Sitting of 5 May 1988

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]
PRAYERS
  PRIVATE BUSINESS
    SOUTH YORKSHIRE LIGHT RAIL TRANSIT BILL
    Considered; to be read the Third time.

    LONDON REGIONAL TRANSPORT BILL (By Order)
    Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question [10 December], That the Bill be now considered.
    Debate further adjourned till Thursday 12 May.

    TEIGNMOUTH QUAY COMPANY BILL (By Order)

      YORK CITY COUNCIL BILL [Lords] (By Order)
      Order for Second Reading read.
      To be read a Second time upon Thursday 12 May.

    ASSOCIATED BRITISH PORTS (No. 2) BILL (By Order)
    Order for Second Reading read.
    To be read a Second time upon Wednesday 11 May at Seven o'clock.

    CARDIFF BAY BARRAGE. BILL (By Order)
    Order for Second Reading read.
    To he read a Second Time upon Thursday 12 May.

    CITY OF LONDON (SPITALFIELDS MARKET) BILL (By Order)
    Order for Second Reading read.
    To be read a Second time upon Thursday 12 May at Seven o'clock.

    FALMOUTH CONTAINER TERMINAL BILL (By Order)
      NORTH KILLINGHOLME CARGO TERMINAL BILL (By Order)
        ST. GEORGE'S HILL, WEYBRIDGE, ESTATE BILL (By Order)

          NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE TOWN MOOR BILL [Lords] (By Order)
          Orders for Second Reading read.
          To be read a Second time upon Thursday 12 May.

    ASSOCIATED BRITISH PORTS (BARROW) BILL [Lords] (By Order)
    Read a Second time, and committed.
Oral Answers to Questions
  AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

    British Poultry Federation
    Mr. Alexander: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he last met the chairman of the British Poultry Federation; what matters were discussed; and if he will make a statement.
    The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Donald Thompson): My right hon. Friend met the chairman of the British Poultry Federation today at the lunch following the federation's annual general meeting. They discussed a number of issues of interest to the industry.
    Mr. Alexander: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply, which was not quite as foul as I had expected. Will he congratulate the industry on the way in which it has managed to achieve considerable success without assistance from the EEC?
    Mr. Thompson: I am sure that my right hon. Friend mentioned that at lunch today. It is remarkable that industries, such as the poultry industry which receive least do best. We assist with export refunds and in as many other ways as possible. I shall be visiting the European poultry fair at Stoneleigh on the 18th of this month.
    Mr. Hunter: In discussions with the British Poultry Federation, will my hon. Friend draw attention to the fact that prices to the producer are dropping at a far greater rate than those to the consumer? Surely that is an unsatisfactory state of affairs. Will my hon. Friend comment on the matter?
    Mr. Thompson: Market forces will always find their own level. I am sure that the producers and the retailers who are in a very strong position at present, constantly argue this out between themselves.

    Hill Farming
    Mr. Kennedy: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on the current level of average income in the hill farming sector.
    The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. John Selwyn Gummer): The latest information on the incomes of hill and upland livestock farms is shown in tables 30, 31 and 32 of the White Paper on the "Annual Review of Agriculture 1988"—Cm. 299 —and, in more detail, in the recent publication "Farm Incomes in the United Kingdom".
    Mr. Kennedy: I thank the Minister for that comprehensive answer. Following the Brussels summit in February and the decisions or actions initiated there on price stabilisers, particularly for sheep, there is bound to be some anxiety in marginal agriculture areas, such as my constituency in the Highlands of Scotland, about long-term trends in the sheep sector. Will the Government carefully bear in mind the long-term concerns in areas such

    1001
    as the Highlands when reaching or implementing domestically any decisions that follow from European decisions?
    Mr. Gummer: I have recently spent some time in the mountainous areas of Wales, which have similar problems. I am sure the hon. Gentleman will accept that we keep the matter under close consideration, because those areas rely particularly on sheep for their income and we shall be taking them into consideration in the coming review of the sheepmeat regime. However, the forecast for the 1987–88 accounting year suggests a reasonably healthy rise in incomes for such farms in the United Kingdom.
    Mr. Curry: Will my right hon. Friend accept that little could be more damaging to the hill sheep producer than a set-aside programme which encourages people to go into livestock, notably sheep, on the lowland? Will he exercise the option that he will have when he draws up his set-aside programme to make sure that while safari parks with camels or lions may be put on set-aside land, sheep are not.
    Mr. Gummer: I am not sure that I wish to encourage camels on such land either, but the matter that my hon. Friend raises is important and we are trying to reach a decision on that in the set-aside arrangements. People are obviously considerably worried if they feel that others are supported in a way that they are not to produce something in areas where other opportunities exist. That is obviously a matter of great importance, on which my right hon. Friend will have something to say later.
    Mr. Campbell-Savours: What about the shortfall in income for hill sheep farmers in Cumbria and other parts of the United Kingdom as a result of Chernobyl? Is the Minister aware that 66 farmers in Cumbria believe that they are owed £172,000 by Her Majesty's Government for damage arising from the Chernobyl incident? Does he not think it unreasonable that an accident that took place thousands of miles away in the Soviet Union should be paid for by my constituents and other farmers in the county? I recognise that there have been many discussions over the past year, but can he, even at this late stage, help us out?
    Mr. Gummer: We have looked carefully at all the individual claims. There is no doubt that in any system some will fall outside the guidelines, whether on Chernobyl or any other matter. If the hon. Gentleman wants to do something about Chernobyl, he might ask his hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark) to stop stirring up worries and anxieties over Chernobyl on matters that do not exist and never have existed.
    Sir Hector Monro: Does my right hon. Friend agree that hill farming is a hard-pressed section of the industry? Does he accept that the environmentally sensitive area programme has been a great success? Is there any hope of extending that programme, so that more farmers can avail themselves of management agreements in difficult highland areas?
    Mr. Gummer: I am sure that my hon. Friend is right in saying that the implementation of the first, and now the second, set of ESA proposals has been a success, but they are an experimental series of areas from which we must learn. It would be a mistake to suggest that we could now decide on extensions. However, we are obviously learning
    1002
    all the time from the wide range of areas concerned, and if we find that it is sensible to extend them, no doubt we shall do so.
    Dr. David Clark: When the Minister looked at the tables of average incomes in the upland areas, did he notice that some of the incomes were very low indeed? Will he take seriously the point raised by my hon. Friend for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours)? Does he accept that in some cases in Cumbria and Wales those low incomes were affected by the shortfall in Chernobyl payments? Is he aware that I wrote to his right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food at the end of March suggesting that we should appoint local adjudicating committees to look at all the cases to find a reasonable and fair solution to the problem?
    Mr. Gummer: We have tried hard throughout to look at those cases as carefully as possible and to give them the compensation to which they are entitled. A further look at the same cases will not make any difference. I repeat that I hope that the hon. Gentleman will take on his shoulders the serious responsibility that he bears in trying to frighten people in areas where no fears need to be raised.

    Grain
    Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what representations he has received about arrangements for the release of grain held in United Kingdom surplus stores.
    The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. John MacGregor): I continue to receive representations about the current arrangements for the release of grain held in intervention.
    Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: Does my right hon. Friend agree that storage is now one of the most profitable sectors of British agriculture? Does he think that the tendering procedures for taking grain out of store are adequate to overcome the natural reluctance of store owners to relinquish their source of income?
    Mr. MacGregor: We are continually examining the storage arrangements to ensure that we get value for money. The real point is not about releasing grain from intervention stores, but that, under the Community rules adopted last year, Commission agreement is required for sales of grain from intervention on to the domestic market. We opposed those new rules when they were introduced, but we have them. There is no point in making intervention grain available, because, under Community rules, it cannot be sold at a price lower than the buying-in price and market prices are currently well below that level.
    Mr. Ralph Howell: What does my right hon. Friend consider to be the world market price for milling and other wheat?
    Mr. MacGregor: I do not have the precise figures, but I suspect that my hon. Friend is saying that the world market price can change. It depends on the surpluses that exist and the subsidy that is going in from not only the Community, but the United States and elsewhere, to reach a world market price. That is a difficult figure to estimate, but if we get the surpluses under control the world market price will not necessarily be where it is today.
    Mr. Tony Banks: If the Minister cannot answer that question, perhaps he can answer this one. How much is it costing to keep the grain in intervention stores?
    Mr. MacGregor: have made it plain many times that the costs are too high. The costs are about £12·5 billion a year for all intervention stores. That is not just the cost of storage, but the cost of disposing of the surpluses. That is why we took such a strong line in the negotiations for CAP reform that we have successfully carried through to deal with that problem. I have always made it clear that we must reduce those costs.

    Farming (Extensification)
    Sir John Farr: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he intends to introduce a scheme to de-intensify United Kingdom farming.
    Mr. Gummer: The Council of Ministers has recently adopted a measure requiring member states to introduce extensification schemes providing incentives for farmers to reduce output of surplus agricultural products. We shall not be able to determine how extensification should be applied in the United Kingdom until detailed Commission rules have been established.
    Sir John Farr: Although I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that answer, does he agree that there is much to be said for a regime in farming as an option that encourages farmers to put less in and extract less from their land? That would solve the problem of excess application of nitrates and the many other problems that are associated with intensive farming.
    Mr. Gummer: My hon. Friend makes a good point. The extensification schemes may play an important role. However, the problems of policing and the difficulties of ensuring that money from the taxpayer is not given to people who continue to over produce are very serious. I hope my hon. Friend will accept that it will take a little time to overcome those difficulties.
    Mr. Geraint Howells: Does the Minister agree that the Government must be careful before introducing such a scheme? Last year many hon. Members on both sides of the House suggested that we should have quotas for beef production. The Minister will be aware that there is now a shortage of beef in Britain and in other countries.
    Mr. Gummer: The hon. Gentleman, with his great knowledge of farming, underlines the problem that it is impossible to know from one year to the next what beef production will be. We know that there is a major underlying trend of increasing yields in the production of livestock. We also know that all sorts of international complications can change the suggested amounts for next year. The hon. Gentleman will agree that an extensification scheme that might allow people to farm less intensively—where that seems sensible—would be helpful, if we could find one that worked.
    Sir Richard Body: Does my right hon. Friend agree that we made a good start in this respect by introducing ESAs under the Agriculture Act 1986? Should we not press ahead with more such schemes as fast as we reasonably can?
    Mr. Gummer: It is a very good start, but these are experimental areas. Each of them has peculiarities. We are trying to see how the system works best. When we evaluate how the ESAs have worked over the next two or three years, we shall be in a better position to make the decision that my hon. Friend would like. I remind him that just a year ago we had only half as many ESAs. We have doubled that number already, and also the amount of money that we are spending on them.
    Mr. Win Griffiths: We welcome these first measures and recognise the grave problems of implementing the schemes, but are not the pollution problems, which are equally severe, likely to cause as grave problems? Will the Government give a firm commitment that they will do more to tackle the problems of pollution in rural areas?
    Mr. Gummer: I have made it clear in recent speeches and in the actions that we have taken that we deplore pollution by the farming community. This community is taking action, and more and more people will realise how important the issue is. Last year was a difficult one for pollution because of the weather, but I do not think such incidents are justifiable, and we must get a better record.

    Public Houses (Tenancy System)
    Mr. Allen: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what representations he has received from the east midlands on the tenancy system in public houses.
    Mr. Donald Thompson: A number of hon. Members have written to me concerning the situation of tenants of Home Brewery plc. I have also met delegations of hon. Members and representatives of the National Licensed Victuallers Association to hear their views on the application of the Brewers Society code of practice on tenants' security in this and other cases.
    Mr. Allen: The Minister will be aware, because he has seen other hon. Members and me, that the Scottish and Newcastle brewery has taken over the Home brewery in Nottingham, with the consequence that up to 300 tenants have been issued with either notice to quit or up to fivefold rent increases. Will the Minister make representations so that the tenants and Scottish and Newcastle will get around the table, and the latter will behave in a decent way towards those tenants?
    We are also worried about the future of the Daybrook brewery in Nottingham, and the assurances that Scottish and Newcastle has given us may not be worth the paper they are written on. Matthew Brown's brewery in Workington—[Interruption] I know that Conservative Members do not like to hear that—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. I ask the hon. Gentleman to put his question briefly. This is not an Adjournment debate.
    Mr. Thompson: If I did not before—and I did—I now recognise the passion that the hon. Gentleman brings to this issue. I met him, my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr. Stewart) and other hon. Members, and the National Licensed Victuallers Association. After that meeting I wrote to the Brewers Society outlining the events of the meeting and asking it to look at the matter carefully.
    Mr. Colvin: My hon. Friend will be aware that there are considerable reservations in the licensed trade about the

    1005
    way in which the Brewers Society's code of guidance on tenants' security is operating in practice. As he will know, there are two alternatives. One is to give the code of practice statutory backing; the other is to make publicans subject to the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954. Which of those alternatives does he favour, if he feels that a change is required?
    Mr. Thompson: I suggest that the tenants, through their associations, press the breweries to stick more closely to the code of practice, and that my hon. Friend, if he thinks it appropriate, introduces a measure to codify that code of practice in legislation. It is not for me to do that at this time or to encourage the landlords and tenants to move to the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954.
    Mr. Campbell-Savours: What are we going to do about this company, which rides roughshod over the livelihoods of people throughout the United Kingdom wherever it is allowed to operate? May we have an official inquiry of some sort into Scottish and Newcastle's divestment of its shares in MacKinleys in Scotland and into the jobs lost in Scotland? Such an inquiry will reveal once again the irregular and unreasonable way in which the company operates.
    Mr. Thompson: The pressure of market forces does not always work in the direction of tenants, landlords or brewers. I do not think that the sort of inquiry envisaged by the hon. Gentleman would be sensible, or clear, if it were set up in the way that he suggests.

    Bananas
    Mr. Sackville: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what representations he has received about the price of bananas.
    Mr. Donald Thompson: The price of bananas is a matter for the market, but my Department receives a variety of views on the subject, depending on market circumstances.
    Mr. Sackville: Is my hon. Friend not aware that, historically, we have paid the highest prices for bananas in Europe and have the lowest consumption, mainly because of our bilateral agreements with Jamaica and other producers? Does he not agree that if we are to go on helping our Commonwealth friends in this way by paying over the world price the responsibility should fall on our trade and aid budget and not on the household budgets of families such as mine, who are very partial to bananas?
    Mr. Thompson: I am afraid that my hon. Friend is a month late. On 31 March we introduced a new system whereby dollar bananas would be able to be introduced to Britain at a minimum level. That system will also safeguard traditional suppliers to whom bananas are most important and for whom they are a great source of income. My hon. Friend mentioned aid. My hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Mr. Patten) made sure that the Caribbean islands received about £4 million of aid last year, plus aid from the European Community, the World Bank and the Caribbean Bank, to which we were contributors. If bananas can produce so many fast bowlers, perhaps we could have them cheaper in Yorkshire as well.

    Pigmeat
    Mr. Tredinnick: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on the competitive position of British pigmeat producers.
    Mr. MacGregor: In recent weeks the pigmeat market appears to have stabilised and the United Kingdom monetary compensatory amounts have fallen from minus 10·9 per cent. to minus 4·9 per cent.
    Mr. Tredinnick: Would my right hon. Friend care to comment on the impact of current MCA levels on imported pigmeat and bacon? Is he satisfied that the British slaughtering industry is sufficiently prepared for the single European market in 1992?
    Mr. MacGregor: The whole of industry has to make sure that it is sufficiently prepared for 1992, and many industries have a lot to do in that respect. In answer to my hon. Friend's first point, our domestic market shares have been holding up, but the important point is that the recent drop in the MCAs has meant that the subsidy per tonne of imported bacon side has fallen from £69 to £31 in the last few weeks. In so far as the MCAs are having an effect, it is much reduced. In the debate after Question Time I shall have more to say about pigmeat MCAs.
    Mrs. Margaret Ewing: Given that there is a slight improvement, is the Minister satisfied that the pig industry is out of the crisis that it has faced over the past few months? Does he recall that in 1983, in a similar situation, 12 per cent. of the United Kingdom's pig breeding stock was lost? Is he satisfied that that will not happen again?
    Mr. MacGregor: I have to make clear that it is not a slight improvement in MCAs. At the peak in February last year MCAs were nearly minus 28 points and now they are below minus 5. That is a considerable change. I am well aware of the pressures that the pig industry is facing. We are in a cycle in which supply is exceeding demand and, in a market such as the pigmeat market, that creates problems for producers.
    Mr. Marland: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the British pig industry is further disadvantaged by the Dutch pig industry, which makes extensive use of manioc imports? Pelleted manioc imported into Holland carries a levy of 28 per cent. and the levy on the raw material is 6 per cent. Is he aware of allegations that the Dutch are importing pelleted manioc and paying only the 6 per cent. levy? Is my right hon. Friend's Ministry prepared to look at this?
    Mr. MacGregor: We may if we wish use manioc in this country, but naturally the Dutch have advantages in their ports and in the ease of access at their ports for their producers. I have been looking into the point raised by my hon. Friend and the Customs directorate of the European Commission is investigating it. It is a fairly technical point and perhaps I could write to my hon. Friend about it. I do not think that it makes any difference to the present position of our pig industry.

    Woodland Grant Scheme
    Mr. Martyn Jones: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he next proposes to

    1007
    meet representatives of the National Farmers Union to discuss the woodland grant scheme; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. MacGregor: I have no arrangements at present to meet representatives of the National Farmers Union for the specific purpose of discussing the woodland grant scheme.
    Mr. Jones: Is the Minister aware that farmers who take part in the woodland grant scheme will be at a disadvantage with the planting of conifers, because if they plant less than 50 per cent. of conifers they will not be able to claim the planting grants, while farmers outside the scheme who plant 100 per cent. of conifers will able to claim on the whole figure?
    Mr. MacGregor: Some changes have been made to the woodland grant scheme to deal with conifers, which are environmentally more acceptable in some parts of the country than in others and have been welcomed by some people. However, overall, the woodland grant scheme fully compensates for the changes in the tax regime, because the support from the Exchequer, whether in tax forgone or in grants for planting, remains unchanged. The woodland grant scheme as now conceived is better than the previous one.
    Sir Geoffrey Johnson Smith: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, in Sussex and many parts of Kent, of far greater importance than a woodland grant scheme is the introduction of a clearance scheme so that people can clear the woods and go ahead with replanting?
    Mr. MacGregor: If my hon. Friend is referring to the costs of storm damage clearance, he will know that we have received a full report on the matter and a report from the Select Committee. I hope, before too long, to be able to respond to those reports.
    Mr. Alan W. Williams: Does the Minister agree that there should he far more emphasis on planting woodlands, both under this scheme and under the Farm Land and Rural Development Bill? As about 15 per cent. of our land is producing 50 per cent. more food than we need, there is a need for massive diversification into woodland. Does not the scheme need to be doubled, trebled or even increased tenfold over the next five years?
    Mr. MacGregor: I hope the hon. Gentleman will have noticed how, under this Government, private landowners have increased their planting. As he said, that is the purpose of the Bill that will come before the House for its final stages this evening. We have been taking a number of initiatives, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will give his full support to the Bill.
    Mr. Ian Bruce: May we have an assurance that the excellent knowledge and expertise in the Forestry Commission will be used to advise farmers so that they do not go headlong into long-term investment and perhaps make many mistakes which the commission could prevent? Will my right hon. Friend encourage the National Farmers Union and the Forestry Commission to discuss such matters?
    Mr. MacGregor: The Forestry Commission is available for both encouragement and advice. Under schemes that qualify for grants farmers must go to the Forestry
    1008
    Commission, and will therefore receive advice. My hon. Friend will know that we have been stepping up the advisory capability of ADAS to meet that objective.
    Mr. Ron Davies: If the Minister meets representatives of the National Farmers Union, will he discuss with them the practice that has apparently been developing over the past couple of years whereby the Government approve for planting more than double the hectareage provided for within their own targets? Does that mean that expenditure on the forestry industry is not cash limited?
    Mr. MacGregor: I am not aware of the problem to which the hon. Gentleman refers and I shall have to look into it, but, within our provision, we hope that there will be full take-up of these grants, although we must apply budgetary disciplines.

    Farm Diversification Scheme
    Mr. Kirkhope: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the latest position on the introduction of the farm diversification scheme.
    Mr. Gummer: Farmers have responded enthusiastically to the introduction of capital grants for farm diversification. Since the scheme started on 1 January this Ministry has received about 388 applications covering a wide range of investments. We plan to introduce soon related grants for feasibility studies and marketing under powers being sought under the Farm Land and Rural Development Bill which we will discuss this evening.
    Mr. Kirkhope: Will my right hon. Friend consider placing greater emphasis on assistance to enterprises on the fringes of urban centres, such as my constituency of Leeds, North-East? Is he not disappointed that a larger number of applications have not been received for activities involving horses, bearing in mind my interest in those activities in Yorkshire?
    Mr. Gummer: I bear in mind my hon. Friend's interests in these activities, but I am not disappointed in the level of applications, because we have received a great number and wide range of them in a short time. I take my hon. Friend's point, but one of the problems that we must sort out in the urban fringes is how best to apply the planning arrangements to protect the environment, while at the same time providing people with an opportunity to diversify.
    Mr. Wells: Will my right hon. Friend consider extending the farm diversification scheme to those who benefit under the banana agreement referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Sackville), in view of his obvious antipathy to that programme? Is it not true that, under that programme, the consumption of bananas in this country has been increasing by 4 per cent. per annum?
    Mr. Speaker: Order. I am trying to relate this to the original question.
    Mr. Wells: It relates to the farm diversification scheme. I am asking my right hon. Friend whether the scheme should be extended to other producers of bananas, who will have to diversify if banana imports decline.
    Mr. Gummer: I do not think that there is any opportunity for the Government to extend the scheme to

    1009
    the Caribbean islands. The consumption of bananas is increasing, and should continue to do so. It is reasonable that some of those bananas should come from other developing countries that produce them. We must protect those with whom we have a long-standing agreement and understanding, but I do not see why some of the expansion should not benefit the other poorer countries.

    Farming (Extensification)
    Mr. Haynes: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he proposes to publish further details of his proposals for an extensification scheme; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Gummer: Following the decisions of the European Council in February, the Agriculture Council has now agreed separate schemes for set-aside and for extensification. The Commission has recently adopted the detailed rules for set-aside. An announcement will be made as soon as possible on the detailed arrangements to apply in the United Kingdom. Introduction of a scheme for extensification will depend on further Commission rules, which have yet to be proposed.
    Mr. Haynes: There are proposals about the production of food, and whether too much or too little is being produced, but what about the protection of wildlife? We want protection for the birds, the bees, the weasels, the squirrels and the rabbits, and if we do not get it, the Minister will be looking for protection.
    Mr. Gummer: I know how close the protection of rabbits and weasels is to the heart of the hon. Gentleman, and I am sure he will be pleased to know that in the environmentally sensitive areas we have taken a number of opportunities to find ways in which this protection can be extended, not least with the strip system, which is being used in Breckland. Great care will be taken to ensure that the set-aside scheme is environmentally satisfactory. The hon. Gentleman will also understand that since the passing of the Agriculture Act 1986 the Ministry has had a duty to take into account the environmental impact of its decisions.
    Mr. Nicholas Bennett: In coming to a decision on whether, under the set-aside scheme, farmers should leave their land fallow or be allowed to use it for grazing, will my right hon. Friend bear in mind the grave concern among farmers in Pembrokeshire and in west Wales that they will be put at a grave disadvantage if farmers receiving grants can then use the land for stock grazing and undercut prices?
    Mr. Gummer: I assure my hon. Friend that we are taking closely into account the representations that we have received in deciding how the scheme should apply to the United Kingdom. It is obviously of great concern for those who can do little other than use their land for grazing if others who have a range of opportunities are encouraged by support to move into grazing of livestock. On the other hand, the opportunity for grazing fallow is there, and we shall have to consider it most carefully.

    Common Agricultural Policy
    Mr. Geraint Howells: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what assessment he has
    1010
    made of the extent to which the common agricultural policy at present gives British farmers the opportunity to compete on equal terms with their counterparts in Europe; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. MacGregor: As the Commission document on the price-fixing makes clear, it is very difficult to assess equal terms between member states, since so many factors vary.
    Mr. Howells: Is this not an opportune time to have an independent inquiry into the workings of the common agricultural policy, to see whether British farmers are able to compete on equal terms with their counterparts in Europe?
    Mr. MacGregor: We have had inquiries on some aspects of the CAP. For example, an inquiry into pigmeat came to the view that, with the possible exception of the MCA issue—the hon. Gentleman knows my position on this—overall the costs were similar and that it was not possible to suggest that British farmers were in an uncompetitive position. I do not believe that a general inquiry is required. It is always my aim to ensure that, on matters of Commission or national confidence, British farmers compete on reasonably fair terms. I shall have more to say about that in our debate later.
    Mr. Haselhurst: Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is becoming extremely difficult and embarrassing explaining and justifying to British pig farmers the commonality of an agricultural policy and market in which they seem to be diminishing in number at regular, cyclical intervals? Will he do something to underpin the British pig industry more successfully than we have managed to do so far?
    Mr. MacGregor: Pig production has held up pretty well in this country, and we are maintaining our market share. I have made clear on a number of occasions that I should like to see MCAs eliminated.
    Mr. McGrady: Is the Minister aware of the precarious position of the pig industry in Northern Ireland, which has been decimated over the past decade, from a total of 24,000 producers to only 4,000? While we welcome the movement that he announced earlier on MCAs, will he strive to lift that burden from those who are trying to compete with northern Europe, where producers receive a subsidy of £50 to £70 per tonne? Will the Minister consider also increasing the export restitution, to enable an expanded market to be created in the third world?
    Mr. MacGregor: We have considered export restitutions and pressed for them on a number of occasions. There have been a number of significant changes over the past six months, and the hon. Gentleman will realise that they are available to farmers in the European Community as a whole, not just to those in the United Kingdom. I have made it clear that the subsidy to which the hon. Gentleman referred has been considerably reduced during the past few weeks. It is my objective to have pigmeat MCAs eliminated altogether, although that will be difficult to achieve.

    Farming Unions
    Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he last had a meeting with the leaders of the farming unions; and what matters were discussed.
    Mr. MacGregor: I meet the leaders of the farming unions frequently to discuss agricultural matters.
    Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Does my right hon. Friend accept that farmers are very grateful for the stand that he takes in representing their interests? Will he please do all that he can to ensure early devaluation of the green pound, so that our farmers are paid as much as German farmers are for indentical produce?
    Mr. MacGregor: In our current discussions in the Council on price fixing I have taken the view that we should take a further step towards devaluation of the green pound. I hope to say more about that in the debate this evening.
    Mr. Skinner: Is the Minister aware that one of the complaints that he will receive from British farming unions —and if he met the agricultural workers union he would hear the same—is that on the continent the £2 billion fraud under the common agricultural policy during the past two years has meant that British farmers have not been able to compete effectively? Can he throw any light on the fiddle set-aside scheme, which has not yet been introduced, but which, according to sources within the Community, involves a figure approaching 50 per cent.?
    Mr. MacGregor: I find it difficult to understand how there can be a fiddle under a scheme that has not been introduced.

    Whales
    Mr. Bowis: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what measures he is taking to promote the conservation of whales.
    Mr. Gummer: The Government are in the forefront of recent efforts within the International Whaling Commission to ensure that the moratorium on commercial whaling, which came into effect in 1985, is fully respected. We recently ensured that the scientific committee condemned Japanese attempts to use scientific excuses for whaling and it has asked them to stop. We shall continue to fight to ensure that the whale is conserved.
    Mr. Bowis: Will my right hon. Friend find time to wait upon the Japanese representatives currently visiting this country, to pass on to them a guide to and examples of, good practice, and the way in which the British Government have dealt with the problem, and ask them to follow suit?
    Mr. Gummer: I shall certainly look into that, and, if it proves possible, point out that the British Government's campaign has had full support from International Greenpeace and from Sir Peter Scott and the organisations that he represents.

    Common Agricultural Policy
    Mr. Wilshire: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what further action he is taking to seek to reform the common agricultural policy.
    Mr. MacGregor: I am seeking to ensure that the approach adopted on CAP reform at the recent European Council is followed through in the price fixing. I favour adjustments to support arrangements which will bring supply and demand into better balance and restore intervention to its original role as a safety net rather than an alternative market outlet.
    Mr. Wilshire: As every citizen is a consumer of agricultural products but few earn their living from agriculture, will my right hon. Friend give higher priority to the wish of consumers for lower prices, rather than the high prices that we now have?
    Mr. MacGregor: The Government's record on food prices is very good. The average is well below what it was under the last Labour Administration, and is below the rate of inflation. I think that the problem is much more the contribution that the taxpayer has to make in ways that are not a sensible use of economic resources, and it is on that that we are concentrating.

  PRIME MINISTER

    Engagements
    Mr. Haynes: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 5 May.
    The Prime Minister: This morning I presided at a meeting of the Cabinet and had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House I shall be having further meetings later today, including one with the Prime Minister of Hungary.
    Mr. Haynes: Is the Prime Minister aware that I have received a letter from a widow in my constituency, in the beautiful village of Selston? Before 11 April she was receiving housing benefit. She has now been told that she is no longer entitled to it, and she is struggling to find food. I hope that that point has gone home. Because of the policies of the Government and the Prime Minister, I believe that she is a wicked woman and that they are a wicked Government.
    The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman must think terrible things of the previous Labour Government, bearing in mind that this Government are spending far more than that Government did on social security and on housing benefit, and that there is a far higher standard of living. What a pity that he did not ask his own Front Bench—[HON. MEMBERS: "Answer the question."] I am answering the question. Hon. Members have a much better Government than they have ever had before.
    Mr. Page: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 5 May.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Page: As some of the television companies are indulging in trial by television before the legal processes are completed, will my right hon. Friend consider

    1013
    strengthening the guidelines by which those companies are controlled? Will she consider whether they are the right companies to project the balance that will be necessary when the House is televised?
    The Prime Minister: Televising the House is being considered by a Select Committee, and that Committee will no doubt wish to make its own recommendations for the House to decide. As for trial by television, it is not so much the actual specific rules on which we depend. It has been something much deeper than that. It has been a matter of the customs and conventions referred to by Lord Justice Salmon in his report, in which he said:
    "One would not wish to see in this country the horror of trial by Press, Television and Radio … We have so far escaped them only because of the high sense of responsibility on the part of Press, Television and Radio".
    It is that high sense of responsibility that does not seem to be here now. Lord Justice Salmon went on to say, andthis is vital:
    "The real danger of such interviews is that witnesses whose evidence is vital to the matters under investigation are questioned without any of the safeguards which obtain in our courts of law or before Tribunals of Inquiry."
    One of the proudest bastions of liberty is that the rule of law is inviolate. That is what is at stake.
    Mr. Kinnock: In her letter to me this week the Prime Minister said:
    "what matters is the total income of individual people from benefit"
    I agree with that, but how does the right hon. Lady respond to a 76-year-old widow who says—[interruption.] All hon. Members will have received many similar letters. They had better listen to the Prime Minister's answer, because they will need it.
    The widow says:
    "My only income is my pension … I was due in April for a £1·30 rise which would bring my income to £44·68 but now I have to pay £1·68 rates which brings me off a little worse … I have to put £25 a week away for bills—electricity, gas, life insurance, house insurance, ground rent, water rates, telephone and TV licence.
    This leaves £18 a week to live on, which isn't much fun.
    All my home is getting worn out, like me, and cannot be replaced. By the way, I have got £400 in the bank but dare not break into it as it is for my funeral."
    As it is obvious that thousands of people are in a similar position, will the Prime Minister change her social security and poll tax policies again in order to remove the 20 per cent. rates liability for people such as that widow?
    The Prime Minister: No. If the lady is within income support, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, there is full transitional protection. He is very well aware of that. For a start, those people are the poorest in our society. As he knows, widows will greatly benefit from the community charge, as they will pay a lot less than they would have done under the rates system that he wishes to support. There is an 80 per cent. rebate for those who are poor, and those on income support will receive a sum equal to about 20 per cent. of the average rate to enable them to pay either their rates or, later on, their community charge.
    Mr. Kinnock: The lady in question lives in a borough where the average rate is lower than the outer London average, and lower than the national average. I know that the right hon. Lady takes notice of her own mailbag. She must know that the average rate in her constituency is £678 a year. A 20 per cent. average liability is therefore £137·40,
    1014
    which is £2·64 a week. To offset that 20 per cent. rates liability, the DHSS pays £1·30 a week. How does £1·30 a week offset £2·64 a week?
    The Prime Minister: If there is an average payment, obviously some people will do very much better and some people will not get as much. The right hon. Gentleman is perfectly well aware of that. He will bring forward one or two losers and forget all the gainers. He will know from the latest figures that the highest domestic rate in this country is 329p, in Bolsover, and the lowest is 98p, in Kensington.
    Mr. Kinnock: The Prime Minister does not understand her own system. The DHSS provides £1·30 a week towards the extra liability that people have to meet 20 per cent. of the rates liability, wherever they live. Will she tell me how somebody on an income of just over £44 a week is not worse off as a consequence of having to meet that liability? When someone gets £1·30 a week extra, is she a loser or a gainer when she has to pay £2·64 a week extra for rates? Will the Prime Minister please try to understand the situation of the thousands of people in that position, including those in her own constituency, who have somehow to meet their 20 per cent. rates liability of £2·64 a week out of an extra £1·30 a week?
    The Prime Minister: I have answered the right hon. Gentleman. It is he who refuses to understand that if there is an average sum to meet a particular liability, some people will get more than the liability and a few people will get less. Is he suggesting that because sometimes there are losers there should never be any changes? If that is so, why did his Government introduce fair rents, when everyone had to pay increased rents over controlled rents? Why did his Government change the basis of the pension uprating when it did not suit them to compensate pensioners for price increases, and every pensioner lost?
    Mr. Benyon: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the grave concern that many of us feel at what appears to be French capitulation to terrorism, and will she convey this disquiet to the French Premier?
    The Prime Minister: As my hon. Friend is aware, our policy on hostages has not changed. We do everything that we can to inquire about them and to persuade those who hold them that it is totally wrong to do so and that they should be released unconditionally. We will not pay a ransom or make any payment of that sort to obtain the release of hostages. We have asked the French Government about the matter, and they have assured us that they have not paid a ransom.
    Mr. Chris Smith: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 5 May.
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Smith: Can the Prime Minister tell the House whether the ability of British manufacturers to export competitively plays any part in determining her policy towards the appropriate level of the sterling exchange rate, or is it only the Chancellor who is interested in British exporters?
    The Prime Minister: We are all interested in British exporters and, as the hon. Gentleman will be aware, we have to import many raw materials and semi-fabricated

    1015
    products in order to export the finished product. Of course, imports under a high exchange rate are much cheaper than they would otherwise be.
    Mr. Andy Stewart: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 5 May.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Stewart: Now that winter is over and our thoughts are turning to our summer holidays, has my hon. Friend considered taking her vacation in the new Center Pares holiday village in Sherwood forest? Since that new complex opened, 250,000 visitors have attended and paid entrance and holiday fees. The complex employs 450 people. Does my right hon. Friend agree that tourism is the easiest way forward in creating new jobs?
    The Prime Minister: I agree with my hon. Friend that tourism creates a great many jobs and brings a considerable income to this country. I confess that I had not thought of spending my own holiday at that place, but I hope that many other people will do so.
    Mr. Mallon: Given the Prime Minister's belief that recent television programmes produced by Thames Television and the BBC may be prejudicial to the findings of the inquest in Gibraltar, will she express similar concern at the decision of the Attorney-General not to prosecute senior police officers who were involved in similar incidents in the North of Ireland? Does she agree that that must he grossly prejudicial to the inquiries there? Does she further agree that the unprecedented delay of six years in holding inquests into those incidents must lead us to the conclusion that a just and equitable decision is not now possible?
    The Prime Minister: No, I disagree with the hon. Gentleman. As he is well aware, the Attorney-General's decision was made in accordance with the due and proper process of law, which, he explained to the House. That is quite different from trial by television.
    Mr. Gorst: Will my right hon. Friend say whether it would be the intention of the Government, in setting up the Broadcasting Standards Council, to refer to it matters such as the programme on the shootings in Gibraltar and the BBC's programme, "Spotlight", if it transmits it?
    The Prime Minister: That had not been the intention. As my hon. Friend is aware, we agreed to set up a Broadcasting Standards Council more to deal with violence and matters of that sort. I would prefer to think that we could rely on the television authorities to upheld the rule of law, which, after all, is the fundamental safeguard of the freedom of us all. One cannot agree with the rule of law and then flout its conditions. I hope that we will be able to persuade them that that is the predominant issue.
    Mr. Flannery: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 5 May.
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Flannery: Why is the Prime Minister, who is wealthy beyond the bounds of ordinary people's wealth, so callous and merciless with the old and the poor? Can she explain to the people outside why all this money is going to the powerful and wealthy, when it should be going to the needy, the sick and the old? How can she reconcile that with having a conscience of any kind?
    The Prime Minister: Lower rates of taxation have led to far higher incomes, to far higher standards of social services and in the Health Service than we have ever known, and to far higher living standards for widows and pensioners than they have ever known, as all the figures show. The high taxation regime run by Opposition Members led to big cuts in the social services and the Health Service. The hon. Gentleman will never understand the means by which wealth is created and the means by which extra money can be passed on to those in need. It is noteworthy that Opposition Members voted against cuts in income tax. Their votes would have cut the net take home pay of many people on quite low incomes.
    Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Is my right hon. Friend aware that my constituents fully support her in the support that she invariably gives to our security services, whose members preserve our lives? Is she further aware that they also believe that if convicted terrorists were executed, they could not escape to kill again.
    The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend knows my personal view on capital punishment. This is a matter for the House as a whole to decide, and I believe that there will one day be an occasion when the House can consider it again.

P and O Dispute
3.30 pm
Mr. Michael Meacher (Oldham, West) (by private notice): To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will make a statement on the latest developments in the P and O dispute.
The Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. Norman Fowler): The dispute continues, but I understand that P and O are operating the Pride of Kent and the Pride of Bruges between Dover and Zeebrugge.
Unlawful secondary action and picketing have interrupted the operation of a number of ferries owned by other British companies. As a consequence, in an action brought by Sealink, the National Union of Seamen was fined £150,000 on Tuesday and its assets sequestrated. I understand that further discussions between the NUS and Sealink are taking place today in the offices of ACAS.
As with all other industrial disputes, the resolution of the issues must be a matter for the parties, operating within the law and within their economic circumstances.
Mr. Meacher: Is the Secretary of State aware that the National Union of Seamen sequestrator has frozen the pensions of retired NUS members uninvolved in the dispute, has prevented the original and wholly legal dispute from being serviced and has put a stop on business unconnected with the sequestration order, such as death and accident claims? Is not that contrary to the principles of natural justice and is not this much harsher than any previous sequestration?
Will the right hon. Gentleman accept that sequestration on the basis of secondary action was wholly unjustified? Is it not a purely legal pretence that the Sealink issue is entirely unconnected with the primary dispute with P and O, given that the chairman of Sealink said:
"If P and O does win, we are obviously asking our trade unions to accept the same manning levels"?
Is the Secretary of State aware that the NUS has offered arbitration, has agreed the phasing-in of the full P and O proposals, with the full £6 million savings within the three years that P and O originally demanded, even though the Channel tunnel is at least five years away? Will the Government now use their good offices to bring P and O back to the negotiating table, as the company's intransigence and unreasonableness are the sole cause of the continuing dispute?
Is the Secretary of State further aware that the current P and O proposals to recruit untrained crews, to cut crewing levels by 20 per cent. and to introduce an 18-hour shift day again put at risk passenger safety only 13 months after the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster? Did he see the "Brass Tacks" programme two nights ago, which revealed dangerous undermanning, the use of unserviceable and unreliable equipment and instances of ships' officers being over-fatigued? Will the Government now exercise their powers under the Merchant Shipping Act 1970 to ensure that industrial safety is paramount—or is the Secretary of State deterred by the £100,000 contribution that P and O made to Tory party funds last year?
Mr. Fowler: The hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) cannot come straight from the picket line and expect us to accept what he says as an objective statement of the position in this dispute. He would do much better with regard to the Sealink case if he persuaded the union
1018
to accept the ruling of the court and to stop secondary action. It is not remotely helpful to the outcome of this dispute for the Labour party to have joined in, and for Opposition spokesmen to appear on the picket line.
On safety, there is no truth whatsoever in what the hon. Gentleman suggests. There have been general inspections of ships and their equipment, carried out in Rotterdam by Department of Transport surveyors. Emergency procedure drills were conducted before the ships left Rotterdam; and before the ships left service from Dover, emergency procedure drills were witnessed by surveyors with each fresh crew.
So far as an inquiry or arbitration is concerned, ACAS can be brought in at the request of the two parties, but I must emphasise that it is up to the parties. No inquiry will settle issues that relate, apart from anything else, to the commercial judgment of the company, faced with new competition.
The NUS had every opportunity of avoiding sequestration. There is absolutely no doubt about that. The judge said:
"Members and their leaders have only themselves to blame. This is the clearest possible case of deliberate attempted suicide."
With regard to the law, the hon. Member for Oldham, West, and I hope the Opposition and the Leader of the Opposition, must accept that unions are not above the law. If they act in defiance of court orders, they must expect them to be enforced. I hope that he will make clear now his support for the law in these matters.
Mr. Norman Tebbit: Is my right hon. Friend able to say, first, whether there are any political or financial connections between the National Union of Seamen and the Labour party?
Secondly, after the ignorant comments of the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) concerning secondary action, will my right hon. Friend confirm that the objection to secondary action is that it is taken against those who have no means of influencing the outcome of the primary dispute? That is why secondary action is, rightly, outlawed, and why those who suffer from it should have recourse to the courts for relief and damages.
Mr. Fowler: I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend. It should be recognised that there is no right for people or unions to spread a strike to companies that are not connected with a dispute; and there is no right to stop fellow workers coming to work, or to force people when they fail to persuade. A much better course for the Opposition, rather than joining in this dispute, would be to point out the value of the law in industrial relations and to seek to use their influence to get the NUS to accept it.
Mr. James Wallace: Few in this House would deny that there is a crisis in our merchant fleet, not least with the advent of the Channel tunnel, but does the Secretary of State accept that dialogue and conciliation are much better ways of sorting out these problems than taking up entrenched positions? Will he use the good offices of the Government to encourage such dialogue?
On a constituency matter, is the Secretary of State aware that the P and O ships that link Shetland with the mainland are now at port and will not sail, but that the NUS has agreed that emergency provisions may be carried. In that event, will he encourage P and O to ensure

1019
that ships are made available for that purpose? How does the Secretary of State expect messages to get through to the NUS about the emergency supplies required if the offices of the Aberdeen NUS are sequestrated?
Mr. Fowler: That individual case is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport. As for the hon. Gentleman's point on negotiation, it is fair to point out that there has already been substantial movement from the original proposals. Crew rostering arrangements have been improved and working days reduced. The hon. Gentleman must accept that the proposals have been sufficiently attractive for more than 1,000 of the staff to accept them and for 5,000 or 6,000 people to work on these ships under those conditions.
Mr. David Shaw: Is my right hon. Friend aware that some 5,000 P and O and Sealink employees wish to work in Dover and Folkestone? Is he aware that many trade unionists approached me and other Members of Parliament about asking the union to have a secret ballot and that the union refused a secret ballot on P and O's terms? Is my right hon. Friend further aware that the 24 hours on, 24 hours off system of working is already employed by Sealink and that P and O's only requirement is that it wants to pay its employees more than Sealink to work the same system? Is he further aware that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) and I are extremely worried about the acts of intimidation and violence in our constituencies?
Mr. Fowler: The House should know that since last Tuesday there have been 14 arrests for various public order offences and 61 reported cases of intimidation, ranging from paint daubing to threatening telephone calls. There should be no dispute in the House about the fact that such events and actions are condemned not only by the Government but by the Opposition Front Bench spokesmen.
Mr. Eric S. Heffer: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the National Union of Seamen is one of the most democratic unions in this country, that it regularly has secret ballots and that the outcome of some of those secret ballots was that a majority of the members decided not to accept the blue book, and certainly not the red book, which P and O has been trying to impose on those workers, a system which, if accepted, would be a form of slave labour?
The right hon. Gentleman talks about keeping to the law. Is he aware that, last Saturday, the port master of Heysham harbour cut the ropes of the Tynwald, the Isle of Man boat, putting all the craft in that harbour in jeopardy? Is that not an illegal act? What action will the Government take to deal with that man? The Government are quick enough to support the union being sequestered. They have one law for the rich and one for the trade unions.
Mr. Fowler: That is absurd. If the hon. Gentleman or his hon. Friends wish to report that action, clearly it will be investigated by the police. It is precisely the same as in any other circumstances. That is what the rule of law means, and it is about time that the hon. Gentleman understood the position.
The hon. Gentleman's remarks about secret ballots and slave labour are again patently absurd. More than 1,000 of
1020
the staff of P and O have accepted the conditions and between 5,000 and 6,000 people have applied for the jobs which have been advertised with those conditions.
Mr. Barry Field: Has my right hon. Friend found time to look at early-day motion 1035? Does he agree that the words "in every possible way" are more weasel words from the party which refused to condemn violence during the miners' dispute?
Mr. Fowler: As I have already made clear, it would be in the public interest for the Opposition spokesman who asked this private notice question to make it clear that he and the Opposition are in favour of the union respecting and following the rule of law in this country.
Mr. Peter Shore: In considering the dispute, will the Minister have firmly in mind the appalling contraction of the Merchant Navy that has taken place during the past eight years, and the need to avoid any further damage and contraction which a prolonged dispute would involve? Does he agree that the solution to the dispute must come out of arbitration? Will he urge that course on both parties to the dispute?
Mr. Fowler: No, I will not do that. I do not think that that is the right way to proceed. As I have made clear, I think that that is essentially a matter for the parties concerned.
In regard to competition, I have sympathy with the first point made by the right hon. Gentleman, but surely the lesson of what he is saying is that British companies that are trying to be competitive are also trying to protect British jobs. If the ferries become uncompetitive, the only people who will gain will be overseas competitors and overseas union members.
Mr. Ian Bruce: Does my right hon. Friend agree that secondary action in the dispute is not only illegal, but has been positively against the interests of the P and O strikers? Surely, in a single movement, they have stopped the NUS being able to support those strikers, and they have forced anybody who wants to go to the continent on a ferry to go on a non-union P and O ferry?
Mr. Fowler: As a result of the secondary action, there has been an interruption to services which has been to the disservice of literally everyone, but most of all to the travelling public and to companies that want to send goods from this country to Europe.
Mr. Tony Benn: Is the Minister aware that the use of repressive legislation passed by Parliament to destroy the National Union of Seamen, representing seafarers on whom the nation's welfare has always depended, is absolutely in line with the policies of Mussolini and Hitler, who began their attack upon democracy by obliterating trade unions in Italy and Germany? Following the ban on trade unions at GCHQ and the abolition of the GLC and the metropolitan counties, is it not clear that the Government of which he is a member are set on the systematic destruction of democracy in this country?
Mr. Fowler: The right hon. Gentleman is not only being absurd; he is making himself a laughing stock by making such remarks. It is not repressive legislation. There RS a right to work without being harassed, intimidated or threatened. There is a right for people to make up their

1021
own minds about whether to cross a picket line and to work. The right hon. Gentleman should respect those individual rights.
Sir Ian Lloyd: The very grave allegations made a few moments ago by the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) that standards of safety have been seriously compromised by the management of P and O are so serious that they should either be substantiated immediately or withdrawn.
Mr. Fowler: As I have said, the suggestions by the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) about safety standards are simply untrue. [Interruption.] I shall tell the hon. Gentleman how I know. The two P and O ferries that have returned to service have been very thoroughly inspected by Department of Transport surveyors. Probably no two ferries have ever been more thoroughly inspected. As my hon. Friend rightly suggests, it would be much better if the hon. Gentleman withdrew those suggestions.
Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones (Ynys Môn): Does the Minister agree that the adversarial nature of legal proceedings means that the parties are now being driven into positions from which it will be difficult for them to negotiate, and because the ferry operators now believe that they have the upper hand in those legal proceedings they are merely waiting for the union's resolve to be crushed? Does not the Minister think that he should now reflect and use his good offices to urge the parties to go to arbitration because that is the only sensible way to resolve the dispute?
Mr. Fowler: I do not accept that at all. No objective observer would accept the hon. Gentleman's description of what has taken place. The NUS has been given every opportunity to avoid what has taken place in the courts. The courts have made that clear and the judge has made that clear, and the NUS has only itself to blame.
Mr. Nicholas Bennett: Does my right hon. Friend agree that we are seeing the dying gasps of boneheaded trade unionism, which contrasts very much with the new realism of the electricians and the engineers? Does my right hon. Friend also agree that it is not surprising that the Labour party should support the NUS when Mr. McCluskie is a member of its national executive and there is more interest in the leadership contest between the leader of the Labour party and the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn)?
Mr. Fowler: What we do not want to see are the dying gasps of the British ferry industry and the competitive position of British ferries. That is the point. The course on which the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) seems determined to take his party means that British jobs will again be lost as a result of union action and the hon. Gentleman's support.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. I remind the House that this is a private notice question, which is an extension of Question Time, and we must now move on.

P and O Dispute

  Business of the House
  3.51 pm
  Mr. Frank Dobson: May I ask the Leader of the House to state the business for next week?
  The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John Wakeham): The business for next week will be as follows:
  MONDAY 9 MAY—Consideration in Committee of the Finance (No. 2) Bill.
  TUESDAY Io MAY—At the end on Tuesday motion on the Control of Misleading Advertisements Regulations.
  WEDNESDAY II MAY—Opposition Day (11th Allotted Day). There will be a debate on an Opposition motion entitled "The Crisis in Housing".
  Motion to take note of the European Commission's proposal on the approximation of indirect taxation. Details of the EC documents concerned will be given in the Official Report.
  The Chairman of Ways and Means has named opposed private business for consideration at seven o'clock.
  THURSDAY I2 MAY—There will be a debate on prisons on a motion for the Adjournment of the House.
  Motion on the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Immunities and Privileges) Order.
  The Chairman of Ways and Means has named opposed private business for consideration at seven o'clock.
  FRIDAY I3 MAY—Private Members' Bills.
  MONDAY I6 MAY—Until seven o'clock, private Members' motions. Second Reading of the Civil Evidence (Scotland) Bill [Lords].
  [Debate on Wednesday 11 May 1988

  Relevant European Community Documents

  8199/87

  Indirect tax rates and structures

  8200/87

  Value added tax rates

  8201/87

  Removal of fiscal frontiers

  8202/87

  Value added tax clearing mechanism for intra-Community sales

  8203/87 + COR 1

  Convergence of rates of value added tax and excise duties

  8204/87

  Taxes on cigarettes and other manufactured tobacco

  8205/87

  8206/87

  Excise duty on mineral oils

  8207/87 + COR 1

  Excise duty on alcohol

  Relevant Report of European Legislation Committee
  HC 43-viii (1987–88). para 1
  Relevant Reports of the Treasury and Civil Service Committee
  Third Report (1987–88), (HC 248)
  First Special Report (1987–88) (HC 438)]
  Mr. Dobson: First, does the Leader of the House recall telling the House last Thursday that he would try to get the Secretary of State for Social Services to clarify when the special Department of Health and Social Security unit dealing with excessive cuts in housing benefit would be set up, where it would be located, and how people affected should make claims? Since then, there has been no such clarification about that U-turn unit, so will the Secretary of State for Social Services now come to the House to spell

  1023
  out exactly what is going on and to give answers to the questions that hon. Members on both sides of the House are being asked by their constituents?
  Secondly, can we expect an early statement explaining the Government's attitude to the Kuwaiti holding in British Petroleum, which they welcomed when it bailed out the privatisation share issue but which is now feared to be a monopoly takeover hid?
  Thirdly, we understand that one of the private Bills to be considered next week is the Associated British Ports (No. 2) Bill, which would give that private company planning permission that it might not be able to obtain from the relevant planning authorities. The right hon. Gentleman will recall that the last such Bill was the one which gave P and O planning permission for works at Felixstowe dock. On that occasion, Tory Members of Parliament, including the Prime Minister, were whipped to vote for the Bill and the Government sacrificed a day's business—[Interruption.]
  Mr. Speaker: Order.
  Mr. Dobson: —a whole day's business to help the company get its private Bill through. Will the Government take—[interruption.]
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I am trying to listen.
  Mr. Dobson: I am trying to speak, Mr. Speaker.
  Will the Government take the same attitude—[Interruption.]
  Mr. Bowen Wells: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The shadow Leader of the House has made a damaging remark about Conservative Members. He has accused us of being whipped in support of the P and O Bill. That is a grave aspersion on our honour and he should withdraw it.
  Mr. Speaker: With my background, I do not think that I can say that to be whipped for any Bill is necessarily out of order.
  Mr. Dobson: It is an—[Interruption.]
  Mr. Speaker: Order. We have to take the rough with the smooth in this place.
  Mr. Bowen Wells: It is a lie.
  Mr. Speaker: It may be a little wide of the truth, but it is not a lie.
  Mr. Dobson: It is a fact. It is a fact that the Prime Minister stayed up most of the night to vote for P and O. It is a fact that, rather than lose P and O's business, the Government sacrificed a whole day of their business to help P and O get its private Bill through. Will the Government take the same attitude to the Associated British Ports Bill? If not, can we conclude that that company has not yet paid as much into Tory party funds as the £100,000 paid by P and O?
  Finally, and not for the first time—but I hope for the last time—when will the Leader of the House discharge his duties to the people of Scotland and establish the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs?
  Mr. Wakeham: The hon. Gentleman asked me four questions about the business for next week. First, he asked me about housing benefits. Later this afternoon, my hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security and the Disabled
  1024
  will provide the House with details of the changes in housing benefit which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced in the House last Wednesday, together with the arrangements to effect those changes. The hon. Gentleman will have to contain himself until that answer is given.
  My right hon. and noble Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry announced on 4 May that, in accordance with the advice of the Director General of Fair Trading, he would refer the Kuwaiti Investment Office's 22 per cent. shareholding in BP to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. It is now for the commission to report on whether the shareholding is against the public interest.
  Private Bills are a matter not for me, but for the Chairman of Ways and Means. The hon. Gentleman's remarks confirm to many of us the wisdom of having matters connected with the usual channels conducted in private rather than in public, especially if one's facts are wrong.
  I have discussed the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs with the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar), and I am considering the best way to proceed.
  Several Hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. No fewer than 35 hon. Gentlemen wish to take part in the agriculture debate. I remind hen. Members to ask single questions of the Leader of the House on the business for next week.
  Sir Peter Emery: Does my right hon. Friend accept that many hon. Members will be pleased that, after 11 months of this Parliament, we have the names of the members of the Procedure Committee on the Order Paper? Does he recall that, before we rose for the summer recess, he told the House that he would try to initiate a debate on the previous reports of the Procedure Committee? I realise that there may be some difficulty in obtaining the agreement of the Opposition for this, but will he consider having such a debate on motions in the names of the members of the previous Committee rather than in the name of the Government? The House could then decide whether advice could be given to both sides of the House on how to proceed on those reports. A debate on that matter would be to the benefit of everybody.
  Mr. Wakeham: I am glad that my hon. Friend is pleased that we have been able to table a motion on the re-establishment of the Select Committee on Procedure. I can also assure him that it is my intention to hold a debate on procedural matters as soon as it can conveniently be arranged. As I have said on many occasions, these things are best discussed with all the parties concerned so as to find the most practical and agreeable way forward.
  Mr. James Molyneaux: The Leader of the House was present yesterday when I inquired whether the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland intended to make a statement following yesterday's meeting of the Anglo-Irish Conference. Did he transmit that request, and, if so, what was the response?
  Mr. Wakeham: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State had a private meeting yesterday with the Taoiseach,

  1025
  followed by a full session of the Inter-Governmental Conference. A full statement setting out in detail the subjects discussed at the conference is in the Library.
  Mrs. Ann Winterton: My right hon. Friend will be aware that the remaining stages of a private Member's Bill to limit late abortions for social reasons will be debated tomorrow. Will he do all in his power to prevent any possible filibuster and enable right hon. and hon. Members to exercise their own judgment on this important matter?
  Mr. Wakeham: I have a great deal of sympathy with my hon. Friend. Filibusters and rules of order are matters not for me, but for you, Mr. Speaker. I am sure that the whole House would deprecate the use of filibustering tactics to avoid discussion of this important issue.
  Mr. Robert Maclennan: In view of the reports, which have appeared this morning and been confirmed by a Government spokesman this afternoon, that the Government's chief scientific adviser has recommended the cancellation of the fast breeder reactor programme, and of the alarm and despondency that that report has caused, will the Leader of the House ensure that the Secretary of State for Energy makes a statement next week at the earliest opportunity?
  Mr. Wakeham: I do not know where the hon. Gentleman gets all his information. The information that I have is that the Government review all their R and D programmes from time to time, which is good management, as the hon. Gentleman will agree. We are considering a range of options for the fast reactor programme, but no decisions have yet been taken. I shall certainly refer his question to my right hon. Friend, as I know of his constituency interest in the matter.
  Mr. Ivan Lawrence: As there is obviously deep feeling in the country and among my colleagues in the House about the future of the British passport, would it not be appropriate for the mood of the House to be tested by having a debate on the subject at the earliest possible opportunity?
  Mr. Wakeham: I shall certainly bear that suggestion in mind. The British passport is not being replaced by a European Community one, as is alleged in some quarters. Rather, a new version of the British passport, machine-readable and in a common format agreed in 1981 with other EEC countries, will start to appear from July when the Glasgow passport office is computerised.
  Mr. Nigel Spearing: Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that the import of his announcement about next Wednesday's business is that there will be private business from 7 pm to 10 pm and then a debate on the important proposals of Lord Cockfield and his associates on VAT extensions to food, fuel, domestic building and water and sewerage? According to a written answer that I received on Tuesday, it will also be extended to charity sales from gift shops. Is not one and a half hours too short a time in which to debate this important extension of taxation for the British people? If the right hon. Gentleman persists in having the debate at that time of night, will he consider suspending the rule and making the debate a bit longer?
  Mr. Wakeham: I appreciate that this is an important matter. I think that the arrangements I have made for the debate are adequate. I am certainly prepared to have discussions if there is a general wish to extend the time.
  Mr. Tony Marlow: My right hon. Friend will have seen early-day motion 1053, which has been tabled by various influential Opposition Members.
  [That this House condemns the continued Government attempts to interfere with the Independent Broadcasting Authority and British Broadcasting Corporation in their efforts to report and comment on the Gibraltar assassinations; and considers that both the shoot to kill policy and suppression of comment are serious aspects of this extreme right-wing Conservative Government.]
  He will notice that it seeks to brand British service men as assassins. I think he will agree with me that it is the most disgraceful and shameful EDM that we have seen. May we have an early opportunity to debate it so that we can point out the way in which certain members of the Labour party seek to twist the knife in the spine of the British services, and so that the public at large, although we are not allowed to say that that is intentional in this place, will make up their minds that it is? It is the Opposition's intention to do all that they can to undermine the success of our service men in the fight against the vile terrorists who, in cold blood, killed three innocent young men in Holland last weekend.
  Mr. Wakeham: The Government's concern is about the interference with witnesses and the effect that that could have on the inquest that will take place in Gibraltar. Of course there is no question of the Government seeking to challenge the constitutional independence of the broadcasting authorities; it is the damage that is done that we find reprehensible, and it should not have taken place. That is why I had better restrain myself from making further comments now.
  Mr. James Kilfedder: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it in order for the early-day motion referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) to remain on the Order Paper, given the terms in which it is couched? It brands three soldiers as assassins, when no decision on that has yet been made in any court of law.
  Mr. Speaker: The early-day motion is in order.
  Mr. Peter Shore: May I press the Leader of the House further on the business announced for Wednesday? It really is not good enough to have a debate lasting one and a half hours after 10 pm on a matter as important as the harmonisation of value added taxes throughout the Community—and the harmonisation of excise duties, too. This is one of the most serious proposals to come out of the EEC. It will affect the sovereignty of the House in ways deeper than many of its other enactments. Surely the matter should have been given a proper debate in prime time.
  Mr. Wakeham: I have heard what the right hon. Gentleman said. I repeat that I believe that what we have done is right and adequate, but I am certainly prepared to examine the matter again in view of what he has said.
  Sir Ian Lloyd: From a somewhat less localised standpoint than the hon. Member for Caithness and

  1027
  Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan), may I express my anxiety about the future of the fast breeder reactor programme? As Great Britain has spent an enormous sum developing this most important technology, and as her reputation stands high and it is at least arguable—I put it no stronger than that—that the future of energy in the next century could depend on the continuation of that technology, I hope that the Government will take no decision until we have had a chance to debate this thoroughly.
  Mr. Wakeham: I cannot add anything to what I said to the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan). I can confirm that no decisions have been taken. The point that my hon. Friend makes has been taken on board, and I shall see that the Secretary of State for Energy knows of his concern.
  Mrs. Margaret Ewing: Is the Leader of the House aware of the concern among those involved in the professional training of social workers that the DHSS has rejected proposals put forward by the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work? Would it therefore be possible for the House to debate the priorities, or lack of priorities, of the Government in this vital area, in which we need adequately trained staff to deal with society's problems?
  Mr. Wakeham: I agree with the hon. Lady that that is an important subject. I cannot find time for a debate in the near future, but I shall certainly refer the matter to my right hon. Friend.
  Mr. Harry Greenway: May we have an early debate on local government finance so that the House can examine the deplorable decision of Lambeth City council to cancel, at two weeks' notice, a £50,000 grant to the excellent Caine Hall family centre, which looks after families and is run by the London City Mission, because of its refusal to employ homosexuals and lesbians? May we couple that debate with another on Ealing council's continued determination to spend £1,000 of hard-pressed ratepayers' money on an evening for lesbians?
  Mr. Wakeham: I was hoping to have a bit of a rest from local government finance, but my hon. Friend raises an important subject. I wish I could promise him a debate on the matter that gives him concern, but I cannot promise one in the immediate future.
  Mr. Frank Cook: In responding to the question of the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) about the Dounreay reports, the Leader of the House confessed his ignorance about the source of the information. I have copies of reports from The Guardian, the Financial Times and The Independent, and I shall let the right hon. Gentleman have them. If there is substance in these reports, there is no need for me to remind the right hon. Gentleman about the importance of jobs and the protection of jobs, or about the shift in long-term energy policy that such a move would bring about. Knowing how difficult it is to get a debate in Government time—it is like trying to find rocking horse droppings—will the Leader of the House prevail upon his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy to make a statement after energy questions on Monday?
  Mr. Wakeham: When I expressed some surprise about where the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland
  1028
  (Mr. Maclennan) had got his information, I thought that it was probably more reliable than the front page story in The Guardian which I, too, read. My information came direct from the Secretary of State, who said that no decision had been taken. I prefer to rely on his information than on anything that I read in The Guardian. The hon. Member asked about a statement. It is probably better for a statement to be made when there is something to say.
  Mr. Kilfedder: May I refer again to the Anglo-Eire Conference meeting which took place yesterday and which the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has described as a meeting at which crucial and important decisions affecting the people of Northern Ireland were made? Despite what the Leader of the House has said, the communiqué issued after the meeting amounted to very little. It hides more than it reveals and the Unionist people of Northern Ireland—I emphasise Unionist—are being kept in the dark about decisions being made about their future and the future of their children, whereas the SDLP is a party indirectly to all decisions made by the Anglo-Eire Conference.
  Is it not a disgrace that right hon. and hon. Members are being kept in the dark about decisions being made in Dublin? Is it not a disgrace that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has not had the decency to come here today to make a statement about the meeting? Will the Leader of the House make sure that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland comes to the House tomorrow, Friday, to tell us, the people of Northern Ireland and the people of the United Kingdom what decisions are being made with Dublin?
  Mr. Wakeham: I cannot accept the hon. Gentleman's analysis. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State For Northern Ireland did the right thing in putting a full statement in the Library. It would not be right for him to make a statement in the House. I can tell the hon. Gentleman that decisions about the United Kingdom will be taken by the United Kingdom Government.
  Mr. Seamus Mallon: The Leader of the House will no doubt be aware that a recent public opinion poll in the Republic of Ireland showed that the third most important foreign personage was the Prime Minister, who was second only to the Pope and Mother Teresa of Calcutta. The same opinion poll showed that the most important Irish person was the Irish Prime Minister. Should we not capitalise upon the mutual popularity of the two Prime Ministers by having a debate in which we can properly assess the very successful outcome to date of the Anglo-Irish Agreement?
  Mr. Wakeham: I recognise that there will be need for a debate on these matters, but. I cannnot promise one next week.
  Mr. Michael Fallon: Will my right hon. Friend arrange an early debate on the social implications of the Church of England's new urban fund and the Bishop of Durham's new opportunity fund, under which every parishioner on the church roll in my constituency will be asked for a flat rate contribution of £20, irrespective of income or ability to pay? Would not such a debate be an opportunity to persuade the bishop to introduce the same generosity, tapers and benefits that we are introducing in the Local Government Finance Bill?
  Mr. Wakeham: If the bishop were to take part in the debate, it would have to be in another place. But I take my hon. Friend's point.
  Mr. Greville Janner: As it is now nearly three months since the Government set up their inquiry into the alleged involvement of Waldheim in the death of British commandos, may we have a statement from the Home Secretary about how the inquiry is progressing, or can the Leader of the House give some indication? Meanwhile, may we have an assurance that there will be no contacts between the British ambassador in Austria and President Waldheim unless and until he is cleared of these allegations?
  Mr. Wakeham: The review is being conducted by the Ministry of Defence and it is intended to be as thorough and comprehensive as possible. It is being pursued as quickly as is consistent with proper consideration of the evidence and the need for accuracy. Although good progress is being made, this is a complex and important matter and it would be premature to speculate on when the review might be completed. It would not be appropriate for me to comment on the findings before the review is completed.
  Mr. Bowen Wells: On Wednesday the harmonisation of VAT and excise duties is to be debated for only one and a half hours. Is it not absurd that we will be considering for such a short time matters that are normally the subject of a Bill—for instance the Finance Bill, which occupies much time on the Floor of the House and in Committee? Does my right hon. Friend agree that the question of dealing with European legislation—a question that I have raised with him before—should be immediately considered by the Procedure Committee, which I am delighted to say he has been able to set up? Will he refer this matter to the Committee urgently because clearly he cannot find proper time for it in normal business hours?
  Mr. Wakeham: My hon. Friend used the word "absurd". I suggest that he reads the Government motion before reaching such a conclusion. I think that what I have done is the sensible way forward, but, as I have said, I am prepared to have discussions to see whether we can find better arrangements.
  Mr. Keith Vaz: Will the Leader of the House make time available for an urgent debate about the state of Britain's footwear industry? Is he aware that there are 11,000 footwear workers in Leicestershire and in other parts of the midlands? Is he also aware of the new figures published by the British Footwear Manufacturers Federation which show that the imports have increased dramatically over the past month? When may we have a chance to debate this important matter?
  Mr. Wakeham: As I am sure the hon. Gentleman will accept, there are many important matters calling for the time of the House and it is impossible to fit them all in. Perhaps an Adjournment debate would enable him to put some of the points that he wishes the House to appreciate.
  Mr. John Marshall: Will my right hon. Friend consider initiating a debate on the future of the confectionery industry which faces the threat of 80 per cent. of the industry being owned by companies in non-EC
  1030
  countries? Is my right hon. Friend aware that Rowntree is subject to a bid by two Swiss companies, both of which are immune to a counter bid from Rowntree?
  Mr. Wakeham: Under the Fair Trading Act 1973 the Director General of Fair Trading has a duty to advise my right hon. and noble Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry about whether a merger or a prospective merger should be referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission for further investigation. The Director General takes into account all matters which may raise questions of public interest, including the points that my hon. Friend raised, and the likely and significant effect on employment and other matters. I think we had best leave it at that.
  Mr. Dennis Skinner: Why does not the Leader of the House arrange a debate next week about the seamen's dispute so that we can fully engage in an argument about the real facts? Will he tell his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment to have a more comprehensive list of the facts when he next appears at the Dispatch Box? Will he tell him, for example, that there is nothing wrong in Labour Members such as myself going to a picket line in Dover or anywhere else when the Prime Minister spends her time supping gin and tonic and whisky with Jeffrey Sterling in Downing street? He is employed as a special adviser to the Government and the Prime Minister and gives £100,000 for Tory party funds.
  There is much talk about a ballot. The Leader of the House should tell his right hon. Friends that all the seamen in Britain wanted a ballot, but were stopped from having one by the Tories' friends in the courts. There is also an argument about safety. If the Leader of the House had watched the BBC programme the other night, he would know that many ships are in jeopardy and that Sterling wants to reduce even further the number of men and women who are employed. The Government are interested in seafarers only when they want them to fight their wars.
  Mr. Wakeham: The one thing that is quite clear from that diatribe is that the hon. Gentleman does not want to resolve the dispute. I should have thought that he would be the first to understand that in all industrial disputes the resolution of the issues must be a matter for the parties operating within the law and taking cognisance of economic circumstances. I do not think that a debate would improve the situation one iota.
  Mr. Ian Bruce: Is my right hon. Friend able to organise a debate on office accommodation in the Palace of Westminster? In view of the comments made in the press by the hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone)—he said that the Labour Whips were not able to give him accommodation—is my right hon. Friend able to confirm that the Opposition Whips were given more than their fair share of accommodation? As all Conservative Members have offices, is it not strange that the Opposition Whips were unable to find the hon. Gentleman an office?
  Mr. Wakeham: I cannot comment on the remarks of the hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) about those matters. Office accommodation is not as satisfactory as some people would like, although both sides of the House do their best. The Opposition have their way of doing things and we have our way, and we had best leave it at that.
  Mr. Harry Cohen: May we have a full-scale debate on the P and O attempt to break the National Union of Seamen? Some hon. Members wish to make the point that the P and O management appears to be above the law as it has not been brought before the law for its part in the Zeebrugge tragedy. It is attempting to smash the trade union and to worsen—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman should ask for a debate, rather than participating in one.
  Mr. Cohen: Is not P and O endeavouring to worsen working conditions and passenger safety? Is it not the real enemy within in that dispute, supported by the Government's secondary action?
  Mr. Wakeham: The hon. Gentleman has confirmed my earlier view that the object of having a debate would not be to try to resolve the matter, if we were to follow his course of action. I should like to see the matter resolved, but I do not believe that a debate involving the expression of such sentiments will help to resolve the dispute.
  Rev. Martin Smyth: Does the Leader of the House accept that his answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for Lagan Valley (Mr. Molyneaux) concerning a statement by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland leaves us absolutely amazed? The description of the statement in the Library as a full statement would not be accepted as such by anyone in Northern Ireland or by anyone reading it intelligently in the United Kingdom.
  I impress upon the right hon. Gentleman the need for an urgent statement so that we can cross-examine the Government, in the new light that has dawned, on the fact that the Government will now be concerned about border patrol. Is the impact on the finances of the Republic of Ireland making that demand or is there no real concern that people in Northern Ireland have perished because there has not been proper frontier control? We must address such questions arising for innocuous statements unless we want to leave the Northern Ireland Office in orbit over Maryfield or Phoenix Park.
  Mr. Wakeham: I hope that the hon. Gentleman is not suggesting that I am not concerned about the victims of terrorism, but I gave what I thought was a full answer to the question. A copy of the statement has been put in the
  1032
  Library, but the question whether it is a full statement is a matter of opinion and the hon. Gentleman is entitled to his opinion. I have nothing to add to what I have already said, but I shall refer his remarks to my right hon. Friend.
  Mr. Tony Banks: Why should we not have a debate on the P and O dispute? After all, the Government have interfered so much through legislation in industrial relations that they have now made it virtually impossible for any trade union legitimately to pursue its aims and objectives. Why do the Government persist in acting like industrial warmongers rather than trying to bring some peace and satisfaction to what is clearly a troublesome situation at Dover?
  Mr. Wakeham: Unlike the Labour Government, which the hon. Gentleman presumably supported, this Government have produced a framework of law so that the parties in dispute can find an orderly, civilised and legal way of settling their disputes. That does not involve debates in the House in the middle of such a dispute, and that is why it would not be sensible to have such a debate.
  Mr. Roy Beggs: If the Leader of the House has not already read the statement placed in the Library regarding the Anglo-Irish Conference meeting yesterday, will he look at it carefully? The first part of the statement relates to those people who were present and covers almost half a page. The remainder is totally unsatisfactory to those of us who represent the Unionist majority. Will the right hon. Gentleman take that into account and recognise that we should have liked to ask a Northern Ireland Minister, the Secretary of State, or the Prime Minister today whether the Secretary of State obtained the assurances from Mr. Haughey during yesterday's discussions that the Prime Minister demanded in this House? We have a right to know whether progress is being made and whether the nonsense of promising further steps to improve security is leading us anywhere.
  Mr. Wakeham: I have nothing to add to what I have already said, but I shall refer the anxiety of the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State.
  Mr. Tony Banks: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. Speaker: In a minute.

  Anglo-Irish Conference (Meeting)
  4.26 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 outcome of yesterday's meeting of the Anglo-Irish Conference."
  The matter is specific because yesterday's meeting dealt with the Gibraltar killings, extradition, terrorist cross-border racketeering, fair employment proposals, financial assistance to west Belfast, the murders of RAF personnel in Holland and the assurances that the Prime Minister has been seeking from the Dublin Government about their attitude to certain aspects of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Those are all issues of great significance, not just to the people of Northern Ireland, but to people in the United Kingdom and further afield.
  The matter is urgent because, by this evening, the only people on the island of Ireland who will know nothing in detail about the discussions or their outcome will be the Unionist community in Northern Ireland, for whom these may well be matters of life and death. For two and a half years, the Northern Ireland Office has governed Northern Ireland by this hole-and-corner procedure, never once coming to the House to report on its dealings with the Dublin Government. In the interests of democracy, if nothing else, it should be stopped and we should make a new start this afternoon.
  Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman asks leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 20, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that he believes should have urgent consideration, namely,
  "the outcome of the meeting held yesterday in Dublin of the Anglo-Irish Conference."
  As the hon. Gentleman knows, my difficult duty in assessing applications under Standing Order No. 20 is to consider whether such an application should be given priority over the business set down for today and whether it meets the criteria. I regret to say that I cannot find that the matter that he has raised meets all those criteria and, therefore, I cannot submit his application to the House.

  Points of Order
  4.29 pm
  Mr. Tony Banks: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I tried to raise a point of order before the Standing Order No. 20 application and you said to me, "In a minute." That is normal and it is what we have come to expect, but during business questions two Conservative Members rose on a point of order and you did not say to them, "In a minute." You heard the point of order.
  You have come up with a rule under which, in effect, points of order will not be taken until business questions, applications under Standing Order No. 20 and statements have been dealt with. We have accepted that. We simply ask that the rule should be applied equally to both sides of the House.
  Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman must not allege such things. I dealt with those points of order because they
  1034
  appeared to require my immediate intervention. If the hon. Gentleman had risen at that time, he would certainly have been heard in the same way. There is no change at all. In our debates, the points of order raised are dealt with immediately.
  Mr. Michael Fallon rose—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I remind the House that 35 hon. Members wish to speak in the following debate, but I shall take the hon. Gentleman's point of order.
  Mr. Fallon: I ask you, Mr. Speaker, to reflect further on the question raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) about the standard of language that is acceptable in early-day motions. Unless a ruling is made soon, the Table Office will have an increasingly difficult position forced on it by the growing tendency of hon. Members to table early-day motions that express strong and often controversial views and describe events or policies in highly tendentious language. Some weeks ago the word "mongrelisation" was used. Last night, the events in Gibraltar were described in a highly prejudicial fashion as "assassination". Will you reflect on the standard of language acceptable in early-day motions?
  Mr. Speaker: If there is any doubt about the submission of an early-day motion, it is always brought to my attention. That motion was not brought to my attention, and therefore it was considered to be in order by the Table Office.
  Mr. Frank Cook: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am genuinely confused. I listen carefully to your rulings, and—
  Mr. Speaker: I think that I can anticipate the hon. Gentleman's point of order. I took the point of order during business questions because I thought it arose out of something that had been alleged during business questions. As the hon. Gentleman knows, if something happens in a debate which requires the immediate attention of the Chair, it is raised as a point of order. That is the normal procedure, and that is what I did. If it is a point of order that requires my judgment on a general matter something not requiring immediate attention, it is taken in its proper place, which is after the applications under Standing Order No. 20. There has been no change.
  Mr. Cook: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am grateful to you and I accept what you are saying. The problem is that I recall clearly a lengthy exchange on just these issues, fronted by my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours). It seemed to me that at that time you were ruling in a different way.
  Mr. Speaker: I disagree with the hon. Gentleman. That was a matter of points of order arising out of Question Time. It was completely different from a point of order that calls for immediate attention. [Interruption.] Is the hon. Gentleman saying that any point of order that requires the immediate attention of the Chair should be deferred?
  Mr. Cook: With respect, Mr. Speaker, that was the reason why I could not understand the ruling in the first place.
  Rev. Ian Paisley: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Will you help Northern Ireland Members?

  1035
  Important events are occurring in our Province, and we have only this Chamber in which to speak. Now we are not permitted to discuss anything that is happening in Northern Ireland. We do not have debates. Matters are announced by radio and television, and that is all we know about. Surely there must be more help. What is the use of our coming here when we cannot speak? When we did not come, it was said we should come, and when we do come, you do not let us speak.
  Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman wishes to take part in today's debate, and no doubt he will raise Northern Ireland matters, but as I told the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. McCusker), who made an application under Standing Order No. 20, I must have regard to the criteria laid down in the Standing Order.
  Mr. Ian Gow: Further to the point of order about early-day motion 1053, Mr. Speaker. You told the House that the Table Office had not referred this early-day motion to you, and it is just possible that you had not had an opportunity of looking at it until the matter was raised with you on the Floor of the House today. That being so, would you undertake to consider the wording of this motion, and let the House have your advice on whether, if the allegation which relates to Gibraltar had related to somewhere within the United Kingdom, you would have allowed a motion such as this to go on the Order Paper?
  Will you also bear in mind that some of those who signed the early-day motion are members of the national executive of the Labour party? In the opinion of many of us, a motion of this kind is deeply prejudicial to the proceedings that will take place in Gibraltar during the coroner's inquest, and are a gross abuse of the right of hon. Members to table early-day motions.
  Mr. Speaker: I will reflect on what the hon. Gentleman has said, but it would be an intolerable imposition on the Speaker if he had to look at every early-day motion. I have to rely on the judgment of those in the Table Office. I have already ruled that this early-day motion was considered to be in order or it would have been brought to my attention and I would have had to adjudicate upon it.
  Mr. Dennis Skinner: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It would be an irksome duty if you had to read the more than 1,000 early-day motions right through to the bitter end. You would, for instance, recently have been reading about the success of Hamilton Academicals, Wigan rugby football club, Bristol rugby club, which I believe lost, Sunderland and Lincoln, which, for some obscure reason, has been supported by the SDP. About the only sporting success that has not been delineated in an early-day motion is Steve Davis's success at the Crucible last week—and there must be a reason for that.
  If you had to look at all the motions, you would not have time to notice in the House points of order that arise on spec and cause you trouble and worry. To conclude that little episode, I remind you that I told you about two years ago that it would be difficult to sustain the process for long, and today, you had to break that ruling. In the case of further interruptions by my hon. Friends—it probably will not be me—will you allow them the same privilege?
  Mr. Speaker: If a matter requiring my attention arises during a debate or during Question Time, I would hear it. That is the doctrine of first opportunity, well enshrined in "Erskine May".
  Mr. Robin Maxwell-Hyslop: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You may inadvertently have said something that you may wish to correct in a statement tomorrow. If I understand what you have said today, you have propagated a new doctrine—that, although Mr. Speaker is not inerrant or incapable of error, the Table Office is inerrant and incapable of error and that anything that is accepted by the Table Office cannot subsequently be challenged with Mr. Speaker. That must, with the greatest respect, be wrong, Mr. Speaker. It must be open to every hon. Member to challenge ad hoc decisions by Clerks in the Table Office and for you to apply your own judgment to matters that have not been referred to you. I do not believe that you would wish to live with a situation where, if something out of order has inadvertently been accepted by the Table Office, you are thereby debarred from subsequently ruling that it ought not to have been accepted.
  Mr. Speaker: I hope that I did not say what the horn. Gentleman has suggested. Of course, if something is plainly out of order, then it is correct that it should be challenged. I am saying that early-day motions—there are thousands of them—are screened by the Table Office. If there is any doubt about them, they are brought to my attention. It happens with very few, but plainly if any of them subsequently turned out: to be out of order, it would certainly be in order for hon. Members to challenge them and bring them to my attention.
  Mr. James Kilfedder: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. Tony Banks: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I have already dealt with the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks). I will hear the hon. Member for North Down (Mr. Kilfedder).
  Mr. Kilfedder: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. During business questions, I raised a point of order because I was provoked by what I had heard. I apologise to you because I believe that your ruling was absolutely right, and I should have waited until after business questions. I know that now and I wish to apologise to you for any difficulties that I may have caused you.
  Mr. Speaker: On that happy note, may we finish?
  Mr. Tony Banks: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is one of those who constantly seeks to take part in our debates.
  Mr. Banks: I do not get much of a chance.
  Mr. Speaker: I will have to bear that in mind, but a large number of hon. Members wish to speak in the debate today. It is a rare opportunity to debate agriculture, and I think we should proceed.

  BILL PRESENTED

    EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES (AMENDMENT)
    Mr. Tony Benn presented a Bill to repeal section 2 of the European Communities Act 1972 and to return full

    1037
    and unfettered powers to the United Kingdom Parliament over all legislation enacted by the European Communities which has had, has, or would otherwise have, legal effect in the United Kingdom: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 153.]

    Agriculture
    Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Kenneth Carlisle.]
    Mr. Speaker: If we have five-minute speeches from hon. Members—I have no way to impose such a request—most of those who wish to speak will be called. If we cannot have five minutes, may I ask for speeches of no more than 10 minutes today?
    4.38 pm
    The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. John MacGregor): The Order Paper lists a number of documents which have been recommended by the Scrutiny Committee for consideration by the House. These relate to the stabilisers, set-aside of agricultural land, cessation of farming and the price fixing. I shall endeavour to cover all these in my remarks. Most of the measures flowed from the European Council agreement in February, which was the subject of considerable discussion in the House during the agriculture debate on 15 February, immediately following the summit's decisions. The regulations were then the subject of considerable negotiation in the Agriculture Council, and were eventually adopted on 25 April. As they were not substantially changed from those that we debated in February, I hope that the House will forgive me if I refer to them fairly briefly.
    Document 5004/88 concerns the implementation of the stabiliser for wine, which was also part of the February agreement. We had an intense negotiation on the details of that provision at the March Council, and the regulation has not yet been adopted, as the opinion of the European Parliament is not yet available. Therefore, I will bring the House up to date on that in more detail.
    Of course, the price-fixing proposals are highly topical. The Agriculture Council has had two discussions on these so far, but at this stage they have been only very general —the opening skirmishes, so to speak—with broad positions being outlined. The detailed negotiations will begin in earnest after the French presidential elections, so this is a highly appropriate time for the House to debate the subject.
    That is a large enough menu, but as Mr. Speaker has just implied, this is one of the major agriculture debates of the year and I hope that the House will agree that it would be appropriate for me to refer to other matters which are of great importance to our farmers and hence, in one sense, inextricably bound up with the documents before us.
    First, some general but fundamental comments bear repeating. I am well aware of the pressure on farm incomes. That aspect has been drawn attention to in recent debates by my hon. Friends—though I am not sure that those outside agriculture who freely comment on the protected, so-called comfortable position of farmers, as they put it, are equally aware of it. The fact is that since 1977, farm incomes in general have declined by some 50 per cent. in real terms.
    The latest farm income publication just published by my Ministry is a mine of information. It gives not just the aggregate position, as did the White Paper published in January, but data for farms of different types around the country. Therefore, we have a very thorough and detailed picture. Also given are figures from a survey of Inland

    1039
    Revenue returns which cover the total income, as assessed for tax, of those who farm. As they deal with actual incomes, it is useful and important to consider them.
    Those figures show that in 1983–84, about 68 per cent. of farmers had incomes of less than £10,000; about 24 per cent., between £10,000 and £20,000; and about 8 per cent., above £20,000. Only about 50 per cent. of total income to farming households was derived from farming alone. The rest of their income came from other businesses, other jobs, investment income, and so on.
    By no means all farmers can supplement their income from the farm to a significant extent by having other jobs, so many of them have low incomes. Indeed, the figure for actual income purely from agriculture and horticulture revealed in the survey is much lower than that which I have just quoted—and the position has not improved since 1984. For some—such as those in the dairy sector—the figure has improved, but for others it is worse.
    We can see that farm incomes really are under pressure, at a time when incomes in most other walks of life are rising in real terms. Many farmers earn what would be regarded as a very modest wage, given the hours of work that they and their spouses put in, often in very bad weather in many parts of the country—as my hon. Friends testified earlier. The paradox is that that pressure is occurring at a time when support for agriculture has been rising significantly.
    In terms of CAP support—in other words, mainly taxpayers' subsidies going to commodities—expenditure in this country has risen by 28 per cent. in real terms since the Government took office. That statistic alone belies the accusation that one sometimes hears from hard-pressed farmers that Government support for them is diminishing.
    Mr. Robin Maxwell-Hyslop: Will my right hon. Friend give way?
    Mr. MacGregor: May I just finish the sentence?
    That may he a gut reaction by farmers, when they see their income declining. I can understand such accusations, but they are misdirected. The truth of the matter is that those critics are wrong and that it is the other way round.
    Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: Will my right hon. Friend make the point that the reason for the apparent disparity is that much of the money paid in support goes to the storers of produce rather than to the producers of food and that only quotas can directly support producers rather than storers?
    Mr. MacGregor: Quotas have a different effect. They are not a form of support but are an intervention in the market system. I want to describe the situation as I see it, which is not wholly as my hon. Friend has described it. While some element of the subsidy is going to the storers, it is also the case that if one was producing the same volume as is being currently produced, and if that support was withdrawn, then farm incomes would considerably diminish. It works through, in the support that it gives to the farming community as a whole.
    As so many wish to speak in this debate, I wish to set the scene and I therefore do not wish to give way too often. I wish to explain how—
    Sir Geoffrey Johnson Smith: Will my right hon. Friend give way?
    Mr. MacGregor: No—I must be allowed to get on with my argument.
    1040
    The paradox of declining farm incomes and increasing subsidies can be explained principally by the fact that farmers are producing more than real markets can sustain. In other words, for part of their production at least, they are unable to meet effective demand at the going price without a significant subsidy to cover their current costs of production. That is another way of drawing attention to the surpluses, which are worldwide, and to the excessive costs to the taxpayer of sustaining them.
    Nobody can argue—and no farmer, in his heart of hearts, does argue—that we are getting value for money from excessive subsidies and that they make sensible use of the nation's and taxpayers' resources. That is why I have constantly argued that we cannot bring stability to our agriculture and to farmers until we have dealt with that problem and have contained the sharply escalating rise that has taken place in subsidy support over the past few years. Hence the importance of the stabiliser negotiations and the Brussels summit outcome.
    I am often asked what I see as our main policy objectives for British agriculture. I shall briefly restate what I have been saying in the many meetings that I have been holding with farmers around the country. First and foremost, and for the reasons I have just given, we must get supply and demand into better balance and get on top of the budgetary indiscipline in spending on agriculture in the Community that we have seen hitherto, as well as surpluses worldwide. Hence the importance not only of a stabiliser regime but of a successful outcome to the Uruguay talks. Hence, too, the priority and attention that the Government, and Agriculture Ministers, have been devoted to them.
    Secondly, we must keep British agriculture thoroughly efficient and competitive, taking advantage of technological change and not halting it simply because of surpluses. To take a Luddite approach and fail to embrace the fruits of scientific progress is not the way in which other industries have become, and remain, competitive in world markets. I want to ensure that our agriculture remains competitive and thoroughly up to date.
    Thirdly, it means focusing on the market place in meeting changing and ever more demanding consumer requirements. That means quality and a heavy emphasis on marketing throughout the whole food chain. That is primarily a matter for the industry itself.
    Fourthly, it means that we must face up to the fact that more land will have to come out of agricultural production —and, yes, more farmers as well. Hence the importance of our many initiatives to help ease that process, including set-aside. I suspect that that process will be much more painful in some other member states, where there are still vastly greater numbers of very small farmers than we have, and where agricultural structures are well behind ours. It is also worth underlining that the vast majority of land will, after that process, still be used for basic food production, which will remain the primary industry of the countryside.
    Fifthly, from the point of view of the rural economy, it is essential to recognise that land is a resource to be managed and that alternative products outside agriculture —alternative businesses and leisure activities—will all have an increasing part to play in providing rural employment and rural prosperity. Many farmers are, and have always been, highly entrepreneurial. Many have already recognised the signs and have been blazing a trail in alternative businesses and diversification for some time.

