Sitting of 7 December 1989

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

  BIRMINGHAM CITY COUNCIL (No. 2) BILL
  Order for consideration read.
  To be considered on Thursday 14 December.

  BROMLEY LONDON BOROUGH COUNCIL (CRYSTAL PALACE) BILL
  Considered; to be read the Third time.

  CARDIFF BAY BARRAGE BILL [Lords]
  Order for Second Reading read.
  To be read a Second time on Thursday 14 December.

  PRIVATE BILLS (PROCEDURE)
  Motion made,
  That—the Promoters of every Private Bill which originated in this House in the last Session and which is listed in Schedule A to this Order, or which originated in the House of Lords in the last Session and which is listed in Schedule B to this Order may, notwithstanding anything in the Standing Orders or practice of this House, proceed with the Bill in the present Session; and the Petition for the Bill shall be deemed to have been deposited and all Standing Orders applicable thereto shall be deemed to have been complied with;
  —every such Bill which originated in this House shall be presented to the House not later than the seventh day after this day;
  —there shall be deposited with every Bill so presented a Declaration signed by the Agent for the Bill, stating that the Bill is the same, in every respect, as the Bill at the last stage of its proceedings in this House in the last Session;
  —every Bill so presented shall be laid by one of the Clerks in the Private Bill Office upon the Table of the House on the next meeting of the House after the day on which the Bill was presented;
  —every Bill listed in Part I of Schedule A shall, after being so laid on the Table, be deemed to have been read the first, second, and third time, and shall pass;
  —every Bill listed in Part II of Schedule A shall, after being so laid on the Table, be deemed to have been read the first and second time and reported from Committee and ordered to lie upon the Table;
  —when any Bill originating in the Lords, which was brought from the House of Lords in the last Session and to which this Order relates, is brought from the Lords in the present Session, the Agent for the Bill shall deposit in the Private Bill Office a Declaration, signed by him, stating that the Bill is the same, in every respect, as the Bill which was brought from the Lords in the last Session, and, as soon as a certificate by one of the Clerks in the Private Bill Office that such a Declaration has been so deposited has been laid upon the Table of the House, the Bill shall be deemed—

  (i) in the case of the Buckinghamshire County Council Bill [Lords], the London Local Authorities Bill [Lords], the South Yorkshire Light Rail Transit Bill [Lords] and the United Medical and Dental Schools Bill [Lords], to have been read the first and second time and committed and shall be committed to the Chairman of Ways and Means, who shall make such amendments thereto as have been made by the
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  Committee in the last Session, and shall report the Bill as amended to the House forthwith, and the Bill, so amended, shall be ordered to lie upon the Table;

  (ii) in the case of the Nottingham Park Estate Bill [Lords], to have been read the first and second time and committed;

  (iii) in the case of the Medway Tunnel Bill [Lords] and the Vale of Glamorgan (Barry Harbour) Bill [Lords], to have been read the first time and ordered to be read a second time;

  (iv) in the case of the Greater Manchester (Light Rapid Transit System) (No. 3) Bill [Lords], to have been read the first time and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills;

  —in respect of all the Bills listed in Schedules A and B to this Order, the various stages deemed to have been taken shall be recorded in the Journal of this House as having been taken;
  —only such Petitions as were presented against any Bill brought from the Lords in the last Session which stood referred to the Committee on the Bill and which have not been withdrawn shall stand referred to the Committee on the Bill with the same title in the present Session;
  —in relation to any Bill to which this Order applies Standing Order 127 relating to Private Business shall have effect as if the words "under Standing Order 126 (Reference to Committee of Petitions against Bill)" were omitted;
  —in respect of any Bill originating in the House of Lords to which this Order relates and upon which the Examiners have reported in the last Session that no Standing Order not previously inquired into was applicable thereto, the Examiners shall, if the Bill is brought from the Lords in the present Session, be deemed to have made the same report in the present Session;
  —no further Fees shall be charged in respect of any proceedings on any of the Bills to which this Order relates so far as Fees were incurred during the last Session;
  —this House doth concur with the Lords in their Resolution contained in their Message [22nd November] relating to the River Tees Barrage and Crossing Bill [Lords], the Happisburgh Lighthouse Bill [Lords], the Great Yarmouth Port Authority Bill [Lords], the Southampton Rapid Transit Bill [Lords], the Heathrow Express Railway Bill [Lords], the London Local Authorities (No. 2) Bill [Lords] and the Greater Manchester (Light Rapid Transit System) Bill [Lords].
  Schedule A
  Part I

  1. City of London (Spitalfields Market) Bill

  2. Hythe Marina Village (Southampton) Wavescreen Bill

  3. Isle of Wight Bill

  4. New Southgate Cemetery and Crematorium Limited Bill

  5. St. George's Hill, Weybridge, Estate Bill

  6. Penzance Albert Pier Extension Bill

  Part II

  1. British Film Institute Southbank Bill

  2. British Railways Bill

  3. City of London (Various Powers) Bill

  4. Redbridge London Borough Council Bill

  Schedule B

  1. Buckinghamshire County Council Bill [Lords]

  2. London Local Authorities Bill [Lords]

  3. South Yorkshire Light Rail Transit Bill [Lords]

  4. United Medical and Dental Schools Bill [Lords]

  5. Nottingham Park Estate Bill [Lords]

  6. Medway Tunnel Bill [Lords]

  7. Vale of Glamorgan (Barry Harbour) Bill [Lords]

  8. Greater Manchester (Light Rapid Transit System) (No. 3) Bill [Lords]—[The Chairman of Ways and Means.]

  Hon. Members: Object.
  To be considered on Tuesday 12 December at 7 o'clock.

