unions but brought by officials upon their members, particularly in some of the more bitter disputes that we have had in recent times.
I do not think that the example given by the noble Lord was a good one. I do not think that there is much merit in his amendment. The Government have moved some way toward his position and that of his honourable and right honourable friends. I am afraid that we cannot go any further and I hope that he will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: Before the Minister sits down, I believe that, apart from obtaining the leave of the Committee, this may be the only opportunity I have to put a question to him. Let us assume that I accept every single case that he advances of oppression by a union of a member. How on earth does that justify the oppression of the branch chairman and his family by the member, who may be a fraud and a liar and whom he is out to protect in his clause?
9 p.m.
Lord Trefgarne: All that the trade union official has to do is to show that what the member is alleging is false. His position is then quite protected.
Lord Renton: In the course of the further interventions by the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, he has not mentioned the vital precondition of all this that we find in the opening words of the subsection,
"an individual who has been disciplined by a trade union".
That is the situation with which we are faced.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 24 to 28 not moved.]
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton Lord Wedderburn of Charlton moved Amendment No. 29:
Page 6, leave out lines 5 and 6
The noble Lord said: This amendment and the amendments that follow it pose this question to the Government: what is freedom of association? That may sound a rather academic question but it is not. It is only on the basis of free association that in democratic countries organisations—whether they be trade unions, golf clubs or the myriad organisations that make up our society—can operate in the way that their members wish.
The Government know that there are ILO conventions. The International Labour Organisation Convention No. 87 on freedom of organisation, freedom of association, states in Article 3 that workers and employers shall have the right to draw up their constitutions and rules. It is a long time since our law also approached the question of organisations—as the ILO and some other countries do—by referring to organisations of workers and organisations of employers where some parity is maintained. It says that they shall have the freedom to draw up their own rules and electoral systems in full freedom, and that the public authorities shall refrain from interference which will restrict that right or the lawful exercise of it.
The Government were pressed on this matter in November and December in Standing Committee F of another place. It is interesting to note how strongly the government Ministers in that Committee firmly adhered not only to the ILO Convention No. 87 and Convention No. 98 but also to the European Convention on Human Rights and, perhaps more importantly in this respect, the European Social Charter (especially Articles 4, 5 and 6). All these go to make up an international standard which, as many Members of the Committee will know, this country did a great deal to create.
The germ of many of those standards is in the industrial relations practice of Britain—not so much in its laws but in its practice in the past. The exceptions that the ILO has come to recognise—and these the Government relied upon for their 1984 Act in terms of control of trade union elections and procedure—are if an exception is made to protect the democratic rights of members and to provide a sound administration for the members to exercise their rights.
In my submission, the Government appear to be infringing those principles in spirit and in the broad sense of free association if they say this to an organisation—I put the point very quickly. "You may adopt these lawful rules. There is no penalty in the law for having a rule, for example, that says a member shall be fined so much if he does certain things". There is scarcely an organisation in the land that does not have a rule of some such kind. However, if one says to that organisation, "You may have your rules and they are all lawful, including
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expulsion rules, but you cannot use your expulsion rule" (this amendment is about the rule of expulsion and we shall come to other rules later) "except on pain of very strong penal consequences," then one is surely breaking the principle that that voluntary association can choose its colleagues.
I am not sure that the Government have considered this aspect of the matter, because the arguments that they use lead to the conclusion that they have addressed us tonight without consideration of this point. However, sometimes their lack of consideration shows through. In another place, in order to justify this position, one Government Minister (I have the references if the noble Lord wishes them, but I am sure that he knows about the Committee stage in another place) alleged that companies could not expel members of any kind of company, be it limited by shares or limited by guarantee, and that was different from trade unions. However, that is wrong. If the articles allow it, companies, whether limited by guarantee or by shares, or indeed companies of any kind, can, as the authorities show very clearly, exercise their expulsion rules (as we would call them for a union) or regulations (as they would be called in the articles), and such limitation is placed upon them of similar kinds.
It would be quite extraordinary if one said to a company, especially a body registered as a company limited by guarantee, as a social organisation, many of which have been engaged in litigation, "You cannot exercise that rule." One may say that one cannot have certain rules and try to justify that, but, if one allows them to have the rule and then says, "You cannot exercise it except on pain of serious penalty," that seems a very stong limitation on the freedom of association.
Companies can do it; other organisations can do it. We know the Government's view on that. It is no good giving those examples because to them trade unions are special. Trade unions are unique. No power of analogy or argument drawn from other organisations ever has any impact on the Government. That we know. However, in another setting, do they not consider that this is a serious limitation on the right of free association, which they may perhaps have to consider with regard to the various international standards and instruments to which they pronounced their firm adherence at the earlier stages of the Bill in another place? I beg to move.
Lord Trefgarne: As I dare say is now clear, the Government believe that union members should not be disciplined at all for working during a strike or other industrial action or for seeking to enforce their legal rights. We recognise that unions cannot in the end be forced to keep individuals in membership any more than employers can be forced to continue employing someone. The Clause reflects these principles. It provides the individual with a right to compensation if expulsion occurs analogous to a dismissed employee's right to compensation in a parallel situation.
If we were to accept the amendment it would imply that discipline short of expulsion was in some way

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worse than expulsion itself. This might encourage unions to expel individuals whom they would previously have treated less harshly. It would also take away the benefits of union membership for those whose only crime (if that is the word) was disagreement with the leadership, perhaps on one occasion only. I do not think that that would be right.
I thought that the noble Lord might have referred to the International Labour Organisation, because I am aware that the TUC has complained—
Baroness Turner of Camden: My noble friend did.
Lord Trefgarne: I apologise; indeed he did mention it. I am aware that the TUC has complained that this provision may breach the convention. The Government are quite convinced that that is not so. We believe that the provision is entirely within our international obligations including the convention to which the noble Lord refers.
The principles of what we are seeking to achieve in the clause are very clear. I shall not repeat them to the Committee again. The amendment would to an extent undermine those principles and I cannot therefore agree to it.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 31 to 34 not moved.]
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton Lord Wedderburn of Charlton moved Amendment No. 35:
Page 6, line 37, at end insert ("and discipline which is unjustifiable for the purposes of this section shall not constitute unlawful means for the purpose of any liability in tort").
The noble Lord said: I wish to put upon the record a clearer statement than that which the Minister obtained from Amendment No. 15. It concerns a similar point, which is that whatever the limitations on remedy and on right which appear in Clause 3, there is the possibility that a breach of Clause 3 by a union could give a third party a right of action in the High Court. I stress the word "could". I believe it is an ambiguity and that this would be another way to remove it. If the Minister will not accept this amendment now, will he please consider it before Report? I beg to move.
Lord Trefgarne: I undertook to examine a similar matter in connection with Amendment No. 15. I am happy to give the same assurance in connection with Amendment No. 35.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 36 not moved.]
On Question, Whether Clause 3 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord McCarthy: The Minister was asked by my noble friend Lord Wedderburn to bring him some comfort; I thought he said as Chesterton said:
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"I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher".
That is certainly the case in relation to the amendment. The Minister will not be surprised to learn that we oppose the Question that Clause 3 shall stand part of the Bill.
There is much to be said. We have stated our case on all the amendments which we have put down, some of which have been moved and some because of the time of night have not. Essentially our case was made in speeches in the fine debate which we had on the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, and the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, where we sought to protect strike action within the context of the 1984 Act. We told the Committee that we thought it was unfair and unwise and several Members of the Committee said it was way, way over the top. But that was a general argument about the general state of the clause. On that occasion I accept that we were asking for a major change in the clause. If that amendment had found acceptance in the Committee—I would not say it was a wrecking amendment—it would have made a major change in the scope and value of the clause to the Government.
The amendments that we have moved since then have been pianissimo; they have been tiny; they have been small in the extreme. Of course we have had the usual answers that it is unnecessary, it is unacceptable or it is unclear. Sometimes it has been all three; unacceptable, unnecessary and unclear.
My noble friend Lord Wedderburn said, "Surely you can allow the unions some right of disciplining the individual who subsequently acts against the union". The Government said, "No, not under any circumstances. So much the worse for him". My noble friend said, "Surely you cannot suggest that a member of a union is free to slander, libel and villify without regard for the truth. He must have reasonable grounds". "Not at all", they said. "It will serve them right". My noble friend then said, "Surely we should observe, as we see it, the ILO conventions, the European social charter, in regard to the right to expel". They said, "Not under any circumstances. It might encourage expulsions instead of fines, which are unlawful anyway". Therefore we oppose the Question that Clause 3 shall stand part of the Bill.
Lord Rochester: As has the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, I too have already given reason enough as to why I believe that the clause should be omitted from the Bill. I shall not repeat the reasons. It is a rotten clause and should be withdrawn.
9.15 p.m.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: I believe that at this stage the relevant thought is that the side note to the clause is:
"Right not to be unjustifiably disciplined".
That is the essence of the clause. It is interesting to note that the representatives of the Labour Party in the Committee oppose it. In so far as one can ever deduce the thoughts of the representatives, or representative, of the Liberal Alliance, they apparently believe the same. Opinion outside the

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Committee will be that it is proper to provide that people in unions should not be unjustifiably disciplined. It is no argument for amendments to say that they are very small, as the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, has attempted to adduce: they were very small, they were insignificant and they were wrong.
Lord McCarthy: is the noble Lord's position that the trouble with us is that we are too concerned as to whether the worker is unjustifiably dismissed by the employer; and he is too concerned as to whether the worker is unjustifiably disciplined by the union?
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: The noble Lord will realise that the first point does not arise in connection with the Bill. We are discussing the second point. It is clear that the representatives of the Labour Party believe it to be right that a worker should be unjustifiably disciplined. I believe that that will be noticed outside this Committee.
Lord Wyatt of Weeford: Despite my reservations as regards an earlier part of the clause, I believe that it is preferable to have the whole clause, even with one defect, than not to have it at all.
Lord Trefgarne: I do not have much to add to the discussion. At the end of the remarks that I made before the dinner break I said that the proposition was contained in the Green Paper published last year. It was also contained in the Conservative Party Manifesto at the last election and was approved by the electorate. It was approved by another place when it considered the provisions of the Bill. It was also approved by your Lordships' House in the Division before the dinner break and that was aimed at the principle of this Bill. I do not believe that the proposition could have better credentials and I recommend to the Committee that the clause remains part of the Bill.
Clause 3 agreed to.
Clause 4 agreed to.
Clause 5 [Further remedies for infringement of right under section 3]:
[Amendment No. 37 not moved.]
Lord Trefgarne Lord Trefgarne moved Amendment No. 38:
Page 8, line 13, at end insert—
("(3A) Where the Employment Appeal Tribunal or any industrial tribunal is satisfied, on an application under this section, that it would (but for this subsection) be required by virtue of subsection (2) above to dismiss the application, it may, instead of dismissing it, transfer the application to an industrial tribunal or, as the case may be, to the Employment Appeal Tribunal; and an application transferred under this subsection shall be proceeded with as if it had been made in accordance with that subsection at the time when it was originally made.").
The noble Lord said: I should also like to speak to Amendment No. 123. This is a technical amendment concerning the method of applying for compensation in respect of unjustifiable discipline. In brief, the amendment ensures that if an individual makes his application for compensation to the Employment Appeal Tribunal—the EAT or, I suppose, "eat" for short—and the EAT decides that the application should have been made to an industrial tribunal because the union has revoked the finding and
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reversed the penalty, then the EAT will have the power to remit that application to a tribunal. Similarly, a tribunal will be empowered to remit applications to the EAT.
Without the amendment, the EAT could only reject the application leaving the individual to make a new application to an IT. This would be unnecessarily bureaucratic and, depending upon how long the EAT took to come to its decision, could mean that the individual lost his right to apply for compensation because of the time limit specified in Clause 5(3). I believe that this is a technical clarification and correction. I am happy to give the Committee further details if it wishes, but in the meantime I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Baroness Turner of Camden Baroness Turner of Camden moved Amendment No. 39:
Page 8, line 17, at end insert ("having regard to the loss suffered by the complainant").
The noble Baroness said: I rise to move Amendment No. 39 and to speak also to Amendment No. 40, because the two amendments run together. Their intention is to ensure that any compensation awarded under this section should have regard to the loss suffered by the applicant.
In many instances it is quite possible that the financial loss will be quite small. In fact, in financial terms it could well be non-existent. We are dealing here, in the main, with individuals who have decided to ignore the union strike call despite a majority in a ballot. Presumably such people will, in most cases, have gone to work and may have done much better than their colleagues who were on strike. Some of them may possibly be much better off because they could have been doing the work of their colleagues on strike and perhaps making money on overtime which they would not normally have had.
If the union attempts to discipline those people, they are to have access to the courts and may claim compensation. It seems very unreasonable that the court should not be bound to consider what losses have been sustained by the applicant when it awards compensation. In fact, if substantial compensation is awarded under this section in such cases, it could lead to great disturbance in industrial relations at local level where the people who have actually been on strike would have lost a good deal of money while on strike in order to gain benefits for the whole of the workforce.
If this amendment is carried, we shall not need the wording set out in lines 37 to 40 since that prescribes a minimum amount. It should be open to the court to award only nominal damages if the damage to the individual has only been slight. I beg to move.
Lord Trefgarne: I believe that the Bill as drafted does exactly what the noble Baroness wishes, because as it is drafted tribunals and the EAT will be able to have regard to loss suffered by the applicant when deciding whatever amount is,
"just and equitable in all the circumstances".
That will have to take clear regard of the loss actually suffered by the applicant. Therefore, I believe that