    1041
    To assist that process, we have introduced the farm diversification scheme, which has had a good response in its first few months.
    Sixthly—here I know that I will carry the hon. Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark) with me—the changing agricultural scene provides exciting opportunities to achieve a new balance between farm production and environmental objectives. Hence the ESAs, which have also got off to a very promising start.
    All six objectives form a coherent pattern and one which I believe is right for the future of British farming, the rural economy and the attractiveness of our countryside. The various new initiatives we are now pursuing, often taking the lead in the European Community, all flow from them.
    I will not dwell on the details of the stabilisers, as we have already debated them twice in the House. I shall confine myself to three points on the stabilisers. First, while we have not gone as far as some people—especially those outside agriculture and in other industries—would like, I hope that no one will be in any doubt about the potentially severe impact of stabilisers and hence the pressure on farmers if production continues to rise.
    The severe restraining effect of the oilseed stabilizer—which is necessary in view of the escalating costs and hence incentives to further production of the previous regime —is now well recognised. But in cereals, if Community production exceeds the maximum guaranteed quantity of 160 million tonnes by whatever amount regularly over the next four years, intervention and buying-in prices will automatically be cut by as much as 12 per cent., coming on top of reductions in recent years. Cumulatively, that could mean that by 1993 the common level of support for cereal producers could be as much as one third lower than it was in its peak in 1983–84.
    That is a not insignificant reform to undertake. It does of course have its good side for some sectors in our industry, in the livestock and especially intensive livestock sectors, but it is none too soon, in the light of the likely continuing technological developments and the potential worldwide surpluses. I shall have more to say about that later. The point for our farmers is that had we not acted now to get gradual restraint into the market and to curb production, our cereal growers could have faced much more drastic emergency action at short notice later on. They ask for greater certainty and stability. This helps to provide a measure of it.
    Mr. Ralph Howell: I find it difficult to understand how it will help our hard-pressed producers if their returns are cut even further when they are below production costs already. And why are we constantly talking down the world price of wheat and saying that it is lower than the price British farmers are receiving, when that cannot be proved? When our millers are paying up to £250 a tonne for American wheat to be delivered to East Anglia, and home producers are getting only about £100 a tonne, how is it in the interests of British farmers for the price to be cut still further? They are in an appalling position already.
    Mr. MacGregor: The support price will fall if production goes on rising. I beg my hon. Friend—who I know is very interested in these matters—to note that the
    1042
    subsidy costs of the cereals regime have been rising very sharply since 1984. It is unsustainable for the increase to continue at such a pace, especially if it provokes a further international trade war. I should like to say more about that later. One part of the answer must be to take more land out of cereal production. That will be crucial if we are to solve our problems.
    The second point on stabilisers is that the wine stabiliser does not affect us as producers, but is of great concern to us as taxpayers, as net contributors to the Community budget and, in some instances, as consumers. A tough wine stabiliser is also important in keeping within the FEOGA budget ceilings. It is therefore very important to the United Kingdom that a tough stabiliser should be achieved in our negotiations, and that outcome has been achieved.
    The key point is that the price for obligatory distillation has been set at 50 per cent. of the guide price for the first 10 per cent. of normal production, representing about 10 million hectolitres, and at 7·5 per cent. thereafter. I put that on the record although I know that not many people study wine stabilisers in detail. It represents a cut of over 50 per cent. in the average price paid at present. I believe that it was entirely right to arrange such a tough wine stabiliser, because we were producing surplus wine that no one wanted, and I believe that the package meets our major objective in providing truly deterrent measures against over-production.
    I have already mentioned that the wine stabiliser has not been agreed in the Council, because it has yet to be considered by the European Parliament. I know that the House supports the Government in attaching great importance to the need for all the stabilisers to be agreed together. Let me give some reassurance on that point. The Agriculture Council has agreed that any change resulting from comments from the European Parliament would be adopted by the Council only on a unanimous vote.
    Thirdly, the new arrangements for budgetary discipline are crucial, and are already making themselves felt. Greater realism has been entering into the discussion of the Agriculture Council for some time, but this is now strongly reinforced by the awareness—in any decisions that we make, but, I suspect, especially at price-fixing time—that the financial guideline has to be respected. All the old loopholes have been closed, and, apart from an allowance for large movements in the dollar, there are no circumstances that can justify exceeding the guideline; nor can the Commission defer expenditure by allowing the build-up of stocks.
    A very important provision in the new arrangements—which the Government worked hard to achieve, and which I believe has not been given as much attention as it deserves—is that stocks must be written down to their market value when they are taken into intervention. That means that if stocks were to build up there would be an immediate pressure on the guideline. The Commission and Council have made great efforts recently to run down the mountains of food in intervention, and the new accounting arrangement will be a powerful deterrent to their re-creation.
    It is worth mentioning that while the levels of intervention stocks are still higher than we would like, considerable progress has been made. In August 1986, the Community had some 1·4 million tonnes of butter in intervention: over 10 months' supply. By contrast, in February this year the level of stocks was not much more

    1043
    than half that. For skimmed milk powder the improvement has been even more dramatic, with stocks falling from over 1 million tonnes in 1986 to a quarter of that level in February this year.
    Cereals stocks have also been reduced, albeit with assistance from two successive poor harvests. Stocks' of wheat totalled over 10 million tonnes in 1986 and are now under 3 million tonnes, and there have also been reductions in stocks of barley and rye. We see similar progress in the United Kingdom on its own, with butter stocks down by 36 per cent. from February 1987 to February 1988, skimmed milk powder stocks down to practically nothing and cereals down by 51 per cent.
    Emphasis on the financial guideline takes me straight on to the price fixing. The proposals here follow up the agreements on stabilisers, which of course affect the support levels for many commodities in 1988–89, and the Commission has generally proposed no further changes to price levels. The proposals include a number of related measures, some of which would involve effective reductions in support levels. For two sectors—fruit and vegetables, and tobacco—the proposals put more flesh on the bones of the stabilisers which were agreed at the summit.
    We have two major concerns in the negotiations. First, it is essential that we respect the new agricultural guideline of 27·5 becu—£19 billion—for 1988. The Commission's proposals are made within it. We must ensure that the final decisions taken by the Council also respect it. That means that we must carry forward the essential message of the summit: supply needs to be brought closer to real market demand.
    There is also a major deficiency in the package on green rates. The Commission has proposed only one green rate change—a 10-point devaluation for Greece. I have made it quite clear that in our view, some devaluation of the green pound at this price fixing is fully justified, and I would like to tell the House why.
    In agriculture, as across the whole range of economic activity, we are looking towards 1992 and the completion of a single European market. The Commission last year set the Community the aim of abolishing all MCAs by then. That is essential if we are to have a proper single market without frontier controls, and I strongly support it. It would therefore be sensible—and wholly consistent with the Commission's aim—to take a measured step in the direction of MCA abolition at the current price-fixing.
    I have told the Agriculture Council that I find it surprising, and discriminatory, that the Commission proposes a devaluation for only one country—Greece—and makes no provision for a devaluation in the United Kingdom.
    Although sterling has appreciated recently, our MCAs remain higher than in any member state except Greece, and are still in double figures for the main crop products. That means that support prices in other countries are higher than ours.
    Producers here have recognised the essential need for CAP reform if the system is not to collapse under its own weight. That shows their realism, and I welcome it and am grateful for it. But it would be wrong to ask them to shoulder a disproportionate share of the burden of budgetary restraint. To avoid this we need to start reducing our MCAs now, and I shall continue to press for a devaluation of all products. I well understand the desire for reasonably fair competition—I say "reasonably fair"
    1044
    because, as the Commission document on price fixing points out, there are a whole host of different factors in each member state which in different ways made up the competitive mix, and one cannot isolate any one. I hope that this has made the position clear on the general green pound.
    It is worth pointing out that a 1 per cent. green pound devaluation adds only one fiftieth of 1 per cent. to retail prices. The House is aware of the excellent record on food prices under this Government. The average annual increase in food prices since May 1979 has been just under 6 per cent. and the trend in recent years has been steadily downwards. The most recent figures indicate a rate of just over 3 per cent. This compares with an average increase of nearly 16·5 per cent. per annum during the period of the last Labour Government.
    Mr. Nicholas Baker: What my right hon. Friend has said about the need for devaluation of the green pound will be welcomed by everyone who supports British agriculture, which demands level playing fields, not favourable treatment. What I find hard to understand, and perhaps my right hon. Friend can explain, is why the Commission is so negative and does not seem to wish to produce proposals for making these playing fields level so that our agriculture can compete fairly.
    Mr. MacGregor: The Commission has produced in its document—it is worth reading, because it is an interesting passage—some explanations of why it is very difficult to establish across the Community for every member state what a level playing field is. I go along with that, because when one looks at any commodity one sees that a whole range of factors have to be considered when trying to establish what is—to use my hon. Friend's words—a level playing field. Obviously it is for the Commission to justify its own price proposals. The Commission is arguing that the proposals that it puts forward come pretty well up to the budgetary ceiling and it feels that it cannot go any further. So this is going to be a difficult negotiation. but I hope that I have made it clear where I stand.
    Pig farmers are additionally suffering from a variety of problems specific to the sector which are nothing to do with the CAP but very much to do with straightforward supply and demand in a comparatively free market. On one of the two areas that affect the CAP—private storage aids being the other—I should like to go further. MCAs apply to pigmeat to compensate for differences in the price of cereals between member states. But the calculations take no account of the use of cereal substitutes in the pig ration. The result is that these costs are lower in the Netherlands than in the United Kingdom, yet Dutch pigmeat still receives an MCA subsidy when it comes to the United Kingdom. It is an internal trade distortion; it is nothing to do with support prices, because there is no support price regime, apart from a very small aspect. This means that for pigmeat MCAs produce distortions rather than prevent them.
    While our MCAs in pigmeat have already substantially reduced in recent months—I made that point frequently at Question Time this afternoon—and therefore have considerably reduced the trade distortion so that it is now quite small, I am nevertheless still pressing, as a point of principle, for the complete elimination of our MCAs in this sector, although, again, because the Commission has

    1045
    not proposed it and a number of member states would not wish to change the system, this is going to be a very difficult part of the negotiations.
    Time does not permit me to deal with each of the commodities, so I will touch only on the main ones. On cereals, the Commission is proposing a general freeze on prices. It has also proposed that monthly increments to intervention prices should be halved, which would reduce support levels by around 2 per cent. this year. As this flows from discussion at the European summit, I am ready to accept the proposal, although I recognise some of its disadvantages, such as that it may encourage putting cereals into intervention earlier in the year. So I would be equally ready to accept any other solution which had an equal effect—for example, a direct cut in intervention prices. We must maintain the momentum of the changes agreed at the summit if we are to bring cereals production in the Community under control.
    Some, of course, point to the improving world market for cereals and question whether the problem of surpluses still exists. It is possible that cereals consumption will exceed production in 1988, and the stocks that overhang the world market are falling. But in the past year, with our extremely difficult harvest in the United Kingdom due to weather conditions—as we in East Anglia need no reminding—we still had a surplus, as did the Community as a whole, so that there was a continuing need to export to third countries, with the big cost involved in the export refunds.
    We must also have it in mind that in the United States, which I visited recently, under current support programmes some 69 million acres of land is set aside; that is 80 per cent. of the total cereals area in the entire Community. Some 23 million acres of that land is set aside under the conservation reserve programme, which means that such land has to be set aside for 10 years. But the remaining 46 million acres is set aside on a yearly basis, and our set-aside schemes will, of course, go beyond a yearly basis.
    That illustrates the massive potential in the world for increased production. It is significant that the United States, in any case, under the provisions of the Food Security Act, plans to reduce the area set aside next year because of the fall in United States stocks of grain. Other major grain-producing countries will not continue to hold back their production if the Community does not maintain its efforts to control its own surpluses.
    There is one other major cereals issue this year—the proposal for a cereals incorporation aid, designed to increase the quantities of cereals used in animal feed. It was agreed at the summit that the Commission should be requested to come forward with ideas for increasing cereals usage, and I agree that the more cereals that we could use in this way the better. But any scheme to encourage this must be cost-effective and must not create distortions. I believe that the scheme put forward by the Commission does not meet those criteria, and I have therefore been expressing very serious reservations about it.
    I have several reservations, which I cannot cover because of the time factor, but perhaps the most fundamental one is that it seems a peculiar oddity, to say the least, that we are imposing, on the one hand, the cereals co-responsibility levy—which, as the House well
    1046
    knows, I strongly dislike and to which I have frequently expressed objections—which adds to the costs of cereal users, and on the other hand we may introduce a complicated cereals incorporation subsidy to reduce its effect. It would be better not to have the cereals co-responsibility levy in the first place. But that is an argument that I seem to be alone in pushing in the Council. This ill-thought-out proposal reinforces my belief that a reduction in price is the best way of making cereals more attractive to animal feed compounders.
    For all these reasons, and others that I have not been able to go into, I am expressing concern about this proposal and will continue to argue—I hope that I will have the House with me—that if our aim is to increase consumption of cereals it is better to cut prices than to increase the co-responsibility levy, because lower prices benefit consumers more directly.
    Mr. Robert Key: Will my right hon. Friend give way?
    Mr. MacGregor: I really must not give way at this stage because I have other points that I must cover to explain the Commission's view and the Government's position on it, and I know that many hon. Members wish to speak.
    Dairy products are unlikely to feature very much in this year's price review. I am taking the opportunity to press very strongly for the Commission to come forward with proposals later this year to improve the transferability of milk quotas, including ideas for removing the link between quotas and the land, giving member states more flexibility in the operation of quotas, within, of course, the need to have overall effective production controls in each member state. I should like to see these discussed and agreed in the Council this year so that they are ready for operation in 1989, at the end of the first five-year period of quotas.
    Mr. James Wallace rose—
    Mr. MacGregor: I feel that I ought not to give way, because so many hon. Members wish to express their points of view. My right hon. Friend will be winding up at the end and can respond then.
    I will continue to pursue my suggestion as I believe that it is highly desirable. Again, it is an initiative in which the United Kingdom is in the lead.
    There is one other point on milk that I ought to mention, because it is frequently raised by some of my hon. Friends, who point out that there are occasions when users of milk, particularly manufacturers of cheese, are short of supplies. The point is that it is not that we are short over the year in general if we produce to or near our quota; it is that at certain points of the year, effectively the seasonal trough in the summer, supply falls sharply compared with other times in the year.
    So, as we bring milk production into line with demand, the balancing of demands in the seasonal production trough becomes increasingly important. I have therefore urged the Milk Marketing Board to make every effort this year to avoid the problems encountered with the supplies of milk for cheese manufacture last autumn.
    The board has advised me that contingency planning has progressed well on three fronts in particular. First, the programme for rationalising butter and powder manufacturing capacity has enabled a substantial reallocation of milk to higher value manufacturing usage. Secondly, manufacturers have been encouraged to make more

    1047
    Cheddar during the peak of milk production; manufacture of hard pressed cheese is currently estimated to be 25 per cent. up on the first quarter of 1987. Thirdly, the board is seeking to reach agreement with manufacturers on arrangements to give a higher priority allocation of milk for territorial cheese manufacture in the July-October period.
    The House will appreciate that the extent to which the plans succeed will depend upon the co-operation of both sides of the industry. But I am hopeful that the industry as a whole will fully recognise the importance of avoiding seasonal shortages of high-quality home-produced cheese for which there is a regular and growing demand.
    I have explained to the House on previous occasions why I regard a set-aside scheme as an important complement to action on price. It also deals with the general objective of getting more land out of production, particularly arable land. It provides an alternative source of income for those farmers most affected by reductions in Community support. It provides payment for management of the land—this is a crucial point to underline—that will conserve the countryside and preserve the environment for the benefit of the public as a whole.
    The timetable is very tight. Member states are now obliged to introduce set-aside for the 1988–89 cereals marketing year. Effectively, that sets a target of 1 July which we must make every effort to meet, although I have made it clear in the Council that for those of us who have to take the scheme through our Parliaments it is an ambitious timetable. The Commission last week completed the drawing up of the detailed regulations and I am now considering with my agricultural colleagues in this country the form of the United Kingdom scheme in the light of these rules.
    The views we have received since I issued our consultation document in December have been most helpful and will be taken into account. Once we have completed that consideration, we must have the clearance of the Commission, like all other member states, and then put our proposals before the House. I hope to make an announcement fairly soon. I will, however, make two points now.
    First, the Community rules give member states the option to permit set-aside land to be grazed at a lower level of payments. That is now being described as grazed fallow. I was one of those who insisted that this should be optional and not compulsory. I have received divergent views on whether the United Kingdom should take up the option. Factors that will need special attention are the potential environmental benefits from permitting grazing, though there will he environmental conditions for set-aside as a whole; the possible adverse effects of an encouragement to extra production, and problems with administration and control, which are quite severe.
    One of the points of which I am particularly aware, and which will be very important in our consideration of all factors in reaching a decision, is the concern expressed by farmers, particularly in the hills and especially by the sheep industry, about the knock-on effects in lowland areas of the pressure on cereal prices and, hence, the implications for hill areas, which often have no alternative to sheep production, if there were a grazed fallow scheme on arable land which might have the effect of expanding sheep production. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I heard what was said on that point during Question Time and I have
    1048
    heard the response to what I am saying now. I shall certainly be listening carefully to further views expressed during the debate.
    Secondly, I want to make one point clear to avoid doubt in the minds of farmers about what land will qualify for set-aside payments. The Commisson rules allow set-aside of land in production in the 1987–88 crop year, provided that the land has not been brought into arable production since the beginning of 1988. The implications of this are obvious for any farmer intending to plough up grassland this year in the hope of benefiting from set-aside payments; that will not be possible.
    I should also mention one other element of the stabilisers package, to which one document before the House refers; the scheme for cessation of farming which in fact means early retirement. Member states may take up the scheme if they wish and may offer payments to older farmers taking all their land out of production or amalgamating it with neighbouring farms. I have constantly emphasised in the Council the need to ensure that such schemes do not add to production, and preferably reduce it. We succeeded in getting it confined substantially in that direction, though not entirely so. The scheme will be taken up elsewhere in the Community where there is a large proportion of such elderly farmers, often farming on a small scale. But my initial view is that the scheme is not attractive for the United Kingdom.
    I have had to outline many of the points in some detail and I apologise to the House for taking time on that. However, it is important, as this is the first opportunity we have had to show the United Kingdom's general position. I should like to finish on a few quick points of general importance to agriculture, particularly bearing in mind the fact that, as Mr. Speaker said, we do not often have main debates on agriculture.
    In horticulture, which has to look to the market for its return, the mood is buoyant. Growers have been able to benefit for the past five years from the very favourable grants for modernising their glasshouses and orchards and these are now beginning to show an effect in keeping our industry capable of producing good quality products economically and performing well in today's competitive conditions.
    The new policy initiatives that we have taken on environment and farm diversification, both of which I listed as key objectives at the beginning of my speech, are already producing good results. In the first year of operation of the five original English environmentally sensitive areas we made 1,480 agreements for farmers, covering 35,600 hectares—about three quarters of the area considered suitable for entry to the scheme.
    I am delighted to say that in the 1988 application period, which has just closed, there has been a similarly excellent response. Nearly 1,000 farmers have applied to join the scheme this year with land covering some 65,500 hectares. In all, this brings the total to just over 100,000 hectares or 85 per cent. of the area considered suitable for the scheme. That is a success story by any standards and a resounding reply to those sceptics who said that farmers would not be attracted by the ESA initiative.
    The farm diversification grants scheme has also got off to a good start in attracting lots of interest. While talking about environmental matters, I emphasise the considerable switch in capital grants that we have undertaken in recent years, cutting down substantially on those grants

    1049
    that assist in the production of agricultural products, thus, of course, adding to the surpluses, and concentrating on grants with environmentally favourable effects.
    I simply do not think that the scale of our change has yet been appreciated. The simplest way of demonstrating the impact of our approach is to give the figures. Grants for conservation and effluent prevention work took up 4 per cent. of our total expenditure in 1983 but represent 48 per cent. of expenditure under the current scheme. Grants for production facilities under schemes presently available for take-up have declined from 96 per cent. to 52 per cent. of total expenditure.
    This year's Budget has great importance and highly favourable effects for farmers. The most marked is the removal from the tax system of so-called capital gains incurred prior to April 1982, which will exclude the inflation element of land value increases which occurred during the 1970s. That will allow farmers and landowners to unlock the value of their assets, thereby giving many of them the opportunity to reduce their borrowings or reappraise their utilisation of their resources—very important at this time of substantial agricultural change. That is not the only good point for farmers.
    Retirement relief for farmers will be extended and the further changes to the inheritance tax system, combined with earlier changes to capital transfer tax under this Government, will make it much easier for farms to be passed on without expensive or complicated schemes to finance the tax payments, the effective tax rate being cut to 20 per cent. Farmers' incomes—along, of course, with those of others—will benefit from the reduction in the basic rate of tax to 25 per cent., the reduction in the higher tax rates and the alignment of the small companies rate of corporation tax to the basic rate.
    An important point in this connection is the effect of the reductions in direct tax rates on a point that has frequently been raised by farmers—I want to stress it now—in the context of the changes to the capital allowance system in 1984. Many farmers have pointed out that 90 per cent. of farm businesses are unincorporated, so that, as they saw it, they did not fully share in the offsetting effect, when the capital allowance changes were introduced, of the reduction in the corporation tax rate. The changes in this year's Budget mean that that point, which has often led some farmers to ask for a reintroduction of modest capital allowances for unincorporated businesses, has lost its impact. The average rate of tax for unincorporated farm businesses will now be around or well below corporation tax rates.
    I know that the Opposition have supported our environmental initiatives, and I am grateful for that, but a marked feature of the current agricultural scene is how little the Opposition have to say of any value or benefit to farming.
    The hon. Member for South Shields and his hon. Friends sometimes try to make something of a point about the pressure on farm incomes. We all understand that—none more so than me, and I have already commented on it at length. But it is somewhat of a pointless comment, because the hon. Gentleman has made it clear that he fully supports the CAP reforms for which we have been successfully striving, and I am grateful for that. As I have constantly stressed, these are necessary for the long-term
    1050
    stability of British agriculture; but it is certainly these that are putting the pressures on farm incomes so the hon. Gentleman and his party have nothing to offer in that respect.
    In cases where they have something different to say, the impact of the Opposition's policies will be extremely unfavourable for and unhelpful to farming. They have already opposed the basic and higher rate tax changes that we are making, and presumably will oppose the capital tax changes, too. We have just incorporated in the Local Government Finance Bill—in the primary legislation—the exemption of agricultural land and buildings from our replacements for rates. The Labour party voted against the amendment and so would be imposing a very heavy additional financial burden on farmers if it got the chance. The hon. Member for South Shields certainly made it clear earlier that he opposes any changes in the green pound and MCAs, which farmers consider to be so important to their competitive position at present—and he nods now.
    The Labour party clearly has nothing to say of any value to farmers at the present time. It is our policies that deal directly with the current problems facing agriculture. Those policies are working for a more sensible system within the Community and a more stable long-term basis for agriculture, and will ensure the continued success of British agriculture in the changing market place, the right balance between agricultural and environmental needs in the countryside and a prosperous rural economy. I commend them to the House.
    5.21 pm
    Dr. David Clark: This is an appropriate time for the House to be debating agriculture. As the Minister rightly pointed out, we do so as the Council of Ministers and the Commission are beginning their haggling over this year's price level. We do so as an important conference takes place here in London on world agricultural trade, and at a time when British agriculture is in considerable disarray.
    I welcome the debate, although I feel that the juxtaposition of a discussion of the detailed Commission proposals and a debate on the state of agriculture in this country is not a happy one, because it means that many points with which I am sure the Minister would have liked to deal have gone without mention. I fully understand that. The Minister introduced the debate in his normal urbane and civilised manner, not surprisingly praying in aid on occasion the fact that he was involved in negotiations and therefore could not elaborate as he might have wished. We understand that difficulty but, equally, we feel that there are many points that we have the right to raise with him, and I hope that we can persuade him and his right hon. Friend to be a little more forthcoming later this evening.
    I took the Minister's comments at the end of his speech in the spirit in which they were made. They were fair political points. There are differences of opinion between us, and we must acknowledge that. However, it is also important to stress that Opposition Members believe in British agriculture. We are prepared to support British agriculture, and we believe that in the long term our approach is more for the benefit of British agriculture than might appear from the Minister's comments.
    I deal, first, with the point about the long-term benefits to British agriculture. I emphasise that we are beginning to

    1051
    witness the real costs of the Prime Minister's capitulation at the summit in Brussels. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, no!"] I know that Conservative Members object to that. There is a fundamental difference between us. Opposition Members believe that the Prime Minister lost her bottle; that she got frit, to use her word, and as a result threw away our bargaining chip. We shall not get another one probably for another five years. In the intervening period we must muddle along, trying to reform the CAP as best we can. The Prime Minister had always been regarded in Europe as a tough negotiator. Now that her bluff has been called, the task of wringing changes out of our European partners will be much more difficult. Her tough image is irreparably damaged.
    As we contemplate the immediate future for British agriculture, we begin to notice the costs of the Prime Minister's concessions—costs which the Minister himself acknowledged. He repeatedly said, in effect, that arrangements had been agreed at Brussels and that we had to accept them as agreed at the summit meeting. He is quite right. All the stabilisers were agreed in principle as they lay on the table at Copenhagen at the previous summit. There had been no real debate about them previously. They were not discussed because people did not feel that they would be taken on board. We have had to take the shortcomings of the stabilisers on board without any real discussion.
    I believe that if the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food had been at Brussels at the side of the right hon. Lady we should not have got into the mess that we are in at the moment. The Minister has the unenviable task of trying to pick up the pieces and make sense of the reform of the CAP. He has to do that from a very weak bargaining position. He has admitted time and time again that when he has wanted changes in the agricultural scene he has been on his own. He has lost his bargaining power. We had a bargaining chip at Brussels, but we threw it away needlessly.
    I have made a number of allegation and perhaps it is incumbent on me to justify my criticisms of the CAP.
    Sir Geoffrey Johnson Smith: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will make a sensible speech and get back to his proper form. No doubt this is a bad patch. What is this marvellous bargaining chip, and who supports him, apart from one or two of his hon. Friends?
    Dr. Clark: If the hon. Gentleman had not been so quick to jump to his feet he might have heard a sensible speech, and I hope that he will stay and listen. If he has not realised that the CAP—and the European Community—was bankrupt at Brussels, there is nothing that I or anyone else can do to get it across to him. It is as simple as that.
    Miss Emma Nicholson: If the hon. Gentleman is unhappy and believes that the common agricultural policy was bankrupt in Brussels, why does he not accept that stabilisers were the answer? For example, without the single sheepmeat stabiliser we would have lost our variable premium, which would have been absolutely catastrophic. What is wrong with the stabilisers as an answer if the CAP was going bankrupt?
    Dr. Clark: If the hon. Lady had graced us with her presence during other agricultural debates—
    Miss Nicholson: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
    Dr. Clark: I shall give way in a moment.
    Miss Nicholson: I am happy to assure the hon. Gentleman that I have been present at other agricultural debates—[Interruption.]
    Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean): Order.
    Mr. Brynmor John: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speake. Do you now permit an hon. Member to whom the hon. Member who has the Floor has not given way to speak while that Member is still on his feet? Is that another of the double standards that are creeping into the House?
    Mr. Deputy Speaker: Dr. Clark.
    Dr. Clark: If the hon. Lady was present at previous debates—I accept that she must have been: I am sorry that I missed her—she cannot have been listening. The Minister will acknowledge that we have accepted the concept of meaningful stabilisers. We are critical of the operation of some of the stabilisers, and I want to explain why. We believe that they will harm this country's agriculture and the incomes of many of our less well-off farmers.
    I was criticising the CAP because as the cost escalates the position becomes even more farcical.
    "The situation has deteriorated so far that total public resources spent on agriculture through the Community and national budgets have reached a level which even not counting social security transfers, is now practically equivalent to the, net income of the sector."
    That is a damning comment, but I am afraid that I cannot claim credit for it. That view comes directly from the Commission itself, in volume 1 of its proposals on pricing for agricultural products in the coming year.
    To rid it of Euro-jargon, it means that agriculture is highly subsidised, to an extent that could not even be contemplated in any other sector of industrial activity, in this country or elsewhere in Europe. It is a damning comment that the amount of public support for agriculture, through the Community and national budgets, is practically equivalent to the net income of the agricultural sector. That is a serious indictment, which we must address. We put forward our points of view today against that background.
    Sir Hector Monro: That information is very reveling.
    Dr. Clark: The hon. Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) says, cynically, that that information is revealing. I accept that. The key point is that people in this country do not realise it. We do well to remember how much of our money and the money of our constituents goes to support the agriculture industry.
    How can the Minister justify this situation? How does he advise us to explain to our constituents, who may have been miners, shipyard workers or steel workers, that it is wrong to subsidise their industry, but right to subsidise agriculture to this extent?
    Conservative Members ought to listen to this. I accept that it is right to give some subsidy to agriculture, because the industry is vital to this country in more ways than one. Equally, I submit to hon. Gentlemen that the same argument can be made for the coal and shipyard industries.
    Mr. Nicholas Baker: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
    Dr. Clark: No. I have given way twice already. I shall follow the lead of the Minister, as I have a lot to say. It is better that I make my speech and hon. Members then seek to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and make their own speeches.
    Can the Minister tell us how we can justify the present system to farmers who receive only a third of agricultural support? The key factor is that a grossly expensive agricultural support system does not reach the farmers, who are at the sharp end. Only a third of the money goes to farmers, and the rest goes to storage and the likes of export restitution. How can the Minister defend that system and not seek a radical reform? The question is unanswerable.
    I wonder where the Government stand on this issue. I listened very carefully to the Minister and though that I heard some indications. Did I detect a shift in Government policy for agricultural support? I listened carefully to what the right hon. Gentleman said today about the markets. I even listened to the philosophical guru of the agricultural Benches, the hon. Member for Calder Valley (Mr. Thompson). All his references at Question Time today to market forces got through to me. They burnt through to my soul. I thought, "Aha, perhaps there is a shift in Government policy. Perhaps they are moving away from almost unfettered support for agriculture." Are the Government really thinking of removing or reducing financial support for industry?
    I read with great interest a speech made last week by the Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food at the annual dinner of the Grain and Feedstocks Association. He made some revealing comments to that august group. He is reported as saying that price cuts were his preferred option to reduce surpluses. How does that square with the Government's policy on the devaluation of the green pound, which is a price increase for farmers, rather than a price cut? The fundamental message in his speech came when he provided some insight into the Government's thinking on the reduction of intervention in the farming industry. He made the point that government was best when least obtrusive and involved. His general conclusion was that farm support ought to be reduced.
    Further confirmation of that change in Government policy came yesterday from the Economic Secretary to the Treasury. I believe that the Treasury has some influence in these matters. The Minister was arguing that the experience of the deregulation of transport, financial services and mining in Britain had stimulated growth. He argued that deregulation could have a similar effect for agriculture.
    It is fair to ask the Government at this early stage whether they are really contemplating a U-turn on agriculture. Because so many jobs are involved, and the lives of so many of our citizens will be affected, is it not time for the Government to come clean and start an open debate on the matter?
    We on the Labour Benches would approach any rethinking on agricultural policy in an open and positive manner. I make that offer to the Minister. There is much at stake. It makes a lot of sense to strive for a policy based on common and agreed principles. If we could get consensus on some basic issues of principle, we might take the debate a stage further. Therefore, I ask the Minister to give us a little more information about his thinking on these matters. As he pointed out at the beginning of his speech, public subsidy to agriculture is increasing all the
    1054
    time. He gave a telling figure of 28 per cent. in the past few years. He used it for a different reason, but I use it in this context, too.
    Continuing the theme of finance, I shall consider the cost of the CAP to the consumer. It is worth repeating it to the House, with all the legitimacy of a Treasury document to back me. It was issued and distributed at the time of the NFU conference, and it said that it cost the average household of four in Europe more than £10 a week to support the farming community.
    The figure for the United Kingdom is even higher, because of our different trading patterns. As long ago as 1986, the university of Newcastle calculated the figure at £11·50 a week. I know that the figure is not very welcome to farmers in this country, but it is a fact promulgated by the Treasury. When the Minister accepted our amendment to the Government's motion on CAP reform in November 1987, we thought that, while he did not agree with the figure, he reserved his position. I fully concede that point, because I want to be fair. We believed that the Government genuinely shared our concern. I hope that that is still the case. However, I detected rather a different attitude by the Minister today, compared with his determined approach before he went to Brussels.
    I shall say a few words about the green pound, because the Minister asserted our position correctly. The NFU argues, especially through its publication British Farmer, that the green pound is still the most critical issue facing British agriculture. I regard the NFU as probably the most effective trade union in the country. It has been remarkably successful over the years in persuading successive British Governments to back its proposals. It is more than a strange coincidence that sometimes the Ministry of Agriculture and the NFU speak in almost the same voice.
    I can understand the determination of the National Farmers Union to maximise the income of its members, and I appreciate its arguments for devaluation of the green pound. There is no doubt that the system of green currencies has got somewhat out of hand, but I have some intellectual difficulty in accepting the duplicity of the NFU's approach. I shall explain what I mean.
    On one hand the NFU is on record as supporting the concept of stabilisers, which is a means of cutting surpluses by price reductions. Obviously, for such a system to work effectively, the price cuts must hurt. Yet the NFU is on record as justifying its devaluation stance by claiming that at least 4 per cent. is needed to offset the effects of stabilisers on British farm prices. The two objectives are contradictory, and that casts doubt on the NFU's determination to tackle seriously the costly farm surpluses.
    While I accept the NFU's claims that the farming industry is not so prosperous as it was, equally I use the Minister's arguments that the farming industry has had benefits in the past 12 months and will have benefits in the immediate future. The industry has the benefit of lower input costs—of fuel oil and so on—because of the strength of sterling. It has the benefit of a reduction in income tax—for some farmers, a reduction in income tax at the higher level. The industry has those benefits, as the Minister has pointed out.
    Mr. Geraint Howells: Some farmers do not earn enough to pay tax.
    Dr. Clark: The hon. Gentleman makes the point that some farmers do not pay tax. He represents a particularly difficult area for farmers, and his statement is correct. Many of his constituents are on low incomes and work hard in difficult terrain. I think I am right in saying that the average income for the Welsh upland disadvantaged area farmer is £4,617 a year.
    Mr. Howells: I am one of them.
    Dr. Clark: I thought that I was doing rather well in helping the hon. Gentleman, until he started adding his additional incomes. I think that I have made my point without the help of the hon. Gentleman, who is such an honest man.
    Apparently, the Government agree with the NFU's approach. The Minister has said that he is in favour of a devaluation of the green pound. We are entitled to ask by how much. As the right hon. Gentleman pointed out, a devaluation in the green pound affects the cost of living of the rest of the community.
    Mr. Robin Maxwell-Hyslop: Trivial.
    Dr. Clark: I shall return to that trivial point. Is that really the Government's position? How can they justify their support for the NFU's campaign to offset the cost of stabilisers by price increases to farmers through a green pound devaluation? I thought that the Government were serious about stabilisers, and here I return to the point that was made by the hon. Member for Torridge and Devon, West (Miss Nicholson), which I may have misrepresented.
    I listened carefully to the Minister. Will he confirm that the Governments of France, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Greece have requested green rate devaluations? If they have, that negates any advantages that we in Britain may gain by our devaluation. One is then talking about rates of devaluation, and that is another reason why we want to know the rate on which the Minister has his eye.
    Mr. Tim Boswell: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
    Dr. Clark: I must continue. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will try to catch your eye later, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
    Will the Minister confirm that the French, the Italians and the Irish have argued that a devaluation of their green currencies is a condition of any price package agreement? Is it true that the British Government have not taken that line? Am I right in believing that the Minister is not making a green pound devaluation a condition? Is his declared support for devaluation real, or a sham? The House needs to know where he stands.
    The recent strengthening of the pound in foreign currency exchanges has made the case for the Minister's devaluation stance even weaker. On 22 April, in Farming News, the hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) spelt that out clearly in words of one syllable for us all to understand. This strengthening led, ipso facto, to a corresponding devaluation of the green pound. Given that, surely there can be no justification for further devaluation, unless of course the Minister is not confident that the pound will remain strong over the next 12 months. For the House to make a decision, or even to offer an opinion, on the level of the green pound, we need to know where the Minister stands on this issue. Is the current strength of the pound temporary, or will it be permanent?
    1056
    The answer is crucial. Does the right hon. Gentleman side with the Chancellor or with the Prime Minister on this issue'?
    I happily offer the Minister my support on one small issue. There are sound technical reasons for the abolition of MCAs in the pig sector. In effect, it would mean a green pound devaluation in that sector. I hope that the Minister will press as hard as he can for that. He has our support. For the technical reasons which he explained so well, we believe that the pig regime is different.
    I should like to conclude on the green pound issue—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."]—by mentioning the forgotten consumer. Obviously, Conservative Members will cheer at that, because they would like to forget the consumer. When I mentioned price increases, the hon. Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop) said that they were trivial. They may be trivial, but, on the NFU's figures alone, it means 1p on the standard loaf of bread, 3p on a 250g pack of butter and an extra 4p per pound on beef. What does the Minister say to those of our constituents who are already on low incomes, who have been heavily penalised by the Government's policy and who have lost in the past 12 months through the Government's reform of social security and the housing benefit system—
    Mr. Paul Marland: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
    Dr. Clark: I would rather not give way, for the simple reason that I think it important that I make my speech and then allow others to make theirs.
    When the poll tax is introduced, these people will be even worse affected. They will not have the benefits of any tax cuts, because many are on such poor incomes that they do not pay any income tax. If I may say so, they are like the farmers of mid-Wales. How can we argue for any further financial penalty in the form of higher food prices for the many pensioners, the long-term unemployed and the widows and widowers in constituencies such as mine who have lost under the Government's rigid reform of the social security system? Is it fair to suggest to widows with no capital, who were recently faced with a £15 cut in their already meagre income following the changes in the Government's rules, that there should be price increases to help the hard-up farmers?
    It is ironic that some of the unemployed once worked in the shipyards and the coal mines before the Government withdrew the subsidies. That is a fair point which is often raised with me. A further irony, while I am on the subject of ironies, is that some of the people most severely affected by food price increases are the farm workers, who are among the lowest paid in Britain. In a sense, they have been the real forgotten farmers.
    I freely acknowledge that all is not well in farming. The Government must accept some responsibility for farmers' difficulties. Farmers are completely bemused by the Government's lack of direction. The Government's policies have had the same effect on farming as on society as a whole. The past three Administrations under the Prime Minister have shown that the rich farmers are getting richer and the poor farmers are getting poorer. The small farmers in particular have suffered greatly under the Government.
    The position of some farmers in the upland areas of Wales, Scotland and England—for example, Durham and

    1057
    Cumbria—is diabolical. Many farmers are on income support, or near to it. Many are deeply distressed at the Prime Minister's sell-out in Brussels on the sheepmeat regime. I use the word "sell-out" rightly, because even the Minister accepts that the sheepmeat regime discriminates against the British sheep farmer. No objective person could avoid that conclusion.
    I shall now turn my attention to the set-aside issue. It is disappointing that we are having this debate without all the information being available to us. This is very serious. As I understand it, the EC conditions for set-aside have been agreed. I understand that they were agreed at the end of last week. I find it rather deplorable that although the issue was agreed at the end of last week, this debate is taking place without the documents and the details being available to hon. Members.
    I shall ask the Minister one or two questions on the issue. Am I right in thinking that bare fallow will not be allowed? I should like an answer from the Minister. Does the Minister consider that the £16 million allocated to the scheme will be adequate? I wonder whether the Minister could develop a little further his attitude and his thinking about fallow grazing. If bare fallow is to be disallowed, only green fallow and grazing fallow are left. Therefore, the options are restricted. I understand that it is entirely up to the Minister whether there is grazing fallow. As has been shown by hon. Members during Question Time and in interruptions in the debate, there is deep concern about the effect of grazing fallow, especially on the farmers in the upland areas to which I have referred.
    The concept of grazing fallow is admirable if we can contain the progeny issue. As the Minister knows, there are deep and serious anxieties about the operation of the scheme. We know that the hill farmers operate a monocrop system. We also know that they have no alternative. Even if grazing fallow is allowed at a 50 per cent. grant, it turns upside down the economics of sheep farming.
    Perhaps I can use an example. Perhaps I can compare an average hill farm in Cumbria with 600 ewes with an average cereal farm in East Anglia of about 1,000 acres. The East Anglian farmer may put 200 acres into green fallow as grazing fallow set-aside. As I understand there is to be a limit on stocking on grazing fallow, he will be permitted to place approximately 400 mule ewes on that land. Given the nature of lowland farming, he would expect a lambing percentage of about 180. He would therefore stand to gain £8,000 under the set-aside scheme at 50 per cent. In addition, he would get a ewe premium of about £2,000, at £5 a ewe, and expect a variable premium on 720 lambs at £4 a lamb, amounting to £2,880. That means that there would be a total gain to the East Anglian farmer of £12,880. I accept that he would have some costs, but he would also be able to sell the lambs.
    The Cumbrian situation assumes a small drop in lamb prices, due to the increase in lamb numbers, of perhaps £5 a head. In the upland areas it would be realistic to expect a lambing percentage of about 70, which means about 420 lambs, perhaps less 120 kept back for further breeding. The system would mean a loss to the Cumbrian farmer of £1,500. Assuming that there is a drop in the ewe premium of £1·80, which is likely, there will be another loss of more than £1,000.
    1058
    I have spelt that out in some detail because only when it is stated in such stark detail do we realise why so many hill farmers are worried. On a simple comparison—I have used the rounded figures for simplicity—the Cumbrian farmer is more than £2,500 worse off, while the East Anglian farmer gains more than £12,500. Surely that cannot be right. It highlights the danger that can follow from grazing fallow.
    Obviously the final details have to be worked out, but I hope the Minister will ensure that the House has a full debate on the set-aside issue before a final decision is taken, and before the final details are sorted out. I have not dealt with the environmental aspects and the other economic aspects that are affected by the set-aside issue.
    I shall conclude with two thoughts. All hon. Members will agree that we are facing a period of great uncertainty. I should have thought that it was time for diversification and alternative methods of farming. I understand that that is the view of the Government. However, I do not understand why they appear to be intent on further slashing the research and development budget in agriculture, fisheries and food. As I understand it, the report on the review has been submitted to the Cabinet Office. I understand that it has been discussed by the Cabinet. If that is correct, and if the future of research and development is to be altered radically, with industry being encouraged to fund more research, more jobs will be lost.
    The issue raises many questions. For example, does the industry have the ability to pay for research? I understand that the farming industry is under stress and under financial pressure, yet the Government want it to pay for more research. What influence will industry have in deciding the research topics? How will it be decided which research is to be classed as near market research? So far the review has been conducted in the utmost secrecy. The industry itself has not been consulted, nor have any interest groups affected, such as the trade unions and other pressure groups. I hope that before making any recommendations the Minister will come to the House, make a statement, and let us question him on the proposals.
    I began my speech by referring to the fundamental challenges facing agriculture and by accepting that there is a difference of approach between the two sides of the House on many issues. I began by proclaiming the Labour party's concern and desire to keep British agriculture healthy. I applaud the Government's meagre efforts to reform the CAP. Our criticism is that they were not drastic enough.
    I urge the Minister to persuade his colleagues in Europe that we must be much more serious about working in the international ambit. We must devote much more effort to making sure that agricultural issues are discussed within the context of world trade. I make the point that I hinted at in the course of my speech. We feel that there is common ground. We believe that the Government have sometimes been obsessed by secrecy. That is not good for the farming industry or for the House. We should like a much more open discussion, and I urge the Minister to ensure that during the period of readjustment and reform he takes the House and other interested parties into his discussions and listens to their opinions before reaching conclusions.
    I think the Minister acknowledges that there have been issues that we have supported. I freely admit that we have given our full support to the environmentally sensitive areas scheme, which has been a successs. We welcome its

    1059
    success, we want it to be more successful, and we are willing to help the Government in positive efforts to help British agriculture, but we always reserve the right to take a different approach on some of the issues.
    5.58 pm
    Sir Richard Body: I was disappointed in the speech of the hon. Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark). I thought that he would get to the root of what is wrong. His speech was founded on the same fallacy as all the pages that we have had from the Community—I do not know how many, but the documents stand about four inches high. Like the speech of the hon. Member for South Shields, none of them explains the paradox that my right hon. Friend gave us at the outset. In the past eight years the Government have increased support to agriculture by no less than 28 per cent. in real terms. That is a huge increase. Every farmer in the land should be grinning all over his face with delight, but we all know that the opposite is the case. In the same period, farming net incomes have plummeted.
    There is nothing new in that paradox. It began, sadly enough, soon after we launched a policy of price support some 40 years ago. That was done entirely in good faith. We believed that if we artificially raised the price of what the farmer produced, the extra money would go into his pocket and become an addition to his net income. Instead, in the past 40 years farming net incomes have gone down, in real terms, to one third of what they were before that policy.
    Some of us are old enough to remember—the hon. Member Ceredigion and Pembroke, North (Mr. Howells) is very nearly old enough to remember—the days when, just after the war, young men could start serious farming with just a few hundred pounds and make a good livelihood. Today, they would need a hundred times more money in real terms to enable them to do so. In those intervening years—this is why I emphasise that the paradox is not new—300,000 farmers have gone out of business, and the annual review shows that they are still leaving at the rate of 2,000, 3,000 or 4,000 a year. I regret that, and I hope that all other hon. Members do so too.
    The fact is that price support has not had the effect of supporting farms. It is high time that farmers and taxpayers were given some explanation of where all the money has gone. If one looks through the annual estimates for agriculture, one can easily tot up all the money that has gone to agriculture in the past 40 years. One can also estimate how much land values have gone up in the same period. The two figures come to exactly the same. We have lost the money that has gone in price support in inflated land values. That has been fine for somebody such as myself who has the good fortune to own a couple of farms, but it is harsh indeed for the small farmer, and particularly harsh for the tenant farmer, because the more land values rise, the more rents rise. With the aid of the annual review, one can see how that has happened. Even in the past eight years they have nearly doubled.
    We must think seriously about whether the policy to which we have been pledged for so long is fundamentally right. I was more than delighted when my right hon. Friend the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food touched upon the root causes of the paradox. He is edging towards a much more sensible policy, and I hope that it will work. I am all in favour of set-aside, provided that it
    1060
    is constructive. Nothing would damage the reputation of farmers more than to be paid large sums of money for their land to lie idle. The money must be used for constructive purposes, and I am sure that that is my right hon. Friend's wish.
    I also hope that the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food will be much more active in extending ESAs. I appreciate that they are all an experiment, but some of us suspect that the Ministry—not my right hon. Friend, but those further down the line—are not going ahead with sufficient enthusiasm with that practical alternative by which we can lower the temperature of farming and give farmers real security by compensating them for any loss of profit that they suffer by farming differently and more constructively.
    We all know—I think that the hon. Member for South Shields quoted a figure—that the average family is paying much of the price. The figure, accepted by the Treasury and everyone else, is about £11 for the average family. That is a serious amount. If we phased out price support, the average family would be that much better off a week. They would have £11 a week more spending money.
    Mr. Ralph Howell: Does my hon. Friend accept that the figure that he has just quoted is based on wheat at £50 a tonne and that no such wheat is available? The cheapest wheat imported into Britain is £105 a tonne and wheat from other parts of the EC is as much as £177 a tonne. His figure is wholly fallacious.
    Sir Richard Body: I dispute those figures. Only a few weeks ago I had the offer of some land at £7 an acre, and that was in Australia where land that can grow wheat at £50 an acre has gone out of cultivation. There has been compulsory set-aside and farmers have walked away from it. But there is land there that is now growing wheat at £45 an acre and they would gladly send it to this country at that price. I am not suggesting that it would all come in, but I am saying that we are deluding ourselves if we think that we are helping the farming community by pursuing a policy of price support, which manifestly has not supported more than half our farmers since it was introduced.
    I am not arguing that no money should go to farming. On the contrary, I am saying, and have said often, that we have got agriculture into such a mess that a vast sum of public money is now needed to put it right. One of the things that has gone wrong is that we have brought into arable cultivation about 7 million acres—an area the size of Northumberland, Durham and Yorkshire—of poor, grade 3, 4 or 5 land, which cannot possibly grow cereals economically. That is the root cause of the grain surplus that we have had for the past few years, which nobody in Britain wants to buy, certainly not the poor pig producers and dairy farmers who cannot afford it.
    I have consistently argued that to put right the pattern of agriculture a large sum of money is needed—perhaps £2,000 million a year. I think that public opinion will accept that. I draw the attention of my right hon. Friend the Minister to a significant recent opinion poll which said that 78 per cent. of the British people would be willing for 1 per cent. of the national income—which is more than £2,000 million—to go to agriculture for purposes of protecting the countryside, conservation and so forth. That is a heartening prospect for farmers. It means that the British people are willing for an appreciable part of their

    1061
    income to go to agriculture and support it in a genuine way. If we extend the principle of ESAs and the constructive policy of set-aside—as my right hon. Friend is anxious that we do—we would be able to use such money for that purpose.
    However, I fear that if we pursue that course we must also recognise that consumers have rights too, and it would be too harsh to expect consumers to be heavily taxed at £11 a week per family for more expensive food at the same time as contributing another £2,000 million a year.
    I hope that my right hon. Friend will pursue the course of getting to the root of the paradox that has hurt agriculture for a long time. It may not have affected some of the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, North (Mr. Howell), who may have been beneficiaries, but many other small farmers in Devon, Wales and elsewhere, particularly in the livestock sector, have gone out of business at the rate of several thousands a year. Our aim should be a more balanced agriculture, but one that is secure and stable. That will not come while we pursue a policy of supporting the products instead of the farmer and his farm.
    6.9 pm
    Mr. Geraint Howells: It is always an honour to follow the hon. Member for Holland with Boston (Sir R. Body). We have both been in the House for many years and have disagreed on agricultural policy on nearly every occasion. I am old enough to remember the days when I lived on my father's 250-acre farm. My father's gross takings on that farm were £60 a year, out of which he paid a farm worker. We can turn the clock back 40 years if we want, but I would prefer to start on the farming ladder in the 1980s.
    Little did I think, when I began my farming career back in the 1950s, that Welsh farmers would one day be told that they were producing too much. After all, for years the farming community had been encouraged by successive Governments to improve the land, invest in modern buildings and machinery and build up viable units to reduce our food import bill and ensure that Britain provided as much food as possible from its own resources. Farmers responded magnificently to those appeals. Over the past decade or two, the family farms in Britain—the basis of agriculture—have improved out of all recognition. They have turned themselves into efficient small businesses that make a vital contribution to the economy of rural Britain.
    Welsh farmers find it difficult to accept with equanimity the fact that they have been penalised for their efficiency and for putting all their energies and capital into their life's work. There was a sad lack of foresight by the Government when they accepted and introduced schemes that could easily lead to the destruction of the family farm structure in Wales and the rest of Britain, and to many farmers' financial problems being made impossible.
    It should be possible in 1988 to improve the marketing organisation of the European Community, dispose of unwanted surpluses and find alternative markets, without having to use the intervention system and put everything
    1062
    into cold storage. I was delighted when the Minister said that he has plans to remove many of the surpluses in the intervention system.
    The intervention system has always struck me as a wasteful and shameful exercise, especially when millions of people are starving and young children are dying in their thousands every day through lack of food. Those of us who confess that we are Christians—some of us do—believe that, if there is a will, there is a way to help many of the starving people of the world.
    One of the saddest aspects of the affair is the way in which such mismanagement of the common agriculture policy is turning people in Britain against the EEC and causing them to forget the advantages that membership has brought us. As a dedicated European, I feel sorry that many people are not taking advantage of what is happening in Britain. The Community has expanded the market for British goods, and it has ensured that there will never be any food shortages in the Community.
    The common agricultural policy must be reformed. I agree with the efforts made by the Government, but they have not yet done enough. I am sure that it is not an impossible task, given the will to do it. There is far more to the European concept than its agricultural policy.
    British agriculture is facing its worst crisis in recent memory. I do not think that hon. Members on either side of the House will disagree with that argument. For many of our farmers, the consequences of the crisis are dire. Many have seen their incomes fall to unacceptable levels. If I understood the Minister's opening remarks, he agrees with that view.
    In 1987, United Kingdom farming income fell to its second lowest point since the war, and over the past five years the average decline has been 9 per cent. a year. The effect of that decline has been that during the past two years about 20,000 full-time jobs for farmers and farm workers have disappeared from the industry and investment has fallen by 30 per cent. to the lowest level since the mid-1950s. Last year, the number of full-time workers dropped below 100,000—to 96,000—for the first time.
    I do not know whether it was a slip of the tongue—it is for the Minister to defend himself—but he said something that will agonise hon. Members on both sides of the House, and especially the agricultural industry. The Minister said that many more farmers will have to leave the land in Britain and in the Community. I am sure that he is aware that in France and Germany people working on the land represent 20 per cent. of the electorate. In Britain the number has reduced to just over 2 per cent.
    In reply, will the Minister state whether he wants the 2 per cent. who are engaged in agriculture in Britain to decline to 1 per cent. or even 0·5 per cent.? It is a sad reflection on the industry when the Minister responsible for agriculture says that more farmers will have to leave this land of ours and go elsewhere to look for work. If the position is so serious, the Government should introduce schemes so that many of our farmers could become part-time farmers, and save our countryside and stop depopulation.
    I draw the Minister's attention to this week's Farming News, which reports on the deepening crisis in mixed arable and pig units in north Humberside. Farm workers are being laid off in that region at an alarming rate. The report exaggerates little when it says that farmers, who are forced to take on the extra work themselves, are

    1063
    "hanging on for grim death".
    The people who remain in the industry have seen their incomes cut drastically in recent years. What I say next will be important to everyone in the House, as I believe that agriculture is more important than political parties. The leaders of the Farmers Union of Wales are today meeting the Secretary of State for Wales in Cardiff. The union has discovered that 37 per cent. of full-time farmers in the United Kingdom earned less than £5,000 last year, and more than half of them made a loss. Those are the figures given by the Inland Revenue, which also says that about 31,000 farmers earned less than £40 a week.
    Something must be done to stop the decline. Whatever views the Minister holds, and whatever the Opposition spokesman thinks—I disagreed with many things he said —the industry is in dire financial trouble. The hon. Member for Holland with Boston said that more money must be given to the industry if it is to survive. That must be done soon.
    Mr. Richard Livsey: I particularly want to draw the Minister's attention to the farmers on low incomes to whom my hon. Friend has referred and who he says constitute 37 per cent. of all farmers. Many of them have been receiving family income supplement and are now being transferred to family credit. Their assets of livestock and land are being taken into account, and many of them are therefore not receiving the benefit. So the social security reforms are another aspect that affects agriculture. These farmers will have to leave the land. It is a serious state of affairs.
    Mr. Howells: That was a good intervention, even though it was a short speech. I am sure that the Minister will heed what my hon. Friend has said.
    I said earlier that British farming is one of the most efficient industries in the world, yet the Government continue to deride farmers for overproducing. Their record of efficiency speaks for itself. Farm product prices have risen by only 51 per cent. in the past 10 years. Food prices in the shops have risen by 88 per cent. and prices generally by 120 per cent. Britain's farmers responded to the call from the Government to produce more and make Britain self-sufficient, but when they respond to the reverse call to cut back production they can only go so far. The industry is already demoralised, without criticism from those who should be defending it in Europe.
    One step that would help to restore confidence in the industry would be an independent inquiry into the running of the common agricultural policy. British farmers have the right to know how their position compares with other farmers throughout Europe. That point was raised in Question Time this afternoon, and I am sure that when the Minister reads what I said he will take the lead in setting up a public inquiry in Europe to establish whether British farmers have the opportunity to compete on equal terms in Europe. That would be a step in the right direction and would allay many of the fears of Welsh farmers.
    The way in which the Government allow the green pound to operate is crippling agriculture, and that must be changed before it causes further damage. Its current operation creates ludicrous problems—producers in this country are put at a tremendous competitive disadvantage by the heavy subsidising of food imports and the taxing of exports. It is little wonder that British farmers cannot understand what is happening. They see their livelihoods threatened and all they hear is talk from the Government
    1064
    —without action. I hope that the Minister will do something in the near future about the green pound. I assure him that my hon. Friends and I are behind his efforts to devalue the green pound soon.
    There must be a concerted effort to achieve parity as soon as possible in all areas so that our industry can compete fairly in the markets of Europe. Our producers cannot be expected to compete in a single European market with one arm tied behind their backs.
    The National Farmers Union of England and Wales has already been mentioned, as has the Farmers Union of Wales, but I have received a letter from the National Farmers Union of Scotland, which wrote to my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Sir R. Johnston) saying:
    "I know that you are fully aware of the grossly unfair imposition imposed by the green pound on Scottish (British) farmers at this time, and the gap remains large despite the strength of sterling over recent weeks. The Government is using the green pound to keep food prices artificially low, and in doing so is hitting the producer rather than the retailer who has much larger margins if economies have to be made."
    So the problems in Scotland are the same as those in England and Wales, and I am sure that the Minister will take heed of that request.
    I said earlier and I say again that 12 months ago many hon. Members said that it would be most likely that we should have to introduce a quota on beef production. Here we are 12 months later and we have been told by the Meat and Livestock Commission that there will be a shortage of beef before the end of the year within the Community. The Minister gave figures for butter and dried milk today, and it is more than likely that there will be shortages of other products in the Community within the next year or so.
    We can all say that the livestock market is buoyant now. Store cattle are selling exceptionally well; calves, in particular, are selling well because many are going to the continent, but there will be a shortage of beef in the near future, in my view. Whatever views we may hold on the introduction of stabilisers and set-aside policy, much more consultation should take place before the Government and our friends in Europe decide on a policy. A great deal of consultation is needed. If agriculture is to survive and we are to keep the small farmers alive in our countries and in the Celtic fringes, we need a 10-year plan for agriculture and parity within Europe.
    It is well known that I am a farmer. Perhaps I can sum up my contribution by saying that I have been in the House for 14 years and a farmer all my life. Ten years ago, my income from the House of Commons was not enough to keep the family, but the money I received from the farm subsidised that income. Today, the money that I receive from the House of Commons subsidises the farm. The position is serious. I honestly believe that the Minister is doing his best; he is an honourable and sincere man, but what is needed is action, not words.
    Several Hon. Members rose—
    Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): Order. I remind the House of Mr. Speaker's appeal for brief speeches.
    6.28 pm
    Mr. Robert Hicks: It is not for me to comment on the details of the income of the hon. Member for Ceredigion and Pembroke, North (Mr. Howells), but it is always a pleasure to follow him because

    1065
    he speaks much good common sense based on his own experience. I endorse his remarks about our membership of the European Community and the importance of the smaller family farmer in the structure of agriculture.
    One of the most significant features of the debate on agriculture is the growing recognition that we are no longer discussing only the level of farm incomes or even the cost of the common agricultural policy within the European budget. We are also considering the future structure of our rural areas in an economic and social context. It is about the fabric of the countryside that I want to speak.
    The background is not particularly encouraging, but that, in itself, is not surprising. Most of us accept the need for greater financial discipline. Surpluses must be reduced to more manageable sizes. Although that adjustment is difficult and painful for many producers, within the overall requirements of the country and of the national farm, the various proposals outlined by my right hon. Friend—the introduction of stabilisers, a voluntary scheme for set-aside and no increases in prices for 1988–89—are necessary. I also recognise that Ministers have a difficult task in this respect.
    As mentioned in the debate, the Government's White Paper shows that the United Kingdom's farming income in 1987 fell to its second lowest point in real terms since 1945. Over the past five years there has been an average decline in real incomes of 9 per cent. per annum. In the last two years alone, about 20,000 full-time jobs in agriculture have disappeared. In addition, many jobs have been lost in ancillary activities because of events such as the closure of milk processing plants.
    Those are all examples of reductions in the level of job opportunities in the rural economy. An added dimension to the trend is that rural areas often already have high levels of unemployment. In my constituency unemployment is currently 14 per cent. Farming and associated enterprises and activities have long been one of the principal anchor points of our county's economy. As the House knows, it is essentially a livestock area and I should like to mention the effect of the proposed changes and recent trends in milk, beef and pig production.
    As we know, pig farming traditionally operates in cycles of peaks and troughs. This trough seems to be longer and more pronounced than any of its pig trough predecessors. I hope that you can follow that, Mr. Deputy Speaker. If we look at the figures for my county showing the effect of this downward trend, we see that in 1978 there were 1,364 farmholdings with pigs forming part of the enterprise. The number has dropped by 36 per cent. in the last 10 years, so that today there are 867 such farmholdings. The total number of pigs on those farms has fallen from 105,000 to 85,000, a drop of 19 per cent. That reflects a reduction in the size of the breeding herds, the sows and gilts. This is a worrying trend. The pig production unit traditionally formed part of the mixed farming enterprise in counties such as Devon and Cornwall.
    I did not object to the principle of milk quotas. Following their introduction, the profitability of milk production rose. That was essentially because hitherto farmers had not necessarily realised that the maximum output of milk did not equate to maximum profitability.
    1066
    The adjustment was essentially a one-off exercise and has now been achieved. We are now in a new situation in which there is a virtual standstill on milk prices, and that comes on top of a 19 per cent. quota cut since quotas were introduced. That has imposed considerable financial pressures on milk producers and had it not been for calf prices I doubt whether the financial position of the milk producers could have been sustained. Here again we run into the problem of the multiplier effect because beef producers in my part of the world are facing serious financial problems.
    In part, those problems stem from the high price of calves and store cattle. The beef producer faces the prospect of a reduction in beef intervention prices and the abolition of the variable premium from January 1989. In that context I welcome the Minister's remarks about his attitude to the green pound intervention and about the posture that he will take in meetings of the Council of Ministers. Irrespective of that, one of the key questions is simply about the alternatives that can be used to sustain the rural economy and farming incomes, given the background of the proposed changes and the consequences that will result from them.
    The Minister recently gave evidence to the Select Committee on European Legislation. He was pressed about the growth that there would be in rural employment if set-aside were to be fully implemented. He said:
    "Yes, I have been asking myself this question. It is, I think, difficult to judge. I would guess that at the end of the day the effect of set-aside will be marginal either way on rural employment."
    My right hon. Friend was pressed further and asked to be more specific. I asked about the actual alternatives for land use that would stimulate employment in rural areas. My right hon. Friend replied:
    "I have seen in the West Country quite a number of tourist activities. This is not necessarily land that is set-aside, but I have a considerable number of developments of tourist activities, old houses converted into hotels and … horse related activities."
    My right hon. Friend was correct about that, but he owes it to the House and to all those in agriculture who will be adversely affected in some way or another by these proposed changes to show a greater awareness of the difficulties that producers will undoubtedly face.
    Not everyone will be able to grow trees as an alternative activity or to set aside land. Not everyone will be able to find a suitable tourism project to develop or a leisure and recreational pursuit on which to rely. There is a limit to the number of golf courses, horse-related business activities, farm museums and theme parks that a rural economy can sustain—highly desirable as those developments may be. There are also problems in connection with local planning authorities. The Minister has a responsibility to ensure that dilatory planning authorities become more responsive to the changing needs of rural economies.
    I conclude by again emphasising to the Minister that there is considerable uncertainty among producers about their future. That is understandable, given the changes that have been made and are being made to adjust to changing circumstances that we all acknowledge. I welcome my right hon. Friend's positive attempts to lead along the path of diversification. He must demonstrate a clear perception of his objectives to the producers. They are the people that he is anxious to convince that they do have a real role to play in maintaining the structure of the countryside as we know it and wish to see it developed in the future.
    6.39 pm
    Mr. Martyn Jones: When we examine the 5 in of solid paper that we are supposed to be debating today, the need for diversification into wood production becomes apparent just to supply the paper needs of the bureaucracy of the European Community.
    However, on a serious note, hidden within that kilo or so of paper are some documents with grave potential for agriculture in the United Kingdom, particularly for the farmers on marginal hill farms, who are livestock farmers with little or no real chance of diversification, and very many of whom I represent. Farm incomes have dropped drastically in the past few years. That drop is, of course, more damaging to those already on low incomes and once again affects most seriously the livestock farmer in upland areas.
    Community price proposals will reduce beef production by abolishing the beef variable premium from next January. This will hit United Kingdom farmers, particularly in areas such as Clwyd, South-West. We are the only country that has variable premiums. Others buy into intervention, and therefore the United Kingdom will as usual come off worst. Monetary compensatory amounts exacerbate the situation, taxing producers and denying fair competition for our producers in Europe.
    Sheepmeat production is probably the most important provider of jobs and plays an important role in the preservation of the countryside in large areas of my constituency. We have heard that the vast amounts of Eurocash being spent on the common agricultural policy are not cost-effective. Both the farmer and the housewife obtain value from the variable premium scheme for sheep, and it will be detrimental to both if it is removed.
    Control of production is required, but the present measures are likely to have a twofold effect on farmers dependent on sheep.
    First, measures to reduce production in other areas that desperately need control, such as cereals, are likely to drive lowland farmers into sheep and grazed fallow, and such moves will turn into a stampede.
    Secondly, that will push the United Kingdom flock over the stabiliser limit and the twofold effect will be disastrous for marginal hill farms and for the conservation of our upland areas. Surely one sector of an industry that is in surplus should not have its problems solved at the expense of another.
    The Minister claims that some devaluation of the green pound will take place. This will help the farmer, although once again it will help the better off more than the less well off. I am sure that the long-term interests of most farmers in my constituency would be better served by some form of income support based on the continuation of their responsible care of the rural environment. Environmentally sensitive areas are welcome, but set-aside properly administered could be a godsend to hill farmers squeezed by low incomes and arable replacement by lowland farmers.
    Set-aside with safeguards to protect wildlife, landscape and archaeological features of farms, with maintenance plans taking in the whole of the farm and avoiding intensification on other parts of the farm, but with adequate payment for the farmer, must be the only answer in the long term that will not destroy the fabric of large areas of the rural parts of my constituency.
    6.43 pm
    Mr. Alick Buchanan-Smith: I was encouraged this afternoon, as was the House, by the speech of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, particularly by his acknowledgment of the serious situation facing agriculture and by his tough and realistic approach to the negotiations in Brussels in the weeks ahead. I intend to refer to some of the problems facing agriculture, particularly in the light of my right hon. Friend's comments and open acknowledgment of the difficulties, although I shall not detain the House for long.
    I shall not repeat my right hon. Friend's comments about incomes. We face similar problems in Scotland, as I am sure he will acknowledge. The real value of net farm incomes is now only about 33 per cent. of the 1977 figure. This again shows the difficulties that we, like farmers in Wales, now face. However, as my right hon. Friend acknowledged, that pattern is not the same in different parts of the country. He mentioned East Anglia, where he comes from, and I wish to mention the Grampian area of Scotland, where I come from. Last year, the harvest there was probably more disastrous than in any other part of the United Kingdom, and the problem of indebtedness is serious. I have made those points before and simply wish to emphasise them again.
    There has been a massive deterioration in recent years in the agriculture asset base. It is critical to consider that in terms of the long-term future of the industry. We have seen, on the one hand, increased borrowing and, on the other, lower land values. For example, over recent years that asset base—it is on that base that any industry judges its prospects for the future—has diminished by about 50 per cent.
    This is not simply a question of moaning or crying wolf. In these debates we set out the facts to enable proper judgments to be made. What is to be done? I know from practical experience that in the negotiations my right hon. Friend must be guided by the agreement in Brussels in February.
    The remarks of the hon. Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark) left me with niggling doubts and complete uncertainty about what alternative he would offer to tackle that problem. He appeared to be grudging about progress so far. I am sure that my right hon. Friend will stand up for United Kingdom interests in the broad framework agreed in Brussels in February. He must ensure that there is no deterioration in those matters of prime interest to British agriculture, in view of claims made by other European Ministers.
    My right hon. Friend covered a number of matters, including set-aside. I want to concentrate on the green pound because, given the background of the Brussels agreement in February, this is crucial to British agriculture in the forthcoming negotiations. The green pound is overvalued, as my right hon. Friend acknowledged. The British farmer is receiving less than his competitors and, most important, the terms of trade in agricultural products are to the disadvantage of United Kingdom producers. My right hon. Friend will know that that is not a new phenomenon. It has been going on for several years and has been a major contributor to the current weakness and malaise of British agriculture.
    It is acknowledged that the worst affected sector is pigs. Earlier this year the subsidy on bacon imported from

    1069
    Denmark and Holland was as high as £70 a tonne. The situation has improved because the pound has strengthened, but that does not remove the need for action.
    Will the pound remain strong? I shall not enter into that debate here, because it would not necessarily take us very far. What matters is that in future the strength of the pound could deteriorate, and I ask my right hon. Friend to ensure that in the negotiations in Brussels he takes the green pound to such a level that if there is a deterioration we do not go back to those huge export subsidies which our competitors in Europe enjoy. Therefore, I urge my right hon. Friend to achieve, as far as possible, at least a neutral position, and as soon as possible.
    There is a cost in this, but there is also a benefit. Every 1 per cent. of devaluation means an extra £50 million increase in the incomes of British farmers, who are so pressed. There is a cost to the Exchequer of between £8 million and £9 million for every 1 per cent. change, but that is a small price to pay to help this major industry in its difficulty. One can always come up with objections—for example, the cost of living and food prices, a point made by the hon. Member for South Shields. However, as my right hon. Friend did, let us get this into perspective. A 1 per cent. devaluation is about 0·2 per cent., or one fifth of a penny in the pound, on food prices. It is about 0·02 per cent., or one fiftieth of a penny in a pound, on the retail prices index. In those circumstances, we need a devaluation of between 9 and 10 per cent. That is about one third of a penny in the pound on the RPI and it is necessary to sustain this great industry.
    Some Labour Members may say that this is inflationary, but let us remember that over the past 10 years the retail prices index has gone up by 120 per cent., while the farmgate price has gone up by only 50 per cent. This means that agriculture has made a massive contribution to the Government's achievement of their objective of bringing down prices and inflation. Agriculture has served this country. Let us now, in our turn, see that the Government and the country serve agriculture.
    6.52 pm
    Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones (Ynys Môn): In this important debate, I shall concentrate on the effect of agricultural policies not only on agriculture but on the agricultural and rural communities of the countries of Britain. Agriculture is an important employer in Wales. In rural Wales, it is a vital industry in terms not only of the number of people employed directly on farms, but of those employed in ancillary industries such as creameries. We have seen the effect of certain policies on those creameries in recent years, and on the small businesses and families who depend on agriculture.
    The policies of the past 30 years have had a dramatic effect on rural Wales. In those years, thousands of people have left rural Wales, leading to massive rural depopulation, to the break-up of many rural communities and the consequent pressure that that puts on the traditions of rural life, the way of life of those communities, and, in parts of Wales, on the Welsh language. Therefore, it is important for us to consider not only the economic impact of agricultural policies but the social, linguistic and cultural consequences.
    1070
    We have heard a great deal about different sectors of agriculture, but it must be remembered that Wales and Scotland, and parts of England and Northern Ireland, are primarily livestock producing areas and that the consequent effect of pressure on those sectors makes it difficult for those farmers to retain their livelihoods, because they have little room for manoeuvre if they wish to move into other sectors. That is why I shall concentrate on what is happening in the beef, sheep and milk sectors and how that affects our farmers.
    The beef sector has already been highlighted in the debate. It is interesting to note that, although for years we have been talking about a potential beef surplus, the industry believes that there is a shortage of quality beef coming on the market. In view of the potential crisis, I ask the Government to give a significant boost to the suckler cow premium. As has been said, about 12 per cent. of our calves are being exported, and they are sometimes the best quality calves. Therefore, in years to come, the quality of our beef stock will suffer immensely. I urge the Government to consider a substantial improvement in the premium.
    The crisis which faced the milk sector in 1983, 1984 and 1985 through the initial imposition of milk quotas has in some ways subsided. However, there remains the significant problem, which the House should consider, of the transfer of milk quotas between farmers. The main reason why milk quotas are being transferred from farmer to farmer is the total failure of the outgoers scheme. The original intention of the scheme was to reduce overall milk production in the United Kingdom. That is not happening. Rather than being reduced, milk production is being moved around the country, with the significant effect that small producers in places like Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are feeling the pinch because they are in financial trouble. The large milk producers are buying up milk quotas and, increasingly, milk production in the rural areas is lost. I urge the Government to look at ways in which that can be prevented.
    The sheep sector is of major importance for Wales. I warn the Government that the problems in this sector, unless we get it right, could make those of the milk sector pale into insignificance. Some 80 per cent. of farmers in my constituency keep sheep. Therefore, the importance of sheep to Wales is obvious, and the Government understand that and should act upon it.
    We could face real trouble as a result of the agreement in the cereal sector and the introduction of green fallow and grazing fallow. In fairness, the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food said that there would be significant problems over the introduction of the grazing fallow. Let us make one thing clear: the introduction of the grazing fallow shows that the muscle of the cereal growers, in having this on the agenda in the first place, is significantly greater than that of sheep producers. The cereal growers are an important lobby and the importance of that lobby has put that issue on the agenda.
    We have the awful prospect of cereal growers being subsidised for not growing cereals, and being entitled to move into other sectors such as the sheep sector. If that happens, sheep will quickly be in surplus. Something should be done now to protect our sheep producers, and the Government should reject any proposals to bring grazing fallow into operation in the United Kingdom.
    There is already a massive increase in the number of sheep being kept. For example, in the first eight weeks of

    1071
    this year's lambing season alone, £48·5 million was paid out in the variable premium, whereas the total sum for last year was only £105 million. Last year there were 2,000 new wool producers, and if one allows cereal growers to keep sheep that will have a significant impact. If there is an increasing squeeze on sheep producers, family farms in rural Wales and in other rural areas of Britain will be under threat. The Government should act now.
    The overall position of the varible premium and of the ewe premium in the Brussels negotiations should tax the Minister's mind greatly. We know that there will be problems in introducing sheep quotas and realise that they will create severe policing difficulties. However, the Government have a duty—in my view, a primary duty —to protect the traditional sheep farmer who has nowhere else to turn if there is a surplus and a knock-on effect. The traditional sheep farmer in rural Wales will suffer significantly if no agreement is reached in the Brussels negotiations.
    My penultimate point concerns the green pound. I shall not detain the House unduly because other hon. Members have already spoken eloquently about that subject. However, I would ask the Minister, when he replies, to give the House some idea of the level of devaluation that he considers necessary, bearing in mind that the NFU recently called for a 9 per cent. devaluation.
    Finally, at a crucial time for agriculture, research and development becomes of increasing importance. If farmers are not to be allowed to follow the traditional path and are compelled to consider other methods and sectors of production, it is vital that they receive the best possible advice. That means good research and development. Will the Government give an assurance that research establishments in England, Scotland and Wales will be maintained and expanded? Also, will the Minister tell the House when he expects to receive the results of the Barnes review of research and development in Scotland? We implore the Government, with all the passion at our command, to consider the problems of rural areas, particularly in respect of their agriculture industries, and to take up many of the issues that have been raised in this debate.
    7.2 pm
    Sir Michael Shaw: I am glad that I have this opportunity of following the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Mr. Jones) because, judging from his remarks, the northern area of my constituency is like his constituency. Last Saturday I met members of the Whitby NFU, who knew of this debate. They made a number of points, and I am glad to say that my right hon. Friend the Minister has dealt fairly and squarely with most of them. I shall certainly make sure that his remarks are put before them in due course.
    I was sorry to hear the hon. Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark)—I regret that he is not in his place—say that the Government had thrown away a unique opportunity at Brussels. He cannot understand the processes of Brussels, because if one enters into negotiations there expecting 100 per cent. success, the only certain thing is that one will achieve nothing. The successful future of the Common Market and of the CAP, whatever changed form it finally takes, will largely be due to the determination of our Government, particularly during their presidency.
    1072
    We went as far as we could, and the successes I believe we shall achieve—and we all give our good wishes to my right hon. Friend the Minister in his further negotiations —will stem from the fact that we knew how far to go at the appropriate time. We are now taking up the fight again on those points which we believe to be so important. In other words, we did not throw away a unique opportunity at Brussels. We played it right, and it is an ongoing game in which we shall continue to have an important role to play.
    The farmers in my constituency are worried by a number of the factors which right hon. and hon. Members have touched on in this debate. The devaluation of the green pound ranks high among their problems. My right hon. Friend the Minister spoke about the MCAs and the problems of securing agreement because of the varying circumstances in each member country. We, too, have varying circumstances, which no Minister can himself manipulate. None the less, those circumstances exist.
    I hope that in any discussions my right hon. Friend has, it will never be forgotten that the rates of interest all our farmers have to pay at the bank are very different from those paid by our competitors in Europe. That is an important factor in pricing policy.
    Farmers in my constituency are also very worried about set-aside. Beef and sheep producers feel that that is the only stock they can rear on their farms and the only type of farming they can do. They have always done it, and are doing it now, and it represents their only hope for the future. Others who might be persuaded to enter beef and sheep production might do so only temporarily, and it would be fatal if their temporary incursion were to cause lasting damage to those farmers who will always have to depend on beef and sheep farming for their livelihoods. I shall say nothing about the subject of pig farming, because enough has been said already about how seriously those concerned, who include pig farmers in my own constituency, view that aspect of production.
    There has been no reference so far to diversification. One of the problems affecting it will be the attitude of planners. If one is diversifying, there will be a change of use, and old buildings might have to be altered for new uses. There may even be questions about whether roads are suitable for tourists in certain parts of the country. It would be tragic if farmers seeking to diversify, as they are encouraged to do, found themselves bumping up against objections from planning authorities. I hope that those concerned with planning in country areas will make sure that they have the machinery set up to help, as sympathetically as they possibly can, those farmers seeking to diversify. In that way, they will be of great benefit to their own countryside.
    7.8 pm
    Mr. Alan W. Williams: I wish to say a few words about reforming the common agricultural policy and about the set-aside proposals, particularly in respect of grazing fallow, which is a serious matter for my constituents. I start by quoting from a recent Consumers Association report concerning the common agricultural policy, which described it as
    "one of the most anti-consumer policies of all time."
    In considering agriculture, we tend always to think of the farmer—the producer—and hardly ever of the consumer. As has been said several times already, the CAP costs the average European family £710 a year. That figure

    1073
    was given in the Which? report. How can such a policy be justified when £10 or £11 a week is being paid by each family in this country?
    The report also comments that the arrangement hurts low-paid families much more than those with average incomes, because such families—pensioners' families, for instance—spend proportionately more on food. The Consumers Association concluded that, in the longer term, the only way to reform the CAP was to bring down support prices to a point at which surpluses were no longer created. That applies in all other industries: agriculture is singularly cushioned in this respect. In the long term, it must be the sensible course.
    As I said earlier, seen from the consumer angle, there can be no justification for the CAP. It would have been much more appropriate to hold a debate tonight not on agriculture, but on food and food prices and the effect on rural communities. Those factors affect most of the population. As the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Mr. Jones) said so eloquently, during the past few decades the effects of farming policy in Wales have meant massive rural depopulation.
    Earlier the Minister admitted that the drift from agriculture would continue. He said that with equanimity and complacency, as if it were a fact of life about which he could do nothing. In comparison with the rest of Europe, however, that drift has gone far too far already in Britain. The thrust of any agricultural policy must surely be to try to preserve rural communities and small farmers.
    The CAP was devised originally to protect small farmers: that is the incredible irony and dishonesty of what has happened in the past 20 or 30 years. Initially, in 1960, there were 17 million farmers in the nine EEC countries. Now the figure is down to 7 million. In Britain, 430,000 people derive their livelihoods from agriculture, and that number is falling by 9,000 every year. That is the pace of decay in agriculture.
    Unfortunately, the Government allow the relentless drift from agriculture to continue. We know that that is happening, despite the enormous subsidy—the £11 per week per family, the £20 billion cost of the CAP and the £4 billion that comes from the British taxpayer and consumer. Agriculture derives a larger subsidy from the taxpayer than the whole of manufacturing industry. The subsidies to British Rail, British Steel and the coal industry, and regional aid, are dwarfed by it.
    The money that goes to agriculture, however, is spread out very unevenly. It is based almost entirely on production, which means that the big producer receives an enormous benefit, while the small farmer derives very little. It is tied to land ownership. Six per cent. of farmers own 45 per cent. of the land, so half of any money that we put into agriculture will go to fewer than 10 per cent. of farmers.
    In any reform of the CAP, we need targeting, if I may use the Government's word. I do not believe in it when it comes to social security, when money is taken from the poor to pay for the richest. In agriculture, however, we have the reverse of targeting. The taxpayers' money is going to the very rich farmers. There is the awful distortion of the big farmers deriving hundreds of thousands of pounds a year in subsidies. Co-existing with those millionaire farmers are farmers in the poorer rural areas of
    1074
    Wales who are driven to the wall and out of business. We drastically need a redistribution of resources away from the rich farmers to the poor ones.
    We were not told the numbers involved, but one of the announcements that we heard this evening concerned the devaluation of the green pound. I cannot agree with such a devaluation simply because it is a blanket benefit to all farmers. A farm that is 10 times as big as another will derive 10 times the benefit. That cannot be justified. Every 1 per cent. devaluation means £50 million. A 9 per cent. devaluation means £450 million being taken from some part of the British economy.
    In the past month or so, social security changes have been announced. Apparently we have not the money to give the pensioners and the low-paid, and we have learned of the cruelties of the social fund. How can that and the deterioration in our health services be squared with giving money to these farmers? I would agree with it entirely if the money went to small farmers, but unfortunately half of it will go to only 10 per cent. of farmers.
    Two months ago, the Prime Minister returned from Brussels championing the success of her negotiations, and trumpeting her success in limiting the budget. But, as was conceded earlier, devaluing the green pound is simply a way of countering or neutering the effects of that—a way of getting back the money that was conceded in Brussels. The Consumers Association has concluded that the only sensible long-term reform of the CAP must involve guaranteed prices in Europe coming into line with market realities—if I may use a phrase used by Ian MacGregor during the coal miners' dispute. The market realities in Europe are that we are producing 15 per cent. more food than we need, and prices are well above world prices. Stabilisers will help, and I am delighted with that major step forward. The amounts agreed—160 million tonnes for cereals, for instance—were too high; too much ground was given in Brussels. Nevertheless, the principle holds considerable hope for the future.
    As 15 per cent. of land needs to be declared redundant, farmers are asking what else they can do with the land. The Government are being very weak about giving a direction to those farmers, who do not know which way to turn. They know that there is a crisis and that they cannot carry on as they are, but the Government are providing very little leadership. They seem to have no policy to offer the farmers, bumbling from one little step to the next.
    Woodlands obviously have a major role to play. I have been involved in Committee with the Farm Land and Rural Development Bill, which is a very timid affair. We talk about 12,000 hectares a year when we know that 4 million hectares are redundant and it would take 300 years to diversify at that pace. We need at least 10 times the commitment to that.
    Mr. Roger Knapman: The hon. Gentleman devoted the first part of his speech to saying that his constituents needed more help and the second part to decrying the level of Government expenditure. Is there not something slightly ironic there? Do those two parts fit together?
    Mr. Williams: As was said by the hon. Member for Holland with Boston (Sir R. Body)—I am sorry that he is not in his place, but this was very much the thrust of his

    1075
    excellent speech—the money that now goes to agriculture needs to he redeployed and used to solve the problems of agriculture, especially as it is going to rich farmers.
    Woodlands certainly have a major role to play, but we are far too timid and the action that the Government are taking is on far too trivial a scale. The consumer would very much like to see de-intensification of agriculture and cutting down on the use of pesticides and fertilisers, especially in areas where there are serious problems of nitrate pollution and where nitrogenous fertiliser should not be used, for the sake of human health and safety and the preservation of our water supplies.
    As has already been said, the Ministry is very much in the pocket of the NFU, which is a very effective pressure group. Where do their policies differ? The consumer is in favour of de-intensification and a tax on the use of pesticides. The Government should look at what is happening in Europe. In Sweden there is a tax on the use of pesticides and a very heavy tax on fertiliser usage. It needs to be a heavy tax to cut down its use, and there are strong environmental arguments to justify such a tax. There is now a trend towards organic farming and, among consumers, towards organic, healthily grown food. Food can be grown perfectly economically with far less use of pesticides and fertilisers. Again, Government thinking is at a very elementary stage. They are pussyfooting around without any real commitment or direction.
    I feel very unhappy about set-aside in a moral or ethical sense. It is fundamentally immoral to declare land redundant. It is like declaring people redundant—and this Government, of course, have no compunction about that. I feel that set-aside is a wrong policy anyway, whatever type of set-aside it may be.
    I am particularly concerned about the idea of grazing fallow. Perhaps there is an argument for green fallow, the rotation of crops and the 15th or 17th century idea that in one year in five one should not grow anything. But the implications of what we have heard so far of Government thinking on grazing fallow would spell disaster in my constituency and many other less-favoured areas.
    The idea, as I understand it, is that in the fertile cereal-growing areas farmers could be given about £50 to £200 per hectare to turn to grazing and produce sheep meat or beef. Sheepmeat is not in surplus; it is just about in equilibrium at the moment. Therefore, any extra sheepmeat produced in cereal-growing areas would threaten to lead to a surplus. We do not really need it, and it would simply exacerbate the problems of the CAP.
    Far worse would be the effect on areas such as those in Wales, because it would mean that we were subsidising lowland farmers to drive upland farmers out of business. That, in summary, is what grazing fallow means.
    I hope that the Government will take seriously the comments made in the debate and any representations made by farmers in our areas.
    7.25 pm
    Rev. Ian Paisley: As the largest single industry in Northern Ireland, employing 13 per cent. of the total work force, directly or indirectly, agriculture plays a vital role in the economy of Ulster. The crucial importance to Northern Ireland of the future well-being of agriculture must be recognised by the Government in their dealings with the European Commission and the Council of Ministers. At the moment the outlook for Ulster farmers
    1076
    is very bleak indeed. Ulster farms are largely small family farms, and they are the backbone of the industry in Northern Ireland. They are now being seriously threatened by factors that are beyond the farmers' control. With little or no alternative means of earning a living open to many farmers in Northern Ireland, it is imperative that action is taken to preserve the rural infrastructure.
    Suggestions from some quarters that farmers should diversify—for example, go into tourism—re in many cases simply not practical in Northern Ireland. Our indigenous population is much too small for diversification into tourism and, because of the continuation of the troubles, there is unlikely to be a vast influx of tourists to the Province, although we welcome the increase in tourism there. Therefore, Northern Ireland is not in a position to benefit in the same way as other European countries or the mainland here from schemes to diversify into tourism.
    Similarly, the suggestion that farmers in Northern Ireland should get involved in forestry as a means of diversification is not likely to attract any small farmer. He would have to wait a very long time to see any return on his initial outlay and investment if he tried to diversify into forestry.
    Options which are open to agriculture elsewhere in Europe are simply not available to the farming community in Northern Ireland. Given that fact, it is essential to address the very real problems being experienced in the industry in Northern Ireland. It seems to me to be a terrible step for the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to announce that from 1 October farmers in Northern Ireland will no longer have the advice services of the Department of Agriculture, unless they pay for them. Up to now, such services have been free of charge, but from 1 October farmers must pay for them. This will undoubtedly lead to advice not being sought, because the farmers' financial position is very serious indeed. I had a meeting with some farmers recently, and they brought their bank manager along. They put their accounts on the table and I was appalled at the plight of the farming community.
    The European Commission's farm price proposals contain some measures that are detrimental to Northern Ireland farming interests. In particular, the proposal for no change in the valuation of the United Kingdom green pound will have serious repercussions in Northern Ireland. I welcome what the Minister said today, and I urge him to seek a substantial devaluation in the United Kingdom green pound during his discussions and negotiations in the Council of Ministers. I should like to know what percentage he has in mind for devaluation.
    Farmers in Northern Ireland and in the United Kingdom generally have no objection to competition, but they must be allowed to compete in the market on a fair and equitable basis and not be placed at a disadvantage compared with farmers in other member states.
    We have heard prices of cereals quoted in the House today. Many hon. Members are unaware that, because of transport costs, all farmers in Northern Ireland have to pay £13 or £14 per tonne more than farmers in the United Kingdom. How then can farmers compete in the Common Market? I must confess that I am opposed to the Common Market. I always have been, and always will be. We had a large intensive industry of pigs and poultry in Northern Ireland but it has been slashed by 50 per cent. because we cannot buy grain on the world market. However, I do not want to go into that controversy today.