Oral Answers to Questions
  HOME DEPARTMENT

    Concessionary Television Licences
    Mr. Janner: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what representations he has received concerning concessionary television licences for retirement pensioners living in sheltered housing.
    The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. David Mellor): Since the change in the regulations in May 1988, we have received deputations from four hon. Members, and received 373 letters, 191 of those from hon. Members, about aspects of the concessionary television licensing system. The nature of each representation is not separately recorded, but the main points raised were whether the scheme should be extended to ordinary housing, the treatment of new residents of schemes which no longer qualified and whether the circumstances of individual housing schemes fitted the new regulations.
    Mr. Janner: Will the Minister look urgently into the case of 10 old-age pensioners in Leicester, five of whom live in Braunstone in my constituency? Their preserved right to a concessionary television licence has been lost entirely as a result of bureaucratic delays in the television licence office. Leicester city council was not informed or asked to produce a list of renewals until August 1988, four months after the cut-off date. Does he agree that it is cruel and wrong that those elderly people should lose that right? Will the Minister do his best to cut through the bureaucratic tangle which should never have existed?
    Mr. Mellor: If the hon. and learned Gentleman will let me have details of the case, I will join him in writing to the national television licence records office to sort the matter out.
    Mr. Devlin: Will my hon. and learned Friend look into the interesting and anomalous case of the sheltered housing at Willey Flatts in Yarm in my constituency? It is an establishment of segregated and sheltered bungalows for which there is an extra charge because there is a warden service. In the past, the residents enjoyed a concessionary television licence because they were old-age pensioners. The national television licence records office wrote recently to say that in future the concession will not be available. Having realised that the bungalows are separate and have been so for 20 years, it is seeking to change the previous ruling. Will my hon. and learned Friend intervene in that completely ridiculous situation?
    Mr. Mellor: Once again, all that I can say is that while the interpretation of the regulations is not a matter for me, if I am provided with the full details and if I can be helpful, I shall try to do so.
    Mr. Corbett: Does the Minister understand that the arbitrary system under which most pensioners have to pay for a licence but some do not causes friction and resentment? Now that only seven in every 100 homes has a black and white set and as pensioners own most of those, will the Minister give them a Christmas present by exempting all black and white sets from the licence fee? If
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    the Government could do away with the licence for 7 million dog owners, why cannot he do the same for the far fewer pensioners who own black and white television sets?
    Mr. Mellor: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will agree that since its introduction in 1969 the scheme has caused a wholly disproportionate amount of grief to every Government who have had to deal with it. We have tried to tidy up the arrangements so that the scheme genuinely benefits those whom it was intended to benefit. Later on the Order Paper we may reach directly some of the proposals to expand the scheme. The schemes have a cost which would have to be borne by the average licence payer, many of whom, as the hon. Gentleman knows, are not particularly well off and would not thank us for adding to their burden in order to benefit others.
    Mr. Latham: I was one of the 191 Members who wrote to the Minister. Is my hon. and learned Friend satisfied that local authorities now understand the regulations? I am still getting questions from constituents about the scheme and, obviously, in some cases there are serious anomalies.
    Mr. Mellor: I repeat that a serious effort was made to clear out the anomalies in last year's regulations, but I am only too willing to look at any evidence from my hon. Friend that we have not succeeded in that brave endeavour.

    Safer Cities Project
    Mr. Rooker: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on progress in setting up the safer cities project.
    The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. David Waddington): Excellent progress has been made in setting up safer cities projects. Twelve are now operating and four more should be in place early in the new year. The multi-agency approach is the best way to reduce crime —and fear of crime. It encourages local authorities, voluntary bodies, local industry and concerned individuals to work in partnership in implementing imaginative measures, such as improving lighting in car parks and streets, and increasing home and office security.
    Mr. Rooker: I agree with everything that the Home Secretary said, but may I put to him one particular problem about the budgetary arrangments for the safer cities projects? For all the projects the budget is the same. Without disparaging Hartlepool, there is no comparison between it and Birmingham, yet both receive £250,000. Birmingham is 12 times the size. The budgets for the safer cities programmes should be related to the needs of the area. This is new money, not existing money. By definition, the bigger the area, the greater are the crime rates. That should be recognised in the budgets, particularly for places as large as Birmingham.
    Mr. Waddington: Yes, but the hon. Gentleman will recognise that when the scheme was first launched it was on the basis that there would be a set sum for each project, so there is no question about it. Birmingham knew perfectly well how much it would cost and decided that it was right to go ahead on that budget. I must stress, because it is important, that Birmingham has received some extra funding this year. What is much more