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this amendment is not necessary. Indeed, I believe that its adoption would rather complicate the clause and I hope that on reflection the noble Baroness can agree with that.
Baroness Turner of Camden: I cannot agree with that, and I am sorry about that. I note that the Minister thinks that the first amendment, No. 39, is already covered in the legislation. I said that I was speaking also to Amendment No. 40, and if one looks at lines 37 to 40 on page 8 one can see that a minimum is specified. The subsection states:
"shall not be less than the amount for the time being specified in Section 73(4A) of that Act (minumim basic award in certain cases of unfair dismissal)".
In other words, if that still stands in the legislation it will not be open to the court to award only nominal small amounts of damages or small amounts if the damage to the individual—the financial loss—has been very small or even non-existent. Perhaps the individual may have gained financially through not having been involved in the dispute which was the cause of the original issue. Therefore, I am not happy with the reply from the Minister and would like him to speak to that amendment.
Lord Trefgarne: I apologise. I should have been rather more forthcoming on the second point because the noble Baroness is also seeking the removal of the minimum award. The minimum award reflects the seriousness of cases where the penalty has not been revoked. Unions will therefore have an incentive to rescind displinary action before individuals apply to the Employment Appeal Tribunal if they know they will otherwise be liable to pay at least a minimum award. This liability cannot of course arise until at least four weeks after declaration of unjustifiable discipline has been made by an industrial tribunal. It is important to keep the minimum award provision in place because, as I have said, that gives the union an incentive to rescind the action before the EAT machinery creaks into action.
Baroness Turner of Camden: I am sorry that I cannot agree with the Minister. It seems to me that if we have within the legislation provision for a minimum award we are removing from the courts the opportunity and the flexibility to decide on nominal amounts. That is quite unjustifiable in the circumstances. However, I shall not press the amendment to a Division at this stage but will look carefully at what has been said before Report. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 40 not moved.]
Clause 5, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 6 [Right to inspect union's accounting records]:
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton Lord Wedderburn of Charlton moved Amendment No. 41:
Page 9, line 14, leave out ("six") and insert ("three").
The noble Lord said: We now come to Clause 6. "Accounting records" is a very wide phrase and is
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defined in Sections 10 and 11 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act 1974, usually known as TULRA. It is necessary to remember of course that most unions have a rule concerning inspection. The reason for that is the 1871 Act, over 100 years ago, requiring unions which registered, as most did under that provenance, to have a rule about the inspection of books and accounting records. The Green Paper took up this point saying that that requirement had been lost—which is true—in the 1970s. The Green Paper was not wholly accurate on the way it had been lost but that is another matter.
Therefore, the Government have come forward not with something like the 1871 provision, which gave unions a flexibility which is not allowed them under this legislation, but with a specific rule about inspection of the accounting records. Our amendments, in series, are meant to point to a number of these specific regulatory features which we say are unnecessarily rigid and extensive. Amendment No. 41 questions that extension.
A union is to be told that it must keep its accounting records for six years. Obviously that is related throughout the rest of the clause to the area of the obligatory inspection, if a member requires it, bringing his accountant with him. All the books and records, as we see in the clause, not merely of the union but also of every branch and section must be kept for six years. If one says that that is a hard burden on many branches that are run from home in the spare time of members and if one raises the question of whether the right to inspect is going to carry the right of a member into the branch secretary's home, one begins to see the difficulty.
This amendment asks: why six years? From debates in another place it seems to be the case that there was some analogy with company law. If there is not, perhaps the Minister will tell us where it came from. If there is an analogy—and I put it more widely—with other associations, there is only one place known to me at least where one finds a requirement for accounting records, as opposed to filed accounts, to be kept for six years. In private companies it is three years.
If one was to take an analogy with company law, perhaps one should have gone to Section 222 of the Companies Act 1985 and said that this is an analogy with private companies. Some private companies are pretty big. But the Government have chosen six years, which is the period for the public company. As regards a trades union's period of limitation for the retention of accounting records not merely at headquarters but at regional district, every single branch and section is equated with a public company. I suggest that this is ridiculous. It is ridiculous in terms of the amount of paper or technology involved. If every branch secretary had the latest word processor the number of bytes or other electronic measures that would be taken up over the six years would become rather large. It seems to me to be rather absurd.
It may be that the Minister can say that the Transport and General Workers' Union has 1½ million members—at least I hope it still has—and therefore it can be equated. I know that the Minister

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hopes that it has not, but he will see that number increase when employment improves. The Government keep telling us that employment is improving.
The Committee may wish to consider the national league for the blind and the disabled, which has 2,800 members. Why should that organisation be equated with a public company for the purpose of the six years' period, let alone the Sheffield Wool Shearers who have 17 members'? They are in. It seems to me quite absurd. We ask the Government, as we have done throughout, to justify this clause. In another place the debate on this clause left the Government exposed without the justification of even the kind of arguments we have heard this evening. I beg to move the amendment. I ask the Government: why not three instead of six years?
9.30 p.m.
The Earl of Dundee: I have listened with interest to the argument put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn. I agree with him straightaway as regards his remarks concerning public companies. I do not believe that it would ever have been a good idea for the Government to equate the arrangements for public companies with what they have in mind in this clause. I believe that such analogies are very misleading between unions and companies. Companies and trade unions have quite different purposes and there is really no valid analogy concerning the relationship between a trade union and its members and that of a company and its employees or shareholders.
The noble Lord also said that he believed what we were proposing was going to be rigid and very difficult for everyone concerned. I cannot agree with that at all. If we consider the difficulties which will arise—namely, altering arrangements that the unions currently make— I think we agree that the difference in practice would be very little. Presumably, unions already have to keep some kind of accounting records for at least a period of one year. Many may already be using computerised systems where storage costs may be marginal once the system has sufficient capacity to keep the records. That may mean little more than a place to keep the computer tape.
In any case, it would be worth little to create a right for members if that right was severely limited by the fact that it applied only to records created in or relating to a period of less than six years. Unions with substantial amounts of accounting records will have large memberships and any additional costs which arise to comply with the duty to keep accounting records for longer than the law currently requires will translate into a very small increase in the subscriptions of the individual union member, if it is quantifiable at all in those terms.
The noble Lord asked me to say what are our main reasons for considering a particular period at all, and in this case six years. I can give an assurance to the noble Lord that we have put serious thought into this matter and our reasons for so proceeding are good ones. It is reasonable to assume that members may be interested in more than the current year's accounting records. For example, they may be seeking to
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establish how long any perceived or suspected problem in the union's affairs or transactions had existed. They might need to have access to accounting records, for example, in order to found a legal action. The period of six years, therefore, appears in Clause I because it corresponds to the period during which a court may, generally speaking, entertain an action rather than rejecting it on the ground that the period of time between the date of the complaint and the commission of the wrongful act is too long. With those reassurances, I hope that the noble Lord may see fit to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: Curiouser and curiouser, although I share the ground that the noble Earl offered me. I accept that there is no real analogy between the command structure of a company and the democratic association of a trade union. That is why I would be surprised if the Government had made an analogy here, just as there would be no analogy between company law and trade union law if they enact this clause, because the shareholder has no right in law to inspect the accounting records. One might have thought that, with the kind of manipulations which have gone on in the City in the last few years, if the Government were really concerned with malpractice, they would have given the shareholder a right to look at the accounting records of companies back over the last six years. However, there is not a word, not a whimper, not a single syllable upon that. Why? They are only interested in regulating trade unions.
The noble Earl, with respect, gave it away. What came high on the list? The member might want to bring a legal action against the union of course and he will have state apparatus in the form of the commissioner to help him do it. That is what it is all about. We understand that. So there is really not much point in asking, "Why six?" I suppose the amendment should have been, "Why six? Perhaps you would prefer 12", because the noble Earl's arguments would lead with equal validity to 12, 24 or even 100.
There is one small point which the noble Earl does not seem to appreciate. He says that the provision will need only a small increase. I wonder whether he really understands the job of being a branch secretary of a large union on the ground at home, late at night, coming home from work and going off to the union meeting room. We know what the Government are about. They are asking those people to keep six years' stuff and make sure it is all there when this accountant comes along to inspect it in their front parlour because they know they will not take on the job. That is another way of making trade unions cease to operate effectively. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord McCarthy Lord McCarthy moved Amendment No. 42:
Page 9, line 25, after ("below") insert—("by making available to that member for inspection the records relevant to the request which relate to the period ending with the date of the request and commencing with the date of the most recent return made by the union to the Certification Officer under section 11(2) of the 1974 Act")
The noble Lord said: It is necessary to read though this amendment at this time of night because Members of the Committee may not appreciate how modest it is.
We are saying that the limits of the intervention and right to inspect the accounts should be,
"by making available to the member for inspection the records relevant to the request which relate to the period ending with the date of the request and commencing with the date of the most recent return made by the union to the Certification Officer under Section 11(2) of the 1974 Act".
So instead of being able to go back six years, you would only be able to go back to the date of the most recent return made by the union to the certification officer. We would argue that if you have a return from the certification officer, you have the necessary information that you require to see what the broad financial position of the union is. If your argue, as you might well, that dreadful things have happened to the finances of the union since the most recent return made by the certification officer, you have a right to see the records since then.
However, the problem I have with this debate so far is to find any real justification for anything at all that the Government want to do in this clause. It is very significant, is it not, that the Green Paper is very strong on examples? At least it has the same old examples; it does not have this secret reservoir which the Minister has and which we are all hoping to see. The examples of abuse are all about use of the National Union of Mineworkers' funds at the time of the miners' strike. It does not deal with the parts which start at paragraph 3.23 of the Green Paper:
"Possible Changes: Members' access to union accounts".
The Green Paper does not produce any scandals, nor does it allege any cases where those particular provisions in Clause 6 actually apply. We have no concrete cases at all. Of course, I accept that the Minister may have a reservoir of which he may be about to give me sight. I hope that he is. It would be even better if he were to give us prior sight of such a reservoir. But perhaps that would not be a good idea from his point of view.
In the Green Paper there is no justification at all for what is being suggested. All it says is that although there is a right to inspect annual returns to the certification officer in the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act 1974, the Government do not believe that that provision is sufficient. Therefore they believe that there should be a right to inspect accounting records, although we are not told in the Green Paper—as the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn of Charlton said, we have to guess—exactly how wide those accounting records will be. We do not know whether the member will be able to look across branches and back over six years at the salaries that officials and branch collectors receive; the mortgages that the union takes out; the ex gratia payments that the union makes and the commercial companies with which it deals. We do not know whether the union member living on one side of the country at, say, Land's End will be able to obtain the records six years back of what happened in a totally different section of a union—for example, the Transport and General Workers' Union—in John o'Groats. The Minister
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has said that none of this procedure will take much time; none of it will be much of a problem for the unions and that all of it will be perfectly easy for them to do.
If it is to be done at every level and at every branch, it will have to be done by lay members of the union. The overwhelming majority of branch secretaries are lay members. They give their services free of charge or for a pittance. Now they are being told that they must keep records for six years. Somehow we will have to find out how much they have to keep and in what form because, unless they do so, the union is likely to find itself in some kind of legal difficulty.
We say that there is no conceivable justification for this requirement. We say that the only possible justification is to provide that the annual returns that are given to the certification officer cannot give you an immediate, up-to-date, record of the state of your union and therefore you ought to be able to obtain any further information from the date of such a return. I beg to move.
Lord Rochester: This may be a convenient point at which to express a general view on the Government's proposals under Clause 6. As the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, has reminded us, under the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act 1974 unions and employers associations already have to make an annual return to the certification officer and keep proper accounting records which provide a true and fair view of their affairs.
I see no reason to give union members, accompanied by professional advisers, a further statutory right of access to their union's accounts. The noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn of Charlton, has already reminded us that companies are not legally obliged to provide such detailed information which the Government now have in mind for trade unions. For example, shareholders have no right to financial information on a plant-by-plant basis, nor to inspect the company's books. In my view it would be better merely to require employers and trade unions to disclose to their employees or their members, as the case may be, appropriate financial information as envisaged in the Industrial Relations Act 1971 (in respect of employers) rather than impose this administrative burden on trade unions.
9.45 p.m.
Lord Renton: I assume that noble Lords opposite accept that Clause 6 is desirable and are trying to improve it.
Noble Lords: No!
Lord Renton: Not so: I am surprised at that in view of the strong arguments put forward in the Green Paper for making unions accountable to their members.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: I can perhaps put it briefly. In respect of the inspection of accounting records, requiring bodies generally, as the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, said, to have a rule of reasonable proportion in that area seems sensible. It