    1077
    For dairy farmers, the present milk quota regime has led to many difficulties. I agree with the hon. Member for Carmarthen (Mr. Williams) that the larger producer has done well, but the small family farm is now in jeopardy. If something is not done for the small family farm in Northern Ireland, many thousands of farmers will go to the wall. Many of us fought hard for the extra allocation of 65,000 tonnes of milk from the EEC. If that had not been spread over the entire United Kingdom, but had come fully to Northern Ireland, we would not be in our current state. The super-farms on the continent are nothing more than milk factories. They get away with it, while the small farmer in the United Kingdom goes to the wall.
    With the milk quota regime in place, the further proposal from the Commission to extend the milk co-responsibility levy for a further two years is unacceptable and should be resisted by the Minister in his discussions in Europe. It is an extra tax on milk producers which they should not be asked to pay when one realises the considerable constraints under which they already have to operate.
    In the beef industry, once again there is a proposal to end the United Kingdom variable premium. I am on record in the House and in the European Parliament as condemning the proposal, which the Commission has been forced to take back on previous occasions. The premium compensates producers when the market price falls below the target scale. It also ensures that the price is kept down for the consumer. We have heard much tonight about the interests of consumers, and rightly so. However, the intervention system increases the price to the consumer, by taking beef off the market. The variable premium provides benefits for producers and consumers. It should be retained rather than be phased out simply to bring us into line with the rest of the EEC.
    I want to stress the tragedy that has occurred within our pig industry. It has been cut to 50 per cent. and Northern Ireland has become the dumping ground for pigmeat from Holland. The Dutch have trebled their pig industry, while ours, as I have said, has been cut by 50 per cent. Before joining the Community, Northern Ireland was able to buy cheap cereals on the world market. Now, it is forced to import dearer feedstuffs and, as a result, cereals are very expensive.
    What is the Minister's commitment to the abolition of MCAs on pigmeat? He told a deputation from Northern Ireland that he was interested in this issue. Is it true that in France the MCAs on pigmeat have been phased out?
    The time has come to look at the pigmeat that is imported into Northern Ireland from Holland. Why is it —perhaps the Minister can tell me—that meat from Holland is not inspected? The Ulster Farmers Union, a deputation of which I met this morning before coming to the House, told me that it had been in touch with the Department of Agriculture in Northern Ireland, which said that such matters were not its responsibility. The Department said that it was the responsibility of the Department of Health and Social Services. The deputation went to the DHSS and was told that such matters were not its responsibility either. Therefore, we have uninspected pigmeat coming to Northern Ireland. The pigmeat that is exported from Northern Ireland is carefully checked and
    1078
    examined, while pigmeat coming in is not inspected, and the two Departments wash their hands of any responsibility.
    Northern Ireland has been fortunate. It has been free from swine fever for a long time. The time has come for the Department to do something about this matter. I understand that swine fever could come to Northern Ireland through contaminated pigmeat.
    The farmers in Northern Ireland will wait with interest to hear the Minister's reply. Some of the things that he said today were encouraging, and I was glad to hear him make such remarks.
    7.37 pm
    Mr. Eddie McGrady: It is probably opportune that I should follow the hon. Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley) who so eloquently described the agriculture industry in Northern Ireland. I should like to re-emphasise what he said: agriculture is the base industry upon which most of our people are sustained. It sustains the farmers, their families, their communities and their entire environment.
    I am what is called "book-learned- on agriculture. That is a Northern Ireland expression meaning that I have no practical knowledge of the industry. However, in my former occupation as a professional adviser I was aware of the greatly deteriorating real income being suffered by the farming community. Since becoming a Member of the House, representing an entirely rural constituency, I have been inundated day by day by matters concerning the plight of the small farmer. I have been concerned with the plight of the farmer with 40 or 60 acres, the hill farmer and the family farmer who are all suffering greatly.
    The sector that is most at risk and is teetering on the verge of collapse is the pig industry. Producers in Northern Ireland are producing animals at a loss of £4 to £6 per head. Obviously, they cannot sustain a continuing loss of that nature for any time.
    The plight suffered by the industry can be shown by the fact that about 10 years ago there were 24,000 producers and now there are only 4,000. The pig population has been decimated by 50 per cent. Most of that is due to what is seen as the unfair competition from the northern European countries, arising from the MCA differential. As has been said, until last month that was giving continental producers a hidden subsidy of almost £60 to £70 per tonne and now, fortuitously in a sense, it has been reduced to £45 per tonne as a result of the exchange rate fluctuation. That is still an enormous disadvantage. When added to feed costs, import costs and additional transport costs when produce is sent out again, it gives rise to very heavy overheads indeed.
    I was pleased to hear the Minister say at Question Time that he was resolved that the MCAs should be reduced to nil as soon as possible. I asked him then whether he could extend the export restitution so that not just Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom as a whole, but the whole European Community could expand into new markets—particularly in the Third world.
    Perhaps one of the most unjust systems applying to farming in Northern Ireland is the milk quotas system. We seem to be locked into a decision made some years ago which seems to be immutable. The dairy farming community in Northern Ireland is small and, because of its size, farms have tended to pass from family to family and

    1079
    from farmer to farmer. However, that community is now locked into a fixed position. None of the cases concerning milk quotas that I have referred to a tribunal seeking the alleviation of hardship has been successful. I have not been successful in getting quotas reallocated in one single case. No real revision of adverse circumstances arising from the quotas is possible for the producer.
    Quotas are also stifling new blood and new ideas in the industry. The young farmer can no longer get into the dairy business. He lacks the capital and purchasing power to buy quotas. The new generation of dairy farmers will not succeed unless something is done to alleviate matters and allow more fluidity in the allocation of milk quotas. The hon. Member for Antrim, North referred to the hijacking of additional quota for Northern Ireland to the United Kingdom as a whole.
    Milk quotas are having a further adverse effect, as many hon. Members have said. They are forcing many would-be mixed farmers and dairy farmers into sheep farming. That has a particularly adverse effect in my constituency, which is a less-favoured area and contains two mountain ranges. Hill sheep farming is most important to many of our people. Unless relief is given, we shall be heading for a new mutton mountain. We shall then have to take corrective action, probably when it is too late.
    I do not wish to repeat what has already been said, but I have one or two new points pertaining to Northern Ireland in particular.
    Mr. William Ross: The hon. Gentleman refers to the problem of ossification due to milk quotas and to the looming problem of a mutton mountain. I agree that milk production has ossified as a result of quotas, but may I now take it that the SDLP is against quotas and will be against quotas for mutton as well?
    Mr. McGrady: I am arguing for flexibility and fluidity to enhance dairy farmers' ability to continue to earn an income so that they will not be forced to consider sheep rearing, with the possible creation of a future mutton mountain.
    A problem has recently arisen regarding the plight of potato producers in Northern Ireland. My recent information is that they are suffering financial hardship. I do not know to what extent the Ministry can intervene. The producers are not being paid for their produce. Exporters are not being paid by their foreign importers. That will have a most serious effect on that important sector of farming in Northern Ireland.
    Let me deal with the less-favoured areas. There are applications before the Ministry to extend them. It seems to me that the Ministry is sitting on them; there appears to have been no movement in the decision-making process over the past few months.
    The hon. Member for Scarborough (Sir M. Shaw) made some interesting remarks about the panacea of diversification in farming to supplement farm income from other sources. I completely agree with him that the possibility of diversification will be negated by the planning regulations that will apply in Northern Ireland. My constituency is almost exclusively an area of outstanding natural beauty. Parts of it are areas of special scientific interest, and parts of it are areas of special control with green zones, blue zones and yellow zones. Within that colour scheme, it is virtually impossible to
    1080
    build a house to accommodate one's family, let alone diversify into other forms of industry and income-producing activity.
    I recommend hon. Members who are interested in rural development and the protection of rural communities to read in detail the Maher report, an EEC report designed to help rural communities in Northern Ireland. It is a most interesting document whose recommendations about planning and revitalisation would go a long way towards assisting the continuation of our rural communities. which are the backbone of most nations, and certainly of our nation.
    I wish briefly to make two points which are nevertheless important to the people who are suffering the disadvantages to which I shall refer. Perhaps the problem of rural electrification is unique to Northern Ireland, as I do not think that it has been mentioned today. I draw the Minister's attention to the fact that the most exorbitant prices are being charged for rural electricity extensions by the sole producer—the Northern Ireland Electricity Service, which is a monopoly. The charges being quoted for small extensions to main lines, even for a relatively short distance, are prohibitive to our small farmers. In addition—the House may hardly believe this—if a farmer goes for credit with NIES, which, as I said, is the sole producer of electricity, it charges an annual percentage rate of 34 per cent. That has been admitted in a parliamentary answer. No small farmer can afford that sort of money for the simple modern facility of electrical energy.
    My last point is allied to that and concerns bank interest rates. Bank interest in Northern Ireland is automatically 2 per cent. above the minimum lending rate. No reason is given. It is completely to the profit of the banking fraternity. Whatever the rate in the United Kingdom, it is 2 per cent. extra in Northern Ireland from the start. One negotiates from there upwards. Several years ago, farmers were being encouraged to bring wheelbarrows to the high street banks to get the surplus money lying on the counters. They took out massive loans. Since then, they have been crippled by enormous overheads in the form of bank interest.
    Will the Minister consider what justification there is for this additional interest factor in Northern Ireland, which affects not only the farming community but the manufacturing and service industries and personal loans.
    I commend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food for his interest in abolishing the obvious subsidy created by MCAs. I look forward to that alleviating some of the disadvantages suffered by farmers in Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom.
    7.50 pm
    Mr. James Paice: One of the disadvantages of sitting through a debate and being called to speak at the centre point, if not beyond it, is that many of the more important points have been made.
    Many farmers will be watching with interest the results of this debate, and the negotiations in the next few weeks. They will be gratified by the Minister's speech. He showed clearly that he will go to Brussels to defend the interests of the British farmers. That will not be a moment too soon for the British farmer. One of my sorrows during the few months I have been a Member of the House is that many hon. Members have been critical of British farmers and

    1081
    agriculture. Even today there have been accusations from the Opposition Benches about the levels of subsidy in agriculture. The blame has been laid entirely at the door of the farmer: we are told that it is his fault.
    It is worth reminding ourselves, however, that farmers have responded to the pressures of successive Governments. It is only 13 years since the previous Labour Government produced the White Paper "Food from Our Own Resources" which was widely welcomed. It gave the green light to farmers to produce continuously. That is exactly what has happened. But 13 years is but a blink of an eyelid in the time scale involved in agriculture production.
    Farmers have had the security of some market price support, which has enabled them to continue producing and to live up to the expectations of the House. Every country in the western world has various forms of support for agriculture. It is not unique to us. Farmers have sat back and rested in the sure knowledge that the Government and the state will support them all the way. They have invested in and been very welcoming to new techniques, machinery and technology.
    We have heard it suggested that many people want to turn back the clock and ban the use of chemicals, and even fertilisers, and that it would solve the problem. It is ludicrous to suggest that as a universal panacea. It would be like telling the National Coal Board that it should produce coal only from its poorest and oldest pits. That would also mean turning one's back on modern techniques of production. It is a good idea in environmentally sensitive areas to have a system such as the Government have brought in during the past few years. I welcome that, but abhor the suggestion that it should be applied across the country without further thought. It would reduce production but increase production costs per tonne, litre or kilo. Then consumers, or the House, would have to find more money in support of agriculture.
    We heard much about the consumer from the hon. Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark). The interests of farmers are in fact very much akin to those of consumers. They are two sides of the same equation, because if the consumer is not buying, the farmer is not producing and surviving. They are both vital. In the 14 years that the CAP has applied to this country, food prices have increased by less than the retail price index year after year. The consumer in Britain as well as in Europe, has been protected from the massive price fluctuations that occur among commodities that are not subject to a marketing regime.
    The public perceive that our stores are bulging. I understand why it is highly emotive to have surplus food when we see on our television screens people starving in other parts of the world. It is a vital issue, but we have to examine the reality. On 1 January this year there were just over 1·25 million tonnes of cereals in store in the United Kingdom, or half the figure of a year before and a fifth of what it was two years before. That is a measure of the way in which our intervention stocks have been reduced, contrary to claims that are often made in the House.
    Just to put it into context, the 1·25 million tonnes of intervention stocks on 1 January represented only half the reduction in the previous year's harvest, which was 3 million tonnes down. That was more than twice what we
    1082
    had in store only four months after that harvest. Those figures put in context some of the more absurd ideas that have been put forward.
    Mr. Nigel Spearing: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
    Mr. Paice: I shall not give way, as many hon. Members wish to speak. The hon. Gentleman will have a far greater chance to speak from the Opposition side.
    The Minister said that 50 per cent. of CAP money is spent on storage and disposal of surpluses, and on export refunds; that position is ludicrous. It has occurred because the Community's politicians—I absolve most politicians in this country from the charge—have failed to grasp the nettle time and again. Because of that inaction, farmers are being asked to pay the price. The massive amount of money spent on storage and export refunds is all considered to be agricultural support. Farmers are personae non grata. They wonder where they are going. They are vilified by the press, by Opposition Members and, I am sorry to say, by a few Conservative Members. That is unacceptable, and it worries me.
    I cut my teeth on agricultural politics. I joined the Conservative party and came into the House because I know that my party and my Government support agriculture, as they have done for many years. It worries me that farmers are beginning to doubt the Government's commitment to their future. I know that that is not true, and I want to make it absolutely clear as far as I can. I am sure that the Minister of State will do the same in winding up. The Government and the party are committed to a strong and vibrant agriculture that faces the future, as well as recognising the faults of the past.
    We have to create more opportunities for farmers to diversify. There is no single panacea or prop, or livestock commodity, that every farmer can say is the new golden world. It is only 10 to 12 years since oilseed rape appeared on the horizon of East Anglia and then spread throughout the British isles. Now it is planted as far away as Orkney and Shetland. That crop was a great boon. The bubble has burst and there is no similar crop that farmers can plant.
    There must be a range of alternatives for farmers, but we have to accept that, as has been said by hon. Members on both sides, for topographical or geographical reasons, not all farmers can take them. Not all farmers are able to go into tourism, horses or other activities. That must be recognised.
    I have no brief to protect farmers from bad investments. There have been many of those in the past few years. I do not hold a brief for the inefficient, who must recognise that the time has come for change. But I believe that the country and the House have a responsibility to recognise that farmers need time to adapt to change and to face the future. We have asked them to do a great deal ever since the war, and they have done it beyond all our wildest dreams. Our response to what they have given us must be to give them the chance to change and to be treated fairly. I welcome the commitment by my right hon. Friend the Minister on the green pound. It is important that we have a devaluation to enable farmers to compete just that little bit more fairly.
    I recognise the dilemma faced by Ministers. It is strange to be trying to contain the costs of the CAP while maintaining farmers' incomes and viability. We must do something. Although stabilisers are a good means of

    1083
    putting a cap on the Community's expenditure, I am worried about the effects on individual farmers. In a few years we may wish that we had adopted a more flexible approach.
    The Farm Land and Rural Development Bill, which we shall discuss later, is a valuable step forward. It brings in measures that are long overdue. It is many years since I urged my Member of Parliament, my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), now the Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, to introduce a scheme to encourage farmers to move into woodland production. This is happening now and, although it is long overdue, it is welcome.
    Mr. David Nicholson: It is too small.
    Mr. Paice: I shall come to that point.
    Two or three Opposition Members have compared the amount of money spent on supporting agriculture with the amount spent on supporting British Steel, British Coal, British Shipbuilders and other industries. But there is an even more significant statistic—the amount of money that we are providing to enable those who are finding farming impossible or difficult to continue to diversify or to move into other businesses or interests. The Farm Land and Rural Development Bill will provide £1 million a year for grants towards diversification projects, in addition to the £3 million for related capital grants. Sums of £10 million or £12 million a year have been allocated as replacement for income forgone for woodlands.
    That can be compared with the amount spent on British Steel to help steelworkers when there was no further work in steel—£419 million over the past 10 years in readaptation benefits. I do not include redundancy payments. I am talking about special payments to enable those workers to find other businesses and jobs. As for British Coal, more than £2 billion was provided to redundant mineworkers to help them find alternative employment and businesses. That puts into perspective the £4 million a year which we are giving to farmers for diversification and the £10 million or £12 million a year which we are putting into woodlands.
    I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Mr. Nicholson) that the woodlands scheme is too small. I hope that it is the beginning of something much greater. Over the next few years, we shall press Ministers to double, treble and quadruple the assistance.
    Hon. Members are rightly concerned about the rural environment, conservation, public access and leisure. The points have been made many times. Great steps have been taken and the Government's measures will assist. We must understand that these measures can be taken only with profitable agriculture. One cannot achieve effective conservation by pauperising agriculture—contrary to the beliefs of some. The countryside is changing. Agriculture is changing, and it knows that it must. Farmers recognise the challenge facing them. We owe them the opportunity to change. I support the Government's efforts to reduce the costs of the CAP. I know that Ministers will work hard over the green pound and other issues, in the interests of farmers.
    The House has a major responsibility to tell farmers clearly that it knows that they must adapt and face the future. That is their reponsibility, but Parliament must recognise that it owes them the chance to change. We shall give them that opportunity.
    8.5 pm
    Mr. Brynmor John: I should like to follow the remarks of the hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East (Mr. Paice) in two particulars. First, I have abstained from agriculture debates for a few months since the corruption of the Opposition Front Bench gave way to the incorruption of the Back Benches—[Interruption.] I was sure that the Minister of State would look up that ecclesiastical reference. Little has changed in agriculture debates in those few months. We come every year to talk about the crisis facing farmers. The crisis has been continuing for nearly a decade and the main problems have changed little or not at all.
    The hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East said that we blamed the farmers. For my part, that is not true. I have never blamed the farmers for our present position with the CAP. We are producing too much of the wrong quality for consumption. There is a mismatch between what is produced and what is consumed. That is partly the structural fault of the CAP, and partly the fault of Ministers. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not be unduly defensive or prickly when I say that the House must decide the balance between consumption and production for the future and how we shall best achieve it.
    Secondly, I hope that hon. Members will not look upon the green pound devaluation as a panacea. They appear to do so, but it will be at best—this is the Government's argument and not necessarily mine—only a temporary alleviation of the problems. I say "temporary" for a reason. These matters are not decided by economics. One of the weaknesses of the NFU's brief is the belief that if we move everyone else will stand still and that, either passively or actively, they will accept that we should devalue, whereas others should not accept a devaluation. The truth is that every country will look for a matching devaluation of the green pound once we start. The hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East talked of a devaluation of the green pound to enable us to compete, but there will he little or no competitive edge. We must return to the point: how, in the long term, do we match agricultural production with the CAP system?
    I agree with the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. There is something structurally wrong with a system that pays so much subsidy, yet so little trickles through to the producer. Whatever else it is doing, it is not doing the job for which it was intended, so we must change the system fundamentally.
    The hon. Member for Ceredigion and Pembroke. North (Mr. Howells) and a number of hon. Members ask why we cannot feed the Third world out of our surpluses. There are two answers. First, the surpluses provided depend upon other measures being taken. For example, skimmed milk products are of no use unless there is a pure water supply in the country to which they are sent, and that depends on other forms of overseas aid.
    The second answer is that if we systematically exported our surplus products to the Third World to feed them we would destroy their economies, their agriculture and their societies. Let there be no mistake about this. I think that there is general agreement in the House that we should seek a balance between consumption and production within the EEC, with only reasonable economic exports being added.
    I now turn to the present situation. I rely heavily on documents 4079/88 and 4588/88 in dealing with the

    1085
    surplus of cereals. The cereal surplus was 18·1 million tonnes in 1986–87. That has dropped to 14·2 million tonnes because of the very bad harvest last year, but it is interesting to note that it is 0·4 million tonnes higher than it was two years ago, so let us not be sanguine about the way in which all the mountains are disappearing. They are not disappearing. Consumption still does not match production. If a stabiliser is set at 160 million tonnes, that will still provide a continuing surplus in Europe over and above what we can consume, so the mountains will not disappear.
    The documents say that, despite all the efforts, there is still a beef surplus which amounted to 700,000 tonnes in September. We all recognise the problem of red meat and livestock production. Sugar production is acknowledged to be in chaos. We have over-produced for many years. Who knows what the benefit is? There are A quotas, B quotas and C quotas. In our C quota we are effectively undermining the economies of the cane sugar producing countries and causing poverty in many other countries. I do not think that we should be proud of that record.
    The production of fresh fruit and vegetables has increased in the past year, despite the fact that buying off the market—that is, buying in and not putting the produce on the market—in many continental countries has become a valuable and significant source of income for farmers. In other words, the products are already too numerous and too great in volume for the market, yet we still consider them to be worth subsidising.
    We have to consider where to go from here, because there is a time limit. Document 5448/88 says that in time all those things will be brought into equilibrium, but when will that be? How long, oh Lord, how long? Set-aside can provide only a partial answer. In my view it cannot provide an answer on other than environmental grounds, because the Minister acknowledged in his evidence to the Select Committee that marginal land will be put into set-aside first. He said that we are so efficient that we will not be able to produce more. We are told that crop yields in cereals will rise by 25 per cent. in 10 years. If that is so, from the remaining land we can produce much more than we are producing at the moment in cereals.
    Everyone is trying to avoid talking about quotas. The Minister of State knows my view. I believe that quotas should be introduced to govern all products. I believe that that should be done by the EEC for an overall total, but the decision on how each country works up to its national total should repatriated to the individual countries. We must take steps to bring in those quotas. That is the only way in which we can help the small farmers. What we mean by a small farm is not what Europe means by a small farm. In European terms, a British small farmer is a large farmer. We will be unable to help small farmers unless we have a measure of repatriation in the common agricultural policy.
    Sheep farming is vital in my part of the country. For such monocultures it is a matter of life and death, not only for individual farmers, but for communities. The NFU is fighting very hard on sheep quotas, despite the fact that union members are asking for them.
    1086
    When speaking to a farm conference, Mr. John Davies, the Under-Secretary at the Welsh Office responsible for agriculture, was reported in the Western Mail on 28 April as saying:
    "I for one will fight tooth and nail against the imposition of sheep quotas."
    Does the Minister really consider that that is the proper way for a civil servant, who is traditionally politically neutral, to address the problem? Ministers should come out from behind their civil servants and say that to the farmers, instead of using civil servants to express politically contentious views.
    Ultimately, wriggle as Ministers may, the only answer will be quotas which combine strategic decisions being taken by the EEC with national repatriation of the means of working up to the quota. Only in that way can we begin to safeguard the small farmer, the monoculturalist and the future of the agriculture system. Even if we continue with a budget of £19 million in subsidy by the EEC, this will be greater than the present budget and will be a continual source of reproach. In all future debates, as if the matter were fresh and new, hon. Members will be saying that we face an era of crisis. We have faced it for a decade. For heaven's sake, in our negotiations this year, let us seize the means of overcoming it once and for all.
    8.16 pm
    Sir Charles Morrison: I was interested in what the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Mr. John) said about quotas. As a result of the introduction of stabilisers, we have what amounts to a Communitywide quota. It will be interesting to see to what extent that Communitywide quota or, to use the old term, standard quantity over a period of time, has to be broken down into quotas for individual farms.
    I was very encouraged by the appreciation and understanding shown by my right hon. Friend the Minister of the situation facing agriculture. Nonetheless, it is a continuing irony that agriculture, the industry which, more than any other, has done what was asked of it—increasing production, productivity and the self-sufficiency of national food requirements and helping the Government in their endeavours. The industry is now facing the greatest difficulty. Not surprisingly, as a result, many farmers feel somewhat soured and let down, let alone worried, financially squeezed and desperately anxious about the future of their businesses and the future of the countryside.
    The underlying cause of that disarray remains the slow growth in the size of the market in comparison with the huge growth in output stemming from scientific advances put into practice.
    I think that the hon. Member for Pontypridd is right. We now have to bring consumption and supply into better balance. However, that is small consolation to the individual farmer who learns from the White Paper that United Kingdom farming income in 1987 was the second lowest in real terms since the war, and that over the past five years the average decline has been 9 per cent. a year. Whereas industry generally is achieving an annual return of about 8 per cent. on working capital, farming achieves the negative return of minus 0·5 per cent. and investment is at its lowest level since the 1950s. Nor is it a consolation that all that is a consequence of successful farming. None the less, that is the situation with which my right hon. Friend the Minister must grapple.

    1087
    In practice, my right hon. Friend must grapple with the contradictory objectives of preventing further growth in surpluses and in the cost of the common agricultural policy, and the commitment in the treaty of Rome to increase the earnings of those engaged in agriculture.
    Furthermore, my right hon. Friend carries a great responsibility, as has been emphasised several times already, for the economic and social interests of rural areas and for the conservation of the countryside, the latter being an admirable, but added, self-imposed burden stemming from the Agriculture Act 1986. I do not envy the Minister, but he and his ministerial colleagues are extremely well qualified to cope with the gargantuan task that they face.
    We all know that in 1992 the Common Market becomes a reality. From that time on there should be fair and equal competition between all food producers in the Community. That does not mean, as was said earlier, that British farmers will automatically enjoy a bonanza. It must not be forgotten that many European farmers, probably a majority, are already efficient and are daily becoming more so. On the other hand, British farmers will at least not be at a disadvantage, as at present they are in many respects. Not only are they squeezed financially in the short term, but farmers outside Britain enjoying a slightly better level of prices may be able to improve their competitiveness now, which would be to our disadvantage from 1992.
    The National Farmers Union has calculated that the loss of farm income in the United Kingdom brought about by stabilisers for all commodities in a full marketing year will amount to about £125 million. I accept that the Government do not wish to have a green pound devaluation to offset the effect of stabilisers, as the objective of stabilisers is to contain output and the cost of the common agricultural policy. But I also agree with the hon. Member for Pontypridd that a devaluation on the green pound is not a panacea.
    On the other hand, when United Kingdom agriculture prices are between 6 and 8 per cent. lower than those in France and Ireland, and up to 17 per cent. lower than those in the Netherlands and West Germany, it must follow that there is a strong case for the devaluation of the green pound, because such price levels are bound to militate against the competitiveness of United Kingdom producers. Therefore, I was pleased to hear what my right hon. Friend had to say on that topic.
    There is heavy discrimination against cereal farmers in Britain. Although some livestock market prices are satisfactory at present, livestock farmers are being asked to compete on unfair terms. The position of pig farmers continues to be very serious indeed.
    The vice-chairman of a pig farmers' co-operative in my constituency has just sent me some illustrative figures. I believe that they were produced by a Cambridge agriculture economist and refer to eastern counties pig producers, but I am assured that the situation in Wiltshire is similar.
    In the four weeks up to 23 February this year, pig producers in the study were making a loss of £13·20 per £100 of output, or about £6·50 per pig. In the subsequent four weeks a loss of £11 per £100 of output, or about £5·50 per pig, was registered.
    My correspondent described his position as an example. He turns out 5,000 finished pigs a year. Therefore, even if the loss was £5 per pig, less than either
    1088
    of the figures that I have quoted, he would show a year-end deficit of £25,000. Clearly, such a situation cannot continue for long without disaster, and action is called for.
    I have no doubt that pig farmers are efficient enough to make a living if competition is fair, but for that to be so my right hon. Friend the Minister must achieve a devaluation of the green pound and wipe out MCAs whatever opposition he faces from his European counterparts.
    While pig producers' returns have not exactly been helped by extra sheepmeat coming onto the market and while I am pleased to see more sheep in a traditional sheep area such as Wiltshire, I share the concern of my right hon. Friend the Minister and others about possible adverse consequences in the upland areas where sheep are often the only source of income.
    I revert for a moment to cereals and other crops on which there is major economic pressure. For example, rape has been an excellent corn break and cash crop for the past decade or more, but now its economics is decidedly marginal. Therefore, there is bound to be a tendency for farmers growing rape to return to more grain production.
    Already the United Kingdom is the sixth largest exporter of grain in the world. Even as little as 10 years ago nobody would have thought that that was conceivably possible. It is an extraordinary reflection on British agriculture's ability to increase output. It is amazing. But equally clearly, against a background in Europe and the United States of what almost amounts to a glut in cereal production, there is little scope for still more exports. In any case, as we know, stabilisers will insist on a limit on production, and with storage and disposal of all surpluses costing about £250 million a week, the stabilisers must be right.
    But I am not sure whether the production limit insisted on by the stabilisers is fully understood. We know that the stabiliser for cereals has been set at 160 million tonnes. We know that the EC can normally dispose of about 155 million tonnes. We know that the estimated output for Europe in 1992 is about 184 million tonnes. No doubt stabiliser price cuts would cut off some of that production, or at least reduce it in some areas. No doubt set-aside, too, will encourage a reduction in cereal acreages, but the size of the area to be set aside, or de-intensified, or extensified, is literally enormous.
    Mr. Christopher Gill: Does my hon. Friend agree that to set aside the equivalent of 5 per cent. of our productive area we need to set aside the equivalent of the counties of Shropshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Staffordshire put together?
    Sir Charles Morrison: I am sure that my hon. Friend's calculation is more or less correct. I was about to make the same point in a different way.
    On the basis of an annual growth in grain production of about 2·6 per cent. on average—I say on average because obviously there will be an occasional bad harvest, as there was last year—in the United Kingdom alone, it has been estimated that the area of land surplus to the requirements of cereal production is likely to increase annually at about 100,000 hectares—247,000 acres. That means about 1 million acres in four years. It is a staggering acreage that must come out of grain production in one way or another.
    It is no use pretending that there is a simple panacea for this problem. My right hon. Friend will have to make use

    1089
    of a full range of policies to cope with the new position of agriculture and the rural areas. I am glad that that is exactly what he is doing. However, I hope that he will give more consideration to the financial encouragement of the growing of spring cereals and the undersowing of grain. Those two systems together could have a considerable effect on reducing the total grain production and would be enormously beneficial to environmental conservation.
    While my right hon. Friend considers those matters, will he also redouble his efforts to convince his colleagues on the Council of Ministers that the co-responsibility levy achieves nothing but great administrative cost? Does the Minister know what that administrative cost happens to be? That levy is also a considerable cost to feed manufacturers, and improves the relative economics of imported manioc to the detriment of further use of United Kingdom or European Community-produced grain.
    I encourage the Minister to take more of his measured steps more quickly, and perhaps even a few unmeasured ones, if they can speed the process of readjustment of British agriculture. British farmers and all those employed in the ancillary industries depend on the success of that process. Collectively, they account for the health of the rural economy. That is the burden for which my right hon. Friend is responsible. It is a heavy burden, but for the good of all our rural areas, it is one in which my right hon. Friend must achieve success.
    8.32 pm
    Mr. Calum Macdonald: We heard earlier that a number of Conservative Members wish to speak in the debate. I have the impression that it would be helpful if speeches were kept as brief as possible to let as many hon. Members as possible speak. That is a courtesy that is not normally extended to Scottish Opposition Members during Scottish Question Time or Scottish debates, when often our time is eaten up by Conservative Members. I shall try to be as brief as possible, because I would not wish to follow that pattern.
    The thread running through the debate is not just the vast amounts of money being expended on agricultural subsidies in general. There is also a worry, expressed especially by Opposition Members, that the small farmer is not getting a fair and adequate deal.
    I remember a comment made by the former Minister with responsibility for the Highlands and Islands, who was then the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute, Mr. John MacKay. He referred to crofters as state pensioners. He said that they should not be receiving handouts from the state and behaving like pensioners. The electorate has now pensioned off that Member of Parliament. That sort of attitude from the Government is not appreciated by smaller farmers or crofters.
    For crofters to be referred to as state pensioners is to imply that they receive an excessive amount of Government subsidy. That was not only a graceless remark by the previous Minister, but it was wrong. It has been mentioned already that only about 30 to 40 per cent. of EEC agricultural subsidies go to farmers. Only 10 per cent. go to the smaller and poorer farmers—those on less than average incomes. That is despite the fact that,
    1090
    according to The Economist, the smaller farmer is more efficient in his output per acre, output per head of stock, unit labour cost and pound invested.
    However, as the hon. Member for Holland with Boston (Sir R. Body) said, the overall effect of Government subsidies is to support not smaller and proper farmers, but always the larger farmers. That is the sort of discrepancy that I draw to hon. Members' attention. It is wrong not only on the grounds of equity, but on the grounds of efficiency. It is wrong not just in the narrow economic sense, but in the larger sense of using Government and Community money properly to sustain, support and promote rural communities.
    I confine my remarks to crofters as a sub-group of the smaller and poorer farmers. The image of crofting sometimes conveyed—possibly the image that Mr. MacKay was thinking of when he referred to them as state pensioners—is that it is an outmoded, inefficient and inadequate system of agriculture or a traditional form of farming that has lost its place in the modern world. That is not true. Modern-day crofting is more relevant than it has ever been.
    Crofting is a model of the sort of farming that Conservative Members say that they want to see. Crofting exemplifies the virtues of diversification of farming activities. Crofters commonly combine their farming activities with other economic supplements—for example, weaving, working in light industry, tourism or even professional work. That not only increases their individual income but stabilises the rural population.
    Although people can lose their jobs and go through temporary periods of crisis, if they have a crofting background on which to fall back, they can retain their roots in the community until they find further employment. That helps to avoid the demoralisation that could easily lead to rural depopulation.
    Crofting is also relevant to today's needs. It will probably amaze many hon. Members to learn that the most densely populated area of countryside in Britain is in the northern end of my constituency. Although it is very marginal land, because crofting can combine with other forms of income, people are encouraged to stay on the land, which maintains a flourishing rural community
    Sir Hector Monro: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
    Mr. Macdonald: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will allow me to continue. He may be able to catch your eye later, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
    I turn now to some of the problems that crofters face. Enough has been said about the threat that grazing fallow poses to them. If sheep production is moved from the upland areas down to the lowlands that will be a body blow to the crofting communities, because sheep production is the staple of crofting. I hope that the Government will seriously take account of that.
    This problem is reminiscent of the problems of the milk quotas and unequal effects on farmers, particularly in Scotland, where farmers have not produced to excess but have been hit by the broad-brush approach because of the way in which the quota scheme operates. I hope that the same will not happen with stabilisers for sheep production.
    A couple of points that have not yet been discussed arise from the Minister's opening remarks. He got feisty and condemned the Opposition for having nothing to say for the farming community. He tried to give the impression

    1091
    that the Government's record with farmers was blameless, but the tax on research and development is affecting smaller farmers who cannot afford to pay the new fees they are being asked to pay for services from the Ministry, which they formerly received free.
    What will be the effect of the poll tax on crofting communities? The Minister made great play of the fact that farmers, too, would benefit from the income tax changes of the Budget. However, he scrupulously avoided referring to the poll tax's impact on rural communities. It will be devastating, particularly in the Highlands and Islands, for two reasons. As a flat-rate tax it will discriminate against low-rated rural areas in the Highlands and Islands. The university of Strathclyde has estimated that between 65 and 75 per cent. of people there will end up as losers under the poll tax.
    The present rating system makes allowance for the fact that marginal, peripheral and outlying areas receive fewer council services—less rubbish collection and street cleaning, fewer street lamps, and less access to libraries and facilities such as swimming pools. By taking account of those factors, the rating system balances out the inequity. The poll tax will not take account of them and will be a great disincentive to people to live out in the rural areas, because they will have to pay the same for fewer services.
    The poll tax will also disadvantage crofters because they will lose the 50 per cent. rating concession that they now have and which was introduced by a Conservative Government in the 1950s. It is an unfortunate sign of the times and of the change in the Conservative party that it should take that concession away. It is hypocritical of the Government to go on about the supposed threat of the rating of agricultural businesses and to do away with the 50 per cent. rating concession simultaneously. If there is an argument for the one it also applies to the other.
    The rating concession for crofters was introduced specifically to take account of the disadvantages they suffer, living and working in the areas that they do. The costs of living are higher there; electrification is an example which has been mentioned. Crofters in my constituency can pay £2,000 to £3,000 to be connected to electricity. That is why it is sad that the Government are thinking of taking the concession away. It has been estimated that the introduction of the poll tax will remove £1·5 million from the crofting areas.
    The Government cannot pretend to be blameless on fish farming, either. It is not an industry in surplus. It is an example of crofters diversifying and it makes great use of new technological developments. It has exciting prospects and is particularly useful in the disadvantaged areas on which we need to target our money. The Government happily sit by while fish farmers are burdened with a tax with which no other enterprise or business in the country is saddled. It was imposed by the Crown Estate Commission and the fish farmers receive next to nothing in return for it. They would at least receive services in return for their rates. Until the Government wake up to that and do something positive about it, they can hardly pretend to he blameless.
    The thrust of Opposition Members' remarks has turned the Government's attention to the position of smaller and poorer farmers in disadvantaged areas. The agricultural crisis consists not only of the difficulties in keeping subsidies for the farming sector under control. The underlying crisis is the increasing trend towards fewer and
    1092
    bigger farms. That is an unhealthy trend for rural communities and the Government should try to do something about it.
    8.47 pm
    Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: I agree strongly with what has been said about the beef variable premium. It always seemed a perfect system to me. It helps the farmer and encourages the housewife to buy the beef by keeping the price down instead of selling it into intervention. To get rid of it seems an act of madness.
    I thank my right hon. Friend the Minister for the tough stand he takes on most issues for British farmers—if not yet on the one I have mentioned. He manages to hold out against all the other farm Ministers in the European Community, he preserves our interests, and he prevents discrimination against us. That is his primary job. We shall never reach a stage at which everything in the garden is satisfactory, so I draw his attention to some matters that particularly concern my constituents.
    First, we demand a measured devaluation of the green pound so that we are paid the same for our produce as other European farmers. However, it is important that should not lead to the French obtaining an even better devaluation, which would cause CAP spending to hit the budget ceiling and so jeopardise other policies. There is no justice in our farmers getting less than the others on the continent for identical produce.
    My sheep farmers are worried about the future course of stabilisers. We did not want and do not like a separate stabiliser system for sheepmeat and we know the Minister fought hard to avoid that. But we can all—albeit a trifle reluctantly—accept the logic that as we have a separate sheepmeat regime to which we are deeply attached we cannot grumble too much if we have a separate sheepmeat stabiliser relating to 1987 flock numbers, as long as it does not lead to too big a reduction in the support price.
    We are, of course, anxious to get on with the wider review of the sheepmeat regime so that we know where we stand in the longer term. Until the French presidential elections are over, I fear that this, along with many other things, will have to wait. The French insist that we do not discuss the long-term review until negotiations with the 12 outside countries, and especially with New Zealand, are completed. Those discussions have not yet begun.
    I make absolutely no apology for saying that we should take a very tough line with New Zealand on sheepmeat and on butter now that she no longer fully supports NATO. It is most important that in any set-aside policy, land set aside should not be used for grazing sheep because that would put many of my sheep farmers out of business. I am grateful to the Minister for getting this matter on the optional list in Europe, and I trust that he will not permit it to take place here. I hope that I did not detect a slight wobble when he was speaking about this and trust that it was merely a courteous nod to his own part of the world.
    The matter of most concern to dairy farmers is the quota system. They have now settled down and adjusted to it as it is. Although we know that quotas should exist up to 1992, there is no guarantee that they will exist up to then or that even before 1992 there will not be changes in the rules and regulations about transfer and leasing after 1989, never mind 1992. It terrifies me to see how much some farmers are paid for quota. That is an absolutely artificial market that can be changed by Government regulation,

    1093
    reducing an expensive quota to a worthless piece of paper virtually overnight. It is vital to clarify these points as soon as possible or bankruptcy could result.
    I thank the Minister for his efforts on our behalf and wish him well in his negotiations in Brussels.
    8.51 pm
    Mr. Win Griffiths: In many ways the debate is a rerun of debates that have taken place in the last decade or more. Anyone who reads the Commission's document, "The Situation on the Agricultural Markets", or its proposals for agricultural prices in 1988–89, which sketch what has been happening in agricultural markets, cannot help having a great sense of feeling that he has read it all before throughout the 1980s.
    The Commission admits that the money being spent on the common agricultural policy is doing very little for farmers. Referring to the agricultural markets, the document says:
    "it has become increasingly evident that the income support function the CAP provides to farmers is often poor value for money."
    The document on the proposals for agricultural prices for 1988–89 says that, despite the changes so far undertaken,
    "the underlying trends in consumption and of production are not yet significantly different from those recorded in the more distant past."
    In other words, even the tinkering that has so far been carried out on the common agricultural policy has not produced a significant change in the way in which money is spent on that policy.
    It is difficult to realise in the context of a debate on CAP spending that this year's budget for the CAP shows the largest increase for a long time—perhaps even in the history of the common agricultural policy. It is up by almost 30 per cent. In the previous five years, the average increase was slightly over 16 per cent. and yet the budget is presented to us as a triumph for the new realism. The new realism for the cereal quota is 160 million tonnes, but Community consumption over the past few years has been less than 140 million tonnes. Unless there is some way of exporting about 20 million tonnes at no cost to the taxpayer, we are building into the system a significant subsidy at a time when we are supposed to be trying to get rid of subsidies.
    A great deal has been said about the GATT round of talks in Uruguay. Even if they are successful, they will take at least four years to carry through. The differences that exist between the negotiating positions of the European Community, the United States and the so-called Cairns group headed by the Australians are so great that it is difficult to see how a compromise can be achieved within four years.
    The common agricultural policy has outlived its usefulness. It was formulated at a time when traditional farming methods were the norm, when the dairy industry grazed cows on ordinary untreated grass in the summer and gave them a bit of hay in the winter. Now we are factory farming and the common agricultural policy cannot cope with that. We must stop tinkering with the complexity of the existing systems and come down to seeking a few fairly simple but radical solutions.
    The first thing we must say is that the existing system must be phased out over, perhaps, five years. In its place
    1094
    we need a battery of measures, such as the introduction of quotas across the board allied to a reduction of inputs. That can be achieved partly by reducing prices and thereby discouraging farmers from the excessive use of fertilisers, cattle feed and pesticides, most of which are doing irreparable damage to parts of the countryside.
    The Minister was rather complacent in speaking about some of the people who oppose new methods and changes as Luddites. Much of the opposition is simply to do with making sure that we do not pollute the earth and poison ourselves. We need to extend the principle of environmentally sensitive areas. Perhaps we should push a similar scheme on the 7 million acres of land mentioned by the hon. Member for Holland with Boston (Sir R. Body). That land has been brought into production since the last war and has brought about much unnecessary production.
    We should get rid of the green currencies, phase them out. However, we must accept that in doing that we will come up against one of the major problems of the common agricultural policy, which is that conditions between member states are very different. I shall give one example of that in relation to energy prices. In 1987, energy prices declined in real terms by more than 20 per cent. in the Netherlands, by 12 per cent. in Italy but by only 4 per cent. in France. I could give other examples to show that the input costs for farmers vary tremendously across the Community. We need to forget about the existing common agricultural policy and get a completely new one based on the factors that I have mentioned.
    8.58 pm
    Mr. Paul Marland: I begin by paying tribute to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food for what he has achieved in Europe on behalf of agriculture in this country. Many farmers in my constituency admire his robustness and they will be delighted to hear that he has forced a tough stabiliser on wine production. Too often the farmers of this country think that farmers in other countries get away with blue murder while we put up with the curtailment of output.
    The situation in the countryside is genuinely worrying, not only for farmers, but for the ancillary trades and for the rural economy in general. There is no doubt that the dairy industry is experiencing a certain stability over the introduction of quotas and I cannot help but smile when I recall the resistance to those quotas when they were introduced. The future for cereal farmers and livestock producers is most uncertain.
    I welcome my right hon. Friend's commitment to the transferability of quotas between farmers. That will be widely welcomed and we should appreciate what my right hon. Friend has achieved. Nevertheless, the farmers are still a little discontent about the £90 dairy inspection charge. A commitment was given some time ago that that would be re-examined, and it would be interesting to hear tonight whether any progress has been made on that.
    Like myself, the dairy farmers in my constituency are against the co-responsibility levy and it would be marvellous if that could be abolished. It is a ludicrous tax and is now down to low levels, particularly in the dairy business.
    Furthermore, there is a levy to be paid by milk producers this year on over-production. My right hon. Friend will probably remember a commitment given by his

    1095
    predecessor that farmers in this country would not have to pay that levy unless it was paid by producers in every other country in the Community. I should be grateful if he would reiterate that commitment.
    Overall, dairymen crave fairness and fair competition. They are prepared to take on anyone, but they want fairness. As we face up to the next stage of curtailing agricultural output, farmers accept the need for financial discipline. Quotas have undoubtedly made farmers look carefully and afresh at their businesses to maximise profits rather than simply maximise output. A price squeeze has the same effect, but the farmers retreat into trying to produce more rather than trying to produce it more cheaply, thereby defeating the object.
    Farmers are looking at the whole of their businesses, rather than concentrating on producing more and obtaining a greater output. Whether they are involved in milk, cereals or meat, they are concentrating on selling the product rather than just producing it. Food from Britain has undoubtedly been a help in that, but much still remains to be done and we must look to the farmers and producers to do much of that themselves. If they wish to diversify and go into a leisure business—caravans, fishing or shooting —they expend a great deal of time researching the market before they do so.
    The message that I wish to give to my right hon. Friend is that agriculture as a whole is looking for fairness of competition. We shall achieve parity in a genuine common market in 1992. I am delighted that we are to begin to take steps towards achieving parity of the green pound and sweeping away some of the livestock MCAs that need to be removed.
    Many hon. Members were impressed by yesterday's lobby by pig farmers from the NFU headquarters. They crave equal opportunity. In 1984, 83 per cent. of the food consumed in this country was home-produced. In 1987, that figure had fallen to only 73 per cent. Much of that must he attributed to the fact that our farmers are facing unequal competition while others are able to send cheap food to this country. There is no accounting for those who want to eat Danish butter or drink French water, but we are losing out in our market to cheap imports.
    I was pleased to receive a brochure entitled "Pork Talk", published by the NFU, as it shows the unfairness of competition in the pig in the pig industry abroad. In France, there is a system called "Stabiporc". That is not a new way of putting the wretched animal to death, but a stabilisation scheme initiated by the Credit Agricole and backed by the French Government. Last year, this scheme paid out £12·5 million via marketing groups, either as a subsidy or as cheap loans at a 5 per cent. rate of interest. In Italy, grants totalling more than £30 million have been paid to producers on a per pig basis as an emergency measure. In Germany, small farmers are able to reclaim VAT of 13 per cent. on output, while paying only 7 per cent. VAT on inputs.
    As I said at Question Time today, the imports of manioc carry a levy of 28 per cent. for pelleted or processed product and 6 per cent. for raw product. It appears that, although the imported product is processed, the lower levy of only 6 per cent. is being paid. This is in clear breach of the rules. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister of State will have time to reflect on these obvious breaches of the regulations and will be able to give us his thoughts about "Pork Talk"'s revelations.
    1096
    What of cereals and stabilisers in general? As I have said, when prices are forced down, farmers produce more. Secondly, the plant pathologists have guaranteed that they can increase output by 1·5 per cent. per annum, so that forcing down the price will not do much good. Thirdly, stabilisers penalise the non-expanders. Fourthly, bearing in mind that mainstream farming will always occupy most of the land in the United Kingdom, it would be marvellous if we could look again at the quotas for producing cereals. Quotas have been successful in milk, potatoes, sugar and hops.
    As has been said already today, morale in agriculture is bad—it goes from poor to terrible. We can see where we are going, but I urge my right hon. Friend to keep talking and to keep pushing as he has been doing in Europe. He must go steadily, and be gentle with the farmers. He must keep on telling them where he is taking them because he is getting a lot of credit for doing that.
    9.6 pm
    Mr. Nigel Spearing: It is unfortunate that the Minister cannot tell the farmers where he is taking them. I do not criticise the right hon. Gentleman personally, because he does not decide policy any more, and neither does the House. The Minister was not even present—if I am mistaken he will correct me—when the Prime Minister, along with others, decided what the stabiliser figures and arrangements would be. That is the extent to which uncertainty about agriculture has been increased.
    The House is not even debating a motion on the important documents before us, which bring about a complete change in agricultural policy and the prices for the coming year. We are paying those prices in the way of taxes.
    I deplore the fact that the Government have decided, though a procedural device, not to allow the House to debate an amendable motion. There is now no view of the House on this change of agricultural policy or on the prices that are being paid. That procedural and constitutional slippage should not go without strong remarks. We should point that out to Conservative Members. They have different views from mine about the main merits of the market, and they voted away those powers, so they have no real claim to talk, because we are now but a consultative assembly, if not less than that.
    Enough of procedural matters—let us talk about agriculture. Can and do stabilisers work? If the liabilities exceed the income, capped by the so-called discipline tied to the gross national product of the Community, what will happen? Those who know doubt very much whether stabilisers will do the trick. The Select Committee on European Legislation has reported on these matters, in documents HC 43-xix and HC 43-xxx. We note that, although 1 million hectares have been designated for the set-aside proposals, the Government reckon that even if it is reduced on the basis of cereals, it will save only £260 million.
    It looks to me as though we shall be in shtuck in a few years' time, if not sooner, with those so-called measures. The bizarre results about which we have heard, if my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark) was right, shows that there has not been much field work. His

    1097
    figures comparing likely income from the schemes for a farmer in Cumberland compared with one in East Anglia were bizarre indeed.
    With the quotas introduced this year, together with those introduced two years ago, we have reached a turning point in British agriculture of equal significance to that resulting from the Williams Act and our entry into the Common Market itself. The Minister must agree that the tragedy of it all is that, despite the money being spent, and unlike those two other eras of the War Agriculture Executive Committee and the Williams Act, we are not encouraging good husbandry.
    The combination of interest rates, bank loans, the need for inputs and the need for productivity screws farmers into practices and financial difficulties that they could well do without. Indeed, as has been publicised in the newspapers, the Minister may have difficulty in deciding who is to pay for better practices. There are reports questioning who is to pay, for instance, for nitrates—with which we shall have to deal in respect of our water supplies in any case.
    I draw the attention of the House to evidence that can be found in the Library, and which has been received by the Select Committee on European Legislation, from the Council for the Preservation of Rural England. In referring to direct income aids, the council states:
    "CPRE considers that if a rich and varied landscape, wildlife and historical heritage is to be maintained, price reduction must be accompanied by the introduction of direct income aids tied to environmentally beneficial uses of land. This is not recognised in the Commission proposals."
    The Minister suggested that there would be some environmental benefit from the additional expenditure, I doubt it. Mention was made of environmentally sensitive areas, and it was stated that 100,000 hectares will be put into the sort of regime that I will describe in inverted commas as "the Halvergate scheme". That is surely no answer at all. Paying farmers additional money not to grow things which they might otherwise grow, under a regime that is already expensive, is throwing additional sums of money after and additional sum of money. That illustrates the back-to-front nature of the whole scheme.
    Article 39 of the treaty of Rome is worth studying because it encourages production, scientific innovation and greater output per farm worker. Those may have been valuable at the time when the treaty was drafted—my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mr. Griffiths), adverted to them in his speech—but they have now become the opposite. Instead of encouraging certainty for farmers, who have the weather to deal with anyway, they encourage uncertainty, and that is what agriculture can well do without.
    9.13 pm
    Mr. Robin Maxwell-Hyslop: When the quotas were introduced in April 1984—may I have the attention of my right hon. Friend the Minister?—the then Minister of Agriculture explained to the House that he had agreed to southern Ireland having an increased milk quota while ours was slashed, on condition that the United Kingdom was allowed to keep the variable premium. Therefore, if the variable premium is taken from us, I charge my right hon. Friend to ensure that the southern Irish quota increase, which was agreed only on the basis of
    1098
    the variable premium remaining, is taken away to what it would have been had it been on the same historical basis as that for the United Kingdom. We cannot have this penny spent over and over again—it was a quid pro quo and so it must remain.
    In the brief time available to me I exhort my right hon. Friend the Minister, who is such a redoubtable fighter for the United Kingdom's industry in negotiations, to ensure that the policy is coherent. It is not coherent to put a standard quantity—now called a stabiliser, although it is exactly the same as a standard quantity—on lamb production, and then to allow the grazing of fallow land so that others can go into sheepmeat production who are not there at present.
    Nor, of course, does it make sense to put a standard quantity on British sheepmeat production and not drastically curtail imports of New Zealand lamb. Otherwise the percentage of the market occupied by New Zealand will continue to rise rather than fall, just as the percentage of our packaged butter market going to New Zealand has increased rather than diminished. By 1989, New Zealand butter imports ought to be down to 40,000 tonnes. New Zealand will then have only the same percentage of the market as it did in 1983. That is essential. New Zealand has sacrificed our sympathy in following a policy of withdrawing from its defence obligations; we therefore have no further obligation to crucify our own agriculture to admit New Zealand's produce.
    Quotas have been mentioned, but when a quota is applied it should, if possible, be before and not after there is a surplus. Otherwise many producers will have the unanswerable problem of spreading an overhead commitment based on one level of output over a smaller level. It follows as night follows day that the standard-quantity policy will fail for the same reason as it failed under Christopher Soames. It does not bite on the individual producer; it still pays him to produce more and to beggar his neighbour instead of himself.
    We shall have to proceed to a quota policy, because it is the only way to resolve the dilemma to which my right hon. Friend himself drew attention. With vastly increasing expenditure on the so-called agricultural programme in the Community, we nevertheless have catastrophically falling farm incomes. The only way to square the circle is to have quotas which provide budgetary limitation, with the payment going to the food producer rather than to the food storer.
    I have said this before, and I shall continue to say it. The truth will not go away with failure to grasp the nettle, and that is why quotas are bound to come. They are, moreover, the only way to secure the pattern of livelihood in rural areas, instead of causing rural depopulation with all the social costs that go with it. The realities will not change.
    I have a last question for my right hon. Friend. Much reference has been made to 1992, when EEC competition policies are to achieve final harmonisation. The date for other policies is 31 December 1992, but many people assume that the end of the green pound and the MCAs will be on 1 January 1992. Will that be the case, or will it happen a year later, on 31 December? It is crucially important that we get rid of such distortions—which will otherwise drive so many of our producers out of business —before that date arrives. That is why we should do as much as possible this year rather than leave it until 1 January or 31 December 1992. We must get rid of those

    1099
    distortions with which our industry is at such a disadvantage as compared with other producers in Europe.
    9.20 pm
    Mr. Ron Davies: I am very conscious of the fact that a number of hon. Gentlemen who have been present in the Chamber throughout the debate have not been fortunate enough to be called. That is a matter of regret, because the debate has been interesting and very well informed. I express my personal regret that those hon. Members on the Government Benches have not had an opportunity to make their contributions. I know, however, that the Minister of State is anxious to reply fully to the debate. That is right and proper because, as the Minister said in opening the debate, this is essentially a consultative debate. I am sure that the House wants to hear some response from the Minister of State on the matters that have been raised.
    I am the sixth hon. Member from the Principality to speak this evening. There have been contributions from two of my hon. Friends representing Scottish constituencies, and from two hon. Members from Northern Ireland. I am aware that the responsibility for agriculture is not held exclusively by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, because the territorial Ministers have responsibilities as well. None of them has been present during the debate. I do not say that as any kind of criticism, because they have other responsibilities, and the debate is being led by the Minister. Because serious concerns that have been expressed by those hon. Members representing Wales, Scotland and Ireland, I hope that the Minister of State will give an undertaking that he will draw to the attention of the territorial Ministers the concerns that have been expressed this evening. That is not a point of contention. It is a request to the Minister and I should be grateful if he would respond to it.
    The majority of the contributions have had three things in common. First, and most obviously, most of them have been critical of the Government. That is true not only of the contributions from the Opposition Benches, but of most of those from behind the Government Front Bench. Secondly, most of the contributions have concentrated on constituency matters. That, too, is right and proper, because there has been an intensive system of lobbying during the last couple of days, and farming interests are very important to the economy and the fabric of our rural life. It is therefore important that those interests are properly represented in debates in the House.
    Thirdly, most of the contributions have come from hon. Members who represent essentially the dairying or livestock areas of this country. Those are the areas that are in greatest jeopardy because of the potential movement out of cereals as a result of the stabiliser proposals. The great fear in the dairying and livestock areas is that as the stabiliser package starts to bite and put pressure on cereal producers to go into livestock rearing, this will undermine those areas that have been referred to by several of my hon. Friends as monoculture areas, where the combination of geographical and economic circumstances means that there is little opportunity for diversification. I believe that those are very significant developments.
    When the Minister opened the debate he referred to the paradox of the common agricultural policy. He said that
    1100
    as financial support for the CAP has grown, so the income of farmers has fallen. Tonight's debate is essentially about how that internal contradiction can be resolved.
    There has been much criticism of the CAP, particularly from my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (M r. John), whose contribution I welcomed, because for several years he spoke for the Labour party on agricultural matters. I am sure that all of us recognise the value of his contributions, and I was particularly pleased to hear him in the debate this evening.
    It is worth reminding the House that since 1975 the CAP has been responsible for increasing agricultural production by 23 per cent. That has been at the cost of a 125 per cent. increase in expenditure by the guarantee fund. At the same time as that increase in production, farm net income has seen a 25 per cent. reduction. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mr. Griffiths) said, the average cost to the average Family in the Community is now running at over £10 per week.
    Throughout that time, in the words of the former Minister responsible for the environment, the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Waldegrave), the CAP has been operating as the engine of destruction of our environment. As my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd pointed out, we have been responsible for dumping surpluses on the Third world and wrecking their economies. That is not a record of which the CAP can be proud.
    Both sides of the House have expressed the concern and alarm for the future that is felt, in all sectors of the industry. Everybody is concerned, apart from the Minister of Agriculture. He seemed to suggest that everything is OK. He said, "I will make adjustments to the green pound if I can get agreement. I will get the stabilisers to operate if I can get agreement." He made many suggestions about his policy, but he signally failed to give us any guarantee about his negotiating position. I was reminded of the speech that he made in February, when he said:
    "As was constantly said to me when I was going round the country, what farmers want most of all is an end to the uncertainty … We have achieved most of our objectives, and one of the factors that had to be considered was the importance of ending uncertainty."—[Official Report, 15 February 1988; Vol. 127, c. 756–57.]
    The Minister set that as a standard by which we should judge him, and by that standard he has failed in his performance this evening. When we have asked for an end to the uncertainty and for guarantees about the position, we have had precious little from him. Our cereal farmers do not know what is to be expected of them. They have no guidelines. They do not know how to adjust their production if they are to avoid the imposition of stabilisers.
    The future of the beef support scheme is in jeopardy. We know that the variable premium will end on 1 January, and we are told that there will be something to replace it, but we do not know what that will be. Our sheep producers face the prospect of an end to the variable premium. The sheep rearing areas do not know what will replace that. We do not know the Government's real intention on the green pound. We had a vague statement from the Minister this evening. He said that he was generally in favour of a devaluation, but he failed to take the same steps as his colleagues in the Council of Ministers, who have set devaluation of the green pound as a condition to their

    1101
    sitting down to negotiate. Our Minister has said that we would like to see a devaluation of the green pound, but has not set it as a condition.
    That is supposed to be a package that brings an end to uncertainty. I am afraid that we have had as much certainty in those matters as we have on the Government's real intention on extensification and set-aside. We have not had an end to any of the uncertainty.
    We know that the Government have announced that by midsummer the proposals will be implemented. If anybody could think of a date for the implementation of the proposals that would be least suited to agricultural interests in this country, it would be midsummer. The cereal harvest will be growing and harvest time will be approaching. How are farmers supposed to adjust then? How, halfway through the season, are our stock farmers supposed to adjust their annual programmes? How are they to cope? How are they to avoid the impact of stabilisers? By midsummer none of the uncertainties will have been resolved.
    We know that the Minister has succeeded in one thing. He has succeeded in making most people opposed to his proposals. I do not mean just those in the House, but most people outside as well. The hon. Member for Ceredigion and Pembroke, North (Mr. Howells) referred to the representations from the National Farmers Union. He mentioned the good briefing that the NFU had circulated to Members of Parliament.
    The NFU said:
    "Over the last two years some 20,000 full-time jobs for farmers and farm workers have disappeared and investment has fallen by 30 per cent. to the lowest level since the mid 1950s. Farmers' return on working capital was negative."
    The NFU also said:
    "The Government's White Paper also showed that UK farming income in 1987 was the second lowest in real terms since the war—over the last five years, the average decline has been 9 per cent. a year."
    That is not a particularly praiseworthy record. The NFU goes on to say, however, that the package will serve to tighten the screw even further. That is the view of the NFU.
    The Farmers Union of Wales was even less charitable. On 3 May it responded—[Interruption.] The Minister of State may want to challenge some of these points and I look forward to hearing him challenge the statement by the National Farmers Union, interpreting the Government's statistics. The president of the Farmers Union of Wales said:
    "The Ministry of Agriculture's recent report on farm incomes in the UK shows that the real value of farm land and building has fallen by 40 per cent. since 1979. Based on Inland Revenue data, 48 per cent. of all farmers were assessed to have a total income of less than £6,000 in 1985 and 31,000 had an income of less than £2,000 a year … These statistics bear out the fears we have been expressing in recent months. Unless farmers generally can improve their incomes, the effect of this continuous erosion of earnings will have far-reaching consequences on the industry."
    The package will have far-reaching consequences in precisely the areas that can least afford to bear the brunt —Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the upland parts of England. That is the unfairness and folly of the Government's proposals. They have not sought to ensure that the cuts fall where they can be borne most easily. Not through malfeasance on the Government's part, but
    1102
    through indolence, or perhaps lack of concern about the upland areas, their policies will fall most heavily on those areas.
    I see that the hon. Member for Torridge and Devon, West (Miss Nicholson) has come back into the Chamber. It is true that she joins us frequently during our agriculture debates. She comes in, goes out and comes back in. I am sure that, like all other hon. Members, she will have had representations yesterday from the farmers. The farmers who lobbied me and my colleagues from Wales were particularly concerned about the erosion of the farming base. They argued as follows "We have had lean times, certainly since 1979, and they have eroded our earning capacity. As a result of that erosion, capital investment in the industry has fallen. It has now fallen to its lowest level. It is now a third of what it was a few years ago. As a result of the Government's packages and the lack of investment that we have had in recent years, the industry is being critically weakened."
    The farmers are looking forward a few years—it is a pity that the Government are not—to 1992. In 1992, the Single European Act will be in operation, whatever the hon. Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop) and my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) may think or hope. What will happen then? If our agriculture has been faced with five years of erosion, if farm incomes and farm investment have suffered from five lean years, it will not be in a position to respond to the challenge available to it. I fear, and the farmers of Wales who came to visit me yesterday fear, that instead of an exciting challenge and the opening up of new opportunities, they will face a nightmare. They obviously do not welcome that prospect.
    Those views from the industry have been expressed in the debate this evening, and they are shared by the House of Lords Select Committee on the European Communities. As most hon. Members know, the Committee has been examining these proposals. The Minister of State will be pleased to know that it is not the national executive committee of the Labour party, but a Committee of the House of Lords. The report says in paragraph 50:
    "It is the Committee's view that Agricultural Stabilisers should not be regarded as the major instrument for controlling production levels. Primarily, Agricultural Stabilisers are instruments for budgetary control … Effects for production of most CAP commodities are likely to be limited and to be lost within the overall variability in agricultural production from year to year."
    It goes on to say:
    "For sheepmeat, the Committee cannot accept the discrimination against the United Kingdom incorporated in the Commission's original proposals. Following the perverse logic of setting a separate stabiliser for sheep numbers in Great Britain, the principal Community sheepmeat producer, the Commission should equally have proposed the setting of separate stabilisers for the principal Member State producer of other commodities (for example, a separate stabiliser for cereals in France)."
    The sheep farmers of England and Wales want to know the reason for this treatment. They will lose £3 million in variable premium next year because the Community is in surplus and we have special arrangements for Britain, which is the largest producer. That will have considerable consequences, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Mr. Jones) said. Why have sheep farmers been singled out for equal treatment, while the cereal farmers of Germany and France, who are responsible for surpluses in that commodity, are not to be treated similarly? Why does

    1103
    the European burden not fall on them? It is most unfair. There is little wonder that farmers in the uplands, faced with the prospects of a squeeze, and competition from lowland diversification, view the future with trepidation.
    The environmental impact of stabilisers has been mentioned, as has the way in which the Government have been using the Agriculture Act 1986. We all listened to the hon. Member for Holland with Boston (Sir R. Body) with great interest and respect. I am sure that some of us read his books in the same spirit. The hon. Gentleman mentioned environmentally sensitive areas. The Opposition have gone on record as saying that we endorse the Government's proposals and welcome ESAs. They have been successful. I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South, does not agree with us, but, that is our view. We debated this in Committee and told the Government of our support, but it is not unqualified and unlimited support. The reservations that we are starting to have about the impact of these measures are shared by many people outside the House.
    Let me quote from evidence given by the Council for the Protection of Rural England, with eight other organisations, to the House of Commons Select Committee on European Legislation:
    "the Commission's proposals pay scant regard to the environment, maintaining many damaging aspects of the guaranteed section, despite firm evidence of the acceleration of loss of landscaped features."
    The CPRE was joined in that by eight other groups, including the Ramblers Association, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Council for the Protection of Rural Wales and the World Wildlife Fund, in an unprecedented coalition to put pressure on the Government to recognise the folly of their ways. They are particularly anxious to ensure that when the new set-aside proposals eventually come into effect, they will achieve a diminution in agricultural production in a way that minimises environmental damage and uses the opportunities that created for environmental enhancement. It is a great pity that we have had little evidence from the Government that they intend to do that.
    We are not confident that the set-aside proposals will achieve the objective of reducing production. This week the European Commission has made provision for a 50 per cent. leakage of saved production. If the Commission wants 1 million hectares of land removed over a five-year period it will have to make provision for double that, because of the inherent inconsistencies of the set-aside proposals. It is budgeting for a 50 per cent. failure of the proposals.
    The proposals present a threat to the upland farmer. They will not achieve their objective and will be environmentally damaging. In the last debate, in February, we offered constructive support to the Government. They have failed in the endeavour that they set out to achieve in Europe. Their proposals are inadequate and we shall urge them to reconsider their position.
    9.40 pm
    The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. John Selwyn Gummer): It must have been surprising for many hon. Members who have sat through the debate to hear the speech of the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Davies) and compare it with the speech of the hon. Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark). The hon.
    1104
    Member for Caerphilly attacked the Government for not listening to the lobby of the National Farmers Union, yet his hon. Friend told the NFU that the real problem with the Government was that we were not tough enough on the price stabilisers, that we had not banged the farmer strongly enough and that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister did not have enough bottle. That is what the hon. Member for South Shields said, although it is not something that would be recognised by any other European country. If the hon. Gentleman had been around Europe and listened to what the rest of Europe thinks about how successful the Prime Minister had been and how unsuccessful their own Prime Ministers had been, he would have heard a different story.
    The hon. Member for Caerphilly had the cheek to say that we had been too hard on the NFU and went on to say that the NFU wanted a devaluation of the green pound. The hon. Member for South Shields said that he did not want any devaluation of the green pound. The hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways, even though lie has been divided from his hon. Friend by every other hon. Member who spoke. No doubt the hon. Member for South Shields will start telling his hon. Friend that it is a good idea to have the same policy at the beginning of the debate as at the end. The only problem is that that would mean that we would have to assume that there was a policy at the beginning of the debate. That is difficult to understand.
    I felt sorry for the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Mr. John) because at least when he led the Opposition we knew where we were. We may not have agreed with him, but he put forward a policy that had to be answered. He had a view. He said that we should have quotas on everything. That was nonsense, but it was a perfectly legitimate view. The hon. Member for South Shields has given us no view at all. On the one hand, he has said that the farmers were poorly off and, on the other, his policy would make them more poorly off.
    I must apologise to the hon. Member for South Shields. In a recent debate, I accused him—I think, in retrospect, unfairly—of being committed to a policy of £50 a tonne, for wheat. If I was unfair, the hon. Gentleman must stop using the figures which are based on £50 a tonne; otherwise he is trying to have it both ways. I apologise to the hon. Gentleman, but I hope that he will cease using figures that suggest that farmers in Britain could produce wheat at £50 a tonne.
    The hon. Member for South Shields went on to accuse my right hon. Friend the Minister of a sell-out on the sheepmeat regime.
    My right hon. Friend has made it absolutely clear that the United Kingdom needs a regime which satisfactorily meets the needs of our sheep industry, but at the same time we are not starting discussions by saying that we are not willing to discuss. That is no way to get out of our problem. The Opposition admit that a series of different regimes within Europe create certain problems. If we could find a solution which was satisfactory to everyone, it would be worth discussing. However, as history has shown, we have stood up toughly for the British farmer, as my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster (Dame E. Kellett-Bowman) made clear.
    The hon. Member for South Shields cannot have it both ways. Either he should accept that it is his policy to clobber the farmer, or he should propose something which will give the farmer even more in the way of subsidy. He cannot expect to have the farmer's vote while he is making one

    1105
    half of his speech and the consumers and the taxpayers vote for the other half. He really must be consistent, and until he is he will not be taken seriously by the farming community or indeed by the electorate.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Holland with Boston (Sir R. Body) is taken seriously. I have not quite finished his book, "Red or Green for Farmers", in which he made some important points which we should not avoid. His major concern is that farmers should be seen, at least in part, as conservers of the countryside. I think he used the word "husbandman" in his book. We might be accused of sexism if we use that word, but we may find a word which would cover what he wishes us to do.
    I hope that my hon. Friend agrees that the Government have shown themselves increasingly concerned to say that part of the reason why the agriculture community is supported in a way that is different from other industries is that they look after 80 per cent. of the land area of the country. If it were not looked after by farmers, it would turn into a wilderness that would not be loved by ramblers, bird watchers, townies or anybody else. Therefore, the farmers need support to enable them to avoid that.
    The hon. Member for Ceredigion and Pembroke, North (Mr. Howells) always delights us with the charm with which he puts the whole of his own personal experience, and indeed his personal financial circumstances, at the mercy of the House so that we can understand how matters proceed. I agree very much with his concern that we should not so cut production in the rich part of the world that we are unable to meet the needs of the poor. However, all the advice of the independent groups such as Oxfam is that, except in emergencies, there is little place for food aid, because continuing food aid undermines the ability of countries to produce.
    Not long ago I went to Mauretania, which is one of the poorest nations. The effect of continuous food aid on that country and the destruction of nomadic agriculture as a result is one of the most serious things I have ever seen. We must not be too facile in our discussion of the matter—that description does not apply to the hon. Member for Ceredigion and Pembroke, North—and suggest that one can pick up a lot of the surplus food produced in the west and deliver it on a permanent basis to developing countries.
    I take very seriously the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Cornwall, South-East (Mr. Hicks) about the problems with the pig cycle. I worry lest pig producers should believe that, even if in the course of our negotiations we reach our desired aim which is the elimination of MCAs on pigmeat, as has been stated very clearly by my right hon. Friend and myself, that will not remove the fundamental problems of the pig industry, which is a much wider international issue. It is necessary to eliminate MCAs as it is unfair that the situation should remain as it is, but it ought not to be seen as the only answer. The NFU briefing gives the impression—I am sure it is not meant—that the removal of MCAs will have a bigger effect on the livelihood of farmers than I believe will be the case.
    Mr. Quentin Davies: Will my right hon. Friend give way?
    Mr. Gummer: No. I want to apply myself to answering the questions.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Cornwall, South-East also mentioned the planning authorities' attitude. We are anxious that all planning authorities should realise that the changes in the countryside demand a more sympathetic understanding of the re-use of old farm buildings, of new enterprises and so on. The countryside must be a work-place, not a museum. It is crucial that planning authorities should realise that.
    The hon. Member for Clwyd, South-West (Mr. Jones) made a curious comment. He said that, as usual, the United Kingdom comes off worst. Time and again the rest of Europe believes that we have won battles, even though we have started with a major disadvantage. The trouble with the hon. Gentleman is that he constantly carries on with an untruthful statement about the effect of British negotiations and discussions.
    My right hon. Friend the Member for Kincardine and Deeside (Mr. Buchanan-Smith) spoke of the contribution of lower food prices to the fight against inflation. We should congratulate the farming industry on the way in which over the past 10 years it has made a major contribution to the reduction of inflation. It is noticable that it has been able so to do within the environment created by this Government whereas it was not able so to do within the anti-agriculture and anti-food production environment created by the previous Labour Government.
    The hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Mr. Jones) talked about the suckler cow premium. It was this Government who raised the level in Europe much higher than it had been before and paid at the top of the permitted level. I know that he will understand that the suckler cow premium is always one of the most difficult parts of my negotiation because other EC countries do not attach the same importance to it as we do. However, I shall certainly take on board what he has said.
    Mr. Gill rose—
    Mr. Gummer: I must try to answer the points that have been raised. I shall talk to my hon. Friend after the debate, if he will allow me.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough (Sir M. Shaw) talked about planning, and that is a matter that we have very much in mind. I have now addressed five meetings of planning officers and those concerned with planning committees and I am now discussing means whereby we may make farmers more aware of their responsibilities. This is a two-way matter. It is not just a matter for the planning committee; the farmer must be prepared to proceed in the right way in order to have the best chance of obtaining planning permission.
    The hon. Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley) talked about whether the rest of the United Kingdom had stolen his milk. I know of his feelings, but I must tell him with great care that much of the English part of the United Kingdom feels rather the opposite. There is always that difficulty. The hon. Gentleman may disagree with them, but I merely say that as a matter of fact, whether they are right or wrong. However, the hon. Gentleman made an important contribution enabling us to understand even further the particular problems in the north of Ireland.
    The hon. Member for South Down (Mr. McGrady) made some points that I shall draw to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern

    1107
    Ireland. The hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Davies) asked me to draw to the attention of the various territorial Ministers the points made in the debate, and I shall certainly do so.
    My hon. Friend and constituent, the Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East (Mr. Paice) spoke about diversification opportunities. He said that so far we have done the right things, but not enough of them. I would expect him to press me to do more, but it is most important that what we do we get right. We must not have a modern equivalent of the groundnuts scheme. We must not go forth with some gigantic scheme for, for example, the afforestation of Britain which turns out to be founded upon false premises. We cannot have an ESA system which turns out to be an invitation for fraud or scandal. We must move step by step towards a position in which alternatives are available for farmers throughout Britain.
    The hon. Member for Pontypridd reminded us clearly of his view on quotas. However, I disagree with him and with my right hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop) on that. Quotas have a disastrous effect upon an industry. They give to those who can the power to continue. There is no opportunity for others to come in. They solidify and restrict an industry. There is little opportunity for enterprise. There is no advantage in dong something well. They have all the worst aspects of Luddism and I continue to be wholly opposed to them. If we have a system with a mixture of price restraint and alternative provision, and we can keep the farming community closer to the market, I believe that we shall have an answer that will work.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Sir C. Morrison) spoke about the green pound, and in so doing he did a most important service to this debate. He reminded us of the underlying increase in yields and production. The hon. Member for Ceredigion and Pembroke, North passed over the fundamental underlying facts about the increase in production in favour of temporary positions in the beef and cereal markets. My hon. Friend the Member for Devizes put the record straight.
    The hon. Member for Western Isles (Mr. Macdonald) spoke about the problems of crofting. I shall consider with my right hon. Friend the points that he made. He knows that I have tried to see what can be done for crofters. I was sorry to hear his comment about my former hon. Friend, Mr. John Mackay. I do not believe that the hon. Gentleman quoted him properly. That was a pity given the tremendous amount of work that John Mackay did on behalf of those people least well off in the farming industry.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster congratulated my right hon. Friend, and I thank her for that. She made some points about New Zealand that were echoed elsewhere. We must be careful about blaming the New Zealand people for the state of their not always attractive Government. We shall take into account what my right hon. Friend said.
    The hon. Member for Bridgend (Mr. Griffiths) suggested that our policy was to get rid of subsidies. That is not our policy. We accept that agriculture will continue to need support. Our policy is to ensure that that support goes to the farmer and is not wasted on the system. We
    1108
    want to make savings for the taxpayer and make sure that our money is efficiently and effectively spent. If the hon. Gentleman wants to get rid of subsidy entirely, he must tell the farming community that that is the policy of the Labour party. That is what its policy appears to be.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Marland) mentioned the £90 dairy charge. It difficult to accept the objection to people paying £90—usually once every two and a half years to ensure that the product that they sell to the public is of the proper quality. Everyone else has to do that, and I do not see why it is so terrible to ask the farmer to do it, too. If we can reduce the price, we certainly will. I hope to make an announcement on that matter once the discussions have been completed.
    The hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) made some procedural points. Those were agreed through the usual channels and cannot be aimed at the Government or at my right hon. Friend.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop) knows that I do not share his views on quotas. The sort of quotas that he wants would not be a sensible solution to the problem. However, I agree with him about coherency of policy. It is important that all parts of the policy fit together. He will agree with me En rejecting the attacks of the hon. Member for Caerphilly. In the part of his speech which was on the same side as the hon. Member for South Shields the hon. Gentleman repeated the argument that the Government should now tell the House what decisions will be made after the negotiations for the price fixing. We could do that if we knew. We do not know, because we have not had the negotiations.
    The Opposition have not been involved in negotiations for so long that they do not understand how they work. They cannot ask us to tell the House our detailed position when we are trying to win in negotiations. If they go into negotiations by telling their opponents exactly what they will settle for, they will lose the negotiations.
    That point was made by the hon. Gentleman who was presuming to tell my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister how she should negotiate. A fat lot of good she would have got out of the negotiations if she had gone in like him. She would have said, "This is what I will settle for; I might go down the road as far as that. I have agreed to do this in advance." What a nonsensical way of dealing with anything. Thank God our negotiations are not carried out by the hon. Member for South Shields and his cohorts our opposite numbers in Europe would not know who was speaking on bahalf of the Government and they would be beaten in any discussion of any subject in any part of the farming industry.
    This debate has been another example of the fact that the Labour party has no agriculture policy. In so far as it discusses agriculture, it hits the farmers, attacks what they are doing and does everything possible to undermine—
    It being Ten o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

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

    Farm Land and Rural Development Bill [Lords]
    As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered. Order for Third Reading read.
    10.1 pm
    The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. John MacGregor): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
    The House will be well aware from the previous debate of the action we are taking at Community level to tackle the challenge of the surpluses and, domestically, to deal with alternative land use. I did not refer to the farm woodlands scheme earlier, because there is an opportunity to do so now, although I made a brief passing reference to the farm diversification scheme.
    The two schemes that we shall introduce after the passage of the Bill are part of a coherent policy that we have been developing for the alternative use of land that is no longer needed for food production. Both the farm woodlands provisions—clause 2—and those on farm diversification—clause 1—will help to contribute to the process of adjustment that will be required. They will also assist the rural economy and help to maintain an attractive and living countryside.
    I am delighted to see that there has been considerable interest in the Bill and widespread support for the principles that it contains. About 80 amendments or new clauses were tabled in Committee, mainly relating to clauses 1 and 2. Most were designed to probe the Government's intentions about the details of the schemes that we propose to introduce by secondary legislation. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Minister of State and my noble Friend in another place for the admirable way in which they guided the Bill through its Committee stages.
    In view of the hour, I shall comment now on only one or two points of general interest. While the Bill was under consideration in Committee, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced in the Budget that the tax arrangements for forestry were to be changed. That brings to an end arrangements that were widely seen as unjustified, unacceptable and damaging in the long term to the forestry industry. In parallel with the tax changes, the Forestry Commission closed its existing planting grant schemes, and we have introduced a new one, called the woodland grant scheme. It was not possible, for obvious reasons, to announce the Budget changes in advance or to consult on them. However, the House will have an opportunity to debate the financial side of the changes during the passage of the Finance (No. 2) Bill. My right hon. Friend explained in Committee the implications for the farm woodlands scheme.
    In brief, the Forestry Commission's new woodland grant scheme offers higher rates of planting grant than previous schemes, both for broadleaves and conifers. However, for farm woodlands, we have decided to increase the grants only for broadleaf trees. We hope that that change will ensure an adequate proportion of broadleaf planting under the scheme, especially as the new higher rates will apply to pure broadleaf planting and the broadleaved component of mixed woodland. We felt that that was a better way of encouraging more broadleaf planting than the introduction of compulsory minimum
    1110
    proportions of broadleaves, as favoured by some. That would have been administratively cumbersome and too inflexible, given that the appropriate mix of species will vary from area to area.
    The Committee also took the opportunity during discussion of clause 1 to discuss the closely related capital grants for diversification, which we introduced on 1 January this year, and the way in which the scheme relates to the planning process. We made it clear in those discussions that we shall not be paying any capital grant on work that has not secured any necessary planning consent. So the new scheme is not in any way designed to circumvent the normal planning process.
    In the case of the new grants for feasibility studies and for marketing costs which the Bill introduces, the need for planning permission will not, of course, normally arise, so the arrangements will be different. We are, however, conscious of the need to help farmers to become aware of when they need planning permission and of the need to encourage them to discuss relevant proposals with the local planning authority at an early stage. That can often be helpful in securing planning consent.
    Replying to the previous debate, my right hon. Friend the Minister of State spoke about the relationship between farmers and planning authorities now that we are encouraging more actively farming diversification to alternative businesses. I am well aware of the concern among farmers about the attitudes of planning authorities. As my right hon. Friend said, it is equally important that farmers should become knowledgeable about how to approach planning authorities about their developments, and we are currently thinking about how we can assist on that.
    The Bill has been widely welcomed and forms part of our coherent strategy for farm diversification and the rural areas. It is desirable for the Bill to be passed as quickly as possible so that we can move to the next stages and introduce the schemes that are involved.
    10.5 pm
    Mr. Richard Livsey: My hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion and Pembroke, North (Mr. Howells) cannot speak in the debate because he chaired the Standing Committee—with distinction, I understand. I was not a member of the Committee but I have taken a close interest in it. The Bill must be seen in the overal context of the Minister's policy. It is clearly part of the common agricultural policy as it applies to Britain.
    The Minister earlier spoke about price restraint, stabilisers and set-aside. I shall not go into detail about that. He spoke about taking land out of production and into woodland. I gather that overall, 12,000 hectares of woodland per annum is the planting target. One hopes that there will be a proper balance—indeed, the Bill makes some effort to achieve it—between broadleaf trees and conifers. We are also dealing with diversification and rural development.
    One of the critiques that one can make of Government policy as seen in the Bill is, can it be measured against declining farm income? We have heard that farm income dropped in real terms by 9 per cent. per annum throughout most of the 1980s. We also heard that 37 per cent. of farmers have incomes of less than £5,000 per annum. I should like to look at that against the Minister's policy on prices, and the reduction in output that will result from the

    1111
    imposition of the policy of putting more land into woodlands and against the Government's other policy, which is not in the Bill but is connected with set-aside. When one looks at those policies one cannot be over-optimistic about the effect on farm incomes.
    If, by one way or another, land is taken out of production, output will go down and the profit from farming will he reduced. Another part of the Minister's policy is that farm prices will be held. That will also lead to a reduction in profits if, at the same time, the input prices that farmers have to pay continue to rise. The overall equation does not make economic sense, especially on family farms.
    The Minister said that environmental grants in 1983 were 4 per cent. of total grants and that in 1987 they were 40 per cent. of the total. He failed to say that between 1983 and 1987 total grants dropped from £216 million to £95·7 million. It is easy to make up statistics in an honest endeavour to prove the case, but 4 per cent. of £216 million compared with 40 per cent. of £95·7 million represents a reduction in support of £121 million over a four-year period. That needs to be put in perspective.
    From my research of the Committee proceedings, I see that there is an allocation of £1 million for diversification and a forecast for the farm woodland scheme of £10 million, plus capital grants of £3 million. That adds up to £14 million and must be set against the loss of £121 million over the past four years. There is a problem because there is less land in production and there are lower prices and rising costs. It is not surprising that farmers find that their margins are reducing substantially.
    I welcome the proposals for diversification and the increase in woodlands, but I counsel the Minister that this long-term policy requires time. I refer him to an article in today's Western Mail which states:
    "Robin and Jo Ransome have a 30-acre holding, Grieg Cottage Farm, near Grosmont, in Gwent, where they run a flock of 100 milking ewes."
    Clearly, those people have gone into diversification. The article continues:
    "The milk produced by the flock is processed on the farm to make `Skirrid' cheese. Whilst at agricultural college, Jo did a business management exercise on setting up a milking sheep unit. She interpreted the available data pessimistically but still came up with a viable proposition."
    It is a viable proposition, but I know from personal experience that it has taken five years to get it off the ground. I was the lecturer who supervised that project at the Welsh agricultural college. I plead with the Minister to note that diversification takes time, and investment should be made over a period so that farmers can develop their business.
    New clause 1 has excellent objectives—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. No amendments were selected.
    Mr. Livsey: I understand that, in Committee, a discussion took place about low-input farming.
    Mr. Anthony Steen: How does the hon. Gentleman know that?
    Mr. Livsey: I know that because I read a chunk of the Committee proceedings.
    There is a case for low-input farming, but I wish to caution the House about that. It is an attractive ecological policy to farm all the land, rather than taking some of it out of production, but the margins on low-input farming
    1112
    are unknown and uncertain. I ask the Minister to consider the possibility of putting his experimental husbandry farms to work in diversification.
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must relate his remarks to what is in the Bill, rather than what might have been in the Bill.
    Mr. Livsey: Diversification could be tested on the test bench of the experimental husbandry farms to find out whether adequate net incomes could be obtained from farmers with diversified farm enterprises. Much work is needed before we can go headlong into great changes of policy. However desirable, they are theories and need to be put into test bench practice before they can be brought to a conclusion.
    In rural development, there is no question but that the work of the Development Commission and the Council for Small Industries in Rural Areas has been good. I understand that the two bodies are to be amalgamated under the Bill, and that is an interesting development because COSIRA has a good record in assisting small businesses and jobs in the countryside. The Bill must bring about a sustainable agriculture with adequate farm incomes, a countryside that appeals and remains ecologically and environmentally balanced, and a rural population that lives on more than a poverty wage, with a diversity of occupations.
    Those objectives are hard to achieve, but they should be aimed at, and the Bill is a start on that route. I encourage the Minister to go much further, because the money that is on the table is not adequate to replace some of the land that has been lost from agricultural production. More money is needed to ensure that these farm businesses survive.
    10.15 pm
    Mr. Quentin Davies: I welcome the Bill, but it is in the nature of a minor palliative for the debilitating disease from which British agriculture is suffering. It is rather like treating a case of serious typhus or yellow fever with an aspirin. It may be welcome to the patient, but it does not go far enough.
    There must be a general realisation, after our earlier debate, that agriculture is in a serious position. The general public still do not have the faintest notion of the seriousness of the problems. I can give two cases from my constituency to support much of what has been said in the Chamber today. Last weekend, I was speaking to someone who is greatly respected as a conscientious and efficient farmer in the Fens. He has been farming since 1943 and he tells me that this year, for the first time, he will be making a loss. I was also speaking to the senior partner of one of the biggest firms of chartered accountants in south Lincolnshire, most of whose clients are in agriculture, and he told me that not one would be reporting a profit this year. That is in Lincolnshire, an area which until now has been associated with prosperous agriculture.
    Of all the grievous burdens that British farmers face, the most grievous and the most easily avoidable is that created by the completely bogus system of currency rates, the so-called green exchange rates. There is no reason, either in equity or in economics, why exactly the same exchange rate should not he applied to agricultural commodities as is applied to all other goods and services.

    1113
    Would it not be regarded by the House as a monstrous national scandal if it were suggested that German cars, washing machines or schnapps should benefit from a 12·5 per cent. export subsidy and British motor cars should suffer a 12 per cent. levy?
    Mr. Speaker: Order. Will the hon. Gentleman please return to the subject of the Bill?
    Mr. Davies: I hope that I did not stray too far out of order. The subject that we are discussing forms part of a complex structure with the rest of today's proceedings and the reason is simple. It is that the object of the Bill is to address a fundamental problem, which has already been referred to by the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnor (Mr. Livsey)—the future of agriculture and the livelihood of the people who work in it. I have been much impressed by the energy and determination with which my two right hon. Friends have defended our agricultural interests in the Council of Ministers.
    Dr. David Clark: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. My understanding is that we are debating the Farm Land and Rural Development Bill. The House has strict procedures and I was wondering whether the Orders of the Day had been changed.
    Mr. Speaker: Certainly not. The hon. Member for Stamford and Spalding (Mr. Davies) must relate his remarks to the Bill.
    Mr. Davies: I trust that it will be in order, Mr. Speaker, to say that while I greatly welcome the Bill and the effort which the Government have put into it, I hope that that effort is not by one iota at the expense of the energy and determination that my right hon. Friend the Minister will continue to display in Brussels, in endeavouring to abolish green rates of exchange.
    10.20 pm
    Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: I was not a member of the Standing Committee on the Bill, but I understand that the debates which took place there were both informed and constructive.
    I come to this debate armed with words of wisdom from a member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which is most concerned about one aspect. That society approached me as a member of the Public Accounts Committee to point out that some £6 million will be allocated over the next three years to a particular area of expenditure under the farm woodlands scheme.
    My understanding of that scheme is that it is intended to bring about a major change in land use in the United Kingdom by the conversion of 12,000 hectares of land each year for the next three years. Although that is only a modest measure, it represents an increase of more than 50 per cent. in the current rate of woodland planting in the United Kingdom, which is 23,500 hectares a year.
    The Bill makes no provision for monitoring the impact of the scheme on the environment or the extent to which it meets the objectives of directing land away from agricultural production and assisting in reducing surpluses. There is no provision either for monitoring the enhancement of the landscape and the creation of new wildlife habitats, or the contribution made to the rural economy and to the nation's timber needs.
    1114
    How will the Minister know whether the scheme has helped to reduce agricultural surpluses? How will he be able to measure that if he does not check the output from farmers who enter the scheme, or even make a sample check that could be subject to some form of multiplier with a view to making a national assessment? How will the Minister know that a farmer has not turned over to agriculture a spare piece of land which may be of high interest in terms of its wildlife? Such action by irresponsible landowners could negate the objective of the scheme.
    Mr. Barry Mayes of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, who so competently briefed me on these matters, wishes to know, on behalf of his organisation, how the Minister can satisfy himself that the objective of achieving one third broadleaves has been met if the scheme is not monitored.
    Mr. Steen: The hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) has raised an important point. Like him, I am a keen enthusiast of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. However, is the hon. Gentleman not concerned that if farmers grow trees, which is commendable and would have his support, they may be tempted to destroy the habitat for wildlife and birds that currently exists there, in order to make good the crop output which they lost? That is one of the worries. If I can catch your eye later, Mr. Speaker, I hope to extend that point—but is it not one of the hon. Gentleman's concerns?
    Mr. Campbell-Savours: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, of which I am sure the Minister is aware. We all know that some farmers will try to compensate for that loss of production by utilising land that currently might form a habitat for wildlife, and that is worthy of concern. What I want to know—as does the RSPB—is how those habitats will be protected from the greedy farmer who wants to compensate for loss of income.
    Mr. William Ross: The hon. Gentleman has just referred to the "greedy farmer who wants to compensate for loss of income". Surely anyone whose income falls tries to increase it to its former level to maintain his standard of living and that of his family. Why should farmers be called greedy for trying to do what everyone else tries to do?
    Mr. Campbell-Savours: If the hon. Gentleman had been listening to what I was saying, he would realise that I was referring to the "greedy farmer" in the context of his making use of a specific loophole. If he did not do so, I would not wish to describe him as greedy. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would accept that if a farmer used the scheme to compensate himself for money that he might have lost, that would be a greedy move. No doubt he would not wish to condone it, and nor would the hon. Member for South Hams (Mr. Steen). I am sure that the Minister will wish to assure the House that he will not condone it either, and will introduce monitoring arrangements to ensure that it does not happen.
    Can the Minister satisfy himself and Parliament that taxpayers' money—potentially £2 million a year—is being spent effectively? How can he modify the rate of grant under clause 2(3) if he is unable to measure how effectively grants are being put to use? On behalf of the RSPB, I suggest that, as a compromise, a review is conducted of perhaps 10 per cent. of the participants in each region.

    1115
    That would keep the administrative burden and the cost to the state to a minimum, while providing an indicative measure of cost-effectiveness and of the extent to which the objectives of the scheme are being met.
    I put that proposition as a member of the Public Accounts Committee. I remember many occasions on which the Government have introduced schemes and we have ended up evaluating the effective use of taxpayers' money. We have often found that the money has not been used properly, in that it has not met the objectives of Government. The Minister may wish to intervene to reassure me. I believe that he should consider the possibility of a Public Accounts Committee inquiry. However, if he were to give the assurances that the RSPB and I, along with other hon. Members, are seeking, that inquiry could possibly be avoided.
    The Minister of State referred earlier to the groundnuts scheme. We might have a minor "groundnuts scheme" if all this went wrong. The Minister may refer with glee to the famous groundnuts scheme, but he would do well to recall that the losses on Nimrod and on Britain's torpedo programme—losses incurred under the present Government—far outstrip in real terms anything lost by a Labour Administration during that groundnuts affair.
    10.27 pm
    Mr. Christopher Gill: The Bill has been described as a modest little Bill. However modest it may be, I welcome it: indeed, I welcome any initiative that encourages woodlands. I am sure that it is right to encourage broadleaf woodlands particularly, and right also to encourage those who are prepared to plant them and to make an inevitably long-term investment that has little or no prospect of short-term gain. If previous generations had not taken that broader view, where would all the beautiful Shropshire oak that adorns the Chamber have come from?
    Farm woodlands make sense on four counts: economic, ecological, practical and environmental. Economically, it must surely make sense to try to replace 90 per cent. of our timber imports with our own production. Quite apart from the benefit that that would confer on our balance of payments, it would create employment. Environmentally, trees are an important part of the countryside and they certainly improve any landscape. Practically, we can grow trees in this country. The climate is not unfavourable and farmers have the ability and knowledge to plant and care for trees. Ecologically, at a time when the world is seeing the destruction of the rain forests, it must make sense to plant trees, on however modest a scale. Timber is the only replaceable fossil fuel.
    While congratulating my right hon. Friend the Minister on the Bill, I should like to put the proposed measures in perspective. It would be wrong to believe that this is more than a small step forward. It would be wrong and dangerous for Parliament to suggest to the nation that it is anything more than a small step forward.
    In my county of Shropshire, which is a reasonably green and pleasant land, woodland occupies only 7 per cent. of the total land area. That is 7 per cent. after considerable arboreal activity in the years since the war. In fact it represents only a mere 0·5 per cent. increase in the 40 years since the war.
    In the context of agricultural surpluses, estimates of the land that we need to take out of production vary according
    1116
    to which expert one consults: some say as little as 5 per cent. and some say as much as 20 per cent. If we accept the smaller of the figures, we are talking about taking out of agriculture the equivalent of what is currently planted with trees in the British countryside.
    The purpose of my remarks is not in any way to denigrate the efforts of my right hon. Friend the Minister. Indeed, all concerned—the farmers, the public and my right hon. and hon. Friends—recognize—
    Mr. William Cash: Will my hon. Friend give way?
    Mr. Gill: I will give way to a neighbour.
    Mr. Cash: I am a constituent of my hon. Friend and I thought that it would be appropriate for me to say how much I agree with everything that he has said. I am not only a constituent but a neighbour, and my hon. Friend has touched on a point that is of great interest to his other constituents in Shropshire and to my constituents in Staffordshire. I endorse everything that he has said.
    Mr. Gill: That was a generous intervention and it was much appreciated, even though my hon. Friend interrupted me in mid-flow when I was trying to pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Minister for his efforts. Hon. Members recognise and respect him as a sincere and concerned man who is doing what he can under extremely difficult circumstances. I should not like my right hon. Friend to interpret my remarks in any way as critical of his efforts. The purpose of my remarks is to put those efforts into perspective. However, the scale of the problem defies any one man's efforts. Indeed, it defies the best endeavours of this nation and all other nations. But, Minister, every little helps.
    10.33 pm
    Mr. William Ross: There is much in the Bill that I welcome and much that will be welcomed in Northern Ireland. However, Madam Deputy Speaker, you will not be surprised to hear that I begin with the same little quibble, to put it mildly, that we always have. When I turn to page five, line 10 I see that
    "Sections 1 to 3 above do not extend to Northern Ireland".
    There is a little more above that, which is the usual junk that we see in Bills. It says that there will be
    "An Order in Council under paragraph I (1)(b) of Schedule 1 to the Northern Ireland Act 1974".
    All the same old nonsense that we see time and again appears in the Bill.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Antrim, South (Mr. Forsythe) would have been carrying out this task tonight, had it not been for a family death. He raised that point in Committee and said that there is no good reason why he Bill, and so many others, should not be extended to Northern Ireland. Then we would not have to go through all the other nonsense of introducing something similar for Northern Ireland when we are not offered any possibility of real debate and certainly no possibility of amendment. The introduction of something similar for Northern Ireland may be during the next few weeks or perhaps as far away as two years. However, I do not think that it will be as long as that in this case.
    It is that point about Northern Ireland which concerns me, my party and those whom I represent. I wish that the Government would get away from it and start treating Northern Ireland as if it really was part of this kingdom,

    1117
    rather than something that some of them appear to wish to push away, off into the blue yonder. Northern Ireland is not going to go away; it will be part of the United Kingdom for a very long time. Since I came to this place 14 years ago, I have existed in that limbo. I liked it little then and I like it less now. The sooner that we are done with that nonsense, the better for all concerned.
    When I was here in 1974, the House was full of sound and fury and weeping and wailing about a universal food shortage. We are now bemoaning a massive surplus across the world. When one reads the papers and sees the horrifying pictures of famine in some lands, one sometimes wonders where the surpluses are, although one can understand the difficulties of dealing with localised famine in the world.
    How have we gone from one extreme to the other in those 14 years? I recall that in my first speech on agriculture all those years ago I asked what we would do when European production created surpluses. Some hon. Members giggled, but the Government of the day did not giggle as loudly as the rest. They clearly saw it coming.
    We are in this difficult situation today because agriculture has existed in highly artificial market conditions for the past 50 years. Those artificial conditions have caused many of the difficulties that we now face. Our problems will remain. I cannot envisage those artificial market conditions—either the former or the present measures of support—disappearing. They will stay with us for many a long day, and we must live with them. We must accept the restrictions that they place on us, but we hope to see the day when agriculture can stand on its own two feet.
    The Bill deals not only with woodlands but with grant-aided ancillary farm business activities. Just to lift the Minister's heart, let me tell him of a wonderful story that appeared in the Belfast Telegraph on Good Friday this year about a new farm industry in Ballymena in Northern Ireland. A farmer there had started a brand new farm industry. He was producing donkey's cheese for sale. Those who care to look up the date of Good Friday will realise that we were being had. I am afraid that that particular bird never flew very far. I see one or two hon. Members having a look at their diaries. For the benefit of those who cannot remember, Good Friday fell on 1 April. I confess that I thought that that was a wonderful story and showed a great deal of initiative on the paper's part. Sadly, the donkey's cheese is still in the making, and will remain in the making for many a day.
    Earlier today, the Minister spoke of people with small farms going out of agriculture. He implied that that would reduce production. Shortly afterwards, the Liberal spokesman, who will forgive me if I do not try to pronounce his constituency—I am not sure that he would do all that well with some of our Irish place names—drew attention to the fact that he was a small poor hill farmer from Wales who did not apparently earn much money out of his farm. That is precisely the position in most of Europe, which is full of small part-time farmers like the hon. Gentleman, who has taken on another part-time job in the House.
    We shall continue to have in much of continental Europe people who are not really dependent on farming
    1118
    nevertheless farming at a fairly high level of efficiency and producing an enormous amount of food. I do not believe the happy story that the small farmer on the continent will disappear, thereby reducing total food production. People will remain, because they like living that way.
    The Minister said that we had to keep up with modern farming methods. I got the impression that, if we did not, farming would quickly be in serious trouble. Over the past 40 or 50 years, we have been engaged in steadily reducing the number of human hands in farming, increasing the number of machines, improving our methods and increasing production as a result. Every time we moved another step down the road of more machines and fewer people, we took another step towards our present surpluses.
    There is a limit to how much one pair of hands can do, how many sheep and cattle they can look after. Every stockman in the House knows what I mean. A farmer needs to look at the animals every day and to look after the machinery, crops, hedges, ditches and fences to ensure that everything is in proper shape for farming.
    If we continue taking land out of production and pursue farm diversification and ancillary farm businesses, inevitably, regardless of set-aside, there will be a transfer of food production from the marginal worse land to the better land. That will follow as surely as day follows night. The smaller farmer in the hills will suffer. The squeeze will be slow, but steady, and continued.
    We face the problem with which the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Argentina and many other countries have had to live throughout their existence —the ability to produce far more food than our people can consume. We are going down the same road that the United States went down, of trying to reduce food production to provide a reasonable standard of living on farms or farming enterprises.
    Whenever I come to the House, I drive over Glenshane pass, which is not far from where I live. I always look out across the river Roe and I see a large chunk of the hill which, a few years ago, was heather but which was dug up at great public expense. It is one of the areas in the United Kingdom which was dug up and sown with grass to increase hill production. One wonders now how wise that expenditure was. Although it was useful to the farmer concerned and allowed him to remain in business and to look after his family for a few more years—it is not quite the loophole to which reference has been made—in the long run it will be money lost. Sadly, a good proportion of the farming community will come under increasing financial pressure. Over a long period, it will mean that fewer people will live on the land.
    A new clause was tabled but not selected, which was a pity. If we had considered it, we would have started to discuss the nitty-gritty of what the Bill says to the farming community. The Bill is an admission that, for many farmers in a large part of the United Kingdom, farming no longer provides a satisfactory standard of living. There are transitional movements to keep people on the land.
    To some extent, the Bill is a bit of social engineering. It is an attempt to keep a living viable community in the rural areas. We would be far more honest if we spelt out our long-term regional objectives to the farmers, but I fear that, as usual, they will never be told how much or what food they will be expected to produce. We shall continue down that road and cause more problems than ever before.