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    important is that it was never intended that the whole cost of crime prevention should be borne by this particular scheme. This is pump priming and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will agree that, for all the limits on the funds, these are excellent projects.
    Mr. Wheeler: My right hon. and learned Friend will be aware that the Select Committee on Home Affairs has today published a report on drug trafficking and related serious crime. Is he aware that some of the recommendations have a direct bearing on the safer cities initiatives? Would he care to comment on how drugs aspects might be further strengthened under the scheme?
    Mr. Mellor: We are indebted to the Select Committee for having produced such a useful report and we shall give a full reply in due course. It may be worth reminding my hon. Friend that in April 1990 we shall launch a new initiative which involves setting up schemes in nine city centres where there are particular drugs problems. I am sure that my hon. Friend will give us all possible support in that endeavour.
    Mr. Hattersley: Will the Home Secretary confirm that while this year's total expenditure on safer cities projects nationwide is more than £4 million, the reduction in annual grants to local authorities is running at £20 billion? As a quarter of that could be used for exactly the initiatives that he has described—lighting and other safety initiatives —is it not a poor deal for the Government to take away 1,200 times as much as they have given?
    Mr. Waddington: The right hon. Gentleman is not comparing like with like. The object of the exercise is to have a multi-agency approach to crime prevention, which does not rely solely on the efforts of the local authorities. I might argue that if relying on local authorities were sufficient to crack the problems we would not have had to set up the safer city projects. The object of those projects is to have a multi-agency approach and draw in central Government agencies, local authorities, local industry, voluntary bodies and concerned individuals. I believe that that is the right way to go about it.

    Sunday Trading
    Mr. Simon Coombs: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the judgment of the European Court of Justice on Torfaen borough council against B & Q concerning Sunday trading.
    Mr. Mellor: The judgment of the European Court indicates that the existence of the Sunday trading laws as such is not in breach of the treaty of Rome. It also indicates that the restrictive effect of the legislation on Community trade should not go beyond what is necessary to achieve its underlying economic and social policy. The judgment regarded the question whether the effect of the legislation meets this requirement as a matter of fact to be determined by courts in this country. The Government are considering the implications of the judgment.
    Mr. Coombs: I thank my hon. and learned Friend for that answer. Does he agree that the ruling of the European Court of Justice on Sunday trading makes the law of this country a shambles? Does he recognise that every court and every local authority now has a free licence to make up
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    its mind on this issue? Does he not regard that situation as wholly unsatisfactory? Notwithstanding the excellent efforts of my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary to bring legislation on this matter to Parliament when he previously held office in the Home Office, such legislation is still needed. When will my hon. and learned Friend bring it forward?
    Mr. Mellor: I continue to regret that, in 1986, when the opportunity was accorded to the House to make alterations to what many believed to be an increasingly archaic piece of legislation, that opportunity was not taken. We are still looking at the judgment of the European Court, but on the face of it, it appears to ask British courts to make a difficult judgment. That judgment will not make the Shops Act 1950 any easier for the courts to interpret or, I suspect, for an increasing number of our people to accept.
    Mr. Murphy: Will the Minister welcome the initiative taken by my local authority, Torfaen council, in bringing B & Q before the European Court on the issue of Sunday trading? Will he condemn B & Q for openly flouting the law of the land? Will the Minister and his right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General give as much practical, moral and financial help as possible to local authorities, which have to bear the burden in this matter?
    Mr. Mellor: I must leave it to the people of Torfaen to judge whether it was a proper matter. All I can say is that the law is the law and its enforcement requires no commendation from me.
    Mr. Stanbrook: Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that, now that the European Court has had its say, it is imperative that the law should be applied and enforced and that those people who are calling for breaches of the law and condoning and encouraging such breaches in their organisations should be proceeded against for the common law offence of incitement to commit a crime?
    Mr. Mellor: Traditionally the question whether to prosecute has been left to local authorities. It is not for me to intervene in that process. I repeat that, whether some hon. Members like it or not, the fact is that the restrictions imposed by the Shops Act 1950 seem outmoded to an increasing number of people. Down the years, an increasing number of local authorities, rightly or wrongly, have refused to enforce it. Parliament has left a vacuum by its repeated failure to address this matter. I continue to hope that it will be possible to find some sensible way forward.
    Mr. Maclennan: When the Minister is considering the implications of Sunday trading, will he take the view that the same position must necessarily prevail throughout the country? Is there not a strong case to be made for a local option and for allowing local authorities to decide whether they wish the law in their area to be the same as in others?
    Mr. Mellor: Additional difficulties are certainly created when there are different prosecution arrangements, not least for traders who are only a short distance apart when some are left to trade freely on Sundays and others are not. For many years, a minority of authorities have decided to prosecute and others have not. I cannot help returning to this point: the problem is the continued attempt by the

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    criminal law to enforce an outmoded view of what should or should not be sold on Sunday. That is the nub of it. One day, the House will have to address that issue.
    Mr. Malins: Will my hon. and learned Friend take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of his predecessor, our right hon. Friend the Chief Whip, for his attempts to find a consensus on the way forward on the difficult issue of Sunday trading? Does he agree that while opinion in the House is so divided and while it is difficult to achieve a consensus, it would be wrong in principle to move forward to any legislation on the subject?
    Mr. Mellor: That is certainly the Government's position—one forced upon them by what happened in 1986. I have participated in debates on this matter for a number of years. I have yet to hear any hon. Member say that the Shops Act 1950 is right, although we may disagree about what should replace it. On that basis, the House will need to try before too much longer to reach a consensus, on which we can then make some progress.
    Mr. Hattersley: The Minister of State has been palpably ambivalent about the enforcement of the law. May I ask him directly whether it is his wish or, indeed, his instruction that local authorities should enforce the law as it now stands?
    Mr. Mellor: The right hon. Gentleman knows only too well that, thank goodness, in this free society it is not for me—[HON. MEMBERS: "Answer the question."] I am answering the question in precisely the form in which it was put to me. It was put—[Interruption]
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The Minister cannot answer the question if he is not given the chance.
    Mr. Mellor: It is not my fault if the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) chooses to formulate his question in a way that is not acceptable to those sitting alongside him. He asked whether I would instruct prosecution authorities to prosecute. It is not the function of a Home Office Minister in a free society to do that.