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is the rigidity, extent and absurd proportions of the clause that we cannot possibly accept.
Lord Renton: In other words, the noble Lord accepts the principle that there should be some right of inspection by union members. That means that the unions must keep the accounts in such a way that they reveal what needs to be revealed.
I shall deal with the four items mentioned in the amendment. First, there is information,
"the disclosure of which would be against the interests of national security".
There, I think the noble Lord has a point.
Lord McCarthy: I think that the noble Lord is talking about the next amendment. We are dealing with Amendment No. 42.
Lord Renton: I must apologise to the Committee for jumping the gun.
Lord Trefgarne: My noble friend Lord Dundee will reply to the amendment in a few moments, but I wonder whether I may be allowed to intervene briefly on one point. The noble Lord has spoken on many occasions about the great reservoir of cases to which I have referred. I did not say that I would reveal that reservoir to noble Lords. I undertook to write to the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, about the international implications, and that I shall do; but the reservoir is for occasional revelation in small parts.
Lord McCarthy: That is the problem that we have with the noble Lord. We asked him two questions on virtually the same basis. We asked, "Can you tell us more about your statement concerning other countries that do such things?" He said, fairly and openly, "Yes, I will tell you more. I will not burden the Committee with it. I will write to you." Is that right?
Lord Trefgarne: That is correct.
Lord McCarthy: I ask the Minister another question. I say, "What about all the vague statements you have made about all the other cases you have; this reservoir of cases. Can you not send us a letter about that?" The Minister says that he cannot. I do not see why.
Lord Trefgarne: I believe that good things come in small packages. I shall allow the noble Lord the occasional look as we go through the Bill.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: With great respect to the noble Lord, we are not concerned; it is the Committee that is concerned. Does he not feel that there is some lack of courtesy to the Committee to say, "I have the evidence. We will debate it, but I shall not show it to you so that you can debate it with me. I will only let it come out in small packages"? We are not concerned. We want the Committee and the world to see this great fund of evidence and then debate it. That is all we ask.
Lord Trefgarne: I described two of the cases during discussions on an earlier amendment. Other Members of the Committee were as disturbed by those cases as I was. It would not be right to reveal a whole raft of cases now. I do not intend to do that.
Lord McCarthy: With great respect, there is a real difference, and the noble Lord knows that well. There is a difference in coming to this place and mentioning names which we have not had before; unions which we have not been told about before; making statements and allegations which we have no opportunity of checking; and saying, "I will dribble some more out for you next time, lads". There is all the difference in the world between that and telling us what they are now, before we debate the issue, so as to allow us to make our own investigations.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Lord Dean of Beswick: But is that not the tenor of all the proceedings on the Bill? I was present earlier when the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, who, unfortunately, is not present, condemned an Opposition amendment out of hand. He said that if it were accepted it would be fraught with difficulty and that he could see the unions abusing it. But he did not give one single example of how it could be abused. We are almost in the game which we were in with the local government Bill of people being condemned when the case was in no way proven. As a basic trade unionist, not an ex-trade union official but as somebody who joined a trade union at the age of 15 and is still in one 50 years later, I have always believed in the openness of the books and making available the fullest information possible. I say that as a former secretary for 22 years of a very large Labour club. Everything was available to be shown within a reasonable period.
I think that some parts of this Bill are almost like the people who believe in a majority punishment, like the schoolteacher who has one or two recalcitrant pupils but rather than punish them decides to punish the whole class. Most of this argument is based on the fact that some unions may at times misbehave. I happen to belong to a trade union which, so far as I can remember, has always believed in the ballot box by post. That is where I stand, I believe in that. However it seems to me that the Government are going along without any concrete proof and continually moving the winning post.
It is not good enough. I recognise the Minister's ability and, although I disagree with him on most matters, I always think he does a good job in trying to explain his case. But in this instance he has failed lamentably. It is not good enough in Committee on a Bill as important as this that he should say, "I'll let you know, I'll think about it." The answers should be given at the Dispatch Box, if there are answers.
We have the situation where, because of the pressure over the years, over the last two or three Sessions the Government have been pushing through too much legislation and not giving adequate time for debate. I read in this morning's paper that there will be some further major amendments to the Housing

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Bill when it comes here. Those amendments will not be debated in another place, we shall debate them here first of all. I should find it indefensible if I were a Peer sitting on the other side, even if I believed that the Government were right, that the House should be treated in this manner. I would expect the Minister dealing with this issue to be a little more forthcoming than he has been. I think he has been uncharacteristically flippant in what he has said and I hope he will be more forthcoming in his answers to what has been said.
Lord Mottistone: I find this recent plea, which is what it sounds like, from the other side very strange. It does not seem to bear any relationship to the amendment under discussion. We are talking about Amendment No. 42 but, so far as I can gather, the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, was inviting my noble friend to tell him all that he is ever going to say in relation to all the other amendments now—
Lord McCarthy: No, no.
Lord Mottistone: The time to tell people evidence to back up something is in relation to particular amendments. This is a very strange sort of thing. I am quite sure that noble Lords think they are doing the right thing and I do not wish to go on with this argument. What I want to do is to encourage the Committee to get on with the amendment and to take amendments in an orderly fashion. Let us get through them, finish them and, if we have nothing else to talk about, let us not introduce strange subjects which relate to the Bill as a whole.
Lord Dean of Beswick: That is not—
Lord Mottistone: For heaven's sake, let us get on with the amendment.
The Earl of Dundee: I am very grateful to all members of the Committee who have contributed to this amendment. Perhaps I may say first of all in reply to the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, who referred to analogies with companies, what I also said to the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, a moment ago in connection with the previous amendments that these really are misleading. I do not think that they get us very far. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, and I take the same view on that.
The noble Lord, Lord Rochester, also said he thought that what we are proposing in the clause—for the right of inspection to go back for six years—would be a serious burden on unions. I cannot agree with that. The noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, made the same point. But surely in a modern age with computerisation we cannot seriously feel that what we are proposing—just to extend the right of inspection for a few more years than already exists—will be a serious imposition.
Perhaps the key issue was introduced by my noble friend Lord Renton when he referred to the right of
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inspection itself and the principle that union members should have that right and should be able to carry it out properly for several years and not just for a short interim period. That is why I feel that if this current amendment were to be adopted it would be contradictory to the aim of the clause. The whole foundation of the clause is that a member may need access not just to his union's annual return to the certification officer, which is a right that he already has under Sections 11(4) and 11(5) of the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act 1974, but also access to the accounting records on which that return should have been based. With those remarks, I hope that the Members opposite may feel able to withdraw the amendment.
Lord McCarthy: Of course we are not surprised that we receive such answers. I only have three points to make to the three speakers who have addressed us on this matter during the debate. We would support the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, but unfortunately we cannot put those kinds of amendments into this Bill because that is not in the Long Title. There is a wonderful system here. If one tries to introduce amendments that are not in the Long Title, one is told that that is not in the Long Title. Then one asks if the Long Title can be changed, and one is told "only at the end". When one changes the Long Title, one cannot put any more amendments down. So we cannot do anything about all the very good ideas that the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, has.
We should like to say that the disclosure provisions in this Bill should be imposed upon employers for six years and upon all their establishments too. That would be wonderful, but we have to deal with what we have got.
I have to say, really as much to the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, as to the Minister—I do not know whether the noble Lord was in his place when the altercation between the two sides arose—that the Minister mentioned a reservoir of disgraceful things which trade unions did. He said that they acted coercively in relation to their members and that he would let us have in good time one or two examples of that whenever he thought that it would liven up the debates. We are asking whether we can have them now so that we can go away and investigate them in advance and be in something like an equal position with the Minister when he pops out the next two or three. Up until now the Minister has said that he will not do that.
I do not know quite what to say to the noble Earl, Lord Dundee. It is just like the principle "Let them eat cake". When someone comes to the Committee and says that this matter is a question of computerisation, he has clearly never seen a branch secretary on a Saturday night struggling to make his books add up.
Lord Dean of Beswick: I do not think that Ministers are aware of the percentage of trade union subscriptions which are collected voluntarily at factory level. They represent quite immense sums of

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money. The possibility of introducing a computer there is completely nonsensical and farcical. In continuing in his reply will my noble friend advise the Minister and the Government how to deal with that situation? As an ex-shop steward I can say that that would make a complete nonsense of what the Government are proposing here as regards accuracy of information and submission. Anyone who thinks otherwise is living in cloud-cuckoo-land.
Lord McCarthy: My noble friend is absolutely right. These activities are carried out by ordinary
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citizens in boilersuits in their spare time. To say that all one has to do is to install computers is the Marie Antoinette answer. It is saying, "Let them eat cake". We have to withdraw this amendment but we still believe that it should be accepted.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: Perhaps I may—
Noble Lords: The amendment has been withdrawn.
10 p.m.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton Lord Wedderburn of Charlton moved Amendment No. 43:
Page 9, line 28, at end insert—
("(2A) Nothing in this section shall require a trade union to disclose any information

(a) the disclosure of which would be against the interests of national security;

(b) communicated to it in confidence or obtained in consequence of the confidence reposed in it by another person;

(c) relating specifically to an individual, unless he consents to its being disclosed, or

(d) obtained by it for the purpose of bringing, presenting or defending legal proceedings.").