    Farmland and Rural Development Bill [Lords]
    10.44 pm
    Mr. Anthony Steen: I had the great fortune and privilege to be a member of the Standing Committee which considered the Bill, and I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Minister of State for the skill, ingenuity, courtesy and kindness with which he steered the Bill through, and for his grasp of the subject, which all my hon. Friends will appreciate.
    It would he unfortunate if I rehearsed at this late hour all the arguments that were put forward by hon. Members on both sides of the House, because my right hon. Friend will have taken them all on board and looked at the sense of them, but I want to raise one point. The Bill is about land use. It is a modest proposal—not something to get excited about or to make long speeches about. It will make only a tiny difference to the general farming pattern in Britain.
    However, the Bill is a major step in a change of attitude which the Government are courageously formulating. The farmer must now find alternative sources of income from other uses of his land with which to supplement his income for which, in the past, he depended on the Government. He must now go to the private market and find a new source of income for the land for which the Government previously paid him. That is the critical point of the Bill. It is trying to encourage the farmer to find a new vehicle for exploiting his innovatory talents so that he can find a new way of generating income. I do not know whether my right hon. Friend considers that to be a fair synopsis of what he is trying to do.
    The alternative land use that the Bill will develop will reduce food production only a little. However, the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) raised a real point, although he may not have put it in quite the modest and courteous way that he usually does, when he suggested that farmers were greedy. That may have been a slip of the tongue, but it did suggest something a little more sinister. The farmers are not greedy; they are desperately trying to make good a falling income. But as a result of that they may be tempted to make use of land which in the past has been scrubland and an important habitat for wildlife which they have not previously thought of using, but which, in view of the new pressure on them to make good a falling income, they may feel forced to use.
    In that context, let me mention that in my constituency there is a dying race of bird called the cirl bunting. There are only 80 pairs left in Great Britain. I am sure that many hon. Members have spent many hours in South Hams looking for the cirl bunting. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds arranged for me on Sunday morning a few weeks ago to spy out the land on and around East Prawle and East Portlemouth and spot the cirl bunting. This may not be the right time to describe the beauties of the bird, but the point is that the cirl bunting needs the coastal scrubland which is peculiar to South Hams.
    The farmer in this area could be tempted to apply for a grant to plant trees on his land. In that event, he might also be tempted to say, "I am losing good acres on which I have produced food. I will plough up this scrub land." As that land is important for the survival of the bird it could mean the destruction of another rare species in Britain.
    1120
    Not all hon. Members will agree that preserving the cirl bunting is of great importance, but the point I have made is indicative of the dangers that are inherent in the Bill. I hope the Minister, if he does not mention the cirl bunting by name, will refer to the problem that was raised eloquently, if unfortunately in some respects, by the hon. Member for Workington.
    Mr. Roger Knapman: I too enjoyed serving on the Standing Committee. Does my hon. Friend think it possible that cirl buntings are down to the last 80 pairs because they do not have enough trees in which to nest?
    Mr. Steen: They do not nest in trees.
    My fear is that farmers may take advantage of the Bill to grow trees. The Government's whole land use policy may also encourage farmers to make good the shortfall in their incomes not only by laying down the 20,000 golf courses which land owners have said would solve our agricultural problems, but will go in for housing. There is a great threat to the countryside in the south of England by ever more houses being built on the green belt and on green field sites, and I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) will raise that issue on the Adjournment.
    I fear that farmers who cannot produce food on their land and who are desperate to achieve alternative land use will be obliged, if they can do so, to sell land for house building. Not only will that destroy the agricultural potential of that land, but it will destroy wild life and habitat.
    I feel sure that the Minister, in his broad compass approach to these matters, will deal with the problem of the urban sprawl of housing in the south and the dangers of the Bill becoming a vehicle for the exploitation of farm land for purposes other than agriculture.
    10.53 pm
    Mr. Tony Speller: The hon. Member for Londonderry, East (Mr. Ross) was right to choose reality as his text, because the Bill provides vast enabling powers to the Minister, should he wish to use them, and should the Treasury agree to their use. On that basis—not that it is the only one—the measure is to be welcomed.
    The Bill does not refer only to afforestation, but as we import over 90 per cent. of the timber used in Britain, afforestation is a sensible course to pursue. Apart from that—and whether or not the cirl bunting of South Hams is helped to multiply—it gives us a chance to save and promote agriculture and rural England for those who should live there.
    It is no secret that every agricultural area or village is, in effect, its own minor green belt in which live excellent people who have retired from the cities, but who were not originally rural residents. While my hon. Friend the Member for South Hams (Mr. Steen) seems to be strongly against the provision of more houses, he should be aware that in the adjacent constituency of Devon, North we want many more houses for our young people, who at present cannot afford the few houses that are being provided.
    I welcome the Bill, because it is sensible and logical, but it is only fair to say that in its totality it bears upon the whole future of agriculture, if there is to be a future. We can destroy agriculture, as indeed this nation has

    1121
    destroyed other industries—for example, shipbuilding, steel and others—whether wilfully or otherwise. It is easy to lose industries in the name of efficiency.
    Hon. Members have mentioned scrubland. Many of my constituents work incredibly hard to make upland scrubland productive. It is an unwise world that says, "Let the farmer go; let the scrubland stay," because sooner or later we will need the food that that scrubland can provide. It would be an unwise Administration, which this is not, or unwise Members of this House, which we are not, who would allow us to destroy our agricultural existence for the benefit of some largely plasticised green belt, which, if we are not careful, will spread across the country. We can buy cheap food at the moment, but the moment that we cannot provide food for ourselves will be the moment when the prices will go up. The Bill is welcome, not just for the afforestation provisions, but for the other things that it will allow.
    In the county of Devon, about 5 per cent. fewer people will be working the land 12 months from now. If that continues, we will not have a rural population to talk about developing or assisting. We will have a selection of retirement homes dotted round a countryside that we have deliberately denuded in our folly. The golf courses may come—I welcome golf courses. But, more than that, I welcome the Bill because without the rural development that it can help to bring we will not have the people in the village or in the small town to retain the school, the church, the doctor, the health centre, the scout troop, the guide troop and all the things that make the countryside far more worth living in than the town for people like myself. That is not to be unkind to the town, but, it is illogical if everyone says, "Infill the town," when what they are actually saying is, "Neglect the countryside."
    I give my full support to the Bill. It could turn out to be a more major measure than most of us believe. It is important not to destroy the countryside in the name of some form of conservation, which may mean buntings for all but houses for none.
    10.58 pm
    Sir John Farr: I support the Bill as far as it goes.
    It was said by some hon. Members in Committee, and it was repeated during the debate on agriculture earlier this evening, that some local authorities have an oppressive attitude towards any change in farming activities. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment has sent a succession of circulars to local authorities suggesting, for example, a modest change from farm activity to perhaps camping or riding. These suggestions have been resisted by local authorities. My right hon. Friend should remember that local authorities must be brushed up on change and be reminded of their obligations, or they will restrict farming—as many of them do—with the same old restricted planning pattern that they have used for old and out-of-date farm buildings.
    Clause 2 deals with farm woodland schemes. Some people believe that the development—12,000 hectares, or 30,000 acres, a year, making a total of 100,000 acres over three years—is tiny. It is a step in the right direction, and I do not regard it as insignificant. The replanting of 100,000 acres over three years could make a great impact
    1122
    on the countryside. What I do not like about the Bill, and what I had hoped to mention tonight in debates on my amendments, which unfortunately were not selected—
    Mr. Hugo Summerson: Nor were mine.
    Sir John Farr: I share my hon. Friend's sorrow.
    My anxiety is that the farm woodland scheme is permanent. The trees will be there for ever. The scheme may be right—indeed, the Government are convinced that it is right. The trees will be there for our lifetime, and probably for our children's lifetime, especially if we plant the hardwoods that the Government are making financially advantageous. But is it the right thing to do now? Should we commit ourselves to taking out of agricultural production for ever 100,000 acres of land, whether it be good or bad quality, without considering alternatives, such as less input, less output?
    If there were a sudden need for increased agricultural production—perhaps because of a complete change in the political climate—we could not retrieve land planted with trees. But if land was on a low-intensity regime, output could be stepped up overnight and we could meet any critical demand that we cannot foresee now. I hope that there will never be such demand, but I had hoped that the Bill would give the Secretary of State power to include a modest de-intensification scheme.
    The hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) and other hon. Members asked about the monitoring of the complex requirement to plant 100,000 acres of land with trees. Does my right hon. Friend have any idea of how it will be checked? Although I do not expect that the average farmer or landowner would try to breach the regulations, if it is known that there will be no supervision of the system, that will encourage people who are in a bad way financially—many of my farming constituents have never been worse off—to bend the system. It is asking for trouble.
    The Bill could have been much improved. Sooner or later—I hope sooner—the Government will have to introduce a scheme of de-intensification. It has been demanded by hon. Members on both sides of the House, and I am sorry that my right hon. Friend did not see fit to include it in the Bill.
    11.2 pm
    Sir Richard Body: I agree wholeheartedly with everything that my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir J. Farr) said.
    When replying to this short debate, will my right hon. Friend the Minister give an assurance on how clause 2 will be used? We have lost many thousands of acres of moorlands. A quarter of the north Yorkshire moors have been ploughed up—much of it to produce surplus grain. We have lost hundreds of acres on Exmoor, and the same can be said of nearly all our moorlands. My right hon. Friend knows, too, that many recreations depend upon open countryside. Some time ago, in preparing a talk for a conference, I discovered 20 such recreations. I need hardly remind my right hon. Friend that those recreations are carried out by taxpayers, and our objective must be to reconcile the interests of taxpayers with those of farmers. We shall not achieve that objective if even more of our moorlands are lost to afforestation.

    1123
    Perhaps my right hon. Friend will give an undertaking to the many people worried about the matter that clause 2 will not be used in a way that will result in the loss of even more of our moorlands.
    11.4 pm
    Mr. James Paice: I have already welcomed the Bill, but I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Minister will not take exception to my continued expressions of pleasure and welcome for it.
    It is right that we should go in this direction. As several hon. Members have said, the Bill opens the door to a new approach to supporting agriculture in its widest context, not merely as food production, which is how we have always thought of it, but as the husbandry and management of the land.
    I fully recognise the need to try out the schemes before they are let loose and expanded across the countryside. I accept what my right hon. Friend the Minister of State said when winding up the previous debate: it is necessary to prove the schemes. We must be able to do so.
    Hon. Members on both sides have mentioned monitoring. I want the scheme to work, and I believe that it will, but I want to be able to say in two years' time that it works because we have proved that it does. It is probably impossible to monitor it on every holding that goes into planting woodlands, but we should be able to do some sort of sampling to prove that there is a reduction in yield on the farms in question. If there is a proven reduction in output on those holdings, that justifies the scheme and will justify hon. Members in asking to double or treble its size in a couple of years. We can do that only if it has been proved to reduce surpluses.
    I am slightly concerned about the level of compensation for loss of income on the woodlands scheme. I realise that that is not cast in stone in the Bill, but income replacement must recognise the role of fixed costs on the farm. Merely converting 5, 10 or 20 per cent. of the land to tree planting does not reduce fixed costs in proportion. That is the opposite of economies of scale and we must all understand that.
    Unless the acreage payments during the growing period at least replace some of the fixed costs a greater burden will be placed on the remaining acreage. We have already heard that there is no way in which the remaining acreage can carry that extra burden. The upshot will be less interest in the scheme from farmers, because they will realise that the bottom line of their farm business will get worse, not better.
    I fully understand the impossibility of index-linking. That idea was proposed in the Standing Committee, on which I was pleased to serve. I also understand that my right hon. Friend has the Chief Secretary to the Treasury continually looking over his shoulder at every penny he spends. I hope that he will at least undertake to review the payments regularly to ensure that they are sufficient to encourage farmers to move into these schemes. Otherwise, a highly welcome and acceptable change in direction could be spoilt for that odd ha'p'orth of tar.
    11.4 pm
    Mr. Ron Davies: It has already been noted that the hon. Member for Ceredigion and Pembroke, North (Mr. Howells) was not joining in the debate this evening because he chaired our proceedings in Committee.
    1124
    I put on record my appreciation of the work that he did as Chairman of the Committee. He brought to it a fairness and expertise that was appreciated by all.
    I also put on record the support that I received from my hon. Friends in Committee; several of them spoke in the debate tonight. This may be a rare occurrence, but I thank the Minister, too, and congratulate him on the approach he adopted in Committee. There was a bipartisan approach to the Bill and I am pleased to say that its progress was helped, if not accelerated, by the thoughtful and courteous way in which the Minister responded to the amendments that we tabled, many of which were probing amendments.
    In opening the debate the Minister said that during the proceedings an announcement was made after the Budget about the introduction of a new woodland grants scheme. He said that the scheme would replace the old arrangements because they were unsatisfactory and had led to a great deal of tax abuse. We certainly support the introduction of the new scheme and hope that it will remove the opportunity for abuse of the tax regime. However, the Minister's stated objective will not be achieved because, on the basis of figures provided by his Department, about 250,000 hectares of land were cleared for planting under the old regime and the tax concessions will last for the next five years. That fact should be set against the Government's much vaunted statement that they put and end to these abuses. It is unsatisfactory that these tax abuses will continue for another five years, and I hope that the Committee examining the Finance Bill will remedy that defect.
    We are not entirely happy with the new grants, although they are important in that they form the basis of the grants available under clause 2 of the Bill. Despite all the arguments and the protestations from the Government, the planting grants still favour coniferous afforestation. It was our view, and we thought that it was the Government's view following Government statements, that the planting of broadleaf trees should be encouraged. The new grants scheme and the new financial arrangements mean that continuous incentive is given to coniferous afforestation.
    The Minister has had one close look at the reports of our debates in Committee. I suggest that he has another close look, when he will see that the evidence that we received from, among others, the Oxford institute, showed that the balance was still in favour of coniferous afforestation. I think that at one point the Minister agreed with us about that. That is not a sour note, but it is a note of disagreement between us.
    We did not oppose the Bill on Second Reading and I like to think that in Committee we approached the Bill constructively. We offered amendments and views and hoped that the Minister would take note of them. He said that he would take notice of some of them. We have no intention of opposing the Bill on Third Reading, but I should like to reinforce a couple of points. This is an enabling Bill. We look forward to the secondary legislation which, I presume, will be introduced next month. I hope that the Minister's mind is still open and that perhaps we can persuade him on one or two points, as some hon. Members have attempted to do in the debate. He need not respond to my questions now, but perhaps he will see whether there is still room for manoeuvre in the statutory instrument.

    1125
    The matter of consultation has been raised in the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) was the first to raise it and he did so in response to a brief from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds which, I am sure, assisted all Members in Committee. The hon. Member for South Hams (Mr. Steen) supported my hon. Friend the Member for Workington and spoke in particular about the cirl bunting. I was disappointed that he was not equally vociferous in Committee and did not use his vote there to support the cirl bunting as he used it to support it in this debate.
    While the hon. Gentleman was speaking I had a look at the Committee Hansard. On Third Reading the hon. Member for South Hams spoke for seven minutes, but during the whole of the Committee proceedings he managed only three interventions which between them made four paragraphs. On my calculation that is one and a half minutes. He also made three sedentary interventions. He voted against an amendment of ours that would have provided precisely the sort of protection that he argued for the cirl bunting, thereby denying the protection that he is now vociferous in advocating.
    I suggest to the hon. Member for South Hams that we have both learned something from the debate. I have learned not to rely on his vote following his voice in Committee, and he has learned that before he makes interventions on Third Reading he should check his actions in Committee to see whether he can justify his comments on Third Reading.
    The question of consultation has been raised. We are particularly concerned to ensure that there are safeguards for areas of high landscape or environmental value. Areas of outstanding natural beauty are excluded from the consultation arrangements. We do not wish to see coniferous afforestation in such areas unless there has been adequate consultation. If there has been consultation and it is proved that the afforestation is not damaging to the landscape, we have no objection, but there should be consultation in respect of such areas. Unfortunately, although the Bill provides for the Minister to undertake that consultation, it does not require him to undertake it and I hope that he will consider that point further, even at this late stage.
    The question of monitoring has been raised by the hon. Members for Harborough (Sir J. Farr) and for South Hams, by my hon. Friend the Member for Workington and by the hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East (Mr. Paice), who frequently joins us in these agriculture debates. I hope that the Minister will consider the question of monitoring for the following reasons.
    First, if the Bill is to provide a scheme that will, of its nature, be experimental, there must be a measure of assessing that experiment. If it is a scheme on which there will be further developments, the effectiveness of the scheme must be properly evaluated.
    Secondly, the broadleaf percentage should be high and increasing. Unless there is a proper measure of assessment and monitoring, the Government will not know what factors control the broadleaf component, what the damage is or what the consequences are of the relative percentage between broadleaf and conifers. It would be useful for the House to know how the forestry industry and farmers are
    1126
    responding and whether they are planting broadleaf or coniferous woodlands. Without that measure, provided for in the Bill, we shall not have that information.
    Thirdly, the Minister said that the grant rates might change. Unless there is more monitoring and an understanding of the economy of the farms involved in the scheme, how will the Government know the relevance of grant rates? Will they be increased or reduced, or will the balance between broadleaf afforestation and coniferous afforestation be changed? For those reasons, the Minister should reconsider the question of monitoring. I do not expect him to answer those detailed points now, but I hope that he will consider them before bringing forward a statutory instrument.
    The hon. Member for South Hams raised the question of displacement. By displacement, we mean that a farmer might seek to afforest part of his holding but then replace that agricultural land by ploughing up an area that might be of the highest environmental value, although not in agricultural use. The hon. Gentleman described that as scrub land. We are concerned to prevent that. The Minister recently said:
    "If I could find a satisfactory way to tighten the system, I should implement it."—[Official Report, Standing Committee B, 29 March 1987; c. 125.]
    Has he found a satisfactory way? Can he now offer us some practical evidence that he intends to live up to his words?
    I understand that the Government will have a tight way of measuring and assessing the new set-aside proposals. If they can find a way of measuring set-aside, with all the hazards that that involves, I am sure that they can find an adequate way of assessing these proposals. The Government should do that to ensure a diminution in agricultural production and to provide the environmental protection that we are seeking.
    Fourthly, we must consider the question of planting rates. This was the subject of debate in Committee, and we argued that if the applicant for grant wished to plant at less than the normal density, full grant should nevertheless be paid. For example, some farmers would want to plant to the highest levels of coniferous or broadleaved, but at a lower density to ensure rides, because if they want to develop a pheasant shoot, a ride that has not been planted would be a requirement. We argued that if they set aside areas from within the total holding, and planted only 70 or 80 per cent. of it, because of the high fixed cost of, for example, fencing, the maximum grant of 100 per cent. should be paid. That would encourage lower density forestry rather than the higher density traditional forestry.
    The Minister did not give way on that in Committee, and said that the planting was primarily for timber production. In as much as the land cleared for planting exceeds by something like a factor of two the amount of land that the industry feels that it is necessary to afforest, we do not think that the argument about the primacy of timber production exists any longer. I ask the Minister to look at that again.
    Many areas of derelict woodland are not in timber production but have the highest environmental value and are a major component of the farm as an on-farm woodland, and at least some, if not the whole, of the financial provision should be made so that farmers can achieve proper control of woodland production in areas of

    1127
    neglected woodland. We were thinking in particular of the woodlands in the less-favoured areas, because they have particular financial problems.
    Those are some of our concerns. I hope that the Minister will at least listen to the representations which have been made by hon. Members on both sides of the House, and which are shared by people outside the House. I hope that he will be able to satisfy us a little more on these points when we debate the statutory instruments.
    11.21 pm
    The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. John Selwyn Gummer): I thank the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Davies) both for the courtesy of his remarks, and for the conduct of the Opposition case in Committee. It was a happy and pleasant Committee, which did its job well, and that was not least because of the chairmanship of the hon. Member for Ceridigion and Pembroke. North (Mr. Howells). I am not sure whether he would have agreed with the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnor (Mr. Livsey) about the milking sheep unit that took five years to set up. I wonder whether that was because of, or in spite of, his help. He is right to suggest that there is no perfect answer to our problems, and the idea that, by some miracle, low income farming can provide an alternative, without considerable research, is mere idle speculation. It will provide some of the answers, but it cannot be seen as a panacea, and too many panaceas are presented by people who often know little about the practicalities of farming, although the hon. Gentleman is certainly not one of those.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Stamford and Spalding (Mr. Davies) congratulated my right hon. Friend the Minister and me on some of the stances that we have taken. In his close concern for the Bill, he reminded us of some of problems of agriculture with which the Bill does not attempt to deal. I have no doubt that other legislation will be introduced to solve the problems that he has raised, and on that occasion we can deal with the points that he made.
    The hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) spoke about monitoring, and I assure him that we shall monitor the scheme carefully, because every request for support will come to the Ministry, as well as to the Forestry Commission, and there will be occasions on which the Ministry will refuse, because the land is not suitable, or because the plan is thought not to be what we want, so the monitoring will start then.
    Secondly, we shall have to monitor a sufficient number to ensure that what has been claimed as the plan is the plan that is carried out, for people will, in some cases, be paid a different sum because of the nature of the trees that are planted. Obviously we shall have to monitor that aspect. We shall have to monitor also to see whether the planting meets the purposes for which it was undertaken.
    It is difficult to devise a monitoring system that will with absolute certainty link particular amounts of production from the total farm with the effect of a certain amount of afforestation of woodlands. For example, the woodlands might be started in a year in which farming activity was hit by very poor weather and production from the rest of the farm in that year was very low. If one monitored the situation three years later, one might find a considerable increase in production. However, that might have more to do with the weather than with the fact that perhaps a very
    1128
    small amount of land had been set aside for woodlands. It is not possible to make direct comparisons, but we shall certainly undertake direct monitoring of the kind for which the hon. Gentleman asks.
    I disagree with the hon. Gentleman in his concern that, because of the woodlands scheme, farmers are likely to be pressed into bringing into production areas of their farms which are not currently in production. If a farmer had such an area and was so pressed, he would be able to bring it into production whether or not there was a woodlands scheme. Indeed, in many ways he might be more likely to do so because he would not have the advantages that a woodlands scheme would give him to use for woodlands land that perhaps would not be suitable for cereal production.
    The hon. Gentleman applied himself to the real problem, to which I referred in Committee, that there are certain types of habitat and wild land in the ownership of farmers which we would much prefer not to be turned into productive agricultural land. Indeed, the changes made to grant structures over the past few years have been aimed at not helping farmers to do that. We have also implemented grant aid to help people return to having more hedges and trees, and the like.
    Hon. Gentlemen opposite have raised perfectly reasonable points, but I do not believe that the problems they mentioned are directly connected with the woodlands scheme. I do not see an easy way of stopping farmers from undertaking, at their own expense, that which most of us would prefer them not to undertake—except that there is a growing understanding of the damage that such action can cause not just to individual farmers but to the farming community as a whole—who know that its reputation can be very much affected by the actions of an individual.
    I hope that the Public Accounts Committee will not need to look unhappily upon the results of the scheme, for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture was himself once a Treasury Minister and he is more keen on monitoring even than the hon. Member for Workington. Were I to propose any scheme that was not properly financially controlled, my right hon. Friend would use his superior office and power to cut me down at once. I assure the hon. Gentleman that that is so.
    Mr. Campbell-Savours: When grant applications are made, will assurances be sought from farmers that certain land in their ownership might not have its use changed in the way that I suggested might be the case?
    Mr. Gummer: There is no such formal requirement in the Bill. However, our experience with the ESAs has shown that the people on the ground who are concerned with these matters are increasingly knowledgeable in conservation, so applications will be carefully considered. If circumstances arose in which we felt that an application was marred by other intentions, we would see to it that those other intentions were not carried out. I cannot make a formal commitment, but that is the spirit in which we are approaching the matter.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill) called this a modest Bill. In one sense, of course, it is.; no vast sums are available. In another sense, however, it is not. First, the British Government are entering into a very long-term commitment to enable people to grow trees. I follow the view of history given to us by the hon. Member for Londonderry, East (Mr. Ross). Even five years ago, I

    1129
    cannot imagine that people would have believed that the Treasury might consider such a long-term commitment reasonable. It is a major achievement. It has not happened in other countries, but it is happening in Britain, and it will make a considerable difference. We now have a different attitude to woodlands.
    The support for marketing and feasibility studies is a crucial part of helping farmers to develop that different attitude. It emerged in Committee—from hon. Members on both sides—that farmers are not natural foresters. It is quite difficult to change their approach so that they see trees as a crop, but the Bill makes a major move in that direction. The phrase "modest proposal" is perhaps better seen in the Swiftian context than in any modern one.
    The hon. Member for Londonderry, East gave us a salutary reminder of 14 years ago, when people feared a major worldwide food shortage and starvation because of the growth in the population. The Government are determined not to put land permanently out of agricultural use in a way that would endanger the future if the position changed dramatically. We must learn that we were wrong 10 or 14 years ago, when we thought that the world would be one of continuous shortage. We cannot be absolutely sure that our present best analysis—that it will be a world of surplus—will continue ultimately to be so. We must act on it, because it is the best that we have, but we can all produce scenarios in which it would not apply.
    For my hon. Friend the Member for South Hams (Mr. Steen), that is the protection against his fear that the land will be used for house building, concretisation and so forth. In that event, it would not be available for agriculture were circumstances to change. Woodlands, farm diversification, recreation and golf courses are sensible uses of the land because they enable the land to be used again for agriculture. In the end, the provision of food for our people must be the primary demand of any Government.
    Mr. Steen: Is my right hon. Friend saying that he will discourage the Department of the Environment from allowing widespread building on land in the south of England that is currently used for agriculture?
    Mr. Gummer: My hon. Friend must understand that the Department of the Environment needs no discouragement from me. The Department has made it absolutely clear that it intends to protect the green belt and look after the very interests that he mentions. I want to encourage the Department to do what it is doing now—to join me in trying to persuade planners to be a little more flexible, in areas where the pressure is not of that kind, towards farmers who want to diversify and provide jobs in country areas which are essential so that those areas do not become museums but remain work places
    That is the major importance of the Bill. We want a living countryside; we want a working countryside. We do not want a Marie Antoinette countryside. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Devon, North (Mr. Speller) about the need to ensure that planners take the problems seriously. I underline also what he has said about farmers looking after the land.
    I have sympathy with the belief of my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir J. Farr) that we should have the ability to de-intensify. I am sure that he will be
    1130
    comforted to know that if his amendments had been accepted and written into the Bill the Ministry would not have had powers additional to those that it already has. Under the European Communities' extensification plans, we would be able, by laying orders before the House, to do exactly what my hon. Friend wishes. I ask him to allow us to proceed in a way that makes sense. We are committed to present a system of set-aside and a system for the extensification of holdings. We must proceed in that way in accordance with the timetable that has been laid down by the Community, which is one that we would wish to follow.
    The set-aside will be established first, and that will be followed by an extensification scheme. Extensification is a more difficult task than the establishment of a set-aside scheme for it involves a form of monitoring that we have not yet crack painted. I think that my hon. Friend will agree that there is a real problem. How should we lay a reasonable system that will satisfy the Public Accounts Committee upon a scheme for extensification? It is difficult to determine the base line and thereby to demonstrate that there has been a real diminution in production in those terms. We have not yet produced the answer, but I hope that we shall be able to do so.
    Mr. William Ross: I apologise for intervening at such a late stage in the Minister's remarks. I wish him to appreciate that the planting of trees is a long-term project. If it is found after 14 or 15 years, for example, that the land is needed for other purposes, we shall not be justified in cutting down the trees at that stage. Furthermore, it will not be easy to bring the land back into production. It will be a costly business, however, to wait until the trees grow to maturity and then to bring the land back into production. For example, all the roots will have to be removed. If there is to be a land bank, as it were, and extensification, surely sheep grazing will be a more reasonable approach.
    Mr. Gummer: The hon. Gentleman is asking me to take an alternative course when I believe that we must take both approaches. As my hon. Friend the Member for Holland with Boston (Sir. R. Body) has said, we are talking of large areas and a wide range of considerations. There is no one answer, and woodland can be only one part of our approach. I have no doubt that other elements of it will be extensification, set-aside and diversification. There will be low-input farming and some organic farming. If we allow woodlands to be a part of our approach, that does not mean that we remove permanently the possibility of agriculture being introduced within that scheme. Of course, it would not be easy to return the land to agriculture directly. Indeed, it would not be possible to do so for some time.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Holland with Boston talked about moorland. We have framed the Bill extremely carefully and its provisions have been changed very much from the original proposals to try to meet the problems that my hon. Friend has in mind. That is why we have talked about improved grassland, although there is a restricted amount of land that can be used for that purpose. In considering grant aid for the planting of woodland, we would not agree to provide it if we considered that there were important environmental

    1131
    reasons against doing so. The arguments that my hon. Friend advanced are precisely those that we shall be taking into account.
    I am loth to give a guarantee that in no circumstances will there be a slip-up. I do not intend that moorland that should be an open area should be turned into woodland. That is not the purpose of the Bill, and I can assure my hon. Friend that we shall carefully keep in mind the responsibility that the Government placed with the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food for the first time in history to take as one of its requirements environmental needs as well as direct agriculture needs and food production.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East (Mr. Paice) pressed the point of monitoring. I hope that I have answered that. I understand his question on loss of income. We will be reviewing the payments. We made it quite clear that after three years we would do so. It will not be tied to the cost of living because that would be the wrong way of looking at it and I cannot guarantee that we would be increasing the figures. However, we shall certainly be reviewing the payments, as he asked.
    The hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Davies) asked a range of questions. We intend to use the experience of the ESAs. He was gracious enough to say that experience had shown that his original fear, which was that the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food was the wrong body to control the ESAs and that it should perhaps be done through a third party such as the Countryside Commission, was groundless. I hope that I can ask him to accept that his fears may be groundless in other areas. [Interruption.] I hope that time will tell and that in the future the hon. Gentleman will not be as unhappy as he is now. He will discover that, where there is any doubt or concern, we will take the necessary steps to consult people
    1132
    who can give us advice. We intend to be careful about conservation needs and to ensure that proper decisions are made. Those decisions will be taken particularly carefully when it comes to environmentally important areas.
    The hon. Gentleman's concerns on mixed planting and other matters are not well-founded. However, I shall look at them again, as he asked in the preparation of the statutory instruments.
    This Bill has been welcomed on both sides of the House. It is modest only in the sense that it is experimental and because we have restricted it by insisting on cash limitation, hectarage limitation and other things to ensure that we do not run before we can walk. However, it is not modest in that it makes a major change in the way in which the Government look at the countryside and the agricultural community. That change has been made necessary by current conditions and we have made the change before almost all our continental partners. In that we can honestly say that we are leading Europe to a better understanding of a proper partnership between the farmer and the conservationist.
    We believe that the farmer is the best conservationist of the countryside. To be that, he must, in a time of surplus, be helped because he will need to change not only his farming methods but his habits and the habits of his forefathers. He will have to see woodlands as a crop. He will have to look for methods of diversification. He will need to see new ways of using the land. All that demands of the farmer a considerable amount of change. The Bill, when it becomes an Act and when the statutory instruments are laid, will give him a chance to make that change more effectively.
    Question put and agreed to.
    Bill read the Third time, and passed, without amendment.

    Green Belt (Urban Development)
    Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Lennox-Boyd.]
    11.43 pm
    Mr. Ivor Stanbrook: Mr. Deputy Speaker, with my agreement and that of my hon. Friend the Minister, my hon. Friends the Members for Beckenham (Sir P. Goodhart) and for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims) hope to catch your eye during the debate. I see also that my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Wolfson), who I know is particularly interested in this subject, is present, as is my hon. Friend the Member for South Hams (Mr. Steen).
    The debate concerns the green belt and its necessary preservation. Fifty years ago, something happened which changed the lives and the environment of Londoners and provided us with a constant blessing. The London and Home Counties (Green Belt) Act 1938 was passed to protect and preserve the swathe of green land then surrounding London. From that time onwards, the urban sprawl was halted; the concrete jungle ceased to encroach on the English countryside. A simple proposition—a presumption against planning consent for urban and residential development—has sufficed to preserve London's green lungs for half a century.
    The green belt is not sacrosanct, and there have been exceptions to the general rule. Some development, consistent with the overall policy, has been allowed. There is scope for developments serving agricultural and recreational needs that retain the green fields and enable the city dweller more fully to enjoy his natural heritage.
    There is, however, constant pressure on local planning authorities in the south-east to make more land available for development and to meet the increasing demand for housing. The very attractiveness of areas such as my own, on the edge of the green belt, has increased the demand and forced up the value of existing sites or added to the pressure for infilling or backfilling, to the detriment of the local environment. Local authorities are continually urged by their residents to resist higher densities, and they try to do so, but they constantly lose cases on appeal to the Secretary of State who—all too often contrary to an approved local strategic development plan—allows higher densities and lower standards. If I have one criticism of my right hon. Friend it is that too often he appears to want to deregulate our planning controls. Deregulation is a good policy in certain fields of activity but it cannot and must not apply to planning law.
    If housing in established residential areas is growing increasingly more expensive, the landowner and farmer who owns land in the green belt on the fringe of London sees himself as living on a gold mine with nothing but the green belt policy separating him from a huge fortune. There is a lot of money to be made from getting planning consent for development in the green belt, but the public and the public interest demand that the policy be maintained.
    The green fields between urban London and the M25 motorway are precious to Londoners. They serve the ecological, social and economic needs of London and it would be an act of ministerial vandalism to destroy them by allowing them to be used for commercial or urban development. If the developers want to satisfy the
    1134
    increasing demand for housing and office premises, we should insist that they build in the existing urban areas and the inner city and not on green field sites.
    Mr. Anthony Steen: Is my hon. Friend aware that the land register already shows 100,000 acres of land in public ownership which is vacant, dormant, derelict or underutilised and which is still not being used for housebuilding? Although the Government are committed to getting rid of public vacant land, the speed at which they are doing so is such that it will not be until the year 2500 that the land will be properly used. Does my hon. Friend agree that public vacant land is one of the major problems that are causing developers to go into the green fields and into the green belt? They are not using the land that is going to waste.
    Mr. Stanbrook: That is an astonishing fact and I hope that the Government will turn potential developers' eyes towards land that is available to them and away from green field sites.
    In 1986 a farmer in my constituency who owns some 500 acres of good farming land abutting on the M25 joined forces with the Prudential corporation and put in an application for planning consent to develop his land on a scale that takes one's breath away. He proposes a huge shopping and commercial complex covering 1,700,000 sq ft of floor space with parking for 6,000 cars. The catchment area on which it will draw is expected to include places within 30 minutes' driving time, which would cover more than 2 million people. The effect would be to draw on people as far away from Orpington as Rochester, Maidstone, Tonbridge, Tunbridge Wells, Greenwich, Bexley and Lewisham.
    The effect on local shopping centres, trade, firms and businesses in my constituency and those of my hon. Friends in the London borough of Bromley would be devastating. The proposed floor space is one and a third times greater than the entire floor space of all the shopping facilities in Orpington. The traffic generation would be enormous. At peak times it would involve 30,000 to 60,000 movements in the Orpington area alone. With the addition of the service traffic required to supply such a massive development, the effect on the M25, which is already working to capacity, could be disastrous.
    The planning authority, the London borough of Bromley, refused the application. It said that development in the green belt was inappropriate, damaging to its character and likely to lead to dangerous traffic congestion. The site is in an area, on the escarpment of the north downs, of outstanding natural beauty. It is covered by public footpaths which I, my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst, Councillor Dennis Barkway, the leader of the council, and almost 4,000 local residents traversed on foot last Monday, a public holiday, in protest at the plan. The impact on local shopping areas would be annihilating. Worst of all, approval for such a scheme would drive a coach and horses through the green belt policy.
    The proposed developers have appealed. The hearing of the appeal will be on 21 June. Is it conceivable that such a scheme could be allowed to succeed? Do the Government contemplate abandoning the green belt policy? Surely not, and yet why should a huge multi-million pound corporation like the Prudential venture its capital and its reputation on a huge publicity campaign and immense legal costs if it did not expect to succeed?
    Mr. Mark Wolfson: My hon. Friend has made the point that, if permission were granted on appeal, it would drive a coach and horses through the present planning policy. Does he agree that we expect my hon. Friend the Minister to give a clear signal to the potential developers that this appeal is unlikely to succeed and that their efforts are wasted? I understand that the relevant Minister gave such a signal at an earlier stage.
    Mr. Stanbrook: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Why should we all go through the agony of doubt, fear and suspicion that the appeal might be allowed if there is no question of its being allowed? I realise that my hon. Friend the Minister will say that the Secretary of State will be called upon to act in a judicial capacity, so we cannot expect her to pronounce on the merits of the case. If so, there must be a better way of stopping the waste of public money and of satisfying the very strong feeling of outrage, than suffering a long drawn-out process extending over two years before we get a rejection of an application which should never have been made in the first place.
    I cannot contemplate the political consequences of the appeal being allowed. If it were allowed, the consequences for the Government would be devastating in the south-east. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will make it plain that the Government stand by the green belt policy and will not allow London's heritage to be sacrificed to private greed.
    Sir Philip Goodhart rose—
    Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): Order. Does the hon. Member have the Minister's consent to intervene?
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mrs. Marion Roe)indicated assent
    Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Member may proceed.
    11.53 pm
    Sir Philip Goodhart: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) on the eloquent but restrained fashion in which he put the case for the people of Bromley against the proposed development at Hewitts farm in the green belt. I must admit that I have received one letter in support of the scheme—it was sent by the planning consultants, representing the Prudential Assurance Company. But I have received scores of letters from individual constituents opposing the scheme. Virtually every residents' association in the area has told me that it considers the scheme to he an outrage.
    I realise that the Minister cannot pronounce on the merits of the case tonight, but I am encouraged by the fact that last year, in a restatement of Government policy, she said:
    "the Government have also made it clear that large retail stores simply do not belong in green belts. We have also made it clear that developers who pursue proposals for large scale retail developments in green belts to appeal and are unsuccessful may expect to have the costs of any inquiry awarded against them."—[Official Report, 24 July 1987; Vol. 120, c. 678.]
    That seems to be an excellent statement. I hope that my hon. Friend will say again tonight that costs can be awarded against the developer. I hope that she will go further in the next few months. At the moment it is far too easy for developers to appeal against a decision by a local planning committee. They might become more selective in their appeals if they knew that they invariably had to pay
    1136
    the costs of an appeal, whether successful or unsuccessful. Our only real defence against such incessant appeals is to make the appeal process more expensive for the developer.
    In this short but important debate we clearly cannot properly discuss the general issue of appeal costs, but I am confident that the Minister will be sympathetic if I write to her later.
    11.56 pm
    Mr. Roger Sims rose—
    Mr. Deputy Speaker: I take it that the hon. Gentleman has leave to intervene.
    Mr. Sims: I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) for allowing me to contribute to the debate. The site to which he has referred lies in his constituency, but the issue that we are discussing has far wider implications.
    The development proposed would affect many of the shopping centres within the borough. It would radically alter the entire rural environment in which my hon. Friend's constituents and mine live, and, of course, it would be completely contrary to the Government's green belt policy.
    In reply to a question on 19 November 1986, the then Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Waldegrave) said:
    "There is a general presumption against inappropriate development throughout the green belts".—[Official Report, 19 November 1986; Vol. 105, c. 242.]
    That policy was reiterated by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary in a debate that I initiated in July 1937 and it has been spelt out subsequently in planning policy guideline documents issued at the beginning of this year. It was further confirmed in an exchange of correspondence which the Secretary of State had with my right hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) as recently as March.
    If the Hewitts farm proposal were allowed it would be contrary to the wishes of the borough council, which has rejected it firmly; it would be contrary to the wishes of the people of the borough as represented by the 4,000 people who accompanied my hon. Friend and me and the leader of the council on our walk through the area that would be affected last Monday, and it would blow the Government's green belt policy to smithereens.
    If the proposal were allowed, how could my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State possibly resist similar applications all round London? The result would be that London would rapidly become built up from Trafalgar square in all directions to the M25.
    Yet we shall still be going through the procedure—a planning application is put in, it is rejected by the local authority, an appeal is lodged, a campaign is mounted, and there is a public inquiry accompanied by enormous anxiety at great expense. We have already spent 12 to 18 months on this issue. Why do we have to go through all this? My hon. Friend the Minister will tell us when she replies that the law requires that we should, just as she will tell us that because of the law she cannot comment on this case. That we understand, but the law does not have to require that we go through such a charade. We are in a position to alter the law. In the debate that I initiated on 24 July 1987, I urged the Government to take powers to

    1137
    designate certain parts of the green belt as inviolate for a period of years during which no planning applications would be entertained.
    My hon. Friend the Minister pleaded that there would be practical difficulties in so doing. I have to tell her that I am not persuaded by those arguments. Agreeable as it is to spend a couple of hours on a bank holiday morning in the company of my hon. Friend and the leader of the council, walking through a pleasant country area, it should not be necessary for us to do that as a means of persuading the Government to carry out their own policy. I invite my hon. Friend to look again at a way of avoiding all this cost and distress by adopting my suggestion.
    Meanwhile, the Hewitts farm proposal has provoked widespread reaction in the borough of Bromley, in the press, in correspondence, in speeches and in posters, some of it in language which I suspect would be ruled unparliamentary were I to repeat it.
    I invite the Minister to tell the Secretary of State that when the inspector's report on the inquiry into the Hewitts farm application arrives on his desk, he should respond to it with the two letter word "No."
    12.1 am
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mrs. Marion Roe): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) on his speech and my hon. Friends the Members for Beckenham (Sir P. Goodhart), for South Hams (Mr. Steen) and for Sevenoaks (Mr. Wolfson) on their contributions. I know that their concerns about the pressures for development and the future of the green belt are shared by many hon. Members, so I welcome this opportunity to set out, once again, the Government's policy and position.
    The constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington includes substantial stretches of green belt land. Having been a councillor in Bromley for three years, I have personal knowledge and experience of the area and continue to take a close interest in it. I can therefore well appreciate the great value that my hon. Friends, their constituents and visitors place on the countryside in and around the area. I am, of course, also aware that it is the very quality of this countryside, together with the general prosperity and fine residential developments in the area, that make the area so attractive to residents and developers alike.
    I make no apologies for these intense pressures for development in my hon. Friends' constituencies and in other constituencies, particularly, but not exclusively, in the south-east. Those pressures are evidence of developers' increasing wish to invest in this country's new-found and continuing prosperity. Such investment is essential to sustain economic growth and to ensure the provision of jobs, houses, shops, leisure facilities and all the other services required by a growing population.
    However understandable these pressures for development may be, we would be foolish and shortsighted to respond to them solely with economic objectives in mind. Such an approach would rapidly become self-defeating. It would cause irreparable harm to the countryside that we value so much. The Government remain fully committed to protecting that countryside.
    1138
    Our policy therefore is, as it always has been, to meet the needs of development, while protecting and enhancing the environment. This is the essential aim of the town and country planning system, which this year celebrates the 40th anniversary of its implementation. The planning system has served the country well and continues to do so. We intend to retain it, while continuing to refine it to improve its performance and efficiency.
    I accept that reconciling economic and environmental objectives is often a difficult task. It requires planning authorities, my Department's inspectors and the Secretary of State to reach judgments on finely balanced issues. My postbag shows that in planning it is impossible to reach decisions that please everyone, and I suspect many other hon. Members have similar experience.
    It is the purpose of the planning system to regulate the development and use of land in the public interest, not to protect the private interests of one person or group against the activities of another. The question that faces every planning decision-maker is how far a proposed development would affect the locality generally and whether it would affect unacceptably amenities that should be protected in the public interest. The countryside, and in particular the green belt, rank highly among such amenities.
    Normally, in the planning system, there is a presumption in favour of development unless it would cause demonstrable harm to interests of acknowledged importance. That is not the case in the green belt, however, where there is an explicit presumption against development except for a limited range of uses.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims) suggested that we might go even further and declare parts of the green belt prohibited areas for all planning applications and development. This is an interesting idea, but it would not achieve its objective. Apart from the fundamental questions that the suggestion raises about the basic principles of the planning system, the practical difficulties of defining and identifying areas of extra specially protected green belt would distractingly shift the focus of debate, without necessarily addressing the underlying issues. Moreover, the creation of first-class green belt implies also the creation of second-class green belt with a somehow inferior degree of protection. Our policy is that all green belt is special and that, while all development proposals should be treated on their merits, the developments that are likely to have merit in the green belt are very severely limited.
    The detailed policy on controlling development in the green belt, in line with the "presumption against", was first set out in its present form in 1955. We have recently restated it in planning policy guidance note 2. Incidentally, I hope that all hon. Members are aware of these excellent new digests of planning policy, which my Department introduced in January. The policy states that approval should not be given, except in very special circumstances, for the construction of new buildings, or for the change of use of existing buildings, other than for a very limited range of purposes. These purposes are agriculture and forestry, outdoor sport, cemeteries, institutions standing in extensive grounds, and other uses appropriate to a rural area. My hon. Friend will note that that list of purposes does not include major retail development.
    The planning policy guidance note to which I have just referred sets out the five purposes of green belts. They are: to check the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas; to

    1139
    safeguard the surrounding countryside from further encroachment; to prevent neighbouring towns from merging into one another; to preserve the special character of historic towns; and to assist in urban regeneration. The Government attach great importance to green belts. Since 1979 the area of approved green belt in England has more than doubled. The area of approved London green belt has increased from 760,000 acres to 1·2 million acres in the same period. There is no question of change in our policy.
    We are robust in our defence of the green belt. A corollary of this is that the needs of development must be met elsewhere, again with due sensitivity to the environmental implications. We have a range of policies designed to encourage development in areas where it will be welcomed, particularly in the inner cities, but, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said in March in his letter to my right hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine), it is simply not practicable to accommodate all development needs in this way. Some new land has to be allocated in the south-east, for housing and employment, with regard to where people wish to live and where businesses wish to locate.
    We can, I think, claim a fair measure of success in accommodating those aims. Thus, while the south-east has maintained its share of new housebuilding, this has not encroached on London's green belt or on areas of outstanding natural beauty or other statutorily protected areas. Further, the evidence shows that more and more development is taking place on land that was derelict or was vacant land in urban areas. Work done for us by the Ordnance Survey shows that in the past two years or so about 46 per cent. of all new housing throughout the country has been on this type of land, and a survey by consultants has shown that in the south-east the figure was 55 per cent. The rate at which farmland has been taken for development has fallen dramatically in recent years, and in the last five years or so has been at its lowest since records began in the 1920s.
    There is sometimes concern about the future of green belt sites which, although not built on or redundant, have deteriorated in quality and may no longer appear to warrant the description green belt. It is sometimes suggested that the improvement of such sites, and their restoration to truly green appearance, might be secured by the proceeds of allowing a small part of them to be developed for residential or commercial use. This is a dangerous path to follow and, while I must respect the doctrine of "each case on its merits", I should not wish to recommend it.
    One of the primary purposes of green belts is to separate neighbouring towns by checking the spread of large built-up areas. This purpose can be achieved almost as well by gravel pits or other so-called scruffy parts of the green belt as by a landscape of pristine fields and woodlands. To accept otherwise is almost to encourage dereliction in the green belt in the hope that planning authorities will eventually concede that even development is preferable. However, I remind the House that it is an explicit part of green belt policy that detailed green belt boundaries should not be amended or development allowed merely because the land has deteriorated or become derelict. This is not to say that such land should not be improved, but it means that its deterioration cannot justify its development.
    1140
    My hon. Friend is particularly concerned about major retail development. Our policy on major retail development in the green belt could hardly be clearer. It is most recently stated in paragraph 15 of planning policy guidance note 6, which states:
    "Proposals for major out-of-town retail development, which may be well over 100,000 sq ft and up to 1 million sq ft or more, have no place in the green belt, where there is a strong presumption against all inappropriate development. Nor are developments on that scale generally acceptable in the open countryside."
    Short of taking statutory measures to prohibit major retail development in the green belt even being considered. I doubt whether we could emphasise our policy more strongly.
    In case my hon. Friends are still not convinced, I repeat what my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning said at a conference organised by the CBI in October 1986. Speaking about the continuing flow of proposals for vast shopping and leisure complexes, he said:
    "It is difficult to see why major developers and institutional investors should be advancing these giant speculative projects that fly full in the face of long-established green belt policy —a policy to which this Government is fully committed. Any such proposal has, of course, to be considered on its merits and in the light of general policy. Some may come to me on appeal, so I must not name names. There is provision, as there must be, for exceptions to be made in very special circumstances. But by way of general policy I would say that the promoters of some of the wilder schemes have no reason to think that they will succeed in breaching green belt policy."
    That was more than 18 months ago, but it remains a waste of time for local planning authorities, local objectors and, not least, my Department's planning inspectors, to have to deal with unrealistic proposals, whether for major retail development in the green belt or for other equally misconceived schemes. As Ministers have said before, those who pursue such schemes to the point of appeal may find that the costs of any inquiry are awarded against them. Whether appellants should bear all or part of the costs of inquiries, irrespective of their justification or outcome, as my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham suggested, is an interesting proposal, and I look forward to receiving his letter on the matter.
    My hon. Friend will have noted that, so far, I have been conspicuously silent about the proposed development that was the principal subject of his speech. I am, of course, very familiar with the development proposals for the Hewitts farm site—even more so following my hon. Friend's description of them. I am also aware of the controversy that they have generated in the constituencies of my hon. Friend and his parliamentary neighbours. However, as my hon. Friend appreciates, I must keep my counsel since, as he said, the proposals are now the subject of a planning appeal currently before the Secretary of State. A number of other major retail schemes around London have reached or are approaching more or less the same stage in the planning process.
    Although I cannot comment on the merits of the Hewitts farm proposals, I can confirm the arrangements for the public inquiry that the Secretary of State has ordered to help him to determine this appeal. The inquiry is scheduled to be held at the civic centre, Rochester avenue, Bromley and to start at 10 am on Tuesday 21 June.
    In conclusion, I again thank my hon. Friend for raising this important issue tonight. Green belt policy is one of the most successful and enduring components of the planning

    1141
    system and one which, I am sure, will continue to enjoy support from hon. Members on both sides of the House. As my hon. Friend said—
    The motion having been made after Ten o'clock on Thursday 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 thirteen minutes past Twelve o'clock.

HOME DEPARTMENT

  Channel Islands
  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if the right of the individual petition has yet been ratified in accordance with article 63 of the convention with regard to the first protocol of the European convention on human rights for(a) the Bailiwick of Guernsey, (b) the Bailiwick of Jersey and (c) the Isle of Man; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  The right of individual petition in accordance with article 25 of the European convention on human rights was renewed by Guernsey and Jersey for a period of five years with effect from January 1986. The first protocol to the convention was extended to Guernsey and Jersey in February 1988.

  The Isle of Man Government decided, in 1976, not to renew the right of individual petition and reaffirmed this decision on subsequent occasions. They are currently considering whether to have the first protocol to the convention extended to the island.

  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement regarding negotiations between Her Majesty's Government and the authorities in(a) Jersey and (b) Guernsey, concerning procedures relating to presentation of petitions from these islands and certain orders of the Privy Council of 1679; and if he will seek assurances that the procedure with regard to the registration of Acts of Parliament orders or letters of the Privy Council in those islands will not be changed without prior approval of Parliament.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  Informal discussions on clarifying the procedures for appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council have taken place with the Attornys-General of Jersey and Guernsey. Any changes relating to the registration of Acts of Parliament, Orders or letters of the Privy Council would be matters requiring the approval of Her Majesty The Queen in Council.

  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether the judges rules remain applicable in(a) the Channel Islands and (b) the Isle of Man where the Police and Criminal Evidence Act does not apply; whether the judges of the courts in those islands are empowered to alter or amend the judges rules; and what proposals there are to extend the Police and Criminal Evidence Act to those islands.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  The judges rules, which have been replaced by the code of practice issued under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, do not apply in the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man and the courts in those islands have no power to amend or alter these rules. Principles similar to those laid down in the code of practice have been adopted in the islands. There is no provision whereby the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 could be extended to the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man.
  532
  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what information he has as to whether legislation has yet been introduced in(a) the Channel Islands and (b) the Isle of Man to prevent discrimination on the basis of racial or ethnic origin or sex; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  No. But I have no doubt that the island authorities will be prepared to consider such legislation if circumstances required it.

  Gillow v. United Kingdom
  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what are the financial costs incurred by the United Kingdom Government in the case of Gillow v. United Kingdom before the European Commission and Court of Human Rights; what part of those costs shall be borne by the island of Guernsey; and what measures have been taken by Her Majesty's Government as high contraction party to the convention for the island of Guernsey, to secure the rights and freedoms protected by the convention in that island in relation to the future application of the Housing Control of Occupation (Guernsey) Laws.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  The sum of £12,869, agreed as compensation and costs to the plaintiff, has been paid by the Bailiwick of Guernsey. The Bailiwick will also he asked to reimburse the United Kingdom for costs to cover the employment of counsel at Strasbourg when these have been determined. Her Majesty's Government are satisfied that Guernsey will take full cognisance of its obligations under the convention in the application of the Housing Control of Occupation (Guernsey) laws.

  British Telecom (Telephone Logs)
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what discussions he has had with British Telecom to ensure that logs of telephone calls are in a form that can easily be used, if necessary, by the police and security services; whether he is satisfied with the established procedures for allowing access to such logs; and whether he will make a statement.

  Mr. Douglas Hurd
  I am not aware of problems arising in this area.

PRIME MINISTER

  Kilmarnock
  Mr McKelvey
  To ask the Prime Minister when she next intends to visit Kilmarnock.

  The Prime Minister
  I have at present no plans to do so.

  Ramsbottom
  Mr. Burt
  To ask the Prime Minister if she has any plans to pay an official visit to Ramsbottom.

  The Prime Minister
  I have at present no plans to do so.

  Prime Minister of Iceland
  Dr. Godman
  To ask the Prime Minister if she has any plans to meet the Prime Minister of Iceland.

  The Prime Minister
  I have no plans to meet the Prime Minister of Iceland in the near future.

  Cyprus
  Mr. Cox
  To ask the Prime Minister what discussions she had during her recent meeting with the President of Cyprus as to the future of British bases in Cyprus; and if she will make a statement.

  The Prime Minister
  It is not my normal practice to give details of such discussions. President Vassiliou and I dealt with a number of matters of interest to both countries.

  Engagements
  Mr. Skinner
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 5 May.

  Mr. Mullin
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 5 May.

  Mr. Anthony Coombs
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 5 May.

  Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 5 May.

  Mr. Wigley
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 5 May.

  Mr. Pike
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 5 May.

  Mr. Stern
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 5 May.

  Mr. Tony Banks
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 5 May.

  Mr. Harry Greenway
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 5 May.

  Mr. Leigh
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 5 May.

  The Prime Minister
  This morning I presided at a meeting of the Cabinet and had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House I shall be having further meetings later today, including one with the Prime Minister of Hungary.

SCOTLAND

  Free School Meals
  Mr. Dobson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will give the numbers of children in each local education authority who received free school meals(a) because their parents were on family income supplement and (b) at the discretion of the local education authority at the latest date for which figures are available.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  This information is not held centrally.

  NHS Nurses
  Mr. Wray
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, how many(a) full-time and (b) part-time nurses work in the National Health Service in Scotland.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  The latest information, which is provisional and relates to 30 September 1987, is as follows:534

  Nursing staff in the NHS in Scotland

  Whole-time

  Part-time

  Qualified

  26,756

  14,183

  In training

  10,805

  40

  Unqualified

  8,743

  13,170

  Total

  46,304

  27,393

  Rating Reform
  Dr. Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland whether, further to his written answer on 28 January,Official Report, column 325, he will clarify the circumstances in which health boards could be designated responsible persons for the purposes of the community charge; about whom the information will he requested; and what kinds of information health boards would be required to provide.

  Mr. Lang
  Under section 17(6) of the Abolition of Domestic Rates Etc. (Scotland) Act 1987 the responsible person who is required to supply information in respect of premises for community charge registration purposes is defined as the owner-occupier or tenant-occupier of the premises or, where there is no such person, the owner or any tenant who has a lease of 12 months or more. The Act also provides that any other person may be designated as a responsible person by the community charges registration officer. In the case, for example, of nurses' homes, it is therefore possible that health boards, or one of their officers, would be, or would be designated as, responsible persons. The responsible person is required to provide the information about persons solely or mainly resident on the premises requested in the inquiry form or the supplementary inquiry form prescribed in schedules 3 and 4 of the Community Charges (Registration) (Scotland) Regulations 1988.

  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland (1) whether any official publicity material in relation to the community charge, that either has been given to members of the public on request, or has appeared in the Scottish newspapers, informs future community charge payers that their name and address may be sold without their consent or knowledge;

  (2) whether any official publicity material in relation to the community charge, that either has been given to members of the public on request, or has appeared in the Scottish newspapers, informs future community charge payers that their name and address on the register may be inspected by police, Inland Revenue, the Department of Health and Social Security and other organisations without their consent or knowledge.

  Mr. Lang
  No.

  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he will ensure that any future official publicity material in relation to the community charge will inform future community charge payers that their name and address may be sold without their consent or knowledge, and that their name and address on the register may be inspected by police, Inland Revenue, the Department of Health and Social Security and other organisations without their consent or knowledge.

  Mr. Lang
  My right hon. and learned Friend is considering whether any restriction should be put on the
  535
  availability for sale of the publicly available parts of the community charges register. It is made clear in the notice to be sent to registered persons informing them of their entry in the community charges register (schedule 1 to the Community Charges (Registration) (Scotland) Regulations 1988) that the parts of the register showing names, addresses and collective community charge mulipliers applying to certain premises will be made publicly available. My right hon. and learned Friend will consider in due course whether any further publicity should be given to these points.

  Laboratories
  Mr. Wray
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list all the laboratories now operating in Scotland with their respective specialities and the number of(a) specialised, (b) auxiliary and (c) ancillary staff, at each establishment.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  In respect of the National Health Service information is not held centrally in precisely the form requested. The available information, including manpower, is contained in "Laboratory Statistics" published by Information and Statistics Division, Scottish Health Service Common Services Agency. The information relates to individual laboratories at each establishment, in the following groups: clinical chemistry, haematology, microbiology and pathology. Copies of the latest edition, for the year ending 31 March 1985, are held in the Library.

  Retail Developments
  Mr. Carrington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many retail developments are currently the subject of planning appeals before him; and what is(a) their total square footage, (b) the number with a square footage at or above 100,000 sq ft and (c) the total square footage of the appeals in (b).

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  It is estimated that there are over 60 current appeals with a retail element of which about half are likely to have a floor area in excess of 100,000 sq ft.

  Student Fees
  Mr. Allan Stewart
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he will announce the fees to be charged to students attending Scottish institutions other than universities in the academic year 1988–89.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  For the academic year 1988–89 my right hon. and learned Friend has prescribed the following fee levels for home students and for students from other European Community (EC) countries on full-time advanced courses in the central institutions and colleges of education (fees for 1987–88 are shown in brackets):

  £

  Postgraduate courses

  1,800 (1,730)

  Undergraduate and equivalent courses

  578 (556)

  For non-advanced courses, the central institutions and colleges of education will be invited to set their own fees, by having regard to fees charged for comparable courses at local authority further education colleges.
  536
  Fees for home and other EC students on courses at local authority colleges are the responsibility of the local authorities. I understand that the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has decided to recommend fees for such students as follows:

  £

  Postgraduate courses

  1,800(1,760)

  Advanced full-time courses

  578 (556)

  Non-advanced full-time courses

  440 (360)

  For overseas students the Government's policy is that students should pay fees that cover the cost of their education. Local authorities and institutions are free to determine the fees to be charged in accordance with that policy, and in the light of their own circumstances. I understand that COSLA has decided to recommend to local authorities the following fees for students at local authority colleges paying the overseas rate who began their courses on or after 1 September 1980:

  £

  Advanced courses

  3,890 (3,720)

  Non-advanced courses

  2,145(2,055)

  Bathing Waters
  Sir Hector Monro
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will announce the results for the 1987 season of monitoring the Scottish bathing waters identified under the European Community's bathing waters directive; and if he will make a statement.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  The monitoring results for 1987 are set out in summary form in the table. Nineteen out of 23 waters monitored met the directive's standards. My Department expects to publish shortly a full report on the quality of the bathing waters during the 1986 and 1987 seasons, and I shall make a further statement at that time.

  Result table

  Nairn

  Pass

  Cullen

  Pass

  Fraserburgh

  Pass

  Aberdeen

  Pass

  Montrose

  Pass

  Arbroath

  Pass

  Carnoustie

  Pass

  St. Andrews

  Pass

  Kinghorn

  Pass

  Aberdour

  Pass

  Gullane

  Pass

  North Berwick

  Pass

  Yellowcraigs

  Pass

  Dunbar

  Pass

  Pease Bay

  Pass

  Sandyhills

  Pass

  Girvan

  Fail

  Turnberry

  Fail

  Ayr

  Fail

  Prestwick

  Pass

  Troon (South)

  Pass

  Irvine-Gailes

  Fail

  Saltcoats/Ardrossan

  Pass

EMPLOYMENT

  Information Technology Centres
  Mr. Leighton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what is the average cost per trainee at an information technology education centre; and how long does the course last.

  Mr. Nicholls
  Information technology centres provide a range of training, most of it under YTS. In 1987–88 the annual cost to the Manpower Services Commission per YTS trainee was £4,224. As with all YTS schemes, information technology centres provide up to two years of vocational training for unemployed 16-year-olds and up to one year of training for unemployed 17-year-olds.

  Job Training Scheme
  Mr. Leighton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many filled places were there on the new job training scheme on 31 March.

  Mr. Nicholls
  At 25 March 1988, the latest date for which figures are available, 30,435 formerly unemployed people were participating in the new job training scheme.

  Disposable Income
  Mr. Nigel Griffiths
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what was the aggregate disposable income in 1979, showing the median, the lowest and highest deciles, and the lower and upper quartiles, for(a) all households in the United Kingdom and (b) Greater London, in an adjusted form on the current basis, as if the housing benefit scheme had applied at that date, as provided for 1983 in the answer in the Official Report, 22 July 1987, columns 211–12.

  Mr. Lee
  It is not possible to produce estimates from the 1979 family expenditure survey on the same basis as those provided for 1983 in the Official Report, 22 July 1987, columns 211–12.

WALES

  Housing
  Mr. Wigley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales how many dwellings have been purchased by each of the local housing authorities in Wales from the private housing sector in each of the past five years.

  Mr. Grist
  The information requested is given in the following table:

  Acquisition of Dwellings by Local Authorities 1983–87

  1983

  1984

  1985

  1986

  1987

  Aberconwy

  1

  3

  4

  0

  2

  Alyn and Deeside

  15

  2

  12

  3

  2

  Arfon

  9

  18

  7

  4

  1

  Blaenau Gwent

  3

  5

  0

  4

  32

  Brecknock

  0

  0

  2

  5

  21

  Cardiff

  5

  0

  3

  5

  4

  Carmarthen

  0

  0

  5

  12

  7

  Ceredigion

  4

  7

  3

  0

  0

  Colwyn

  0

  1

  0

  0

  0

  Cynon Valley

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Delyn

  0

  0

  1

  0

  1

  538

  1983

  1984

  1985

  1986

  1987

  Dinefwr

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Dwyfor

  5

  0

  0

  4

  9

  Glyndwr

  0

  1

  1

  0

  0

  Islwyn

  1

  0

  4

  1

  1

  Llanelli

  0

  1

  0

  1

  0

  Lliw Valley

  2

  0

  0

  0

  9

  Meirionnydd

  3

  0

  0

  1

  1

  Merthyr Tydfil

  0

  4

  0

  62

  1

  Monmouth

  0

  0

  5

  12

  19

  Montgomeryshire

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Neath

  14

  0

  5

  40

  26

  Newport

  10

  4

  1

  61

  89

  Ogwr

  6

  3

  44

  39

  67

  Port Talbot

  0

  7

  0

  0

  0

  Preseli

  15

  26

  17

  12

  3

  Radnor

  0

  0

  0

  2

  4

  Rhondda

  0

  0

  0

  0

  1

  Rhuddlan

  0

  0

  1

  0

  0

  Rhymney Valley

  6

  3

  6

  11

  64

  South Pembrokeshire

  0

  1

  2

  0

  0

  Swansea

  7

  2

  1

  3

  9

  Taff-Ely

  3

  0

  0

  15

  3

  Torfaen

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Vale of Glamorgan

  0

  0

  2

  5

  7

  Wrexham

  0

  0

  0

  0

  1

  Ynys Mon

  4

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Total

  113

  88

  126

  302

  384

  Mr. Barry Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will provide additional finance for Alyn and Deeside district council for housing repairs, maintenance and rehabilitation schemes; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Grist
  Alyn and Deeside district council receives an appropriate share of the capital allocation which we make to housing authorities, and resources are also made available towards the activities of the housing associations in the area. The authority has not bid against additional resources the Department has available for enveloping and block repair schemes.

  Free School Meals
  Mr. Dobson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will give the number of children in each local education authority who received free school meals(a) because their parents were in receipt of family income supplement and (b) at the discretion of the local education authority, at the latest date for which figures are available.

  Mr. Wyn Roberts
  In September 1987 an estimated 82,236 children received school meals because their parents were in receipt of supplementary benefit or family income support. But information about the numbers in each category is not available. A further 7,314 children received free school meals at the discretion of the local education authority.

  Nurses and Midwives
  Mr. Wigley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales (1) if he will list for each year since 1981 the number of whole-time equivalent qualified nurses working in Wales in(a) hospital maternity units and (b) special care baby units;

  (2) if he will list for each year since 1981 the number of whole-time equivalent qualified midwives working in Wales (a) in hospital maternity units, (b) in special care baby units, (c) in education and (d) as community midwives.
  539
  Mr. Grist
  [holding answer 26 April 1988]: Information taken primarily from the NHS payroll is not sufficiently detailed to distinguish reliably between the occupational categories of nurses and midwives requested.

  Tropical Woods
  Mr. Geraint Howells
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what advice his Department is giving to local authorities and other institutional users of tropical woods in Wales about the use of wood from unsustainable sources; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Peter Walker
  [holding answer 3 May 1988]: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply given to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Ms. Walley) by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Industry on 21 April, at column 534.

ATTORNEY-GENERAL

  Crown Prosecution Service
  Mr. Frank Field
  To ask the Attorney-General if, pursuant to the answer to the hon. Member for Birkenhead on 26 April,Official Report, column 64 he will set out the criteria the Crown Prosecution Service uses in judging whether time occupied by earlier court proceedings has occasioned staleness of a significance sufficient for criminal proceedings not to be instituted.

  The Attorney-General
  Each case will be viewed in the light of its particular circumstances and of the considerations set out in paragraph 8, in particular, of the code for Crown prosecutors to which my previous answer referred.

  The code for Crown prosecutors may be found in the annual report made by the Director of Public Prosecutions to the Attorney-General. Copies of the director's first report were placed in the Libraries of both Houses on 13 August 1987. This was announced on 21 October 1987, at column 743.

EDUCATION AND SCIENCE

  Pupil-Teacher Ratios
  Mr. Beggs
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what is the present pupil-teacher ratio for(a) primary and (b) secondary schools in England and Wales.

  Mr. Dunn
  In January 1987 the pupil-teacher ratios in maintained primary and secondary schools in England were 21·9 and 15·6, respectively. Information for schools in Wales is the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales.

  Polytechnics
  Mr. Blunkett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will list those colleges which have given a definite indication of their intention to apply to join the Polytechnics Central Funding Council sector by 30 April and whose full-time equivalent enrolment numbers for courses of advanced further education on 1 November 1985 did not exceed 55 per cent. of their total full-time equivalent enrolment numbers on that date.

  Mr. Jackson
  The following colleges have given a provisional indication of their wish that the Secretary of 540
  State should exercise the power conferred by clause 106(1) of the Education Reform Bill to incorporate them within the PCFC sector with effect from 1 April 1989, subject to the Bill's obtaining the Royal Assent:

  Buckinghamshire College of Higher Education

  Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology

  Gloucestershire College of Arts and Technology

  Harrow College of Higher Education

  Luton College of Higher Education

  Further Education Colleges
  Mr. Devlin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science when he will issue guidance on the way in which the governing bodies of further education colleges should be reformed so as to meet the requirements of clauses 132 and 133 of the Education Reform Bill; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Kenneth Baker
  I am today issuing draft guidance which sets out how I would expect college governing bodies to be reformed and their instruments of government revised in order to meet the requirements of clauses 132 and 133 of the Education Reform Bill if it receives Royal Assent in its present form. The draft guidance is being issued now in order to inform discussion of the further education clauses during the remaining stages of the Bill's passage through Parliament, to help local education authorities, colleges and others to prepare for the reconstitution of governing bodies as envisaged by the Bill, and to give all concerned an early opportunity to comment. Draft guidance on the provisions I would expect to see contained in the planning and delegation schemes envisaged by clause 121 of the Bill was issued on 21 April.

  Copies of the draft guidance have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses and in the Vote Office. They are also being sent to local education authorities, further and higher education colleges, and a range of interested bodies, with a request for any comments by 22 July 1988.

TRADE AND INDUSTRY

  Regional Development Grant
  Mr. William Powell
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster how many applications were awaiting determination on 1 April for(a) regional development grant and (b) RSFA in the Corby development area.

  Mr. Atkins
  The number of applications awaiting determination on 1 April 1988 for the Corby development area was:

  Number

  (a) Regional Development Grant

  245

  (b) RSA

  9

  Consumer Protection
  Dr. Reid
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what representations he has received seeking new legislation to protect consumers; and how he intends to respond.

  Mr. Butcher
  Suggestions for new legislation to protect consumers are received from a wide group of organisations and individuals. I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave on 4 February to the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling), which set out information on plans for new legislation for the protection of consumers.

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Bill
  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what steps are being taken to extend the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Bill[Lords] to (a) the Channel Islands and (b) the Isle of Man: and what other measures are being taken to ensure that the intended purposes of this legislation are not avoided by persons or businesses in the United Kingdom, based in those island territories.

  Mr. Butcher
  Part I of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Bill contains provision under which it may be extended to the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man by Order in Council. In accordance with normal practice it will be for the islands themselves to decide if and to what extent it should be so extended. The Isle of Man is understood to be considering introducing new legislation of its own on copyright, in parallel with the United Kingdom Bill, and in this event extension of the provisions of the Bill is unlikely to be appropriate.

  Financial Services Act 1987
  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what discussions have taken place with the authorities of(a) the Channel Islands, and (b) the Isle of Man regarding the implementation of the Financial Services Act in those territories; and if he will make a statement on the nature of these discussions in respect of (i) investment businesses and (ii) other businesses.

  Mr. Maude
  Guernsey and the Isle of Man have been designated under section 130 of the Financial Services Act as having a law in relation to insurance companies which affords adequate protection to policyholders and potential policyholders. My Department has also had discussions with the authorities of Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man regarding the possible designation of those territories under section 87 of the Financial Services Act in relation to collective investment schemes.

  Businesses (Houghton and Washington)
  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what figures are available for the growth in the number of businesses in Houghton and Washington.

  Mr. Atkins
  Comprehensive information on the lines requested is not available. However, data collected on the setting up of new manufacturing firms employing more than 10 people show that 20 such firms have opened since January 1985 currently employing more than 1,600 people. The full employment implications of these openings, particularly the inward investment cases, have yet to fully work through. For example, excluded from this data is the forecast of an additional 2,400 jobs at Nissan to bring the total employment to 3,500 by 1992.

  Manufacturing Investment (North-East)
  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what are the figures for manufacturing investment in the north-east for each year since 1979.

  Mr. Atkins
  The available information is shown in the following table:542

  Net capital expenditure1 in manufacturing industry in the North-East2 at 1980 prices

  Year

  Net capital expenditure £ million

  1979

  600

  1980

  396

  1981

  254

  1982

  247

  1983

  247

  1984

  281

  1985

  350

  1986

  297

  1 Excluding leased assets.

  2 The North-East comprises Cleveland, Durham, Northumberland and Tyne and Wear.

  Source: Annual Census of Production.

  Technology Industries (North-East)
  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what plans he has to encourage the growth of new technology industries in the north-east of England.

  Mr. Atkins
  Industry in the north-east will be greatly encouraged by the enterprise initiative, with major new initiatives covering design, marketing, quality, manufacturing technology, business planning, business information systems, exports, research and technology and business education backed up by investment and innovation grants for small firms, and regional selective assistance where clearly necessary to bring about good projects.

  New and existing high technology firms and industries will also be encouraged by the work of other organisations in the region receiving support from DTI and from other Government Departments, including the Northern Development Company, English Estates North and the urban development corporations. Taken together with the priority given to new technology by the city action team and the task forces, and the work of others in the region involved in technology transfer and industry/education, this represents a strongly supportive environment and infrastructure for high technology industry to succeed in the north-east.

  Gross Domestic Product
  Mr. Wigley
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster if he will give the increase for domestic product per capita in each of the regions of the United Kingdom since 1979; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Atkins
  Estimates of gross domestic product per capita in each of the regions of the United Kingdom were published in the November 1987 edition of Economic Trends, a copy of which is available in the House Library.

  Increases in gross domestic product per capita between 1979 and 1986 are provided for the specified regions in the table:

  Gross domestic product1 per capita from 1979 to 19862

  1979

  19862

  Increase £/head

  Increase per cent.

  North

  2,701

  5,142

  2,441

  90

  Yorkshire and Humberside

  2,754

  5,215

  2,461

  89

  East Midlands

  2,840

  5,378

  2,538

  89

  East Anglia

  2,778

  5,643

  2,865

  103

  543

  1979

  19862

  Increase £/head

  Increase per cent.

  South East

  3,417

  6,575

  3,158

  92

  South West

  2,749

  5,380

  2,631

  96

  West Midlands

  2,828

  5,069

  2,241

  79

  North West

  2,854

  5,232

  2,378

  83

  Wales

  2,618

  4,795

  2,177

  83

  Scotland

  2,829

  5,234

  2,405

  85

  Northern Ireland

  2,316

  3,889

  1,573

  68

  United Kingdom3

  2,964

  5,597

  2,633

  89

  1 Gross domestic product at factor cost, current prices.

  2 1986 figures are provisional.

  3 Excluding Continental Shelf.

  Steel and Aluminium Forgings Industry
  Mr. Leigh
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what was the output of the steel and aluminium forgings industry in(a) 1987 and (b)

  Mr. Atkins
  The figures are as follows. Separate figures are not available for aluminium forgings.

  Deliveries of forgings

  000's tonnes

  Steel forgings

  Other forgings

  1986

  19·7

  174·3

  1987

  23·3

  223·2

  Source: ISSB (steel forgings).

  British Forgings Industry Association (other forgings).

  Opportunity Japan Campaign
  Mr. Barry Field
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster if he will make a statement on his Department's Opportunity Japan campaign.

  Mr. Alan Clark
  The Opportunity Japan campaign is being mounted by senior British business men with the support of the Department of Trade and Industry and the British Overseas Trade Board. It will aim to heighten United Kingdom companies' awareness of the increasing opportunities offered by the strategically important Japanese market and will stress the arguments for tackling it now with the appropriate long-term commitment.

  This message will be elaborated by His Royal Highness The Duke of Kent, vice chairman of the British Overseas Trade Board, Cabinet Ministers and business men experienced in Japan at briefing meetings for targeted company chief executives. These will be held in June and July at venues throughout the country.

  Scottish and Newcastle Brewery plc
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster whether the Scottish and Newcastle company has filed accounts and an annual return for the last financial year with Companies House.

  Mr. Maude
  Scottish and Newcastle Brewery plc filed accounts made up to 3 May 1987 with Companies House, Edinburgh, on 8 September 1987 and an annual return made up to 10 September 1987 on 22 October 1987.

  These documents are available for inspection.

DEFENCE

  Heanor Hospital, Derbyshire
  Mr. Oppenheim
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he has received any representations regarding the status of Heanor hospital, Derbyshire, as a war memorial.

  Mr. Freeman
  I have recently received a letter from my hon. Friend about this and I will write to him shortly. No other representations have been received to date.

  Israel
  Mr. Cummings
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what military assistance has been given to Israel by the United Kingdom since 1982; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Ian Stewart
  Military assistance for Israel has been limited since the imposition of arms sales restrictions in 1982. Israel continues to pay for some places on United Kingdom training courses. All requests for training and exchanges of information are considered on a case-by-case basis.

  Gibraltar (Shootings)
  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on his negotiations with the Gibraltar coroner on how three SAS men will give their evidence into the deaths of three IRA terrorists without revealing their identities at the inquest.

  Mr. Ian Stewart
  No discussions about arrangements for military personnel to give evidence to the inquest have yet taken place.

  Chemical Warfare Establishments
  Mr. Page
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence whether he has yet made arrangements for the exchange of visits between the Chemical Defence Establishment at Porton Down and the Soviet chemical warfare facility at Shikhany.

  Mr. Ian Stewart
  An exchange of visits between the Chemical Defence Establishment (CDE) at Porton Down and the Soviet chemical warfare facility at Shikhany was originally suggested by the United Kingdom in 1986. At that time the Soviet Union had not yet acknowledged that it possessed chemical warfare (CW) stocks, but it did so in early 1987. It accepted the idea of an exchange of visits in principle towards the end of last year.

  Arrangements have now been made for the Soviet Union to send an official team to visit Porton Down from 24 to 26 May, as the first part of the exchange of visits. In return, a United Kingdom team will visit Shikhany in July for an equivalent period. These visits are designed to improve confidence and understanding between Britain and the USSR in the context of the continuing negotiations of the conference on disarmament in Geneva for a comprehensive and global ban on chemical weapons, which is one of NATO's arms control priorities. They will involve the exchange of scientific, technical and military information on CW-related matters.

  Since the United Kingdom abandoned its chemical weapons capability in the 1950s, the role of the CDE is

  545
  research into protective measures for United Kingdom armed forces for defensive purposes. The Soviet CW complex at Shikhany, on the other hand, is part of their substantial capability for the research, development and production of chemical weapons.

  The programme at Porton Down will be designed to maximise the opportunities for the exchange of information and for building confidence between the two sides. In addition to the visit to CDE, it will include a tour of the other facilities and organisations at Porton Down, including the United Kingdom defence nuclear biological and chemical centre and the DHSS public health laboratory service centre for applied micro-biological research. At CDE the facilities to be visited will include research and trials units, and the recently constructed facility for the destruction of old CW agents. It is intended that the full range of CW-related issues should be discussed during the visit, including production, assessment of the CW hazard, storage, trials, detection, protection, monitoring, decontamination, medical countermeasures and disposal.

  NHS directly employed staff

  Trent Regional Health Authority

  Whole-time equivalents1

  District health authorities

  Ancillary

  Nursing2 and midwifery

  Medical3 and dental

  Administrative4 and clerical

  Others5

  Total

  At 30 September 1982

  North Derbyshire

  722

  1,875

  84

  293

  320

  3,294

  South Derbyshire

  1,672

  3,939

  202

  891

  1,216

  7,920

  Leicestershire (T)

  2,803

  6,176

  574

  1,479

  1,573

  12,604

  North Lincolnshire

  1,103

  2,272

  123

  515

  794

  4,807

  South Lincolnshire

  813

  1,803

  96

  384

  334

  3,431

  Bassetlaw

  219

  591

  35

  139

  124

  1,107

  Central Nottinghamshire

  1,113

  2,019

  99

  440

  489

  4,160

  Nottingham (T)

  2,702

  5,181

  557

  1,510

  1,938

  11,887

  Barnsley

  623

  1,445

  109

  389

  329

  2,896

  Doncaster

  778

  2,311

  126

  457

  392

  4,063

  Rotherham

  712

  1,563

  87

  361

  344

  3,068

  Sheffield (T)

  3,183

  6,092

  629

  1,507

  1,554

  12,964

  RHA HQ and HQ units

  122

  90

  *780

  656

  830

  2,477

  Regional total

  16,564

  35,354

  63,500

  9,019

  10,237

  74,674

  At 30 September 1983

  North Derbyshire

  729

  1,913

  83

  315

  342

  3,383

  South Derbyshire

  1,619

  3,860

  208

  839

  1,249

  7,774

  Leicestershire (T)

  2,727

  6,065

  596

  1,411

  1,619

  12,419

  North Lincolnshire

  1,052

  2,260

  110

  537

  800

  4,759

  South Lincolnshire

  809

  1,874

  98

  401

  354

  3,536

  Bassetlaw

  219

  597

  35

  144

  126

  1,120

  Central Nottinghamshire

  1,116

  2,038

  101

  435

  501

  4,191

  Nottingham (T)

  2,590

  5,168

  564

  1,412

  1,949

  11,684

  Barnsley

  604

  1,454

  111

  373

  328

  2,869

  Doncaster

  766

  2,318

  125

  444

  409

  4,061

  Rotherham

  708

  1,532

  93

  348

  352

  3,033

  Sheffield (T)

  3,101

  6,068

  649

  1,431

  1,573

  12,822

  RHA HQ and HQ units

  118

  85

  *815

  930

  826

  2,774

  Regional total

  16,158

  35,230

  63,586

  9,020

  10,428

  74,423

  At 30 September 1984

  North Derbyshire

  788

  1,964

  91

  356

  404

  3,602

  South Derbyshire

  1,479

  3,867

  214

  860

  1,325

  7,744

  Leicestershire (T)

  2,580

  6,017

  592

  1,488

  1,765

  12,442

  North Lincolnshire

  945

  2,293

  111

  541

  820

  4,710

  South Lincolnshire

  744

  1,905

  95

  422

  380

  3,546

  Bassetlaw

  207

  624

  32

  149

  152

  1,163

  Central Nottinghamshire

  1,026

  2,071

  108

  474

  550

  4,229

  SOCIAL SERVICES
  Mr. Butler
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services whether his departmental budget includes any sums earmarked for HIV testing of pregnant mothers.

  Mr. Newton
  No. However, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said in his announcement on 3 November 1987 about future spending plans for health and personal social services, the additional money for AIDS over £50 million was intended, among other things, to help develop preventive, counselling and diagnostic services. A copy of the announcement has been placed in the Library.

  Staffing (Trent Region)
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will list the staffing levels in each health authority within the Trent region for the last five years in the categories(a) ancillary posts, (b) nursing, (c) medical dental, (d) administration and clerical, and (e) other grades, including ambulance staff and technicians.

  Mr. Newton
  The information requested is shown in the tables.
  547

  District health authorities

  Ancillary

  Nursing2 and midwifery

  Medical3 and dental

  Administrative4 and clerical

  Others5

  Total

  Nottingham (T)

  2,299

  5,251

  554

  1,449

  2,026

  11,579

  Barnsley

  556

  1,474

  108

  371

  344

  2,853

  Doncaster

  711

  2,301

  129

  439

  434

  4,012

  Rotherham

  648

  1,593

  87

  354

  377

  3,058

  Sheffield (T)

  2,851

  6,098

  668

  1,473

  1,646

  12,736

  RHA HQ and HQ units

  110

  86

  *870

  952

  800

  2,818

  Regional total

  14,942

  35,545

  63,656

  9,328

  11,020

  74,492

  At 30 September 1985

  North Derbyshire

  729

  2,052

  97

  383

  439

  3,700

  South Derbyshire

  1,377

  3,876

  203

  825

  1,328

  7,609

  Leicestershire (T)

  2,454

  6,289

  636

  1,456

  1,819

  12,654

  North Lincolnshire

  854

  2,247

  123

  497

  850

  4,570

  South Lincolnshire

  702

  1,965

  98

  430

  400

  3,596

  Bassetlaw

  194

  664

  36

  154

  165

  1,213

  Central Nottinghamshire

  966

  2,136

  109

  452

  557

  4,220

  Nottingham (T)

  2,151

  5,506

  581

  1,387

  2,096

  11,721

  Barnsley

  505

  1,551

  107

  348

  353

  2,863

  Doncaster

  667

  2,325

  117

  422

  442

  3,973

  Rotherham

  623

  1,668

  105

  332

  390

  3,118

  Sheffield (T)

  2,672

  6,307

  662

  1,444

  1,677

  12,763

  RHA HQ and HQ Units

  97

  85

  *885

  885

  819

  2,770

  Regional total

  13,990

  36,671

  63,759

  9,014

  11,335

  74,768

  At 30 September 1986

  North Derbyshire

  624

  2,128

  107

  402

  492

  3,752

  South Derbyshire

  1,284

  3,855

  203

  830

  1,335

  7,506

  Leicestershire (T)

  2,196

  6,349

  640

  1,440

  1,838

  12,463

  North Lincolnshire

  828

  2,316

  114

  499

  867

  4,623

  South Lincolnshire

  637

  2,022

  93

  422

  423

  3,597

  Bassetlaw

  190

  687

  37

  134

  161

  1,210

  Central Nottinghamshire

  885

  2,193

  101

  449

  573

  4,200

  Nottingham (T)

  1,976

  5,339

  586

  1,247

  2,053

  11,200

  Barnsley

  488

  1,614

  102

  330

  367

  2,901

  Doncaster

  631

  2,432

  103

  427

  464

  4,057

  Rotherham

  584

  1,768

  101

  332

  412

  3,197

  Sheffield (T)

  2,555

  6,327

  684

  1,448

  1,729

  12,743

  RHA HQ and HQ Units

  97

  93

  *907

  940

  827

  2,864

  Regional total

  12,973

  37,122

  63,778

  8,900

  11,539

  74,313

  Source: DHSS annual censuses of NHS medical and non-medical manpower.

  1 All figures are independently rounded to the nearest whole-time equivalent.

  2 Includes agency staff.

  3 Includes permanent paid, honorary and locum staff. Excludes consultants from non-teaching districts and senior registrars from all districts—these staff have their contracts with the regional health authority and are shown at * above.

  4 Includes general managers.

  5 Professional and technical, works, maintenance and ambulance staff.

  6 Includes senior staff (see note 3) whose contracts are held by the regional health authority.

  Waltham Forest (Hospital Beds)
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will list the numbers of(a) acute and (b) care of the elderly beds in each hospital in the Waltham Forest district in 1975 and in each year since 1979.

  Mrs. Currie
  The information requested is given in the table.

  The average daily number of available beds for the acute and geriatric specialties in each hospital in Waltham Forest DHA

  Average available beds

  Name of hospital

  Year

  Acute

  Geriatric

  Chingford Hospital

  1975

  79·8

  5·4

  1979

  78·2

  20·1

  1980

  56·1

  50·9

  1981

  44·4

  61·1

  1982

  42·0

  59·3

  1983

  40·3

  41·6

  548

  Average available beds

  Name of hospital

  Year

  Acute

  Geriatric

  1984

  32·6

  43·8

  1985

  33·0

  45·0

  1986

  19·0

  45·7

  Connaught Hospital (closed 1977)

  1975

  111·5

  —

  Harts Hospital(closed 26 May 1984)

  1975

  62·0

  —

  1979

  15·4

  52·8

  1980

  14·3

  47·4

  1981

  17·4

  57·4

  1982

  20·0

  58·0

  1983

  20·0

  58·0

  1984

  3·2

  18·4

  Langthorne Hospital

  1975

  —

  460·5

  1979

  —

  350·4

  1980

  —

  356·6

  1981

  —

  359·6

  1982

  —

  339·6

  549

  Average available beds

  Name of hospital

  Year

  Acute

  Geriatric

  1983

  —

  296·9

  1984

  —

  222·0

  1985

  —

  213·5

  1986

  —

  194·8

  Wanstead Hospital

  1975

  158·1

  —

  1979

  150·6

  —

  1980

  146·7

  —

  1981

  134·7

  —

  1982

  120·4

  —

  1983

  134·1

  —

  1984

  82·4

  22·5

  1985

  98·3

  23·5

  1986

  106·2

  21·3

  Whipps Cross Hospital

  1975

  680·0

  82·6

  1979

  645·0

  83·0

  1980

  644·5

  64·4

  1981

  636·3

  54·3

  1982

  659·7

  49·9

  1983

  640·4

  70·1

  1984

  589·5

  116·0

  1985

  572·7

  114·8

  1986

  568·7

  121·5

  Woodford Jubilee Hospital (closed August 1986)

  1975

  45·0

  —

  1979

  46·4

  —

  1980

  45·1

  —

  1981

  29·2

  —

  1982

  46·1

  —

  1983

  46·4

  —

  1984

  35·0

  —

  1985

  21·0

  —

  Forest Hospital

  1975

  39·8

  —

  1979

  39·1

  —

  1980

  37·2

  —

  1981

  39·6

  —

  1982

  36·6

  —

  1983

  14·8

  —

  1984

  34·0

  —

  1985

  29·7

  —

  1986

  19·2

  —

  Lugano Nursing Home (closed 31 May 1983)

  1975

  26·0

  —

  1979

  26·0

  —

  1980

  26·0

  —

  1981

  26·0

  —

  1982

  24·7

  —

  1983

  10·8

  —

  NHS Property
  Mr. Ernie Ross
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services what is his estimate of the total cost of the work requiring to be carried out on National Health Service properties identified by the National Audit Office report of 28 March, HC 405.

  Mrs. Currie
  The notional cost of bringing all National Health Service properties in England up to an adequate condition is estimated to be of the order of £1·8 billion. It would be wasteful to devote resources to bring every property to an adequate condition, since some are empty and awaiting disposal and some are planned for replacement. In England the NHS target is to have 70 per cent. of properties in an adequate condition and at present 68 per cent. are considered to be so.

  Social Security Reform
  Mr. Jack
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will give details of the changes to social security benefits which were announced on 27 April.

  Mr. Scott
  The measures announced last week included changes to the rules of the housing benefit, income support and family credit schemes and arrangements to provide transitional protection to those claimants in vulnerable groups who have lost significant sums at the point of change to the new schemes.

  First, we propose to increase the limit on the amount of capital which renders a claimant ineligible for receipt of housing benefit to £8,000. Subject to the necessary consultation with local authorities and others, this change will be made as soon as possible to take effect from the date when the regulations become effective.

  Secondly, some minor changes are being made to the detailed rules of income support and, where applicable, housing benefit and family credit. In particular, we are amending the procedures for taking account of the value of a home no longer occupied by a claimant: for example, because the claimant has been admitted to long-term residential care or has left the marital home because the marriage has broken down. There will now be a period of 26 weeks to allow for the disposal of the property, with provision for extension in exceptional cases of genuine difficulty. Other detailed changes, including those to provide transitional protection to people affected by the changes in rules relating to full-time work, are described in my reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst) on 28 April. at columns 253–54.

  The third main change is the introduction of a measure of transitional protection for pensioners, including those in receipt of a widow's pension, long-term sick and disabled people (including those in receipt of industrial injuries benefit), lone parents and families with children who have lost significant sums in housing benefit as a result of the changes introduced on 1 April. The scheme will include those in the relevant groups with capital between £6,000 and £8,000 who will have lost all entitlement to housing benefit between 1 April and the operative date of the change to the capital rule.

  The precise way in which assessments will be carried out will be decided in the light of detailed discussions with the representatives of local authorities about the information that can readily be provided. The main basis for payments will be a comparison between the cash sum received by claimants as housing benefit and housing benefit supplement immediately before 1 April and their present cash amount of housing benefit. For those affected by the change to the capital rules the comparison will be with the cash entitlement after the new limit of £8,000 is applied. The comparison will be adjusted to take account of the minimum contribution claimants are required to make to domestic rates which will not be eligible for any protection beyond that already included in the personal allowances. Transitional payments will be designed to ensure that the resulting cash difference does not exceed £2·50 a week. Payments of family income supplement and family credit will be taken into account in making the comparison, with an allowance for the loss of entitlement to free school meals.

  These transitional payments will be made from a new departmental central unit to be located in Glasgow.

  551
  Payments will be made monthly, or less frequently for small amounts, continuing unless there is a significant change in the claimant's circumstances. They will not be uprated and, as is usual with transitional arrangements, will be phased out as increases in benefits and other changes reduce the necessity for them. The period of phasing will vary from case to case, but for the larger losses protection may be necessary for some time. The new unit will not be fully operational for some weeks, but detailed procedures for claiming these payments will be announced as soon as possible and payments will be backdated to 1 April.

  We estimate that the full benefit cost of these measures will be some £100 million in the current financial year. Parliamentary approval for the payments will be sought in a Supplementary Estimate; pending that approval, urgent expenditure of up to £25 million will be met by repayable advances from the Contingencies Fund. The provision for administrative costs of local authorities in paying housing benefit will also be adjusted as necessary to reflect additional work arising from these changes.

  Family Credit
  Mr. John Marshall
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services what representations he has received about the introduction of family credit.

  Mr. Scott
  The introduction of family credit has been widely welcomed.

  Housing Benefit
  Mr. Kirkwood
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will publish in the Official Report the administrative arrangements to be used to implement the amendments to the housing benefit regulations announced by him on 27 April; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Portillo
  I refer the hon. Member to my reply to the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) on 3 May, at column 424.

  South Manchester Community Health Council
  Mr. Alfred Morris
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services when he will be responding to the correspondence sent to him by the right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe, on matters raised by the South Manchester community health council; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Moore
  I replied to the right hon. Member on 28 April.

  Community Care
  Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services what representations he has received on the implications of the Griffiths report on care in the community.

  Mr. Newton
  We have received a number of comments on Sir Roy Griffiths' report and will take account of them in framing our own proposals.

  Rating Reform
  Dr. Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services whether, after the introduction of the proposed community charge, claimants will be informed 552
  when their names and addresses are passed to the community charge registration officer of the local authority area in which they live.

  Mr. Scott
  Yes. Detailed arrangements are still being developed in consultation with the local authority associations, but the intention is that the letters and forms that are to be given to income support claimants will make clear the circumstances in which a claimant's name and address are passed to the community charge registration officer.

  Mr. Kennedy
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will make a statement outlining the guidelines to his local offices for deciding eligibility to benefits for those claimants whose previously owned capital sum is held in trust; and if he will indicate specifically whether such guidelines take account of any legal variations pertaining to the laws of trust between Scotland and England.

  Mr. Portillo
  The Chief Adjudication Officer is responsible for providing guidance to local adjudication officers who decide claims for income support. Guidance on the treatment of capital held in trust is contained in volume 3, paragraphs 30401 to 30464, of the Adjudication Officers' Guide, a copy of which is in the Library. Paragraphs 30421 to 30428 of the AOG contain advice about the different rules of intestacy in Scotland and England.

  Office of Population Censuses and Surveys
  Mr. Dobson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will list each Office of Population Censuses and Surveys monitor published since 1 January 1987, giving the title, date and numbers of copies distributed to date; how many have been distributed free of charge to(a) Government, National Health Service and other users and (b) press; and how many have been sold so far and at what price.

  Mrs. Currie
  Up to 31 December 1987. OPCS monitors were available free of charge. Following a review of published statistical data, with effect from 1 January 1988, some of the monitors were discontinued and a charging system for the continued monitors was introduced. A copy of the new arrangements has been placed in the Library.

  The information requested is as follows. The sales figures are the numbers sold between 1 January and 29 April 1988.

  Monitor Reference No. WR Series

  Title: Registrar General's Weekly Return for England and Wales

  Date published: Weekly

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 2,415 approx. weekly

  (b)The Press: 10

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. VS Series

  Title: Live births, Stillbirths, and Deaths: Registrations Date published: Monthly

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 3,550 approx. monthly

  (b)The Press: Nil

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. DH3 87/1

  Title: Infant and Perinatal Mortality 1985 Birthweight

  553

  Date published: 3 February 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 2,750 (approx.)

  (b)The Press: 110

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. DH3 87/2

  Title: Infant and Perinatal Mortality 1985: DHAs

  Date published: 3 February 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 2,850 (approx.)

  (b)The Press: 60

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. DH3 87/3

  Title: Infant and Perinatal Mortality 1985: RHAs

  Date published: 3 February 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 2,800 (approx.)

  (b)The Press: 110

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. FMI 87/1

  Title: Live births during 1986

  Date published: 3 March 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 3,800 (approx.)

  (b)The Press: 70

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. DH2 87/1

  Title: Deaths by cause: June quarter 1986

  Date published: 10 March 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a) Government-NHS and others: 3,200 (approx.)

  (b) The Press: 110

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. DH4 87/1

  Title: Deaths from accidents and violence June quarter 1986 Registrations

  Date published: 10 March 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a) Government/NHS and others: 2,400 (approx.)

  (b) The Press: 110

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. DH4 87/2

  Title: Fatal accidents occurring during sporting and leisure activities 1984 and 1985

  Date published: 10 March 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government/NHS and others: 2,150 (approx.)

  (b)The Press: 75

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. AB 87/1

  Title: Legal abortions September quarter 1986

  Date published: 10 March 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government/NHS and others: 2,750 (approx.)

  (b)The Press: 75

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. MN 87/1

  Title: International migration 1985

  Date published: 17 March 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government/NHS and others: 3,100 (approx.)

  (b)The Press: 80

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. MB2 87/1

  Title: Infectious diseases December quarter 1985 Date published: 7 April 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government/NHS and others: 2,520 (approx.)

  (b)The Press: 80

  Numbers sold: Nil

  554

  Monitor Reference No. MN 87/2

  Title: Recorded internal population movements in the United Kingdom Mid 1985-mid 1986

  Date published: 12 May 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government/NHS and others: 2,820 (approx.)

  (b)The Press: 430

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. MB4 87/1

  Title: Hospital In-patient Enquiry (England) Trends 1979–1985

  Date published: 19 May 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government/NHS and others: 2,340 (approx.)

  (b)The Press: 110

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. DH2 87/2

  Title: Deaths by cause, September quarter 1986

  Date published: 26 May 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 3,170 (approx.)

  (b)The Press: 80

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. DH4 87/3

  Title: Deaths from accidents and violence September quarter 1986

  Date published: 26 May 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 2,540 (approx.)

  (b)The Press: 60

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. AB 87/2

  Title: Legal abortions, December quarter 1986

  Date published: 9 June 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a) Government-NHS and others: 3,240 (approx.)

  (b) The Press: 60

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. AB 87/3

  Title: Legal abortions 1986

  Date published: 9 June 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 3,340 (approx.)

  (b)The Press: 60

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. PP1 87/1

  Title: Mid 1986 population estimates for England and Wales

  Date published: 16 June 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 4,660 (approx.)

  (b)The Press: 390

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. MN 87/3

  Title: International migration: mid 1985 to mid 1986

  Date published: 30 June 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 3,180 (approx.)

  (b)The Press: 80

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. AB 87/4

  Title: Legal abortions 1986; residents of regional and district health areas

  Date published: 30 June 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 2,730 (approx.)

  (b)The Press: 370

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. MB2 87/2

  Title: Infectious diseases, March quarter 1986

  Date published: 21 July 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  555

  (a)Government/NHS and others: 2,690 (approx.)

  (b)The Press: 60

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. FM3 87/1

  Title: Adoptions in England and Wales notified during 1985 and 1986

  Date published: 11 August 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a) Government/NHS and others: 1,490 (approx.)

  (b) The Press: 60

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. MB4 87/2

  Title: Hospital In-patient Enquiry (England): Maternity statistics 1982 (revised), 1983 and 1984

  Date published: 18 August 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government/NHS and others: 2,440 (approx.)