    Neighbourhood Watch
    Mr. Colvin: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many neighbourhood watch schemes now exist in England and Wales.
    The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. John Patten): At the end of September 1989 there were estimated to be about 75,300 residential neighbourhood watch schemes in England and Wales. That is almost 16,000 more than the number recorded 12 months ago.
    Mr. Colvin: That is good news. Will my hon. Friend acknowledge that one of the keys to the success of neighbourhood watch schemes is awareness by the criminal element in the areas covered that a scheme is in operation? Will he therefore take this opportunity to name and condemn those local authorities which still forbid neighbourhood watch signs on their streets?
    Mr. Patten: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. It is a great shame when local authorities do not co-operate with local communities to help neighbourhood watch schemes. I should be happy if the right hon. Member for
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    Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) would join me in writing a letter to councils such as Cleveland and Haringey asking them to change their policy.
    Mr. Sheerman: Given the appalling levels of crime, which have risen steadily every year since the Conservative party has been in office, we wholeheartedly endorse the citizens' response to joining neighbourhood watch campaigns. We must ask, however, that those neighbourhood watch schemes do not just go on and on. They depend upon volunteers, but they must be managed. The police and local authorities are asking for some kind of structure to make them more effective. If the Minister wants a joint letter to local authorities to encourage local councils to participate, he will get it from Labour Members, but if he can get local authorities to collaborate on this, will he ask them about the Shops Act as well?
    Mr. Patten: If the hon. Gentleman will come with me to a Labour-controlled borough such as Islington to see the Highbury Quadrant neighbourhood watch scheme, which includes about 800 households—largely council houses, but some in private ownership—he will find that that scheme, like many others in inner cities, is getting along extremely well with a bit of help and encouragement from the police, and is helping with crime prevention and with rebuilding the community, through concern for environmental and other issues.
    Sir Ian Lloyd: The whole House supports the admirable development of neighbourhood watch schemes which do not offend civil liberties, but will my right hon. and hon. Friends pay attention to what might be described as the recent development of neighbourhood spying schemes in which a few chief constables have decided to offer the public freephones so that friends, neighbours and relations can report each other anonymously? That has not been authorised by Parliament and it is thoroughly offensive—more reminiscent of the KGB, the Cheka and the Gestapo than of British justice.
    Mr. Patten: My right hon. and learned Friend and I will certainly look into that in response to my hon. Friend's important question.

    Birmingham Six
    Mr. Bill Michie: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he last met Lord Denning to discuss the case of the Birmingham Six.
    Mr. Waddington: I have not met Lord Denning to discuss this case.
    Mr. Michie: In the event of the current investigation of police officers of the West Midlands force who were also involved in the investigations of the Birmingham Six finding those officers guilty of misconduct, will the Secretary of State confirm that he will again look into the case of the Birmingham Six?
    Mr. Waddington: As the hon. Gentleman knows, this matter was investigated by the Devon and Cornwall police some years ago, leading to a reference to the Court of Appeal by my right hon. Friend the present Foreign Secretary. The case was looked at by the Court of Appeal over a very long period and the confessions were examined with great care. I am always ready to consider whether there is new evidence in a case or any consideration of

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    substance that was not looked into by the trial court, but I see no circumstances now that would warrant my intervention in the Birmingham case.
    Mr. Lawrence: Is not the often heard argument that, because there was a patent miscarriage of justice at one place at one time with one police force, that is evidence that there was another miscarriage of justice at another time and place with a different police force, wholly insane?
    Mr. Waddington: My hon. and learned Friend is entirely right; there is certainly no direct link between the Guildford case and the Birmingham case.
    Mr. Benn: Is the Home Secretary aware that the House Library contains reference to 157 answers on the Guildford case like the one that he has just given, that this matter is being examined by the European Parliament and the American Senate, and that the Prime Minister of the Republic and the primate in the North have raised it? Is he aware that in the light of what emerged in the Guildord case there is no doubt that there is new evidence now because at the time of the Birmingham Six appeal it had not been established that the police had lied? Now that that has been established that is the new evidence justifying a fresh examination.
    Mr. Waddington: That is the most ridiculous proposition that I have ever heard. The fact that there was misconduct in one case in one part of the country is hardly evidence of misconduct in another case in an entirely different part of the country. The right hon. Gentleman should know better than to talk such nonsense.