The noble Lord said: Perhaps I should keep an eye on my noble friend Lord Houghton and not withdraw this amendment too quickly!
All of these amendments illustrate the absurdity of the clause. However, this amendment puts four points to the Government. Whatever else the vast range of obligatory disclosures on inspection to any member at branch or union level contains, have the Government not forgotten several things? The four instances which would provide exemption from such disclosure appear in different forms in a number of statutes. For example, they appear in Section 18 of the Employment Protection Act 1975, which gives exemption from disclosure by an employer in collective bargaining.
The first of the four instances is a disclosure of anything that would be against the interests of national security. I do not know whether the Minister has applied his mind to that. However, it is extraordinary to find that the Government have overlooked the matter. We are not yet six years away from the attempt to crush trade unionism at GCHQ. I am happy to say that trade unionism still exists in the public service both there and elsewhere.
No doubt the accounting and other books and records of such branches would include many things. Perhaps the Minister can imagine a branch at such a sensitive government centre which contains two members, Mr. Wrong and Mr. Right. The subscription stubs and other records, or no doubt the computerised data that the noble Earl would require it to keep, may record many things. If a member comes along and sees all those pieces of information and there on Mr. Wrong's record are the words: "Didn't pay last week; gone to Moscow or Australia", that is plainly a piece of information which should not be disclosed. It might be arguable that it could be kept, with permission, by the authority employing that person. I give that example but there are thousands of others.
Secondly, have the Government thought about confidence? They seem to be rather keen on "duties of confidence" in other respects and elsewhere not a million miles away from the instance which I have just given. I have used the words in the Employment Protection Act. Perhaps the Minister would prefer to use other words. Should anything which is communicated in confidence or obtained in consequence of the confidence reposed in another person be in some way protected from disclosure?
Thirdly, the Government also seem to be very keen on—they usually try to suggest that we are not keen on it but we are—the individual's interests. We believe firmly in the privacy of information about individuals, which is so much at risk in this computerised age and which is the reason we have the Data Protection Act. Perhaps, for example, the subscription records may say: "Could not pay because his wife has left him". Why should some other member be allowed to see that? Is there any reason?
Lastly, I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Renton, whether or not he agrees with the amendment, accepts that it is a perfectly normal rule that information obtained for the purpose of bringing, preventing or defending legal proceedings in some form or other is normally under a heading of privilege, and that any ambiguity as to whether the clause allows a member to demand to see such matters should be cured by paragraph (d). It seems to us that paragraphs (a), (b), (c) and (d) are normal, natural exceptions which we are surprised the Government have left out. I beg to move.
Lord Renton: Perhaps I may deal with the four paragraphs of the amendment seriatim. I think it is very unlikely that any question of national security would arise on the accounts of trade unions, even of a trade union involved in making armaments. However, to the extent that national security might arise, I see no harm in the provision which prevented disclosure.
When it comes to confidence, I do not think that a case has been made out. The essence of accounts is that they should be open to inspection. Glasnost—however it is pronounced—or openness are essential to accounts. At first sight, paragraph (c),
"relating specifically to an individual, unless he consents"
looks as though it might be worth having. However, when one considers the matter further one finds among the conclusions of the Green Paper, set out in paragraph 3.28 on page 15, that:
"A further cause for concern is the introduction by at least one major union of rules to indemnify its officials for the consequences of any actions whether legal or not".
I do not know how anything like that could be brought to light if there is to be a provision of the kind proposed in this amendment. In any event, if a member of a trade union considers that a pecuniary favour has been granted to another member of the trade union, is the inquiry to be frustrated because the member in whose favour the pecuniary advantage has been given refuses to give his consent? Surely, therefore, paragraph (c) cannot be right.
As regards paragraph (d), the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, is quite right in saying that there are certain documents which are privileged from disclosure in a legal action provided that they are prepared for the purposes of that action. On the other hand, any documents which arose before action and were not prepared for that purpose have to be disclosed to the other side under the normal rules of procedure. Paragraph (d) does not make it clear which of the two classes of privileged document or documents liable to disclosure are being referred to.

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On balance, in spite of what the noble Lord said with great sincerity, I do not think that there is very much in this amendment which should compel the Government to accept it.
The Earl of Dundee: I am grateful to noble Lords for their contributions and to the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, for his explanation of what he has in mind. Equally, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Renton who answered the noble Lord's points far better than I could and put them in context very well.
I should like to begin by telling the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, what the clause is about and what it is not about. The clause is not about the disclosure to union members of any specific type of information held by the union other than information which forms part of the union's accounting records which Section 10 of the 1974 Act requires every union to keep.
Those accounting records to which the clause applies are required to be records,
"necessary to give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the trade union … and to explain its transactions".
Nothing in any such records should be denied to the union member. At this point I should like to endorse the remarks of my noble friend Lord Renton who made a connection between glasnost (however one pronounces it) and the right to inspect accounts in an open and straighforward manner.
As regards the content of accounting records, unions have been keeping accounting records as required by Section 10 of the 1974 Act for over 10 years. They are of course needed so that the union's transactions, assets and liabilities can be properly audited.
The Institute of Chartered Accountants has issued guidance on auditing standards, part of which covers the special factors to be considered in the application of those standards to trade union audits. That guidance recognises that there may be considerable diversity as regards the nature of and information to be found in trade union accounting records needed for the purposes of audit.
I am perfectly ready to accept that different unions' proper accounting records as kept for the purposes of Section 10 of the 1974 Act may contain different sorts of information. Some records may contain some information that would come within one or more of the categories set out in the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn. But if that information has to be included in a union's accounting records,
"as necessary to give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the trade union … and to explain its transactions",
the member must have a right of access to it nonetheless.
Regarding the other aspect which I think lies behind the noble Lord's amendment—namely that of the possible unlawful use of information obtained by a union member, whatever information a union member obtains from his union's accounting records—he will not be able to make illegal or
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unlawful use of It without risking the penalties that may follow from such action. The law recognises that a person who has received information in confidence is not allowed to take unfair advantage of it and that an injured party is entitled to seek relief for breach of confidence.
In summary, the concern underlying this amendment is misplaced. The new subsection proposed is neither necessary to achieve nor compatible with the intended effects of the clause.
Lord Dean of Beswick: Once again I ask why the Government insist on double standards. Is it not a fact that in claims for certain benefits across the whole spectrum, the previous 12 months are always indicated as the norm for what will be claimed and what will be paid, on the basis that it is impossible to keep up-to-date records for such a large volume of people—which bearing in mind the number of trade unionists involved is possibly still in the region of 9 million?
Why do the Government expect the trade union movement, which has nothing like the same resources at its disposal for keeping records up to date, to have its books examined at such short notice? Why do they expect the trade union movement to carry out an exercise and produce a result that they themselves are totally incapable of producing in spite of all their resources, a result that in no way and in no respect is finite or definite about what the trade union movement has under its control?
The excuse that has always been given by the Government takes this form: "We cannot pay this; we cannot pay that. We cannot pay at a certain time. We cannot pay it because it is so difficult to collate everything. There is no way that we can do it". I remember that excuse being given before the DHSS was computerised. It is now supposed to be totally computerised, but the same comments are still put forward. When a realistic argument is put forward to the effect that the Government can now do things much more quickly, they always come back with the same excuse: "We are sorry but physically we still cannot do it". Why are Her Majesty's Government asking the trade union movement to do something which they themselves cannot do?
10.15 p.m.
Lord Renton: It may comfort the noble Lord to reflect that nearly all our legislation is passed not in order to govern the actions of the best but to ensure that those people or bodies who fall below the standards of the best reach the standards of the best. That is one of the main purposes of this Bill.
Lord Dean of Beswick: The noble Lord has encapsulated the matter in a nutshell. The arguments put by the other side are that it is to catch the few who are not behaving. The same arguments were put during discussion on the Local Government Bill: "Some are behaving naughtily; we shall punish them all". The situation is like that of the schoolteacher who has one or two naughty pupils but who decides to punish the class in order to catch the guilty ones.

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What the noble Lord, Lord Renton, has just said was similar to what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, said earlier. It is like saying, "We are protecting you from your own iniquities. In other words, we shall hang you tonight because you may be shot tomorrow morning". The arguments from the other side are not good enough on this occasion.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: Perhaps I may address one or two remarks to the Minister and to the noble Lord, Lord Renton. The noble Lord, Lord Renton, referred to the fact that the legislation that one passes is normally measured to the gravity of the problem and the danger. Until we are able to swim freely in the reservoir of the Minister's experience, we do not know what that problem is.
With great respect to the noble Earl, the Green Paper does not disclose even a mere trickle of a problem on abuse. Trade unions have been keeping accounting records since long before 1974. The Act of 1871 required every trade union to keep accounting records if it was registered, and under that dispensation most were. I believe that I am right to say—but we can check it—that Citrine on trade union law reveals that in 100 years of the existence of that Act only three—or it may be two—serious complaints were ever made. Two cases went to the High Court. Both were discussed in the recent case of Hughes in 1985. A very small amount of alleged abuse took place even then. The Green Paper does not give us a stream of facts on abuse in accounting records now.
Turning to the points made on the amendment, I accept what the noble Earl said about a true and fair view. I believe that I quote the noble Lord, Lord Renton, correctly when he spoke about ensuring that the bad do not fall below the standards of the best. When I apply that argument to the Government's record in legislation, and the Financial Services Act that they will not bring into force, I begin to wonder whether they have double standards in this respect. However, if one makes that point, one also needs to state why the extent of the inspection is needed.
My noble friends Lord Dean and Lord McCarthy have tried to ask the Government whether they realise the enormous harassment of trade union sections and branch administration that this will cause. The fact that the Government do not answer that question is capable of the interpretation that they know it and do not care; or even that it is intended. Therefore perhaps by Report stage they will have an answer to that point that means something.
The noble Earl said that on the issue of information disclosed, members cannot make unlawful use of such information without penalty. With respect to him that is a tautology. I am not concerned with unlawful use without penalty. I am concerned with use that does damage in other ways. I agree that some parts of the amendment are concerned with matters that could be unlawful.
I accept what the noble Lord, Lord Renton, said about the drafting of this clause in one particular. I do not accept his comment on paragraph (a) because Civil Service unions will undoubtedly have
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information in and about their accounting records as defined by the 1974 Act that will be concerned with national security—there is no doubt whatsoever about that—and even their membership in some cases. I have had conversation with those who are good trade unionists and good civil servants at GCHQ and they would not tell me whether they or anybody else was in the union to begin with, and they would not have done so before the unfortunate events of 1984. They would not tell me anything about their work which would be related to which union they were in.
Secondly, I think the noble Lord would have to accept that some kinds of confidential information might appear in the records, especially—here is the point on which I freely accept that the amendment must be looked at again—those that do not relate to trade union affairs. I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Renton, about paragraph (d). Subject to a few words I believe that:
"information … obtained … for the purpose of bringing, presenting or defending legal proceedings",
is a fairly good short way of producing the usual kind of formula or privilege; but on paragaphs (b) and (c) I agree with him. If we had this kind of debate more often instead of being told that we were raising issues to which the Government will say "No, no, no", we would advance a little further as a revising Chamber. I do not think that the Committee has acted as a revising Chamber for one minute tonight because the Government will not revise anything. If they will not revise anything in this Chamber there is nothing we can do.
The noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, seems very pleased with that. Of course he is, but perhaps when he is on this side of the Chamber he will not be so pleased.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: As the noble Lord has ventured to refer to me, I should perhaps say that so far from being pleased I was merely being amused.
Lord Renton: Before the noble Lord—
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: I shall reply first before giving way again, which I shall willingly do. I referred to the noble Lord because he made an interjection from a sedentary position. If he was amused, I am pleased. At least that is some profit to the evening.
I put now a serious matter to the noble Lord, Lord Renton. I should like his assistance on the amendment because I believe he will agree with us. There are matters in trade union accounting records, as defined by the 1974 Act, which do not relate primarily to trade union affairs. I gave an example of family affairs. Matters can easily be found in branch papers concerning what is happening in Brother So-and-So's family. Such information should be protected.
I accept what the noble Lord said, that these words go wider. The point about the individual could, as it were, knock the rest of the clause for six if it were taken in its literal sense. I hope that the noble Lord will join us in finding a narrower formula where the protection of privacy concerns matters not related to