  (b)The Press: 60

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. AB 87/5

  Title: Legal abortions, March quarter 1987

  Date published: 2 September 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a) Government/NHS and others: 3,140 (approx.)

  (b) The Press: 60

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. FM1 87/2

  Title: Trends in conceptions to women residents in England and Wales 1975–85

  Date published: 2 September 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government/NHS and others: 3,800 (approx.)

  (b)The Press: 60

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. MB2 87/3

  Title: Infectious diseases, June quarter 1986

  Date published: 2 September 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a) Government/NHS and others: 2,590 (approx.)

  (b) The Press: 110

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. DH2 87/3

  Title: Deaths by cause 1986

  Date published: 8 September 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government/NHS and others: 3,140 (approx.)

  (b)The Press: 60

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. DH4 87/4

  Title: Deaths from accidents and violence 1986

  Date published: 8 September 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government/NHS and others: 2,560 (approx)

  (b)The Press: 60

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. MB3 87/1

  Title: Congenital malformations and monitoring system 1986

  Date published: 22 September 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government/NHS and others: 2,590 (approx)

  (b)The Press: 60

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. FM1 87/3

  Title: Births by birthplace of mother, 1986: local authority areas

  Date published: 13 October 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government/NHS and others: 3,760)

  (b)The Press: 340

  Numbers sold: Nil

  556

  Monitor Reference No FM2 87/1

  Title: Marriages in England and Wales during 1986

  Date published: 13 October 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government/NHS and others: 2,490 (approx)

  (b)The Press: 60

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. FM2 87/2

  Title: Divorces in England and Wales during 1986

  Date published: 13 October 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government/NHS and others: 2,540 (approx)

  (b)The Press: 60

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. DH2 87/4

  Title: Deaths by cause, March quarter 1987 registrations Date published: 17 November 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government/NHS and others: 3,240 (approx)

  (b)The Press: 60

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. DH4 87/5

  Title: Deaths from accidents and violence: March quarter 1987 registrations

  Date published: 17 November 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government/NHS and others: 2,390 (approx)

  (b)The Press:60

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. MB2 87/4

  Title: Infectious diseases, September quarter 1986

  Date published: 24 November 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 2,440 (approx)

  (b)The Press: 60

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. MB4 87/3

  Title: Hospital In-patient Enquiry (England) Day case statistics 1985

  Date published: 1 December 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 2.090 (approx)

  (b)The Press: 60

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. AB 87/6

  Title: Legal abortions, June quarter 1987

  Date published: 8 December 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a) Government-NHS and others: 3,340 (approx)

  (b) The Press: 60

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. MB2 87/5

  Title: Infectious diseases, December quarter 1986

  Date published: 15 December 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 2,610 (approx)

  (b)The Press: 60

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. DH3 87/4

  Title: Infant and perinatal mortality 1986 DHAs

  Date published: 15 December 1987

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 2,800 (approx)

  (b)The Press: 65

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Monitor Reference No. WR

  Title: Registrar General's Weekly Return for England and Wales

  Date published: Weekly

  Number of copies distributed to—

  557

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 1,261

  (b)The Press: 20

  Numbers sold: 338

  Price: £1·00*

  Monitor Reference No. MB4 88/1

  Title: Hospital In-patient Enquiry (England) Maternity statistics 1985

  Date published: 18 January 1988

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 2,400

  (b)The Press: 60

  Numbers sold: Nil

  Price: Unpriced

  Monitor Reference No. PP3 88/1

  Title: Mid 1985-based population projections for authority areas in England

  Date published: 19 January 1988

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 1,762

  (b)The Press: 360

  Numbers sold: 762

  Price: £2·00*

  Monitor Reference No. SS 88/1

  Title: Cigarette smoking 1972 to 1986

  Date published: 9 February 1988

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 1,232

  (b)The Press: 120

  Numbers sold: 507

  Price: £2·00

  Monitor Reference No. DH4 88/1

  Title: Deaths from accidents and violence, June quarter 1987 registrations

  Date published: 9 February 1988

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 1,423

  (b)The Press: 80

  Numbers sold: 578

  Price: £1·00*

  Monitor Reference No. DH2 88/1

  Title: Deaths by cause, June quarter 1987 registrations

  Date published: 9 February 1988

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 1,423

  (b)The Press: 80

  Numbers sold: 578

  Price: £1·00*

  Monitor Reference No. PP3 88/2

  Title: Mid 1985-based population projections for health authority areas in England

  Date published: 8 March 1988

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 1,762

  (b)The Press: 360

  Numbers sold: 762

  Price: £1·50

  Monitor Reference No. AB 88/1

  Title: Legal abortions, September quarter 1987 Date published: 8 March 1988

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 1,452

  (b)The Press: 80

  Numbers sold: 574

  Price: £1·00*

  Monitor Reference No. MB2 88/1

  Title: Infectious diseases, March quarter 1987

  Date published: 29 March 1988

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 1,432

  (b)The Press: 80

  Numbers sold: 509

  Price: £2·50*

  558

  Monitor Reference No. DH4 88/2

  Title: Deaths from accidents and violence. September quarter 1987 registrations

  Date published: 12 April 1988

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 1,423

  (b)The Press: 80

  Numbers sold: 578

  Price: £1·00*

  Monitor Reference No. DH2 88/2

  Title: Deaths by cause, September quarter 1987 registrations

  Date published: 12 April 1988

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a) Government-NHS and others: 1,423 local

  (b) The Press: 80

  Numbers sold: 578

  Price: £1·00*

  Monitor Reference No. EL 88/1

  Title: Electoral statistics 1988, local government areas Date published: 26 April 1988

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 1,106

  (b)The Press: 480

  Numbers sold: 528

  Price: £2·00

  Monitor Reference No. DH3 88/1

  Title: Infant and perinatal mortality 1986 Birthweight

  Date published: 26 April 1988

  Number of copies distributed to—

  (a)Government-NHS and others: 1,456

  (b)The Press: 80

  Numbers sold: 535

  Price: £1·50

  * Also available on subscription.

  Petroleum Licences
  Sir Gerard Vaughan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy (1) on what basis since 1979 his Department has granted licences to search and bore for petroleum under section 2 of the 1934 Act;

  (2) what method has been used to allocate individual petroleum licences since June 1979.

  Mr. Parkinson
  Since 1979 licences have mainly been issued on a discretionary basis, in which the applicant's financial and technical competence and his ability to meet other aims of Government policy, notably his readiness to pursue a comprehensive exploration of the licensed area, have been the major factors in deciding whether or not to grant a licence. A small number of offshore production licences have been awarded by a sealed-bid cash tender system.

  Sir Gerard Vaughan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if, before granting licences to search and bore for petroleum, his Department informs the freehold owners of land affected of the intention to issue such licences.

  Mr. Parkinson
  Freehold owners of land affected are not informed of the intention to grant licences, because the award of a petroleum licence by itself does not confer on the licence holder any rights over the freeholder's land.

  Sir Gerard Vaughan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy how his Department notifies freehold owners of
  559
  land to be affected that it is the intention to grant licences under the Petroleum (Production) Regulations 1976 (S.I. 1976 No. 1129).

  Mr. Parkinson
  The 1976 regulations referred to by my hon. Friend have now been superseded by other regulations and licences are no longer awarded under them.

  Sir Gerard Vaughan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what rights are conferred on an operator granted a petroleum production licence in relation to land the operator does not own.

  Mr. Parkinson
  The grant of a petroleum licence confers on the licensee the rights to search for and get petroleum in the licensed area, depending on the precise type of licence he holds, irrespective of the ownership of the land in question. However, it does not by itself confer any other rights, and so he would have to obtain permission to enter the land before he could exercise his rights under the petroleum licence.

  Sir Gerard Vaughan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy how many petroleum licences have been issued by his Department in each year since 1979.

  Mr. Parkinson
  The figures for all types of licences issued, both offshore and onshore, are as follows:

  Year

  Number of licences issued

  1979

  44

  1980

  138

  1981

  61

  1982

  61

  1983

  127

  1984

  26

  1985

  128

  1986

  94

  1987

  68

  11988

  67

  1 To date.

  Sir Gerard Vaughan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he will set out the criteria laid down for determining the price to be paid for petroleum licences.

  Mr. Parkinson
  Licences are awarded in return for initial application fees and subsequent periodic rental payments. Application fees are set to cover the administrative costs of dealing with the application. The rental payments on various types of licences are designed to be sufficiently low in the early years of the licence to encourage exploration. In the longer-term licences, once the exploration phase has been completed the general principle is to increase the rental year by year in order to encourage the licensee to surrender any areas not required for petroleum development.

  Sir Gerard Vaughan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy in what circumstances it is possible to vary the terms of a petroleum licence.

  Mr. Parkinson
  The petroleum licence is a contractual document and it is not possible to vary any of its terms except by agreement between the parties.

  Sir Gerard Vaughan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy how many petroleum licences have been granted, withdrawn or given up, amended or varied, in each year since 1979.
  560
  Mr. Parkinson
  I refer my hon. Friend to the figures given to him today for the issue of petroleum licences. The figures for surrendered licences of all types are as follows:

  Year

  Number of licences surrendered

  1979

  6

  1980

  7

  1981

  9

  1982

  25

  1983

  31

  1984

  21

  1985

  27

  1986

  27

  1987

  65

  11988

  7

  1 To date.

  Notes:

  1. Figures do not include licences expiring at the end of the term.

  2. Some of the surrendered licences were replaced with different types of licences.

  Each licence contains an agree work obligation which is commercially confidential to the licensee. It is not uncommon for these obligations to be varied or amended. Likewise, assignments of licence interests and changes of company names are frequently the reasons for licence changes. Records on amendments to the licences are not kept in a readily available form and the amount of work involved in compiling such statistics would he disproportionate to the value of the information obtained.

  Sir Gerard Vaughan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he will list the companies to which petroleum licences have been granted since June 1979 and the price paid for each licence.

  Mr. Parkinson
  The companies granted petroleum licences since 1979 are published in the London Gazette and Edinburgh Gazette, copies of which are available in the Library of the House. The fees and charges for petroleum licences are detailed in the gazette notices inviting applications and in the relevant regulations governing the award of each type of licence, which are also available in the Library of the House. It is not possible to give a total price for every licence awarded as the majority of licences issued since 1979 are still in existence, and the total consideration for the licence will depend on future unknown events, such as whether the licence is voluntarily surrendered before it reaches its full term.

  British Coal (Investment)
  Mr. Wigley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what recent discussions he has had with the management of British Coal concerning future investment in the regions; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Michael Spicer
  British Coal's agreed capital allocation for 1988–89 is £650 million. How this is allocated between coalfields is a management matter for the corporation.

ENVIRONMENT

  Land Availability
  Mr. Heddle
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will publish in the Official Report a summary on a regional basis of household projections to

  561
  the latest available date and, in each case, indicate the monitoring and verification procedures his Department adopts with the county planning authorities as to their returns on land availability.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  A regional breakdown of household projections was included in the recently published DOE booklet "1985 Based Estimates of Numbers of Households in England etc, 1985–2001", which is available in the Library. I am sending my hon. Friend the relevant extract.

  In planning policy guidance note 3 we have recently repeated our advice to local planning authorities that, in consultation with housebuilders, they should undertake regular studies of land availability, to ensure that land supplies match the five-year requirement indicated by the provisions of the development plan. The results of such studies are reported to my Department and (as from 1987) are published in annual progress reports.

  Environmental Assessment
  Mr. Heddle
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement following his consultation paper setting out proposals for the implementation of the European Community directive on environmental assessment.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  We are giving careful consideration to the responses to the consultation paper. We intend to lay before Parliament regulations under the European Communities Act 1972 in order to comply with the directive's requirement that member states shall take the necessary measures by 3 July 1988.

  Water Pollution
  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) on how many occasions for the last year for which figures are available local water authority consents, as specified under the Control of Pollution Act 1974, were broken in Great Britain;

  (2)how many private companies broke water authority consents, as laid down under the Control of Pollution Act 1974, during 1987; and which were the companies concerned;

  (3)on how many occasions in the last year for which figures are available the River Calder in West Yorkshire suffered from pollution beyond the agreed consents as laid down by Yorkshire water authority; and if he will list the companies and organisations involved and the frequency of the said polluting;

  (4)on how many occasions in the last year for which figures are available consents for suspended solids in British waterways were breached by private companies; on how many occasions consents for monohydric phenols were breached by private companies and on how many occasions consents for ammonia were breached by private companies in respect of consents set by water authorities in the British Isles as laid down by the Control of Pollution Act 1974; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Moynihan
  This information is not held centrally, but the public registers which all water authorities are required to maintain contain details of all authorised discharges, including particulars of effluent samples taken.

  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment on how many occasions when water 562
  authority consents were breached by polluters legal action was taken by water authorities and convictions achieved; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Moynihan
  Information collected by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department shows that there were about 35 convictions in 1986 following action by water authorities for breaches of discharge consents. The figures for 1987 are not yet available.

  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) what was the total amount of fines collected during 1987 following prosecutions under the Control of Pollution Act 1974, in respect of breach of water authority consents;

  (2) on how many occasions during 1987 the maximum fine of £2,000 was levied by a magistrates' court against an offender under the Control of Pollution Act 1974 in respect of water pollution due to the breach of water authority consents.

  Mr. Moynihan
  Information about penalties imposed following prosecutions under part II of the Control of Pollution Act 1974 is collected by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department. I understand, however, that information for 1987 is not yet available.

  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) on how many occasions British water authorities have been in breach of the Control of Pollution Act 1974 in respect of breach of consents for water pollution as agreed with his Department;

  (2) which water authorities broke water pollution consents as laid down by the Control of Water Pollution Act 1974 during 1987; and what was the frequency of such breaches.

  Mr. Moynihan
  In 1986, the first year for which comprehensive data are available, 965 sewage treatment works breached their consents on more than 5 per cent. of occasions for which samples were taken. These works were spread across all water authorities in England and Wales. The final figures for 1987 are not yet available.

  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will estimate the volume of raw human sewage which is allowed to find its way into British estuaries for the last year for which figures are available; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Moynihan
  Figures are not held centrally. However, most sewage now receives treatment before being discharged to estuaries. As a result, the quality of water in a number of estuaries—including the Humber, Mersey, Tees, Thames and Tyne—has improved in recent years.

  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many prosecutions have been taken out against water authorities by his Department due to breach of consents and what was the total sum of fines for the last year for which figures are available.

  Mr. Moynihan
  No prosecutions have so far been taken out against water authorities by the Department for breaches of consents. However, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Pollution, in examining detailed reasons for non-compliance, will continue to consider whether prosecution is justified in individual cases.

  Greater Manchester Exhibition Centre
  Mr. Arnold
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what public money has been committed by his Department to the setting up of the Greater Manchester exhibition centre (G-MEC); what information he has about the project's other sources of funding; and what steps he has taken to ensure that this expenditure is cost-effective.

  Mr. Trippier
  The former central station train hall was converted into the GMEX centre and opened in March 1986. Public sector input to the conversion cost totalled about £13·5 million, of which the urban programme contributed £9·4 million and the European regional development fund provided £4 million. The private sector contribution was approximately£11 million.

  At the abolition of the Greater Manchester county council the liabilities and rights in GMEX were transferred to the Greater Manchester Residuary Body. The district council has generally been content for the residuary body to deal with the complex GMEX issues and to protect the interests of the ratepayers, and it remains with the residuary body to continue to handle these matters.

  Water Rates
  Mr. David Nicholson
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what was the combined standing charge to domestic ratepayers for water and sewerage in each of the English water authority areas in 1985, 1986, and 1987.

  Mr. Moynihan
  The information requested is set out in the accompanying table.

  Water authority average household bills 1975–76 to 1987–88

  Water authority

  1975–76 £·p

  1976–77 £·p

  1977–78 £·p

  1978–79 £·p

  1979–80 £·p

  1980–81 £·p

  1981–82 £·p

  1982–83 £·p

  1983–84 £·p

  1984–85 £·p

  1985–86 £·p

  1986–87 £·p

  1987–88 £·p

  Combined all services

  North West

  25·28

  29·56

  32·02

  34·62

  37·90

  46·80

  54·69

  59·86

  63·16

  68·25

  77·57

  85·19

  91·12

  Northumbrian

  27·34

  36·40

  30·55

  32·06

  33·94

  41·95

  49·19

  56·86

  64·52

  75·22

  80·38

  84·34

  88·63

  Severn Trent

  26·63

  36·30

  35·67

  35·95

  40·51

  48·99

  56·78

  62·44

  64·63

  67·88

  76·16

  83·55

  89·53

  Yorkshirc

  25·26

  31·37

  33·02

  35·60

  39·36

  49·04

  57·21

  65·30

  68·78

  72·64

  82·30

  90·96

  97·72

  Anglian

  31·12

  43·48

  46·12

  45·02

  48·83

  63·01

  75·08

  82·66

  87·80

  93·96

  105·98

  116·69

  124·03

  Thames

  21·80

  28·15

  29·31

  34·66

  38·62

  47·82

  54·47

  60·77

  66·74

  73·41

  80·75

  83·09

  87·74

  Southern

  35·42

  36·68

  40·40

  42·20

  43·80

  56·60

  67·00

  74·40

  79·20

  83·84

  93·76

  102·78

  109·10

  Wessex

  31·23

  42·05

  45·23

  47·27

  57·22

  65·44

  72·87

  78·49

  81·56

  85·59

  95·35

  107·09

  114·45

  South West

  35·01

  45·41

  48·26

  49·68

  54·57

  66·72

  75·22

  81·24

  87·96

  93·48

  104·59

  110·90

  116·08

  English averages

  26·65

  33·90

  35·13

  37·50

  41·47

  51·37

  59·47

  66·01

  70·92

  75·73

  84·56

  91·25

  97·18

  London Residuary Body
  Mr. Tony Banks
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, pursuant to the answer to the hon. Member for Newham, North-West of 14 April,Official Report, column 234, if he will name the member of the London Residuary Body whose remuneration was reduced.

  Mr. Chope
  Mr. Jack Esling.
  564

  Water Authority standing charges 1985–86 to 1987–88

  Standing charges Water and Sewerage comhined

  Water authority

  1985–86 £·p

  1986–87 £·p

  1987–88 £·p

  North West

  14·50

  16·00

  17·00

  Northumbrian

  20·00

  21·00

  22·00

  Severn Trent1

  0·00

  0·00

  0·00

  Yorkshire

  9·00

  10·00

  11·00

  Anglian

  30·30

  33·30

  35·10

  Thames

  24·00

  24·00

  24·00

  Southern

  22·30

  24·10

  26·00

  Wessex1

  0·00

  0·00

  0·00

  South West

  31·20

  32·00

  33·0

  Notes:

  1 Severn Trent and Wessex both have minimum charges.

  Source: Water Authority annual charges returns to DOE.

  Mr. David Nicholson
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will publish in the Official Report figures showing the average annual payments in water rates per household in each of Devon, Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire, in each year since 1982.

  Mr. Moynihan
  The information requested is not available for individual local authorities.

  Mr. David Nicholson
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what information he has as to what water rate was charged by(a) the South Western water authority and (b) the Wessex water authority in each year since 1974.

  Mr. Moynihan
  The information on water rates requested is set out in the accompanying table for each of the English water authorities. The table shows the average household bill for customers connected to both water and sewerage and being charged on the basis of rateable value. Information on average bills for 1988–89 is still being analysed by the Department and is not yet available for publication.

  Winget-type Houses
  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many Winget type houses are still in existence in Great Britain; how many have been privately purchased by tenants since the Housing Defects Act 1984; and how many applications for repurchase under the Act have been made by Winget-type householders to local authorities in Great Britain.
  565
  Mrs. Roe
  Four local authorities in Great Britain have reported 3,836 Winget-type houses, of which 175 were sold to tenants. No information is available on numbers sold since 1984, but these are likely to be small. The authorities have reported 27 applications for assistance under the housing defects legislation, though that figure is not comprehensive. No information is readily available on applications specifically for repurchase on hardship grounds.

  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what progress has been made towards a satisfactory method of structural repair for Winget-type houses with the national house building certificate and local authorities in consultation with his Department; and if he will make a statement.

  Mrs. Roe
  No repair system for Winget houses has yet been submitted to PRC Homes Ltd. Repairs are not likely to be easy, given the structure of the house and the small numbers sold.

  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what proportion of the housing investment programme was allocated to the repurchase of Winget-type houses within England and Wales in the last available financial year; and if he will make a statement.

  Mrs. Roe
  Local authorities are free to determine their own expenditure priorities within the resources available to them, including their housing investment programme allocations. For 1988–89, £20 million of additional allocations will shortly be distributed to authorities with particular difficulties in meeting their obligations under the housing defects legislation. The allocations will not be made in respect of specific designated house types.

  Brentwood (Rates)
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment by what percentage level Brentwood local authority is above his Department's target in the current financial year; and whether it falls within the current criteria for possible rate capping.

  Mr. Chope
  The setting of expenditure targets has not applied since the financial year 1985–86. Under section 2 of the Rates Act 1984, as modified by the Rate Limitation (Designation of Authorities) (Exemption) Order 1988, made on 13 April, an authority cannot be designated for rate limitation for 1989–90 if its total expenditure in 1988–89 is likely to be less than £13·1 million. Brentwood has reported budgeted total expenditure for 1988–89 of £12·138 million.

  Football League
  Mr. Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will now seek a meeting with the 92 Football League chairmen to ensure a discussion on matters including crowd safety and English participation in European football; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Moynihan
  I have no immediate plans for a meeting with the 92 Football League chairmen. As I told the hon. Member in my answer on 20 April, I hold regular meetings with the president of the League and other football authorities to discuss counter-hooliganism measures.

  Home Extensions
  Mr. Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will introduce legislation to allow grants to residents for domestic extensions to their home in an effort to ease overcrowding; and if he will make a statement.

  Mrs. Roe
  Improvement grants can already be paid at the discretion of local authorities towards the cost of domestic extensions in certain circumstances, including exceptionally where additional living or bedroom space is required.

  Urban Development
  Mr. Leighton
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what are the grant memoranda for urban development corporations.

  Mr. Trippier
  Payments of grant-in-aid to urban development corporations, in common with payments of grant-in-aid to other non-departmental bodies, are governed by memoranda which set out the terms and conditions on which such payments are made.

  Mr. Heddle
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will publish in the Official Report the amount made available by his Department under the urban development grant programme for each year since the introduction of the grant in 1982.

  Mr. Trippier
  The following table shows the urban development grant outturn figures for years since the scheme began.

  Urban development grant expenditure

  £ million

  1983–84

  7

  1984–85

  15

  1985–86

  22

  1986–87

  22

  1987–88

  125

  1 Estimated.

  Mr. Heddle
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will publish in the Official Report the amount received by each parliamentary constituency under the urban development grant programme since 1982.

  Mr. Trippier
  The information requested is not readily available in the form requested and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

  Unified Business Rate
  Mr. Heddle
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement on the manner in which new commercial and industrial premises, either presently unassessed or yet to be built, will be treated when the transitional arrangements for the introduction of the unified business rate are implemented.

  Mr. Howard
  The transitional arrangements are designed to protect those ratepayers who would otherwise face large rate increases between 1989·90 and 1990·91: where there is no liability to rates in the earlier year, transitional protection would be inappropriate. We therefore intend that transitional arrangements should
  567
  apply to property which is in rateable occupation before 1 April 1990, even if a rateable value has not been entered in the valuation list on that date.

  Housing Defects
  Mr. Amess
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if the Government have completed their consultations on the proposed new expenditure limits for grant eligible reinstatement works under the housing defects legislation; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  I am most grateful to all those who responded to our consultation proposals. We have, as a result, been able to settle the final figures for each designated house type. Our suggestion that the limits should be revised within a structure of four main costs bands was widely welcomed, as indeed were most of the details. Some concern was expressed on whether £27,000 would be sufficient for repairs to the "Reema Hollow Panel" house and we have therefore decided instead to place that type within the top £31,000 cost band.

  The new limits will therefore be as follows:

  House type

  New limit £

  Present limit £

  Local designations and any new designations

  14,000

  14,000

  Cornish Unit: 1 storey PRC

  17,000

  14,000

  Dorran: 1 storey PRC

  —

  16,000

  Gregory

  —

  14,000

  Myton: I storey PRC

  —

  16,000

  Newland: 1 storey PRC

  —

  16,000

  Tarran: 1 storey PRC

  —

  14,000

  Unity and Butterley: 1 storey PRC

  —

  20,000

  Wessex: 1 storey PRC

  —

  24,000

  Cornish Unit: 2 storey PRC

  23,000

  16,000

  Stent

  —

  20,000

  Unity and Butterley: 2 storey PRC

  —

  20,000

  Airey

  27,000

  16,000

  Boswell

  —

  14,000

  Dorran: 2 storey PRC

  —

  16,000

  Dyke

  —

  24,000

  Myton: 2 storey PRC

  —

  16,000

  Newland: 2 storey PRC

  —

  16,000

  Schindler and Hawksley SGS

  —

  24,000

  Smith

  —

  20,000

  Stonecrete

  —

  16,000

  Tarran: 2 storey PRC

  —

  14,000

  Underdown

  —

  20,000

  Waller

  —

  24,000

  Wates

  —

  20,000

  Winget

  —

  20,000

  Boot

  31,000

  20,000

  Orlit

  —

  24,000

  Parkinson

  —

  20,000

  Reema Hollow Panel

  —

  20,000

  Wessex: 2 storey PRC

  —

  24,000

  Woolaway

  —

  20,000

  These new limits should enable local authorities themselves to decide the appropriate level of grant, in the majority of cases, without further reference to the Department.

  The parliamentary order implementing these new limits has now been made by my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for the Environment and for Wales and, provided Parliament is content, will come into operation on Tuesday 31 May. My officials will be writing to local authorities, home owners groups and repairers to make sure that all those with an interest are fully aware of the changes.

  Trafalgar Square (Statue)
  Mr. Bowis
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement on plans for the erection of a statue on the empty plinth in the north-west corner of Trafalgar square.

  Mr. Moynihan
  There are no such plans before me.

  Rating Reform
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he will ensure that any future official publicity material in relation to the community charge will inform future community charge payers that their name and address may be sold without their consent or knowledge and that their name and address on the register may be inspected by police, Inland Revenue, the Department of Health and Social Security and other organisations without their consent or knowledge.

  Mr. Howard
  Paragraph 16 of schedule 2 to the Local Government Finance Bill would allow regulations to be made requiring the sale of extracts from community charges registers. No decision has yet been taken to make use of that regulation-making power.

  Dr. Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment on what basis he has concluded that it is in the public interest for the extract of names and addresses from the community charge register to be open for public inspection; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Ridley
  It is in the public interest that the community charges register should be accurate and up to date. The availability of the extract for public inspection will be of assistance in achieving that aim.

  Dr. Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what assessment he has made of the circumstances in which it will constitute a reasonable step, under clause 6(8) of the Local Government Finance Bill, for the staff of the community charge registration officer to question individuals about their neighbours for the purposes of compiling the community charge register.

  Mr. Ridley
  It will be for the registration officer to decide, in the first instance, what constitutes a "reasonable step" in each case for the purposes of obtaining information.

  Dr. Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) whether data held by district health authorities will be prescribed information under paragraph 9(2)(D) of schedule 2 to the Local Government Finance Bill;

  (2)whether Inland Revenue records will be prescribed information under paragraph 9(2)(D) of schedule 2 to the Local Government Finance Bill;

  (3)whether data held by family practitioner committees will be prescribed information under paragraph 9(2)(D) of schedule 2 to the Local Government Finance Bill.

  Mr. Ridley
  Data held by family practitioner committees, the Inland Revenue and district health authorities will not be required to be supplied to community charge registration officers under schedule 2 to the Local Government Finance Bill.

  Dr. Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment whether local authorities' records on their
  569
  own employees and their records on job applicants will be prescribed information under paragraph 9(2)(D) of schedule 2 to the Local Government Finance Bill; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Ridley
  We are considering whether names and addresses from local authorities' employment records should be made available to community charges registration officers.

  Dr. Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) whether the police will be permitted to pass any information on individuals, whether in writing or orally, to the community charge registration officer; and if he will make a statement;

  (2) whether all information held by the police will be prescribed information under paragraph 9(2)(D) of schedule 2 to the Local Government Finance Bill.

  Mr. Ridley
  Information to be supplied to community charges registration officers will be governed by regulations to be made under schedule 2 to the Local Government Finance Bill. Those regulations will exclude police information from the information to be supplied by precepting authorities.

  Dr. Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he has consulted the Law Society about his proposal made in Standing Committee E, on 11 February,Official Report, column 619, that solicitors will inform the community charge registration officer of an individual's change of address.

  Mr. Ridley
  No. I assume that those moving house will want their solicitors to notify local authorities of the change of address, as is normal practice now with rates.

  Dr. Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment whether all information held by local authority social services departments will he prescribed information under paragraph 9(2)(D) of schedule 2 to the Local Government Finance Bill.

  Mr. Ridley
  The information to be supplied to a community charges registration officer by a charging or precepting authority will be limited to the name and address of the person concerned and the dates on or 570
  between which he was known to the authority. It will not include the reason for his being known to the authority, or the source of the information within the authority.

  Dr. Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment whether there are any circumstances in which health authorities will be required to provide information to the community charge registration officer; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Ridley
  There are no circumstances in which health authorities will be required to provide information to community charges registration officers.

  Dr. Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he will list the individuals and organisations from whom he has received representations advocating that local authorities should be required to make available for sale the list of names and addresses from the community charge register.

  Mr. Ridley
  The Government have received representations in favour of the sale of the extract of addresses and names from the Guild of British Newspaper Editors and the Retail Credit Group.

  Dr. Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment whether the community charge registration officer will he permitted to collect any information on children under 17 years.

  Mr. Ridley
  It will be for each registration officer to decide, in the first instance, what information he needs in order to compile and maintain the register. There is no reason to believe that it will generally be necessary to collect information on children under 17.

  Mr. Hardy
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what is his estimate of the level of community charge which will apply in the Metropolitan borough of Rotherham.

  Mr. Howard>
  [holding answer 3 May 1988]: The community charge applying in any area will depend on a number of factors, in particular, the level of spending in that area at that time. On the basis of 1987·88 spending, I estimate the community charge in Rotherham would have been £189 in the first year of the new system and £252 once the new arrangements were fully in place.

  Bathing Water (Survey)
  Mrs. Hicks
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he will now announce the results of the survey of bathing water quality in 1987.

  Mr. Moynihan
  The results for England, Wales and Northern Ireland for the 1987 bathing season are set out in summary form.

  The 1987 results show that 262 out of 374 bathing waters in England, Wales and Northern Ireland—70 per cent.—were considered to meet the directive's mandatory bacteriological standards. This shows a significant improvement over 1986, when only 62 per cent.

  Bathing waters survey—1987 results (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) Compliance with bathing water directive (76/160/EEC): coliform standards

  Full sampling and analysis

  Partial sampling and/or analysis

  No sampling

  Total

  pass

  fail

  pass

  fail

  Northumbrian Water Authority

  9

  10

  0

  0

  0

  19

  Yorkshire Water Authority

  20

  2

  0

  0

  0

  22

  Anglian Water Authority

  18

  10

  0

  0

  0

  28

  Thames Water Authority

  0

  2

  0

  0

  0

  2

  Southern Water Authority

  38

  27

  0

  0

  0

  65

  Wessex Water Authority (South Coast)

  26

  1

  0

  0

  0

  27

  South West Water Authority

  96

  12

  0

  1

  0

  109

  Wessex Water Authority (Bristol Channel)

  6

  5

  0

  0

  0

  11

  Welsh Water Authority

  28

  19

  0

  0

  0

  47

  North West Water Authority

  10

  20

  0

  0

  0

  30

  Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland

  11

  3

  0

  0

  0

  14

  Totals

  262

  111

  0

  1

  0

  374

  Bathing Waters Survey—1987 Results (England, Wales and Northern Ireland)

  Compliance with Bathing Water Directive (76/160/EEC): Coliform Standards

  1987 Result

  1986 Result

  Northumbrian Water Authority

  Spittal

  Fail

  Fail

  Bamburgh/Seahouses

  Pass

  Pass

  Beadnell

  Pass

  Pass

  Low Newton

  Pass

  Pass

  Alnmouth

  Fail

  Pass

  Warkworth

  Pass

  Pass

  Druridge Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  Newbiggin

  Fail

  Fail

  South Beach/Seaton Sluice

  Pass

  Fail

  Whitley Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  Tynemouth

  Pass

  Fail

  South Shields

  Pass

  Fail

  Marsden

  Fail

  Pass

  Roker/Whitburn

  Fail

  Pass

  Seaham

  Fail

  Fail

  Crimdon

  Fail

  Fail

  Seaton Carew

  Fail

  Fail

  Redcar

  Fail

  Fail

  Saltburn

  Fail

  Fail

  Yorkshire Water Authority

  Staithes

  Pass

  No Survey

  Runswick Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  Sandsend

  Pass

  Pass

  Whitby

  Pass

  Pass

  Robin Hood Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  Scarborough North Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  Scarborough South Bay

  Fail

  Fail

  Cayton Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  572
  met these standards. The results have been calculated on the same basis in the two years, although a small number of additional waters were included in the 1987 survey.

  These results are encouraging and show that good progress is being made in bringing all our identified bathing waters up to EC standards. This is being done through a major programme of capital spending to improve bathing water quality, mainly through the construction of long sea outfalls, and we are currently reviewing this programme with water authorities.

  I shall arrange for a more detailed summary of the results to be placed in the Library. The results will also be sent to the Commission in accordance with article 13 of the bathing water directive.

  1987 Result

  1986 Result

  Filey

  Pass

  Pass

  Reighton

  Pass

  Pass

  Flamborough North Landing

  Pass

  Pass

  Flamborough South Landing

  Pass

  Fail

  Bridlington North Beach

  Pass

  Pass

  Bridlington South Beach

  Pass

  Pass

  Wilsthorpe

  Pass

  Pass

  Fraisthorpe

  Pass

  Pass

  Earls Dyke

  Pass

  Pass

  Barmston

  Pass

  Pass

  Skipsea

  Pass

  Pass

  Hornsea

  Pass

  Pass

  Tunstall

  Pass

  Pass

  Withernsea

  Fail

  Fail

  Anglian Water Authority

  Cleethorpes

  Fail

  Fail

  Mablethorpe Town

  Fail

  Pass

  Sutton-on-sea

  Fail

  Fail

  Moggs Eye

  Pass

  Pass

  Anderby

  Pass

  Pass

  Chapel St. Leonard

  Fail

  Pass

  Ingoldmells South

  Fail

  Pass

  Skegness

  Pass

  Pass

  Heacham

  Pass

  Pass

  Hunstanton Beach

  Pass

  Pass

  Wells

  Pass

  Fail

  Sheringham

  Fail

  Fail

  Cromer

  Fail

  Pass

  Mundesley

  Pass

  Pass

  Great Yarmouth North

  Pass

  Pass

  Great Yarmouth Pier

  Pass

  Fail

  Great Yarmouth South

  Pass

  Fail

  Lowestoft North

  Pass

  Fail

  Lowestoft South

  Pass

  Pass

  573

  1987 Result

  1986 Result

  Felixstowe North

  Pass

  Pass

  Felixstowe South

  Pass

  Fail

  Dovercourt

  Fail

  Pass

  Walton

  Fail

  Pass

  Frinton

  Pass

  Pass

  Holland

  Pass

  Pass

  Clacton

  Pass

  Pass

  Jaywick

  Pass

  Pass

  Brightlingsea

  Fail

  Pass

  Thames Water Authority

  Southend Thorpe Bay

  Fail

  Fail

  Southend Westcliffe Bay

  Fail

  Pass

  Southern Water Authority

  Leysdown

  Pass

  Fail

  West Beach

  Pass

  Pass

  Herne Bay

  Fail

  Pass

  Minnis Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  St. Mildreds Bay

  Fail

  Pass

  The Bay Margate

  Pass

  Pass

  Margate Fulsam Rock

  Pass

  Fail

  Joss Bay

  Fail

  Fail

  Broadstairs

  Fail

  Fail

  Ramsgate

  Fail

  Pass

  Sandwich Bay

  Fail

  Fail

  Deal Castle

  Fail

  Fail

  St. Margarets Bay

  Pass

  Fail

  Folkestone

  Fail

  Fail

  Sandgate

  Fail

  Fail

  Hythe

  Fail

  Fail

  Dymchurch

  Fail

  Fail

  St. Marys Bay

  Fail

  Fail

  Littlestone

  Pass

  Fail

  Camber

  Fail

  Pass

  Winchelsea

  Pass

  Pass

  Hastings

  Fail

  Pass

  Bexhill

  Pass

  Pass

  Normans Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  Pevensey Bay

  Fail

  Pass

  Eastbourne

  Pass

  Pass

  Seaford

  Fail

  Fail

  Newhaven

  Fail

  Pass

  Saltdean

  Pass

  Pass

  Brighton

  Pass

  Pass

  Hove

  Fail

  Fail

  Southwick

  Fail

  No Survey

  South Lancing

  Fail

  Fail

  Worthing

  Fail

  Fail

  Littlehampton

  Fail

  Pass

  Middleton-on-sea

  Pass

  Pass

  Bognor Regis

  Pass

  Pass

  Pagham

  Pass

  Pass

  Selsey

  Fail

  Pass

  Bracklesham Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  West Wittering

  Pass

  Pass

  West of Eastoke

  Pass

  Pass

  West Hayling

  Pass

  Pass

  Eastney

  Pass

  Pass

  Southsea

  Pass

  Pass

  Stokes Day

  Pass

  Pass

  Lee-on-Solent

  Pass

  Pass

  Calshot

  Pass

  Pass

  Lepe

  Pass

  Pass

  Milford-on-sea

  Fail

  Pass

  Christchurch Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  Highcliffe

  Pass

  Pass

  Compton Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  Totland Bay

  Pass

  Fail

  Colwell Bay

  Pass

  Fail

  Gurnard

  Fail

  Fail

  Cowes

  Pass

  Fail

  Ryde

  Fail

  Fail

  Seagrove

  Pass

  Pass

  St. Helens

  Pass

  Pass

  Bembridge

  Fail

  Fail

  Whitecliff Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  574

  1987 Result

  1986 Resuit

  Sandown

  Pass

  Pass

  Shanklin

  Pass

  Pass

  Ventnor

  Pass

  Fail

  Wessex Water Authority (South Coast)

  Christchurch, Highcliffe Castle

  Pass

  Pass

  Christchurch, Avon Beach

  Fail

  Pass

  Christchurch, Mudeford Sandbank

  Pass

  Pass

  Bournemouth, Hengistbury

  Pass

  Pass

  Bournemouth Pier

  Pass

  Pass

  Poole, Shore Road Sandbanks

  Pass

  Pass

  Poole Harbour Sandbanks

  Pass

  Pass

  Poole Harbour Lake

  Pass

  Pass

  Poole Harbour, Rockley Sands

  Pass

  Fail

  Shell Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  Studland

  Pass

  Pass

  Swanage

  Pass

  Pass

  Kimmeridge Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  Lulworth Cove

  Pass

  Pass

  Durdle Door East

  Pass

  Pass

  Durdle Door West

  Pass

  Pass

  Ringstead

  Pass

  Pass

  Bowleaze Cove

  Pass

  Pass

  Church Ope Cove

  Pass

  Pass

  Weymouth, Lodmoor

  Pass

  Pass

  Weymouth Central

  Pass

  Pass

  Portland Harbour, Castle Cove

  Pass

  Pass

  Portland Harbour, Sandsfoot Castle

  Pass

  Pass

  West Bay (west)

  Pass

  Pass

  Eypemouth

  Pass

  Fail

  Seatown

  Pass

  Pass

  Charmouth West

  Pass

  Fail

  Souih West Water Authority

  Lyme Regis

  Pass

  Fail

  Seaton (Devon)

  Pass

  Pass

  Beer

  Pass

  Pass

  Sidmouth

  Pass

  Pass

  Ladram Bay

  Pass

  No Survey

  Budleigh Salterton

  Fail

  Pass

  Sandy Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  Exmouth

  Pass

  Fail

  Dawlish Warren

  Pass

  Pass

  Dawlish

  Pass

  Pass

  Teignmouth

  Fail

  Pass

  Shaldon

  Pass

  Fail

  Ness Cove

  Pass

  Pass

  Maidencombe

  Pass

  Pass

  Watcombe

  Pass

  Pass

  Oddicombe

  Pass

  Pass

  Babbacombe

  Pass

  Pass

  Redgate

  Pass

  Pass

  Meadfoot

  Pass

  Pass

  Beacon Cove

  Pass

  No Survey

  Torre Abbey

  Pass

  Pass

  Hollicombe

  Pass

  Pass

  Paignton

  Pass

  Pass

  Goodrington

  Fail

  Pass

  Broadsands

  Pass

  Pass

  Shoalstone

  Pass

  No Survey

  St. Mary's Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  Dartmouth Castle and Sugary Cove

  Pass

  Pass

  Blackpool Sands

  Pass

  Pass

  Slapton Sands

  Pass

  Pass

  Mill Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  Salcombe North Sands

  Pass

  Fail

  Salcombe South Sands

  Pass

  Fail

  Hope Cove

  Pass

  Pass

  Thurlestone Incomplete Returns

  Fail

  Fail

  Bantham

  Pass

  Pass

  Bigbury-on-Sea

  Pass

  Pass

  Challaborough

  Pass

  Pass

  Mothecombe

  Pass

  Pass

  Wembury

  Pass

  Pass

  Bovisand

  Pass

  Pass

  Plymouth Hoe

  Pass

  Fail

  Portwrinkle

  Fail

  No Survey

  575

  1987 Result

  1986 Result

  Downderry

  Pass

  No Survey

  Seaton (Cornwall)

  Pass

  Fail

  Millendreath

  Pass

  No survey

  East Looe

  Pass

  Pass

  Readymoney

  Fail

  Fail

  Polkerris

  Pass

  Pass

  Par

  Pass

  Fail

  Crinnis

  Pass

  Pass

  Charlestown and Duporth

  Pass

  Pass

  Porthpean

  Pass

  Pass

  Pentewan

  Fail

  Fail

  Polstreath

  Pass

  Pass

  Port Mellon

  Pass

  Pass

  Gorran Haven

  Pass

  Pass

  Porthluney

  Pass

  Pass

  Pendower

  Pass

  Pass

  Gyllyngvase

  Pass

  Pass

  Swanpool

  Pass

  Pass

  Maen Porth

  Pass

  Pass

  Porthallow

  Fail

  Fail

  Porthoustock

  Pass

  Pass

  Coverack

  Pass

  Pass

  Kennack Sands

  Pass

  Pass

  Pollurian Cove

  Pass

  Pass

  Poldhu Cove

  Pass

  Pass

  Gunwalloe Cove

  Pass

  Pass

  Porthleven

  Pass

  Fail

  Praa Sands

  Pass

  Pass

  Perran Sands

  Pass

  Pass

  Marazion and Mounts Bay

  Fail

  Fail

  Porthcurno

  Pass

  Pass

  Sennen

  Pass

  Pass

  Porthmeor

  Pass

  Pass

  Porth Gwidden

  Pass

  Fail

  Porthminster

  Pass

  Pass

  Carbis Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  The Towans

  Pass

  Pass

  Portreath

  Pass

  Pass

  Porthtowan

  Pass

  Pass

  Trevaunance Cove

  Pass

  Fail

  Perranporth

  Pass

  Pass

  Holywell Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  Crantock

  Pass

  Pass

  Fistral

  Pass

  Pass

  Towan

  Pass

  Pass

  Watergate

  Pass

  Pass

  Mawgan Porth

  Pass

  Fail

  Treyarnon Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  Constantine Bay

  Pass

  No Survey

  Mother Ivey's Bay

  Pass

  No Survey

  Harlyn Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  Trevone Bay

  Pass

  Fail

  Rock

  Pass

  Fail

  Daymer Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  Polzeath

  Pass

  Pass

  Widemouth Sand

  Pass

  Pass

  Bude

  Fail

  Fail

  Hartland Quay

  Pass

  Pass

  Westward Ho!

  Pass

  Pass

  Instow

  Fail

  Fail

  Saunton Sands

  Pass

  Pass

  Croyde Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  Woolacombe

  Pass

  Pass

  Ilfracombe

  Fail

  Fail

  Combe Martin

  Pass

  Fail

  Lynmouth

  Fail

  Fail

  Wessex Water Authority (Bristol Channel)

  Porlock Weir

  Pass

  Pass

  Minehead Terminus

  Fail

  Fail

  Dunster North West

  Fail

  Fail

  Blue Anchor West

  Pass

  Pass

  Burnham Jetty

  Fail

  Pass

  Berrow

  Pass

  Pass

  Brean

  Pass

  Pass

  Weston-super-mare Uphill Slipway

  Pass

  Pass

  Weston-super-mare Grand Pier

  Fail

  Fail

  576

  1987 Result

  1986 Result

  Weston-super-mare Sand Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  Clevedon Swimming Pool

  Fail

  Fail

  North West Water Authority

  Dove Point, Meols

  Pass

  Fail

  Pasture Road, Moreton

  Pass

  Pass

  New Brighton

  Pass

  Fail

  Formby

  Pass

  Pass

  Ainsdale

  Pass

  Fail

  Southport

  Fail

  Fail

  St Annes

  Fail

  Fail

  Blackpool (Squires Gate—South Shore)

  Fail

  Fail

  Blackpool (South Shore—Central Pier)

  Fail

  Fail

  Blackpool (Central Pier—North Shore)

  Fail

  Fail

  Blackpool (North Shore—Cleveleys)

  Fail

  Fail

  Cleveleys

  Fail

  Fail

  Fleetwood

  Fail

  Fail

  Heysham—Half Moon Bay

  Fail

  Fail

  Morecambe (West End Pool— Sandylands

  Fail

  Fail

  Morecambe (WEP—Leisure Park)

  Fail

  Fail

  Morecambe (Town Hall—Leisure Park)

  Fail

  Fail

  Morecambe (Bare Pool—TH Slipway)

  Fail

  Fail

  Bardsea

  Fail

  Fail

  Walney Island Biggar Bank

  Pass

  Pass

  Walney Island Sandy Gap

  Pass

  Pass

  Walney Island West Shore

  Pass

  Fail

  Roanhead

  Pass

  Fail

  Askam-in-Furness

  Fail

  Fail

  Haverigg

  Fail

  Fail

  Silecroft

  Pass

  Fail

  Seascale

  Fail

  Fail

  St Bees

  Fail

  Fail

  Allonby

  Fail

  Fail

  Silloth

  Fail

  Fail

  Welsh Water Authority

  Jacksons Bay, Barry

  Fail

  Fail

  Whitmore Bay, Barry

  Fail

  Fail

  Cold Knap, Barry

  Fail

  Fail

  Southerndown

  Pass

  Fail

  Trecco Bay, Porthcawl

  Fail

  Fail

  Sandy Bay, Porthcawl

  Fail

  Fail

  Rest Bay, Porthcawl

  Pass

  Fail

  Aberafan

  Pass

  Fail

  Swansea Bay

  Fail

  Fail

  Bracelet Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  Limeslade Bay

  Fail

  Fail

  Langland Bay

  Pass

  Fail

  Caswell Bay

  Fail

  Pass

  Oxwich Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  Port Eynon Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  Rhossili

  Pass

  Fail

  Pembrey

  Pass

  Pass

  Pendine

  Pass

  Pass

  Amroth

  Fail

  Fail

  Saundersfoot

  Fail

  Pass

  Tenby, North

  Fail

  Pass

  Tenby, South

  Pass

  Fail

  Broadhaven

  Pass

  Fail

  Newgale

  Pass

  Fail

  Whitesands

  Pass

  Pass

  Newport

  Pass

  Pass

  Newquay

  Pass

  Pass

  Aberystwyth, South

  Fail

  Fail

  Aberystwyth, North

  Pass

  Pass

  Borth

  Pass

  Pass

  Tywyn

  Pass

  Fail

  Fairbourne

  Pass

  Pass

  Barmouth

  Pass

  Pass

  Llandanwg

  Pass

  Pass

  Harlech

  Pass

  Pass

  Morfa Bychan

  Fail

  Fail

  Criccieth

  Fail

  Pass

  Pwllheli

  Pass

  Pass

  577

  1987 Result

  1986 Result

  Abersoch

  Pass

  Pass

  Trearddur Bay

  Fail

  Fail

  Benllech

  Fail

  Pass

  Llandudno, West Shore

  Fail

  Fail

  Llandudno, North

  Pass

  Pass

  Colwyn Bay

  Pass

  Pass

  Kinmel Bay

  Fail

  Fail

  Rhyl

  Fail

  Fail

  Prestatyn

  Pass

  Fail

  Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland

  Magilligan

  Pass

  No survey

  Castlerock

  Pass

  No survey

  Portstewart

  Pass

  Pass

  Portrush

  Pass

  Pass

  Ballycastle

  Fail

  No survey

  Browns Bay

  Pass

  No survey

  Helens Bay

  Pass

  No survey

  Crawfordsburn

  Pass

  No survey

  Ballyholme

  Fail

  Fail

  Groomsport

  Pass

  Pass

  Millisle

  Pass

  No survey

  Tyrella

  Pass

  No survey

  Newcastle

  Fail

  Fail

  Cranfield

  Pass

  No survey

FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

  Middle East
  Mr. Cummings
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he has been in contact with any international human rights organisations in order to ascertain the current situation of the Palestinian population in the occupied territories during the period of restrictions on journalists' freedom of movement and reporting.

  Mr. Mellor
  We maintain contacts with a number of bodies, including human rights organisations, who monitor developments in the occupied territories.

  Mr. Cummings
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a further statement about the Palestinian uprising in the Israeli occupied territories.

  Mr. Mellor
  Unacceptable actions by the Israeli military and settlers are exacerbating the violence in the West Bank and Gaza. The status quo, characterised by violence and repression, offers no way forward. We urge all concerned to join in the search for a political settlement.

  Mr. Cummings
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what further representations he has made to the Israeli Government on the situation in the occupied territories; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Mellor
  We and our European partners regularly make clear to the Israeli authorities our concern at many aspects of the situation in the occupied territories.

  Mr. Cummings
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if Her Majesty's Government have made or intend to make any representations to the Israeli Government about the closure of Palestinian academic institutions on the West Bank and Gaza; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Mellor
  Yes. We have made regular representations to the Israelis about collective punishments, including the closure of educational institutions.
  578
  Mr. Cummings
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if Her Majesty's Government have made representations to the Israeli Government in respect of the difficulties Palestinian farmers have had in exporting agricultural produce to the European Community.

  Mr. Mellor
  Yes. We have repeatedly stressed to the Israeli Government the importance that we attach to the full implementation of the EC's measures to allow Palestinians in the occupied territories to export direct to the EC, in accordance with the Israeli Government's undertaking of 7 December 1987. Most recently we were fully associated with the representations which the Presidency and Commission made on this subject to Mr. Peres on 31 March.

  Mr. Cummings
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if Her Majesty's Government will make representations to the Israeli Government to allow the population of the occupied territories to hold free elections to choose their representatives at any future peace conference.

  Mr. Mellor
  Elections in the occupied territories are foreseen in the current United States peace proposals, to which we hope Israel will respond constructively.

  Swaziland
  Mr. Hunter
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what is his assessment of the implications of Swaziland's departure from the Rand monetary agreement and participation in the tripatrite monetary area agreement.

  Mr. Mellor
  The Rand monetary area agreement was renogotiated in April 1986 and became the common monetary area agreement or Tripartite monetary agreement. Under the terms of the new agreement Swaziland has been free to conduct an independent exchange rate policy. In practice, however, she has not felt the need to pursue such a policy and the Swazi currency has remained pegged at par with the rand. The new agreement also frees Swaziland from the need to place rand holdings in a special account in South Africa against the issue of Swazi currency notes and coins. This gives Swaziland flexibility in the management of foreign reserves and in the control of monetary policy.

  Mr. Hunter
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what assessment he has made of the implications for United Kingdom policy on the maintenance of stability in southern Africa of the Republic of South Africa's policy towards Swaziland.

  Mrs. Chalker
  We shall continue to urge South Africa to co-operate peacefully with all its neighbours and to refrain from the use of force.

  Mr. Hunter
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations he has made to, or received from, the Swaziland Government with regard to Swaziland's relations with the Republic of South Africa.

  Mrs. Chalker
  None.

  Palestinian Liberation Organisation
  Mr. Cummings
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations
  579
  Her Majesty's Government have made to the United States Government about the closure of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation office in Washington DC; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Mellor
  None.

  Mr. Cummings
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will seek a meeting with representatives of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation to seek clarification of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation's position regarding participation in any peace conference; and if he will take such an opportunity to further British-Arab understanding of the Palestine problem.

  Mr. Mellor
  No. My right hon. and learned Friend does not propose to meet PLO leaders as long as their policy remains ambiguous on renunciation of the use of violence, acceptance of United Nations Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 and recognition of Israel's right to secure existence.

  Mr. Cummings
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations Her Majesty's Government have made to the United States Government about the closure of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation observer office at the United Nations.

  Mr. Mellor
  We and our European partners have on several occasions made clear to the United States Administration our view that the PLO observer mission to the United Nations should be allowed to remain open.

  US-USSR Naval Forces
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what discussions he has had with his NATO allies on the conditions considered necessary for acceptance of the proposal made by Fleet Admiral Vladimir Chesnavia, Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Navy, that the Soviet Union and the United States cut their naval forces in the Mediterranean to 15 warships and 10 support vessels for each side; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Mellor
  There have so far been no discussions within the Alliance about this proposal.

  Fiji Ambassador
  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to the answer of 12 April,Official Report, column 30, what information he has as to by whom the credentials of the ambassador of Fiji expected shortly in this country are to be signed.

  Mr. Eggar
  None. It is normal practice for ambassadors to present to Her Majesty a Letter of Credence signed by their Head of State.

  South Africa (Imports Ban)
  Mr. Butler
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what information he has on the African countries which enforce an import ban on South African goods.
  580
  Mr. Mellor
  A number of African countries have undertaken to impose import bans on certain South African goods. Details of how such bans have been implemented are not available.

  "Death on the Rock"
  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what outside advice was obtained by Her Majesty's Government in relation to the decision not to ask for an injunction against the Thames Television programme "Death on the Rock".

  Mr. Mellor
  None.

  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs for what reasons his Department denied the request of Thames Television for information in relation to the Gibraltar killings.

  Mr. Mellor
  The inquest will be the proper place to provide information relating to the deaths of the terrorists.

  Foreign Compensation (Czechoslovakia) Order
  Mr. Bowis
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what progress is being made in implementating the Foreign Compensation (Czechoslovakia) Order 1982.

  Mr. Eggar
  The Foreign Compensation Commission has now completed the determination and evaluation of claims against the Czech fund. It is hope to make a payout of 100 per cent. of the assessed value of claims to all successful claimants by the end of May. This will exhaust the balance in the Czech fund of approximately £4 million on the assumption that all applicants accept payment.

  Intergovernmental Organisations
  Mr. Harry Ewing
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he will list in the Official Report the intergovernmental organisations. excluding the European Communities, of which the United Kingdom is a member, the amount of the United Kingdom's annual contribution to each organisation, the percentage of each organisation's budget which this represents and which Government Department accounts for each contribution.

  Mr. Eggar
  [pursuant to his reply, 29 April 1988, c. 312]: The Foreign and Commonwealth Office holds no complete record of the intergovernmental organisations of which the United Kingdom is a member. The 1988–89 provision and United Kingdom percentage contribution to the organisations for which the Foreign and Commonwealth Office pays the British subscriptions are set out in the following table:

  Organisation

  1988–89 Provision £000

  United Kingdom Percentage Contribution

  Subscriptions Paid from Class II, Vote 2, Other External Relations

  UN Regular Budget

  21,929

  4·860

  Commonwealth Secretariat

  2,123

  30·000

  581

  Organisation

  1988–89 Provision £000

  United Kingdom Percentage Contribution

  Council of Europe: General Expenses

  7,149

  16·710

  Council of Europe: Buildings

  361

  17·700

  Council of Europe: European Youth Foundation

  181

  18·500

  Western European Union

  1,409

  20·000

  Organisation of Economic Co-operation & Development

  4,442

  6·930

  North Atlantic Treaty Organisation: Civil Budget

  12,833

  18·820

  NATO: International Staff Secretariat

  144

  19·990

  South Pacific Commission

  330

  12·176

  Commonwealth Foundation

  483

  30·000

  Co-ordinating Committee, Paris

  109

  10·250

  International Institute for the Unification of Private Law

  48

  8·430

  International Exhibitions Bureau

  7

  5·210

  Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

  2

  4·430

  Permanent Court of Arbitration

  7

  6·660

  Commission for the Conservation of

  19

  4·940

  Antarctic Marine Living Resources

  Subscriptions Paid from Class II, Vote 5, Overseas Aid

  International Development Association

  168,900

  16·700

  International Finance Corporation

  3,526

  26·960

  Asian Development Bank:

  703

  22·250

  Capital Subscription

  Asian Development Fund

  12,500

  23·800

  African Development Bank:

  1,541

  21·390

  Captial Subscription

  African Development Fund

  8,500

  13·030

  Inter-American Development Bank:

  1,776

  20·980

  Capital Subscription

  Fund for Special Operations

  7,842

  13·460

  Caribbean Development Bank: Capital Subscription

  334

  212·900

  Special Development Fund

  1,618

  112·650

  International Fund for Agricultural Development

  4,992

  34·790

  Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency

  —

  4—

  International Bank for Reconstruction and Development Capital Subscription

  —

  5—

  UN Development Programme (UNDP)

  613,000

  n/a

  UN Children's Fund

  7,500

  n/a

  Food and Agricultural Organisation

  8,424

  75·830

  UN Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO)

  1,624

  74·820

  UN Education and Training Programme for Southern Africa

  50

  n/a

  UN Development Fund for Women

  50

  n/a

  UNIDO Industrial Development Fund

  600

  n/a

  International Atomic Energy Agency

  500

  n/a

  UN Centre for Human Settlements

  70

  n/a

  Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-Operation

  7,500

  30·000

  Commonwealth Youth Programme

  465

  30·000

  Commonwealth Media Development Fund

  150

  n/a

  Commonwealth Secretariat—Nassau Fellowship

  50

  n/a

  Commonwealth Science Council

  159

  29·000

  UN Fund for Population Activities

  5,250

  n/a

  International Planned Parenthood Federation

  6,750

  n/a

  582

  Organisation

  1988–89 Provision £000

  United Kingdom Percentage Contribution

  World Health Organisation (WHO): Special Programme for Prevention and Control of AIDS

  6,000

  n/a

  WHO Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction

  2,200

  n/a

  WHO Onchocerciasis Control Programme

  750

  n/a

  UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases

  650

  n/a

  WHO Action Programme on Essential Drugs and Vaccines

  450

  n/a

  WHO Diarrhoeal Disease Control Programme

  350

  n/a

  International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research

  150

  n/a

  Pan American Health Organisation: Caribbean Epidemiology Centre

  75

  n/a

  WHO Cold Chain Support Unit

  64

  n/a

  Development Centre of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD)

  226

  6·950

  International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property, Rome

  69

  n/a

  UN High Commissioner for Refugees

  3,500

  1·670

  UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East

  5,250

  4·570

  1 Share of last approved replenishment.

  2 Share of capital stock.

  3 Share of the OECD contributors' total.

  4 £2·8 million approx. being 4·86 per cent. of total subscription.

  5 A General Capital Increase is expected to be approved shortly by the Bank's Governors. The United Kingdom intends to subscribe, subject to Parliamentary approval; our share will be 4·955 per cent.

  6 Total for 1988 £24·5 million.

  7 Assessed contribution level.

  n/a = 1988 budget not yet available.

NATIONAL FINANCE

  European Finance Ministers
  Dr. Thomas
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he last met his counterparts from European Community countries; and what matters were discussed.

  Mr. Brooke
  I refer the hon. Member to the answer my right hon. Friend the Chancellor gave on 22 April, at column 580, to my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Smith).

  Tax and Prices Index
  Mr. Leigh
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what was the rise in the tax and prices index in the 12 months to March.

  Mr. Lilley
  In the 12 months to March 1988 the tax and prices index rose by 1·6 per cent.

AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

  Monetary Compensatory Amounts
  Mr. David Davis
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the latest position on monetary compensatory amounts in the intensive livestock sector.

  Mr. MacGregor
  In the price fixing I am seeking to reduce MCAs for all commodity sectors, and to abolish them in the pigmeat sector, on which there are separate technical issues.

  Mr. Michael Brown
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the current level of negative monetary compensatory amounts faced by the pigmeat sector; and what it was six months ago.

  Mr. MacGregor
  The United Kingdom MCA for pigmeat currently stands at —4·9 per cent. as compared to—10·9 per cent. at the beginning of November 1987.

  Sheepmeat
  Mr. David Nicholson
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the current position on the implementation of a sheepmeat stabiliser.

  Mrs. Ann Winterton
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the position on the introduction of a stabiliser to the sheepmeat regime.

  Mr. Knapman
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what measures have been taken to introduce a stabiliser mechanism into sheepmeat support.

  Mr. MacGregor
  Following European Council decisions the Community has agreed on a stabiliser for the sheepmeat sector based on maximum guaranteed quantities of 18·1 million ewes for Great Britain and 45·3 million ewes for the rest of the European Community, including Northern Ireland, which are the latest available figures. Sheepmeat support prices will be reduced for the 1988 marketing year from 23 May by the extent to which the maximum guaranteed quantities are exceeded, with separate calculations for Great Britain and the European Community-11 plus Northern Ireland so long as we operate variable premium.

  A 1 per cent. overrun will trigger a 1 per cent. price cut. On the basis of Commission estimates of ewe flock sizes in 1988, we expect a 3 per cent. cut in Great Britain prices.

  Mr. Alex Carlile
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement regarding the latest developments in the sheepmeat regime.

  Mr. MacGregor
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply given earlier today to my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Mr. Nicholson). I expect discussions on the Commission's proposals for reform of the Community's sheepmeat regime to take place after the price-fixing proposals have been agreed.

  Food Aid
  Mr. Irvine
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what action he is taking to implement the European Community free food scheme.

  Mr. Robert G. Hughes
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what progress has been made on developing a scheme for free food for the needy.
  584
  Mr. Gummer
  As announced on 21 April, butter and beef are being allocated to 127 charitable organisations and local authorities up to the limit of £10·4 million made available to us by the Commission for 1988. The timing and method of distribution to the needy are matters for the individual organisations concerned.

  Breeding Ewes
  Mr. Ron Davies
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the current number of breeding ewes in the United Kingdom.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  From the December 1987 census returns, the figure is put at 19·139 million.

  Single European Market
  Mr. Ian Taylor
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what steps are being taken to reduce trade barriers in the food industry in preparation for the single European market.

  Mr. Gummer
  The European Commission proposed a detailed legislative programme for food law in its 1985 White Paper "Completing the Internal Market." A number of measures are already under discussion in the Council, of which the most important relate to food additives and labelling, foods for particular nutritional uses and food contact materials. We are working for early agreement on these. A number of further proposals remain to be tabled by the Commission.

  Mr. Watts
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what progress is being made by the food industry in anticipation of unrestricted trade within the European Community from 1992.

  Mr. Gummer
  I know that the industry is aware of the challenge posed by the creation of a single market by the end of 1992 and is preparing itself in a variety of ways to take advantage of the new opportunities that are opening up. I intend to do everything I can do to encourage it to do so.

  Mr. Hunter
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is his assessment of the implications for United Kingdom agriculture of the creation of a single European Community market in 1992.

  Mr. MacGregor
  In common with other sectors of the United Kingdom economy, agriculture should stand to benefit from the opportunities created by the completion of a single market of 320 million people, provided that we remain competitive and conscious of the marketing opportunities for selling the output of the British agriculture and food industries. A key factor will be that monetary compensatory amounts represent an important obstacle to a single market. I therefore strongly support the Commission's aim of abolishing them by the end of 1992.

  Apple and Pear Development Council
  Mr. Moss
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he last met the chairman of the Apple and Pear Council; and what they discussed.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  My noble Friend the Parliamentary Secretary last met the chairman of the
  585
  Apple and Pear Development Council on 3 May, when she attended a meeting of the council. At the meeting, the council's proposed advertising plans for 1988–89 were discussed.

  Pig Farmers
  Mr. Win Griffiths
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what measures he proposes to take to help overcome the problems facing United Kingdom pig farmers.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply which my right hon. Friend gave to my hon. Friend, the Member for Bosworth (Mr. Tredinnick) earlier today.

  Mr. David Porter
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what recent representations he has had from pig farmers on monetary compensatory amounts and on the green pound; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. MacGregor
  I have received a substantial number of representations on this subject. I have made clear in the Agriculture Council my commitment to fight for the abolition of our MCAs in the pigmeat sector.

  Bovine Somatotrophin
  Mr. Alan W. Williams
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if, in the trials at present being conducted, any consideration has been given to whether bovine somatotrophin products could be labelled as such at the point of sale.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  Milk from cows involved in the trials is identical over the lactation to that from untreated cows. It is not necessary to treat it differently from other milk.

  Mr. Tony Lloyd
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what representations he has received from consumer organisations concerning the use of bovine somatotrophin in the dairy herd; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  I have received a considerable number of letters from both consumer organisations and individuals who are generally opposed to the use of BST. The product was fully assessed for safety before the current trials were authorised. I see no justification for any ban on its use.

  Mr. Livsey
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on criteria for the approval of farms for the bovine somatotrophin trial in the British dairy industry.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  That is a matter for the holder of the animal test certificate and the farmer concerned.

  Green Pound
  Mr. Colvin
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what representations he has received on the value of the green pound.

  Mr. MacGregor
  I have received a number of representations on this subject. The majority have sought a devaluation for pigmeat. Some have concerned all or a number of sectors and supported a measure of devaluation this year. Consumers' representatives have opposed devaluation.

  Farm Diversification Scheme
  Mr. Moate
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what measures he is taking to encourage farmers to diversify their activities.

  Mr. Gummer
  I refer my hon. Friend to the reply I gave earlier today to my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Mr. Kirkhope).

  Dairy Industry
  Mr. Knox
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he will be meeting the chairman of the Milk Marketing Board to discuss the dairy industry.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  My right hon. Friend the Minister and I have regular contacts with the chairman of the Milk Marketing Board to discuss various issues affecting the dairy industry.

  Sea Fish Industry Authority
  Mr. Wallace
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he proposes any increase in funding for the Sea Fish Industry Authority for grant assistance towards new vessels.

  Mr. Gummer
  No.

  Dr. Godman
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he last met the chairman of the Sea Fish Industry Authority; and what matters were discussed.

  Mr. Gummer
  My right hon. Friend met the chairman of the Sea Fish Industry Authority last December and I met him informally in April, when a number of matters concerning the activities of the authority were discussed.

  Cod Fishing Ban
  Mr. Matthew Taylor
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what representations he has received concerning the recent cod fishing ban from Cornish fishermen; and what was his response.

  Mr. Gummer
  I have not received any such representations.

  Cereals
  Mr. Kirkwood
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he will remove oats from the cereal co-responsibility scheme.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  The coverage of the cereals co-responsibility levy is a matter for the Agriculture Council. We fully appreciate the arguments for exempting oats from the levy and my right hon. Friend is continuing to argue for this in the current price-fixing negotiations.

  Agricultural Land Classification
  Mr. Chapman
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what representations he has received following the publication of his consultation document on agricultural land classification in February; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. MacGregor
  The closing date for responses to the consultation document was 25 April and we have received
  587
  a number of comments of a technical nature. I am looking at these carefully and will be making a statement in due course.

  Horticultural Development Council
  Mr. Hind
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on the progress of the Horticultural Development Council.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  Full details of the progress made by the Horticultural Development Council in its first 15 months are given in its first annual report, which was laid before the House on 28 April 1988.

  Whales
  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what action he has taken to improve the conservation of whales.

  Mr. Gummer
  I refer my hon. Friend to the reply given earlier to my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis).

  Mr. Jack
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on the catching of whales for scientific purposes.

  Mr. Gummer
  It is the firm view of the Government that all proposals for the taking of whales for research purposes should be thoroughly examined by the scientific committee of the International Whaling Commission, which is the body responsible for the conservation of whale stocks. Only when this body is fully satisfied that the research programme will not endanger the whale stocks concerned, has valid objectives and is properly designed to achieve those objectives, and that these cannot be obtained through benign methods, should such research be undertaken.

  Mr. Andrew Mitchell
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what progress has been made in the protection of whales from hunting.

  Mr. Gummer
  In 1985 the International Whaling Commission (IWC) introduced a moratorium on all commercial whaling operations. The United Kingdom has been a leader in this as in other subsequent efforts to stop countries using questionable scientific arguments in order to continue whaling. We shall continue with these efforts in order to ensure the proper conservation of all whale species.

  Fish Farms (Pollution)
  Mr. Graham
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what recent representations he has received regarding the issue of pollution from fish farms; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Gummer
  I have received no recent representations about pollution from fish farms.

  Radioactivity (Farming Losses)
  Mr. Andrew F. Bennett
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what further steps the Government are taking to ensure that farmers do not continue to lose income due to effects of Chernobyl fall out in north Wales, northern England and Scotland.
  588
  Mr. Donald Thompson
  Following detailed discussions with the farmers unions we introduced four separate compensation schemes to help those sheep producers whose enterprises were affected by the restrictions introduced following the Chernobyl incident. Two of these schemes are still operating. One provides full compensation for any market price losses on sheep that have to be marked on their release from the remaining restricted areas: the second offers a payment of £1·30 per head for each sheep monitored and moved out of the restricted area. Both schemes will continue so long as the movement and slaughter restrictions apply.

  Research and Development
  Mrs. Margaret Ewing
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what recent representations he has received on the Barnes review of agricultural research and development.

  Mr. Gummer
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply given to the hon. Member for Bristol, South (Ms. Primarolo) on 25 April, at column 42.

  NFU (Derbyshire Branch)
  Mr. McLoughlin
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he has any plans to meet the Derbyshire branch of the National Farmers Union.

  Mr. Gummer
  I have visited the branch on two occasions and my noble Friend the Parliamentary Secretary plans to visit the Derbyshire branch of the National Farmers Union on 14 September 1988.

  Horses
  Mr. Harry Greenway
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what action he is taking to restore the role of the horse as an agricultural animal; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Gummer
  Traditionally, those horses used in agricultural operations have always been regarded as agricultural animals. It follows that there has been no change in their status, so the question of restoring their role does not arise. I am, however, anxious that horses and ponies used for other purposes should play a full part in revitalising the rural economy and I hope that advantage will be taken of the inclusion of pony trekking and livery in the list of activities qualifying for grant under the farm diversification scheme. There is little doubt that opportunities exist for the development of businesses associated with the breeding, rearing and keeping of horses in rural areas. But, as with other small rural businesses, this calls for a spirit of enthusiasm, dedication and enterprise.

  Sheep Farming
  Mr. Lewis
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on the current state of the sheep farming sector.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  The sheep sector is buoyant, returns are good and exports are encouraging.

  Ms. Quin
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he intends to encourage the recent trend towards sheep farming in the lowland areas of Britain.
  589
  Mr. MacGregor
  Farmers must make their own decisions about sheep farming in the context of the sheepmeat regime.

  Aerosols
  Mr. Allan Roberts
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if there are any plans to ban the use of aerosols in his Department's buildings; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  No. I am not aware of any such plans.

  Nuclear Waste
  Mr. Speller
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many separate sets of permission he has granted in the past 10 years for the dumping of sewage sludge, capital spoil or other materials such as low-level waste products from nuclear plants in the Bristol Channel within 20 miles of the north Devon coastline.

  Mr. Gummer
  Licences under the Dumping at Sea Act 1974 and its successor legislation, the Food and Environment Protection Act 1985, have been issued from 1978 to date in the area specified as follows:

  a. Two licences, renewed annually, for disposal of sewage sludge;

  b. Three licences, each for one year, for disposal of dredged spoil arising from new works;

  c. Seven licences, each for one year, and one renewed for a total of four years, for disposal of spoil arising from maintenance dredging;

  d. 12 licences for disposal of liquid industrial waste; most were renewed for more than one year; all have now terminated.

  Five disposal sites have been approved over the period.

  Authorisations have been granted jointly with the Secretary of State for the Environment under the Radioactive Substances Act 1960 for the discharge by pipeline of low-level liquid radioactive waste into the Bristol channel from the Hinkley Point nuclear power stations and from Amersham International plc.

  Trade Barriers (Removal)
  Mr. Mans
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what assessment he has made of the benefits for Britain's food industry of the removal of trade barriers within Europe in 1992.

  Mr. Gummer
  A wide range of benefits are likely to flow from free access to a single market of 320 million people by the end of 1992, though some of these will, of course, arise from proposals still under consideration. I am sure that the industry itself will be making a detailed assessment of the prospective benefits.

  Channel Islands (Fishing Rights)
  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on progress on negotiations relating to the Channel Islands with particular regard to the right of Channel Islands—registered fishing vessels to operate within(a) British waters, and (b) EEC waters.

  Mr. Gummer
  There are no negotiations to change the rights of such vessels.

  Lowestoft Fishermen
  Mr. David Porter
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on the prospects for Lowestoft inshore fishermen for the rest of the current year in the light of the quota and licensing restrictions on the industry.

  Mr. Gummer
  Provisional figures for 1987 show a 39 per cent. increase in the value of landings of all species compared with 1986, including a corresponding increase of 36 per cent. for cod. Data for the first two months of 1988 show a 29 per cent. increase for all species over the same period last year, including a 6 per cent. increase for cod.

  The figures show that our quota management and restrictive licensing systems are working well for the Lowestoft inshore fleet.

  Cod and Plaice
  Mr. David Porter
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what recent representations he has had on total allowable catches for cod and plaice; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Gummer
  I have had no recent representations on total allowable catches for cod and plaice in the North sea or off the west of Scotland. Fishermen's representatives have, however, been in touch with my officials to express their concern at the level of the precautionary total allowable catch for Channel cod (ICES areas VII excluding VIIa, VIII, IX and X). In consultation with the area VII industry advisory committee the fishery was closed on 11 April in the light of catch statistics up to that date.

  The ICES advisory committee on fisheries management meets next month and we shall press for a review of the total allowable catch for any stock of importance to the United Kingdom should the committee's scientific assessment indicate that there is any scope to do so.

  Dairy Farmers
  Mr. David Porter
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what recent representations he has had from dairy farmers about their industry in general and European competition in particular; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  I receive frequent representations from dairy farmers about their industry. Some are concerned about the prospect of imports of pasteurised milk, but there is increasing confidence that we can compete effectively and that the consumer will continue to favour the freshness and quality of the domestic product.

  Cereal Farmers
  Mr. David Porter
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what recent representations he has had from cereal farmers about their industry in general and European competition in particular; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  I receive frequent representations from cereal farmers on a wide range of issues, including their competitive position.

  Price Fixing
  Mr. Leigh
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on what recent discussions he has held with his counterparts in the European Community in respect of the annual price fixing for agricultural commodities.

  Mr. MacGregor
  The Commission's proposals relating to cereals, fruit and vegetables, sugar, beef and agrimonetary matters were discussed at the Council of Agriculture Ministers meeting on 18–19 April.

  Chernobyl Nuclear Accident (Effects)
  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what action he proposes to take in the light of the report on his Department's response to the effects of the Chernobyl disaster by the hon. Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark), a copy of which has been sent to him; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Donald Thompson
  The Government have already taken action to reflect the experience gained as a result of the Chernobyl accident, through the new national response plan announced on 30 June 1987. As hon. Members will be aware, the Agriculture Committee of this House is currently examining the Government's response to the accident in the light of detailed evidence submitted by my Ministry, amongst others. I shall give careful consideration to the Committee's report.

  Mr. Pike
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what proportion of current agricultural research and development is funded by the industry; and what is his estimate for 1988–89.

  Mr. MacGregor
  Our best estimate is that industry funds about two thirds of the country's total agricultural R and D effort. But many companies do not disclose details of their spending and there are also problems in assessing the contribution of multinationals to the total United Kingdom picture.

TRANSPORT

  Settle-Carlisle Railway Line
  Mr. Cryer
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he is yet in a position to indicate his policy towards acceptance of the conditions laid down by the contributing local authorities to the Settle-Carlisle railway line.

  Mr. David Mitchell
  No. My right hon. Friend will indicate his views on this when he announces his conclusions on the future of the line generally.

  Icelandair Boeing 727
  Mr. Robert G. Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will make a statement on the circumstances in which an undercarriage door fell off an Icelandair Boeing 727 and landed in a garden in Southbourne close, Pinner, on 2 May.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  The Civil Aviation Authority has said that a main undercarriage door fell from an Icelandair Boeing 727 aircraft approaching Heathrow when the door-to-fuselage hinge failed. The airworthiness of Icelandair aircraft is a matter for the authorities in Iceland, who will 592
  be responsible for taking any necessary safety action. Section 76(2) of the Civil Aviation Act 1982 provides for the recovery of damages in respect of any material loss or damage caused by an article falling from an aircraft.

  Cyclists
  Mrs. Peacock
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what evidence he has about the dangers caused by irresponsible behaviour by pedal cyclists to themselves and to other road users; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  Pedal cyclists are one of the most vulnerable road user groups. In 1986, 271 pedal cyclists were killed and a further 25,858 were injured. Although this is less than in 1985, the casualty rate per mile travelled worsened in 1986.

  The Department and local highway authorities work hard to try to reduce these appalling casualties. Many of the accidents to cyclists are caused by other road users.

  There is scope for cyclists to do more to help themselves, for example, by wearing conspicuity aids and safety helmets.

  The majority of cyclists are sensible law-abiding citizens. There are some who seem to think they are above the law. For instance, there is no excuse for not using lights at night, nor for riding on the pavement or in pedestrian-only areas, which causes particular distress to many elderly and disabled persons.

  I am concerned at cyclists ignoring traffic signals and directions. These cyclists should realise that such irresponsible behaviour can increase significantly their chances of being involved in an accident. Cyclists are not above the law. The police can and do take action to. prosecute.

  Parents have a particular responsibility to ensure that their children know just how dangerous roads can be if not treated with respect. They should encourage their children to take proper training, through the excellent schemes run by RoSPA. The local road safety officer can give advice.

  Older cyclists can obtain help and advice on a wide range of issues, including defensive riding techniques and machine maintenance, by joining cycle clubs locally, or by subscribing to a national organisation like the Cyclists' Touring Club.

  Many cycling accidents are caused by other road users. The Highway Code now includes much more advice aimed at ensuring that motorists are more aware of cyclists and the problems they face. As part of our current road safety publicity programme, we are also distributing relevant material to local authority road safety officers.

  Air Services
  Mr. Roy Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what new proposals he has to encourage the development of air services from the regional airports of the United Kingdom.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  It is not our policy to subsidise air services. We will continue to approve capital allocations to increase regional airport capacity where this is justified. In international negotiations over traffic rights we aim to facilitate air services between regional airports and overseas, provided British interests are safeguarded. In particular, the EC air transport "package", which came
  593
  into force on 1 January, gives airlines the automatic right to provide services between any United Kingdom regional airport and most major airports in the Community.

  Mr. Roy Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what plans he has to support financial and other links between British and European airlines where this reflects EEC policy.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  The establishment of financial and other links between British and European airlines is a commercial matter for the airlines themselves. We would be involved only if advised by the CAA that such a link would result in a British airline becoming foreign controlled. We would treat each case on its merits.

NORTHERN IRELAND

  Pigs
  Mr. John D. Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on the state of the pig industry in Northern Ireland.

  Mr. Viggers
  The pig industry in Northern Ireland, in common with the remainder of the United Kingdom and the European Community, is going through a difficult period due to an over-supply of pigs and poor prices for pigmeat.

  To help ease the situation an aids to private storage scheme was introduced throughout the Community in February 1988 to remove surplus pigmeat from the market. To date just over 200 tonnes have been put into store in Northern Ireland.

  Furthermore, the level of monetary compensatory amount paid on bacon exported to the United Kingdom has, due to the increasing strength of sterling, fallen from 15·8 per cent. in October 1987 to 6·1 per cent. at the end of April 1988.

  Road Repairs
  Mr. John D. Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what proposals he has to repair the footway and roadway between the Millifle end of Donaghadee and the bends at Croaghpatrick; when will this road towards Ballyvester be realigned; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Needham
  The Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland has no proposals at present to improve any of these roads as their condition is not considered to justify such works.

  Potatoes
  Mr. John D. Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on the state of the seed potato and ware potato industry.

  Mr. Viggers
  Total shipments of seed potatoes from the 1987 crop are in excess of 50,000 tonnes compared with just over 52,000 tonnes at the corresponding time from the 1986 crop. This has been achieved in spite of a 3 per cent. fall in the area of seed potatoes planted in 1987 and some problems with seed exported.

  Ware potato prices for the 1987 crop have been lower than for the 1986 crop, but the cumulative average grower's price at 15 April was £62·06 per tonne. This is
  594
  well in excess of the target price of £46 per tonne set under the market support arrangements. Prices have been easing back over recent weeks, but this has had only a marginal effect on the cumulative average grower's price for the crop.

  Retail Prices Index (Error)
  Mr. Charles Wardle
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what arrangements have been made for the allocation of money to charities in Northern Ireland in respect of the retail prices index understatement on social security benefits and centrally administered pensions.

  Mr. Needham
  The balance remaining out of the savings attributable to the RPI error in the social security uprating in Northern Ireland, after allowing for the compensatory payments to individual beneficiaries, is about £250,000. This will be made available to voluntary organisations, and particularly to those whose work would benefit the groups affected by the error.

  To ensure as wide and as equitable a distribution as possible, I have decided that the money should be available to regional voluntary organisations and to local groups. The Department of Health and Social Services will administer part of the new fund, in the form of grants to individual regional bodies for specific purposes, and the Northern Ireland Voluntary Trust, which has a well-proven track record in this field, will distribute the balance in the form of grants to more localised community projects serving the same target groups.

  The Department of Health and Social Services will now be inviting applications for a share of the available money, and the Northern Ireland Voluntary Trust will be announcing details of how local groups should apply.

  The savings accruing to the superannuation schemes for Northern Ireland civil servants, teachers and health and personal social services staff amount to about £158,000. In the case of the Civil Service, payments totalling £52,500 were made by the Department of Finance and Personnel to the Civil Service retirement fellowship, the Civil Service benevolent fund and the Northern Ireland Civil Service sports association in the financial year 1987–88. In the case of retired teachers and health and personal social services staff consideration is being given to identifying the most appropriate arrangements for distributing the sums involved for the benefit of the groups of staff concerned.

  Police (Complaints)
  Mr. William Ross
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many complaints have been made against police officers in each of the Royal Ulster Constabulary sub-divisions controlled from the divisional headquarters at Strand road, Londonderry in each of the last five years; what was the result of the cases in each of those sub-divisions; and how often more than one complaint was made against the same officer and with what result.

  Mr. Stanley
  The information is not available in the form requested and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost. However, information about complaints in the police division controlled from Strand road, Londonderry in each of the past five years is as follows:
  595

  Complaints against the police—RUC "N" division

  Complaints

  1983

  1984

  1985

  1986

  1987

  Received

  207

  255

  365

  336

  265

  Finalised

  196

  243

  350

  294

  95

  Substantiated

  2

  1

  3

  5

  2

  Not substantiated

  58

  51

  101

  87

  18

  Withdrawn by complainant

  102

  127

  125

  97

  46

  Non co-operation by complainant

  33

  64

  117

  104

  28

  Not proceeded with

  1

  0

  4

  1

  1

  Job Seekers (Travel to London)
  Mr. William Ross
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will publish a table in the Official Report to show for the last 12 months for which figures are available (a) how many persons from Northern Ireland have received assistance from public funds to travel to London to seek work, and (b) how many families and individuals from Northern Ireland have had to be given accommodation in London at public expense while seeking work in London; what is the average period such accommodation was occupied; and what was the cost.

  Mr. Viggers
  Under the travel-to-interview scheme the Department of Economic Development assisted a total of 275 people to travel to interviews in London during the 12 months ended 31 March 1988.

  Under the supplementary benefit scheme, which ceased on 11 April, help was available in limited circumstances to people on supplementary benefit to enable them to find work within the United Kingdom provided they did not qualify for assistance under the travel-to-interview scheme. information is not held centrally about the numbers of persons assisted and could be obtained only at disaproportionate cost.

  Information is not available about the numbers of families or individuals from Northern Ireland who had to be given accommodation in London at public expense while seeking work there.

  Brussels (Ministerial Visit)
  Sir John Biggs-Davison
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement about the 596
  official visit to Brussels by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers).

  Mr. Viggers
  I visited Brussels on 20 and 21 April, where I had discussions with the Commissioner for Regional Policy and senior officials of the Commission. Our discussions covered Northern Ireland economic issues, ways in which the Province might benefit to an increased extent from the reformed structural funds, the pathfinder initiative, our approach to preparing Northern Ireland for the completion of the single European market by 1992 and the European enterprise conference scheduled to be held in Northern Ireland from 28 September to 1 October next.

  I was encouraged by the Commission's recognition of the Province's particular problems and its willingness to be as flexible as possible in assisting future developments.

  Irish Institute for European Affairs
  Sir Biggs-Davison
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what is the extent of the Northern Ireland participation in the Irish Institute for European Affairs in Leuven; what is the cost to public funds; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Viggers
  Construction trainees from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland participated in the renovation of the institute's buildings. Since 1985 the Department of Economic Development and AnCO (the industrial training authority in the Republic) have jointly sponsored a series of European export marketing programmes training unemployed graduates to become export marketing managers. In addition, the institute is used for a variety of seminars, conferences, public lectures and business receptions by both the private and public sectors.

  The cost of the institute to Northern Ireland funds in the year ended 31 March 1988 was £90,255, including annual subvention of £20,000 payable by the Department of Economic Development over a period of three years, matching a corresponding sum paid by the authorities in the Republic of Ireland.

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock (Prayers having been read earlier at the Judicial Sitting by the Lord Bishop of Truro): The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.

Building Society PLCs: Deposit Protection
Lord Constantine of Stanmore Lord Constantine of Stanmore asked Her Majesty's Government:
What safeguards at present exist or are proposed by them to protect the deposits of members of mutual fund building societies which become plcs.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Transport (Lord Brabazon of Tara): My Lords, a building society which converts into a plc will become an authorised institution under the Banking Act. As such, it will be subject to prudential supervision by the Bank of England and deposits in it will be protected under the statutory deposit protection scheme.
Lord Constantine of Stanmore: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that helpful Answer. I am sure that he is aware of the concern of many depositors in mutual fund building societies that there will be a transition period when the societies become plcs which may render them vulnerable to management maladjustment or future government policies. Can he give depositors some firm assurance that their interests will be adequately protected when such transitions occur?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I believe that I can. As I said in my original Answer, the new companies will be regulated by the Bank of England. It is for members of buildings societies to decide whether they wish to allow their society to be converted.
The Earl of Kinnoull: My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord can remind us what percentage of members will have to vote in favour of such an arrangement.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, the voting turnout level required for conversion to a successor company is 20 per cent. of the members. Of that 20 per cent., three-quarters of depositing members must vote in favour of the conversion. So far as borrowers are concerned, a simple majority of borrowers must vote in favour.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, will the noble Lord give some indication of what protection there will be for depositors who are also shareholders in buildings societies? Is there not a danger that under certain circumstances shareholdings will be devalued by a subsequent public issue of which the shareholders may not approve?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, as I said, the shareholders will have a say whether the society
678
should convert in the first place. Following conversion, the shareholders and depositors will be subject to the Banking Act protection scheme.
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, does my noble friend agree, especially in the light of the figures which he has given us, that it will be very difficult for a mutual fund building society to get the necessary number of votes from its shareholders to convert to a plc? Does he also agree that regardless of whether such a society stays as a mutual fund building society or becomes a plc, the greatest safeguard for investors in the institution will be sound financial management from the top?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely right in saying that financial management at the top is of critical importance. As to whether it will be difficult for a building society to become a plc, we agreed the provisions during the passage of the Act. At that time we felt that that was the correct way to deal with the matter.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, what will happen if a mutual fund building society decides to become a plc through the appropriate majority and is not then recognised by the Bank of England under the Banking Act?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I believe that a building society will have to make certain that it will be recognised by the Bank of England as a bank before it goes down that path.
Lord Jacques: My Lords, is the Minister aware that many people who have given long service to building societies are disturbed by the developments of recent years because they believe that the success of building societies has been due to their specialisation?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, that may be the case. However, the Government decided during the passage of the Act that it was time to allow building societies to take part in the provision of various financial services other than those which are their traditional activities. At the moment they are still confined in great part to the provision of home loans.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, will the noble Lord reconsider his earlier reply? Is it not the case that a building society might decide to become a plc without having any intention whatever of bringing itself within the Banking Act? In those circumstances some subsequent public issue would not be prohibited.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, if a plc is to take part in banking activities, it must be authorised by the Bank of England.
Lord Jenkins of Hillhead: My Lords, is it not the case that recent developments have put building societies in a very difficult position? As the noble Lord indicated, becoming a plc means going through a difficult process which may well not succeed. If building societies do not become plcs, they will not be in the right position vis-á-vis the banks and will lose an increasing share of the mortgage market, as has been the case recently.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, the Building Societies Act allows building societies to engage in activities in which they traditionally were not allowed to engage, as well as attracting more wholesale deposits. Even if they do not become plcs, they will still have more flexibility than was previously the case.

Fiji and South Pacific States: Relations
3.7 p.m.
Lord Auckland Lord Auckland asked Her Majesty's Government:
What is the current state of relations between the United Kingdom and Fiji and the South Pacific Islands of Kiribati, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Glenarthur): My Lords, we have good relations with the Republic of Fiji and with other South Pacific island states, including Kiribati, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
Lord Auckland: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that concise Answer. I declare an interest as chairman of the United Kingdom branch of the Anglo-South Pacific branch of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. Is he aware that there is a wish that Fiji should resume full Commonwealth status? Fiji is one of the long-standing friends of this country. Is my noble friend able to shed any light on the present position and what aid we are presently giving to Fiji?
As regards Tuvalu, is he aware that I had the honour of officially meeting the Prime Minister when he was in this country? Can he say what aid is currently being given to Tuvalu and the other charming islands?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, as regards the readmission or otherwise of Fiji to the Commonwealth, we also hope that it will be able to rejoin as a republic. However, admission depends on the approval of all members of the Commonwealth and not any single member. Regarding aid to Fiji, the bilaterial aid programme is expanding following the recent visit by Sir Ratu Mara to this country. There was a provision of professional and technical personnel and training scholarships in the last financial year of around £1 million. The Government also contribute about £3 million to multilateral aid through the European Development Fund. That will continue. Together with investment from the Commonwealth Development Corporation, total aid to Fiji from Britain is £7 million a year.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, on 29th March the Government were reported as having said they were prepared to assist Fiji in the drafting of a new constitution. Can the Minister say what is the Government's view of the present constitution and whether a new constitution in the Government's view would mean full, free and fair elections? Can he say what progress is being made in respect of the offer of help with a new constitution?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I can confirm that we have offered help in the drafting of a constitution. We
680
hope that that will be possible, and we shall do what we can to encourage Fiji towards a return to parliamentary democracy and constitutional government. Like my noble friend, we would certainly not abandon a traditional friend in time of need. It is important that we recognise that others will be looking to see that the constitutional arrangements in Fiji satisfy Commonwealth principles.
Lord Auckland: My Lords, will my noble friend answer the second part of the Question regarding Tuvalu? Is there any increase in the aid being given to Tuvalu at the present time?
Lord GlenarthurMy Lords, I am sorry. I too met the Prime Minister of Tuvalu when he was over here. Our aid programme—the largest to Tuvalu—was certainly discussed and Dr. PuaPua expressed his appreciation of everything we are doing. Aid amounts to about half a million pounds a year.
Lord Leatherland: My Lords, can the Minister say whether the Government have it in mind to send a delegation of Peers to those islands in order to ascertain exactly what the position is? If so, will he ask for volunteers?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the answer is, not at the present time. However, I note the noble Lord's interest.

Hijacks and Unlawful Seizures
3.12 p.m.
Lord Molloy Lord Molloy asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will consider initiating a convention for the suppression of the unlawful seizure of aircraft and seek the support of other nations to effect a procedure to be followed in the event of any such unlawful seizures.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, successive governments helped to ensure that international conventions so provide. The Tokyo Convention requires states to take appropriate measures to restore unlawfully seized aircraft which land within their territory to lawful control. The Hague and Montreal Conventions are concerned that offenders should be brought to justice. The International Civil Aviation Organisation has produced guidance on the response to hijacks. We shall press for further nations to sign those conventions. We shall encourage ICAO to take further action to improve procedures to frustrate this crime.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, is the Minister aware that I welcome the last part of his statement because it agrees with my submission? Will he not accept that existing precautions are inadequate? It is still easy for hijackers to get on to planes. Despite the courage of the Kuwaiti Government, there was no universal action to support them; the plane was able to go from one airport to another to refuel and so on. Is it not time for this country, which has taken the lead so often in these matters, to call another convention to see whether it is possible to reduce to an absolute

681
minimum the role of hijackers—those appalling cowards—in threatening innocent people and causing great distress among all nations?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary put forward to the European Council of Foreign Affairs Ministers recently a new five-point action plan which, if adopted, would, we hope, strengthen our hand against terrorists. The plan included proposals that the Hague Convention should be strengthened.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: My Lords, perhaps I may ask a related question. The illegal seizure of aircraft is facilitated greatly by inadequate security at airports. Would the Government feel able to take the initiative in securing a worldwide survey of security at airports, subsequently to be made public for the benefit of travellers and airlines throughout the world?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, we work continually with other states to improve the agreed standards and to ensure that they are properly enforced. As to United Kingdom practices, we shall examine the recent incident to see whether any improvements are necessary. We are in constant touch with the International Civil Aviation Organisation to make certain that proposals are carried out.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: My Lords, I do not wish to be rude but that type of answer is the reason we never get anywhere. Someone has to take the initiative. I repeat my question. Will the Government take the initiative and ask ICAO, or anyone else, to undertake and publish a worldwide survey of security at airports? Will they please bring that to the notice of ICAO at its next meeting?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, one point in my right honourable friend's five-point plan was that an international task force should be set up to investigate the hijacking and examine security arrangements at the relevant airports. That should be set up under ICAO auspices. We take very seriously the need for such action but it must be done through international agreement.
Lord Mason of Barnsley: My Lords, is the Minister aware that so long as there are avenues of escape for hijackers and airports and nations are prepared to receive hijacked aircraft, international terrorism will not be curbed? Is he aware, therefore, that only if the International Air Transport Association is prepared to ban airports of nations that receive them can some progress be made on this subject?
Noble Lords: Reading!
Lord Mason of Barnsley: What pressure is Her Majesty's Government applying to IATA to effect that ban on those airports that still allow the reception of international hijackers?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I have already said that we continue to put pressure on other countries through the various organisations and
682
through the ICAO. I think that there is little more that I can say at the moment.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, on the subject of the Kuwaiti hijack, will the Minister admit the very grave difficulties for the Algerian Government in rescuing the passengers and at the same time bringing the hijackers to justice? Will he say how many governments supported the Prime Minister's demand for the imposition of sanctions against the Algerian Government for not succeeding in that?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, we agree that the Algerians faced considerable difficulty. Nevertheless, it is regrettable that the hijackers appear to have been allowed to go free. The prime responsibility must of course be for the safety of the passengers in the hijacked aircraft. As to the noble Lord's second question about a call for sanctions, I am afraid that I do not have an answer at the moment.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, can the noble Lord say whether it is the Government's view that the deal done by the French for the release of their three hostages will increase or diminish the likelihood of further hostage-taking in the future, whether it is by air or any other method? Each is as bad as the other.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, that is rather a different question. But the Government's view remains that we should not give in to hijackers.
Lord Underhill: My Lords, does the Minister not agree that the most important part of my noble friend's Question is the first part relating to security measures at airports? That is surely the most important point and it was emphasised by the noble Baroness. Can the Minister say when the matter is likely to be raised again? Will he provide information on the important question of whether a monitoring team could see that all airports carry out proper security measures?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, it is a matter which should definitely be kept very much in mind. In this country the Government are responsible for security at airports. I believe IATA said recently that we are among the best in that respect. As to foreign airports, it is the responsibility of British airlines which serve those airports to satisfy themselves about the security arrangements.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, would the Minister not agree that terrorism and hijacking are now the most appalling form of international gangsterism? Does he also not agree that international action alone can prevent terrorists' cowardice resulting in more crimes? We cannot simply sit back and say that we have certain conventions and rules which do not seem to be totally effective. I should like to ask the Minister whether he has listened to the comments that have come from all sides of this Chamber and whether the Government will consider an international convention to deal with the aspects that I raised in my initial Question.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, as I have said there are already conventions which, if properly enforced, should deal with those matters. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary has put forward his five-point plan to strengthen those conventions.