    Passports
    Mr. Jacques Arnold: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the average processing time for a non-urgent passport application at the London passport office; and what was the comparable period six months ago.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Peter Lloyd): The London passport office is processing straightforward non-urgent applications in a maximum of nine working days, compared with 32 working days six months ago.
    Mr. Arnold: I am sure that the holiday-making constituents of most hon. Members will be encouraged by that response, but is there not a danger of backsliding in the run-up to the next holiday season? What steps have been taken to ensure adequate staffing?
    Mr. Lloyd: We are determined to avoid the difficulties that we had last year and we have increased computer capacity at Glasgow and Liverpool. We have taken on 220 additional permanent staff and the Belfast office is being expanded. Work will be transferred between offices next summer to ensure a balanced load between them.
    Mr. Randall: How can the public be confident that the Minister's statement will not result in the chaos that we have had in recent years? Growth figures have been predictable and now we understand that the computer has gone wrong. Will the Minister implement the proposals in the Coopers and Lybrand report? Will he give us an
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    assurance that at Easter, next summer and at future peak periods we will not have the mess and chaos that we have experienced in recent years?
    Mr. Lloyd: I can give the hon. Gentleman the assurance that we have taken the steps that I have described. We have the situation very much in mind and have every reason Ito believe that the performance of the passport department will be excellent next year—[Interruption.]
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Beaumont-Dark) should stop shouting across the Chamber. If he looks at the Order Paper he will see that it contains another question on the Birmingham Six.

    Gun Clubs
    Mr. Colin Shepherd: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what further steps are proposed, in the light of recent incidents in Greater Manchester and elsewhere, to impose tighter controls on gun clubs.
    Mr. Peter Lloyd: Subject to the advice given to my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary by the firearms consultative committee, he proposes to withhold his approval from clubs that operate day or temporary membership schemes. Probationary members would also have to be sponsored by two existing members of the club, both of whom hold firearms certificates. They would have to be constantly supervised while on the range and would need to receive instruction in the safe handling of firearms. The number of probationary members of a club would not be permitted to exceed the number of full members.
    Mr. Shepherd: I thank my hon. Friend for that response. Does he agree that while the public are justifiably concerned about the use of firearms, gun clubs are valuable places in which this reasonable sport can be conducted with safety? I am glad that he agrees that gun clubs must be circumspect about the credentials of probationary members. Does he accept that when considering the granting of a firearms certificate for probationary members there is no substitute for an in-depth investigation by the police and that the relevant chief constable should pronounce himself satisfied?
    Mr. Lloyd: I can reassure my hon. Friend on that. Anyone seeking a firearms certificate will be subject to a full police investigation and there is most definitely no question of a certificate being granted simply because a person is a club member.
    Mr. Tony Banks: In view of the great damage to wild life will the Minister consider further extending restrictions on the use of air pistols and air rifles?
    Mr. Lloyd: I do not think that there is any need to change the law on this subject but if the hon. Gentleman has any reasons to suggest that that should be done, I shall be glad to hear them.
    Mr. John Browne: Can my hon. Friend confirm that all gun clubs need the Home Secretary's approval?
    Mr. Lloyd: Virtually all gun clubs need approval. The only ones that do not are those in which all the members already hold a certificate. In most cases those certificates

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    will stipulate that the people holding them can shoot only on a range issued with a safety certificate and, therefore, almost invariably clubs will decide that they need one.

    Birmingham Pub Bombings
    Mr. Corbyn: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he has copies of the alleged confessions of the men convicted of the Birmingham pub bombings.
    Mr. John Patten: Yes, Sir. Copies of the confession statements made by those convicted of the Birmingham public house bombings were provided to the Home Office as part of the inquiry into the case carried out by the Devon and Cornwall police in 1987.
    Mr. Corbyn: Does the Minister accept that those confessions were obtained after beatings of the six prisoners concerned and that serious inquiries are now going on into the conduct of the West Midlands police who obtained those confessions in the first place? Does he agree that six men have been wrongfully imprisoned for 15 years for crimes that they did not commit, that they were abominably treated at the beginning, and that the important thing is for him to take the simple decision to refer the whole case back to the Court of Appeal so that the men's innocence can be declared and at last they can be set free?
    Mr. Patten: All these matters have been before the courts on more than one occasion. They have been fully investigated and they are being further examined now. If the hon. Gentleman or any of his right hon. and hon. Friends comes forward with new evidence, my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary will consider it again. Until that time, I try to remember as much as I can—care though I do for the quality of justice and ensuring that no one is wrongfully imprisoned—the Birmingham 21 who were murdered and the Birmingham 162 who were injured.
    Mrs. Currie: I thank my hon. Friend for his remarks about remembering the devastation in Birmingham that was caused by the atrocious bombing. Will he accept that many of my right hon. and hon. Friends and I are thoroughly fed up with sniping attacks on the police? We have the best police force in the world, and it is about time that somebody said so.
    Mr. Patten: It is entirely right that if any policeman or woman does anything wrong, an investigation should take place and the individual should be brought to justice. On the other hand, I hope that all right hon. and hon. Members will agree that, as my hon. Friend says, we owe a great deal to the police who conduct themselves in difficult circumstances and often face violent attacks.
    Mr. Mallon: However one describes them, surely the Minister will agree that there are new factors that are common to both the Guildford case and the Birmingham case, and that many in this country and elsewhere believe that these factors are a good reason for the Home Secretary again to consider the matter. Does the Minister accept that there are compelling reasons to question the validity and the justice of the original trial verdicts?
    Mr. Patten: I can give an undertaking to the hon. Gentleman, who I know cares passionately about these
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    matters—I respect that care—that if he writes to us and presents new evidence, we shall consider it most carefully. I appeal to all right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House to come forward with their evidence. I only wish that the hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin), who is not in his place, but who persistently tells the House that he knows the names of the people who really carried out the bombing, would write to my right hon. and learned Friend and give us the names.
    Mr. Beaumont-Dark: I am most obliged to you, Mr. Speaker.
    Does my hon. Friend accept that I was the first elected official to visit the scene of the Birmingham pub bombing? I was there within an hour of that dreadful experience having taken place. No one is soft upon this dreadful offence, but the Birmingham people are concerned with justice, not with vengeance. If it is true that four members of the serious crimes squad were involved—we all accept that two trials were held, one in the Court of Appeal and one at the Crown court—would it not be good if the assistant chief constable of the West Yorkshire police, who is involved with the serious crimes squad, at least investigated the four to clear up the problem? Justice is what this place is about, and justice is what everybody should be satisfied we have had.
    Mr. Patten: My hon. Friend speaks with great power about the important balance between justice and retribution, and justice for those who might be wrongfully convicted. I can reassure my hon. Friend that there is nothing to prevent Mr. Shaw, the assistant chief constable of the West Yorkshire force, from conducting an investigation with the oversight of the Police Complaints Authority. There is nothing to prevent him from examining any matter of an earlier date if he has grounds for suspicion.