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trade union membership and the relationship of union and member. I hope that this is a matter that the Government will consider a little more because from their Front Bench no argument has been advanced against this proposal other than they do not accept it. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Renton, for pointing out these other matters and ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Renton: Before the noble Lord withdraws his amendment, may I point out that he was quite wrong about our not being a revising Chamber here today. Goodness me, he and I were overwhelmed by the number of government amendments intended to improve Clause 1.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: I think we should leave it at that.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 44 not moved.]
Baroness Turner of Camden Baroness Turner of Camden moved Amendment No. 45:
Page 9, line 50, at end insert—
("(5B) Where a trade union receives a request from a member under this section it may apply to the Court for an order that the member shall protect the confidentiality of all or part of the records inspected, and on such application the Court may take such order as it thinks appropriate.").
The noble Baroness said: As has been indicated by my noble friend Lord Wedderburn, this is a very important and in many ways a very unfair clause. As we have seen, Clause 6 provides a right for a union member to have access to the accounting records of the union as a whole and every branch and section of the union at places where the records are normally kept. The member may be accompanied by an accountant. The accountant may be required to agree to confidentiality as a professional individial. The member however is under no such constraint. Moreover, as was evident from the previous debate, the term "accounting records" clearly goes much further than the annual audited accounts which are normally published and available. If they did not do so there would be no necessity to include this provision in the new legislation.
Every institution has material which it rightly regards as confidential. Among those are detailed staffing records. Every employer, particularly a good employer, will from time to time give assistance to employees, perhaps with ex gratia payments to alleviate distress following bereavement or other domestic crises. In my union we frequently did that for our own employees, clerical as well as officials. In addition there are records of pension payments, union mortgages, personal records and so forth.
If the clause is not amended it will give dissident members, perhaps acting on behalf of an outside agency hostile to the union, access to employees' records. If so, trade union employees could be subject to gross invasions of privacy in a way that other employees are not. Furthermore, branch accounting records, and in some unions the national records, will include details of which members are in compliance with their contributions to the union and which are not. That matter has already been touched upon by
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my noble friend Lord Wedderburn. In some disputes, particularly those concerning recognition, that would be of great value to an employer. Sometimes individuals belong to a union but they do not wish their employer or anyone else to know. Why should that information be made available to another member? It is information that the union holds in confidence.
Another aspect is the legal service provided by the union. In my union it is customary to keep records of sums of money won for individuals following accidents at work or in other legal cases. Often the individual who has benefited does not wish other people to know how much has been awarded. Why should all or part of such records be available for inspection if there is to be no duty of confidentiality imposed on the member who inspects?
The purpose of the amendment is to enable the union to apply to a court in order to protect the confidentiality of such material. I believe that to be eminently reasonable and I commend the amendment to your Lordships' Committee.
The Earl of Dundee: I appreciate the points raised by the noble Baroness as regards confidentiality. However, I believe that the amendment would impose undue restriction on union members. For instance, a member may need to disclose the details of what he has found in a legal action against the union to which it was relevant. In such a case the union's perception of the confidentiality of the accounting records would not and should not prevent him from doing so. Again, in the absence of a court action, he may wish to bring to the attention of his fellow members or even the public what he had discovered as part of some complaint against his union involving the assertion that union rules or statutory requirements had been breached. I do not believe that there is a good reason for seeking to prevent him from so doing.
I should like to say a few words about the nature of accounting records in that context. Section 10 of the 1974 Act does not provide a list of the documents or non-documentary records that would fall within the definition of "accounting records". It specifies that the records kept must be:
"such records as are necessary to give a true and fair view of the state of the affairs of the trade union … and to explain its transactions".
It may be helpful to the noble Baroness if I also comment on what is likely to happen in the case of a dispute where it would be ultimately for the courts to decide what did or did not constitute such accounting records. In the absence of a court judgment a union in doubt about the matter may well ask its auditors for their view or seek a legal opinion. Bearing those considerations in mind, I would expect such records to consist of the records of completed financial transactions. Such completed financial transactions may be unlikely to contain information that would come within the definition of confidentiality which the amendments propose to apply.
The clause makes it quite clear that a member has the right of access to inspect accounting records only if those records relate to a period when he was a member of the union. There are various other limitations to ensure that that right is not abused. The

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protections for unions in connection with the clause are, I believe, already quite sufficient, and there can be no question of adding to them in the way proposed.
10.30 p.m.
Baroness Turner of Camden: I find that a very unsatisfactory reply. If one looks at the amendment, it says that the union may apply to the court for an order and the court may make such order as it thinks appropriate. In other words, if the union is approached by a member and the information that is being requested is confidential, then the union can apply to the court and the court decides to make an order if it thinks it appropriate. That seems to me eminently reasonable. And, quite frankly, when we come to talk about proper accounting records, I gather that the present legislation compels the unions to keep proper accounting records with respect to their transactions, assets and liabilities.
The wording in the Bill is much wider. It would give a dissenting member every opportunity for thinking that the sort of information to which I have referred, which is eminently confidential and would be regarded by most employers as confidential if it related to employees—perhaps loans or grants to employees who are under stress or something of that nature—was available to him. In my view, that is not satisfactory. I do not see why the amendment which I believe is very reasonable could not be accepted—
The Earl of Dundee: If the noble Baroness will give way, I listened carefully to what she said. I had not appreciated one aspect of what she had in mind—that it would be for the union to apply to the court and that the amendment would not be triggered unless the court took the initiative to trigger it. I am prepared to take this away and have a look at it. I believe that it is a constructive approach. I will take it away and look at it without commitment.
Baroness Turner of Camden: On the basis of that assurance, I am willing to beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 46 not moved.]
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton Lord Wedderburn of Charlton moved Amendment No. 47:
Page 10, line 36, leave out ("or of any branch or section of that union").
The noble Lord said: We come to perhaps the most serious or one of the more serious issues in the clause. It has been made clear by the Government in another place and here tonight that the clause will require the union to permit a member of any one branch of the union to demand the accounting records of the union, of the branch or of a section. That is sometimes called the Land's End/John o'Groats principle; namely, that any member of any branch can go anywhere and demand the six years' records if he has been a member for six years.
My noble friend Lady Turner was right to point out to the Government—because this happened in another place—that the relevant definition in Section 10 of the 1974 Act is not so much that the records
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necessary to give a true and fair view must be kept. Section 10(2)(a) states that the union must keep proper accounting records with respect to its transactions, liabilities and assets.
That leads to the second point to which these amendments are addressed. I speak also to Amendments Nos. 48 and 52. The three amendments would achieve two things. They would cut out the branch records where they apply to branch property. Whenever I say "branch", I include section. However, the amendments would make even clearer the tie between this clause and Section 10 of the 1974 Act; namely, that the union must keep—since the Government have rejected all other amendments—records relating to its transactions, assets and liabilities as Section 10 states, wherever those records are held. That leads to a distinction which, in my reading of the Committee stage of another place, I was not sure that the Government understood, to put it bluntly.
Union property—that is, the property held by the union's trustees or by other trustees who hold for the union—may be held at a variety of places. My noble friends have spoken about the work that is done at so many levels by lay members and, voluntarily, by officials who frequently are trustees either in name or perhaps as branch treasurer and who holds certain funds.
Most of the union property will of course be held by the union trustees or by trustees of some unions at a regional level. But the union property is totally different from branch property; or to put it another way, it frequently happens that branch trustees hold both branch property and union property. For example, if one takes a union, as in one of the printing unions, where the subscriptions as they come in are automatically divided between what belongs to the union and what belongs to the branch (quite apart from the chapel) one immediately gets either one set of trustees holding two sorts of property or, sometimes, two different trustees, or a treasurer and the branch trustees. In other words, branch property is not union property.
I do not have to argue that because recently the courts have held it in two or three decisions, which I should be happy to discuss, in connection with sequestration. It arose in one of the NGA cases and it arose in a SOGAT case. The union was in contempt of court. The court ordered sequestration and the sequestrators went in and seized the lot. In both cases a sizeable branch—in one case based at Manchester, with a very long history and more than its own independence in some ways within the organisation and certainly its own property—applied to the courts successfully to have that property released because it was not union property.
The first point to note about the clause is that there is no distinction between union and branch property. What has been said by the Government in another place, and I think here tonight, makes it quite clear that the Government intend to get at records relating to branch property as well as union property. If that is so I ask: why? There can be no reason for other than branch members getting at branch records. Of course the members have a right; they are the beneficiaries of the trust, if one wishes to put it in a

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legal form, but in trade union terms it is not necessary to put it like that.
It is obvious to a member of a branch that other members of the branch have a right to inspect the books of the treasurer or whichever officers under the rules hold the property. However, members of another branch inspecting on branch property is another matter. That needs special justification and the first amendment strikes that out by getting rid of those words, "branch or section".
The second set of amendments comes to the aid of the Government in the sense that they make doubly clear what may be clear in the clause at the moment, because the Government are probably in a muddle on this. If you apply Section 10 of the 1974 Act, as they did by amendment in another place, it looks as though you are covering only union property, because that is what Section 10 is about. Section 10, if one reads it, is about the union's records relating to its transactions, its liabilities, and so on.
Section 10(4) makes it even clearer, because it says that if the property is held at branch level for the union then any records kept by the branch of union property will be adequate. Were it not for the hour of the night I could give some practical examples of how this works, but I believe the case is made. The first of these amendments —namely, Amendment No. 47—gets rid of "branch or section", because it is there that the clause looks as though, albeit somewhat ambiguously because of its incorporation of Section 10, it is getting at branch property and branch records of branch property for members other than the members of that branch.
The second two amendments—namely, Amendments Nos. 48 and 51, which go together —reaffirm that if the clause is to operate at all —and we still believe that it is horrendously wide and oppressive—it should operate in relation to union property. I repeat that that can be union property usually held centrally or at district or region but it can be property held for the union as a whole. For example, it may be subscriptions held by branch trustees. I believe that to be a clear although a somewhat technical case.
If the Government genuinely believe what they put forward in another place, that they want to tie in this clause with Section 10 of the 1974 Act, then it is a case which they must accept on its own logic. The logic which I have put forward this evening only spells out the case that the Government made in an amendment in another place in bringing in Section 10 of the 1974 Act to govern Clause 6 of the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Renton: The noble Lord knows more about the organisation and the structure of trade unions than I. I have no reason to challenge the factual description that he has given the Committee of the holding of property by unions and by branches. It is implicit in what he said that both unions and branches have separate accounts.
From the point of view of the ordinary member who of necessity normally belongs to a branch rather than to the headquarters of the union, if he wants to find out what is happening to the branch to which he subscribes, surely we must provide that he is enabled
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to do so. The union is mainly the sum of its branches as regards the monetary funds of the union.
I believe the noble Lord is right in saying—but I am open to correction—that the first reference in Clause 6 to branches is in subsection (9)(a), which he seeks to amend. I do not believe the fact that there is no earlier reference should be held to nullify the effect of what has gone before. I understand that is what he suggests. I do not have with me my copy of the 1974 Act. Perhaps the noble Lord can confirm by reference to Section 10 of that Act whether there is anything in it which requires branches to keep accounts.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: There is nothing.
Lord Renton: In that case I believe it is a relevant factor for the Committee to bear in mind. It may be that in the light of what the noble Lord has said and the fact that Section 10 does not refer to branch property, paragraph (a) may on reflection by the Government need amplification. I hope that if the Government consider that to be so they will not depart from the proposition that branch accounts should be open to inspection by branch members.
10.45 p.m.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: I did not wish to mislead the noble Lord. He asked whether there was anything in Section 10 of the 1974 Act which referred to a duty on a branch to keep accounting records. The answer is, I think, no, but a few words should be added. Subsection (4) make two provisions. First, a branch, when it holds union property, may satisfy the union's obligation by keeping the records there. Secondly, as the noble Lord will know, a branch may be a separate trade union in itself. It is a difficult point because sometimes they are separate trade unions in law, although part of the national trade union. If that is so, then the duty falling upon them in that connection is to keep their own. So there are two riders to the "no", but I do not think they affect the substance of the answer to the noble Lord's question.
Lord Renton: I am much obliged to the noble Lord.
The Earl of Dundee: I was interested in the sense in which the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, pointed out to us that the ownership of union property can be construed differently from the ownership of branch property. He made the point that union and branch accounts could, and somtimes are, kept separately.
I think that the noble Lord, Lord Renton, put his finger on the point when he said that the purpose of our proposal is to enable the ordinary member to find out what is going on. The ordinary member cannot find out what is going on if he is simply confined to inspection at his own branch. It might be helpful if I were to expand on the kind of way in which the ordinary member can in practice find out what is going on.
A union member who has an interest in ensuring that the funds of the union are being correctly applied will clearly need access to the accounts of the union wherever they are held. His interest will extend beyond the funds which are centrally applied. There may also be particular circumstances which a