Nicaragua: Aid
3.20 p.m.
Lord Rea Lord Rea asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether, following the cease-fire agreement in Nicaragua, they will view favourably requests for assistance in repairing the human and economic damage caused by the "Contra" war.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the European Community already provides substantial aid to Central America, including Nicaragua. The United Kingdom's share is about 20 per cent. The recent San Jose Conference in Hamburg agreed to additional measures to assist the countries of the region, several of which have suffered severely from internal conflict.
Lord Rea: My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Answer, which was reasonably helpful, and I should like to ask him a supplementary question. There are severe drought conditions; in fact, there is a situation of impending famine in parts of Nicaragua due to the combined effects of drought and the disruption of agriculture because of the war. Can he say whether the Government intend to reply to Nicaragua's recent request to them for bilateral aid of an emergency nature to the tune of less than £1 million to help fund the supply of oil and beans?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, we do not have a bilateral aid programme for Nicaragua but the Government have contributed to joint funded projects carried out by the voluntary agencies. Those are the kinds of things to which the noble Lord alludes. Those projects are mainly humanitarian and are designed to help the poorest people in Nicaragua.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, does the Minister agree that during the past five years British aid to and trade with Nicaragua have declined substantially? In view of the signing of the cease-fire agreement, will Her Majesty's Government now be prepared to review the position?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the answer to that question is that we have not progressed quite so far as the noble Lord indicates. We hope that it will be possible to make further progress and move forward from the recent meeting which was held on 28th April. There is to be another meeting on 12th May. We are still in the position of wishing to see a peaceful negotiated solution to the region's problems. I hope that it will be a successful negotiation and that we shall make progress after that.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, will the Minister be good enough to tell the House the objective of the meeting on the 12th May?
Lord Glenarthur: Yes, my Lords; it is to take forward the meeting which took place on 28th April, which comprised talks in Managua about a definitive cease-fire. The parties met on 28th April but the Contra leaders found the Sandinista proposals unacceptable because they required them to lay down their arms without prior guarantees that the Sandinistas would implement further democratisation. There is to be a further meeting on 12th May, so the process is still very much alive.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, now that the war which has been forced on Nicaragua by the United States Administration for the past six years is drawing to a close, will the Government take such visible steps to help that country rebuild its economy as would befit the traditions of this country?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I think that we have yet to reach the ideal position which the noble Lord wishes to see. We have consistently advocated a peaceful negotiated solution to the region's problems and we warmly welcome both the Central American peace agreement and the 60-day cease-fire agreement which was signed on 23rd March. As I have said, negotiations are still under way. Let us see how they develop.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, does the Minister's reply to my noble friend imply that aid from this country will depend on whether the British Government approve of the peace negotiations in Managua? If that is wrong, will he make it quite clear that that is not a condition for providing aid to Nicaragua? Can he say whether it is the case that the British Government is the only EC government that has so far refused to give bilateral aid to fund the emergency appeal that has been made in the present famine conditions?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I am not laying down any conditions whatever. I stated that at present there is no bilateral aid programme for Nicaragua. However, as I said, the European Community's aid commitments to Central America are substantial. They doubled from 41 million European currency units in 1984 to 82 million European currency units in 1987, of which the United Kingdom contributes about 20 per cent. At the San José conference it was agreed to demonstrate the European Community's practical support for the peace process; namely, through additional food aid, help with refugees and assistance for the proposed Central American Parliament.
Lord Rea: My Lords, is it necessary for there to be a pre-existing bilateral agreement before aid is given in response to an emergency request for aid because of severe famine conditions?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the noble Lord must not confuse the humanitarian aid side with the bilateral aid side. As I have said, we already contribute to joint funded projects carried out by the voluntary agencies. No doubt we shall continue to do so.

Business
3.26 p.m.
Lord Denham: My Lords, it may be for the convenience of the House if I announce that the Committee stage of the Education Reform Bill will be adjourned at approximately 7 p.m. for approximately one hour and that during this adjournment the Summer Time Order 1988 will be taken.

Landlord and Tenant Bill [H.L.]
Lord Denham: My Lords, I have it in command from Her Majesty the Queen and his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales to acquaint the House that they, having been informed of the purport of the Landlord and Tenant Bill, have consented to place their prerogatives and interests, so far as they are affected by the Bill, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill.
Lord Coleraine: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a third time.—(Lord Coleraine.)
On Question, Bill read a third time, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

Education Reform Bill
3.28 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Education and Science (Baroness Hooper): 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.—(Baroness Hooper.)
Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge: My Lords, before the House resolves itself into Committee I should like to ask a question of the Leader of the House or perhaps the Chief Whip as to our future procedures. I think that most noble Lords who are concerned with the Education Reform Bill were distressed at the conditions in which extremely important amendments were discussed without notice at almost five o'clock in the morning. It was quite impossible for people who wished to be involved to find out what was happening or when something would happen. I wonder whether the Leader of the House and perhaps the Chief Whip would accept my view that when we are dealing with very long Bills of this kind most people concerned would like to know within reason either the time at which the House proposes to adjourn or the number of the last amendment we wish to discuss. It should not be too difficult to do one or the other. Not to do either brings chaos and is nothing to our credit.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear.
The Lord Privy Seal (Lord Belstead): My Lords, we intend to reach, if we can, the end of Clause 18 of the Bill; that would take us to Amendment No. 158. So
686
far as concerns the lateness of the hour on Tuesday, I am sorry that the noble Lord felt it was late. I did too.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, the noble Lord has not answered the question that was put to him by my noble friend Lord Donaldson; namely, whether the Government will give some indication in future, as the noble Lord has just done, of their expectations so far as progress on the Bill is concerned. Will the noble Lord answer that specific question?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, that is a matter for the usual channels.
Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge: My Lords, I do not think the House is satisfied that that should be a matter for the usual channels. That is why I took the unusual course of raising it now. The usual channels—my party, your party, each man's party—failed us in this case. The result was chaos. I do not think it is good enough.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: My Lords, I rise only to say that the agreement tonight is that we go to Amendment No. 153, not No. 158.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I stand corrected.
On the point being put to me now by the noble Lords, Lord Donaldson and Lord Harris, this is a matter for the House itself. The first day of this Bill in Committee was a very good example: we had an exceedingly interesting debate, but one which lasted for a very long time indeed, on the very first amendment, on which the Committee divided later. Some equally important amendments were taken quite quickly. It is impossible for anybody, including the Leader of the House, to forecast the timing. What I can do, and have done in answer to the noble Lord is to indicate where we hope to reach today, which has already been discussed through the usual channels. Today we hope to get to the end of Clause 18.
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, I have spoken to my noble friend the Chief Whip. I spoke to eight amendments on Tuesday and the Minister replied, but I did not move them. I shall move them today, withdraw them, and bring them back at Report stage.
Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord the Leader of the House for giving attention to this matter. I wish to say only this. More efforts should be made at least to let people know how late it is intended to sit. On Tuesday night there were more staff on duty than there were Peers voting.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I take seriously what the noble Lord is saying. It is obviously for the convenience of your Lordships' House to have some idea how late the House will sit. Perhaps we may take that issue away and consider it further. I would not wish the noble Lord to think that I was dismissive of this point in any way.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD ABERDARE in the Chair.]
Clause 4 [Duty to establish the National Curriculum by order]:
[Amendments Nos. 54A to 56 not moved.]
Baroness Faithfull Baroness Faithfull moved Amendment No. 57:
Page 3, line 27, after ("powers") insert ("and obligations").
The noble Baroness said: This was one of the amendments to which I spoke but did not move. I therefore beg to move it, but I shall ask leave to withdraw it.
Baroness David: The noble Baroness is mistaken. We do not wish her to withdraw this amendment. My name is to it, and we wish this to be discussed. It is a paving amendment to a number of other amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Ritchie, is prepared to speak to it. His name is there also.
Lord Ritchie of Dundee: In Clause 4 reference is made to the powers of the Secretary of State but not to his obligations. I should like to speak also to Amendments Nos. 71A, 73, 75, 136 and 137, which relate to testing in our schools. It is a very important matter for the attention of Members of the Committee.
I should like to speak from a rather broad base for a moment. This Bill has been introduced in order to improve our education standards. In some ways—perhaps not many—our education service is failing. Hence, we are told, there is the need for this Bill. I maintain that if one is to treat what is wrong with a patient one has to diagnose before prescribing. I feel that by this Bill the Government are prescribing without adequate diagnosis.
It is said that the causes of such failure as there is in our education service are low expectation from the children, some poor teaching, poor discipline involving such matters as truancy, lack of competition and too many fancy subjects being taught. Those seem to me to be the assumptions behind the proposals in the Bill. But are those assumptions established? We need to study the causes of failure.
I believe that the most important issue to consider is the children who are failing. I suggest that they can be divided into certain groups. There is no doubt that there are children who are what we call non-academic. The standard image in one's mind is the child who is more interested in the inside of a motor car engine, than the inside of a book. He or she may be perfectly able but has no interest in classroom learning. Perhaps a number of children come into that category.
There are children with medical problems of one kind or another. There are very many more of these than one sometimes thinks. I am speaking of children with possible auditory or visual problems, with neuro-motor problems and perceptual problems. As every year goes by we see children fail for these reasons. There are psychological problems based on emotional disturbance, perhaps because a child comes from an unhappy, disturbed or broken home.
However, I wish to talk in particular about the problems that arise from the failure to grasp the basics of English—their own language—at an early age. If one takes any adult whose reading and writing
688
skills are less good than they should be—and there are several million of them—such people have been described as functionally illiterate. We talked about this before in your Lordships' House when I introduced an Unstarred Question 18 months ago on dyslexia.
There are many people who can read the cheap press and can just about write a simple note but who never write a letter if they can possibly avoid it. They cannot fill in a form. They certainly never read anything above a certain very low level. They are very often people who remain unemployed because they do not know how to apply for a job in writing; they cannot fill in a form. This is a very serious problem. If one asks a given number of adults who have failed school about the area of their failure, they will say, "I never really got the hang of writing English". Their reading remains inadequate; their writing and spelling remain even more inadequate.
What does one do about this? The answer is that one discovers these shortcomings in a child at an early age. At the moment I am arguing therefore in favour of testing at an early age. The point at issue is not whether children should be tested, but what form the testing should take.
I want to read a brief paragraph from a report on the teaching of English which has just been published. A group of very highly qualified teachers, educationists and writers have been considering how English should be taught in our schools. The committee was set up some time ago, but I am afraid I do not know exactly how long ago. However, it has produced its report, under the chairmanship of Sir John Kingman. It states:
"Almost all the evidence submitted to the Committee mentioned assessment, and expressed varied doubts about either the feasibility or the desirability of testing children particularly at age 7".
This has been much debated recently, as the Committee knows.
"We share TGAT's view"—
TGAT being an acronym for the task group which is looking at how children's performance should be assessed. The group works under the authority of the Secretary of State. The paragraph goes on:
"We share TGAT's view that assessment at age 7 is essential in determining whether or not pupils are making adequate progress in the important early years of schooling. Teachers need to be able to identify where pupils need help".
I should like to stress those words: teachers do need to be able to identify where pupils need help.
"At age 7 it is not too early: deferred, it may be too late".
As one who has had a great deal to do with remedial teaching I know, and I cannot stress too strongly, how important it is to discover at an early age if a child is failing and why he or she is failing so that one may then be able to offer help before it is too late.
I am arguing very strongly in favour of testing, but what form should that testing take? I believe that the form it should not take is that of a standard uniform test handed out to all children at a certain time and at a certain age with a pass/fail criterion—"You have passed and you have failed". Such testing should take the form of a detailed investigation to see how a child is progressing and, as I say, to discover the nature of his failure, why he is failing and precisely where. It is

689
possible that one discovers only at that age that a child has what we used to call a hearing imperception, which is not the same as being deaf. One can hear wrongly without being deaf. That may seem strange but it is possible. It is also possible that it is not until then that one discovers a child may have difficulty in seeing clearly. It is essential that testing should be done with that object in view.
The TGAT report suggests various matters and other Members of the Committee will talk at greater length than I shall. One of the best and most important ways of testing is that it should be carried out by the child's teacher because if the teacher is a good teacher—and we hope that such teachers will be—he will have won the child's confidence so that the child will be able to perform at his best with his own known, respected and liked teacher. However, testing should be done not on one fell day at one fell hour, but continuously. Thus there should be continuous assessment with the object of finding out what is wrong and offering help which can be referred to as diagnostic.
As far as possible, testing should also be what the TGAT report describes as differential, that is to say one has a battery of tests and a child is offered a group of tests appropriate to his ability. For example, for a child of average ability there is probably no reason to offer him the very elementary tests because we know that he can do them. So one does not waste time with that. Nor does one discourage children and depress them by offering tests that are too advanced for them. Therefore, it will be up to the teacher to offer the right tests to the right children. That is one aspect of differential testing.
Another aspect is that in any given subject, such as English, a test should show a standard in various different directions. One may be oral English—a child's ability to express himself or herself orally. Another may be creative writing. A third could be accuracy—spelling, punctuation and so on, so that the final result for a child is not "pass" or "fail", "good" or "bad", but "strong in this direction", "not so strong in that" and "weak in the other". One can then work with that child to help him to improve.
After all that spiel to which the Committee has been kind enough to listen, I should say that I believe it is most important that the kind of testing envisaged should be declared plainly. We had the TGAT report published in January, but the Government have still not yet made clear to what extent they will be guided by it and what form the assessment will take. We should like to hear from the Minister a clear statement about that because then we can stop worrying about it.
I should like to ask two other questions and I shall be grateful for a clear reply. I have been advocating the necessity of testing at a young age. Indeed it may be advisable to test at 11 and 14 as well. But I cannot understand what form testing will take at 16 years of age. I ask the Committee to imagine a girl in the fifth year at school taking a number of subjects. I have written down a number of items at random. She is taking GCSE in the history of art and design, home economics, English, rural science, and religious study. That is enough to be going on with. Is she
690
really to be tested as well in history, geography, mathematics and CDT which are foundation subjects? They are subjects that she will not really want still to be doing as well as responding to the high demands that those five GCSE subjects will be making on her. What is the Government's intention? We wish we knew clearly. No indication has been given. I believe that GCSE results might seriously he affected if there has to be testing in the foundation subjects up to school-leaving age. It may also affect a young person's work in the TVEI which has been so successful. We should be grateful for an answer on that.
I should like an answer to another question. I am a little unsure of my facts on this and for that I must apologise. A while ago the Government instituted a plan for records of achievement at school that a child takes with him or her when he or she leaves. How will that tie in with assessment and test results? Is it really necessary to have both? I feel like echoing the words of one teacher who said to me that he had always understood that a scientific principle of experiment was that if one had a certain set of conditions, which were not entirely satisfactory, one changed one variable and if that produced no result one changed another and so on until one found what change had a good effect.
I believe that at the moment the variables in our education system are continually being changed. We have not yet begun to settle down to the new GCSE examination, to TVEI or to the Education Act 1986 and the way in which that will work. Yet we have the enormous weight of this new legislation upon us already. I should like the Minister to tell the Committee how this will fit in with the plan for records of achievement, which have already advanced quite a distance in some authorities. For all that the Committee may feel about it, ILEA made great advances in that respect. I have seen some of its portfolios, which are most impressive. I beg to move.
Baroness David: I support this group of amendments. They have the effect of placing the major recommendations of the task group on assessment and testing on the face of the Bill. The central issue is that four months after the publication of the report the Government have still not clarified their policy as to the way in which testing and assessment will be implemented. No details are contained in the Bill, which leaves the form of implementation to ministerial orders.
Yet the assessment arrangements are central to the direction of the national curriculum. Without at least a broad indication of the Government's thinking, it is virtually impossible for Parliament to judge the practical effect of the legislation. Much of the relevance of the national curriculum—for example, to pupils with special needs—will depend on the assessment arrangements. No detailed statement has been made on the issue since the publication of the report beyond a statement made at that time by the Secretary of State giving it a "broad welcome".
Ministers' reluctance is surprising in view of apparently encouraging statements in the Commons committee in December which suggested that their thinking was not too far removed from its eventual

691
recommendations. However, the publication in March of a leaked letter from the Prime Minister's office drew attention to substantial differences of opinion within the Government over the form of assessment: whether it should be carried out by teachers; the degree of reliance on once-and-for-all written tests; the cost; and the likely timetables of implementation. The prime purpose of this debate is to seek to clarify the Government's intentions and to insert into the Bill specific safeguards in favour of the direction of the Black Committee. They appear in Amendment No. 73.
The report favours formative assessment, leading on where necessary to diagnostic testing. As the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie, explained, the report favours a differential approach and not a set pass-fail level on a standard basis. It favours continuous assessment in the classroom, of which tests would form only a part. The main purpose of the report is also to identify the future needs of the child. The report asks whether if they are to be published by school or class the results should be published with an indication of the school's overall performance and of its socio-economic background or as raw statistics. The report definitely comes down in favour of no publication of raw statistics. Our amendments follow those lines, particularly Amendments Nos. 136 and 137.
The report's summing up comes from Mr. Norman Thomas, who was a member of the TGAT committee which made the report and who at one time was an inspector and adviser. He says:
"One attitude towards assessment is deeply ingrained: its purpose is to compare children. An act of will is necessary to replace that attitude. Assessment should be for determining what children know so that the best decisions can be taken about how to help them forward. Assessment should be formative".
I have also tabled Amendment No. 75 in the group with the intention of trying to discover what the Government are intending to do about 7 year-olds. I think that more criticism has been made about testing 7 year-olds than children of any other age because of the different form of education that such children will have received up to that age. Therefore it is part of the probing amendments. The TGAT proposals state that the results should definitely not be published. I should like to know whether the proposal that the results should be available to parents, governors and providers (the LEAs) means that they might be as good as being published. What hope would there be of keeping them quiet? I hope that the Minister will be able to inform the Committee of the Government's attitude towards the testing of 7 year-olds and the publication of results.
Baroness Faithfull: Amendment No. 73 falls within this group. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie, and the noble Baroness, Lady David, for what they have said by way of introduction to the debate. I am particularly interested in children with a difficult home background, deprived children, those with special educational needs and the very bright children. As has already been said by the noble Lord and the noble Baroness, it is difficult to know what is the Government's response to the Black Report. It is difficult to know what to recommend until we know what the Government are thinking and how they will implement the report.
692
As regards young children I have received an enormous number of letters from nursery school teachers who have had children in their nurseries who have then moved on to primary schools. They know that from the point of view of their early days some children will make fast progress, some much slower progress and some will be very bright but will have been held back perhaps by their home circumstances. What form will the assessment take? Will it be geared to the needs of the individual child—not to the school, not to the parents but to the needs of the child? Will the assessment lead to a programme for each individual child: the child who is difficult, the child who is handicapped, the child who is very bright? I believe that to be most important. Many teachers in primary and nursery schools are most worried as to the form that the assessment will take at the age of seven and what that will lead to.
One must also take into account the child's perception of his or her self. If the child feels, thinks and is given to understand that he or she is a failure, then failure will build on failure. Unless encouragement and understanding of the child's background and circumstances are taken into account and the child is helped to accept them, he or she will continue to be a failure.
There is also the perception of the parents. I think of the number of times that I have heard parents say to their child, "Of course, you're a silly one you are". The silly one goes on to become a silly one, whereas if the parents have a perception that their child needs particular help at a particular time with a view to development and attainment, they will encourage their child. I believe that an enormous number of people are worried by the line that the Government will take on the TGAT Report regarding what form the assessment will take, what is going to be the future of the child based on the assessment and whether there will be a plan for each child.
4 p.m.
Lord Glenamara: I should like to speak briefly. I am old enough to remember the days when the 11-plus was universal; I well recall its effect on both schools and parents. As some Members of the Committee will remember, the schools always set up a special class called the scholarship class. Bright children were put into that class and were coached intensively for months on end for the examination. The teachers analysed the papers year after year; they assembled hundreds—I have known headmasters who had thousands—of questions. The children were taught to answer those questions mechanically so that when the test came along it tested what it tested and nothing more. As to saying anything about the real child, it was not worth the paper it was written on. That is why we introduced comprehensive schools.
The effect on parents was traumatic. Somewhere between 10 and 15 per cent. of children passed. We are talking about passing and failing. For the other 85 per cent. each year, a black cloud descended on families throughout the country. I am not exaggerating when I say that I have known parents, especially middle-class mothers, who were too embarrassed and ashamed to leave the house for weeks after the arrival of the 11-plus results. I am

693
terrified that this statutory four-stage testing will develop into something of that nature. Is that so?
It appals me that many people—and I am afraid some noble Lords—assume that testing is not done now by teachers. Testing by teachers is part of teaching. Every teacher in every primary school knows the children and tests them week by week. The teacher knows exactly what the trouble is. The proposed tests are quite unnecessary. The noble Lord, Lord Ritchie, has talked about the 7 year-old test. However, I remind the Committee that it can apply to 6 year-olds. Imagine that for 6 year-olds! Yet if one reads the wording of the Bill one can see that it applies to 6 year-olds.
I hope the Minister will reply to this specific point. Unless the tests are purely diagnostic—I hate the awful language which has now been introduced into education but the word "diagnostic" is well understood—they are quite unacceptable to the teaching profession and, I believe, to parents. We know quite well what the Prime Minister wants. She wants a league table of schools based on these tests. I hope that if that is done, it will be utterly rejected by the teaching profession. If there is any question of labelling children passes or failures at seven, 11 or any other age, it should be rejected by the teaching profession. I hope that teachers will refuse to work it. The idea of anything apart from a purely diagnostic test is quite unacceptable. I trust the Minister will reply to that point. There are real worries in this Committee, in the teaching profession and in homes throughout the country about introducing anything like a four-stage 11-plus with a league table of schools.
Baroness Blatch: There is a great deal of emotion over the subject of testing. Listening to the debate, it seems there is a belief that somehow or other, because the Bill requires that children should be tested four times in a school lifetime, almost nothing else should happen in the form of testing, finding out how a child is performing or even finding out where the child's strengths and weaknesses are. Summative testing—as it is known in the jargon—and diagnostic testing are not mutually exclusive. Diagnostic testing is not something which starts when the child is seven. It is something which has happened a number of times before the child is seven; indeed, it continues throughout the educational life of a child. A teacher is always trying to find out the strengths and weaknesses of the child so that the strengths can be built on, the weaknesses can be dealt with and the programmes of study modified accordingly.
It seems a modest requirement of the Bill that only four times in a child's life there should be some view about what children should have achieved by a certain stage and that there should be defined targets or objectives against which measurements are taken. I believe we are rather coy in talking about testing, not in terms of "pass" or "fail", because there are many substitute terms, but to assess whether the child is doing well, doing very well or doing badly.
Among the children who have been described—those with special needs; the very bright—there are a large number who are plain lazy. I was one of them. It is only with some kind of chivvying and encouragement and from time to time a little
694
chastisement that we do better. I suggest that a large number of these children fall into that category. I am not talking about the bottom 20 per cent. or the top 20 per cent. The 60 per cent. of children between the most able and least able do better if the teacher's expectations are rather high and if the child can be motivated to do better. Indeed, perhaps I may introduce a word which has not featured in the debate so far. I am certainly not coy about introducing it. An element of competition is not necessarily bad.
Stretching a child's ability and setting one's sights high for a child are all part of the process. We should all recognise as individuals that we shall not be good at everything. Learning about our limitations is also very much a part of the educational process. If the Government are persuaded that all testing should be diagnostic only, then I believe we shall have failed in one of the main purposes of the Bill. Nowhere does the Bill suggest that we should not continue with the good work done on the records of achievement. They will continue; they will be developed.
Nor does the Bill say that we should do anything other than test children four times a year. I conclude with this thought. Setting tests for children so that all children feel successful and have a great sense of achievement, irrespective of their performance, will do the greatest disservice to the children themselves.
Lord McNair: Perhaps I am repeating noble Lords when I say that if I receive letters from real people I pay more attention to them than to letters I receive from organisations. I should like to confirm what the noble Baroness, Lady David, said. In my experience, what is becoming known in the country as "the test of seven" has produced more mail from real people than any other topic in the Bill.
I believe it is a fact that the word "testing" does not appear anywhere in the Bill; we talk only about assessment. It would probably be reassuring if we could talk about assessment rather than testing. Thinking about this, I tried to imagine a class of average 7 year-olds. The first matter—the noble Lord, Lord Glenamara, pointed this out—is that some of the children are aged six and some probably eight. However, the assessment must presumably happen once a year. That is how I understand it.
Those of us with children or who have observed children and have watched how they develop at that sort of age will have noticed first that they do so at different paces and, secondly, that it is not a steady process but takes place in fits and starts. A trauma, accident or illness may set a child back six months. A happy experience like a holiday may suddenly advance the child. Overnight one discovers that the child can suddenly write two or three words without half the letters facing the wrong way. It is a very irregular process, different for every child.
I have said that the word "testing" is not in the Bill and that the word "assessment" is; but surely testing comes in through the attainment targets. If one sets a target and says at that age that is what children should know, then one is inevitably into the pass, fail business straightaway. I am speaking mostly to Amendment No. 75, which proposes that at the first key stage, the 7 year-olds:
"An order … shall not specify any assessment arrangements in relation to the first key stage".

695
I believe that this is a matter which the Government could concede. If they want to make friends, which I sometimes doubt, I believe that there are few things which they can do in this Bill to win them more friends than to be reassuring. I am afraid that what the noble Baroness says in Hansard does not reach the average classroom. If there is a provision in the Bill such as Amendment No. 75 the Government will make themselves a lot of friends very easily and it will also improve the Bill.
Baroness Young: We shall all listen with great interest to what my noble friend the Minister has to say on this very important issue of testing and assessment. We have not yet heard the response of the Government to the report referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady David. The subject is of great importance to Members of the Committee on all sides and I hope very much that by the time we reach the Report stage we shall have a clearer view of what it is.
One of the matters which I consider to be most dangerous in this area was summed up by, I believe, the noble Lord, Lord Glenamara; that is, making suggestions which as far as I know are not the intention of the Government. It certainly emerges nowhere in the report on testing and assessment. I am referring to the reintroduction of the so-called 11-plus. The noble Lord, Lord Glenamara, knows as well as I do that one of the criticisms was that the proportion of those who passed or did not pass varied from one local authority to another. That was clearly a major weakness. Whatever may or may not emerge from testing and assessment, it will apply nationally. I believe therefore that that will be very helpful.
There will be a great deal of debate. I was interested to hear that the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie, was in favour of testing at the age of seven—I believe I have written down his remarks correctly—whereas the noble Lord, Lord McNair, was not. Clearly we have a great deal of divided opinion on this subject.
We have a second division not only about the age but about the kind of testing and assessment. My noble friend Lady Blatch has quite rightly said that a good teacher will be assessing the child all the time to know how it is progressing. However, there is a very important problem which underlies this Bill; that is, the actual achievements of our school-leavers, particularly in the middle and lower ranks, as compared with the Germans and the Japanese in, for example, mathematics. Unless we have some kind of a measure of what a child ought to know at a given age, it will be very difficult to see whether we are falling behind other countries and not stretching our children as they should be stretched.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, says, although it is true that it is very depressing to be a permanent failure, anyone who has brought up children knows perfectly well that they need the carrot and the stick most of the way through in order to encourage them to do as well as they should. After all, who wants to do homework in the evening when a favourite television programme is on or a football match is about to take place?
696
It is a very subtle business in many ways to get children to work as hard as they should in order to attain what is expected of them. I do not believe that one does a service to children by pretending to them that they can get away with less than they are able to do: after all, eventually they have to get a job and fulfil themselves in life. This requires some kind of measure.
Therefore, it is very important to know what is going to be said on this matter. All Members of the Committee who are really interested—I believe everyone wants to see standards raised—must see that there is some measure of objectivity in the test, however this is defined (there can be very many definitions of it) to make sure that all the children are achieving as much as they should.
4.15 p.m.
Lord Ritchie of Dundee: Perhaps I may say a few words to correct an impression that my noble friend Lord McNair and I may have given. The situation is not that I support testing and he does not. As he said, he was speaking to Amendment No. 75, which proposes that there should not be any assessment arrangements specified at the first key stage. That is not to say that he does not approve of assessments but merely that they should not be specified by the Secretary of State.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: Before the noble Lord sits down, in the extract which he read from the report on the teaching of English which was published yesterday, did I hear that what it says about 7 year-olds conflicts with Amendment No. 75 or did I mishear?
Lord Ritchie of Dundee: I think not, but I shall have to look again. The report states:
"We share TGAT's view that assessment at age seven is essential".
However, it does not specify whether this assessment should emanate from the teacher or from the Secretary of State. My noble friend Lord McNair said that it should emanate from the teacher and not from any overall standard authority.
Lord Alexander of Potterhill: I hope that when the Minister replies she gives some indication of the targets which are to be set. In earlier years I did a good deal of research in this field. For example, at the age of seven is the standard to be that which is suitable for a child with a mental age of four or one with a mental age of 11? At the age of 11 is the test to be for a child with a mental age of seven or eight or for a child with a mental age of 14 or 15 who will be preparing for the next examination at a fairly high standard? A target for a given age seems to me a complete impossibility and a total denial of individual differences.
Lord Rea: I should like to speak to my Amendment No. 71A which seeks to remove compulsory assessment from 7 year-olds, which is the first key stage. In this amendment I am putting forward not only my own view and that of many primary school teachers I have met—I meet quite a few in my work as a general practitioner—but also the views of the

697
British Association for Early Childhood Education, which feels that compulsory testing of 7 year-olds is quite inappropriate. Like the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie, it is not against assessment as such—in fact entirely the reverse, because continuous assessment is appropriate. As speakers have already said, it is a task upon which many teachers are continuously engaged as part of the very personalised nature of good primary education.
Teachers themselves are aware of the individual strengths and weaknesses of the young children in their classes. Standardised tests are not appropriate because of the very variable speeds of development of young children and their very labile emotional behaviour and balance. Seven year-olds are quite liable not to give of their best on any particular day. They may take exception to certain kinds of testing for reasons which, to them at least, are quite logical and important.
Perhaps I may give one or two examples. In Edinburgh I heard of an infants school which had entrance tests. As part of assessing the intelligence of a 6 year-old boy he was asked to count from 10 backwards. He refused to do this because, he said, "That is not the way it should be done. I will not". On a personal note, I remember when I was six or seven being asked to read aloud a passage from an early reading book. I refused to read a certain passage because it seemed discriminatory and unjust. It read,
"No, John, you cannot come with us because only little girls can go to Fairyland."
That is reverse sexual discrimination with a vengeance. The point that I am trying to make is that standardised testing is quite inappropriate in the infant school. Teachers themselves are far better judges of each child's strengths, weaknesses and needs, both social and educational.
Earl Russell: I speak in support of both my noble friends Lord Ritchie and Lord McNair on the subject of testing. These Benches have not been objecting to testing as such. We have been saying two things throughout these debates. First, we have been expressing our reservations about testing by the order of the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State's hoof is all over this Bill. We think that it should be viewed with some suspicion.
Secondly, we on these Benches have also been saying throughout these debates that we consider children as individuals. My noble friend Lord McNair was saying that there are some problems about providing standardised tests for 7 year-olds because at that age the individuality of the child is likely to affect performance, interest and standard of result a great deal more than tends to be true later when he has been at school longer. Therefore I should like to give my support to both my noble friends.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: May I say a few words on the assessment—did I hear somebody say, no? I thought we were still in a free country and in this free Chamber.
I should like to make some comments upon the testing of 7 year-olds, or the assessment—whichever one likes to call it. One has to realise that in the English education system as we now know it there
698
will be children at all levels at seven years of age who will have had various opportunities in schools, nursery schools, nursery classes and play schools, in various parts of the country. Some of those children will have a greater advantage than others.
Some children will have gone into groups at three years of age. There are now many children of four years of age receiving full-time education in infant schools. There are nursery schools and nursery classes. There are different schools in different parts of the country that have entry at the age of five or the term before the child is five. Some schools will have entry three times during the year. Therefore, in some parts of the country a child at the age of five has very often already been in school for at least seven or eight months. That must affect assessment at seven. Some children, from whatever background, will have that advantage. If there is to be education for children at the age of three, four, four and a half or five, one cannot test unless one provides the same kind of facilities throughout the country.
I think it is true to say that the Department of Education and Science has done a tremendous amount of research into this particular problem. At present there is a committee sitting in the other House dealing with the education of under-fives. It is embracing all these kinds of pupils whom it will be impossible to test because some will have advantages.
The other important point to remember if we are testing at seven, is that there are a great many children in this country who have to start learning English before they start being assessed. Therefore we should have various tests and various assessments for the different cultures in our schools. One has only to talk to someone who teaches in London to realise the various languages that have to be used by the children. So let us remember—and I know this particularly well from research that has been carried out in Birmingham—that in the case of young children from ethnic minority backgrounds there should be a delay in their test in the English language.
I should be the last person to want to see a league table of schools. While the Liverpool football team is at the top of the division, I do not know whether Liverpool's schools would be at the top of the division. I am not suggesting that they are not as good as schools in other parts of the country. However, it would be quite wrong in my opinion to have a league table of the best schools or the best local authorities. That is not what education is all about. The effectiveness of any school has to be assessed by the progress of all its pupils, not by certain individuals who might do extremely well and by a certain few that will be falling by the wayside.
Therefore I should like to ask the Minister whether, on evaluation, the Government will accept paragraphs 29 and 32 of the TGAT report which do not discriminate between schools, and whether they will accept that any performance assessment of children should be private and confidential to the individual child, its parents, and the head of the school.
Baroness Blackstone: It has long been agreed by professional educators that assessment should be a continuous process and not something that just takes

699
place on two or three days in the year or one a term. In saying that I should like to speak in particular to Amendment No. 73.
Continuous assessment allows teachers to observe pupils in a great many different contexts; to examine how they perform in group activities and as individuals; to see how they progress over time; and to ensure that there is some continuity in the learning process. It is also much fairer to pupils because it does not all hinge on a single event—a test that is conducted when perhaps they feel rather unwell or when their parents have just had a terrible row or when they are worried about an argument that they have had with a friend. That is very important.
One or two people have spoken about their own experiences. I remember just how terrifying and traumatic the experience of sitting the 11 plus was. I am not suggesting, as the noble Baroness, Lady Young, has questioned, that the Government intend to bring that back. However, I am suggesting that if we were to go for a system of testing at seven, 11, 14 and 16 entirely by means of externally imposed tests without the involvement of the teachers, it would be a very traumatic experience, at least for some children.
Continuous assessment is a better form of assessment because it gives a much broader picture of what a pupil can and cannot do than some kind of externally imposed system of tests.
The involvement of the teacher is also very important because it is a central part of a teacher's job to monitor pupils' achievements. I should like to stress that on this side of the Committee we are not against testing and assessment; it is the form that that testing and assessment takes which we wish to discuss and argue. A good teacher adjusts his or her teaching as a result of being able to monitor his or her pupils' achievements. It will be adjusted to ensure that the very brightest pupils are stretched and the least able pupils are supported.
If we were to focus our attention on attainment targets that are tested externally—as it is feared the Government intend—we would remove from the teacher that very central responsibility which is such an important part of his or her professional duties and we would expose the less confident and the more nervous child to quite unnecessary trauma.
Assessments should be diagnostic because they should be designed to find out what pupils can do well and what they are doing badly. The noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, said that we should learn about our limitations. I should like to put to her that it is more important, especially with younger children such as 7 and 11 year-olds, to learn about their strengths. We can build on their strengths and then praise them rather than focus on their limitations. I do not accept that diagnostic testing is too specialised or esoteric to be possible on a wide scale and practised by large numbers of teachers.
Without necessarily using labels, thousands of teachers are undertaking diagnostic testing, as my noble friend Lord Glenamara pointed out. It is going on in many schools, especially in primary schools, all over the country. It is only by concentrating on
700
diagnosis rather than on oversimplified measurement that we can do anything to help parents, teachers and pupils themselves to work on their weaker areas and to build their confidence by praising them in their stronger areas. That is what the TGAT Report suggests should happen.
The report makes absolutely clear that testing must be based on differentiated levels of ability. Otherwise, as the noble Lord, Lord Alexander of Potterhill, said, it will be of little value. Above all, it must not be rigidly age related. The brightest child may be three or four years ahead of the average. The least able may be three, four or more years behind. Similarly, rates of progress vary greatly. Pupils may experience sudden spurts ahead and then only average progress. Attainment targets have to be progressive and not age related, and testing must be differentiated by ability.
If testing is to be of real value it must be able to take into account the academic and education needs of all pupils in spite of their diversity. One of the great failures of our public examination system for many years was that it excluded up to 40 per cent. of the ability range and certainly always excluded the bottom 20 per cent. in the lowest group. That cannot be right because it labels some children as failures. The TGAT Report is sensitive and thoughtful about children with special needs. It allows them to be excluded from testing but at the same time it also allows them to have some help from their teachers as they perform the tests. It would be recorded that they had received that help. It is important because it allows those children to be brought into the patterns that are going on in the schools instead of excluding them.
There is also proven advantage in involving pupils in their own assessment and in a dialogue about the curriculum and in negotiating their own targets. This can be done only in school-based assessment. It cannot be done with externally imposed tests of the kind which involve pencil and paper multiple choice. Where teachers and pupils can work together, as they have been doing in the pilot schemes on records of achievement, which so far have been very successful, as the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie, pointed out, that is highly desirable. Just as adults respond to people's expectations of them, so do children. Any labelling that has connotations of failure produces self-fulfilling prophecies.
Summative tests, as they are sometimes called, grade children, in spite of what the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, said. They may not necessarily grade them as passes and fails, but they grade them. It is an insult to the intelligence of children to think that the euphemisms produced as alternatives to terms like "pass" and "failure" are not understood by them. They grade them from top to bottom. It is because of the dissatisfaction of many good professional teachers with that kind of approach that they have been replaced by a much fairer and a more sophisticated method of assessment.
That is what the amendment is about and why we should all be able to support it. The Government have broadly accepted the TGAT Report. If that is the case they should have no difficulty in accepting the amendment.
4.30 p.m.
Baroness Hooper: Good and fair testing and assessment will be essential for the successful implementation of the national curriculum. As the noble Lord, Lord Glenamara, and other noble Lords have pointed out, good teachers and good schools already carry out regular testing and assessment. The noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, made some supportive remarks about the advantages of early testing and assessment, or about assessment at any rate; it is essential for effective teaching. I should like to emphasise as a general remark that what we intend with this Bill is to build on best practices and thereby ensure that good teaching and higher expectations apply to all and not just to some lucky children.
To make it as clear as possible I should say that I shall attempt to deal separately with Amendments Nos. 57, 71A, 73, 75, 136 and 137 which are the subjects of this grouping. Amendment No. 57 refers to the Secretary of State's obligations under Clause 4(2) of the Bill. There are at present no such obligations. That subsection gives the Secretary of State the power to make orders as he considers appropriate. Clause 1 sets out the obligations under which the Secretary of State must operate at all times, and other clauses give him the obligation to consult or to act in other specific ways. Clause 4(1) contains the central obligations to establish and thereafter maintain the national curriculum. Amendment No. 57 is therefore meaningless as it stands and I hope that the mover will find it possible to withdraw it.
Amendments Nos. 71A and 75, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Rea, and the noble Baroness, Lady David, have the effect of removing any requirement for assessment at the end of the first key stage at age seven. Much has been said about the Task Group on Assessment and Testing. It proposed that pupil performance in the core and foundation subjects should be measured against a 10-level scale covering the broad range of attainment to be expected between the ages of 7 and 16. It considered that 7 should be the first assessment age since it is imporant that 7-year-olds who have not made a satisfactory beginning in learning to read, write and calculate should be identified and helped to progress. Because children of this age are at least two years into the first phase of schooling they will feel settled and teachers will know them well.
The group concluded that the results of pupils aged 7 should not necessarily be published since assessed performance in these early stages is influenced by so many factors that the results are clearly difficult to interpret in any general way. In any event, information as to the results of an individual pupil's assessment is not to be made available except to the parents, to the governing body and to the local education authority. It is only to be made available to the governing body and local education authority when it is relevant to the performance of their functions. This is emphasised in Clause 15(5).
It is not true to say that the results would be given wide publication. It is certainly not intended to have a league table. Although the case for assessment at that age is clear and convincing, we feel that it is well covered in the provisions and we must therefore reject Amendments Nos. 71A and 75.
702
I turn now to Amendment No. 73, tabled by my noble friend Lady Faithfull and the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, also spoke in some detail. The amendment seeks to ensure that any orders made by the Secretary of State about assessment arrangements accord with the criteria set out.
These criteria are closely in line with the framework for a national assessment and testing system recommended by the Task Group on Assessment and Testing (TGAT). The Government have welcomed that broad framework, as I made clear on Tuesday in responding to a previous amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone.
I must resist this amendment, not because the Government have departed from their welcome for the broad framework recommended by TGAT but because it is unnecessary and unhelpful to put those somewhat imprecise criteria into main legislation. We have made our intentions very clear, and the task group has made clear that those intentions are workable and desirable.
In the consultative document on the national curriculum which was issued last July we said:
"We envisage that much of the asessment…will be done by teachers as an integral part of normal classroom work".
In the same document we also said:
"The main purpose of…assessment would be to show what a pupil has learnt and mastered and to enable teachers and parents to ensure that he or she is making adequate progress. Where such progress is not made, it will be up to schools to make suitable arrangements to help the pupil".
I think that that accords with much that has been said in the debate this afternoon. In the booklet Education Reform which we published to explain our proposals on the Bill, we made clear that assessment and testing should be undertaken to identify strengths and weaknesses and indeed to plan the next steps for pupils' education.
Our consultative document also made clear that attainment targets—on which all assessment, including testing, will be based—should cater for the full ability range. I make that point as clearly as possible for the benefit of the noble Lord, Lord Alexander of Potterhill. Indeed, Clause 2 of the Bill specifies that attainment targets must reflect the different abilities and maturities of pupils, and the assessment arrangements are to relate to such attainment targets as allow for different abilities. That clause, and the other provisions which I have tried to spell out as clearly as possible to the Committee and which give powers to make flexible provision to meet different cases and circumstances, all make clear enough our intention that the curriculum and assessment arrangements are applicable and appropriate to the educational needs of all pupils.
I hope that it is apparent from what I have said exactly what the Bill provides for, our intentions on how the powers should be used and that they fall within the criteria suggested in the amendment. Therefore, adding those provisions to the Bill would gain nothing, but would merely open up grounds for needless argument about what is intended by some of those words and phrases. I hope therefore that my

703
noble friend and the noble Lord will be willing to withdraw their amendment.
Baroness Seear: Before the noble Baroness sits down, perhaps I may say that I am afraid I am not passing the test. I do not understand what she has told us. What I wish to know, because I am genuinely confused now, and what a great many people want to know, is simply this. Is she saying that she accepts diagnostic assessment, provided they are looking at the criteria, or are these little 7 year-old children—plus or minus a few months, according to when in the calendar they were born—going to sit something like an old-fashioned examination, which some of us would have called an exam, on a particular day? That is what we want to know. Is the answer yes or no? Are the children going to be diagnostically assessed; or are they going to be diagnostically assessed and given the test exam? Which is it to be? I simply do not understand.
4.45 p.m.
Baroness Hooper: The proper expression is that the children will be formatively assessed so that teachers can find out what stage they have reached. If a particular problem is shown, there may be scope or need for subsequent diagnostic testing. I think I have made it clear—or, at least, I thought I had made it clear—both this afternoon and indeed on the first day of Committee that the testing and assessment arrangements which have been recommended by the task group involve, certainly at the age of seven, mainly assessment processes.
However, the task group says that there is room for paper and pencil tests. As I understand it, it is possible for teachers not necessarily to set all the chidren down in one classroom at the same time in order to follow that type of paper and pencil test, but to do it in various different ways so that no one is laying down how it should be done. Therefore, in that sense, it is clearly not a return to the 11-plus by any means.
Baroness Lockwood: Will the Minister tell the Committee who will determine whether paper and pencil testing is part of that assessment?
Baroness Hooper: We debated the other day the question of the responsibility of teachers in all this and I have been at pains to point out that the method of implementing the national curriculum, including the assessment processes and testing, will be very much the responsibility of the teacher within the general criteria laid down by each individual working group on each individual subject. However, if I may say so before other noble Lords spring to their feet, I am about to respond in more detail to some of the other questions which have been raised in the course of the debate. I think what I have to say will meet at least some of the inquiries which have already been made. Therefore I should like to continue.
I move on now to Amendments Nos. 136 and 137, tabled by my noble friend Lady Faithfull and the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie. These amendments concern the publication of the results of assessments.
704
The Government fully accept the need for any published assessment results to be set in context. This is a much more productive approach than seeking in some less than perfect way to adjust results for social composition or other factors. But even this approach needs sensitive handling, especially if parents are not to be antagonised. It may well best be left to local initiative, within some general guidance, rather than even spelt out in regulations. After all, we are only intending to set out in regulations what must be published, and we can rely upon schools and LEAs to put whatever gloss they think is needed on the information when it is presented to the public.
I believe that this should not be a matter spelt out on the face of the Bill, as it would be under these amendments, even allowing for their deliberately vague wording. Matters which are this complicated and sensitive, which require careful consultation with all concerned, are best left to regulations and the detailed discussions which always precede them.
I hope we have said enough to reassure the Committeee that our intentions in this respect are very much in accord with those of the supporters of these amendments. However, our view is that the way ahead should be through full consultation on regulations and guidance, and I must therefore ask the Committee to reject these amendments if they are not now withdrawn.
The noble Lord, Lord Ritchie, was the first to raise again the question of formal written tests in general—not only at the age of seven—which should be included in the national curriculum assessment arrangements. As I previously said, the TGAT Report acknowledges that there is a place for such testing methods, among others. Indeed, in paragraph 45 of the report the group said:
"The system we recommended must include the use of tests".
It then went on to say that the range and scope of standardised assessment is far wider than the term "test" is usually taken to mean.
We agree with that because we would not otherwise have introduced the GCSE examination. In paragraph 47 the report says:
"standard assessments need not only be in written form".
It makes clear that written responses of various kinds should be expected in the testing arrangements. We do not have to throw out the baby with the bath water just because we all agree that some of the written tests currently used by schools are not helpful or useful. In that, we shall be relying on the teachers' professional good sense.
Questions were asked as to when TGAT's further advice will be published. As I said on Tuesday, we are considering the further advice, which we have only just received, and we shall publish it in due course. I cannot promise my noble friend Lady Young that that will be before the Report stage. I hope that it will be. I am well aware that it is awaited with keen interest.
When we have considered TGAT's further advice, and the responses to its recommendations, we will clarify our intentions. The Government should not be rushed into making announcements about assessment arrangements. They are far too important, as everyone who has spoken this

705
afternoon has emphasised. There is no rush on the detail. The arrangements cannot be introduced seprately from, or in advance of, requirements for attainment targets and programmes of study. We do not yet have the recommendations of the first working groups for maths and science which are due at the end of June or possibly in July.
However, the Government have already made it crystal clear that the assessment arrangements they propose will not be a pass/fail arrangement; they will not be a return to the 11-plus; they will include assessment by the teacher as well as tests; they will be used for formative as well as summative purposes. I have said before that the word "diagnostic" is often wrongly used in that context when people really mean formative testing. They will be used to help individual children to determine their next educational steps.
Lord Ardwick: Will the Minister explain what she means by formative in this context? Formative can mean authoritative and prescribed. Does she mean that?
Baroness Hooper: I went into that matter in detail on Tuesday, but I recognise that all the Members of the Committee were not here for the whole debate. Summative testing shows the stage children have reached at a particular age; formative testing, as I understand it, looks at the individual child's ability to reach target levels. So, in that sense, it is slightly diagnostic. At ages 7, 11, 14 and 16 the results of the assessment are made available, as appropriate, and we hope that the assessment will go on throughout a pupil's education.
The noble Lord, Lord Ritchie, again was the first to ask about testing and assessment at the age of 16 and how that ties in with the GCSE. The Government expect all pupils to do the GCSE in the three core subjects—maths, science and English. We expect that most pupils will do the GCSE in some of the foundation subjects. We do not expect pupils to do the GCSE in all the foundation subjects. No one will be separately assessed in a subject in which they do the GCSE. There will be some assessment in foundation subjects not taken as GCSE. The TGAT Report suggests at least one way in which that can be done. After all, pupils in other countries, including Scotland, manage assessment in a wide range of subjects. I am sure that English and Welsh children can also do so.
The Government still intend that records of achievement at age 16 should be introduced. The committee looking at this issue reports this autumn. We feel that such records can be used to record results of assessment. The records are records and not in themselves a form of assessment or testing.
I believe that I have answered most of the points that have been raised. I hope that I have been able to say enough to convince the Committee that the Government have considered in detail all that it is appropriate to have considered in detail to this stage, and that processes are under way which will lead to the other details shortly. I therefore hope that the proposers of this group of amendments will feel able to withdraw them.
Baroness Seear: Did I understand the Minister to say that some of the foundation subjects need not be
706
continued; that people who are taking GCSE at 16 can drop some of the foundation subjects; or do they have to keep them all and do the GCSE? That was not clear from what the Minister said. It is a point of considerable importance to teachers and for that matter to those who are learning.
Baroness Hooper: The intention of the broad and balanced curriculum is that pupils should follow all foundation subjects to the age of 16. For various reasons, they will wish to follow them at different levels. Some will take the GCSE. For others there will be an alternative form of testing and assessment. As I have already pointed out, for the three nonacademic subjects—music, the arts and PE—there willl not be scope for similar testing and assessment arrangements.
Lord Kilmarnock: Before the Minister sits down, will she clear up one point of doubt for me? Some local education authorities publish results weighted against an index of social deprivation. ILEA, for example, does. One of the elements of the index might be the number of children who are taking free school meals. Will that practice be permitted under the Bill? It seems to be allowed for under Amendment No. 136. I should like to know whether, if Amendment No. 136 is not accepted, such practices can be carried on after the Bill is passed.
Baroness Hooper: There is nothing in the Bill to prevent those practices being carried on.
Earl Russell: Before the Minister sits down, perhaps I may find out whether I have understood her aright. Is she telling us that her intentions are honourable but that she does not yet know what they are?
Baroness Hooper: My intentions are honourable. So far as it is possible to know them, I know what they are and so do the Government; but in certain respects it is not possible to know them yet because we are still waiting for further reports and further decisions.
Lord Peston: I am anxious to be helpful. I must tell the Minister that I do not understand what she is saying. It would help us to make up our minds about what to do next with the amendments if she would clarify matters. We have no difficulty with diagnostic tests. We all agree that they are a good idea. It is not obvious to us why they should not be done continuously, but, nevertheless, they are a good idea. If one does diagnostic tests one can respond to them and do something helpful for the individual child. There is no problem for us there.
The problem seems to be that the tests have other functions. Although I heard what the noble Baroness said, I also heard some of her noble colleagues speak before she did and also on Second Reading. Are the tests meant to be incentives to achievement? If they are, is she aware that there are certain children—thrusting children—for whom they are an incentive, but there is a great deal of psychological evidence that those same tests can act as tremendous disincentives to other children?

707
The reason we are concerned about the tests and are not willing to let the matter go is that the Minister has not made herself clear about what the functions of these tests are in their entirety. She has not repudiated what some of her colleagues have said, which sounds different from what she said.
I believe that the noble Baroness said, especially for testing at seven, that the teachers would be in control. These would be tests devised by the teachers. They would be teachers' tests. My reading of the Bill is not that at all. There is no scope in the Bill for teachers testing at seven or any other age. The Secretary of State has all the powers. Are the Government going to amend the Bill to take, or limit, the Secretary of State's powers and do what the noble Baroness says? Will they give those powers to the teachers, as many of us believe they should?
5 p.m.
Baroness Faithfull: Speaking to Amendment No. 73, may I follow the noble Lord, Lord Peston? What is in the Bill does not accord with what my noble friend has so ably said. This is the problem that we face. We have heard the debate; it will appear in Hansard. But teachers and parents will still not know what the Bill means.
My noble friend has given a good explanation, and if she could assure us that this will be in the Bill at the next stage, then I think that I and other noble Lords who have put their names to the amendment would be happy as to what she has said today. What she has said and what is in the Bill are not two different things; but they are certainly not the same thing. I wonder whether other noble Lords who have put their names to the amendments agree with me?
Baroness David: So far as I am concerned, what the noble Baroness said has not satisfied me. The noble Baroness talked about intentions. There is absolutely nothing in the Bill. The Bill has been out for six months. The Government have had plenty of time to think up amendments for Committee stage in the House of Lords. We are anxious to get something into the Bill.
Baroness Hooper: In response to the last point made by my noble friend Lady Faithfull and the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady David, it was never the Government's intention to put this sort of detail into the Bill. It is a framework Bill. Nevertheless the provisions relating to each separate subject in the national curriculum will come before Parliament. They will be subject to a consultation process, and there will be scope for people to make their views known at that stage.
I shall try to answer the queries of the noble Lord, Lord Peston. The object of the testing and assessment is, after all, mainly to increase expectations so that children know what they are aiming at, teachers know what they are aiming at, and most importantly parents are aware of targets. This is where we come to teachers' professionalism, which we discussed the other day. I have tried to explain that our intentions are to have the greatest flexibility possible. We are leaving a lot of scope for teachers to be able to
708
interpret the general criteria in implementing these arrangements. As has been said, there are many good teachers in this country. Many already carry out these testing and assessment processes effectively and efficiently.
In case there is doubt in the minds of some Members of the Committee, may I be permitted to repeat perhaps more clearly what I said the other day in relation to diagnostic testing. The task group confirmed that the main purpose of the national assessment arrangements, including testing, should be formative; that is, to enable teachers and parents to find out what stage children have reached in relation to agreed attainment targets for the national curriculum foundation subjects and to form decisions about, the next step in their education. The testing should also be summative, enabling teachers and others to record in a systematic way the pupil's achievement overall, especially compared with attainment targets for each subject. It should contribute to an evaluation of the work of the education service and its various parts in the light of the pupil's achievements.
The task group also recognises that some assessments or tests will be partly diagnostic in their nature because they indicate learning problems which need to be further investigated. However, it pointed out that such further purely diagnostic investigation will involve the use of highly specialised tests necessarily relevant only to a limited set of circumstances and pupils. We intend that the main purpose of the national assessment and testing arrangements should be to indicate the stage that every child has reached in relation to the agreed targets. That is the reason the proposals have been made in the way in which they have been made.
Baroness Seear: I want to assure the noble Baroness that we are not trying to be difficult; we are trying to get the matter clear. The noble Baroness said that the teachers will take a considerable part in it, and that is reassuring to us. However, Clause 4(2)(a) says:
"The Secretary of State may by order specify in relation to each of the foundation subjects—(a) such attainment targets … as he considers appropriate for that subject."
Nowhere in this clause does it specify that the teachers have any part in it at all. Naturally those teachers who read this are bound to think that it is handed down to them from on high by the Secretary of State.
Would the noble Baroness consider taking it back and seeing whether she can modify Clause 4(2) so that it indicates that the teachers have a part in it? We would then feel a great deal more comfortable about it. As it stands it is dictat. It may not be intended to be, but that is what the words on the face of the Bill say.
Baroness Lockwood: The same principle applies to Clause 4(2)(c) where it says:
"The Secretary of State may by order specify in relation to each of the foundation subjects—(c) such assessment arrangements, as he considers appropriate for that subject."
That again is not in the hands of the teacher who, we are told, can decide whether or not to include a

709
written element in the assessment. It is in the hands of the Secretary of State. I know that the noble Baroness will come back again and tell us that the Secretary of State will lay an order which will be debated by Parliament, but we shall have no opportunity to amend that particular order or regulation.
The noble Baroness has said that in effect she does not disagree with the principles contained in Amendment No. 73, but that she thinks the wording is imprecise. It seems to me that the wording in this particular amendment lays the foundation and broadens the framework in which the Secretary of State will work in relation to assessment. If the amendment is accepted, I think that the Committee will feel much more satisfied that what the Minister has said will apply.
Lord Stewart of Fulham: The noble Baroness discussed the provisions of the important amendment, Amendment No 73, and seemed to argue that they were all implicit in the Bill already and therefore they were not necessary. I notice that the Government's attitude to amendments is a dichotomy. An amendment is either a wrecking amendment, if it disagrees with the Government to a large extent, or if it does not disagree to a large extent, it is unnecessary because it is in the Bill already. This is what we have been treated to!
It may be the kind of exercise in English, mathematics, or logic to which unfortunate children will be subjected in future years; but it does not deal with what we want to know. For example, take the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, has recently raised: the position of the teachers. It was interesting to notice that the noble Baroness invariably indicated that the teachers would have something to do with the setting of the tests. The implication of that was that somebody else would have something to do with it as well. We should like to know something more about who that will be.
When it comes to it, is there going to be an examination day? Are there going to be papers prescribed by the Secretary of State? There may be. But really we are no wiser about that kind of thing now at the end of the debate than we were at the beginning. The noble Baroness has not made that clear at all.
I think one should notice too the extent to which children can sometimes be trapped by the over-ingenuity of the examiner. I remember one child found on the paper in front of him the following instruction: "Take 7 from 100 as often as you can, and what is left?" This is merely the examiner trying to be too clever and asking the child to perform a simple division sum, dividing 100 by 7 and saying what the remainder is. If the question had been clearly phrased, the child could have answered it. But the child looked at what he was actually asked to do: "Take 7 from 100 as often as you can, and what is left?" The child's reply was, "I make it 93 every time"! Of course, the child was quite right. Once you have taken 7 from 100 you cannot do that again; you have only got 93 left, and there is no instruction about taking 7 from 93.
I mention this point because it urges us not to pay too much attention to the results of examinations.
710
They are interesting. Without arrogance, I can claim that I was usually pretty good at passing examinations. I wish my real knowledge of the subject had been equal to what I was able to make it look like when I was answering examination questions. After a time, one becomes quite skilled at that kind of thing.
We were gradually in our education getting away from that, or trying to get away from "examinationitis" to the pursuit of real knowledge. The trouble with this Bill is that it will push us back in the wrong direction. The Minister's refusal to accept any sort of advice giving a little more clarity to the definition of the examination processes in the Bill already, and her reluctance to accept any attempt to improve on that, confirms our worst suspicions. I do not want to be too critical of the Minister because we have been told on all sides that if you tell somebody that he or she is a failure, the prophecy is liable to be self-fulfilling. We would not want that to happen! I noticed that the Minister had a great deal less confidence in this part of the Bill than she showed in earlier passages.
The trouble is that with a process where you have continually to invent a new word to explain and justify what you are doing, when you are asked whether your system of examination is—what is it?—formative, summative or diagnostic, you end up by proving that it is all three. I ask the Minister to look tomorrow at Hansard. She will see that she advocated that the system proposed should contain some element of all those three adjectives. Personally I have never been quite sure about any one of them. I think I know about "diagnostic". I am not happy, I am bound to say—this was brought out particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie, earlier in the debate—with the diagnostic form of testing which relies on a sympathetic and individual understanding of a child's capacities. This is what any competent teacher has been doing for years and goes on doing all the time. We really do not need an Act of Parliament and regulations by the Secretary of State to do that. If we have regulations by the Secretary of State and all the rest of it, it means that we shall be doing something other than "diagnostic".
As has been pointed out, there have been some speeches on the other side which indicated quite clearly that one of those words involves a highly competitive form of examination. That is all very well for people who like examinations. I like watching them. I regard "Mastermind" as a very attractive programme. However, I do not believe that we choose the people who will handle the most important and difficult problems in the world by that kind of test. The test has other functions which are quite interesting but it is not part of the real education process. I feel therefore that the noble Baroness has not left us very much wiser. I think she could now help herself by accepting in particular Amendment No. 73 and giving a little more precision and life to the provisions already in the Bill.
5.15 p.m.
Lord Ardwick: The noble Baroness has made it clear—
Baroness Young: I think it is only fair that I should speak. We always listen to the noble Lord, Lord Stewart, with the greatest interest. He once told me, I think, that he was a former headmaster or a former teacher, and when he expresses himself that becomes very clear. One has that familiar feeling of being under authority. In this case, we enormously enjoyed his jokes. I quite agree about the mathematical problem; it was the sort of thing which I always found extremely difficult. However, he is being less than fair to my noble friend the Minister. The truth of the matter is that this is a framework Bill. That has come out quite clearly.
I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Stewart, and all those who have spoken have read the long report which preceded the summarised version of the Task Group on Assessment and Testing. He will know that the answer to the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, is the definition given of these words which I agree are entirely new to me, but not, I am sure, to everyone in the education world, "formative" and "summative" on pages 6 and 7. With his normal literary skills, I am quite certain that the noble Lord could reduce it to an even simpler form of English.
But be all that as it may, is it not a fact that the Bill needs to be read in conjunction with these other documents which have been produced? The noble Baroness, Lady David, shakes her head. The reason I asked the question of my noble friend is that this is the report of the group that has been looking at testing and assessment. The Government say:
"The Government has welcomed its broad framework and is considering the detailed recommendations".
The broad framework is precisely as my noble friend has set out, including the recommendation on page 11:
"The group recommends the assessments be made by combining teachers' own assessments with the results of externally provided tests".
Lord Grimond: Will the noble Baroness allow me to intervene?
Baroness Young: Perhaps I may complete this argument. I hope very much that the Government will be able to bring forward a response on this before the Report stage. As my noble friend the Minister said, it will not be the 11-plus but it will involve teachers. These are general statements. We are looking for considerable detail and I should have thought that this met the conditions which would enable noble Lords to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Grimond: Is the noble Baroness telling us that the legislation now being passed by Parliament has to be read with a document which is not part of it at all? I find it difficult enough to understand the Acts which we have passed, but if people have to read documents which are not part of the legislation at all in conjunction with the Acts, I think our legislative process is being made a mockery of.
Lord Ardwick: The noble Baroness has made it clear what "formative" means. "Formative" is one of those words which are sprinkled throughout every sociological book, but the formative tests are tests which set out to discover standards. What the noble
712
Baroness has not defined is what summative tests are. I suspect that summative test is another phrase for diagnostic test, but I am not sure.
Lord Peston: Perhaps I may make one remark. I believe that the noble Baroness, Lady Young, was trying to be helpful to the Minister. All the Minister has to say is that she will take seriously what we have said—take this amendment seriously and come back to us. I do not think we shall necessarily press the point but I must draw the attention of noble Lords to the fact that the Minister has not said that. She has given us exactly the opposite impression—that she does not like what we are saying, nor our amendments. We are desperately trying to be helpful, and if the Minister will say that then I personally shall be quite happy.
Baroness Hooper: I believe that this has been an extremely useful debate. Of course we shall take note of what has been said, but I have tried to explain that the arrangements which will be brought forward make it unnecessary to add to the size of the Bill and to add the amendments which are being proposed to the weight of the Bill.
I sometimes find it very difficult. On the one hand, people say that the Government are being over-prescriptive, that they are putting everything down and telling people exactly what they ought to do and they do not want to do it that way. When we explain that we shall take a flexible approach, there are objections on that score because everybody wants it written down on the face of the Bill. For that reason and for the many reasons that I have already given, I regret that I cannot accept the amendment.
Lord Ritchie of Dundee: I think that we have talked about this long enough, but I should like to say a final word. I think that the Minister has been giving us sweet talk. The problem of the noble Baroness is that the Government themselves have not made up their mind what they think about the matter, so that she is in considerable difficulty. They should have made up their mind by now. We on our side feel it is not appreciated in high quarters that a great many teachers and parents are very worried. All they know is what is contained in the Bill, namely, that the Secretary of State can do anything and everything. There is nothing in the Bill to reassure us that he will consult anyone.
The Minister spoke of not wanting to add to the weight of the Bill. There could easily be a solution in a dozen words. That would not add greatly to the weight of a Bill of already considerable size.
We have had certain assurances from the Minister. We greatly hope that she will come back on Report.—
Noble Lords: No!
Lord Ritchie of Dundee: I think in that case that we need to test the opinion of the Committee.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Aylestone): Does the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, wish to withdraw?
Baroness Faithfull: Perhaps I may have some clarification from the Chair. Has the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie of Dundee, moved Amendment No. 57? We shall come to Amendment No. 73 later. Are the amendments being moved individually or en bloc? I am not sure of the procedure.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees: There is only one amendment before the Committee, Amendment No. 57. The others will be reached in the fullness of time.
Baroness David: Amendment No. 57 was moved as a paving amendment to a group of amendments so that they were taken, so to speak, all together. We wish to press the amendments.
5.22 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 57) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided; Contents, 119; Not-Contents, 149.

DIVISION NO. 1

CONTENTS

Adrian, L.

Galpern, L.

Airedale, L.

Graham of Edmonton, L.

Alexander of Potterhill, L.

Grey, E.

Allen of Abbeydale, L.

Grimond, L.

Amherst, E.

Hanworth, V.

Ardwick, L.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Attlee, E.

Hatch of Lusby, L.

Aylestone, L.

Hayter, L.

Baldwin of Bewdley, E.

Houghton of Sowerby, L.

Banks, L.

Hunt, L.

Barnett, L.

Jacques, L.

Basnett, L.

Jay, L.

Birk, B.

Jeger, B.

Blackstone, B.

Jenkins of Hillhead, L.

Blease, L.

Kilbracken, L.

Bonham-Carter, L.

Kilmarnock, L.

Boston of Faversham, L.

Kinloss, Ly.

Bottomley, L.

Kirkwood, L.

Briginshaw, L.

Leatherland, L.

Broadbridge, L.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, B.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Lloyd of Kilgerran, L.

Callaghan of Cardiff, L.

Lockwood, B.

Campbell of Eskan, L.

London, Bp.

Canterbury, Abp.

Longford, E.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Lovell-Davis, L.

Carter, L.

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Chelmsford, Bp.

McNair, L.

Chichester, Bp.

Masham of Ilton, B.

Chitnis, L.

Mayhew, L.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Meston, L.

Cocks of Hartcliffe, L.

Milford, L.

Dainton, L.

Molloy, L.

Darcy (de Knayth), B.

Morton of Shuna, L.

David, B.

Mulley, L.

Dean of Beswick, L.

Nicol, B.

Diamond, L.

Oram, L.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Peston, L.

Donoughue, L.

Pitt of Hampstead, L.

Dormand of Easington, L.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L. [Teller.]

Elwyn-Jones, L.

Ennals, L.

Prys-Davies, L.

Ewart-Biggs, B.

Rea, L.

Ezra, L.

Ritchie of Dundee, L.

Faithfull, B.

Robson of Kiddington, B.

Falkender, B.

Rochester, L.

Falkland, V.

Russell, E.

Fisher of Rednal, B.

Sainsbury, L.

Foot, L.

Seear, B.

Gallacher, L.

Sefton of Garston, L.

714

Serota, B.

Wedderburn of Charlton, L.

Shepherd, L.

Whaddon, L.

Stallard, L.

White, B.

Stewart of Fulham, L.

Wigoder, L.

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Williams of Elvel, L.

Swann, L.

Willis, L.

Thurlow, L.

Wilson of Rievaulx, L.

TordofT, L. [Teller.]

Winchilsea and Nottingham, E.

Truro, Bp.

Turner of Camden, B.

Winstanley, L.

Underhill, L.

Young of Dartinglon, L.

Wallace of Coslany, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Airey of Abingdon, B.

Hives, L.

Aldington, L.

Hood, V.

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Hooper, B.

Allenby of Megiddo, V.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Arran, E.

Ilchester, E.

Auckland, L.

Johnston of Rockport, L.

Bathurst, E.

Joseph, L.

Bauer, L.

Kimball, L.

Beaverbrook, L.

King of Wartnaby, L.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Lauderdale, E.

Beloff, L.

Lindsay, E.

Belstead, L.

Lloyd of Hampstead, L.

Bessborough, E.

Long, V.

Blatch, B.

Lothian, M.

Bledisloe, V.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Luke, L.

Braye, B.

Lyell, L.

Brookes, L.

McAlpine of Moffat, L.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Mackay of Clashfern, L.

Butterworth, L.

Malmesbury, E.

Caithness, E.

Mancroft, L.

Cameron of Lochbroom, L.

Marley, L.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

Campbell of Croy, L.

Merrivale, L.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

Mersey, V.

Carnock, L.

Middleton, L.

Cathcart, E.

Milne, L.

Chelmer, L.

Monk Bretton, L.

Chorley, L.

Mottistone, L.

Clitheroe, L.

Mountgarret, V.

Coleraine, L.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Constantine of Stanmore, L.

Munster, E.

Cork and Orrery, E.

Nelson, E.

Cottesloe, L.

Norfolk, D.

Cowley, E.

Norrie, L.

Cox, B.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Crickhowell, L.

Orkney, E.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Orr-Ewing, L.

Dacre of Glanton, L.

Oxfuird, V.

Daventry, V.

Peel, E.

Davidson, V. [Teller.]

Pender, L.

Denham, L. [Teller.]

Pennock, L.

Dundee, E.

Platt of Writtle, B.

Eccles, V.

Plummer of St Marylebone, L.

Eden of Winton, L.

Porritt, L.

Elibank, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Ellenborough, L.

Reay, L.

Elliott of Morpeth, L.

Reigate, L.

Erroll, E.

Renton, L.

Erroll of Hale, L.

Rippon of Hexham, L.

Falmouth, V.

Romney, E.

Ferrers, E.

St. Davids, V.

Ferrier, L.

Saint Levan, L.

Fortescue, E.

Saltoun of Abernethy, Ly.

Fraser of Kilmorack, L.

Sanderson of Bowden, L.

Gainford, L.

Seebohm, L.

Gardner of Parkes, B.

Sharples, B.

Geddes, L.

Skelmersdale, L.

Glenarthur, L.

Southborough, L.

Grantchester, L.

Strange, B.

Greenhill of Harrow, L.

Strathspey, L.

Greenway, L.

Sudeley, L.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

Swansea, L.

Swinton, E.

Halsbury, E.

Terrington, L.

Hanson, L.

Teviot, L.

Harvington, L.

Teynham, L.

Hesketh, L.

Thomas of Gwydir, L.

715

Thorneycroft, L.

Vinson, L.

Trafford, L.

Ward of Witley, V.

Trefgarne, L.

Weir, V.

Trumpington, B.

Windlesham, L.

Ullswater, V.

Wolfson, L.

Vaux of Harrowden, L.

Wyatt of Weeford, L.

Vestey, L.

Young, B.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
5.32 p.m.
Baroness Seear Baroness Seear moved Amendment No. 58:
Page 3, line 29, after ("practicable") insert ("that is to say, in particular, when sufficient qualified teachers and resources are available").
The noble Baroness said: The Committee will be relieved to hear that this amendment deals with a matter which, while it is very important, is much narrower than that which has been considered in Amendment No. 57. We are all in agreement that we need to raise the quality of education in this country. There is no argument about that. We are told repeatedly that the purpose of the core curriculum and the foundation subjects is that general standards should be raised. However, there is a corollary in that—
Baroness Hooper: Perhaps I may intervene. My understanding was that the amendment had been debated earlier with Amendment No. 21.
Baroness Seear: That was such a long time ago and at such an appalling hour that I claim my right to debate the amendment again. There can be no improvement in standards in schools unless the level of teaching is such that those standards can be reached. There is no doubt that we are lacking today in teachers and equipment to teach the subjects which are prescribed in the Bill. It seems to us that it presents a false prospectus to parents and teachers to say that certain subjects are compulsory if, at the same time, there are not enough qualified teachers to teach those subjects. The Kingman Report, which has already been quoted today, says specifically that of those teaching English in our schools, 28 per cent. have no qualification above O-levels. It has also been repeatedly said that something like 50 per cent. of those teaching mathematics have no proper qualifications.
The desire to raise quality and the laying down of subjects to be taught must carry a corollary of the provision of an adequate supply of properly trained teachers, otherwise, the whole process is humbug. Therefore, we wish to see on the face of the Bill the statement that there will be no compulsion to introduce those subjects until there is an adequate supply of teachers and of resources. However, I wish to lay a special emphasis on the provision of teachers. That matter seems to me to be absolutely vital. It will make a nonsense of the intention of the Bill if it is not accompanied by such a provision. That means that we must put proper resources towards producing qualified teachers to teach the prescribed subjects. I beg to move.
5.37 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 58) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided; Contents, 103; Not-Contents, 138.

DIVISION NO. 2

CONTENTS

Airedale, L.

Jenkins of Hillhead, L.

Alexander of Potterhill, L.

Kilbracken, L.

Amherst, E.

Kilmarnock, L.

Ardwick, L.

Kinloss, Ly.

Attlee, E.

Kirkwood, L.

Aylestone, L.

Leatherland, L.

Baldwin of Bewdley, E.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, B.

Banks, L.

Lockwood, B.

Barnett, L.

Longford, E.

Basnett, L.

Lovell-Davis, L.

Blackstone, B.

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Bonham-Carter, L.

McNair, L.

Boston of Faversham, L.

Masham of Ilton, B.

Bottomley, L.

Mayhew, L.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Meston, L.

Callaghan of Cardiff, L.

Milne, L.

Campbell of Eskan, L.

Molloy, L.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Morton of Shuna, L.

Carter, L.

Mulley, L.

Chitnis, L.

Nicol, B.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Oram, L.

Cocks of Hartcliffe, L.

Peston, L.

Darcy (de Knayth), B.

Pitt of Hampstead, L.

David, B.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L.

Dean of Beswick, L.

Prys-Davies, L.

Diamond, L.

Rea, L.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Ritchie of Dundee, L.

Donoughue, L.

Rochester, L.

Dormand of Easington, L.

Russell, E.

Elwyn-Jones, L.

Seear, B. [Teller.]

Ennals, L.

Sefton of Garston, L.

Ewart-Biggs, B.

Serota, B.

Ezra, L.

Shepherd, L.

Falkender, B.

Stallard, L.

Falkland, V.

Stewart of Fulham, L.

Fisher of Rednal, B.

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Foot, L.

Swann, L.

Gallacher, L.

Thurlow, L.

Galpern, L.

Tordoff, L.

Graham of Edmonton, L. [Teller.]

Turner of Camden, B.

Underhill, L.

Grey, E.

Wallace of Coslany, L.

Grimond, L.

Wedderburn of Charlton, L.

Hanworth, V.

Wells-Pestell, L.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Whaddon, L.

Hatch of Lusby, L.

Wigoder, L.

Hayter, L.

Williams of Elvel, L.

Houghton of Sowerby, L.

Willis, L.

Hunt, L.

Winchilsea and Nottingham, E.

Hylton, L.

Jacques, L.

Winterbottom, L.

Jay, L.

Young of Dartington, L.

Jeger, B.

NOT-CONTENTS

Airey of Abingdon, B.

Cameron of Lochbroom, L.

Aldington, L.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Campbell of Croy, L.

Allenby of Megiddo, V.

Canterbury, Abp.

Arran, E.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

Auckland, L.

Carnock, L.

Bathurst, E.

Cathcart, E.

Bauer, L.

Chelmer, L.

Beaverbrook, L.

Chelmsford, Bp.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Chorley, L.

Beloff, L.

Clitheroe, L.

Belstead, L.

Coleraine, L.

Bessborough, E.

Constantine of Stanmore, L.

Blatch, B.

Cork and Orrery, E.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Cottesloe, L.

Braye, B.

Cowley, E.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Cox, B.

Butterworth, L.

Crickhowell, L.

Caithness, E.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

717

Dacre of Glanton, L.

Munster, E.

Daventry, V.

Nelson, E.

Davidson, V. [Teller.]

Norfolk, D.

Denham, L. [Teller.]

Norrie, L.

Dundee, E.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Eccles, V.

Orkney, E.

Elibank, L.

Orr-Ewing, L.

Ellenborough, L.

Oxfuird, V.

Elliott of Morpeth, L.

Peel, E.

Erroll of Hale, L.

Pender, L.

Falmouth, V.

Pennock, L.

Ferrers, E.

Platt of Writtle, B.

Ferrier, L.

Plummer of St Marylebone, L.

Fortescue, E.

Porritt, L.

Fraser of Kilmorack, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Gainford, L.

Reay, L.

Glenarthur, L.

Reigate, L.

Grantchester, L.

Renton, L.

Greenway, L.

Rippon of Hexham, L.

Hanson, L.

Romney, E.

Harvington, L.

St. Davids, V.

Hesketh, L.

Saint Levan, L.

Hives, L.

Saltoun of Abernethy, Ly.

Hood, V.

Sanderson of Bowden, L.

Hooper, B.

Seebohm, L.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Shannon, E.

Ilchester, E.

Sharples, B.

Johnston of Rockport, L.

Skelmersdale, L.

Joseph, L.

Southborough, L.

Kimball, L.

Strange, B.

Lauderdale, E.

Strathspey, L.

Lindsay, E.

Sudeley, L.

Lloyd of Hampstead, L.

Swinton, E.

London, Bp.

Teviot, L.

Long, V.

Teynham, L.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Thomas of Gwydir, L.

Luke, L.

Thorneycroft, L.

Lyell, L.

Trafford, L.

McAlpine of Moffat, L.

Trefgarne, L.

Mackay of Clashfern, L.

Trumpington, B.

Malmesbury, E.

Ullswater, V.

Mancroft, L.

Vaux of Harrowden, L.

Marley, L.

Vestey, L.

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

Vinson, L.

Merrivale, L.

Ward of Witley, V.

Mersey, V.

Weir, V.

Monk Bretton, L.

Windlesham, L.

Mottistone, L.

Wolfson, L.

Mountgarret, V.

Wyatt of Weeford, L.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Young, B.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
5.44 p.m.
[Amendments Nos. 59 to 62 not moved.]
The Duke of Norfolk The Duke of Norfolk moved Amendment No. 63:
Page 3, line 32, at end insert ("; and
(c) to arrange that within the provision of the national curriculum, there is flexibility and scope for the governors of voluntary schools to promote and develop the distinctive ethos and character of their schools.").
The noble Duke said: The reasons behind the amendment can be stated fairly simply. The country's public system of education is a dual system of county and voluntary schools. About a quarter of all the pupils in the system attend voluntary schools of one kind or another. Almost all of the voluntary schools are religious foundations—Church of England, Catholic, Free Church or Jewish. It is most imporant that those voluntary schools should continue to be able to maintain and develop their distinctive ethos and character. That largely depends on factors other than the content of the secular curriculum. Religious education in the school clearly plays a very large part in that. So too does the nature of the leadership given
718
by governors, the headmaster and the staff in their various ways. However, the secular curriculum could also have an effect.
Under the Bill the secular curriculum is in future to be nationally determined. Under the 1986 Education (No. 2) Act the content of the secular instruction was to be under the control of the governors in all voluntary-aided and special agreement schools. The Bill will make them, like other schools, subject to the national curriculum. It seems that it is not impossible that topics and books could be included in programmes of study which at least some voluntary schools might find objectionable on religious grounds. Are there safeguards to protect voluntary schools from the possible danger of their being required to teach matters or use books to which they have conscientious objections? I commend the amendment to the Committee.
The Lord Bishop of London: I should like to support the amendment of the noble Duke, the Duke of Norfolk. I shall be very brief but I hope that the brevity of my remarks will not be taken as being in proportion to my concern, which is very considerable.
As the noble Duke has said, our education system is a partnership which, speaking for the Church of England, we have been at very great pains to try to develop, foster and improve. For that reason, while we are very willing to co-operate we would ask that consideration be given in various ways to the particular needs of voluntary schools. I speak as chairman of the Churches' Education Policy Committee on which all the Churches are represented. Therefore, I know that, in addition to the concern which the noble Duke has expressed on behalf of the Roman Catholic community, the amendment has the support of both the Church of England and the other Churches.
Baroness Hooper: I hope that I can reassure my noble friend the Duke of Norfolk that the ethos and character of voluntary-aided schools, and in particular of Catholic schools about which he spoke so eloquently, are safe under the national curriculum proposals.
We of course fully accept the desire of the governing bodies of those schools to offer an education which is permeated with their distinctive character as religious foundations. We recognise the special contribution which such schools have made to our education system, and would not want to put their special nature and status in any danger.
The Bill does not remove the right of governors of aided schools to control the school curriculum, within the national framework set out in statute. They have had that right to control the secular curriculum in aided secondary schools since 1944, and in the 1986 (No. 2) Act we extend it to aided primary schools.
What is required by statute will not be such as to threaten the governors' powers in this respect. Much of the school timetable will remain within their control. The national curriculum provisions do not allow my right honourable friend or any future Secretary of State to prescribe particular teaching methods or materials. What is prescribed in terms of

719
content will be subject to full public consultation. Exceptions for certain types of school could be made in regulations under Clause 10 if that were agreed to be appropriate.
I believe that it is inconceivable that any Secretary of State would in fact seek to make orders which were unacceptable to aided schools on religious or moral grounds. But if that were the case, the remedy would be in your Lordships' hands. The orders establishing attainment targets and programmes of study will be subject to Parliament's approval.
I hope that in the light of what I have said my noble friend will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
The Duke of Norfolk: I am grateful for that reply and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 64 not moved.]
Lord Peston Lord Peston moved Amendment No. 65:
Page 3, line 32, at end insert ("In exercising these duties the Secretary of State must declare the general criteria according to which he has acted and give specific reasons corresponding to the case or cases under consideration.").
The noble Lord said: I gave notice of raising this kind of amendment during Second Reading. I had an earlier amendment along the same lines. However, I felt that the middle of the night—or was it the early hours of the morning?—was not the time to discuss a matter of such importance.
I am raising this amendment as a matter of general principle. I am looking for a response on the principle. I certainly do not wish to do what I said that I would do at Second Reading; namely, put down an amendment of this kind for every one of the powers of the Secretary of State proposed in the Bill. I am concerned to elucidate these powers and to draw the attention of the Committee to what I consider is both a serious constitutional issue, and one of interest to education.
Clause 4 states that the Secretary of State "may by order", and so on. It states what he may do, using such expressions as,
"as he considers appropriate for that subject".
The clause sets out one or two broad matters that he may not do. Let me tell the Minister that I am pleased to see that the Bill also makes provision for certain things that he may not do.
I believe that the Secretary of State should have powers. That is not the point at issue. In those happier days when we on this side of the Chamber were in power, and I had the privilege of advising our Secretary of State for Education and Science, it was extremely frustrating that on the whole we had no powers at the DES. Others who have served at the DES will remember how little we could do. We were told that we had no powers because it was the nature of our education system that the Secretary of State should have no powers. However, those days have long since gone. We have now reached a state of affairs where it is believed that the Secretary of State should have powers; and in very large part this Bill introduces such powers.
However, I do not say that he should not have powers; I believe that his powers should be different from those set out here. I shall not trouble the Committee with my view at length today, but I see the powers of the Secretary of State as those of a backstop. I see his powers as being fall-back powers enabling him to set wrongs right, rather than the powers set out here. I have taunted noble Lords opposite with the fact that they are supporting what I regard as one of the most dirigiste and interventionist pieces of legislation that any of us has ever seen. My colleagues and I remain somewhat surprised not to hear much criticism of that from Members of the Committee opposite. Let us leave it at that.
I should prefer the powers to be different, but I am happy for the Secretary of State to have powers. I should like to hear from the noble Baroness that if he exercises those powers he ought to exercise them in some public sense. I hope that I do not break the Official Secrets Act. I always felt that those of us who have served Ministers must always maintain some cover over what we do. But I do not think that I am breaking the rules when I say that the one thing that Ministers like most is power—but with no one being able to check what they have done. That is what they love. They like to act, but in a way that no one can query.
I shall not be happy with such replies as, "You can trust the Secretary of State" and so on. It worries me that the Bill allows the Secretary of State to do things but does not oblige him to give his reasons why. I am concerned—and it is not unrelated to the question of the rule of law—that the provisions do not require him to set out specifically the general principles according to which he is acting. I do not say that on occasion the Secretary of State will not do so. But, so far as I understand it, he is not obliged to do that.
There is a constructive, educational reason for the Secretary of State to explain the general criteria on which he is proposing to act in a specific case. If he does so, we can discover what he is up to. If we are acting differently we shall discover why we are doing things wrong. Equally, we may find that we can help him, because if he acts according to various criteria we—and I refer not only to Members of the Committee but also to the interested public at large—shall be in a position to say that the Secretary of State has acted in this way for that reason, and we think he has acted wrongly for these reasons. One can then make a constructive contribution.
I place this amendment before the Committee in an attempt to be constructive. I have assured the noble Baroness on many occasions from this Box—and I continue to do so—that my approach is constructive. However, in the case of the Bill it is more than constructive; we should be acting correctly legislatively if we amend the Bill in this way. However, if my attempt at drafting is not good, perhaps the noble Baroness will agree to go away and amend the Bill herself in order to achieve the objective that I have in mind.
Viscount Eccles: I shall keep Members of the Committee for about two minutes. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Peston, that the Secretary of State

721
for Education has had far too little power. That is why we are in trouble now. It is difficult to give powers to the Secretary of State that do not offend the good schools. One wants the power in order to rectify the defects.
For what it is worth, my experience is that a Secretary of State cannot possibly give general criteria for what he does. His day is taken up in rushing from one decision to another. Questions can be asked at Question Time in the other place. The position is much better here than in America. Under our constitution one can question Ministers—in my opinion more and more. I believe that it is a good thing. But one cannot ask Conservatives for general criteria; we do not know what they are! The noble Lord's side of the Committee may know what general criteria are, but we do not. It would make administration absolutely impossible.
I hope that from time to time over the years there will be a Conservative Secretary of State. Do not ask the poor man to do something that he has not been brought up to do!
Lord Morton of Shuna: I have lived under a Conservative regime for longer than I should have liked. I thought that in general the Conservative Party and Conservative governments liked to act within the law and within the spirit of the law. That is an issue on which there has been consensus between all parties in this Chamber. It is one of the aspects of consensus which should continue.
I said on Second Reading that it was very unfortunate to have a Bill drafted with, as far as one could see, the specific aim that judicial review would never occur. That is very damaging to democracy. As I attempted to say, I do not think that any democratic Minister of any government should ever be frightened of having his administrative acts challenged. If he has gone wrong he should be prepared to accept the court's decision that he has gone wrong. If he has not gone wrong he should be able to say why he has not gone wrong. The difficulty about this Bill is that it gives any Secretary of State of any party the power to do anything without ever giving any reason. That is an administrative dictatorship and wrong on any constitutional legal grounds. I very strongly support this amendment. I do not believe that the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, believes that he could not give reasons for what he was doing when he was doing it.
6 p.m.
Lord Hylton: I thought that the Conservative Party was in favour of openness in government, rather like certain leading elements in the Russian Communist Party. As to general criteria being too vague, do we not have to look at this amendment in the context of the particular clause? The Secretary of State will take certain actions after the National Curriculum Council has sent him a report. Either he agrees with it or he disagrees with it. Surely he must have some criteria for doing so.
Baroness Hooper: I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Peston, for raising this issue since it enables me to explain the ways in which the Secretary of State's
722
powers are already circumscribed. However, I should like to start by thanking my noble friend Lord Eccles for giving us the benefit of his experience, which in this case is perhaps more specific than anybody else's.
The effect of this amendment would be to require the Secretary of State to state general criteria and give his reasons whenever he makes an order under Clause 4 of the Bill. We have already disposed of an identical amendment proposed in respect of Clause 3 and therefore I believe that, for the same reasons, we should reject this amendment. I remind the Committee that the general criteria must in all circumstances be those established under Clause 1 of the Bill. We believe that it would not be proper for the Secretary of State to depart from those very publicly stated general criteria. They hardly need any regular restatement, as is proposed, each time an order is made. As for reasons, these will inevitably be aired in the wide consultations surrounding the making of orders on attainment targets and programmes of study since we are looking at this amendment in that context, and that will involve the parliamentary process.
There may be a case for the Secretary of State formally to state his reasons when making certain orders in certain circumstances. Where that applies we have already written into the Bill a statutory provision to that effect. Thus, when the Secretary of State intends to make an order about attainment targets or programmes of study and does not accept the advice that he has been given by the National Curriculum Council following their consultations, he must publish a statement of his reasons for that decision. This is the important case in which it is necessary for the Secretary of State's reasons for departing from the considered advice of his advisory body to be clearly known to Parliament before his proposals are considered; but we need not extend this provision, as would the noble Lord's amendment, to every order, however minor and uncontroversial, and where the Secretary of State has endorsed completely advice from an independent body which itself has consulted widely. I therefore hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Peston: I hope that the Committee will bear with me if I pursue this matter a little further. Perhaps I may first say that I am somewhat at a loss. I am not aware that we disposed of the equivalent amendment to Clause 3—assuming that the noble Baroness was referring to my amendment—because I did not move it. I am a little at a loss about that matter. Unless I was asleep, I am pretty sure that I did not move the amendment, so it is still there to be brought back in the future should I want to move it.
I am still somewhat lost and perhaps one or two matters could be explained to me in my ignorance as a parliamentarian. Let us assume that the Secretary of State makes some assessment arrangement for the subject of history for 15 years. That is perhaps too far-fetched a proposition, but as I read the Bill certainly he could do that. Is it suggested that what will happen is that someone in the House of Commons will get up and ask him a question as to why he has done that and that this explanation will then be fully and seriously explored in the House of Commons? Are we told that that is the way that

723
Parliament will act for this purpose? Will he be obliged to answer the question, or can he simply say, "I made the order and it is really none of your business"? I should like an answer to that point to start with.
Viscount Eccles: I have not been in the other place for 25 years, but I am told by those who are there that Ministers are now questioned both on the Floor of the House and in Committee to an extent that did not exist in my day. I was allowed to do practically what I wanted to do, which one cannot do now. I think that if one wants efficient administration one not only looks for a fair government but a good government, and a good government is one which has the power to act.
Lord Peston: Perhaps I may return to this point. I too believe very strongly in that. The central part of my own theme and my view of decision-making is that I want Secretaries of State who are able to act. However, I should still like them to be constrained by rationality. In particular I should like the Committeee to bear in mind a point that I made earlier about the principle of fallibility. The essence of all decision-making is that there is always the fairly high probability that one is mistaken. The whole aim of the democratic, academic and argumentation processes is to expose fallibility.
All I ask is for it to be brought explicitly into the Bill. Not for one moment am I suggesting that every time some minor order is put forward some great philosophical treatise ought to emerge from the DES. For most of the time the Secretary of State will merely say, "I acted as I did the last time" and that will keep us happy. But these are quite fundamental matters.
I return to my point about the need for the Secretary of State to be explicit, which is in itself helpful to education; in other words, it is not just a trivial matter in terms of Parliament. I wonder whether the noble Baroness would like to comment on those remarks before I respond finally?
Baroness Hooper: We believe that because the Secretary of State is obliged to take advice from the National Curriculum Council before making orders and the processes for the NCC involve wide consultation, only if he disagrees with that advice should it be necessary to have a procedure of this kind.
Lord Peston: I must say that I am not too happy about that explanation, but I should like to think about what the noble Baroness has said. As she is well aware, I have ample opportunity to put down similar amendments throughout the passage of the Bill and to discuss the same principle further, so since no other noble Lords seem to be very interested, I shall not detain the Committee any longer. I am not sure whether the correct procedure is to withdraw the amendment or not to move it; I shall do whatever is appropriate.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Ritchie of Dundee Lord Ritchie of Dundee moved Amendment No. 66:
Page 3, line 33, after ("order") insert ("a draft of which has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.").
The noble Lord said: In moving this amendment I shall also speak to Amendment No. 79 since the two are closely connected. They are also linked with the amendment that has just been withdrawn by the noble Lord, Lord Peston.
Our concern over this matter, as has already been said by the Secretary of State—and I shall not elaborate on his remarks—is that the Secretary of State appears to be able to act autocratically without consultation with anyone. I feel that it is reassurance that is needed here. This clause is one in which he seems to have a complete blank sheet, to do with as he likes. If only there were some check or balance indicated it would be a great reassurance.
The Secretary of State is to be supplied with advisory bodies: the National Curriculum Council and the Curriculum Council for Wales. They have certain functions which are set out in Clause 7, but it does not appear that he has to consult or listen to them. That is one of the points that worry us; namely, that he is not under any statutory obligation to consult those bodies or to listen to them. Will he use them or will they just be puppet bodies? The feeling is that reference to them should appear in Clause 4 somewhere. We should see words such as "after consultation with these bodies he may make orders".
That is not the amendment before the Committee at the moment. As the reference is not there, we feel there should be some other check. That is the object of the proposed amendments. In Amendment No. 66 we suggest that a draft should be laid before the House and should be subject to affirmative resolution, or that this should take place where there has been some disagreement between the Secretary of State and the councils concerned. This again is so that the matter should be publicly debated and come before public view, so that the Minister cannot just act without giving reasons and without the matter being made public. For these reasons I beg to move Amendment No. 66.
Lord Morton of Shuna: I should like to support the amendment. In Clauses 13 and 14 we have various rules as to how the Secretary of State is to deal with the various councils. If he disagrees with the councils' advice he has to give his reasons, as the Minister has already reminded us.
But we foresee a problem in relation to the facts. First, the Secretary of State just issues his reasons. They are not open to any discussion. He decides after he has received advice from councils that that is it: it is finished. Only then, as I understand it— and I may be wrong because it is a complicated Bill—there is in subsection (2)(a) and (b) the negative procedure under Clause 192 (if I have followed that correctly). Under Clause 4(2)(c)—perhaps I may be allowed to remind the Committee that we had a discussion about what the assessment arrangements standards and so on were to be—the Secretary of State has no parliamentary scrutiny at all. He does it by order, and the order takes effect without Parliament agreeing