    Television Licences
    Mr. Skinner: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will now introduce free television licences for all pensioners and disabled; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Mellor: No, Sir. The cost of so doing for all pensioners would be £400 million, and would increase the price of the licence fee for the rest of us to over £100. Since many pensioners are not poor and most other television licence payers are not rich, that would not be equitable.
    Mr. Skinner: If the Government can find sweeteners for British Aerospace and are able to make handouts to their friends in the City, why cannot they find £400 million to ensure that pensioners on one side of the street who have to pay for their television licences are in the same position as those on the other side of the street who do not? Why should the Prime Minister have 13 television sets and not have to pay for a licence? She has one in every room. Even Boris has one free. Now that this place is televised, some pensioners are having to pay to watch the proceedings in the palace of varieties while some get it for nowt. Surely that is the utmost degradation. Why do the Government not make everyone equal in this respect?
    Mr. Mellor: Without being ungentlemanly, I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman was right to quote the example of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister? He

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    is suggesting that she should have an additional concession by having a free licence as a lady of pensionable age. That identifies precisely why he is advancing a bad idea. There are plenty of pensioners who are well off and do not require a state subsidy for their television licences. There are plenty of other non-pensioner, non-disabled licence payers who would resent, and rightly so, having to pay £100 instead of £66 to provide for a concession that is merely an electoral bribe for some and a fine for others.
    Mr. Andrew MacKay: Does my hon. and learned Friend accept that most reasonable people would say that there is no justification whatever in giving free television licences to every pensioner, including many who are extremely well off, while at the same time a large number of young families on limited incomes have to pay for a full and increased licence, which is hardly fair?
    Mr. Mellor: My hon. Friend is right. It is interesting that, notwithstanding the stridency of Opposition Members, when they come to formulate their policy proposals they do so with great care, simply saying that it is their
    "intention to move towards a funding system which will permit"—
    presumably an open-ended commitment that could well be ignored in any Parliament that so chose. Those are weasel words, but if any right hon. or hon. Member on the Opposition Front Bench wished to toughen them up a bit and give a categorical assurance that would delight the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), I am sure that he will catch your eye, Mr. Speaker.

    Police National Computer
    Mr. McFall: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what decision he has made regarding the privatisation of the police national computer and the passing of control of the police national computer into the hands of an executive agency.
    Mr. Waddington: The police national computer organisation is engaged in work to replace the existing computer with a new system-PNC2. This is planned to become operational by the end of 1990. I have not yet considered the longer-term role of the organisation. That will depend on a number of factors, including the programme of work on the provision of further information systems for the police. Plans for those systems are presently being developed.
    Mr. McFall: Does the Secretary of State realise that the Police Federation is passionately opposed to the privatisation proposal on the ground that private security firms will now have access to information which they have historically been denied, destroying the relationship between the police and the public on confidentiality? Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman realise that programmes such as "Crimewatch" would no longer be able to carry the message that the police will keep confidential any information that they receive, which in effect will increase crime? If the right hon. and learned Gentleman hands over the police national computer to the executive agency, will he state unequivocally why?
    Mr. Waddington: Obviously, we want effective and efficient management and the best value for the taxpayer. We must consider all the options, including contracting
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    out, executive agency status, or a combination of the two. I fully agree that two matter that we must consider are security and confidentiality, but executive agency status is not incompatible with the security that the hon. Gentleman wants.
    Mr. Sayeed: Will the terminals to the computer be connected by fibre optics or through the general telephone lines? If it is the latter, how shall we ensure the security of the system?
    Mr. Waddington: I shall have to write to my hon. Friend about that. Proposals have not yet been put to me, but I shall study them anxiously when they are.
    Mr. Darling: The Home Secretary seems to be telling the House that he will spend public money on improving the police computer before deciding whether it should be privatised. What benefits could possibly accrue to the detection or prevention of crime from privatising the police national computer? Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman accept that if it were privatised, confidentiality and security would be prejudiced? How on earth does the privatisation proposal assist us in the fight against crime?
    Mr. Waddington: I do not see the logic of the argument that executive agency status need necessarily prejudice security and confidentiality. I agree that we must look into all the relevant matters, but at the end of the day we want an efficient system which represents good value for money.