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member may wish to investigate—for example, where he believes his branch or section is being treated less favourably than others for improper reasons, or where he believes there to be a problem affecting a number of different branches or sections. To pursue such matters he needs to have access to the union's accounting records as they relate to such branches or sections. The noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, may feel that the interesting distinctions which he was drawing to our attention are transcended by the practical needs in the context of this clause.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: I am not sure where we are, except that I appreciate the Government are not going to accept our amendment. However, one gets used to that.
The amendments in a sense represented an attempt to clear up a point and an attempt to tease out just what is the intention of the Government. To take the second point first, it was not entirely clear in another place whether they really meant to cover the accounting records of all the hundreds of thousands of branches up and down the country for six years back. I remind your Lordships again of the definition. The accounting records must be kept with respect to transactions, assets and liabilities.
"Transactions" is very wide. If it means that all branch property is included in that, which is apparently what the noble Earl is saying, then we suggest that there is no justification. Most rule books of course provide for the revelation of branch records to branch members, but in the amendment to which we are about to come, where perhaps the point will be even more germane, that is not the Government case. Their case is the Lands End to John o'Groat's case; everyone from Lands End can inspect the John o'Groat's branch and vice versa, and the same will apply everywhere up and down the country. The question is; why? They say that members might want to bring an action againt the union. That is usually the idea in mind, and I see that, but it does not seem to us to be a very good reason. That is the first point. The branch case has not been made out for branch property.
Where the branch is holding union property—and more usually union property will be held at the level of union headquarters—there the Government have put something in subection (9)(a) which seems to restrict the paragraph to union property. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Renton, and I did not disagree on this point. It is the definition of the subsection that is in issue. Therefore we have references, if I may take the relevent words:
"to accounting records of that union, or of any branch or section — as are, or purport to be, records which are required to be kept by the union under Section 10 of the 1974 Act".
However, a branch does not have to keep such records as its own property under the 1974 Act. I thought that the Government would say tonight, on having successfully included that amendment, that they were not going to press for branch property. However, they now say that as they have got the amendment in they will proceed to do likewise in respect of branch property. The next thing to happen will be that on Report they will be seeking to take that amendment out—an amendment which they
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introduced in another place. I hope that they do not do so because there is a fighting chance, as the words stand, that at least the inspection of branch property will not be unlimited.
I thought it would be better if we cleared the matter up; got rid of the branch as the repository of the obligation; dealt with the union as the Government wanted in incorporating Section 10, and then, although we would not like it—we think the clause is a bad one—we would at least know where we stand.
Lord Renton: Even if the Government have not got the matter right and fulfilled their own intention of enabling branch accounts to be inspected, would the noble Lord not agree that branch members are more likely to be interested in the inspection of their branch accounts, rather than union accounts? Therefore their right to do so should be made abundantly clear.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: The common ground between the noble Lord and those of us on this side of the Committee is even greater. Branch members should have access to their own branch records, albeit I should prefer a framework which the law used to have within which the rules had to come and not this rigid notion. Nevertheless, each union has different rules. They provide broadly that members of the branch have a right to know what is going on. As a rule, if a branch secretary tried to conceal what was going on within that branch he would get short shrift. They may also be genuinely interested in the accounting records of the union, although, like my noble friend Lord McCarthy, I would restrict that to the date of the last published accounts. Once the union has published its accounts for the year, that is fair.
The Green Paper made a much better case on this than the Government Front Bench have done tonight. It said that something nasty may have happened since the last filed accounts, so you ought to look at the last accounting records. I did not agree with the way it was put, but the noble Lord, Lord Renton, and I could easily have found agreement on that proposition. But that is not what we are presented with now. We are presented with a gigantic explosion of inspections by people.
Let us face the fact the trade union movement has known since the days of Osborne, and others like him, while it has had the economic lead, that every branch secretary or general secretary up and down the union knows that there are people trying to find out things to which they would not normally have access. My noble friend Lady Turner of Camden has referred to many such people this evening. Their purposes in so doing are, let us say, not friendly to the union. Of course the same is true of all organisations. They know people who, if they got to know certain things, would not use them in a kindly way.
Lord Dean of Beswick: Will my noble friend give way briefly? As a member of the second largest trade union in the country, the AEU, is he not aware that every branch of that union annually elects its auditors and trustees to examine the books on behalf of its members? Is he further aware that very few, if any, branches of the AEU are property owners? Of course the national union is, by virtue of its district offices.

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Does my noble friend not agree that the general picture, in most cases, is that the overwhelming number of trade unions do not have masses of property situated all over the place? Are we not, once again, using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut?
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: I am grateful to my noble friend. There will be branches of some unions that have offices and so on; but for the most part it is branch funds that matter. That is the main point.
I put two points for the Government to consider on Report. I am sorry if the noble Lord, Lord Renton, feels that I have been helpful to the Government in trying to get the clause right. We are not concerned merely to oppose in the sense of saying that it is a bad clause; we are concerned with the clauses for a special reason. We believe that the Government do not show any consideration, or much knowledge of what goes in the administration of a real trade union. Many of the clauses will make the life of those who contribute, often in their own time, difficult. When there are no explanations for the clauses, we become somewhat suspicious—we are not usually suspicious people—of the intentions behind what will obviously be capable of harassment.
There are those, as I said, such as the Economic League, which make a practice of giving information about union members to employers and so forth. We know that there are those people who will be put up to demand inspection of a vast amount of information. It should be limited to reasonable proportions.
I repeat that branch funds and property and therefore branch accounting records should not be within the clause. They are dealt with perfectly well in branch rules for the members of the branch. Secondly, if it is the case, as the Government argued when they introduced the amendment into subsection (9)(a) in another place—they made a big case of it—that they want the clause to be coterminous in its impact with Clause 10, let them look again at subsection (9)(a) to see whether there is perhaps virtue in the second and third amendments to which I am speaking. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 48 not moved.]
Baroness Faithfull Baroness Faithfull moved Amendment No. 49:
Page 10, line 39, at end insert ("except that accounting records of a limited company through which a trade union carries on any commercial activity shall not, for the purposes of this Act and the 1974 Act, be treated as accounting records of that trade union;")
The noble Baroness said: I shall be brief. As already stated on innumerable occasions, Clause 6 makes provisions for trade unions to keep accountancy records and to make those records available for inspection by individual members of the trade union. But some trade unions have certain of their activities carried out through a limited company. For instance, the Royal College of Nursing, which is a trade union, carries out some activities through Scutari Projects, a publishing company which publishes a professional paper for the Royal College of Nursing. A rival firm,
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Macmillan Press, publishes the Nursing Times and would have access to the commercial company acting for the Royal College of Nursing.
The amendment provides that the records of the limited company, Scutari, would not fall within Clause 6. The Companies Act may cover the contingency, but that is not certain. From the debate in the other place, I understand that the Secretary of State took the view that a limited company's accountancy records probably did not fall within Clause 6, but he was not certain. The amendment would put the matter beyond all doubt. I beg to move.
Lord McCarthy: I support the amendment. As the noble Baroness said, this is the Royal College of Nursing's amendment. As a special body, the RCN has got out of nine-tenths of the Bill, and it wants to get out of this bit. Since we believe that there is no justification for the clause, we must support the RCN in its desire to get out of the Bill altogether.
The Earl of Dundee: Clause 6 creates, as we know, a member's right in respect of access to his union's accounting records. It does not provide for access to the accounting records of any other body. Limited companies through which trade unions carry on commercial activities, assuming they are companies in their own right, cannot be trade unions. So it is already the case that the provisions of the 1974 Act and those of Clause 6 have no impact on their affairs. Simply for that reason I would ask my noble friend if she would see fit to withdraw the amendment.
11 p.m.
Baroness Seear: Why are the Government so resistant to the belt and braces approach occasionally? If there really is any doubt in people's minds, what harm does it do to put something into this Act, so that people do not have to go to a number of different Acts to find out what their position is? It cannot do any harm and it could well do some good. Can the Government really not accept this?
The Earl of Dundee: I take the noble Baroness's point that even if this is irrelevant, perhaps there is sometimes a case for irrelevance if it gives people peace of mind. I should perhaps say to the noble Baroness that I would at this stage be perfectly happy to take the matter away and, without commitment, see if I can come back with something which might be to her satisfaction.
Baroness Faithfull: I rise quickly to my feet to say that under those circumstances I shall reconsider the matter, discuss it and take legal advice. I am very grateful to my noble friend and to the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, as well as the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord McCarthy Lord McCarthy moved Amendment No. 50:
Page 11, line 1, leave out from ("construed") to end of line 6 and insert ("as creating a duty to comply with a request in relation to the accounting records of a branch or section of a trade union where the request is made by a person who was not a member of that branch or

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section either at the time of his request or at a time during the period to which the records relate.").
The noble Lord said: I think it is necessary to point out precisely where this comes in the Bill. We are dealing with subsection (10), which states:
"Nothing in this section shall be construed as preventing a duty to comply with a request made in relation to the accounting records of a branch or section of a trade union from arising where the request is made by a person who, although he was a member of the union at the time of his request and at a time during the period to which the records relate, was not a member of that branch".
We want to rewrite that subsection so that it reads:
"Nothing in this section shall be construed as creating a duty to comply with a request in relation to the accounting records of a branch or section of a trade union where the request is made by a person who was not a member of that branch or section either at the time of his request or at a time during the period to which the records relate."
In other words, as the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, has said, this is the amendment to do away with the Lands End to John o'Groat's aspect of the clause. It is talking merely about branch property or branch information, branch accounts. We do not see why unions which very often have very different kinds of accounting methods at branch level, and which would not normally be expected to keep their records at branch level for six years, should be expected to do all this and necessarily to keep them in a standard form, the precise description of which we do not yet know, because that will emerge over time.
Any member from any part of the union can ask for the branch records or section records from a branch or section which he has never visited, which he knows nothing about, which does not negotiate his terms and conditions and which may consist in a large union of workers of a quite different category and type of work from the work he does. We do not see why the Government want it. This is in a literal sense a probing amendment: we are probing, we want to know why the Government are so keen to put in this bizarre provision.
The noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, said that the only justification in the Green Paper for anything in this clause is that part which says that maybe there is a justification for going back to the time when the last accounting records were made. That relates to the accounting records for the entire union. But here we are saying that we should go back six years in every single branch of the union and that access should be available to any individual member of the union who was a member at that time. We are saying that we are very suspicious about this.
I repeat that this is a probing amendment. We are not even certain that we believe—at least I am not certain that I believe—the Government when they say as they have to some extent said today that they are afraid of the misapplication of funds. The misapplication of funds concerns people if it occurs in their own branch or it concerns them if they believe that misapplication is on such a scale that it is a national problem. But why someone living in Lands End should be bothered about the misapplication of funds in John o'Groat's is something that I find extremely difficult to guess.
It seems to me that somewhere we are coming close to an atmosphere which I have felt overhanging this
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Bill from the beginning. That has come through quite often in the comments that the Ministers have made on this and previous clauses today. The suggestion is that something must be under the bed and that, if only the Government could place enough demands on unions somewhere, some more scandals would arise. The secret cornucopia which the Minister has and which he will empty out for us in dribs and drabs might get filled up. We are very suspicious and we do not see why this provision should be supported. I beg to move.
The Earl of Dundee: I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, is suspicious and I hope that I may be able to reassure him that he really has nothing to be suspicious of. The noble Lord refers to the John o'Groat's to Lands End problem as he calls it, but perhaps I may briefly remind the noble Lord and the Committee what would be the position if we were to accept this particular amendment.
If we did accept it I really think that we should see that it would run quite counter to the effect, and intention, of subsection (10). This subsection is essentially clarifying that nothing in the clause shall be construed as preventing a union from complying with a request made by a member of one branch or section to inspect the accounting records of another branch or section.
The amendment would reverse the effect of the subsection; a member's right to inspect branch or section accounting records would be confined to those which existed in the branch or section of which he was a member. That would be unacceptable. A member who has an interest in the way his union's funds are applied quite properly has an interest in the accounting records of the union wherever they are held.
Perhaps I may repeat what I said a moment ago regarding the fairly obvious practical example that would obtain where a member may believe that his branch or section is for improper reasons being treated less favourably than others or that there is a problem affecting a number of different branches or sections.
The noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, perhaps rather assumed that the only geographical distance that we have to consider is that between the far north of Scotland and the far south of England. But of course there are a numerous and infinite number of branches all over the country and I do not think that I can accept the nature of the difficulty which the noble Lord gives us to understand is reflected by his John o'Groat's to Lands End imagery.
I do not think that there is anything sinister or underhand about this clause or the Government's attitude to it. The matter is open and indeed my noble friend Lord Renton a moment ago put this very accurately when he compared the openness that we have in this clause with glasnost, which he attempted to pronounce. I shall not try to say too much on that in case I mispronounce it.
Baroness Seear: I do not understand why the Government are treating the trade union movement as if it were totally different from any other kind of organisation in the country. I do not know what