725
"yes" in the affirmative procedure, or saying "no" under the negative procedure: and the order comes into force. So far as I can see, as long as something has been published by the Stationery Office he can make an order bringing the Stationery Office publication into effect with a rule of law without any discussion on assessment arrangements
I do not want to repeat what I said on the previous amendment, but this seems to me to be wrong in principle. There should be a method of parliamentary discussion devised especially about assessment arrangements where it appears that there is a certain disagreement of view among various members of the Committee.
6.15 p.m.
Baroness Hooper: As we have heard, Amendments Nos. 66 and 79 are alternatives. Amendment No. 66 would require all national curriculum orders to be subject to affirmative resolution procedure, while Amendment No. 79 would only extend that requirement to orders in which the Secretary of State failed to give effect to the advice of his advisory bodies.
Having listened carefully to the debate, I have some sympathy with the general intention of the second of the amendments, Amendment No. 79. While resisting Amendment No. 66, I can undertake to the noble Lord that I will give this matter further consideration and perhaps report back at a later stage.
Lord Ritchie of Dundee: I have listened with amazed interest to what the noble Baroness has said. It is not very often that we have this sort of pleasure extended to us. In those circumstances, I am very pleased to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 67 to 69 not moved].
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Serota): I should point out to the Committee that if Amendment No. 70 is agreed to I cannot call Amendment No. 71.
Lord Peston Lord Peston moved Amendment No. 70:
Page 3, leave out lines 35 and 36.
The noble Lord said: I do not understand that. Perhaps someone will explain it to me when I learn how the rules operate.
I seem to find myself always in the position of claiming that what I am about to introduce to the Committee is fundamental, but I am back again on that tack. I am discussing together Amendments Nos. 70 and 74. Essentially what I have in mind and what concerns me is the future role of the local education authorities. What I want is some clarification on that, to see what the Government have in mind.
On an earlier amendment I was discussing the powers of the Secretary of State. In the olden days the Secretary of State did not have many powers and the school system of the country was run by the local education authorities. Many members of the Committee and many Members of another place
726
learnt their administration and their politics, if I may say so, as members of local education authorities. Many of us believed that whatever their faults they were the key to education in this country.
I argued on Tuesday—or it may have been in the early hours of Wednesday morning—that we ought not to forget the great contribution that local education authorities have made to education in this country. In particular I was at pains to say, and some noble Lords agreed, that they were at the forefront of innovatory activity and of a great deal of the best of what is good in our education system. One could produce a whole list of subjects, ranging from matters in the Bill to do with local financial management; many items to do with the curriculum in the primary schools and many matters to do with the structure of schools. They were thought of by the local education authorities and introduced by those authorities, and I have to say that they were not thought of or introduced by the Department of Education and Science—incidentally, a department not known, even in my day, for its innovative powers or imagination or, in many cases, its knowledge of education. However things may have improved since then.
What worries some members of the Committee is that the Bill seems to be anti local education authority. Indeed, it does not only seem to be, but I should have thought that it is. That is based on the idea, quite correctly, that some local education authorities have done rather less well than the average, let alone the best. It is also based on the idea—not one that I disagree with—that there are some schools in our country which are not good enough. The reason for that is a degree of failure on the part of the local education authority. When I argued earlier that I felt that the Secretary of State ought to have fall-back powers my concept was precisely powers to intervene where the local education authority was failing.
What I seek clarification on is the question of the failures. I believe we all agree—certainly I have heard noble Lords on the Government Benches agree—that the failings are in a minority. We have all been at pains to congratulate the successes, but because of the failings of a minority the Bill appears to indicate that the local education authorities as a whole are somehow taken out of education. While that is an exaggeration, they are certainly very strictly limited.
I raise the matter under this heading because, in an area where I believe they have a proper role in attainment and programmes of study, there is no mention whatever of local education authorities. I seek to draw to the Committee's attention that extraordinary state of affairs. During the discussion on religion on Tuesday we were reminded of the role of the Churches in the history of our schools. The other main part of that history is the local education authorities. Whereas the Churches appear to be doing quite well in protecting their position—at least up to a point—the local education authorities are doing very badly. Indeed, their position does not seem to be protected.
I am asking the Committee and the noble Baroness whether it is their intention to limit the local education authorities as much as they appear to be doing. Is this really what they want to do? That

727
matter applies particularly to areas where I believe there is still room for innovation and imagination by local education authorities and the officials who work for them. I should like to pay tribute to those who have worked as education officers; and one should not forget some of the great people who have made contributions in that area. Do we want no more of that in our country? Do we really want a centralised system to this degree, with the assessment and curriculum councils centralised? It is for those reasons that I bring the matters before the Committee.
The other point is a drafting matter. I assure the noble Baroness that I shall not go over the assessment debate that we have just had. However, she will notice that whereas Clause 4(2)(a) states:
"such attainment targets;",
my amendment provides for:
"such individual attainment targets;"
That is solely there slightly to over-egg the pudding, as it were, and to remind us that we are dealing with individual men and women.
I should like to draw out from the noble Baroness and other noble Lords their views on the future of local education authorities. I hope for strong reassurances that there will be more for local education authorities. I am desperately hoping not to hear the sentence, "It is all implicit in the Bill".
Baroness Hooper: The noble Lord would leave the duty and power to define assessment arrangements with the Secretary of State but give to local education authorities the power to specify attainment targets and programmes of study. Local education authorities will have a new strategic role as a result of the Bill. I was at pains to point that out at Second Reading. However, this amendment appears to be a recipe for disaster. We do not want an assessment-led curriculum, with local education authorities reduced to inventing alternative ways of meeting centrally-set assessments. We want assessment arrangements which serve the objectives of the national curriculum to flow naturally from the agreed targets and help to chart pupils' progress in a consistent and useful way.
I am confident that noble Lords opposite will not wish to press such an amendment which, I believe, must share the fate of other attempts to wreck these clauses.
Lord Peston: I certainly do not want to wreck the clauses; I am trying to improve them. I am getting rather fed up with the fact that every time one tries to make a contribution one is told that one is wrecking the Bill. There are other areas in regard to which I shall be looking forward to wrecking the Bill, but this is certainly not one of them.
I have not yet heard the kind of statement that I should like to hear as regards local education authorities. I have introduced the subject under this heading in order to obtain that reassurance and a more positive statement on their role. However, I should like to explain the specific points. In many parts of education the tests or examinations are rather central, but then teachers and others ask,
728
"How do we respond to this? Do we take GCSE or GCE?". I realise that that is not a perfect analogy but they are the examinations. One then tries to set down targets for achieving that end, the ways in which to study and so forth.
Here there exists something which is not quite that situation. Certainly the assessment arrangements are central. Except for certain thoughts on local variations I am not so unhappy for there to be a national system of assessment in very broad terms. However, I should like as much local freedom as possible. I go below the level of the LEA and I should like to have as much freedom as possible in the school. I fail to see that arising under the clause. Indeed, under the clause I see rather the reverse. It is the fact that those people who have been carrying out the job will be constantly looking to what the Secretary of State specifically wants. They will constantly worry about whether they are doing what he wants, and they will not be getting on with the business of education. I add the point that I believe that their innovative and experimental powers will be limited.
So many members of the committee present have experience of education at local level and they must know that I am right in what I am saying. They must know that this does not correspond to the British system of education—it simply does not. I ask: do your Lordships wish to move as far from the way in which we have done things as this? I am not seeking to wreck, nor am I seeking to prevent the Secretary of State having powers. I wish that in my day he had had many such powers, but this goes much too far.
Baroness Young: I should like to ask my noble friend to clarify several further points. I understand the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Peston, about local education authorities. Anyone who has served in such an authority knows the value of local government. One of the issues in education which has always worried me is that at the end of their school lives only those who obtain a national examination, such as GCSE or O- or A-level, have a document which indicates their achievement. It is a national examination, although we can argue about variations between the boards, and by and large it is accepted. An examination which was not accepted so widely was the CSE. That was most unfortunate, but this is not the place to examine all the reasons for that.
I have been attracted to the idea of a national assessment arrangement because it means that all children will have an opportunity to show their achievements at the end of their school days. I believe that it is partly incorporated into the pupil profile in which I am most interested because I believe it to be important. Before anyone thinks that I would wish to make everyone take a written examination, I should like to say that I believe it to be extremely important that, for example, the child's attendance record should be recorded, together with comments about whether he tries and behaves well in school and co-operates with others. Whether one likes it or not, employers look for those points in prospective recruits to a variety of jobs. I believe that it is extremely important for a child to have something which they can show when they apply for a job, move

729
on to further education, or whatever, from whatever part of the country they may come.
One of the difficulties about a local assessment is that inevitably one will have variations. I suspect that before one knows where one is one matter will be considered to be more valuable than another. If that is the case it will be very difficult for a child in one authority, so I believe that there is an important argument about national assessment. On the other hand, I believe that within that area there must inevitably be great variations of actual practice as to how one reaches that target. Different teaching practices, whether or not one is taking the GCSE, illustrate different methods of teaching. Perhaps my noble friend will confirm that the role of the teacher will be to decide how one will attain that situation. Far from creating a straitjacket it would be a matter for the professional responsibility of the teacher. Perhaps I am not interpreting this correctly, but I believe that this is a very important point and I believe there would be a great measure of agreement of the importance for all school children being able to say what it is that they have achieved in a form which is agreed and acceptable for the outside world.
6.30 p.m.
Lord Young of Dartington: The last contribution was particularly helpful because it threw light on what is behind this clause, but it almost inevitably raised further questions. The issue which was raised is the relationship between the targets, the programmes of study and assessment arrangements that will be provided under this clause and what is provided by the examination boards for the children who are able to take various kinds of examinations.
I believe that all of us are very concerned about children who will not take examinations, and that is why the whole notion of profiles, and so on, is very attractive. However, is it implied that the programmes of study for children who are able to take GCSEs and A-levels will be largely those set down by examination boards, and that the operative ones which will be brought into operation by this clause will especially refer to the children who are not up to taking national examinations of that kind? If that is the case, will it also be the case that the attainment targets will be related to the ability of the children to achieve them, so that for the bottom 40 per cent. there will be a series of attainment targets related to what they are capable of?
If that is so, it should be brought out in greater clarity than it has been so far. Of course, if it is brought out in that way, it raises yet further questions about the way in which the needs of the so-called less able children will be dealt with without them being "ghetto-ised" and put into a separate category in the educational system: those for whom the Secretary of State's arrangements will apply as against the rest who will continue to be affected most in their programmes of study by examinations of the kind to which they have worked so far. Perhaps the noble Baroness may care to comment further on that.
Baroness Hooper: The provisions of the subsection as it now stands refer to testing and assessment arrangements at all ages. Targets are to be related to
730
the broad level of abilities and that was the discussion that we had on the testing and assessment arrangements. I do not think that I can add to the comments made by my noble friend Lady Young except to say that yes, this is where we see the important role for the teachers in interpreting the nationally set arrangements. However, one of the objectives of the Bill is to raise standards overall and in accordance with a nationally recognised level. This amendment would defeat that purpose, but there is nothing in the Bill to prevent local education authorities having an important advisory role.
Lord Peston: I am probably in one of my more stupid moods because I do not see how it would defeat what the noble Baroness, Lady Young, had in mind if I understood her correctly. She is saying that there should be a national system of assessment. Regretfully I agree with her that everybody should have a piece of paper. I hate credentialism, but we seem to live in that sort of world and anyway it cheers people up to have a piece of paper.
My main point is that I agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Young, said about assessment nationally. However, I fail to see why one cannot say that one favours broad national assessment principles and criteria but that the local authority cannot then specify the individual attainment targets and programmes of study.
Perhaps I may anticipate a later amendment which I shall be moving. There is an amendment on regional matters and in a way one is anticipating some of that now. I do not understand why one cannot—not necessarily in my amendment—write that kind of local flexibility into the Bill while still accepting the national criteria. Therefore, I do not follow the noble Baroness in rejecting what I am saying. It seems to me that I have a logical position which, in a sense, is not very different from what she is saying but it is not in the Bill.
Baroness Hooper: We have a long way to go this afternoon and I do not wish to spend too much time on this matter. Perhaps I may sum it up by saying that as I understand it the noble Lord wants a local curriculum that is nationally assessed which would not meet the point raised by my noble friend.
Lord Peston: If the noble Baroness will bear with me—and she and I both stayed until 4 o'clock the other morning and I am not in the mood for that again so I agree that we should like to get a move on—I am not saying that I want a local curriculum. We are not debating the national curriculum. Unless I now totally misunderstand her, I regard the individual attainment targets and the programmes of study as being what they are. They are concerned with what one actually does in education. They are concerned with the individual child and what that child is doing. I can see the DES laying down a very broad view on that; but I regard the specifics of it—and I thought that was what the noble Baroness, Lady Young, was saying—as being very much a local matter.
The Bill does not say that. The Bill says, "the Secretary of State" and so on. Therefore, I do not believe that I am sabotaging the national curriculum

731
and being antipathetic to job creation in the DES in London. I simply say that my understanding is that our education system in this country has in the past given the kind of task to local authorities which this Bill wants to give to the Secretary of State. I am trying to bring them back to the local education authorities.
I hope that the noble Baroness does not view this as my attempt to sabotage the national curriculum. I have had an attempt at that and I have other ideas about having another attempt. That is not what this is about. This is about the way in which the school system of this country should proceed. I do not know whether I made myself clear, but we seem to be at cross-purposes.
Baroness Seear: The noble Baroness said that the local education authority would have an advisory role. Perhaps she could spell that out. If by that she simply means that the local authority could make a few suggestions which the Secretary of State can then override, that will not take us much further; but perhaps she has something else in mind.
Baroness Hooper: The national curriculum will set out nationally-agreed targets and the broad framework of programmes of study. There will be considerable freedom for teachers and local education authorities as at present to tailor specific educational provisions to pupils' needs. I believe that that meets the case.
Lord Peston: I am still totally at a loss. I do not wish to divide the Committee; but perhaps the noble Baroness may wish to think more about what has been said. I shall think more about what has been said and return to the subject at a later stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Blackstone Baroness Blackstone moved Amendment No. 71:
Page 3, line 36, leave out ("programmes") and insert ("guidelines").
The noble Baroness said: The Minister has constantly emphasised that the Government intend to be anything other than inflexible in the implementation of their proposals. In moving this amendment, perhaps I may say that so far in Committee I am somewhat encouraged by some of the phrases which she has used. We have heard her talk about a "framework only", about "key objectives" and about "phasing in" over a number of years. However, I am rather discouraged by her response to many of the amendments put forward. In replying to the amendment moved by noble friend Lady David, she said:
"We are firmly convinced of the need for flexibility. We shall be discussing different types and degrees of flexibility more fully on later amendments".
This is one such opportunity to discuss different types of flexibility.
One of the most important matters in dealing with young people in the classroom is to encourage curiosity. Acquiring a tendency to be curious will help them very much more in life than acquiring a particular body of knowledge in any specific area. What stimulates curiosity in young people or small
732
children varies greatly from pupil to pupil, from time to time and from place to place. It cannot be written into some central programme of study. Good teachers search for things that make children curious and make them want to know more. They need the freedom to identify such matters. That is an important reason for providing teachers with guidelines, which I am sure will be very largely adhered to while allowing some scope for deviation and the flexibility which the noble Baroness the Minister has constantly talked about.
For a programme of study to work in practice, it will inevitably have to be quite detailed. In turn, detailed programmes will be very restrictive. Teachers, constrained by programmes of study which, as I have said, are bound to be detailed, will be prevented from fulfilling their proper professional role. The Government's proposals on such central programmes—to be laid down, we are told, by orders in Parliament—are an aspect of the Bill that head teachers, senior officials in local authorities and inspectors and advisers are particularly concerned about.
They are concerned for two reasons. First, programmes of study that involve detailed working syllabuses will not allow that flexibility about which the Minister has spoken. It will become very difficult to take into account local and regional interests. It will be difficult too to take into account the needs of particularly gifted children and the needs of slow learners and those with particular learning difficulties. The second concern is that teachers and local education authorities, as my noble friend Lord Peston has said, will be denied the opportunity of being innovative, of developing new ideas and of responding to change. Surely we want a profession which is able to be innovative and responsive.
Perhaps I may say a little more about each of these concerns. The noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, has said that Conservatives do not know what criteria are. The Secretary of State seems to have discovered criteria as regards the GCSE. Under defined GCSE coverage, every programme of study has to meet certain conditions but the syllabus for individual areas or subjects can be worked out within what are called national criteria. Moreover, teachers can prepare their own mode three schemes, as they are known.
Setting criteria in this way is what I have in mind when I suggest that programmes should be replaced by guidelines. Teachers can then respond much more easily to the very rich variation of local and individual differences. Without this amendment and the replacement of programmes by guidelines teachers will have much more difficulty.
Turning to the teachers themselves and their concerns about over-prescription, I should like to quote what one ex-chief education officer from Lincolnshire has said. Mr. George Cooke finds especially disturbing that,
"It is the most effective and committed teachers who feel the most disillusionment. It is almost as if our political leaders were trying to fight a war calling for great effort without caring a damn for the morale of the fighting troops".
I believe that to be one of the problems about this Bill.
We are told that in music, art and physical education we are to have guidelines only. This means that in music, for example, teachers will be asked to ensure that pupils have a chance to be taught about composing, listening and performing, but it will not prescribe that pupils have to have a little Bach, Verdi, pop, folk, or reggae. In my opinion it would be quite wrong to do so. It would also be wrong to put into these programmes of study, as they are currently called, too much detail of other areas. We need guidelines and not programmes across the board.
As my noble friend Lord Peston said, in the past there has been some frustration in the DES and among Secretaries of State about having insufficient power to influence what happens in schools. This amendment will give the Secretary of State and the DES the power to influence the curriculum. I have sympathy with that wish. It will avoid a situation in which the Secrtary of State, along with the DES, can actually prescribe down to the last detail. I beg to move.
6.45 p.m.
The Earl of Arran: Although I shall be brief on this amendment, I hope that I shall be helpful to the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone. Amendment No. 71 would have us redefine programmes of study as "guidelines of study". Since it would do so in only one place in the Bill, the overall effect would be most confusing. Moreover, the sentiment behind the amendment is not acceptable. For some foundation subjects we shall, as my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has made clear, only be establishing programmes in the form of guidelines. But for the core subjects in particular, we should not want to be limited to what is generally conveyed by that term. What we want are programmes of study—not detailed syllabuses, but a good deal more than guidelines for what we want pupils to study and achieve. In the light of what I have said, I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw the amendment.
Lord Peston: May I ask the noble Earl to clarify the matter? Are we not discussing an amendment which relates to the foundation subjects? The Minister has replied as regards the core subjects which are different from the foundation subjects. Unless I misunderstood him, he seems to have said that programmes of study for the foundation subjects will be guidelines and therefore my noble friend is pushing at an open door. I should like some clarification on this point.
The Earl of Arran: To clarify that point, it is only certain foundation subjects.
Baroness David: I believe that the noble Earl actually used the words "core subjects".
Baroness Seear: The Bill says quite clearly "each of the foundation subjects", but the Minister said "core subjects". What are we talking about?
The Earl of Arran: In this particular discussion we are talking about both core and foundation subjects.
Baroness David: Is the Bill going to be amended at that part to say "core and foundation subjects"? Nowhere have we been told that "foundation" embraces "core".
Lord Trafford: If the noble Baroness looks at Hansard tomorrow I believe she will find that my noble friend said "of foundation subjects as for core subjects"—in other words, referring to a programme of study in foundation subjects as indeed in the core subjects. That is what I heard but I confess that I do not have tomorrow's Hansard either.
Baroness David: I shall look carefully at Hansard tomorrow. But the misunderstanding seems to have arisen among several of us. I am not alone.
Baroness Seear: Even if it were a misunderstanding, the Bill refers to foundation subjects. We really do have to come back again and again to what the Bill says because that is all we are interested in. We do not mind very much what it is but we would like to know.
Baroness Blatch: Returning to the debate on the first day in Committee I seem to recall references being made to a degree of prescription: that it would be very much more detailed for the core subjects and for four foundation subjects—geography, history, technology, and a language—and much less prescriptive for the remaining subjects of music, art and PE. We are talking about degree of prescription. The Bill is talking about the powers of the Secretary of State to set up committees to determine programmes and targets to be achieved. Therefore the degree of prescription would fall within that.
Lord Young of Dartington: If that is the case—and it seems highly reasonable— we are being asked to divide the foundation subjects into two categories. Music, art and physical education are being considered in a different category from history, geography and technology. It seems eminently sensible to me. How can one lay down a detailed programme of work for music when conditions from one school to another differ so much with regard to instrument teaching in all sorts of ways?
Would it not meet the case if the word "programme" is kept but the word "guidelines" is added so that it would read, "such guidelines or programmes of study"? The Secretary of State would then not be under the duty to lay down a programme of study for music and art, which is only going to make him look ridiculous if he tries to undertake it.
The Earl of Arran: Perhaps I may come back on this and say that the programmes of study will not be syllabuses. They will set out certain important matters, skills and processes, to which pupils must be introduced; but they will not say how these should be organised and will leave considerable freedom for teachers to add their own particular slant. The degree of detail will vary subject by subject and will be subject to wide consultation. What matters is how these powers are used and not what they are called.
Lord Peston: Those of us who have some experience of teaching know that after a certain amount of time one is wasting one's time in attempting to communicate, but I will still carry on.
One of the first thoughts that suddenly occurred to me was that maybe it is a misprint. Maybe it is meant to say "foundation and core". Indeed, if it is not a misprint, I am a little worried as to why "core" is not there anyway. That is my first question. Perhaps the noble Lord might like to think about that. I will accept the answer that it is a misprint if he likes to say that.
The other point is that I thought the Minister said in response to my noble friend Lady Blackstone's speech that there was a range of programmes of study. Some were, to use the noble Baroness's expression, more prescriptive, and some were less prescriptive. I thought he himself said that some of them were akin to guidelines. Did I miss that? I thought he said some were akin to guidelines and some were rather less akin to guidelines.
We are seeking some clarification of that. Indeed, if some of them are akin to guidelines, we would not mind the Bill saying that they are guidelines and that others are rather less guidelines. I cannot speak for my noble friend but I would be reassured by the statement that the noble Earl will think about it again and come back to us; but I am certainly not reassured at the moment.
Baroness Blackstone: Perhaps I may ask the Minister exactly what he means when he says there will not be syllabuses, but that the degree of detail will vary from subject to subject. Can he tell us a bit about which subject there will be more detail for and which subject there will be less detail for, and where the dividing line is to be between a syllabus, on the one hand, a programme of study, on the other hand, and guidelines as a third example? It is very confusing and unclear.
The Earl of Arran: In answer to the question put by the noble Baroness, we are not as yet going into details. They are being considered and we will decide at a later date.
Baroness Seear: This is the Committee stage of a Bill which is going to become an Act of Parliament. It is really not good enough to be told that the Government will make up their mind after the Committee stage when we have no more opportunity to amend it in detail, and will then tell us what they want in the Bill. We are putting a potential Act of Parliament through this Chamber and we should know what is in the Government's mind now, not at a later stage.
Baroness Blatch: The Committee has so far established that there shall be a national curriculum and that there shall be testing to define objectives. It seems perfectly appropriate now that we put upon the Secretary of State's department the powers to determine the programmes of study which shall be more or less prescriptive according to subject. I think it has been mentioned that the core will receive the greatest detail. It may just be that the additional word "core" in the first part of subsection (2) might make
736
this more clear. The Secretary of State now needs the powers to deliver what this Committee has already determined is absolutely and entirely appropriate.
Baroness Lockwood: Surely my noble friend has put his finger on a very real deficiency in the Bill. Clause 4(1) says:
"It shall be the duty of the Secretary of State … to establish a complete National Curriculum as soon as is reasonably practicable (taking first the core subjects and then the other foundation subjects)".
Subsection (2) says:
"The Secretary of State may by order specify in relation to each of the foundation subjects".
It does not say that he may specify in relation to the core subjects. So if the Secretary of Statre draws up a programme for core subjects, that could be challenged becaue it is not contained in the Bill. So there really is some confusion here.
The Earl of Arran: Clause 4(1) also states:
"and then the other foundation subjects".
The foundation subjects include the core subjects, as defined in Clause 3(2) and Clause 2—the core and other foundation subjects.
Lord Peston: Maybe that is the explanation and we have all totally misunderstood the Bill. Are we being asked to accept that the expression "the core and other foundation subjects" is to be taken to mean that the foundation subjects consist of the core and other foundation subjects and that that is what the Bill means?
I should like to be told that that is what it means because that would help us a great deal. However, if that is so it still remains the case that the noble Earl has given us, if I may say so, a rather random account of the programmes of study. We should still like something more specific and definite. I should certainly like to know whether the logic of what we are saying is that from now on we say that the foundation subjects are the whole lot, of which a sub-set are the core. Is that what we are saying?
Baroness Seear: What is the point of having the two words? If that is the position there is no difference between the two words. Why have "core" and "foundation"?
The Earl of Arran: The national curriculum, as we all know, consists of the core and foundation subjects.
Lord Young of Dartington: Would the Minister not think it would be in the interests of clarity (since we have been confused by this, other people may well be in the future) if in line 34 it was stated that the Secretary of State may by order specify in relation to each of the core and other foundation subjects? That brings a degree of repetition into that sentence which would make it much clearer. If it had been there, we would have saved about 25 minutes of our time this afternoon, quite apart from anything else.
Lord Ritchie of Dundee: If I may say so, I think this is an epitome of the whole Bill. It bears every sign of haste in the drafting and so the form that it has taken

737
has been to enable the Secretaray of State in several hundred different ways, in order that he may go ahead and do these things. If more thinking and more time had been given to the Bill before it was brought before Parliament, that would have saved a lot of time in Parliament.
Earl Baldwin of Bewdley: Might it not help if Clause 18 said something on this? That clause deals with the definitions and says:
" 'core subjects', 'foundation subjects' and 'key stages' have the meanings given by section 3 of this act".
Since Clause 3 is not entirely clear, that might be a place for a more precise definition.
7 p.m.
The Earl of Arran: The Government distinguish in the Bill between the core and other foundation subjects. There are two reasons: one educational, and the other practical. The educational reason is that the knowledge, skills and understanding which pupils acquire through the core subjects lie at the heart of the rest of the curriculum, provide the basis on which other subjects can build and are key elements of what the pupils need if they are to be equipped for adult life. The practical reason emerges in subsection (1) of Clause 4. This requires the Secretary of State,
"to establish a … National Curriculum as soon as is reasonably practicable (taking first the core subjects)".
They are taken first because of the importance we attach to them within a broad and balanced curriculum. Consistent with that the first working groups we announced were for maths and science. We have followed that up with the recent announcement of the English working group.
Lord Kilmarnock: As the noble Earl, Lord Baldwin, has already pointed out, Clause 18 (which we have not yet reached) says that the core subjects and the foundation subjects shall,
"have the meanings given by section 3 of this Act".
However, as my noble friend Lord Young has just pointed out, the past 25 or 30 minutes of the debate have shown that it is not clear to people of average intelligence (who I think comprise the Committee) what the precise meanings of these two terms in Clause 3 and in Clause 4 are. Simply in the interests of clarification and for the removal of doubt for the general public—and for people who will have to interpret the Act—would it not be sensible for the noble Earl to say that, as doubts have been expressed about the meaning of those two clauses, the Government will take them away and possibly come back with clarification at the next stage of the Bill?
Lord Jay: Perhaps I may try to give some assistance to the Minister. I understand that he is now saying that the core subjects are themselves foundation subjects. If that is so, would it not be better to amend Clause 3 to say that there are two kinds of foundation subjects—first, the core subjects; and, secondly, the other foundation subjects? None of the misunderstandings which have arisen tonight would then arise in the minds of any intelligent reader of the clause. As it is, the clause is muddled and hurried.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: I think we all understand the difference between foundation subjects and those which constitute the core. We are becoming very muddled in our discussion of this matter. We are not clear about this Part of the Bill. We might ask the Minister whether for clarification it needs to say "foundation" and "core". If it does, he could bring forward an amendment. If not—and if somebody else wants to pursue it—he can explain. As to the programmes of study, he said in the first place that some programmes would be issued as guidelines. That seemed to me, in spite of the confusion, to be a perfectly clear response. I wonder whether the Committee will agree that that would be helpful.
The Earl of Arran: In the circumstances, I shall heed the advice of my noble friend and examine this point. I shall take it away and hope to come back with a clearer definition at Report stage.
Baroness Blackstone: I am most grateful to the noble Earl. This has been unsatisfactory. We are not only in a muddle about what constitutes "core" and "foundation". We are also in a muddle about where guidelines are to be operated, where programmes of study will be operated and where we will have something rather more detailed and more like syllabi. In agreeing to take this away I hope that he will not only look to clarify "core" and "foundation" but also say where we shall have guidelines, where we shall have programmes of study and exactly where they will apply and what those terms mean. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Rea Lord Rea had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 71A:
Page 3, line 37, at beginning insert ("for key stages 2, 3 and 4.").
The noble Lord said: This amendment was discussed at some length earlier this afternoon and at this point I do not wish to continue the discussion. After dinner there will be an opportunity under Amendment No. 75 to discuss this point which concerns the withdrawal of the requirement to assess 7 year-olds.
[Amendment No. 71A not moved.]
The Earl of Arran: This might be a suitable and convenient moment at which to break for dinner. Perhaps I may suggest that we return to the Committee stage at five minutes past eight. I beg to move that this House do now resume.
Moved, That the House do now resume.—(The Earl of Arran.)
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: Presumably that is on the conclusion of the debate during the dinner hour. If that goes beyond five minutes past eight it may be slightly later.
The Earl of Arran: I should have said, "not before five past eight".
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.

Summer Time Order 1988
7.6 p.m.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Earl Ferrers)The Minister of State, Home Office (Earl Ferrers) rose to move, that an Humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the Summer Time Order 1988 be made in the form of the draft laid before the House on 8th March [20th Report from the Joint Committee].
The noble Earl said: My Lords, this draft order, which has been considered by the Joint Committee of Statutory Instruments and which has been approved by affirmative resolution in another place, is uncontroversial in so far as it applies the existing system for determining summer time to 1989. As before, summer time will begin on the last Sunday in March and it will end on the Sunday after the fourth Saturday in October 1989. The order provides therefore that summer time will stretch from 26th March to 29th October in 1989.
The order derives from the European Communites Fourth Summer Time Directive and is consistent with the ordinary operation of the Summer Time Act 1972. As before, the United Kingdom will be an hour behind most of the other states in the Community except between the end of September and the end of October, when we shall be on the same time as them. This is because they end their summer time at the end of September, a month before we do. All states in the Community (and indeed in Europe) start summer time on the same day.
I said that the order was uncontroversial because I think that most people value summer time. I am fully aware that there are among your Lordships those who would like to see more summer time, and that there are others who are opposed to such a move. The Government have commissioned a large-scale survey on summer time, as I informed your Lordships on 12th April in a Written Answer to my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy. The survey asks for views from a wide range of organisations on three options which were more favoured in a preliminary survey which was conducted last year. I do not propose to go into the merits or the drawbacks of those options. We are consulting widely on them and we shall decide on what steps to advise Parliament to take when we have analysed the results.
I had intended to dilate somewhat more extensively on the virtues of the summer time order but in view of the number of noble Lords who have indicated they wish to speak I thought it might be more to the convenience of the House if I were somewhat less expansive than I had intended. I shall try to cover any detailed points at the end of the debate should that prove necessary. I seek the agreement of the House for this extension of the existing arrangements while we test the mood of the country as to whether there should be a change to the arrangements and if so to what. I beg to move.
Moved, That an Humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the Summer Time Order 1988 be made in the form of the draft laid before the House on 8th March. [20th Report from the Joint Committee]—(Earl Ferrers.)
7.10 p.m.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, the length of the list of speakers not only indicates the great national interest in the question of summer time, but also encourages the House during dinner hour business to have a self-denying ordinance in regard to the length of speeches. I intend to impose that ordinance upon myself.
I have a precedent for that because the last time this matter was debated on an order was in 1985. It was debated on 17th December of that year. I limited my observations to wishing the noble Viscount who was then the Minister a happy Christmas, and wished a warmer summer time for us all in 1986. A speech of no great content, your Lordships may feel.
The Minister is thoughtful when he abbreviates his address to the House on this matter. However, I think we ought to delve a little more deeply into some of the aspects involved, as indeed he indicated he was prepared to do in his winding-up speech which he will deliver in due course in reply to what I hope will be a short debate.
He mentioned the study which will take place and which is obviously most necessary. However, one must mention the options which will be considered in the survey. The first of such options is the maintenance of the status quo. We are of course only being asked, while the survey is taking place, for the period of a year to be imposed under the order, as against three years in 1985. Secondly, there is the harmonisation of the ending of summer time with the rest of Europe, which would mean that we would lose an hour's evening daylight in October. Thirdly, there is the adoption of Greenwich mean time, plus one hour in the winter; with Greenwich mean time, plus two hours, in the summer. That would of course mean the period between the end of March and the end of September.
There are just a couple of matters that I should like briefly to indicate to the House which I believe are of grave concern. The one thing we would want to do when looking at any survey and when looking at this matter in the future, is to make absolutely sure that economic considerations are not the only considerations which we have in mind. For example, there is the question of the quality of living and also the very important issue of safety; that is, safety of our children and safety of old people. I was most interested—as I believe most noble Lords would have been had they studied it (as they may well have done)—in the Minister's speech when the matter was dealt with in another place on 28th April this year; in other words, only a few days ago. The Minister said that the question of safety was very much a consideration. I hope that the Government will continue to look at that aspect with the greatest of care. The Minister said:
"Several hon. Members, including the hon. Members for Kingston-Upon-Hull, West and for Newport, West asked whether the extension of summer time throughout the year is likely to result in a reduction of road deaths and casualties. The answer is that on the best available evidence it will lead to such a reduction".
He then quoted from Chapter 8, page 64 of the review of British standard time published in October 1970 which stated:
"There is little doubt that British Standard Time has led to an overall improvement in road accident casualties although the crude

741
figures of savings of casualties need to be treated with some reserve. The overall improvement seems to have been even greater in Scotland than in England and Wales".—[Official Report, Commons 28/4/88; Col. 617.]
He made the further point that this is very much behind the campaign being mounted by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. I think noble Lords should note that campaign, having regard to our casualty figures, with the gravest of concern.
We should also note that many of us in regard to the quality of life prefer, on returning from our day's work, to find a little bit of daylight available to us enabling us to have some pleasure with the members of our families. That is yet another consideration. I leave that aspect with the further thought which one ought to have in one's mind; namely, Scotland. I know that feelings there are extremely high on the issue of summer time and the question of the present order and the present state of affairs.
The last point I mention, in view of the self-denying ordinance which I have imposed upon myself, is this. In another place the matter was raised as to the validity of Article 100A under which it was apparently the European view that a directive—a proper directive—could be given in regard to such matters. I noted with concern, because it is a matter which obviously ought to be elucidated, that again at col. 617 the Minister, Mr. Douglas Hogg, said:
"I am not irrevocably persuaded that article 100A applies to the directive. Clearly, that matter requires further consideration. I most certainly do not concede that the directive is intra vires article 100A. Secondly, the fact that, on this occasion, we raised no objection to the treaty base of the directive—agreeing as we did with the policy included in the directive—does not in any way preclude us from raising an appropriate objection on subsequent occasions and in the context of subsequent directives".
I wonder whether the Minister when he replies can tell us whether that consideration has now developed into a decision by the Government as to whether Article 100A is applicable to the directive and whether the directive is intra vires Article 100A. I think it is essential that we should know just where we are going.
7.15 p.m.
Viscount Mountgarret: My Lords, when the existing arrangements for summer time were agreed in 1985 in association with our partners in the European Community, it was for a period of some three years. The present arrangements are due to come to an end this year and something different will be organised for next year. However, there has been a feeling among a wide number of people, including many of my noble friends and indeed some noble Lords opposite, that perhaps the existing arrangements are not entirely what we might like to see.
The arrangements agreed to were imposed in order to try to meet the requirements of our partners in the Common Market and to harmonise with them in so far as it was possible. Therefore, to that end, it was agreed that summer time would begin in this country at the end of March, but we could not accept that we should terminate our summer time at the end of September for reasons with which your Lordships are familiar. Therefore the arrangements were to persist for three years.
742
However, because of the representations that have been made—and on behalf of many of my noble friends and colleagues I should like to thank my noble friend Lord Ferrers and his predecessor for having given us a good deal of their time by listening to our arguments and suggestions—a compromise has been achieved by suggesting that the order laid before the House this evening should maintain those existing arrangements for one further year. We must of course agree to that, because if we were not to do so it would cause the most frightful difficulties with airline timetables, diaries and the printing of many other documents.
However, it does mean that serious thought should be given to what we shall do in the future. Whether we like it or not—I must say I do not—we are one state. At any rate, in 1992 we shall be one state with Europe. We shall have one passport, and so on. As I have already said, I do not like it but it will happen and therefore we must get on with it. It seems moderately logical that when we are on the same longitude, so to speak, as the majority of central Europe, the question of harmonisation with Europe, as regards the time issue, is relatively logical. If it was latitude and you had time zones and so forth that would obviously be another matter. However, in this case it is not so. Therefore, for that reason—no doubt, noble Lords may well have others—this seems to be an opportunity for the Government to take on board the representations which have been made to them about seriously considering how far they can harmonise with Europe.
If we were to extend summer time by bringing forward the clock change from the end of March to the beginning of February, that would be sensible, because the shortest day, I believe, is 21st December. That is only six weeks after the clocks change at the end of October and yet, lo and behold, the clocks are not changed again until March, which is three months after the winter solstice. There is therefore an imbalance, which probably does not make sense. Perhaps that point could be looked at. It is a sensible opportunity to consider harmonising with Europe and adopting central European time.
The disadvantages rather than the advantages, must be brought out. I admit that there would be about six to eight weeks in the winter when it would be pretty dark in the morning. That we agree about. However, six to eight weeks during the course of the year is something with which we might come to live. We had an experiment some 20 years ago. We are talking about time, and time has moved on. That change may be something with which we could live which would not be intolerable.
It is not impossible to change times locally. Individual employers could change the time at which one starts work so that one could take advantage of the longer evenings. I shall take the lead of the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, and impose a self-denying ordinance. I am conscious that those who live in the far north of Scotland will be opposed, root and branch, to any extension of summer time. I suspect that if they were given the option they would prefer to see what I call double Greenwich meantime and put the whole thing back an hour. The proposal would be opposed in Scotland. I understand that. I

743
find it difficult to reconcile the proposal with fairness to people who live in the far north.
Having said that, if it is found that it is to the benefit of the nation as a whole—I do not know whether it will be—to adopt central European time or a substantially extended summer time, one must question whether it is right for the wishes of a minority of the nation to supersede those of the majority. At the moment Scotland has different licensing hours. It will have a community charge before we do. It has different rules and regulations as regards the law and so forth. If they so wish, it may not be impossible for the Scots to have their own Scottish time. After all, they would only suffer the same inconvenience we suffer with our European counterparts.
7.23 p.m.
Viscount Bledisloe: My Lords, I rise not to express any view on the merits or demerits of summer time, but to pursue somewhat further the last point mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon; namely, the powers or vires under which the Commission made the directive which led to the order. In particular, I wish to ask the Minister whether Her Majesty's Government regard it as proper for the Commission to have made the directive under Article 100A as opposed to Article 100 which has been its justification in the past.
It would be hard to think of a drier or more boring point to raise until one appreciates that whereas under Article 100 a directive can only be made by a unanimous decision, under Article 100A a qualified majority suffices. To put it crudely, if Article 100A can properly be used for this purpose the United Kingdom and Ireland could be ordered by the rest of the Community to change to Continental time against their wishes. So this is more than being merely a lawyer's point.
In the past, the Commission's directives on summer time were laid under Article 100 which gave power to issue directives for the approximation of provisions of member states where such provisions directly affected the functioning of the common market. It was assumed that those words were wide enough to justify making directives as to summer time, although perhaps the fact that there had to be unanimity meant that no particularly great attention was paid to the question of vires. If one can object by voting one does not have to consider carefully whether the power is intra vires.
However, since the passing of the Single European Act, the Commission has new powers including that whereby only a qualified majority is required to approve a directive. The only thing one can say about Article 100A with total confidence is that what it means is unclear. It probably gives power to the Commission to adopt measures which have as their object the establishing and functioning of the internal market. Of course the internal market is something a great deal narrower than the common market.
It seems highly doubtful whether those narrower words where one has only the object rather than the assistance—the object of the internal market—can include the regulation of our times and our clocks.
744
No doubt the regulating of our times and clocks has some effect on trade. But It can hardly be said that a summer time order has, as its object, the functioning of the internal market. Nonetheless, on this occasion Her Majesty's Government seemingly did not raise the issue in Brussels. When it was raised by the select committee, their answer was that in instances where, in the past, Article 100 had been used, there would not usually be any real likelihood of successfully arguing that Article 100A was improper and, further, that the Commission was inclined to give a wide interpretation to Article 100A.
That answer could mean one or more of three things. First, it could mean that Her Majesty's Government regard Articles 100 and 100A as meaning the same thing. I suggest that it is plain that they do not. That is certainly the view of your Lordships' sub-committee E and its extremely learned chairman. Secondly, it could mean that Her Majesty's Government will defer to the Commission's interpretation, even when they doubt that it is correct. Thirdly, it could mean that there is no great point in arguing because the majority can outvote us whether or not the article applies. I hope that neither of the last two attitudes are those of Her Majesty's Government. Of course, even if outvoted, if the article does not apply, that is a matter they can challenge.
It is always important to be vigilant to ensure that there is a proper legal foundation for the Community's actions. It is especially so where the majority can make a decision against one's will. I therefore ask the Minister three questions. Does he agree that it is at least doubtful that Article 100A is appropriate? Secondly, does it remain open on future occasions for Her Majesty's Government to challenge the use of Article 100A for this purpose, even though they have succumbed to it on this occasion? Thirdly, will he give your Lordships an assurance that the Government will in future carefully scrutinise the use of the article and will challenge anything that appears to be an attempt to use it where it is not truly appropriate?
7.30 p.m.
Lord Monson: My Lords, like most other noble Lords I am not particularly concerned with this order, which I am perfectly happy to support, but with what we are threatened with after 1989. The most ominous proposal is that GMT—Greenwich mean time—be permanently abandoned for all practical purposes and replaced by British summer time in the winter and double British summer time in the summer months.
A more potent receipe for stirring up the antagonisms which stem from the North-South divide can scarcely be imagined. It will be suspected that once again the affluent, urbanised, suburbanised, Eurocentric and Yuppie-infested South-East is bending the rules in its favour to the detriment of the poorer and more rural West Country, North of England and Celtic fringe, condemning the inhabitants of those regions to be deprived of daylight until 10 a.m. in mid-winter.
The alleged justification for such a change is to make life easier for British businessmen. But, my

745
Lords, just consider this for a moment: when it is 8 a.m. in New York it is 5 a.m. in Los Angeles; when it is 5 p.m. in Perth it is 7 p.m. in Sydney; when it is 12 noon in Nova Scotia it is 7.30 a.m. in Vancouver. If European businessmen cannot cope with three time zones when their American, Canadian and Antipodean counterparts can happily manage with five, six, or seven, then heaven help us.
It is in fact the obsessive harmonisers who are being provincial and out of touch with the world as it is in this matter and not those who prefer the status quo. It really is time that advocates of harmonisation took the geographical realities into account. The distance from Athens to Lisbon equates to the distance from New York City to Denver, Colorado, or to the distance from St. Louis, Missouri, to San Francisco. All six cities are on roughly the same latitude.
There is a two-hour time gap between each of the latter pairs, and so logically there must also be a two-hour time difference between Lisbon and Athens. Lisbon and Oporto are on roughly the same longitude as Cork and Galway, so clearly Ireland, both North and South, plus, I would contend, Scotland and Wales, come logically into the Portuguese time zone, particularly given their much darker winter mornings.
The other argument advanced for dispensing with Greenwich mean time is the road safety one. But in mid-winter it gets dark in the evenings earlier in Copenhagen than it does in Glasgow, and almost as early in Hamburg as it does in Liverpool; all this under the existing dispensation. If the road safety argument were valid then both Denmark and West Germany, to say nothing of East Germany, ought to put their clocks forward to the equivalent of double British summer time in the winter months. It is most significant that they have not felt it necessary so to do.
What about the October problem? October is more often than not a good month in Britain, especially the first half, but it is an even better month on the Continent except at the higher altitudes. Most of the Continent enjoys long, warm autumns, which is why hardwoods can be grown profitably in central Europe but not, by and large, in Britain. This being so, and assuming that to have identical dates for the beginning and end of summer time throughout Europe would be mildly useful, though by no means essential, then surely the right course now is to persuade the Continentals of the enormous benefits to their people of extending their summer time to the end of October rather than depriving the British people of their enjoyable October evenings, for which no government would be forgiven by the British people.
If the other EC countries are foolish enough to continue to deprive themselves of the benefits of light October evenings, thereby incidentally declining to bring their dates and ours into line, then I would suggest that we might as well take the opportunity to extend our own summer time to the first or second Sunday in November, a season when it can often be warm enough to play tennis, for example. This would have the incidental benefit of giving our poor, overworked exporters, or rather those exporters who export to Europe rather than to any other continent, an extra hour in bed for an extra fortnight each year.
7.35 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, from the Written Answer to my Question on 12th April, to which my noble friend the Minister of State referred, it is clear that this order, besides continuing the present annual arrangement, looks forward to the three options that the Government set out in that reply for the future. The Government invite views on those options. I am glad to observe that none of the options is reviving British standard time, which was adopted for three years as an experiment, from 1968 to 1971. I would remind your Lordships that the clock was then put forward for one hour from Greenwich mean time and remained at that throughout the year.
My purpose in this short debate, where we are all subject to the clock, is simply to draw attention to what happened then and to express the hope that the Government will be extremely cautious about taking that course again. The decision whether to continue the experiment started in 1968 was taken after a debate in the other place, the Commons, on 2nd December 1970. In a free vote the result of the Division was overwhelming—366 against, to 81. Three hundred and sixty-six to 81! That debate was after two and a half years of experience of that experiment.
British standard time was of course especially difficult for northern and western regions of the country. For example, the agricultural and building industries found working in darkness in the mornings inconvenient and dangerous. As regards school children's safety, most of the concern related to the smaller children who do not stay at school all day, and return home by daylight under any system. With BST they were going to school in the dark in the mornings.
Time is short and I shall not enumerate and describe other objections and difficulties because the Commons Hansard of that debate of 2nd December 1970 can be read. There were many objections from Scotland but objections came also from northern and north-western areas of England and Wales. I should remind your Lordships that Scotland forms more than one-third of the land of the United Kingdom, and that it extends a long way north of the Border.
At the time of the experiment in the late 1960s my home was, as it still is, almost 600 miles north of London, so I have been in a good position to observe and share experiences of the experiment and of other systems. As I return home tomorrow, having flown south the evening before last, when I reach the Border I shall be only half-way. My home is where my constituency was, and I therefore remember how strongly my constituents were against what was happening during that time of the experiment. I cannot remember anyone in that area of my constituency nearby who was in favour of what was happening.
The history of the Bill which introduced BST is worth recalling. When it appeared first in this House in late 1967 it was not proposing an experiment but a once-for-all change. When it moved to the other place I and my Scottish honourable friends, with others, voted against the Second Reading. During its passage we managed to achieve the vital alteration

747
conceded by the government of the day to make it a three-year experiment only. The sequel I have already described—a massive majority in the Commons not to continue the experiment or make it permanent.
The Members of Parliament who voted in that 366 came from most parts of the United Kingdom. They were not simply Members from the North or North-West, and they were from all parties. I cannot go into it now. If I may sum it up in one sentence, I believe that in a free vote Members of Parliament representing southern constituencies found that their constituents did not care very much one way or the other, but they were conscious that their friends in all parties, Members representing areas north and west, found that their constituents did feel very strongly. That, therefore, is my explanation briefly for the huge vote.
Of course, things have changed in nearly 20 years, although the rising and setting of the sun did not perceptibly change in that period. Since then we have joined the European Community. I claim to be an ardent European. There is no time now for me to do more than point out that I was in the Shadow Cabinet and the Cabinet which took the United Kingdom into the EC in January 1973 and was greatly involved in the drive and the work needed to attain that. I have since been identified with moves towards a closer European Community.
However, do we need to have complete synchronisation of time systems with the rest of the EC? The United States is a single market but it retains different time zones. I hope that the Government will look at what happens across the Atlantic. I certainly would not want to make life any more difficult for British industry and commerce, but the Americans do not seem to find it difficult to have times that are different within their own country.
7.40 p.m.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, is so courteous and charming, and indeed disarming, that he almost had me believing him when he said that this was an uncontroversial measure. I think he has probably already discovered that there can be a good deal of controversy about it. But, as it stands, I agree that the little order we have before us is quite innocuous, although the implications are indeed very wide and serious.
I do not intend to go into the merits or otherwise of the various options for altering or retaining our present system of times. I have to declare that in 1970 I was one of the 81 who voted for the retention of the experiment. Although I could not quite accept them, I understood the arguments which were made, particularly by colleagues in Scotland and in the north of England.
I am concerned about the use of Article 100A. I see that my noble friend Lord Bruce of Donington is here; he led the Labour attack on the Single European Act. Those who took part in that debate will remember that we tried to point out to the House that this could be a Trojan horse which would remove from Parliament the sovereignty which it has enjoyed in the past and should continue to enjoy in the future.
748
However, we were overruled. We were assured that there was nothing in the Single European Act which would in any way detract from the sovereignty of Her Majesty and of her Parliament. We were assured by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, that there was no loss of sovereignty involved in the passing of the Single European Act. It had only to do with the single market.
I was accused of unnecessarily stirring up worry and trouble. But it seems that we had a point because it is the Commission that has the duty and power to propose things and we now find the Commission proposing under Article 100A to impose whatever time they feel will be necessary, not only on this country but on other countries of Europe as well.
This may seem to be unimportant, although, as we have heard this evening, many people think that the sort of time we have in the United Kingdom is very important indeed. But if the Commission can use Article 100A for time on the pretext that it has to do with the operation of the single market, what other items might they put through under that provision? For example, could they not say that because British pensions, and therefore the contributions of employers to pensions, are lower than the average in the Common Market, we should alter our arrangements under Article 100A because they distort competition?
The list of things that could be pushed through under Article 100A is enormous. That is why it is vitally important that on this little issue we should establish the ground rules. The Guardian yesterday carried an article by David Hencke on fears that the EEC single market will be used as a Trojan horse to cut Westminster control over social policies. But in that article the writer says that the Home Office appears to have been in a mess over the EEC decision to harmonise summer time by 1990. Home Office staff, unused to the Brussels small print, failed to note that the time changes were introduced under the internal market procedure under which Britain loses its veto. I find it very hard to believe that the Home Office did not know exactly what they were doing. If they did not know what they were doing, it seems to me that they have failed in their duty to the Government and the Minister.
I believe that the single market will be against this country's interests anyway. But I am quite convinced that there will be many more people agreeing with me who will express their fears of the operation of the single market if they believe that Article 100A provides not for a British veto but for a qualified majority in all things. They will be very, very concerned as to what the future holds. I do not believe that people in this House and in another place want to cede to a bureaucracy in Brussels social and economic matters over which this country alone should have control.
We have already lost the British passport. Many people do not understand that, but we have lost it, make no mistake about it. I know that 107 Members in another place have signed an Early Day Motion asking for retention of the passport, but I am afraid that the horse has bolted. They are trying to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted. So far as I am concerned, I am not a citizen of Europe; I hope I never shall be. I owe allegiance only to Her Majesty,

749
make no mistake about that. I hope that people will remember that in future when they are passing legislation in this House and in another place.
I hope that the noble Earl will be able to assure the House and me that, with everything they have, the Government will fight this incursion—because that is what I believe it is—by the Commission into British sovereignty. It is assurance we want, not only about British summer time but about everything else. That is the major issue which is before us.
7.49 p.m.
Lord Brougham and Vaux: My Lords, as noble Lords will know, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, of which I have the honour to be president, mounted a campaign for permanent British standard time. RoSPA's case for the introduction of British standard time relates solely to the road safety benefits. The Government Transport and Road Research Laboratory predicts that 580 lives would be saved and serious injuries avoided if British standard time were introduced in the country. This is based on the results of the 1968–71 study, which showed that 1,340 deaths and serious injuries were avoided each year. The figure has to be corrected to take into account changes in traffic flow, vehicle design, improvement in road lighting, and so on. The main benefits come in the evening when the lighter evenings favour the road user returning home. Since 1971 there has been a whole range of unfounded stories suggesting that the experiment be dropped for safety reasons, yet the statistics show the positive benefit for road safety, and the opinion polls show that most people liked it.
The Home Secretary put forward three possible courses of action. First, keeping the present system would continue the needless loss of life and limb on our roads—580 every year. Secondly RoSPA estimates that harmonising the beginning and ending of British standard time with our EC partners would increase the number of deaths and seriously injured by 100. Thirdly, introducing double standard time, though not specifically asked for by RoSPA, would incorporate the British standard time benefits.
RoSPA launched a campaign earlier this year for the introduction of British standard time, and the support has been phenomenal. I ask noble Lords to read RoSPA's pamphlet Light Saves Lives. It clearly explains the facts, and outlines the response and support that RoSPA has so far received.
I urge the Home Secretary as a matter of urgency to introduce measures that incorporate these road safety benefits. Every year at least 580 people would have reason to be grateful to him.
7.52 p.m.
Lord Vinson: My Lords, I think that we are all grateful that the order gives us the opportunity to discuss this matter (which was last considered some 15 to 20 years ago) because there have been major economic and social changes in that period which I believe strongly reinforce the case for an extension of the existing period of summer time.
First, many elderly people, particularly in urban areas, are fearful of being out of doors after dark because of the rising incidence of mugging and rape.
750
When the clocks go back in October, a curfew on their activities effectively descends at 4 p.m. A further hour's daylight in the evening would markedly improve their social life. I suggest that that is far from being of benefit to urban yuppies only.
I support the noble Lord, Lord Brougham and Vaux, in regard to accidents. There are of course many more cars on the road. Statistics show clearly that more people are killed in the evening rush hour when drivers are more tired, when traffic densities are greater and, frankly, when there is more alcohol in people's blood.
I am very persuaded by the figures of the Transport and Road Research Laboratory. A saving of between 500 and 600 lives is a considerable one. I remind your Lordships of the public interest and concern about the massacre in Hungerford and the Zeebrugge disaster; yet, in this instance, we are talking of a saving of double that number of lives every year. That is an important consideration.
I agree also with the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon. Leisure patterns have changed, and the working week is shorter. People would welcome the chance of getting home in daylight to work in the garden and to play golf or other outdoor sports.
As well as the social reasons, there are the economic reasons. The economy would benefit markedly. Surveys by the Rural Development Commission and others show not only a preference for lighter evenings but that, because economic activity levels would be higher, more jobs would be created. Not least, it would extend the tourist season and improve vacancy ratios for the whole tourist industry. Business overall would benefit. Now that we are in the EC, harmonising our working patterns must at least be a sensible option. So there are cogent social and economic reasons for extending BST. Indeed, these positive reasons apply equally to those who have the good fortune to live in Scotland.
In view of the great interest shown in the matter, perhaps I may suggest that the Government find the opportunity for the House to debate the matter at greater length.
7.55 p.m.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, in a debate of this character involving as it does the position of Greenwich mean time, I almost feel that I should declare an interest. However, given the fact that I am not a passionate adherent of GMT, it is probably less necessary that I should do so.
In view of some of the arguments deployed not only in this House but in another place and in the press in the last few weeks, it is perhaps instructive to look briefly at the history of the issue. As many in the House will be aware, Greenwich mean time was accepted as a common time system for Great Britain late in the last century. The first Bills introduced into Parliament to reform the system—by moving the clock forward in the summer months—were introduced in 1908 and 1909 by William Willett. However, as a result of our invincible conservatism, progress was blocked. The arguments used against Mr. Willett were that people would be encouraged to stay in bed in the mornings, that children would be

751
kept up later at night and that it would dislocate traffic between the United Kingdom and Europe.
Without the First World War, it is probable that nothing would have changed. In 1916, however, Germany and some other continental powers introduced daylight saving in summer months; and, of course, within a few months we had decided to follow suit. The argument then was that an extra hour of daylight in the evenings would save gas, electricity and oil and thus help the war effort. Since then, of course, we have had some form of daylight saving every year.
As the Government made clear in the consultation document, the issue before Parliament is now a very different one. I think that this debate has demonstrated that, if nothing else. As we know, the European Commission will be putting forward its own proposals on the arrangements in the Community for summer time from 1990 onwards. As the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, will not be astonished to learn, I do not entertain the same dark suspicions of the European Commission as he does. Apart from that, however, as the Government's consultation document has pointed out, there is a growing volume of support in the country for more summer time in the United Kingdom.
I do not propose to rehearse the various options which have been set out in the consultation document. That was done briefly and accurately as always by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon. However, I must make it clear that I do not consider the maintenance of the present position, with minor modifications, to be a desirable choice. At present we introduce summer time at the same time as our partners in the Community. This year, however, as in previous years, we end summer time at a different moment from the rest of the Community: 29th October for us; 24th September for other member states.
I know that many people with businesses closely involved with the Community want to harmonise with the rest of Europe. So do I. The effect of tinkering with the system in this way, however, would be to reduce the amount of daylight in the evening for a period of four weeks every year. I believe that the majority of people in the country would not find that acceptable. I certainly would not.
As in 1971, I have little doubt, as the noble Viscount, Lord Mountgarret, said, that some farmers and many people in Scotland—the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, also dealt with this matter—are opposed to more dramatic change. I think that there is a strong argument in favour of more dramatic change. It is a question of judgment but I believe that the majority of people in this country would support that approach.
The option which I favour and which is set out in the consultation document is single summer time during the winter and double summer time during the summer; in other words, an additional hour of daylight in the evenings throughout the year. I do not doubt that such an approach would be opposed fiercely by many people. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, was right to indicate some of those who would be passionately opposed. However, I believe that a case for that approach is overwhelming.
752
First, the changeover date could, in those circumstances, be brought forward to September, thus ensuring harmonisation with our partners in the Community without the loss of four weeks of daylight in the evenings. Even more important, it would mean that British time would be the same as that of every other country in the Community, with the exception of Greece. What sort of sense does it make to choose deliberately to retain different time zones as we approach the major challenges and opportunities that will arise in 1992?
Secondly, there is the unambiguous evidence as regards road casualties, which the noble Lord, Lord Brougham and Vaux, touched on a moment ago in the light of his substantial experience with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. No one has sought to challenge those figures. As the noble Lord said, 580 deaths and serious injuries can be related directly to this issue every year. That is a formidable number. The obvious reason is that in the mornings people go directly to work and school. Drivers are sober and refreshed. The same is clearly not always the case in the evening.
Thirdly, there is the issue of crime which was touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Vinson. Dr. Mayer Hillman of the Policy Studies Institute, in his important report on the summer time issue, thought that lighter evenings could lead to some reduction in the number of burglaries. That may or may not be true. Even more significant would be the improvement that that would represent for those who now fear going out in the dark. Many thousands of elderly people find it far too intimidating to leave their homes in the evening. Many of them are even fearful of coming to answer the door after dark. Anyone who has been involved in election campaigning knows that to be true. Although I would not ascribe any single view to a particular body of people, I have found that a number of police officers with experience in the field of crime prevention share that view.
A case for change along the lines which I have suggested and which the Government have set out in the consultation paper would significantly improve the quality of life for many people. It would increase opportunities for outdoor sporting and after-work leisure activities. It would be of great benefit to trade, travel and communications. As I have indicated, I am well aware of the anxieties of many people in Scotland and of some people in the farming industry. I understand their concern. However, I do not share it.
We have an opportunity here both to enhance the quality of life for many of our citizens and to end a system which has imposed a thoroughly undesirable burden on Britain in the European Community. I believe that it is time to change.
8.5 p.m.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, we have had a wide-ranging debate this evening. The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, was very courteous in his remarks to me. He chided me for saying that the order was uncontroversial, as though I had said something terrible. He then capped that by saying that he agreed that the order was innocuous. I liked that change of stance within about 30 seconds!

753
What I actually said was that the order is uncontroversial in so far as it applies the existing system for determining summer time to 1989. I accept that there are many other problems that can lead to great controversy. We have heard of them this evening. The order permits the continuation of the present system for another year. What happens thereafter is a matter for determination and consultation. That is what we intend to do.
The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, said at one juncture that the Home Office did not know what it was doing. He referred to the Guardian article. The noble Lord should not take such note of everything that appears in the newspapers. The article was not correct. There is no directive or decision to harmonise summer time by 1990. The only directive is the one which we are discussing this evening—the fourth directive—which extends the status quo to 1989.
I heard with interest the expression of a variety of different views on what the final result should be. The fixing of summer time, in whatever way it may transpire, is almost as controversial as trying to fix Easter. However, we have undertaken a pilot study of views, and we are now undertaking a much broader study and consultation with a variety of different interests in order to find what the general view is. I dare say that no single view will emerge.
The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, asked whether I could guarantee that economic considerations would not be the only ones to be taken into account. I can assure him that all considerations will be taken into account. Even if only economic considerations were of interest to the Government, I have no doubt that the views which will be put forward will include all views, both economic and others.
I do not propose to follow the arguments about the virtues of one system or another. That is for another day. However, anyone can give views on the options to any department or to the Home Office. After the survey is complete, the Government are likely to issue some form of consultation document stating what change is called for, if change there is to be, and there will again be an opportunity for comment.
The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, gave the House his fairly pungent views on the European Community. He said that he considered that the order was the thin end of the wedge and he wished to ensure that the Government would fight the intrusion of the EC into the affairs of Great Britain. I know that the noble Lord will not expect me to go along with him. He has views which are respected. However, we consider this country to be an important and leading member of the European Community. We are part of the Community. We wish to make sure that it succeeds. We take the interests of Great Britain into account in all our deliberations—
Lord Bruce of Donington: I hope so!
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, did the noble Lord make an intervention?
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, I ventured to say, by way of observation to the noble Lord, the words, "I hope so".
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, that is exactly what I thought that the noble Lord said. I was rather surprised that he said it. In fact, we do and we will. The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, referred, as also did the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe (who conducted his speech with reference to that point), and the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, to the use of Article 100A. That is an important point. They asked whether Article 100A was a suitable treaty base for the fourth directive.
I think that it might be helpful if I were to put the order into its proper European context because it is a matter of some concern to your Lordships. The Community has long recognised that different summer time dates in different countries can cause difficulties, especially for transport and telecommunications. For that reason the recital to the first directive of 22nd July 1980 made it clear that its objective was to facilitate transport and telecommunications between member states.
The first three directives were produced under Article 100 of the Treaty of Rome. That article provides for the Council, acting unanimously on a proposal of the European Commission, to issue directives for the approximation of laws, regulations or administrative action in member states which directly affect the establishment of the Common Market.
The common starting date for summer time throughout the Community is now accepted; but the United Kingdom and Ireland, through a derogation in successive directives, has continued to end summer time a month later than the rest of Europe.
The Commission put forward proposals for a fourth directive late in 1987, with Article 100A as its legal base. This enables the Council to adopt measures by qualified majority which have the establishment and functioning of the internal market as their object. But since the Commission started the ball rolling rather late in the day, and the Article 100A procedure is more lengthy than the old Article 100 procedure, the Commission decided to prolong the present system for another year, with the continuing derogation for the United Kingdom and Ireland.
This continuation was entirely acceptable to us; but I realise that some noble Lords, including the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, are concerned about the principle of use of Article 100A for the fourth summer time directive.
When we were negotiating with the Commission in late 1987, we considered, but did not enter an objection to, the vires of Article 100A. Our main concern was the policy issue—in other words, when summer time was going to end in 1989—and we were satisfied that the fourth directive achieved our aim with its derogation for the United Kingdom. We take the view, however, that this does not preclude our challenging the vires of Article 100A for any future directive on summer time. The noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, specifically asked me about that.
I should perhaps add that the choice of which article of the treaty is appropriate is essentially a matter for the Commission. It can be amended only by the unanimous vote of the Council or by successful challenge in the European Court. I would not wish to mislead your Lordships by implying that a challenge

755
to the vires of the treaty base would be appropriate or successful. What I can say is that we shall continue to consider future proposals for directives in the light of opinions expressed on this occasion to ensure that the vires of Article 100A is not exceeded.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, before the noble Earl proceeds to another point, and without asking him for a categorical assurance today because that may not be fair, I should like to ask whether he will undertake to report to his right honourable friends in the Home Office and in other appropriate departments the concern that was expressed in regard to Article 100A being used on this occasion. Will they consider the possibility that it may be necessary for Her Majesty's Government to put on record that the fact that they have assented to the directive does not mean that they are accepting that it is a proper use of Article 100A and its powers?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, is always fair. He was kind enough not to ask for an immediate response. However, he will receive an immediate response in so far as I shall of course ensure that the concern which has been expressed today is conveyed to my right honourable friend. I would tell him that it has been put on record by what I have said that although we accept the use of Article 100A on this occasion, that does not mean that we shall not on future occasions challenge the use of Article 100A if we think it necessary.
I hope that your Lordships will not think it impolite of me if I do not refer to some of the many options which have been suggested for the future, because the future is in the future. The present order continues the existing system for another 12 months, and I hope that it will have the approval of your Lordships.
Lord Ferrier: My Lords, will the noble Earl give the House an assurance that the interests of Scotland will be carefully considered in his forthcoming examination?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, the interests of Scotland are always carefully examined and will continue to be.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, before the noble Earl sits down, I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Vinson, asked whether we could have a debate on this subject. Did the noble Earl answer that point?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I can only answer that question with the leave of the House because I think that I have already made more than my fair share of speeches. I did not answer that point. The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, is quite right. It is of course a matter for the usual channels. My noble friend may put down an Unstarred Question if he wishes. However, I think that there will be an opportunity to debate the matter after we have completed our consultation, accepted views and put forward our proposals. I think that would be the best time for a debate.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Education Reform Bill
8.12 p.m.
House again in Committee on Clause 4.
Lord Peston Lord Peston moved Amendment No. 72.
Page 3, line 38, at end insert ("having regard, in the case of assessment arrangements for pupils in the last key stage, to the requirements of the General Certificate of Secondary Education.").
The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 72 is about the GCSE. I hope that we can deal with it very briefly. The noble Baroness will remember that I asked her a question about the GCSE. She was extremely reassuring about the Government's determination that the GCSE would be a success. I should like some clarification.
As I understand it, the Bill provides for assessment procedures for the final stage and yet at the same time pupils will be taking the GCSE. I should like to hear a little about the relationship between the assessment procedures and the GCSE. Will they be separate or somehow co-ordinated? Any further points she has to make about GCSE will be most welcome. I beg to move.
Baroness Hooper: We have indeed already touched upon this subject today. The task group recommended that at the last key stage—age 16—there should be no immediate change to GCSE to fit the national assessment arrangements, but that the GCSE criterion syllabuses would in due course be revised as appropriate to incorporate the 16-plus attainment targets and programmes of study. The nature of the revisions required would only become clear following the development and implementation of the national curriculum and assessment at the younger ages. The task group also considered that when a pupil was not studying a subject to GCSE level, he or she could be assessed against less demanding attainment targets. So they will indeed be separate.
The subject working groups which are developing recommendations on the attainment targets, programmes of study and related assessment arrangements for all the foundation subjects will consider the interface with GCSE and make recommendations which will be subject to public consultation before the Government reach conclusions on them. In view of this explanation I hope that the noble Lord will feel satisfied.
Baroness David: I should like to ask the noble Baroness a question about the timescale. There will be other possibilities of targets, tests, or whatever you like to call them, at age 16 as well as GCSE. Will the GCSE eventually be phased out in favour of the rest? Can she tell us the number of years before we can expect some changes?
Baroness Hooper: We discussed this matter in some detail during debate on the national curriculum at the beginning of the week. It may reassure the noble Baroness if I say that the GCSE is and will remain central to our plans for raising standards in schools. We intend the GCSE to form the basis of assessing most pupils against national curriculum attainment targets at age 16, but the foundation subjects of the

757
national curriculum will be phased in over a period, starting with the core subjects. I cannot give the Committee the ultimate limit.
Earl Russell: I should like to say a few words in favour of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Peston. I speak personally on this issue because I have a son who is studying for the GCSE. One of the loudest snorts of contempt that I have ever heard him utter came when I quoted to him the recent observation of the Secretary of State that the GCSE was the best prepared examination in history. It represents a very considerable burden of work. The course work has proved to be much heavier than expected. That does no harm. If, however, I were to exert my parental influence and try to get my son at the same time to take seriously a large number of tests in other subjects in which he is not interested, it might prove beyond my powers.
I accept and welcome the remarks of the noble Baroness about thought being given to this matter but once again the Committee is asked to buy a pig in a poke. It is not being given an adequate basis on which to make a judgment. The noble Baroness says she will take thought of it, but in times gone by—indeed, even at the present day—one knows what is meant when the Sovereign says, "The King will take thought of it". It means that this Bill is not ready to pass.
Lord Peston: I hope we shall continue to keep up our efforts on the GCSE. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 73 to 75 not moved.]
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Hayter): I have to announce that if Amendment No. 76 is agreed to I cannot call Amendments Nos. 77 and 78.
Baroness Hooper Baroness Hooper moved Amendment No. 76:
Page 3, line 46, leave out subsection (4).
The noble Baroness said: I spoke to this amendment when we discussed the group of amendments starting with Amendment No. 4. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
[Amendments Nos. 77 to 79 not moved.]
Lord Peston Lord Peston moved Amendment No. 80:
Page 4, line 10, at end insert—
("( ) Before making an order under subsection (2) above, the Secretary of State shall give notice of the proposal—

(a) to such associations of local education authorities, bodies representing the interests of school governing bodies and organisations representing school teachers as appear to him to be concerned: and

(b) to any other persons with whom consultation appears to him to be desirable,

and afford them a reasonable opportunity of submitting evidence and representations as to the issues arising.").
The noble Lord said: I wish merely to expand upon some remarks I made earlier; I do not wish to speak at great length. The amendment refers to consultation by the Secretary of State. I believe that the noble Earl, Lord Arran, has mentioned the
758
matter but I do not remember the exact words and a copy of Hansard is not yet to hand.
I believe that any sensible Secretary of State would want to consult the LEAs, bodies representing school governors and, most certainly, teachers. This discussion gives me a chance to say something about the teachers and to reinforce what my noble friend Lady Blackstone has said. There will be a major change in the educational system of our country whatever happens. We all agree that the teachers are essential to this change; we all agree too, I believe, that at the moment the morale of teachers is too low and needs to be raised. That is for the other side of the Committee—the Government—to do. There is not much that we on this side can do. I want particularly to emphasise the need to take teachers' views into consideration.
I remember the old days. Any suggestion that such consultation should take place is quite different from saying that one has to do what those bodies say. In other words, the Government must decide and act. I believe that a sensible Secretary of State would want to consult anyway. However, to be on the safe side—at some time there might be a Secretary of State who is not very sensible—I should like to see that duty written explicitly into the Bill. I beg to move.
Baroness Hooper: The amendment relates to consultation on orders made under Clause 4. On all orders establishing or amending attainment targets and programmes of study, consultation is already required in a way which goes well beyond that contained in Clauses 13 and 14 of the Bill. We have been referring to the Task Group on Assessment and Testing and indeed the task group did not deal with the question of consultation on the specific assessment and testing arrangements and instruments to be adopted under the new system. But we do not consider it necessary to provide for statutory consultation on orders establishing assessment arrangements for the foundation subjects for a number of reasons.
First, the main aspect of assessment on which public debates are needed—its role as part of the national curriculum, the age points at which it should generally be applied and the establishment of SEAC as the body charged with securing quality control in this area—is being debated on the primary legislation. Secondly, I suggest that only such purely mechanical aspects of assessment arrangements as the commissioning, trialling and storage of tests could be regarded as free-standing. In the main these arrangements will have to follow from the attainment targets and programmes of study, orders relating to which will be subject to full consultation on Clauses 13 and 14.
It could hardly be said that we plan to decide on the assessment arrangements without consulting the wishes and opinions of the public and informed educationists. As I indicated, the TGAT report published last January proposed a coherent national assessment system which has been the subject of wide public debate. The Government will take into account the views expressed in that debate before reaching their own conclusions on the report and on the group's further advice. Again, as I have indicated, it will be for the subject working groups to make

759
recommendations about attainment targets and programmes of study and the assessment arrangements appropriate to them. Those recommendations will also be the subject of formal public consultation before any decisions are made on them.
In these circumstances I can see no need for formal consultation on orders which will be made to give effect to matters already fully debated and to a large extent consulted upon in other contexts. I must therefore ask the Committee to reject the amendment.
8.30 p.m.
Lord Peston: Before doing so, can the noble Baroness clarify this point? In the areas where the Secretary of State will consult, will he make it known, positively, to interested parties that their views are desired; or will the interested parties take it for granted that the initiative must lie on their side? Will consultation mean a positive statement, such as "I should like you to tell me what you think"; or the negative approach, "If you have anything to tell me, come and tell me."? Have I made myself clear?
Baroness Hooper: Perhaps it is not entirely clear. Where formal consultation is required, obviously consultation will be requested. Otherwise, it is open for anybody to come forward and to contribute.
Lord Peston: With that reassurance, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 4, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 5 [Courses leading to external qualifications]:
Baroness Seear Baroness Seear moved Amendment No. 81:
Page 4, line 23, after ("means") insert ("recognised by the Secretary of State at the date of the passing of this Act for the purpose of authenticating the General Certificate of Secondary Education qualification, or").
The noble Baroness said: I am hoping that the reply we had earlier to a question from the noble Lord, Lord Peston, about the General Certificate of Secondary Education means that I shall receive a satisfactory reply to this amendment.
The amendment deals with the clause which provides for the Secretary of State to decide what may or may not be taught, and what may be recognised as an objective for a course. It should include specifically recognition by the Secretary of State of those examinations already accepted for the GCSE.
The objective of this amendment is to make it quite clear that all the work that has been done to get the General Certificate of Secondary Education off the ground and to establish standards and examinations for it, will be accepted and incorporated into the new proposals. It will be a frightful waste of time and effort if all that work is then again to be re-examined and questioned.
Are we to understand that where programmes for GCSE have been accepted, they will be accepted by
760
the Secretary of State? To make this clear, this should be incorporated into the Bill.
Baroness Hooper: This amendment would make each of the five independent GCSE examining groups a designated body, empowered to give statutory approval to qualifications and syllabuses. The intention, presumably, is to enable each examining group to approve its own qualifications and syllabuses. But this would completely undermine the objective of national quality control of independent scrutiny and approval. This national oversight of the system is a key element of the existing, voluntary arrangements under the Secondary Examinations Council, and it forms an essential basis for the statutory arangements now envisaged. The five GCSE examining groups in England and Wales bring experience of GCE and CSE examinng and longstanding reputations for high standards. But it is nevertheless essential to have an independent guarantee of the standards across those five separate groups from a national perspective. The current voluntary arrangements do not provide that guarantee. That is why these provisions are in the Bill.
Earl Russell: I must confess that I listened to that reply with some misgivings. The effect of the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie of Dundee, would make it impossible for the Secretary of State arbitrarily to abolish the examining of a subject.
We suppose that the Secretary of State did not have that intention; and that it was necessary simply to receive such an assurance. We have not received that assurance. I agree that it is necessary that the list of subjects should from time to time change. However, that decision should be taken properly by professionally qualified people. We do not believe that the Secretary of State is one among their number. The power to decree by order that this subject shall not be taught is a power to which we do not feel happy to agree.
Baroness Hooper: The case for effective national approval is supported by experience. Under the O-level and CSE, the examining boards approved over 25,000 syllabuses for use in schools. With GCSE they have currently produced many fewer—just under 2,000—but the number is growing. The GCSE examining groups were directly responsible for approving some 900 of these, the Mode 2 and 3 syllabuses. SEC has now scrutinised nearly half of the 900 approved by the groups and so far, I understand, has found only 19 that come up to standard. That evidence, I submit, points sharply to the need for effective national approval with teeth.
Earl Russell: The discussion is about the powers of the Secretary of State. This has not been answered.
Baroness Hooper: I believe that I have made statements showing the need for a national system which obviously implies that it is the Secretary of State who will be involved.
Baroness Seear: I find the answer extremely unsatisfactory once again. However, I shall read

761
what the noble Baroness has said. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 82 not moved.]
Baroness Cox Baroness Cox moved Amendment No. 83:
Page 4, line 25, at end insert—
("(4) Where sufficient parental demand exists in any maintained school for tuition towards the qualification of a designated body, it shall be incumbent upon the governing body, the head teacher and, where appropriate, the Local Education Authority, to satisfy that demand.").
The noble Baroness said: In speaking to Amendment No. 83, I should like to speak to Amendment No. 152.
Baroness Hooper: I apologise to the noble Baroness for intervening. My 8.mderstanding is that in speaking to Amendment No. 83 she would also speak to Amendments Nos. 143 to 152.
Baroness David: That was also my grouping.
Baroness Cox: I am very happy that my remarks may be taken as relevant to that wider range of amendments.
My concern relates to the provisions in Clause 5 which give the Secretary of State the right of veto over any public examination that may be taken by pupils up to the age of 16 at any maintained school.
The noble Lord, Lord Peston, earlier accused members of the Committee on this side of the Chamber of not being sufficiently concerned with what he regarded as rather dirigiste aspects of some of the proposals in this Bill. I would argue that some of these dirigiste provisions have been necessary in order to correct some of the very real problems that currently exist in our education system. However, I believe that the measure in Clause 5 is an example of dirigisme which is not necessary and which would be harmful to parents and teachers, because the provision to be provided in Clause 5 would give power to a Secretary of State that has never been held before.
At present the public examinations have no mandatory basis. The old GCE O-level, and before that the school certificate, developed by consent between universities, the examining boards, schools, teachers and parents and employers. However, there was always the opportunity of taking different examinations in schools in England and Wales. For example, pupils could enter for City and Guilds, Royal Society of Arts or Scottish O-levels. However, under Clause 5 such a range of examinations may be taken only with the consent of the Secretary of State. I would argue that this is an unnecessary and an undesirable potential restriction.
I also argue that it is especially timely—and is made especially relevant at the present moment—because of growing dissatisfaction with the current GCSE and especially with some syllabuses within the GCSE. For example, the history syllabus of the Southern Examination Board, some would say, is hardly history. Indeed, concern is expressed by teachers and parents for the growing emphasis on empathy rather than knowledge. One question in a trial paper asked pupils to pact
762
themselves in the shoes of the PLO and to justify the PLO murders of Israeli athletes at Munich; and of the TWA hijacking and the subsequent murders associated with that. Alternatively, some of the literature to be studied in some English literature syllabuses is thought by some teachers and parents to be of rather poor quality—perhaps even verging on some kind of modern pornography.
Another cause for concern expressed by many teachers is the high proportion of course work compared with assessed work at the end of the two-year study. For example, in some schools it is possible to obtain one's GCSE with 100 per cent. of the marks being achieved through course work at the school over the previous two years, with no examinations being set at all. That is despite the stated intention of the Government at the time when the GCSE was originally set up that course work would on the whole not account for more than 20 per cent. of final marks. In many schools it is now possible for subjects such as English language and English literature to be achieved by 100 per cent. of course work.
At present parents, teachers and those concerned can threaten to turn to other examining boards, other syllabuses or even to another examination altogether. Indeed, they have the freedom to carry out such a threat and to choose to take other exams. The obvious choice is Scottish O-levels or perhaps to attempt to continue with GCE O-levels, given that the London Examining Board and possibly others will still be offering O-levels to overseas students or to individuals. One might ask: why not allow home students to take O-levels if they want to? Why not even allow other new exam boards to establish themselves if they seem to meet a need?
However, even with the present freedom that we ostensibly have the situation is sometimes fraught with problems. For example, Members of the Committee may have read in newspapers of the courageous teachers of Lewes, in Sussex, who were profoundly disturbed by the history syllabus. But when they wanted to teach instead for the alternative Scottish examinations they were banned from discussing with parents even the possibility of providing these alternatives. They were not allowed to do so on school premises; they had to meet on the pavements to talk to parents about alternative exams. They were accused of insubordination, threatened with disciplinary action and possibly dismissal for raising the question of alternative exams.
Lord Joseph: Will my noble friend allow me to say that I do not think any such ban came from the Government? It was from the governors. Is that correct?
Baroness Cox: Absolutely correct. I am grateful to my noble friend. I was just about to point out that this indeed came from the head, I understand, with the backing of the governing body. That was the source of the prohibition. The teachers felt that they were living in East Germany rather than in East Sussex. They were also forced to offer an alternative history course for the Scottish O-grade, which they felt a commitment to do; but they had to offer it off the schools premises in their own free time as well as teaching for the GCSE in school. Perhaps it is worth

763
noting that the alternative exam is so popular with the parents and pupils that more than 40 of this year's fifth-year pupils are taking it and another 40 of the fourth-year pupils are involved in preparing for that alternative examination next year.
I give that example because it shows the kind of problems that could arise should this legislation in future preclude freedom for parents and teachers to offer a range of examinations if they are not happy with those which are currently provided or which might be approved. I argue that my amendment would strike an appropriate balance between parents' and pupils' interests and the role of central government.
I turn very briefly to the provisions in Clause 17. Our concern is that the clause would give the Secretary of State power to extend similar powers of direction concerning examinations to pupils beyond the age of 16. What it means in practice is that the Secretary of State would be able to direct the same for GCE A-levels; for example, permitting only A-levels and nothing else. But there are alternative examinations which students might wish to choose, most notably the international baccalaureate. That is already taken by pupils at Sevenoaks school and is accepted by Oxford and Cambridge as an equivalent to A-levels for university entrance. I submit that those provisions in Clause 17 should either be deleted or should be modified in the form of the amendment which I put before the Committee for consideration to permit freedom for alternative examinations.
I hope therefore that my noble friend the Minister will agree to consider these points, which are designed to allow flexibility for schools and colleges to enter pupils and students for as diverse a range of examinations as are appropriate for them as individuals and for local needs and requirements. I hope, also, that the provisions will ensure that the designated list will be as wide as possible, again to allow as much freedom as possible for young people to develop their interests and attain as wide a range of qualifications as they wish and which might be appropriate for them.
I see no justification for the provisions as they stand in the Bill at present. I beg to move.
8.45 p.m.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: The noble Baroness has put the case very clearly. She has generalised on a particular case in Sussex. It seems to me that if such an occurrence is possible the Government should try to ensure that there cannot be room for it. It is extraordinary to think that there is any school where it is not possible at least to contemplate taking a different examination, although it depends how it works out. If a large number of pupils in the school want to take a different examination it is probably possible to do it quite cost-effectively. However, if only one or two are concerned it could cause extra cost and one may have to think whether there is perhaps a way for parents to meet the cost of the entrance to the exam, which was what happened in the authority where I was involved in Scotland.
I believe that the Government should consider the possibility of making sure that such an eventuality
764
cannot arise. I was glad that my noble friend Lord Joseph pointed out that it was the governors who prevented the action and not the local authority. That is a very important point because it makes the whole difference to the case. I hope the Government will consider this to see whether they can do anything to improve the situation.
Lord Young of Dartington: I should like to support Amendment No. 83. It seems to me that the criticisms that have been made from many quarters about the dirigism which underlies so much of this Bill would be tempered in a tiny, featherlight way if the amendment were taken on board by the Government. The wording may not be suitable but one would hope that the general intent of the amendment might be taken up and incorporated sensibly into the final structure of the Bill.
There is a new trend in the secondary school system which speaks in favour of the amendment and which is perhaps worth mentioning. It is the increasing use being made in schools of open learning material on Open University lines, but at a different level. These methods are being used in many schools which do not have a full complement of teachers to cover the full range of subjects that may be in demand in those schools. That certainly will be the case when the national curriculum comes into existence. Many schools will not have the right complement of teachers, which may give a new and important place to open learning methods which enable children to study in the school under the supervision of a teacher who is not necessarily the subject teacher for the subject they are taking, but can effectively, as experience has shown, supervise the work of individual children or a group of children.
That will mean that any school can have a much wider range of choice about both the subjects taken and the examinations to which those subjects will lead. The Royal Society of Arts has been mentioned. The City and Guilds can also be appropriate in other circumstances, and so can Scottish qualifications. Such a system would allow for considerable variation in methods of learning and the approach to different subjects which can be taken within the one school. But if it were to be laid down that all the children, including minorities, should follow the course which leads to only one examination, with the examinations of perhaps only one or two boards, this new type of freedom which a new kind of technology of learning is making available would not be there and people would not be able to take advantage of it.
In view of that, and of the opening up which could occur with the use of open-learning materials, it would be appropriate that similar measures to those proposed should be incorporated in the final legislation. It would be a tiny tilting of the balance towards freedom in schools which many fear will be largely circumscribed by the general tenor of the Bill when it becomes an Act. I hope that the Government will be prepared to consider seriously what lies behind the amendment and will do their best to come to terms with it.
Lord Joseph: The Committee may be surprised to find that, as the person notoriously responsible for introducing the GCSE, I rise to support my noble

765
friend's amendment. I am proud of having introduced the GCSE. I believe that I can take the credit for inventing the ingredients of differentiation and the accompanying grade criteria which I hope will be introduced before too long. I am proud of introducing those concepts into what had been widely canvassed as an examination form. I am particularly proud because I believe that in that way the examination can be used to stretch pupils of every ability.
Nevertheless, I recognise the worry that has emerged, particularly in industry, as a result of the specimen papers—and they were only specimen papers. I am not anxious that the GCSE should be protected by anything approaching a monopoly. I recognise that the Bill falls far short of giving a monopoly to the GCSE but, who knows? it may not be as good as we hope it will be.
I should like to remove the misconception about empathy, for instance. The idea—which I strongly supported—of introducing empathy was precisely in order that pupils should learn to realise how much our forefathers lived in a world where immortality, for instance, was largely accepted. It was far more widely accepted than now. I wanted pupils to understand that, for instance, in the past there was a widespread belief in hell. It was possibly more widespread than today. I wanted pupils to appreciate that our forefathers lived in a climate of perception very different from today. I now find that what appeared to me to be a broadening and deepening idea of empathy has been used to seek to associate pupils with concepts of terrorism, for instance. To my mind that is a straight abuse of the original idea.
Returning to the amendment, let us suppose that the GCSE does not satisfy parents, or a group of teachers, or a group of employers that the children with the classification from GCSE are adequately educated for their standards, intentions or purposes, although I hope that that will not prove to be true. Why should those who set the GCSE examination not face competition from an ad hoc group which may be set up to set examinations that would meet the wishes of parents or teachers? I am all for some protection, but the great protection will be that a new examination would not be used if it did not meet the requirements of groups of parents and teachers. Since in the examination world we are living in a world of commerce where costs must be covered, it will be no light or riskless endeavour for a group to set up an alternative examination unless it reckons that there is a market.
I urge the Government to contemplate loosening the restrictions imposed by the clause, not because I believe that in the event the GCSE will cause discontent on any scale, but because it should have the potential competition if it should fall below expectations.
Lord Kilmarnock: I am glad that the noble Baroness mentioned the case of the parents in Lewes. Despite the admirable intentions behind the movement towards empathy, introduced and referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Joseph, and which in principle I entirely support, there is evidence that it has been abused. A case in point is that of the Lewes parents.
766
In a minor way I have had a similar experience. I have a 15 year-old son who I discovered was being taught the history of the Labour Party before he had been taught about the glorious revolution of 1688. I happen to be interested in the history of the Labour Party because I am interested in politics. However, my child—fortunately or unfortunately for him—is less interested in politics. In my view he should have been taught about the glorious revolution of 1688 before entering into the minutia of the Labour Party of the 20th century which could—
The Earl of Longford: Is it not prejudicial to free thinking for one to talk of the revolution of 1688 as glorious? Many people believe that it was disgusting.
Lord Kilmarnock: I believe that a committee of both Houses of Parliament is considering how the event, whether glorious or otherwise, should be celebrated. I used the word "glorious" in its popular conception and I am not giving it any other weight. Whether glorious or otherwise, there is no doubt that it was an extremely significant event in English history and I believe that the teaching of it should have come before that of the history of the Labour Party. Perhaps it is a minor detail, but in such circumstances I should have liked to have a choice about the course my child might have studied and the examination he might have taken.
Finally, may I say how glad I am that the noble Baroness mentioned the international baccalaureate. I have tabled Amendment No. 110 which addresses that point. Perhaps it should have been discussed in this group, but I shall speak to it briefly in due course and hope that the noble Baroness will support it. At a later stage in the Bill we shall see whether the issues can be brought together.
Earl Russell: I listened with considerable sympathy to the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox. They are matters of real concern and I have heard the story from colleagues many times. However, when I hear it from colleagues it is a little less exciting and little less black and white than I have heard tonight.
I believe that steps are being taken to try to do something about the situation. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Joseph, spoke about empathy. I think that what is being attempted is valid but extremely difficult to get right. It demands a great deal of skill on the part of the examiners for which they need practice. They are getting that and also a good deal of advice.
Although I have a great deal of sympathy with the principle behind what the noble Baroness is asking, I should like to say that if pupils are taking two different types of examination in the same school at the same time, considerable demands are made on the teaching workforce. Today the Committee has seen fit to reject an amendment asking that the proposals should not be implemented until sufficient teachers and resources are available. I cannot see how the Committee can pass the noble Baroness's amendment unless a similar amendment to Amendment No. 58 were passed by the Committee. In that case it might be a different matter.
Baroness David: I support what the noble Earl has just said. I should also like the Minister, or the mover of the amendment, to give the meaning of the word "sufficient" and say who will decide that. Is it a word which appears quite often in legislation?
9 p.m.
Baroness Hooper: Clause 5 is intended to provide essential underpinning for the national curriculum. It is widely recognised that school examinations exert a powerful influence over the curriculum. It is therefore necessary to have a statutory guarantee that examinations are fully in step with the statutory national curriculum. However, the clause also has a wider purpose, to ensure that external examinations provide the strongest possible basis for the assessment of pupils' achievements at the age of 16. Nevertheless, there is no intention that the clause should create a harmful straitjacket or enforced monopoly.
I have some sympathy with Amendments Nos. 83 and 85 as proposed by my noble friend. Of course, schools must be responsive to the wishes of parents in curricular as well as other matters. The Bill imposes a requirement on schools to publish information. We envisage that this information will include the courses, qualifications and syllabuses offered by the school and that there will be separately published lists of nationally approved qualifications so that parents will have ready access to relevent information. The Education (No. 2) Act 1986 and the provisions of this Bill regarding school governing bodies ensure that the parents' voice is heard more loudly than before and parents will have more influence over the school curriculum policy through the governing body.
I draw back, however, from placing a statutory requirement on schools to accede to parental wishes in the selection of qualifications and syllabuses. Parents may have strong views, and in some cases considerable detailed knowledge, on how subjects should be taught. The proper place for those views to be expressed is through the governing body in contributing to the formulation of curriculum policy.
We are fully aware of the criticisms of GCSE history to which my noble friend and others have referred. There may be shortcomings in some syllabuses and weaknesses in some specimen papers. However, the shortcomings of particular syllabuses and specimen papers are not an argument that GCSE itself is inadequate. We shall of course continue to look at this matter and to keep the GCSE under review, but I assure the Committee that there is nothing in the Bill to prevent alternative examinations being used by schools, and in particular the international baccalaureate which has been referred to.
I take the opportunity to commend to the Committee the government amendments to Clause 17, Amendments Nos. 123 and 151, which are tabled in my name. These are technical amendments which do not alter the intention of this clause as approved in another place. The amendments clarify the arrangements for local education authority complaints machinery and for the publication of information if the provisions of Clause 17 were activated. They make clear, for further education colleges, first that the requirements in Clause 15
768
concerned with the publication of information will apply only in respect of information about qualifications and syllabuses and courses of study; and secondly, that the requirements in Clause 16 for local education authority complaints machinery will not apply.
In saying that I cannot accept my noble friend's amendments in this case, nevertheless I wish to commend the government amendments to the Committee.
Baroness Cox: I am grateful for the contributions to this debate. In response to the remarks made by the noble Baroness, Lady David, perhaps I may say by way of clarification that I should have thought a definition of "sufficient" might be a viable teaching group, but I agree that it is a loose phrase and I take that comment on board when considering where one might go from here.
I am grateful for the sympathy of my noble friend. However, I am not sure that it meets the point because, as I read the provisions of the Bill at the moment, the Secretary of State can have the overriding power to determine for which exams schools may enter their pupils and I believe that the power of the governors might be relatively ineffective. However, I shall go away and reconsider the provisions of the Bill. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 5 agreed to.
Clause 6 [Duties with respect to certain requirements]:
[Amendments Nos. 84 to 86 not moved.]
Baroness Cox Baroness Cox moved Amendment No. 87:
Page 4, line 33, leave out ("section") and insert ("sections 25(1) and").
The noble Baroness said: Perhaps I may speak very briefly to Amendments Nos 87 to 89 because they were grouped with Amendment No. 28, but due to the complexities and seriousness of the issues involved in Amendment No. 28, I did not speak to these amendments. However, perhaps I may now speak to them briefly for clarification. To save the time of the Committee, may I briefly touch on Amendment No. 141, again to clarify the position.
Amendments Nos. 87 to 89 amend Clause 6(1)(c) so as to lay a duty on local education authorities, governors and heads to observe the statutory requirement for worship as well as, as is already in the subsection, the statutory requirement for religious education.
Amendment No. 141 amends Clause 17 which is the new complaints procedure, so that worship is also included in that procedure along with religious education, which is already there.
I am raising this matter for clarification because I recollect that in the small hours of Wednesday morning the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London welcomed these proposals, as did the Minister when she indicated her acceptance of them. However, the Minister said that it would be most appropriate to deal with them under Clause 93. I take that point because Clause 93 is where the main point

769
about religious worship arises. The only reason I seek clarification now is because it seems that unless this point is taken on board it might mean that worship will not be covered by Clause 6 and the complaints procedure there. I should like assurances that worship will be so covered, as I believe was intended, and I believe that that is what was agreed on Tuesday night; but I wish to confirm that.
Baroness Hooper: Perhaps I can give my noble friend the assurances for which she has asked, and I do not believe I need to add anything further to the remarks I made on the last occasion.
Baroness Cox: With that kind assurance for which I am most grateful, and the understanding that this will be brought back by the Government on Report, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 88 to 91 not moved.]
Clause 6 agreed to.
Lord McNair Lord McNair moved Amendment No. 92:
After Clause 6, insert the following new clause:
("Road Safety Education.
.—(1) The Secretary of State may make regulations requiring schools to provide road safety education for their pupils in such form and manner, and at such times as may be prescribed.
(2) Before making regulations under this section, the Secretary of State shall consult with any person (including any representative organisation) with whom consultation appears to him to be desirable.").
The noble Lord said: According to the groupings, this matter has been debated. That is stretching the word "debated". So far as I can remember, the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, said one sentence and I cannot recall the reply that was made to it. This matter is so obviously sensible and desirable that I wonder whether the noble Baroness could say something about the policy of the Government as regards the inculcation of children to the idea of road safety?
Baroness Hooper: We debated the whole subject of the number of amendments under this heading and the general response was that this is a subject that we believe to be important; that it should be dealt with in the normal school curriculum as a cross-curricular theme, if necessary, but that there should be room otherwise to deal with it in the amount of time which is available for specific subject areas.
Lord McNair: I am grateful to the noble Baroness and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The Lord Bishop of London The Lord Bishop of London moved Amendment No, 93:
insert the following new clause:
("Standing advisory councils on religious education
.—(I) It shall be the duty of every local education authority to constitute a standing advisory council on religious education to advise the authority upon such matters connected with the religious instruction to be given in accordance with an agreed syllabus as the authority may refer to the council or as the council may see fit.
Reference below in this section and in section (Advisory councils: supplementary provisions) of this Act to the council are references to any council constituted by a local education authority under this section.
(2) The matters referred to in subsection (1) above include, in particular, methods of teaching, the choice of books and the provision of lectures for teachers.
(3) The council shall consist of—

(a) the representative members required by subsection (4) below; and

(b) where any agreed syllabus for the time being adopted by the authority is in use at one or more grant-maintained schools, a person appointed by the governing body or (as the case may be) by the governing bodies of the school or schools concerned;

and may also include co-opted members.
(4) Subject to subsection (5) below, the representative members required by this subsection are persons appointed by the authority to represent respectively—

(a) such religious denominations as, in the opinion of the authority, ought, having regard to the circumstances of the area, to be represented;

(b) except in the case of an area in Wales, the Church of England;

(c) such associations representing teachers as, in the opinion of the authority, ought, having regard to the circumstances of the area, to be represented; and

(d) the authority;

and references below in this section to representative groups on the council are references to the members appointed by virtue of paragraphs (a), (c) and (d) above respectively and, where members are required to be appointed by virtue of paragraph (b) above, the members so appointed.
(5) Where members are required to be appointed by virtue of paragrapn (b) of subsection (4) above, the representative members required by paragraph (a) of that subsection shall not include persons appointed to represent the Church of England.
(6) On any question to be decided by the council only the representative groups on the council shall be entitled to vote, and each such group shall have a single vote.
(7) The representative groups on the council, other than that consisting of persons appointed to represent the authority, may at any time by a unanimous decision (with each group having a single vote on the matter) require a review of any agreed syllabus for the time being adopted by the authority.
(8) On receipt by the authority of written notification of any such requirement, it shall be the duty of the authority to cause a conference constituted in accordance with the provisions of Schedule 5 to the 1944 Act to be convened for the purpose of reconsidering any agreed syllabus to which the requirement relates.
(9) The council shall in each year publish a report with respect to the exercise of their functions and any action taken by representative groups on the council under subsection (7) above during the last preceding year.
(10) The council's report shall in particular—

(a) specify any matters in respect of which the council have given advice to the authority;

(b) broadly describe the nature of the advice given; and

(c) where any such matter was not referred to the council by the authority, give the council's reasons for offering advice on that matter.").