    Knives
    Mr. Tredinnick: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many prosecutions have been brought under the Crminal Justice Act 1988 provisions banning the public carrying of knives.
    Mr. Peter Lloyd: Section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, which makes it an offence to be in possession of a knife in a public place without good reason, came into force on 29 September 1988. In the remainder of 1988 in England and Wales, 150 people were prosecuted under this section, of whom 130 were found guilty.
    Mr. Tredinnick: Given the low number of prosecutions, is my hon. Friend satisfied that the Act is working effectively? What was the number of prosecutions and convictions in Leicestershire during 1988? Is he aware of the great popularity of the legislation that bans stars and other martial arts weapons?
    Mr. Lloyd: The figure for Leicestershire last year was only one, but provisional figures for this year show that the Act is increasingly being used. I expect it to be used even more as the police become more familiar with it and realise the ways open to them to use it.

  PRIME MINISTER

    Engagements
    Mr. Buchan: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.
    The Prime Minister (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher): This morning I presided at a meeting of the Cabinet and had

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    meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. I shall depart for Strasbourg later today to attend the European Council.
    Mr. Buchan: When the right hon. Lady met her fellow Ministers this morning, did she discuss with the Secretary of State for Scotland his astonishing statement yesterday about homelessness in Scotland, when he said that there was no need for money to be included in the public expenditure statement for homelessness in Scotland because additional money was being made available for London and many of the homeless in London were young Scots? Would the right hon. Lady be prepared to spend Christmas in a cardboard box? Does she agree that the Secretary of State made an appalling statement, both about the position in London and that in Scotland?
    The Prime Minister: My right hon. and learned Friend will answer the hon. Gentleman as he did very effectively with regard to Scotland. Many bed spaces in London are not used in the evening, especially those available for the homeless. People are sometimes sent to such places but do not receive any attention for their personal problems, which we think is necessary. The amount that is being spent on homelessness will continue to increase. In general, the number of houses has risen. The amount available to the Housing Corporation over the next two years will rise from about £817 million to about £1,500 million.
    Mrs. Ann Winterton: My right hon. Friend will be aware of the overwhelming support on both sides of the House and in the country for the cause of the pre-1973 war widows. Will she review the Government's policy as a matter of urgency and place those deserving women, without exception, on a par with their post-1973 colleagues?
    The Prime Minister: As my hon. Friend knows, most of the advances in war widows' pensions—whether on tax matters or the additional amounts given from the age of 65, again at 70 and again at 80—have been made by Conservative Governments. It is an excellent record that we are anxious to keep. We are therefore considering the matter further and hope to be in position to make a further statement before Christmas.
    Mr. Hattersley: When the permanent secretary to the Department of Trade and Industry said on Monday that the terms of the Rover deal were hidden to avoid severely damaging our relations with the European Community, what did he mean?
    The Prime Minister: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry has answered to the House. I firmly agree with the view that the sale of Rover to British Aerospace was greatly in the interests of the British taxpayer, who had already lost about £3 billion, with another £1·6 billion at risk. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, we were in danger of losing the deal. It was an extremely good deal for the British taxpayer and it remains an extremely good deal.
    Mr. Hattersley: As that answer bears not the slightest relationship to the question that the Prime Minister was asked, let me return to the statement made by the permanent secretary to a Committee of the House this week. When he spoke of severe damage to our relations with the European Community, was he not saying in terms that to have revealed the truth would have done so much
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    damage that the Government entered into a calculated deception, and is that view not reinforced by today's revelation that the Government assessed the consequences of such a deception? If there was no deception, why did Lord Young circulate colleagues asking what the price of deception would be?
    The Prime Minister: I do not accept the right hon. Gentleman's interpretation of letters which I understand are now being discussed. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry answered questions on the other matters in the House, and answered them satisfactorily.
    Mr. Hattersley: Is the Prime Minister aware that, although she may not accept that interpretation, Parliament, the country and the European Community do? That is why she will go to Strasbourg with a tarnished reputation.
    The Prime Minister: Parliament, the European Community and, above all, the country, know full well that this was an excellent deal for the British taxpayer, as well as for all who work at Rover and who previously worked at British Leyland. It was good for both workers and taxpayers to privatise both the lorry and the car sectors. Of course the right hon. Gentleman does not like that; he would much prefer the British taxpayer to have to pay over and over again, as long as the thing stayed nationalised—and that was bad.
    Mr. Brazier: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Brazier: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the decision by the EEC Transport Ministers to deregulate air fares is a triumph for British diplomacy, and that it is the kind of concrete measure to help ordinary citizens that she called for at Bruges? Will she take it from me that the majority of the British people wish her well on her way to the Strasbourg summit, and would like to hear more in the same vein?
    The Prime Minister: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Britain has been pressing very hard to secure cheaper air fares in Europe: we were paying far more per mile to go there than we have ever paid to go to the United States. The agreement is indeed a triumph for British diplomacy, and also a triumph for our kind of Europe. We believe in a much freer and more open Europe, which will break down trade barriers and be of great benefit to the people of Britain. [Interruption.]