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happens in the Conservative Party but I can imagine the hullabaloo that would be let loose if constituency members in my own party went round looking into the accounts of constituencies in other parts of the country. I cannot think that the situation is very different in the Conservative Party. Does the Conservative Party allow its Kensington branch to go and poke its fingers into what is happening up in John o'Groat's? We have John o'Groat's on the brain—let us say Edinburgh. Why should unions be treated in such a totally different way to other institutions?
I noticed that the noble Lord, Lord Renton, said that a union was only the sum total of its branches. There is no such thing. Branches are proudly independent and the union as a totality is something quite different from the individual branches. It is not the sum total of its branches any more than the Conservative Party is the sum total of its branches in the constituencies. Why are unions picked out for treatment so totally different from what would be expected for any other organisation?
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: That is the thinking of 1871 extended by the ingenuity of the Conservative Party in recent months. It knows, or ought to know, the problems of getting to know about branch funds in the unions generally. I shall give an example of that difficulty.
When I was chairman of the committee on the financing of political parties, of which my noble friend Lord McCarthy was a member, we sought information about the finances of the branches of the Conservative Party. We said that we should like to know more about the funds of constituency parties: where they get the money, what they do with it and how much they send to headquarters and generally to know more about their financial activities.
We asked whether the party would co-operate if we sent a list of our own selection of constituency parties to which we should like to send a questionnaire. It said: "You may send us your list of our constituency branches that you would like to investigate and we shall forward the questionnaire to them. We shall not allow you to send a questionnaire directly to our branches. We shall veto your list and send on the questionnaires that we think are suitable. Also, when the replies are given they are to come to us first and not to go direct to your committee".
That was how the committee dealt with the Conservative Party as regards disclosure of information about its branches. The committee had to give up the idea of getting any disclosure about the central funds of the Conservative Party. It would not open its books to us. It would not tell us anything about donations. It would tell us about contributions from branches, but donations were a closed book.
Yet representatives of the Conservative Party have the effrontery to sit there and tell trade unions what they should disclose about their finances and their branches. In this subsection they have the sheer impudence to say that a member of a union who has not been a member of a particular branch either at the time he makes the request to see the branch accounts or at a time covered by his request—that means to say that he was not a member of the branch
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and nor was he interested in the funds of that branch—still has the right to disclosure of the accounts of that branch. I cannot imagine anything more stupid.
To what extent is the party opposite going to drag the corpse of the unknown trade union member from the foundations of the trade union movement in the last century and make him king? Apparently that anonymous member, whose inquisitiveness is beyond all reason, can claim to be satisfied and can have the enforcement of the law behind his request. That seems to me to be mad. It is carrying the matter to absurdity.
I think that my noble friends come down from the cloisters of their universities to help us out on these occasions because they want to discover what a brick wall feels like, because that is what they encounter every time they come. Some of us are more used to it than they are. They can at least make some impression in their academic lives. We can make little or none in our parliamentary lives. At this wearisome hour of a quarter past eleven vitality is low and numbers are small. The television cameramen were so bored that they packed up hours ago. Nothing that we were proposing to discuss from about seven o'clock this evening was of the slightest interest to the great British public. So they put the red covers over the cameras and pushed off. I regard that as an insult to the Chamber. Perhaps the overtime they get is too much. I do not know.
If this were a branch meeting of any respectable section of the trade union movement we should say that this was a pretty poor attendance, that the proceedings were dull, that there was no drama anywhere, that nobody was doing anything and that no resolutions were passed—in fact, they were all withdrawn. We should say this was no sort of branch meeting to attend; yet here we are going through this farce.
In my 90th year and after 40 years in the trade union movement, I sit here discussing the future of trade union finances at this juvenile level. It is an insult to anybody's intelligence. It seems to me that the whole of Clause 6 is largely unnecessary. Who are these members who want to bring tame accountants with them to probe into the accounts of large unions which have considerable funds and very large memberships? The inspection of books and accounting of records is Victorian; it does not relate to the modern union. If the unions are to be subject to these requirements, then all other institutions should be subject to the same conditions. What is really needed, not only here but elsewhere, is a universally accepted standard of auditing and of reporting to public interest and opinion. Such treatment is prescribed for a very large section of the public sector and it should probably be extended further.
Meantime, it seems to me that we are simply dabbling with something which is quite unworthy of our attention. I regard subsection (10) of Clause 6 as part of that and I do not know how it comes to be in the Bill. Who sits down and thinks up these provisions? What directive are they given and what is the purpose? Where are they trying to get to? I shall tell you where they are trying to get to. This is a

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biased and critical approach to the trade union movement of today. The whole ethos of the Bill clearly reveals the mentality of the Government towards trade unions: "Let us make them feel that they are under constant observation and that they are smaller than they think they are; let us do this in the sacred name of giving a right to the individual member". We have had some examples this evening of how far that attitude can stretch.
I regard the proceedings tonight on this clause as being quite unworthy of the House of Lords as part of the British Parliament legislating for one of the oldest and most respected branches of working class activity. All the institutions which emanate from the grass roots get this sort of treatment. Friendly societies, co-operative societies and building societies have all gone through it because the Government do not trust those who promote institutions to serve the purposes of the great mass of the people. They do not trust them to deal with their business on the lines of suitable integrity and honesty. It is shameful. It is no good appealing to the reason of Members opposite at this hour of night. They have lost all capacity now for absorbing argument. It is no good appealing to their better nature either. All one can do is to appeal to their sense of shame. That is what I am doing, and now I sit down.
Lord McCarthy: I doubt that one needs to do much after that speech. I think that Members on the other side of the Committee can see how their attitude is viewed on this side. The noble Lord, Lord Houghton, at one point asked: what could be more stupid? But then he went on to show that the Government's action is not so much stupid as malicious. It is not that they do not know what they are doing; in so far as they know, they intend it and they do not intend to do any good to the trade union movement.
The noble Baroness, Lady Seear, is quite right. She asked what party would allow this. Would the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party or the Labour Party allow it? At least if they did, they would have decided to do it. If some party were to say that any branch or ward could march in and ask for the records from six years back, at least it would be a voluntary association under its own rules which decided that. But this Government will do it by law, by fiat, and by all kinds of penalties. As I said earlier, the Minister gave me answers of the "let them eat cake" variety; tonight he gives me "Nothing up my sleeve" replies, and they are not convincing. I withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 51 not moved.]
Clause 6 agreed to.
11.15 p.m.
Clause 7 [Right to require employer to stop deductions of union subscriptions]:
Lord McCarthy Lord McCarthy moved Amendment No. 52:
Page 11, line 15, after ("shall") insert ("notify the union that the employee has so certified and shall").
The noble Lord said: I think we have agreed to consider Amendments Nos. 52 and 53 together. We
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come now to Clause 7 of the Bill, which concerns check-off. The Government are saying in Clause 7 that the individual worker in future shall have a right to require the employer to stop deductions of union subscriptions from source as it were on notification. In our two amendments, which are in some ways complementary although one could see them as alternatives, we suggest that in all reason the union ought to be notified that the employer is doing this. In our first amendment, No. 52, after the word "shall" we should like to insert:
"notify the union that the employee has so certified",
so that when the employer cancels the check-off he tells the union that he has done so.
Amendment No. 53 is a slightly different way of effecting the same thing. We suggest that the employer should not be able to start cutting off the check-off until he has notified the union. This clause is about the check-off, and our amendment proposes that the employer should be under some slight obligation, even if it is a burden on business and even if he is one of the smallest of small businessmen, when he decides that he must give in to a request of a worker in his employ to cancel the check-off at least to tell the union.
I think that it is necessary very quickly to explain to those who may not know why we have check-off at all. The British trade union movement was very reluctant to agree to check-off. It was one of the last trade union movements in the world to agree to it. The system grew in the 1960s very fast, partly because employers wanted it. They wanted it because they did not want people wasting their time going round the factories collecting subscriptions, or failing to collect subscriptions and thus generating difficulties and disputes about people lapsing. The unions wanted it because it avoided the problem of lapsing. The workers were prepared to accept it—after all, under our law they have to sign and agree to it—because it is a painless way of paying union subscriptions and there is no problem of lapsing.
It now covers some 95 per cent. of trade union members. So far as I am aware—and the question has been studied, though not recently—it is one of those rare phenomena that causes no problems or complaints and was not even mentioned in the Green Paper or the election manifesto. The Government have never told us, and they did not tell us in the other place, why they want to do this. I am not saying that it should not be done. Any employer who is asked to cancel a check-off is under a legal obligation to do so. The system can continue only if the individual worker wants it to continue. I am saying that what the best employers do—which is to inform the union—all employers should be made to do, even if it is a burden upon business. This is an extremely reasonable amendment. We hope that the Government will accept it.
Lord Trefgarne: This clause is concerned with the rights of an employee in respect of deductions from his pay made by his employer. It does not affect his substantive obligations to the union; for example, to pay subscriptions so long as he remains a member. The need for the clause arises from the quite unreasonable difficulties that have sometimes been

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placed in the way of individuals who sought to stop deduction of union subscriptions from their pay exercising their undoubted right to resign from a union.
The government amendment in another place arranged for the Bill to be modified so as to require the employee to certify that the union knows that he is leaving it, or has done so. It would be quite redundant, and an unnecessary burden on the employer, to impose a further obligatory notification. There is nothing to prevent unions and employers agreeing that such notification should take place if they wish to do so, but I do not think that we ought to provide for it in statute. I hope that the noble Lord will agree with that proposition and will not press his amendment.
Lord McCarthy: The noble Lord almost opened his reservoir then. He referred to quite unreasonable difficulties. I do not know whether he wishes to send for the cavalry for the details. Does he have anything in his reservoir about quite unreasonable difficulties in getting rid of the check-off? It would be quite unlawful to do so even now. I do not see why the Government cannot accept one or other of these very modest amendments. I have to withdraw them, but I call on the Minister now to tell me what these unreasonable difficulties are. I note that the reservoir remains closed.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 53 not moved.]
Lord Trefgarne Lord Trefgarne moved Amendment No. 54:
Page 11, line 27, leave out subsections (3) and (4) and insert—
("(3) Notwithstanding anything in any contract between the employee and the employer, or in any agreement or consent signified by the employee, a deduction made in contravention of this section shall in all cases be treated for the purposes of Part I of the Wages Act 1986 as a deduction in contravention of section 1(1) of that Act.").
The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 54, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 122 and 137 to 141 inclusive.
During consideration of the Bill in another place, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State undertook to consider, at the request of the Opposition, whether Clause 7 could be amended to provide a simpler and more readily understandable procedure. This amendment to Clause 7, and the consequential amendments to Clause 29 and Schedule 3, honour that undertaking.
The clause already provides that where an employee certifies to his employer that there has been, or will be, a termination of his union membership and that the union is aware of the termination, the employer must stop deducting union subscriptions from his remuneration. If the employer nonetheless continues to make such deductions, the amendment will enable the employee to apply under Part I of the 1986 Wages Act to an industrial tribunal for a declaration and a refund of the deductions.
This allows an individual to obtain a refund without first applying to the county court if his rights under the clause are breached, thus allowing for the removal of subsections (3) and (4). In effect, he will be in the same position as any other employee who has
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suffered an unlawful deduction at the hands of his employer.
Removal of subsections (3) and (4) means that the reference in Clause 29(3) to orders against the Crown is unnecessary and it is itself removed by another of these amendments. The amendments to the schedule are purely consequential. The right given in the Bill for an employee to obtain a refund under the Wages Act 1986 of any political fund subscriptions deducted unlawfully is preserved.
This group of amendments brings about a useful simplification of the clause. I beg to move.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: On this group of amendments, our position is one that the Government often take, except with regard to Clause 29, which may be necessary. However, since the whole issue under the Wages Act is a matter of contract in a very broad sense we cannot see why this amendment is necessary. However, as it has been moved we have no objection to it.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 7, as amended, agreed to.
11.30 p.m.
Clause 8 [Use of funds for indemnifying unlawful conduct]:
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton Lord Wedderburn of Charlton moved Amendment No. 55:
Page 11, line 41, at end insert ("pursuant to any agreement, arrangement or understanding to which the union is a party—").
The noble Lord said: We now come to Clause 8. It falls to me to move the first amendment to it in this excited and crowded Chamber. Clause 8 is particularly obnoxious. It is another clause which takes from trade unions the ordinary law of the land, and takes it from them uniquely.
I should like to place on record my personal reflection upon the evening in the light of what my noble friend Lord Houghton of Sowerby said, which I felt was so much to the point. It was said earlier tonight in previous debates that this was in effect a class Bill. The Minister will not appreciate that analysis, but those of us who have been watching what has happened as the evening has been going on with calm analysis have seen the Government go over the top against trade unions. They were told so from their own Benches on the discipline clause. We have seen the inspection of branch accounts being taken to a ludicrous extent, right over the top, and there are the other clauses that have been debated, and now this one goes over the top, but over the top always in one respect—the union must be picked out, and not just the union, of which the Government are so keen to speak, but the individuals who form that union are picked out for second class treatment and with double standards. If ever a clause did that again, it is Clause 8.
The issue is whether a union should be permitted to indemnify officials, or possibly even others, who have upon its business committed offences. The law is clear at the moment. I support it and so I believe do most fair-minded people in this country. Broadly speaking one must not agree to indemnify for the costs of a