The right reverend Prelate said: I set out the arguments in favour of this amendment in the debate on Amendment No. 2 and I shall not repeat them. It will help the Committee if I briefly set out the details of the amendment because it is not easy to understand without cross-reference to the 1944 Act.
Section 29(1) of the 1944 Act provided for the establishment of a conference to produce an agreed syllabus. The conference was mandatory but only existed during the period when the agreed syllabus was being prepared. Theoretically, it then ceased to exist. The composition of the conference was established in the fifth schedule to the 1944 Act. Section 29(2) of the 1944 Act gave the authority the power to establish a standing advisory committee on religious education but did not require it to do so. It also set out what it could do and no more than that. The amendment before the Committee retains Section 29(1) of the 1944 Act; that is, requiring a

771
conference to be established. It does so on precisely the same terms as the fifth schedule to the 1944 Act and it is mandatory. However, Sections 29(2) to (4) of the 1944 Act will be repealed. In their place will be Amendment No. 93 and the later Amendment No. 94.
The significant changes are that the standing advisory council on religious education is required and it is provided for in the same composition as the conference. We were advised that it was desirable to retain the same composition, as far as possible, between the two bodies for reasons which I need not go into this evening.
In the 1944 Act the provisions for the standing advisory council gave it no power to require a review, whether once or more than once. The amendment provides for that power for review. During the discussion on Clause 2 I said that it provides for a mandatory requirement both for a conference and a standing advisory council. It gives the council power to require a review. As I said, the complaints procedure is also introduced, though not under this provision, in order to cover religious education. I hope that in due course worship will be included too. Indeed, the inclusion of the amendment in the Bill will bring it under the complaints procedure.
I shall not at this stage deal with any matters arising on the composition of the conference in view of the amendments that follow in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Thorneycroft, but I shall want to go into a little more detail when I comment upon his amendments. Let me remind the Committee that this amendment is the result of extensive consultation and it has been agreed to by, one might say, all the interested parties. I hope that it will now be accepted by the Government. I beg to move.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Strabolgi): I now call, as an amendment to Amendment No. 93, Amendment No. 93A:
Lord Thorneycroft Lord Thorneycroft moved Amendment No. 93A:
Subsection (3), at end insert—
("The Council shall be so composed that it will at all times contain a two-thirds majority of members representative of the Christian churches.").
The noble Lord said: I rise to move this amendment to the new clause which has been so helpfully described by the right reverend Prelate. I can best abbreviate my remarks if I recall the Committee to where we stand on this matter.
We have agreed that the position of religious education in the Bill should be elevated. That was done by an amendment moved by the right reverend Prelate to Clause 2 which was broadly accepted by the whole Committee with perhaps one or two dissenting voices.
We have agreed that we are a Christian nation. The old idea, which was current a few months ago, that somehow the influx of immigration from the new Commonwealth, other faiths and so on had somehow detracted from the strength of the Christian faith and tradition or the need for Christian worship, has no longer been argued.
We agreed to give sympathetic consideration to an amendment by my noble friend Lady Cox, laying
772
down in specific terms that Christian education should play a predominant part. The Churches are considering the precise wording which would give best effect to that proposal. These matters were agreed without Divisions, without party dissention or dissention between sectarian beliefs. I am sure that if it is possible that is the best way to proceed on these difficult matters. If Divisions have to take place, they should take place on Report and I hope on a free vote.
To summarise the position; we are seeking to get Christian education in the schools, but Christian education in a very tolerant form. We are seeking a liberal education which recognises the importance of other faiths and ensures that they also are described and respected. We are not seeking indoctrination. We are seeking a fair and open-minded description of this great Christian faith and tradition.
We now come to the point in the Bill which is, so to speak, the machinery of all this. It is where the local authorities find their way to agreed syllabuses and agreed ideas of teaching. As the right reverend Prelate described, this is what his clause seeks to do. I agreed with him when he said that it is a pretty complex matter but, if I may say so, I do not think that is his fault. It has grown over the years. It consists of about four groups of people. There is the Church of England or, in Wales, the Church of Wales. There are other faiths which used to be called other denominations and were thought of as Christian denominations. However, it is no longer thought of in that way and it consists in very substantial part of other faiths—for example, the Moslems, Sikhs, Hindus and so forth. There are groups of teachers and there is the local authority itself. The decision as to what is to be done about education has to be arrived at by unanimous arrangements between those four groups.
I must say that on the whole Christians are not in a majority in all this and and so we get a situation in which Christian education is finally determined on what can be described as the lowest common denominator of broadly, not wholly, Christian groups. It is said that all this has been arrived at after very careful negotiation. I respect that and I know the difficulty of negotiation. I have great respect for the right reverend Prelate. I understand his difficulties, but I am bound to say that in your Lordships' Committee we have to look beyond careful negotiation. We have to look at what is right and what is wrong.
In a way we have to judge the effect of these things by what actually happens. I wish to be fair about this. It may be an extraordinary set-up, but I think the right reverend Prelate would agree that out of it emerges in some cases not a bad syllabus. In some cases there is good Christian education that goes forward. One must pay tribute to men who triumph over all difficulties and get a good solution out of perhaps not very fertile ground.
Then there is another group, which receives a mish-mash. It is taught what might be called multi-faith syllabi. It is taught a little about all religions. It receives what the Chief Rabbi in a brilliant speech the other day called a religious cocktail. We are not urged by the Moslems to do this. The Moslems tend to pray that we shall get back to the Christian faith. We are

773
certainly not urged by the Jews to do it. The Chief Rabbi argued powerfully on the other side. The multi-faith approach is an educationist idea. It became a fashion at a certain time. There were working parties which thought that it would be rather good to do this. Whatever else it is, it is not a Christian education. It is something else. That is the middle group.
There is yet another group. This falls into the disaster area where witchcraft and other ideas find their way into the teaching of children. My noble friend Lady Cox, who has taken such a leading and important part in this matter, will talk a little more about the result of such syllabi later on. That is the position as it is today. In the view of many people in this country—and I do not mean just my view or that of my noble friend Lady Cox but also those of parents—it is wholly unsatisfactory state of affairs and something has to be done about it.
In order to pinpoint the idea I have put down this amendment. I agree that if we are to amend the clause properly the Committee will have to have something much more elaborate than the amendment I have put down on the Marshalled List. One would probably have to delete the clause and start with something else. I have put down in simple words the approach that I am trying to argue. The approach is that if we want a Christian education we must ask the Christians to provide it.
In these advisory councils there should be a majority of Christians so that they determine the main line. There would be others—by all means there should be others. There would be members of the Moslem faith. Certainly I hope that there would be members of the Jewish faith. In a brilliant speech the other day my noble friend Lord St. John of Fawsley described the enormous part that Judaism plays in Christianity. It would be almost impossible to teach one without strong references to the other. All that would be there.
However, the main theme and trend of the education would be determined by men like the right reverend Prelate and members of other Christian denominations. If we want to have a tolerant Christianity, if we want, as I believe we do, the teaching of Christianity in the schools, and if we want it to be taught in a way that is not narrow or bigoted but proudly for the great faith that it is, tolerant of other religions and explaining the great contributions that they make to the world, I can think of no better people than men like the right reverend Prelate to do it. It would be more sensible not to have decisions by committees but a meeting in which Christians and members of the Christian Churches themselves worked out how best this type of Christianity should be taught. It is to urge that approach that I beg to move the amendment.
Lord Morton of Shuna: I hope the noble Lord will not press these amendments, as we did indeed discuss them on Tuesday under Amendment No. 93 and at that stage we had no notice of them. As I said then, there is a problem that, while we accept that there should be a mandatory body in each local authority, there is a certain difficulty on our side in that that body should have a set form for each local education authority.
774
I should have thought that there is even more difficulty if, as proposed in Amendment No. 93A, one must have a two-thirds majority in each local authority. That situation may be most difficult to achieve in certain local authorities. There may be even more difficulty in ascertaining whether the noble Lord and I would agree on what a good Christian education was.
It has occurred to me that the right reverend Prelates, the Bishops of Durham, Liverpool and Manchester, have on occasions talked of an ethic which I recognise as being a concept with which I agree. I can only claim to be an elder of the Church of Scotland so, therefore, if I agree with the bishop that may be very surprising. However, it is even more surprising, on occasions, when those Members opposite agree with the bishops, because on other occasions there have been slight disagreements with them. Therefore, if one starts talking about what a good Christian education is, even among those of us who claim to be Christians, it must be said that there have been centuries of disagreement and therefore I think we should be careful and not try to go too far too fast. For those reasons I hope the noble Lord will not press the amendment.
9.30 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of London: I am most grateful first of all for what the noble Lord, Lord Morton of Shuna, has just said. I hope in what I have to say that I shall not appear to be in any way unsympathetic to those who wish to ensure that a proper Christian education in provided. However, the issue is not quite as simple as it has been made out to be. It is necessary for us to realise that we must strike a balance between compulsion on one side—which I think we all agree is not what we are seeking—and the comparative religion approach on the other, which does not teach anything about religion or religious experience. We have to strike a balance between the two.
The second point I should like to make is this. We are not talking about the Christian faith in a church; we are talking about teaching the Christian faith in our schools. Such teaching involves the local authority, the teachers and also the different churches. Therefore we must ensure that there is agreement among them as to what is being taught. It would surely be folly to try to force any one of those parties to do something which would cause them great unease or difficulty.
We must therefore realise—whether we like it or not—that in providing a Christian education in our schools there are other parties involved, apart from the Christian church of individual Christians. Therefore I believe it is necessary to have the kind of provision we had in the conference and in the standing advisory council so as to ensure that there is agreement among all those people involved. For that reason I do not agree that one can simply solve the problem by an amendment of the type which the noble Lord, Lord Thorneycroft, has proposed because it does not fit, so to speak, into the system which has, on the whole, worked.
As I said previously, I do not take such a gloomy view of agreed syllabuses because the real problem very often is how they are taught. As regards Amendment No. 93C, I have a certain amount of

775
sympathy with its contents but I shall return to that in a moment.
I have a real difficulty with Amendment No. 93A. I am not sure whether the noble Lord, Lord Thorneycroft, was talking about one of the committees within the conference or the council. If he was not, he was asking us to break the law, because he would be requiring us to have religious tests for members of the authority and for teachers. If he is proposing that, further legislation is necessary so that we do not break the law. We cannot look at the whole body and say that the council shall be so composed at all times so as to have a two-thirds majority of members representing the Christian Churches. That is unworkable. Even if we were allowed to ask whether the members of the authority or the teachers were Christian, we should still have the difficulty of deciding whether they were representatives of the Christian Churches, because the Churches might not agree that they were adequate representatives.
Having said that, I come to my comments on Amendment No. 93C. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Thorneycroft, is afraid that in an authority the composition of the other denominations' committee might be so balanced that it had a preponderance of non-Christians on it who could then veto any agreement within the council or within the conference. That point needs to be looked at. It relates to the composition of the committee for the other denominations and not of the council as a whole. The veto operates on two occasions only. There must be unanimity for the conference to adopt the syllabus. There must be unanimity within three of the committees to request a review.
It is possible to conceive of a situation in which one of those committees might be so constituted that it would use the veto to prevent a review. That may be rare, but it is a possibility which should be covered. It is a matter at which we can look in the light of the undertaking I gave when we were considering Amendment No. 2, and which I am prepared to give again now.
The amendments are the result of consultation. I believe that a change in the composition of the Christian denominations committee should be made only after the fullest consultation with the other Churches and representatives of other faiths. I can promise that that will happen. We have already set in motion steps to enable consultations to take place. In fact they have already begun.
Some Members of the Committee may have had a letter from the secretary of the Free Church Federal Council indicating general support for the kind of direction in which I have been pointing in both debates. I have some sympathy with the point that has been raised and which needs looking at again.
I do not believe that the noble Lord had his direction right with the previous amendment. The first amendment is unworkable. I hope that with the assurance that we will take his point seriously he will beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Cox: I shall speak briefly in favour of the amendment put forward by my noble friend Lord Thorneycroft. I understand that it is an attempt at drafting and is not the final form. The point I should
776
like to take up refers to the proportion of Christian representatives on Committee A which at the moment includes representatives of different denominations, and which seems now to be changing its definition to "faiths". I believe that the right reverend Prelate said that he would clarify that matter on Report.
The point I should like to make is that in some of those committees as they are currently formed, Christians are in a minority. For example, Manchester has 45 members, but only 22 are Christians; Bradford, 32 of whom 14 are Christians; and of Brent's 23 members eight are Christians. It might be suggested that it would be good to see a representation on those committees of some of the new churches which are at the moment sometimes not represented, such as the community churches, the black churches, which are among the fastest-growing Christian groups in the country at the moment. Some consideration of the composition of those committees could usefully be reconsidered.
It is important to look at the significance of the Christian component, and to ask whether it matters. I would argue that it does matter—and I am delighted to see that the right reverend Prelate agrees that this is a problem—because of the need for a unanimous vote to agree to require a review of an agreed syllabus. Given the evidence that has been so widely expressed in your Lordships' Committee and outside by Clifford Longley and by the nine bishops in The Times on Tuesday, I think it is agreed that there are problems to do with some of the syllabuses, and that the composition of the arrangements as they now stand is such as to make it hard to initiate changes for those syllabuses.
The requirement for a unanimous vote means that every member of every group has a power of veto which could well mean that the procedures could be stifled. For example, members of groups representing teachers' associations—who, I am told, may often be agnostic or atheistic—can express a power of veto. In discussion with colleagues who have served on those committees I am told that those representatives may only have to threaten to use their power of veto—and sometimes they have no compunction whatever about doing so—in order to reduce the contents of an agreed syllabus to, as my noble friend Lord Thorneycroft said, a lowest common denominator of the kind which has caused such concern.
I appreciate that the right reverend Prelate has explained why historical reasons have led to the question of the consensus vote being there; but I am grateful to hear that he is prepared to reconsider that, and I am delighted to be reassured on that basis.
The Lord Bishop of London: The noble Baroness said that I gave historical reasons. I do not think that that is quite accurate. My point would be (and I must say this) that if we removed this veto does the noble Baroness really want the situation where Christians are trying to ensure that a good Christian agreed syllabus is taught in the schools without the agreement of the authority, the teachers, and others? I feel that this is something I would not wish to contemplate.
If that is what we are forced to do, then I believe that we are faced with a different situation where the

777
withdrawal of classes is the only solution. It was not just historical but because I believe that it is possible to combine a sound, full Christian education if the Christians really take their part in their own committees. It is possible to do that with the agreement of the other parties, and that agreement must be sought.
Baroness Hooper: My noble friend Lord Thorneycroft has indicated that these are probing amendments. We have had considerable debate on this subject so I feel that it is not necessary for me to add to what has been said by the right reverend Prelate except to agree with him that this is a complicated and sensitive matter which needs carefully looking at.
Lord Thorneycroft: I thank the noble Baroness for what she has said. The right reverend Prelate said that we must be careful not to do things which would cause great unease. When the right reverend Prelate is considering these matters, he should not underestimate the great unease which exists in this country at the moment about the failure—and it is a failure—to give Christian education properly in our schools. I fully accept that this amendment is not the correct amendment to achieve all that and that there are problems about the drafting and all these things; but we have to do something more than exists at the moment. We must somehow devise machinery a little more apt to produce the results which millions of parents are asking for in this country. I hope that the right reverend Prelate will bear those things in mind. With that, I ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment No. 93A by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 93B and 93C not moved.]
The Deputy Chairman of Committees: We have been discussing amendments to Amendment No. 93 moved by the right reverend Prelate. We now go back to amendment No. 93.
On Question, Amendment No. 93 agreed to.
The Lord Bishop of London The Lord Bishop of London moved Amendment No. 94:
Insert the following new clause:
("Advisory councils: supplementary provisions.
.—(1) Before appointing a person to represent any denomination or associations as a member of the council the local education authority concerned shall take all reasonable steps to assure themselves that he is representative of the denomination or associations in question.
(2) A member of the council appointed by the authority may be removed from membership by the authority if in the opinion of the authority he ceases to be representative of the denomination or associations which he was appointed to represent or (as the case may be) of the authority.
(3) Any member of the council required by section (Standing advisory councils on religious education) (3)(b) of this Act may at any time be removed from membership by the governing body or (as the case may be) by the governing bodies of the grant-maintained school or schools concerned.
(4) In subsection (3) of that section "co-opted member" means a person co-opted as a member of the council by members of the council who have not themselves been so co-opted, and a person so co-opted shall hold office on such terms as may be determined by the members co-opting him.
(5) Any member of the council may at any time resign his office.
(6) Subject to subsection (6) of that section, the council and, in relation to any question falling to be decided by members of the
778
council of any particular category, the members of that category may regulate their own proceedings.
(7) Nothing in subsection (7) of that section shall be read as requiring the question of how any representative group on the council entitled to participate in the decision there mentioned is to cast its vote for the purposes of that subsection to be decided unanimously by the members of that group.
(8) The validity of proceedings of the council or of the members of the council of any particular category shall not be affected—

(a) by a vacancy in the office of any member of the council required by subsection (3) of that section; or

(b) on the ground that a member of the council appointed to represent any denomination or associations does not at the time of the proceedings represent the denomination or associations in question.").

On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 7 [Establishment of Councils]:
Lord Dormand of Easington Lord Dormand of Easington moved Amendment No. 95:
Page 5, line 4, leave out ("ten or more than fifteen") and insert ("twenty or more than thirty").
The noble Lord said: I beg to move the two amendments standing in my name. Time is getting on, but I hope that the brevity of my speech will not be interpreted as meaning that these matters are comparatively unimportant. I know that I and many others voting inside this Chamber and outside feel that they can have a very considerable effect on the main purposes of this Bill. The problems and challenges inherent in the establishment of the national curriculum will be many and varied. It is inconceivable that a group of 10 to 15 people, chosen by the Secretary of State, will be able to deal with such a range of issues and problems.
Among the very wide range of interests and expertise which the councils will need to include are those of the local education authorities, the parents, churches, higher and further education, industry and commerce, the examining boards, women with special reference to gender inequality issues in the curriculum, and the ethnic minorities, with special reference to anti-racist strategies and the promotion of a multi-ethnic curriculum within the context of a national curriculum. A curriculum or assessment council of fewer than 20 members simply could not bring together the breadth of interests, experience and expertise to discuss and seriously consider the issues involved.
The debates in another place and already in your Lordships' House on this Bill have recognised the central and essential role played by teachers in implementing the curriculum. In the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, in her introduction to the Bill:
"The Government believe that their [teachers.'] contribution is crucial to the success of the policies embodied in this legislation, for it is teachers who have the responsibility for promoting high standards of excellence in learning and personal development".—[Official Report, 18/4/88; col. 1212.]
As far as the value of teachers is concerned, I doubt whether it would be possible to improve on that sentence, and I congratulate the noble Baroness on it. I am surprised to hear myself saying that because it is probably the only thing on which I shall agree with the noble Baroness. However, I reiterate it and say in all sincerity that to my mind that sums up exactly the situation concerning the contributions which teachers make.
The clause currently requires only that:
"members so appointed shall include persons having relevant knowledge or experience in education".
It is certainly not spelt out but presumably the Secretary of State intends this to mean teachers. The claim of teachers to be represented on the grounds I have already mentioned is pre-eminent.
Virtually every teacher belongs to a teachers' organisation. Teachers are not compelled to be members in order to practise their profession, theirs is no casual association. They do not drift into membership, they pay a considerable fee annually to their organisation to represent their interests. A council that does not have a substantial body of teachers in its membership is unlikely to be knowledgeable or indeed credible about the curriculum and assessment. Teachers will need to be appointed in a representative capacity or they will speak for no one but themselves and will be accountable to no one.
On many occasions in the past under both Labour and Conservative governments some people have been appointed in a personal capacity because of the eminence of their experience and knowledge of education. I do not think that that would fulfil the purpose of the clause.
I suspect that the word "teachers" will be heard more than any other word in these long days of debate. That is as it ought to be. As the Minister said, they are fundamental to the success of the service. Unfortunately, the praise is too often merely passing, although it is genuine.
The amendments provide an important opportunity to use not only the dedication of teachers but their expertise, their professionalism and, above all perhaps, their commitment. The councils will be much the poorer without the teachers' contribution. Indeed, it may not be too much to say that they may not fulfil their purpose. I commend the amendments to the Committee.
9.45 p.m.
Baroness Davidson: I support my noble friend's amendment.
Baroness Blatch: I speak against the amendment. Unless I misunderstood the noble Lord, Lord Dormand of Easington, he was suggesting a form of representation on the councils. I set aside for the moment the argument about numbers. I wish to speak about how the teachers find themselves on the committee and the idea that they should in some way be representative of the bodies to which they belong—the NUT, the AMMA, the PAT and so on.
One of the greatest sadnesses to me is that we do not have a professional teaching council in the country. I believe that great efforts are being made to form a professional body to look after the professional interests of teachers. Until that day comes, I cannot dispel the black cloud that hangs over my perception of the situation with teachers coming predominantly from the NUT, the NAS/UWT, the AMMA and so on, the arguments between them, and the destructive force that this was, for instance, in the Burnham Committee. The Professional Association of Teachers, which had a
780
minority of members, was squeezed out in many local authorities, and on the Burnham Committee it had to fight hard until the noble Earl, Lord Carlisle, found representation for it.
I hope that we shall never resort to that kind of membership on the councils. We want professional teachers who walk tall in the professional sense and who represent the professionalism of teachers as individuals. They should not come from the teaching unions by some quota system. I am sorry to have to say that, but I cannot remove from my memory the destructive way in which the formula suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Dormand of Easington, would work. I hope that we will have the finest of our teachers on the teaching council. As I said, for the moment I set aside the argument on numbers.
Lord Dormand of Easington: The noble Baroness may have misunderstood at least part of what I said. The main thrust was that these would be not personal appointments but representative of the teachers' organisations. If the noble Baroness infers that there would be a certain number of NUT, AMMA and PAT representatives, that is not correct. I am saying that the teachers on the councils would be representative of their associations. This has been done many times in the education world. The teaching unions would decide among themselves who would represent the teaching profession as a whole.
As I said, we do not accept for a moment that teachers do not walk tall. One can say of every profession that there are some people who do not measure up to professional standards. I think that it is fundamentally important, not only to this part of the Bill but to all parts of it, to recognise that teachers on the whole do an excellent job.
Baroness Blatch: In the light of what has been said, I do not believe that I have misunderstood the noble Lord.
Baroness Seear: With all due respect to both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness, there is nothing in the amendment about whether members are representative. It is simply a question of the number of people on the councils.
Baroness Hooper: To clarify the position, I believe that we are speaking to Amendments Nos. 95 and 98. I am sorry to have to tell the noble Lord, Lord Dormand, that the harmony which exists between us in our views on the role of teachers cannot extend to those amendments. Amendment No. 95 seeks to increase the membership of the National Curriculum Council, the School Examinations and Assessment Council and the Curriculum Council for Wales. Membership would be increased from between 10 and 15 members to between 20 and 30 members.
The Government do not believe that it would be helpful or efficient to have such large councils. The provision in the Bill for councils of between 10 and 15 members provides adequate scope for the appointment of people with a wide range of backgrounds and experience, while having bodies which are small enough to take decisions and operate quickly and effectively.

781
I recognise the need for councils to have access to a wide range of expert advice and counsel. There is plenty of scope for tapping the expertise of a wide circle of people through co-option on to sub-committees of councils. We have provided for that in Schedule 7.
Those arguments apply with even more force in the case of Amendment No. 98. That amendment goes further than the previous amendment and seeks to include representatives of teachers' organisations on councils. We regard it as being particularly important that the councils, which will be responsible for providing advice and support in the difficult business of introducing the national curriculum, are free from outside pressures and that individual members can give their undivided loyalty to the councils and the work in hand.
The introduction of any representational element in the composition of councils could undermine those aims. I hope and believe that there will be people who are teachers or who have teaching experience on the councils. Therefore, I cannot accept the amendments.
Lord Dormand of Easington: I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness David Baroness David moved Amendment No. 96:
Page 5, line 5, after ("State") insert ("after consultation with such organisations as he may recognise as representative of local authorities, teachers, school governors and parents").
The noble Baroness said: This amendment raises a slightly different point in relation to the councils. The purpose of the amendment is to include a consultation process before the curriculum assessment councils are appointed by the Secretary of State. As the Bill is drafted, it is the Secretary of State who determines without consultation who shall be members of the National Curriculum Council, the Curriculum Council for Wales and the School Examinations and Assessment Council.
The amendment does not prevent the Secretary of State from deciding on the membership of the councils. It merely attempts to ensure that his decisions are informed by the knowledge and advice provided by the appropriate bodies representing the different interest groups: local authorities, teachers, school governors and parents. Such consultation would enable the Secretary of State to make a better qualified judgment about who the most appropriate representatives will be. He obviously must consult somebody. The amendment would not restrict his power to decide and merely assists him in the process.
If the term "representative organisations" is objected to, I should like to point out that in the major Act controlling the National Health Service—the National Health Service Act 1977—the powers of the Secretary of State to set up the central health services council and the standing advisory committees are subject to a duty to consult representative organisations. So this amendment is not moving outside what has already been done in other legislation. I beg to move.
Baroness Hooper: The Government are not unsympathetic to the thoughts which lie behind the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady David. We
782
recognise that the various organisations mentioned may have views on the membership of the councils which are to be established under the Bill. Indeed during the debate in another place about some amendments which would have required various bodies to be consulted on membership—some of which, I hasten to add, sought to restrict the Secretary of State's powers to appoint members far more drastically than does this amendment—my honourable friend the Minister of State said very clearly that she would listen to advice and suggestions from organisations with an interest in education. In fact, as I understand it, the department has already received a number of helpful suggestions about membership, not only from the kinds of organisation mentioned by the noble Baroness in speaking to her amendment but also from bodies representing voluntary schools and independent schools' organisations. All the suggestions have been considered very carefully and, indeed, any constructive and well-intentioned advice we subsequently receive will be listened to carefully, right up to the time when my right honourable friend the Secretary of State announces the complete membership of the new councils.
This informal consultation does not detract in any way from the Secretary of State's responsibility under the Bill for appointing the chairmen and members of the councils. But we are clear that it is both right and necessary for the appointments to be personal appointments by the Secretary of State of the day. Only in that way can we be sure that the councils—and the advice which they will give—will be independent, impartial and free from the influence of particular groups or interests. A mandatory requirement to consult representative organisations would detract from that principle, no matter what discretion was allowed the Secretary of State in the selection of the bodies to be consulted. It is central to this part of the Bill that the councils will be independent bodies. We do not wish to depart from that principle. Were we to do so in the way that is suggested it could also give rise to unnecessary and unacceptable delays in making appointments to the councils when such appointments were urgently required. That too would be unacceptable.
I therefore hope that the noble Baroness will accept that we are open to advice about membership from any quarter and that statutory consultations on the subject would be unhelpful in practice.
Baroness David: I think that that is an absolutely ridiculous answer, if I may say so. There will still be personal appointments under the amendment and apparently the consultation is to be carried out anyway. In order to give satisfaction and to appear to be limiting the Secretary of State's powers by the minutest extent surely it would be sensible to accept the amendment and make a lot of people feel much happier about the Bill altogether?
Lord Hylton: It seems that this rather modest amendment has considerable constitutional implications and should therefore be taken very seriously by the Committee. We may be reasonably satisfied with the present Secretary of State, but there is no knowing who will be appointed to that post in the future. I personally think that it is very important

783
to have some provision in the Bill which will lay down the kind of pattern of behaviour that is to be adopted not only now but also in future years.
Baroness Seear: We too are extremely concerned that the noble Baroness should turn down the amendment in this way and should claim that the fact that the Secretary of State is to make all the appointments personally will ensure that the councils are independent. I have to tell the noble Baroness that that really gives me absolutely no assurance whatsoever on that matter. How are we to know that the Secretary of State will not appoint all his cousins and his sisters and his aunts, which is perfectly possible under the Bill as it stands? What guarantee is there that because he appoints the members personally it will be an independent council? That is a most astonishing statement.
Baroness Hooper: I have to say that I am somewhat persuaded by some of the arguments that have been advanced this evening. If the noble Baroness will permit me, I should like to take this matter back, without commitment, and perhaps deal with it at another stage.
Baroness David: Of course I have to accept that suggestion. I must tell the noble Baroness that if she had not agreed to take the matter back I should have divided the Committee on this issue. I feel very strongly about this matter. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees: I have to inform the Committee that if Amendment No. 97 is agreed to I cannot call Amendments Nos. 98 or 100 as they will be pre-empted.
10 p.m.
Baroness Seear Baroness Seear moved Amendment No. 97:
Page 5, line 8, leave out from ("members") to end of line 9 and insert ("shall be appointed in accordance with the provisions of subsections (3) and (4) below.
(3) Members of each Council shall be appointed by the Secretary of State after consultation—

(a) with such associations of local education authorities, bodies representing the interests of voluntary schools, bodies representing the interests of school governing bodies and organisations representing school teachers as appear to him to be concerned; and

(b) with such other persons, including organisations representing parents, as he thinks fit,

and he shall have regard to the desirability of the membership of the Council reflecting a balance of academic and other expertise in accordance with the aims of securing a balanced and broadly based curriculum.
(4) Not less than sixty per cent. of the members of each Council shall be persons having relevant knowledge and experience in education (including, in particular, education in maintained schools) and in appointing such members the Secretary of State shall have regard to the desirability of including at least two persons having relevant knowledge and experience in education in voluntary schools.").
The noble Baroness said: To some extent Amendment No. 97 repeats what was put forward in Amendment No. 96 but adds a very important point. As the Minister said that she would take back and
784
consider Amendment No. 96, I propose to elaborate on the point in my amendment which is different. I would also ask the Minister to take into consideration Amendment No. 97 at the same time as she is considering Amendment No. 96.
The point of substantial difference between Amendments Nos. 97 and 96 is that we ask for the council to be made up predominantly of people who have both experience and knowledge of education. After all, curriculum and assessment are essentially matters for professional teachers who, with their knowledge, should have a predominant voice in the way they are to be decided. Those two matters on which the council will advise the Secretary of State lie at the heart of the educational process and are the core of the whole Bill. We have talked about curriculum and assessment for the last 24 hours—no, I stand corrected, for the last 48 hours. It seems quite absurd to draw up such things without a very substantial voice being given to people who have both experience and knowledge of education.
The Minister must by now realise that many of us are deeply suspicious about the powers of the Secretary of State which recur and are embodied again and again in the proposed legislation. The powers of the Secretary of State mean to a very considerable extent the powers of the DES. As I said on another occasion, what experience does the DES have of teaching? I know we shall be told that it is being advised. But the advisers are being picked by the Secretary of State. The concentration of power in the hands of the Secretary of State on a matter of such importance fills us with the deepest apprehension.
We are not asking for members of the teaching profession or people with knowledge and experience of education to be appointed by the organisations. That is not our intention. We are saying that professionals should have a predominant voice in a matter where the requirements are so strongly professional.
Lady Kinloss: May I ask for guidance? If this amendment is agreed to, why can I not move Amendment No. 100?
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Renton): If this amendment is agreed to, Amendments Nos. 98 to 100 will have been preempted.
Baroness Young: I wonder whether I may ask my noble friend for clarification on a further point. Personally I am glad that she has agreed to consider the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady David. I do not necessarily require an answer this evening, but perhaps, when she comes back to the Chamber, she will explain the final phrase of subsection (2) which reads,
"and members so appointed shall include persons having relevant knowledge or experience in education".
Clearly this is a crucial matter in the whole debate. I think it is the point at which the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, is driving; namely, that people, before being appointed to these councils, will be fully experienced and have knowledge of education. That is what I would have expected.
I think we all agree that the councils are crucial to this whole section of the Bill. The point I made at

785
Second Reading—a view shared, I think, throughout the Committee—is that in order to maintain high standards and to raise lower ones, the content of the curriculum and other processes are key.
I believe that what is written in the Bill probably goes a long way to meet the points in the amendments that have been tabled but I believe also that public reassurance about the composition is very important. I know the difficulties only too well. I know the difficulties of being a Minister when one is confronted with all these matters. I certainly do not wish to make difficulties. I am trying to be constructive. However, a further explanation at a later stage of how the Secretary of State sees this working out would be very helpful to us all.
Baroness Hooper: I should like to confirm that in speaking to Amendment No. 97 we are speaking also to Amendment No. 99.
I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, that the Secretary of State will have in mind the considerations referred to in her amendment. However, since I have agreed to take back the previous amendment for consideration I think it is appropriate that I do the same in this case, and without commitment.
Baroness Seear: I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 98 and 99 not moved.]
Lady Kinloss Lady Kinloss moved Amendment No. 100:
Page 5, line 9, at end insert ("and one shall have special knowledge of and concern for provision for children with special educational needs and regard shall be had to the desirability of that member being a disabled person.").
The noble Lady said: It will be for the convenience of the Committee if in moving this amendment I speak also to Amendments Nos. 253, 260 and 268. If necessary, I shall move these later when they are called.
As I said in the Second Reading debate, I am eager to see a duty to include representation of special education needs on all councils and governing bodies; that is to say, the National Curriculum Council, the Curriculum Council for Wales, and the School Examinations and Assessment Council. The Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation fully supports this view. It feels that there is a need for a member who can represent the view of disabled children and young people on all those councils and governing bodies and on all the councils and governing bodies for further education.
People are not always aware of, or knowledgeable about, the needs and aspirations of disabled persons. It is surely essential to have on all these bodies at least one person who has made a study of the special needs of disabled persons. We are not asking for the numbers on the councils to be increased, but that one member should have special knowledge of those with special education needs.
I have no doubt about the Government's good intentions as they have responded sensitively already on the issues of grant maintained schools. They have developed a mechanism to modify the national curriculum. But there is a need for some special
786
sensitivity to be incorporated into the planning of curricula at all levels. It is for this reason that expert input is required.
This is an amendment which asks only that children with special education needs are treated in the same way as other children and are represented on all councils and governing bodies. This would apply also to the councils and governing bodies for further education. I beg to move.
Baroness Darcy (de Knayth): I should like to say a few words in support of my noble friend Lady Kinloss. When this was debated at Report stage in another place on 22nd March the Secretary of State said at col. 210 of Hansard that he did not want to be too prescriptive about how the National Curriculum Council in particular would operate. He suggested that it might want to set up a sub-committee to deal with special education needs. That is fine in itself, but I feel that there should be a member on the council with knowledge of special education needs, preferably a disabled person if he or she were the right person for the job, and such a provision should be written into the Bill.
The wording is similar to that used in the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970 in relation to representation of disabled people and their interests on various advisory committees. I hope that the Minister will find it acceptable.
I should also like to support the suggestion of my noble friend that other councils have similar representation. I feel that the provision should be written into the Bill because it is important to ensure that the interests of people with special education needs should also be safeguarded in higher and further education.
Lord Carter: I was glad to put my name to the amendment. I shall be extremely brief in speaking to it. We all agree that the councils mentioned in the clause will have an important role. We feel that it is extremely important that these councils have a full understanding of special educational needs. The point has been made many times that 20 per cent. of the school population at any one time fits into that definition. It is not a fixed population. There are children moving in and out of the definition all the time. It includes not just the physically and mentally handicapped, but children with learning difficulties; those who require special education for a short time, such as after a spell in hospital; children who require home tuition for any reason and so on. We feel that special skills are required in special education.
We also feel that society needs a great deal of conditioning generally towards disablement. I take the example of the programme on BBC Radio, which has the title "Does He Take Sugar?" That is the most apposite title of all the programmes on radio and television. We have all experienced a group of people with a disabled person present. One is often asked by a third party "Would he like a drink?" I say, "Well ask him". The point is that it is all part of the conditioning of society. We feel that the education process is crucially important in helping to overcome this conditioning. That is why we feel that the councils should have special regard to special education. There is a strong argument that there should be proper representation on those councils

787
and the appointment of a member with the special knowledge and the expert input that is required. I urge the Government to accept the amendment.
Lord Hylton: As a parent of a dyslexic child I support my noble friend's amendment. Among noble Lords there is an amazing pool of expertise, concerned particularly with dyslexia. But, alas, outside Parliament there is still far too much ignorance on the subject. It is unfortunately true that too many children are diagnosed too late.
The Earl of Swinton: I, from these Back Benches, also support the amendment. I am not altogether 100 per cent. in support of what the noble Baroness said because I do not believe that it is necessary to have a disabled person participate. On the whole it would be very good to have someone on this body who is aware of the special problems and needs of the disabled.
Lord Young of Dartington: As the father of a schizophrenic son, I also support the amendment. In the education world generally, among people who have great concern for special needs, there has been a great deal of unease about the Bill. Although that unease will not be removed if the amendment is accepted, it would be somewhat appeased. The people who have felt so disturbed would be somewhat reassured if the Government were able to make a small concession at this stage in the discussion of the Bill. It would not lose any of its guts, but it would be reassuring to perhaps hundreds of thousands of people who are deeply worried about what might happen to their children and grand-children who have such needs unless something like this is accepted and followed up in other ways that have more content even than this.
Baroness Hooper: I understand that there is considerable concern in this respect. As my noble friend Lady Young pointed out earlier, the provision that councils should include persons with relevant knowledge or experience of education means that there is a sufficient basis on which to build councils which are in all respects aware of the problems they face and are competent to deal with them. I include in that the practical problems and opportunities of the classroom and the considerations which must apply to children with special needs. Nevertheless, because of the concern which has been expressed—and in taking back the previous amendments which relate to the composition of these councils I must include this one—I shall take the amendment back again without commitment at this stage.
Lady Kinloss: I thank the noble Baroness for that reply, which I should like to read. As she has agreed to reconsider the matter, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
10.15 p.m.
Lord Ritchie of Dundee Lord Ritchie of Dundee moved Amendment No. 101:
Page 5, line 13, at beginning insert ("to promote the development of a balanced and broadly based curriculum for maintained schools in accordance with the provisions of section 1(2) of this Act and").
The noble Lord said: The amendment relates to the role and functions of the council and touches on many of the matters that have already been discussed. Page 5 of the Bill provides that the first function of the curriculum councils is to keep under review all aspects of the curriculum for maintained schools. We have been concerned about the sweeping powers given to the Secretary of State in Clause 4. He can establish the curriculum, revise it, specify the attainment targets and programmes of study and all assessment arrangements without reference to anyone. No doubt he will consult, but it is not written into the Bill.
We believe that the councils exist for the purpose of offering advice and that they should be given a higher profile. We urge the Government to give them the primary role of promoting the development of the broadly-based curriculum referred to in Clause 1. There seems to be no reason why they should not be given that role and it gives them a higher profile.
If the councils are not used for their legitimate purpose they will become puppets and be useless. One wonders who will be consulted by the Secretary of State if they are not consulted. Will the Minister say whether, for example, Her Majesty's Inspectorate will be consulted? If not, who will be? Will the reports of the task groups on the various subjects be closely studied and incorporated in the national curriculum? We presume that they will, but we should like a little more assurance in that respect.
If Parliament is to accord the Secretary of State such wide-sweeping powers he should, in return, undertake to consult to an extent that satisfies Parliament. I beg to move.
Baroness Hooper: I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie, for drawing our attention through his amendment to an important aspect of the framework established by the Bill. Clause 1 makes it encumbent on the Secretary of State, on local education authorities and on the heads and governors of maintained schools to exercise their respective functions so as to secure that the curriculum provided for pupils is balanced and broadly based. This is a fundamental principle of the Bill. The functions of the curriculum councils, as set out in Clause 7, are to keep all aspects of the curriculum under review, to advise and assist the Secretary of State and to make information available to all who are concerned with the provision of education and with the curriculum.
In discharging these functions, the councils will be helping the Secretary of State and his partners to carry out their own duties and responsibilities. We had therefore considered it unnecessary to reproduce the fundamental duty set out in Clause 1 in setting out the functions of the councils. However, this is an important point which we shall look at again in the light of the noble Lord's amendment, in order to satisfy ourselves that our intentions are adequately stated in the Bill as it is drafted. Should we conclude that a specific reference to Clause 1 is required, as the noble Lord suggests, we shall introduce a Government amendment at Report stage. In the light of that assurance—which I assure the Committee will not become a habit—I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw the amendment.
Lord Ritchie of Dundee: I assure the Committee that we are not going to fall into that habit. I am grateful to the Minister for her assurance and I hope that she will be able to bring a favourable reply at the next stage of the Bill, bearing in mind especially the lack of connection that we feel exists between the lofty aims of Clause 1 and much of the rest of the Bill. I believe that every time a reference is made to Clause 1 and the basic aims of the Bill that is a gain. In the circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Kilmarnock Lord Kilmarnock moved Amendment No. 102:
Page 5, line 14, at end insert ("with special regard to those aspects of the curriculum not otherwise included in sections 3(1) and 3(2) such as personal and social education including health education.").
The noble Lord said: I spoke to this amendment at about 3.30 on Wednesday morning and I do not want to take another large bite at the cherry. However, at that time we had a small debate on health education, and AIDS education in particular. In her reply the noble Baroness gave me assurances which were of some comfort. She said that the Government appreciate the importance of personal and social education and life skills. Of course, that is the framework within which much of this health education is carried out.
However, in the course of that debate—and I do not criticise the noble Baroness because this was at an extremely advanced hour—I asked the noble Baroness a question which she was not able to answer at that time. I should like to put it to her again. I am not expecting an answer immediately, but perhaps she may think about the matter and write to me. I do not want to encourage her in had habits and it may be that she does not want to make any more concessions.
In its submission to the Government, the Health Education Authority suggested that it should have some representation on the cross-curriculum working group to examine the place of health education within personal, social and health education and other relevant subjects. It also went on to suggest the appointment of a member of the National Curriculum Council with some expertise in health education, which is again a point that has been made earlier. I do not suggest that there should be an additional number of people on the National Curriculum Council, but simply that there should be someone with expertise in health education.
In view of the undertaking by the noble Baroness on behalf of the Government that they accord importance to this particular area, that suggestion would seem to be logical. Therefore I should be very grateful if she would let me know, possibly by letter, what are the Government's intentions in that respect.
Baroness Hooper: At this stage I regret that I am not able to add anything to what I said on the previous occasion.
Lord Kilmarnock: I am grateful to the noble Baroness. I realise that she is not able to add anything now, but perhaps she will look at what I have said and come back to me. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness David Baroness David moved Amendment No. 103:
Page 5, line 18, leave out ("if so requested by him to assist him to").
The noble Baroness said: In speaking to this amendment, I shall also speak to Amendment No. 105. We have turned from the composition of and appointments to the council to its functions. The point of these amendments is to give some discretion to the National Curriculum Council to allow it to act on its own initiative instead of being entirely under the thumb of the Secretary of State. The council should be allowed to carry out its own research and development work without requiring the Secretary of State's permission, and also to carry out whatever ancillary activities it believes necessary. If the Secretary of State appoints suitable people—and we have to remember that he will make the appointments—it is hard to see why he should not trust them to carry out research and development work on their own initiative.
Most of the other amendments have drawn attention to the powers and control which the Government are giving to the Secretary of State. If the Government are not to ignore these concerns entirely, they should at least give reasonable freedom to the council which this amendment seeks. I have not put them down, but I suggest that a similar discretion should be given to the members of the School Examinations and Assessment Council. I beg to move.
Lord Hylton: It seems that these two amendments link in a very close way with Clause 9 which is concerned with experiments, among other things. It might be helpful if the noble Baroness can tell us what kind of experiments are envisaged in the text of the Bill as it now stands. I believe that there are many of us who are concerned that experiments shall not be made on living children in ways which their parents possibly cannot anticipate as they might end up as being somewhat disadvantaged in a highly competitive society.
Earl Russell: I support the amendment of the noble Baroness. She seems to have raised a principle of great importance which goes right to the centre of this Bill; that is, whether the Secretary of State may confine himself to receiving advice when and as he so wishes. That is something that executives have wished to achieve for themselves for very many centuries and which parliaments have tried to ensure that they do not achieve for almost as many centuries. I believe that Parliament should continue to do its job.
Baroness Hooper: The amendments proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady David, to the functions of the curriculum councils seek to give the councils a significantly greater degree of formal freedom than we intend. The responsibility for promoting and developing the national curriculum properly rests with the Secretary of State, the LEAs and the schools. The work of the councils is to provide support and advice in this important endeavour.
In practice, we believe that the Secretaries of State and the councils will work in close partnership in evolving and conducting programmes of research

791
and development and in carrying out any ancillary activities; but my right honourable friend the Secretary of State will provide the resources used by the councils and will be accountable for their use. It is right, therefore, that the formal position should be as set out in the Bill. The councils will be able to put their recommendations for research and development to my right honourable friend. Where these are well found and can be carried out within the councils' budgets, I would not expect any difficulties.
Lord Peston: Perhaps I may say a brief word on the nature of these councils which follows on from what my noble friend Lady David and the noble Earl, Lord Russell, have said. The noble Baroness emphasised to us her view of the councils as being independent. We certainly would like them to be so. They do advise and many of us have been in the business of advising for many years. I have advised Ministers. There are two kinds of advice that one can give: advice that they want to hear and advice that they do not want to hear. My own view is that the only advisers who are worthwhile are those who give advice that Ministers do not wish to hear. My concept of independence is the concept of saying things which, to say the least, can be something of a nuisance. I believe that is what the noble Earl had in mind.
I should like to hear from the noble Baroness whether she appreciates that that is what we want these councils to be. To be perfectly honest, I believe that their only use to the Secretary of State is if occasionally they say to him things like, "You do not understand; you have got it wrong and we are independent enough to say so". What still worries me a little about the response of the noble Baroness is that I am not quite sure that she and her noble friends really want that kind of advice. My own view is that, in giving her advice, they should want that kind of advice.
Baroness Hooper: I thank the noble Lord for his advice. I emphasise that curriculum development is the primary focus of and reason for the kind of research and development that the councils can undertake. To return to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, and the link with Clause 9, the work of the curriculum development councils requires the fitting together of specific national curriculum requirements in particular schools so that it can be carried out more fully.
Baroness David: I do not think that that is a very satisfactory answer. It is an important function of the council to be able to give advice and to initiate a number of matters. Therefore, I should like to press this amendment.
10.30 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 103) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided; Contents, 32; Not-Contents, 52.

DIVISION NO. 3

CONTENTS

Baldwin of Bewdley, E.

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Blackstone, B.

McNair, L.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Monson, L.

Carter, L.

Morton of Shuna, L.

Cocks of Hartcliffe, L.

Peston, L.

Darcy (de Knayth), B.

Pitt of Hampstead, L.

David, B.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L. [Teller.]

Dormand of Easington, L.

Graham of Edmonton, L. [Teller.]

Rea, L.

Ritchie of Dundee, L.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Russell, E.

Houghton of Sowerby, L.

Seear, B.

Hylton, L.

Seebohm, L.

Kilmarnock, L.

Serota, B.

Kinloss, Ly.

Stewart of Fulham, L.

Lockwood, B.

White, B.

London, Bp.

Young of Darlington, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Arran, E.

Joseph, L.

Bathurst, E.

Kimball, L.

Beaverbrook, L.

Long, V. [Teller.]

Belstead, L.

Lyell, L.

Blatch, B.

Mackay of Clashfern, L.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Mersey, V.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Monk Bretton, L.

Cameron of Lochbroom, L.

Munster, E.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

Nelson, E.

Carnock, L.

Nome, L.

Coleraine, L.

Oxfuird, V.

Cork and Orrery, E.

Pender, L.

Cowley, E.

Rankeillour, L.

Cox, B.

Reay, L.

Craigmyle, L.

Renton, L.

Denham, L. [Teller.]

Saltoun of Abernethy, Ly.

Dundee, E.

Sanderson of Bowden, L.

Eden of Winton, L.

Skelmersdale, L.

Elliott of Morpeth, L.

Swinfen, L.

Ferrers, E.

Swinton, E.

Glenarthur, L.

Thomas of Gwydir, L.

Hanson, L.

Trafford, L.

Hesketh, L.

Trumpington, B.

Hives, L.

Ullswater, V.

Hooper, B.

Vaux of Harrowden, L.

Johnston of Rockport, L.

Young, B.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
10.38 p.m.
Lord Dormand of Easington Lord Dormand of Easington moved Amendment No. 104:
Page 5, line 24, leave out ("and").
The noble Lord said: I should like to speak also to Amendment No. 106. I am immediately tempted to say, whether or not regional considerations are included in the national curriculum, that many schools will continue to include them in the curriculum anyway. Schools have always been encouraged to include a regional dimension in their work.
We can all draw on our experiences of our own regions. I come from the North-East of England. It is unthinkable that our children should not be taught about coalmining, steelmaking and shipbuilding. Perhaps I should say that the present Government have done their best to close all those industries down. That refers only to industry but in fact there are few subjects that are not related to or cannot be

793
related to a pupil's environment. Not to know about the history of one's area and its relationship to national events would be an immense gap in a child's education.
If I may call on my experience again, imagine children in the North-East not having special knowledge of St. Bede and his part in the establishment of Christianity in the North-East. There is no part of our country which does not have something special about its language and its dialect. For example, in our area we have words which are exactly the same as those used in Iceland, Denmark and other Scandinavian countries. Children should be aware of this type of link.
Does the Minister imagine for one moment that the curriculum of a rural school will, or should, be the same as that of an inner-city school? I need not give further examples except to say that some subjects lend themselves especially to the regional perspective; such as, geography and music with its folk songs and, indeed, with its musical instruments. Should Members of the Committee ever wish to hear a blast from me on the Northumbrian pipes, I should be very glad to oblige—although I should not recommend it. There are in addition of course ethnic studies and so on.
There was a worry some years ago among educationists and sociologists that the BBC would standardise our speech and culture and, to some extent, that has happened. However, I find it interesting to note that the pendulum has in fact now swung the other way. I find it pleasant that we now hear many broadcasters who have regional accents. I feel that that is the way it ought to be. It has even gone further than that. I must tell the Committee that I am not much of a television watcher but there are so-called "soaps" which are specifically regional. Indeed, I am told on the best possible authority—my wife, who watches it—that "Brookside" is Liverpudlian. I can say that "When the Boat Comes In"—I nearly said it with a Geordie accent—was a genuine Geordie saga. Similarly, "East Enders" is a London programme and of course there are others.
The Committee will recall that when independent television was set up it was developed on the basis of regional television and that makes a special contribution to our social affairs. I mention those matters because they are yet further evidence of the importance of the regional characteristics of our country. It is obvious that by omitting specific reference to them in the Bill the Government either do not understand, or they have completely underrated the richness, variety and importance of our regional life.
It may be that the Government are taking it for granted that regional considerations will be taken into account in determining the form and content of the national curriculum. However, it would be a little dangerous—especially in view of what has happened in the Bill thus far—to assume that. Once the Government decide, as they have in this measure, that there should be such a national curriculum there is no choice but to give the proposition detailed scrutiny, hence the many amendments which have been tabled to the proposals.
As the Bill stands, a centralising government could easily argue that regional considerations are not a matter for a national curriculum; that is, that it is a contradiction in terms. I have just mentioned a centralising government. There is much evidence in this Bill, and indeed in other spheres, to show that the present Government are a centralising administration. For example, look at what has happened, and is happening, to local government.
However, I choose in conclusion to be more generous on this issue and say that the Government have simply overlooked what to many of us is an important matter. I do not see that they can have any fundamental objection to the amendment and I therefore commend it to the Committee.
Lord Ritchie of Dundee: I should like to say a word in support of the amendment. I think that one of the defects from which the proposed national curriculum suffers is a word which came into my mind and which I subsequently looked up in the dictionary: namely, jejune. I thought that the word meant scanty or meagre and according to The Oxford Dictionary it does. In my view it fits the description of the Bill in that it describes the proposals for the curriculum rather well. According to my colleague's dictionary, it also means naive or unsophisticated. That description also fits the curriculum, which has a certain meagreness, lack of interest and lack of vision about it. It is somewhat naive to propose a list of subjects which, as my noble friend Lady Seear said on Second Reading, was the way we were taught 50 or 60 years ago. The curriculum needs enrichment and the amendment is one way in which it could be enriched.
We on these Benches believe that the regions are important and that London and the centre are not England. The amendment's aim is worthy and we support it.
10.45 p.m.
Lord Peston: I am most annoyed with the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie, because I have "naive" in my notes and I am at a loss to think of another adjective now that he has also used "jejune" and "unsophisticated".
One of the benefits of the Bill, whatever others there may be, is that it has caused some of us to think a great deal about education. I must admit that I have not done so enough recently. Noble Lords opposite may have been right when they accused some of us of being complacent. By limiting the national curriculum and what we must now learn to call the other foundation subjects, the Government have caused me to think about education. I therefore associated myself with the amendment because there is—I am sorry to use the word again—something naive about "other foundation subjects".
I cannot believe that the Government want to carry out their proposals in that way. The more I think about the issue, and the points made by my noble friend Lady David on Second Reading, and later, and by the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, the more I feel that we should not have subjects such as history, geography and so on; we should have—I am increasingly convinced this is what the Government want, but because they do not want to yield to

795
anything we say they refuse to accept them—broad subject headings, as the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, said.
If one had broad subject headings it would be easy, as my noble friend Lord Dormand pointed out, to introduce a local, regional element. I should have thought that it would be reasonable for a local education authority in the North-West to have a course in economic awareness instead of geography within the other foundation subjects. I am sorry to be back to my "instead of geography" point, but it seems reasonable for economic awareness to be within other foundation subjects. It is at least as compelling as geography. I cannot believe that the Government disagree with me that that should be one of the other foundation subjects. It would make much more sense if there were a different heading under which one could do geography or economic awareness, or, to take an even more peculiar subject, regional matters.
One can think of so many other topics that could be included. Given what is happening with the Channel Tunnel, I do not see why French language and society could not be another foundation subject in the county of Kent. Why could not the local education authority decide that that subject was of local interest and importance? As times changed it might cease to be one of the other foundation subjects. The list is endless.
To go back to my geography example again, I now live in Sussex and I do not see why the school children there should not be taught about the environment in general instead of geography. It is an issue that is becoming of some importance in the area.
In pressing this point upon the Government I should like to believe that just as some of us are thinking again—
Lord Trafford: So far as I know, nobody in this Committee has ever tried to defend geography. Perhaps I may suggest to the noble Lord (and not as a great defender of geography) simply that it covers many of the things he is talking about—the North-West, awareness, the environment, meteorology, and a host of other things. Geography is itself a broad subject.
Lord Peston: I am sorry that the noble Lord rose to that bait. I actually do not have quite the antipathy to geography that I sound as though I have. If I use the word "foundation" and I say to myself, "is putting in geography somehow foundation?" intuitively, it does not ring true to me. My point is precisely what the noble Lord, Lord Trafford, said. What one wants is an explicit recognition of groups. That is what one wants. I should like the Bill to say that. If the Bill said that, then I feel that it would be enormously improved.
Baroness Hooper: These amendments seek to add to the functions of the National Curriculum Council and the Curriculum Council for Wales so that they take account of regional considerations. I ought to point out first of all that the curriculum councils do not actually have the job of determining the content or the format of the national curriculum. They are
796
essentially advisory councils, though they also have important responsibilities for conducting consultations on the Secretary of State's proposals for attainment targets, programmes of study and other matters. They may of course make recommendations on the content of the curriculum—indeed we very much hope they will offer early advice both on specific subjects such as maths and science and on the curriculum as a whole.
Later, they may wish to offer advice not only about the other subjects in the national curriculum, but also on particular aspects of the whole curriculum. But the decisions on form and content will be for the Secretary of State working within the framework laid down in the Bill; this includes the requirement to submit key orders to the scrutiny of Parliament. I say all this because we do not want there to be any confusion about where responsibility for determining the form and content properly lies.
The essence of a national curriculum is of course that it should be national. It is based on the idea that all pupils, wherever they live, should be entitled to a broad and balanced basic education and assessed according to generally recognised criteria. In exercising his responsibilities under the Bill, the Secretary of State will certainly not want to derogate from that important fundamental principle which is enshrined in the Bill itself.
Of course we recognise that there are important differences between the culture and traditions of different parts of England and indeed Wales. Thus Welsh is a foundation subject in Wales. We do not expect or intend that the programmes of study in the core and other foundation subjects—whether in England or in Wales—will be so restrictive that teachers and schools will not be able to draw on the distinctive culture, traditions, history, industry and geography of their areas in teaching those subjects. The same is true for the teaching of other subjects which may be on offer. Subjects such as careers education, for example, must reflect the nature of the opportunities offered by the area, as the noble Lord himself said, and the availability of training programmes, and so forth. Indeed, the tendency to do projects for assessment in schools, particularly in geography, must lead to better knowledge of the surrounding area of the school. We certainly have no intention to ignore the richness and variety of our country's culture.
I hope this serves to reassure the noble Lord that there is nothing in our national curriculum proposals which is inimical to the maintenance of the best of our distinctive regional traditions, and that what is taught and how it is taught will continue to depend very much on the approach of individual teachers and schools within the context of the overall national curriculum. On this basis, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Baroness Seear: We really are in a great state of confusion about the difference between core and foundation. The noble Baroness has just this minute said that Welsh is a foundation subject, but Clause 3(1) says that it is a core subject. Is it just possibly true that there is no difference between core and foundation? If that is so, we had better say so and get it put into the Bill.
Baroness Hooper: I do not wish to embark upon another semantic discussion, but in terms of Wales, the point is that Welsh is a foundation subject there and is a core subject in Welsh medium schools. Clause 2(1) refers to the core and other foundation subjects. It may be helpful to the noble Baroness to say that the distinction is that the core subjects are part of the foundation subjects; but they have a slightly different emphasis in that they are the subjects which we believe to be at the heart of the whole curriculum. They are therefore the first subjects to be introduced and they are subjects which will be compulsory throughout primary and secondary schooling. So there is some distinction, but they are part of the foundation curriculum as well as of the national curriculum.
Baroness Seear: But the noble Baroness told me not so long ago that all the foundation subjects had to be continued until pupils were 16. That is another distinction between the two which has apparently gone.
Baroness Hooper: I do not want to get into a long and involved discussion at this point. Foundation subjects are to be continued until 16, but, for example, we are not expecting a foreign language to be started at the beginning of primary school.
Lord Stewart of Fulham: If I heard the noble Baroness aright, she told us that the orders that are made, such as those establishing the council and the national curriculum, are subject to the authority of Parliament. Can she tell me where that is said in the Bill? It is a large Bill and I may quite easily have overlooked this; it may be tucked away somewhere. I think there are in Clauses 13 and 14 descriptions of certain procedures which the Secretary of State has to go through before he makes orders. But nothing is said about when the orders are to be presented to Parliament or whether they are to be subject to the affirmative or negative procedure in Parliament. I think we ought to know this. It may be my own fault and that I have failed to spot something in the Bill, but I have looked for it and have not found it.
Baroness Hooper: Clause 4 deals with the duty to establish the national curriculum by order. That refers to the way in which the Secretary of State should make the orders. But for further clarification I believe I can refer the noble Lord to Clause 192(1).
Lord Stewart of Fulham: I was afraid it might be something like that. Clause 192(1) is right at the end, on page 169, where it says:
"Any power of the Secretary of State to make orders or regulations under this Act … shall be exercised by statutory instrument."
That gets us that far. What has happened to the statutory instrument?
"No order shall be made … unless a draft of the instrument containing the order has been laid before …".
I see. It appears to be a matter for affirmative procedure. I am glad to establish this because I think we are going to have fun when the programmes or guidelines or whatever for history and geography and so on all come before this House to be debated. It is an example of the way nature lags behind art. Some
798
time ago, the humourist Stephen Leacock wrote what purported to be an account of a debate in this House on education. Noble Lords were discussing a clause which said that the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal. They were considering amendments that could be made to it, such as, for example, that it should not apply in schools where two-thirds of the parents had conscientious objections to the use of the isosceles triangle.
I am delighted that the noble Baroness has been able to reassure me that Parliament is supreme on this matter. But I wonder whether the Government have really considered how much they have bitten off. We shall have most interesting debates when we come to look at what the Secretary of State produces.
Lord Peston: I wonder whether we may have misunderstood this. My reading of Clause 192 is that there are excepted provisions. Only some under subsection (3) seem to be made by positive resolution. Large numbers seem to be subject to annulment, which I think means negative resolution. Never having been in the other place, I have no idea what the difference is, but the procedures are certainly not the same.
I wonder also whether it is true, to follow what the noble Lord, Lord Stewart of Fulham, said, that we shall have a chance to debate these matters. Can the Minister tell us whether, if we are of that mind, we shall be able to debate all the orders or virtually none of them?
Baroness Hooper: I confirm that the orders under Clause 4(2)(a) and (b), which are not listed in Clause 192(3), will be subject to the negative procedure. I regret that I am not able to go further at this point. If the noble Lord, Lord Stewart of Fulham, intends to participate in the orders as they fall under parliamentary scrutiny, I can assure him that they will not all come through at once and the "fun" will extend over a period of years.
Lord Dormand of Easington: I found the Minister's reply to the amendment somewhat peculiar. The first part seemed to indicate that a regional dimension is not being explicitly named here. The Minister called in aid something I said in moving the amendment, that if it is a national curriculum there cannot be a regional consideration. The latter part of the reply seemed to suggest that there can be such a dimension, but that it is not necessary to spell it out. I note that the Minister is nodding, which presumably means that my interpretation of her reply is correct. Whether the Government say it or not, therefore, as I said in moving the amendment there will be a regional dimension to teaching in schools, and long may it be so. It is such things that make teaching come alive. It is related to the immediate experience of children. At some stage I hope that we can have a clear statement by the Minister that this is a desirable and effective part of education.
In the circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 105 and 106 not moved.]
Clause 7 agreed to.
Schedule 1 [The Curriculum and Assessment Councils]:
Baroness Darcy (de Knayth)Baroness Darcy (de Knayth) moved Amendment No. 107:
Page 176, leave out line 10.
The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 107, I should like to speak also to Amendment No. 108, which goes with it, and to Amendments Nos. 244 and 245 under Schedule 5, which apply to membership of a higher education corporation. Amendments Nos. 107 and 108 apply to membership of the curriculum and assessment councils.
As paragraph 7 of Schedule 1 now stands, the Secretary of State may remove a member from office if he is satisfied that he,
"(b) is incapacitated by physical or mental illness".
I hope that that is an oversight. As the Association of Disabled Professionals has pointed out to me, it is possible, as the paragraph now reads, that a physical illness leading to incapacity such as arthritis, polyneuritis, polio or multiple sclerosis could be deemed to be a reason for removing a member from office. It does not define what "incapacitated" means or what a member may be incapable of doing.
The paragraph could lead to slightly dotty situations. If one imagines—heaven help the council if it came about!—that I and my noble colleagues, Lady Masham and Lord Ingleby, were all on a council, the noble Baroness and I would be quite safe, having become disabled through accident. However, the noble Viscount might risk being removed from the council, as he has had polio.
I should have thought that there were ample safeguards in head (c) under which a member can be removed if he is unable or unfit to discharge the functions of a member. I hope that the Minister will accept this small but quite important amendment, or at least undertake to bring an amendment forward at Repot stage which meets the point. I cannot believe that it is the intention of the Government to allow removal of a member on the grounds of physical incapacity. I beg to move.
The Earl of Swinton: I hate to stab my noble friend in the back from this side of the Committee. Having sat so often where she now is and generally getting stabbed in the back from this side on education Bills, I sympathise with her. On the other hand, I strongly support the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy, in her amendment. Obviously I feel very involved because of the position of my noble kinswoman.
I think that paragraph 8(1)(b) is most insulting. I should have thought that the wording,
"unable or unfit to discharge the functions of a member",
could not be objected to. I hope that my noble friend will accept the amendment.
Lord Carter: I am pleased to support the amendment. The definition of "physical or mental illness" is unclear. On what basis will the Secretary of State decide that a member is incapacitated? That phraseology is all part of the conditioning of society towards disablement, to which I referred earlier.
800
The Secretary of State is already given sweeping powers under paragraph 7(1)(c) as regards a member who is unable or unfit to discharge the functions of a member. Suppose that the member to be removed feels that his condition does not preclude him from carrying out the duties of a council member? Is he able to make out a case for his retention? If the reason for the decision of the Secretary of Stare is mental illness, presumably he is not in a fit state to make out such a case. That would appear to be a Catch-22 situation.
That sort of thinking is all a part of the conditioning of society in its attitude towards disablement. There are many disabled people who find such terminology to be what I can only describe as carelessly offensive. I hope that the Government will accept the amendment.
Baroness Hooper: I am sorry that the heading has given offence. I reassure my noble friend Lord Swinton that I do not feel that my back is bleeding. I understand very well the reason for the noble Baroness's suspicion of the power in Schedules 1 and 5. That power is not intended to be used to discriminate against people who may become disabled in some way while holding office. Only if the disability were so severe that they were plainly unable to continue would the Secretary of State seek to remove them, and the schedules provide for that. I agree that the power is unnecessary and we accept the amendment. We shall also be prepared to accept an amendment removing the identical provision in Schedule 6.
Baroness Darcy (de Knayth): I need only say that I am delighted with that reply and I thank the noble Baroness.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Baroness Darcy (de Knayth)Baroness Darcy (de Knayth) moved Amendment No. 108:
Page 176, line 11, leave out ("otherwise").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Schedule 1, as amended, agreed to.
Baroness David Baroness David moved Amendment No. 109:
After Schedule 1 insert the following new schedule—
("SCHEDULE: ADDITIONAL SUBJECTS TO FOUNDATION AND CORE SUBJECTS
The following subjects may be taught in combination with the core and foundation subjects specified in section 3(1) and 3(2), or with any subject specified in an Order made by the Secretary of State under section 3(4)

Home Economics

Environmental Education

Health and personal hygiene

Social and Life studies

Childcare and parenting

Sex Education

Economic awareness

Craft and Design

Physics

Chemistry

Biology

Latin

Classical Greek

French

German

Russian

801

Spanish

Italian

Modern Greek

Woodwork

American studies

Building

British government, constitution

Botany

Communication studies

Light crafts

Chemical technology

Current affairs, civics

Community education/studies/service

Dance

Drama, theatre arts

Duke of Edinburgh award

Engineering drawing

Economic history

Electrical engineering

Engineering

Environmental science

European studies

Electronics

Fashion design

Fencing

Film studies

Food and nutrition

Yoga

Metalwork

Draughtsmanship and Technical Drawing

Computer Skills

Social Sciences

Ethnic minority languages and culture

Mother tongue languages

Constitutional and public affairs

Citizenship

Road Safety

Office and secretarial skills

Business skills

Graphical communication

Geology

Greek literature in translation

General studies

Gymnastics

Ancient history

Humanities, human studies

Integrated studies

Jewellery

Law

Library

Materials science

Commercial mathematics, accounts

Further mathematics

Media studies

Mathematics with statistics/statistics

Motor vehicle studies

Needlecraft/textiles

Photography

Physics with mathematics

Pottery

Plastics

Remedial provision

Rural studies

Silversmithing

Surveying

Swimming

Tailoring

Technical drawing

Textile science

Television studies

Work experience

World Studies

Zoology").

The noble Baroness said: I referred to this schedule on Tuesday when speaking to the first amendment. This is not meant entirely to be a joke, it does have a serious side to it. For one thing I think that it illustrates the old-fashioned and unsophisticated nature of the Bill's list of foundation subjects. As my noble friend Lord Peston said the other day, if we
802
have to have foundation subjects, could they not be grouped as the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, suggested in her speech at Second Reading? I should have thought that many of these subjects could well be grouped to form one block of foundation subjects. I put that forward as a suggestion.
I think that the list shows the wealth of possibilities for children being taught in schools, children of all abilities whether academic or non-academic. I think it is a list to be proud of and which the education service should be proud of. I beg to move.
The Earl of Swinton: May I ask the noble Baroness why she has left out taxonomy?
Baroness David: I cannot imagine! I am sure that my husband would be very cross indeed if he knew that I had.
Lord Hylton: The list does seem to be slightly eclectic. If modern Greek is to be included why not Portuguese or Dutch-cum-Flemish, which, after all, are EC languages? If Russian is to be included, why not Chinese?
Baroness David: I would accept all those additions.
Baroness Hooper: I have nothing to add to the comments which I made in the previous debate.
Baroness David: I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 8 agreed to.
11.15 p.m.
Clause 9 [Development work and experiments]:
Lord Kilmarnock Lord Kilmarnock moved Amendment No. 110:
Page 7, line 18, after ("out") insert ("or the continuance of an established curriculum speciality").
The noble Lord said: In a previous debate introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, the question of the international baccalaureate was referred to. The amendment is directed particularly to that system. It would introduce into the second line of Clause 9 after the words:
"enabling development work or experiments to be carried out",
the additional words:
"or the continuance of an established curriculum speciality".
That may seem to be slightly esoteric, but I have discovered that there are not only nine independent schools in the country which offer the international baccalaureate but also eight schools in the maintained sector. One of the effects of their method is that they proceed a long way down the line which I think that the Government themselves intended to take in introducing AS-levels, which have not I think had the success that the Government had hoped for. They take the concept of AS and A-levels a good deal further than is current in most schools at the moment.
I think that it will be very clear to the Committee that schools teaching a broad range of subjects under the international baccalaureate system, including a very strong emphasis on languages, are operating

803
very much within the spirit of all the recent exhortations from the Government to prepare ourselves for the full integration of the European market in 1992. So on those grounds one would have thought that this small but not inconsiderable sector is of some interest and worthy of support. I hope that the noble Baroness, whom I know to be a linguist, will be sympathetic to that aspect of it.
As I said, there are eight schools in the maintained sector which are affected. I shall refer in particular to one at Ingatestone. The school fears that neither under Clause 9 nor Clause 10 would its current curriculum be possible. In that school in particular there is a very strong European influence. In fact the noble Baroness said earlier that there was nothing to prevent alternative examinations being adopted by any school, which of course is true; but does not in fact address the main problem.
In the case of the school to which I am referring, which is the Ingatestone Anglo-European School, the average GCSE pupil will be taking 1·5 modern language subjects, which seems to be very much in accordance with the direction that the Government want to take under the Bill. Personally, I have very considerable reservations about the wisdom of allowing the Secretary of State to prescribe a foreign language for all pupils up to the age of 16. As I said in the Second Reading debate, I think that that may well be counterproductive for those who do not show any such aptitude, and at least at 14 in many cases it may be advisable to switch to something else. But I think the general thrust in the direction of languages is important.
The headmaster of the school to which I have referred writes:
"It would be difficult to sustain this rate [of participation in modern languages] under the National Curriculum proposals, as the Second Language would have to compete with a very large number of other optional subjects".
He also brings to my attention the fact that the school offers a special GCSE subject in European studies in which all the 180 pupils in that particular school are included. The letter continues:
"Unless this subject can be substituted for the History/Geography "Foundation" slot, it too would be condemned to fight for existence in the much constrained time allowed for options".
The point made by the noble Baroness about there being nothing technically against the use of this examination system does not take into account the constraints that would be imposed on those schools by the national curriculum when it comes into effect. I have only referred to one school but there are seven others, and under this Bill some if not all of them would be forced to abandon this approach. They are not proctected under Clause 9 nor, so far as we can see, under Clause 10.
The amendment that I put to the Committee is entirely a probing amendment at this stage. I hope to hear the Minister explain the attitude of the Government to these schools, how they think that they will survive under the new regime and, if they envisage that survival may be difficult, whether they will offer them a helping hand. I think that is all I need say at the moment. I shall be grateful to the noble Baroness if she will tell me the Government's view on this matter. I beg to move.
Baroness Hooper: Clause 9 of this Bill has perhaps been one of the most controversial clauses because I believe that this has been one of the least understood elements of our national curriculum provisions. Clause 9 does not regulate the scope for all curriculum development and experimentation in future. The great majority of this work will continue, as now, in schools and local education authorities, in colleges and university departments of education, to look at alternative ways of meeting commonly agreed, broad curriculum objectives. The only difference will be that increasingly in future these commonly agreed broad objectives will take the shape of national curriculum attainment targets.
The noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, wishes to add the notion of using Clause 9 to allow for the continuation of an established curriculum speciality. We believe that any acceptable curriculum speciality will be able to coexist quite happily with the national curriculum provisions using the very great freedom we have already discussed within and outside the national curriculum.
The example of the school which follows the international baccalaureate course—to which reference was made by the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock—is known to us, and we and HMI believe that that school will have no problem in meeting national curriculum requirements while maintaining its distinctive ethos.
Schools should be able to develop new specialisms at any time. The reference to established specialisms seems to suppose that we stop the clock on the passage of the Bill. What we have in mind is much less restrictive than that. That is why we believe that this amendment is simply not needed. I therefore trust that the noble Lord, as he has indicated, will withdraw this amendment.
Lord Kilmarnock: I undertake to withdraw the amendment. I have listened to the noble Baroness with interest. She talked about the very great freedoms allowed within the national curricular framework. However, many believe that these freedoms will not exist. Alternatively, we believe that they might exist if some of the amendments that we have been proposing at an earlier stage—such as allowing a menu of foundation subjects, or matters of that nature—had been accepted. These would have allowed a great deal more room for this type of individual development.
This is only one instance, but this is one of the main disadvantages of the Bill. It does not provide either for any new or original types of school.
My noble friend Lord Young of Dartington will later be putting forward some proposals to the Committee which will endeavour to take us in that direction. I must therefore tell the noble Baroness that I am not entirely satisfied with what she has said. I do not think that people who are operating those schools will be satisfied either.
However, as I said, I simply wished to have her opinion at this stage. I am grateful to her for having given it to me. For the moment I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Graham of Edmonton Lord Graham of Edmonton moved Amendment No. 111:
Page 7, line 18, after ("out") insert ("or in exceptional circumstances relating to a rapid change in the intake of a school or other unforeseen situations").
The noble Lord said: This amendment has the support of the Association of County Councils and the Association of Metropolitan Authorities.
Clause 9 deals specifically not only with what can be done but provides certain circumstances when the restrictions of the national curriculum shall not apply; and when modifications may be made.
I wish the Minister and her colleagues to consider other circumstances in which the obligation to follow the national curriculum may be lifted. I wish to cite circumstances which make it impossible to deliver the full national curriculum. One can envisage changes in the local community. For instance, there may be the building of a new housing estate; or the arrival of a large number of refugees; or a disaster in a local school resulting in closure of that school: some changes in which there is a dramatic alteration in the school population.
I give the Minister a specific example which would apply in current circumstances. This relates to a church primary school in Paddington. Several inner London boroughs, notably Tower Hamlets, in order to comply with the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act, have provided bed and breakfast accommodation for homeless families outside their boroughs. A large number of those families have been boarded in Paddington. The understanding of English of most of those children of many of those families of Bangladeshi origin (whose mother tongue is not English) is poor. The roll of that primary school was increased from about 100 to 200 in the space of a few months. Because nearly all of the children have poor understanding of English, it was necessary for the school to make a radical alteration in the curriculum for these children.
I am asking the Minister to understand that we are trying to help her and her colleagues, once the Bill becomes an Act. We are hoping that the Bill will take account of circumstances of the kind that I have outlined. They are real problems, based on current practice. It will not change. The circumstances I have outlined are genuine. If the Minister understands that this is likely to happen, the amendment will enable her and her colleagues to act within the spirit of the Act, rather than to find that unfortunately the Act is prescriptive and will leave many problems on the shoulders of the teaching profession. I beg to move.
Baroness Hooper: Like the previous amendment, the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Graham, would also extend the scope of the Secretary of State's powers to cover disapplication of the national curriculum in exceptional circumstances. The national curriculum provisions of the Bill would not be legally enforceable upon a school which was unable, because of unforeseen circumstances, to meet its obligations, and for this reason the amendment is also an unnecessary addition to the clause.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: I appreciate that the Minister's case is that the Bill already provides for the
806
kind of circumstance that I have outlined. The Minister's words will be on the record, and I very much hope that they will not need to be quoted against her in the future. In the light of her explanation, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Ritchie of Dundee Lord Ritchie of Dundee moved Amendment No. 112:
Page 7, line 36, at end insert—
("( ) When an application is made to the Secretary of State under this section, he shall not unreasonably refuse such an application.").
The noble Lord said: This relates to the franchise, as one might call it, given by the Secretary of State to schools which want to experiment with new curricula and to be exempted from the demands of the national curriculum fo a certain length of time. It is extremely important that pioneering should continue to take place in education. It is the lifeblood of the profession, of the business of education. A great deal is happening in the country at the moment: there are bad things too, no doubt, but there are also good facets. I have visited schools where very remarkable things are occurring and I am sure some Members of the Committee have too. These are happening within the maintained sector. I gave the impression on Tuesday that I thought that was true only of the independent sector, but by no means. I am thinking particularly of what is happening in Sheffield at the moment. I have not, unfortunately, been there, but I have visited a new school in Swindon which was very impressive indeed.
To give the Committee an idea of the feeling of the school, I had half an hour or so with the headmaster at the beginning of my visit and then I did not see him again. I was handed over to the children. I went to classes with them and I was taken to meals with them. They took me to meet the rest of the staff and I never saw the head teacher again. I call that very impressive. It is likely to be the good schools that want the special exemption referred to in the clause. It is likely to be good teachers who are at those schools. Good teachers are encouraged by the opportunity to experiment and pioneer. Unfortunately, much of the Bill gives the impression that it will stultify, ossify and freeze for ever a certain situation at a certain moment.
We have had and shall have more assurances from the Minister that that is not so, but unfortunately it is the overall impression given by the Bill. Even this clause appears to be rather grudging. A school which wishes to experiment may be let off for a time but it must return. That is the impression which is gained, and I cannot say how the Bill can be reworded to remove that impression. On the grounds I have explained, I beg to move.
11.30 p.m.
Baroness Hooper: Amendment No. 121 requires the Secretary of State to act reasonably, but that is already a general principle underlying all the provisions of the Bill and of all legislation. If any Secretary of State were to exercise his powers unreasonably, he would be open to legal challenge. If we were to write in the requirement to be reasonable

807
in all legislation where the Secretary of State is allowed to exercise some degree of discretion, all our Acts would be littered with such provisions. But happily this is not necessary in general, nor in the specific circumstances of the Bill.
Amendment No. 113 would require the Secretary of State to have regard to the need to develop and improve the national curriculum. But the Secretary of State already has the duty under Clause 4 to maintain as well as establish the national curriculum, and he must have regard to that duty and his Clause 1 duties in carrying out any of his further powers under Chapter I, including the power to allow major curriculum development work.
As I have said, the National Curriculum Council will also be advising the Secretary of State on his role in this respect, and the council is under a separate duty under Clause 7 to keep all aspects of the curriculum under review and advise as it sees fit. So we are forced to conclude that Amendment No. 113 would be another declaratory addition to the Bill, and that its intentions are already well met by existing provisions. I ask Members of the Committee to reject these amendments.
Lord Ritchie of Dundee: I understood the Minister to imply that all the actions of a Secretary of State would always be reasonable. I find that statement questionable. The actions of this particular Secretary of State may be reasonable, but what may we have in the future? If there is a refusal, how can one appeal on what are considered to be unreasonable grounds?
Baroness Hooper: I said that the general principle underlying all legislation, as well as the provisions of the Bill, is that the Secretary of State in the circumstances should act reasonably.
Lord Ritchie of Dundee: I do not find that answer very reassuring or satisfying. However, at the moment I can make no further suggestions. I should like to reword the amendment and bring back the idea on Report. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 113 not moved.]
Lord Peston Lord Peston had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 114:
Page 7, line 43, at end insert—
("( ) In every local education authority there shall be set up a committee to be known as the Ethics Committee the role of which is to monitor all development work and experiments.").
The noble Lord said: I am strongly in favour of development work and experiments but I am concerned about the rights of parents and children in such schools. I was interested to hear what was said earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton. However, having listened to much of the discussion I believe that I need to think about the matter a great deal more. I shall return to the subject and I shall not move the amendment tonight.
[Amendment No. 114 not moved.]
On Question, Whether Clause 9 shall stand part of the Bill?
Baroness David: This clause has come in for a great deal of criticism from many sides. The noble Baroness has just said that it was the least understood clause. If things are to be put into a Bill that are so misunderstood by a great many people who are well acquainted with the world of education, I believe that is a great pity and that it has been very badly drafted. As the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie, said, the impression is that it has a dampening effect. There is a feeling that things are not going to be allowed, that experiments will be frowned on.
The wording states:
"the Secretary of State may direct as respects a particular maintained school",
and later:
"A direction shall not be given".
I do not care very much for the word "direction".
The fact is that good practice in education is very often started in one authority or another and has then been taken up all over the place. I believe that that initiative would not be taken if every time the local authority or school had to ask permission to do something which was not done every day of the year. Therefore, that is a great shame.
This was the clause which Miss Sheila Browne, who until quite recently was the senior chief HMI, said shocked her most. I believe that it should be taken back and reworded. Perhaps I can ask the Minister whether Her Majesty's Inspectorate is presently in favour of it.
Lord Young of Dartington: Perhaps I can support the noble Baroness, Lady David. I was convinced by the welcome words of the Minister about freedom that the clause should be done away with completely. I am sure we should be better without it, at least as presently drafted. The great pioneers of British education would certainly not have asked for permission to experiment or develop, and their counterparts at this or any other time should not have to ask for permission to experiment or develop the work which they do either in or out of school. If people have to ask permission, then automatically their freedom is limited. One only needs to provide for permission to experiment if the permission might be withheld and it should not be withheld.
This has been an old debate in the Soviet Union. One has to ask for permission from the Soviet Academy of Sciences before one can undertake certain kinds of research. Therefore, research is limited. Surely all teachers should be undertaking development work and experiment almost continuously and always be ready to do so in all kinds of matters whether they be methods of reading, teaching mathematics, and so on. Unless that is so, their teaching will not come alive and stay alive. If they are only able to do that with the permission of the Secretary of State, we can say goodbye to any real growth in the development of education.
In my submission, it is much better for it to be implied that development work is always to be encouraged and not restricted to that for which one is given permission. I hope the Minister is prepared to consider either dropping the whole clause (which I believe would be the best solution) or coming back with a new presentation and formulation of what is intended.
Lord Hylton: We have earlier discussed in this clause whether or not the actions of the Secretary of State will always be reasonable. If one looks at the Department of Environment, some criticism has been made of the Secretary of State with regard to the people he has appointed to the Urban Development Corporation.
My main concern about this clause is this question of experiment. In an earlier amendment I tried to draw a clearer definition of the word "experiment" from the Minister. If I understood her rightly, she was implying that these experiments in this clause would concern fuller development of the curriculum. If I am wrong, I am sure she will correct me. It is by no means certain that all experiments will be successful. I want to guard against unsuccessful experiments actually prejudicing the personal and educational development of the children subjected to them. Can we be told what kind of safeguards there will be to minimise those risks?
Baroness Blackstone: One of the great strengths of the British education system has been the opportunities available for grass root experiment and innovation for local education authorities to develop various new kinds of approach, for heads to try out new ways of organising the school day and for classroom teachers to develop new teaching methods and new curricula. Are we to abandon all this in one fell swoop as a result of this Bill? If permission to experiment has to be sought from the Secretary of State, how is he going to cope with the many approaches that he is likely to receive? Clearly he will be unable to decide all of them for himself because he is a very busy man.
How will his civil servants know how to respond to the approaches that the DES is likely to receive? Few of the senior officials have direct experience of teaching in schools. In that sense they are not qualified to provide advice to the Secretary of State on many of the innovatory experiments that go on at present. Will it be done by Her Majesty's Inspectorate, and are they to do it on top of all the other new work that they have to cope with in relation to the national curriculum and national assessment? If so, presumably the DES will find it rather difficult to respond rapidly and quickly. Its already dented reputation in terms of a quick response to issues of this kind will become even more dented.
I give a recent example in relation to the GCSE. If the department takes as long to deal with the issues raised by this set of questions people who want to mount experiments will, in the end, simply give up. The Nuffield Foundation project on graded assessment in maths, which also involves a number of LEAs, is seeking a very minor exemption from the GCSE national criteria, yet the request has been with the DES for over six months.
There can be no other profession denied the right to innovate and try out new methods and approaches without seeking permission in the way that the teaching profession is being denied the right in this Bill. I support my noble friend Lady David on this Question.
Baroness Hooper: The Government have made clear that they do not wish the national curriculum to be a static one, set in stone. It must be capable of responding to changes of need and circumstance, and to the development of knowledge over time. That is why Clause 4 requires the Secretary of State to revise the national curriculum when he judges it expedient to do so and why Clause 7 requires the NCC to keep the school curriculum under review.
To enable all this to happen it is important to have the flexibility offered by Clause 9. It ensures that development work is not halted because of the national curriculum. We need to allow experiment and development so that the national curriculum can be revised as new needs arise.
Clause 9 therefore allows for some or all of the national curriculum requirements to be waived for a specified period to allow development work to take place. We expect much of this work will be carried out under the auspices of the NCC or CCW, but the clause specifically allows for individual LEAs and the governors of maintained schools, with the agreement of the LEA or the governors of voluntary-aided and grant-maintained schools, to apply on their own for an exemption, so that small local projects can continue to play a valuable part.
Within the framework of attainment targets and programmes of study there will be scope for schools to adopt new approaches and try out experimental approaches without the school needing permission from the Secretary of State. I think that answers the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton. The clause would apply where the suggested experiment or project was so major it would involve exceptions being made to the national curriculum which would require the lifting of statutory requirements.
In response to the specific point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady David, I feel sure that HMI would have let us know if it objected, and I am not aware that it has so objected.
Lord Joseph: Not having heard this debate and therefore not having heard any previous intervention by my noble friend the Minister, I am reassured to learn that the Secretary of State will make exemptions for what I hope will be a considerable proportion of the experimental or development works proposed. If I have missed some previous explanation by the Minister of this matter, I apologise. If she has not told the Committee whether the exemptions contemplated would account for quite a proportion of the workload expected, I for one would be grateful if she could add a word to what she has said.
Baroness David: I think it would be nice if the noble Baroness would confirm what she has said.
Baroness Hooper: Within the framework of attainment targets and programmes of study there will be scope for experimentation without having to make specific application under this clause. Therefore, I do not anticipate that there will be an enormous increase in the workload in this respect.
Baroness David: It seems to me that there will still have to be a great many applications, and that will take a great deal of time. We well know, as the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, said, how long things sit at the DES before there are answers. I think there should be much more freedom and I therefore have to press the Committee to vote against the clause.
11.48 p.m.
On Question, Whether Clause 9 shall stand part of the Bill?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 38; Not-Contents, 22.

DIVISION NO. 4

CONTENTS

Arran, E.

Hesketh, L. [Teller.]

Beaverbrook, L.

Hives, L.

Belstead, L.

Hooper, B.

Blatch, B.

Joseph, L.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Kimball, L.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Long, V.

Cameron of Lochbroom, L.

Mackay of Clashfern, L.

Carnock, L.

Monk Bretton, L.

Carr of Hadley, L.

Mountgarret, V.

Cork and Orrery, E.

Norrie, L.

Cowley, E.

Oxfuird, V.

Cox, B.

Reay, L.

Craigmyle, L.

Selborne, E.

Denham, L. [Teller.]

Skelmersdale, L.

Eden of Winton, L.

Swinfen, L.

Elliott of Morpeth, L.

Swinton, E.

Faithfull, B.

Thomas of Gwydir, L.

Ferrers, E.

Trafford, L.

Glenarthur, L.

Trumpington, B.

NOT-CONTENTS

Baldwin of Bewdley, E.

Peston, L.

Blackstone, B.

Pitt of Hampstead, L.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L [Teller.]

Carter, L.

Cocks of Hartcliffe, L.

Rea, L.

Darcy (de Knayth), B.

Ritchie of Dundee, L.

David, B.

Russell, E.

Dormand of Easington, L.

Serota, B.

Graham of Edmonton, L. [Teller.]

Stewart of Fulham, L.

White, B.

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Williams of Elvel, L.

McNair, L.

Young of Dartington, L.

Resolved in the affirmative, and Clause 9 agreed to accordingly.
Clause 10 [Exceptions for categories of pupils]:
11.55 p.m.
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Aberdare): If Amendment No. 115 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment No. 116.
Baroness Hooper Baroness Hooper moved Amendment No. 115:
Page 7, line 46, leave out from ("apply") to end of line 47 and insert ("; or
(b) shall apply with such modifications as may be so specified;
in such cases or circumstances as may be so specified.").
The noble Baroness said: We spoke to this amendment and to Amendments Nos. 116 and 117 with Amendment No. 4. I beg to move.
Baroness Faithfull: I wonder whether I may ask for an explanation about this. As I remember it, we did not accept this amendment at the last stage. If I am right, we had a debate on all the amendments and my noble friend the Minister spoke on them but we did not, however, agree to each of them individually.
Baroness Hooper: I think that is what we are doing now. I have moved Amendment No. 115 and I hope that we shall agree to it.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
[Amendments Nos. 116 and 117 not moved.]
Clause 10, as amended, agreed to.
Lord Denham: I think that all Members of the Committee will agree that we have probably gone as far as we usefully can tonight, and therefore I beg to move that the House do now resume.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.

Immigration Bill
Returned from the Commons with the amendments agreed to.

Public Utility Transfers and Water Charges Bill
Returned from the Commons with the amendments agreed to.
House adjourned at three minutes before midnight.

  SCHOOL NURSING SERVICE: ORGANISATION AND MANAGEMENT
  SCHOOL NURSING SERVICE: ORGANISATION AND MANAGEMENT
  CANCER PATIENTS: DHSS GUIDELINES
  CANCER PATIENTS: DHSS GUIDELINES
  COMMUNITY CARE REPORT: CONSULTATIONS
  COMMUNITY CARE REPORT: CONSULTATIONS
  CYPRUS: FINANCIAL AID
  CYPRUS: FINANCIAL AID
  BATHING WATERS SURVEY
  BATHING WATERS SURVEY