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crime in the future. That is against public policy. It would be extraordinary if it were not, but one may indemnify afterwards so long as that is a discretionary matter and not done in pursuance of any such arrangement. There are some footnotes to be added and extra qualifications, but broadly those are the two areas.
They were the areas as set out in the case of Thomas v. National Union of Mineworkers (South Wales Area) in 1985, 2 WLR page 1120. Mr. Justice Scott there sets out precisely that test in relation to the reimbursement of fines or penalties incurred by striking miners who fall foul of the law, as he put it. He cites previous authority to say that there is nothing lawful about an agreement to recompense or indemnify for crime in the future. But whereas here the union had power with its rules (because as the law stands union rules are still of some importance) where it has powers to consider the cases of members arrested for offences, and if it thinks fit in the interests of the union and the members as a whole to relieve the financial consequences of the arrests in the past, then that is not contrary to the law.
The amendment would put the clause not perfectly but basically back into accord with the normal rule of law. If ever anything showed that the Government intend to place trade unions alone into a stockade fenced off by special rules, it is their refusal to allow them the very limited power which the law allows to bodies now. It is a power which companies use every day. How many Members of the Committee have lunched with an executive who has parked his car on a meter, then seen him take off the ticket knowing that it would be sent to the company for payment? That is recompense or indemnity of the costs of a crime. Under the clause unless the Secretary of State is gracious enough, embodying himself the ruler of law, to say that by order he will exempt an area of criminal offences, the trade union is not to be allowed to do so and ordinary officials who have done their job and who have, albeit innocently, committed a criminal offence of parking or whatever, are not to be allowed to do so. I should like to ask the Minister a question to obtain genuine information. Is it the case that the clause forbids the union to pay the fines of anyone who is convicted? If that is the case, it is another dimension from which the union is excluded. It would appear that it is. Therefore, this amendment tries to ask the Government whether there is a limit to the way in which they will pick upon trade unions. If there is no limit, perhaps one day they will reflect ruefully upon what they have done. I beg to move.
The Earl of Dundee: I am grateful to the noble Lord. I believe that his amendment would enable a union property to be lawfully applied in a way the clause specifically aims to prevent. The key principle of the clause is that a member should be able without qualification to prevent the use of his union's funds to provide unlawful indemnities. Whether the funds are applied in this way pursuant to any agreement, arrangement or understanding to which the union is a party, is beside the point.
It is not the Government's intention to limit the clause so that, for example, use of union funds to pay
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indemnities on an ad hoc basis would be permitted. Nor do we intend to limit the member's right so that he might have no grounds for action if his union funds were applied through some kind of holding agency.
The noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, asked whether in certain circumstances the union would be able to indemnify an individual. I can assure the noble Lord that in certain circumstances that will be possible.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: The last part of the noble Earl's response fills me with a certain amount of puzzlement. I thought that he was about to point to a part of the clause that I had overlooked and which allowed that. Perhaps he will do so at Report so that when the reservoir opens we can look at the matter. At the moment I cannot see it.
However, I cannot appreciate his first remarks as a reply because he tells me that the Government intend to have the member of the union prevent the union using its funds or property for the payment of indemnities for penalties of offences. I understood that; it is set out in the clause. Broadly speaking, I am saying that every other organisation in the land has the right to do so ex post facto, with hindsight and discretionary, subject to certain types of offence. They cannot make an agreement to do so in future and I am in favour of that. That has always been the law.
No abuses have been alleged tonight but there may be some allegations in the future. Why is the clause necessary? We are left in the position where I have to beg leave to withdraw the amendment because no other course is open in line with the procedures of the Committee. I have received no reply to the question: why is it there and why cannot trade unions be allowed the same—
The Earl of Dundee: The reason for this clause is that in its absence there is no incentive to a union member to behave in the right way because he knows that, whatever he does, it is quite possible that the union will pay his fine.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: I shall obviously refrain from reading the whole passage from the judgment of Thomas v. NUM. But if that were the case the union would fall within the first rule rather than the second. As Mr. Justice Scott makes clear, if, as he says, a union or any other body is so perverse as to make it a practice to indemnify people for the costs of their crime, that is also against public policy. It is only when it is clearly ad hoc and discretionary that the permission exists. I have no answer, but I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 56 and 57 not moved.]
Baroness Turner of Camden Baroness Turner of Camden moved Amendment No. 58:
Page 12, line 24, at end insert ("and other than an offence committed by an official of the union, other than wilfully or recklessly, in the course of his duties and, in respect of which he ought fairly to be excused having regard to all the circumstances of the case.").
The noble Baroness said: I do not wish to go over the ground so adequately covered by my noble friend

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Lord Wedderburn. However, I again raise the question of why a union should be constrained in a way that does not apply to other organisations. I know that we shall have the answer that unions are unique organisations. However, there are other institutions—and newspapers are an example—where this kind of constraint does not apply. Union officials become involved in situations from time to time which involve minor infringements of the law. An obvious example is a parking fine. Is the employer allowed to pay a fine for his personnel officer but the union cannot pay the fine of an official? I know that the Minister has said that this is one of the offences which will be protected when we have further information from him but I feel that the situation is entirely unsatisfactory.
Our amendment protects an official in respect of an offence commited, other than wilfully or recklessly—and I emphasise that—in the course of his duties and in respect of which he ought to be fairly excused having regard to all the circumstances of the case. Quite recently a journalist was fined for contempt. The newspaper employing him made an announcement on its front page that it would pay not only the fine but also the cost of the action because the employee had been acting on its instructions and in accordance with its policy. There is no reason why that newspaper should not have the right to do that and I applaud it for doing so.
On the other hand, why are unions to be the subject of discrimination again? It seems most unfortunate that this should continue to be the case and we cannot make the Government see that what they are doing is grossly unfair and terribly inequitable. I commend the amendment to the Committee and should like a reply from the Minister as to why this moderately worded amendment cannot be accepted if that is the situation. I beg to move.
The Earl of Dundee: I entirely accept that the intention of the noble Baroness is to introduce innocuous and moderate measures, but I cannot accept this amendment. It would be quite wrong to limit the application of a clause depending on whether or not an offence had been committed in the course of an individual's duties. An individual's duties, whether or not he is an official of a union, should simply not include activities which lead to him being found guilty of an offence with the consequent imposition of a penalty.
It is also irrelevant whether an offence was committed wilfully or recklessly; and it is up to the court to decide whether an individual ought fairly to be excused having regard to all the circumstances of the case. These are matters of relevance to the courts but not to the clause.
These points are sufficient to explain why the amendment is unacceptable and should be rejected. In the light of that, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Seear: Will the noble Earl please explain whether he intends to bring in similar legislation to stop companies paying parking fines for their employees? If not, why is sauce for the goose not sauce for the gander?
11.45 p.m.
The Earl of Dundee: In reply to the noble Baroness, my noble friend Lord Trefgarne has already said that the Bill is about trade unions, not companies. I think I said when replying to one of the points on a previous amendment that there would be circumstances under which the union would not be prevented from paying the fine of an individual who had fallen foul of the law, and a parking fine might well be one such example. However, a union member might have obtained a parking fine in taking part in secondary picketing or industrial action somewhere, in which case it would not apply. It would apply in certain circumstances.
Baroness Seear: Where in the Bill does it say that this exemption could be made? The noble Earl said that there are some circumstances in which it would not apply. Is that in the Bill?
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: What we are asked to do in every succeeding clause is to take something away from the present responsibilities and powers of the unions. So far as I can tell, nothing in this Bill, and, so far as I recall, nothing in earlier legislation, confers any additional strength on the trade union movement. Throughout the legislation the Government have been building up the response of individual members of unions to the exercise of union power and union responsibility.
That is the ethos of the whole course of action. It is extremely distasteful for anyone who has any respect for the trade union movement to feel that that is the sort of treatment it deserves from any government. It is not conducive to a response from the trade union leadership of any respect for a government who have consistently been following such a policy throughout their term of office. The Government are moving towards a relationship with the trade union movement which bodes ill for the harmony and mutual confidence of the unions and the Government for the rest of the latter's term of office.
The Government may feel that they can ride over this and that they have public opinion on their side, but there is a reaction which may occur. Many people are at present becoming conscious of the fact that the Government's policy is deliberately to floor the trade union movement so far as they can, to weaken its power and to reduce its collective responsibility. That is what is happening. The Government are reducing collective responsibility by promoting individual resistance. The whole basis of the strength of the trade union movement is to get some degree of collective action. Individual actions have failed and have resulted in unity and the added strength of collective action. It is the effectiveness of that unity that this legislation is trying constantly to chip away.
That is something to be deplored. It is reprehensible that we should be kept late at night to continue this process. I hope that for the rest of the Bill we can do rather more business during normal hours of the day.
Baroness Turner of Camden: At this time of night we do not intend to persist with our argument. We

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shall withdraw the amendment and reconsider the position on Report.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 8 agreed to.
Clause 9 [Remedy against trustees for unlawful use of property]:
[Amendments Nos. 59 and 60 not moved.]
Clause 9 agreed to.
Clause 10 [Industrial action to enforce membership]:
[Amendment No. 61 not moved.]
Clause 10 agreed to.
Clause 11 [Action by an employer to enforce membership]:
Lord McCarthy Lord McCarthy moved Amendment No. 62:
Page 14, line 14, at end insert—
("(2) For the avoidance of doubt it is hereby declared that subsection (1) above does not apply to an employer who declares and makes public his intention to engage persons who are members of a specified trade union.")
The noble Lord said: I understand that this is our last appearance tonight. In Amendment No. 62 we are asking the Government for a declaration. I hope that the very worst that they are going to say about this amendment is that it is not necessary. I hope they are not going to say that it is objectionable or unclear. Those are the only three answers that they ever give. I hope they are going to say that it is unnecessary. Even at this late stage I should be even more pleased if they said that the condition in the Bill is unclear and that this amendment makes it clearer. That is our position.
The purpose of the amendment is to protect the rights of the employer. Surely we can reach some agreement on that. That is the right of the employer to continue to express and act upon his preferences and,
"his intention to engage persons who are members of a specified trade union".
What we have legislated about is very largely the conditions of unfair dismissal or action short of dismissal. In this country there is no right to work and certainly no right to work as non-unionist. There is no right to demand a job as a non-unionist. As my noble friend Lord Wedderburn said earlier tonight, the Government have made it clear in another place that they are not interested in trying to circumscribe or restrict in any way the employers' right of engagement. The individuals that the employer decides to engage and their characteristics are the business of the employer. All we have is legislation about dismissal and discrimination, but not about engagement.
It is true that the 1982 Act prohibited union-labour only clauses in contracts for the supply of goods and services. It prevented secondary action to enforce the closed shop against given employers who were employing non-union labour. It is true that in the
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area of race discrimination we have something which is broader than the issue of dismissal. But when we come to the engagement of workers on grounds of unionism or non-unionism, we have the words of no less a person than the noble Lord, Lord Young, to say that it cannot be done. As far as we know it has not been tried yet.
The amendment seeks to make clear that employers can if they wish express and practise their intention to engage persons who are members of a specified trade union and that at this moment in time remains quite lawful. I beg to move.
Lord Trefgarne: If I may say so, this amendment is the closed shop having a last rigor mortis wriggle, if that is the right word—a last struggle before it finally sinks into the world of oblivion where it rightly belongs. In any event, the amendment is defective because taken at face value it seeks to retain the whole panopoly of closed shop approval and dismissal for non-union membership for certain employers and accepts its repeal in the case of others. The distinction would be determined by the employer's expressed intention to engage members of specified trade unions. I need hardly say that such a proposal would be quite unacceptable to the Government.
In principle this amendment is objectionable for the reasons that I have referred to. In any event it is technically defective and I therefore invite the noble Lord not to persist with it.
Lord McCarthy: The noble Lord worries me now. It may be the Government are getting tired. There is nothing here about the closed shop. The closed shop is an agreement or practice. We are not talking about anything which a union does: we are talking about the sacred rights of the employer. I am sure that if the Minister goes away and asks other people in government he will find that this Government have not said that they wish to circumscribe in any way the employer's intention to engage people who are members of a specified trade union. It is not to be through agreements, practices or other nasty things like the pre-entry closed shop but by the simple excision of employer preference. Surely even if the Minister does not agree to this amendment, he can at least admit that that is the case. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 11 agreed to.
The Earl of Dundee: I beg to move that the House do now resume.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House adjourned at four minutes before midnight.

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