    Mr. Speaker: Order. There is a great deal of noise today.
    Mr. Hume: Given the agenda of the Strasbourg summit, will the Prime Minister reflct on some realities on her way there—for instance, the fact that West Germany's interest rate is 5 per cent., Holland's 6 per cent., Denmark's 7 per cent. and Belgium's and France's 9 per cent., while the United Kingdom's is 15 per cent? Moreover, the inflation rates of all those countries are less than half that of the United Kingdom. Given her attitude to the European monetary system, why does the Prime Minister think that all those countries are out of step?
    The Prime Minister: Let me point out—citing some of the countries that the hon. Gentleman mentioned—that Belgium's unemployment rate is 10 per cent., Denmark's and Spain's is 16·8 per cent., France's 10 per cent., Ireland's 17·3 per cent., Italy's 10·7 per cent. and the United Kingdom's 6 per cent.
    Sir Richard Body: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Sir Richard Body: As my right hon. Friend will have an opportunity to express her views on the European social charter this weekend in Strasbourg, will she make it plain that—far from being some document of woolly principles—the charter contains some 43 action points, including 17 directives to the House to change the law? According to an independent study by Liverpool university, one of those directives is in danger of causing the loss of no fewer than half a million jobs in this country.
    The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend is absolutely right: the social charter was accompanied by an action programme embodying 43 proposals and 17 directives, most of which were entirely inappropriate for the Commission. If any action is to be taken, it should be a matter for national Parliaments.
    Furthermore, the social charter would cause a great increase in unemployment in this country—and, I believe, in others—and would probably mean a fortress Europe in the end. It is utterly right that the House rejected it decisively in a vote, and we shall do the same at Strasbourg.
    Mr. Pike: Does the Prime Minister recognise that millions of people in this country have been losers as a result of her Government's policies during the last 10 years and that increasingly millions of people recognise that they will lose even more next April when the poll tax is introduced, because of its basic unfairness and its failure to take into account ability to pay? Will she do something urgently to rectify that, or does she intend to allow the losers to ensure that she and her party lose the next general election?
    The Prime Minister: The overwhelming majority of people in this country have been gainers during the lifetime of this Government. Their standard of living is higher than they have ever known before. The standard of social services is also higher than they have ever known before.
    As for the community charge, I imagine that the hon. Gentleman believes that people should bear a fair share of the cost of local authority public expenditure. In England, only 25 per cent. of local authority expenditure is borne by the community charge. About 9 million or 10 million people will get a community charge rebate, at a cost of £2·5 billion to £3 billion, every penny piece of which will be paid by the taxpayer. I hope that the hon. Gentleman does not wish people to get out of paying their legitimate dues to the local authority.
    Q4. Mr. Sumberg: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December 1988.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Sumberg: Given the economic revival of the north-west of England as a result of the policies of my right hon. Friend and her Government, would it not be a really good advertisement for Britain if Manchester were to host the 1996 Olympic games? If my right hon. Friend agrees with me, will she join me in supporting the campaign to achieve the objective?
    The Prime Minister: I agree entirely that to hold the 1996 Olympic games in Manchester would be a very good way of celebrating the revival of the north-west under this Government. I wish the Manchester Olympic bid team well. I wrote on, I believe, 10 November to the International Olympic committee supporting Manchester's claim for the Olympic games in 1996 to be held in Manchester.
    Mr. Shore: Now that Chancellor Kohl has provided a welcome respite from the headlong rush into European union—[Interruption.]
    Mr. Speaker: Order.
    Mr. Shore: —does not the Prime Minister agree that it would make very good sense for Britain now to organise a serious study of the constitutional and economic consequences of economic and monetary union—a study not confined to the governors of the European central banks—and at the same time to ensure that placed at the very top of the European agenda is the future relationship between the European Communities and the emerging independent and democratic countries of eastern Europe? [Interruption.]
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The Prime Minister.
    The Prime Minister: As the right hon. Gentleman is aware, when the House debated these matters it took precisely the same view as that which he has expressed so clearly on Delors stages 2 and 3: that it was not right to take away from the House of Commons fundamental rights that are central to our duties. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, we have already produced an alternative paper on monetary union which will be considered along with the Delors paper. It goes just a little beyond stage 1, but it would not require any central bank or any common currency. However, it would result in more consistent monetary policies.
    As for the relationship between the Community and eastern European countries, we shall be considering that matter at Strasbourg. We put a paper to the Commission, following questions that I raised at the Paris summit just a few days ago, about the varying kinds of relationships that we could have with eastern European countries. The matter will, therefore, be discussed at the Strasbourg meeting, and I shall duly report upon it to the House on my return.
    Mr Dunn: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Dunn: Is the Prime Minister aware that all right hon. and hon. Members welcome the destruction of the

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    Berlin wall? Does she agree with me that remnants of the wall ought to be kept standing to remind us, and those who follow us, that the wall was built by Socialists, not to keep people out but to keep them in?
    The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend makes his point effectively in his own inimitable way. After 40 years of that sort of system, people in eastern Europe are making their views very clear indeed. Socialism does not work and they want to have no more of it.

Business of the House
3.30 pm
Dr. John Cunningham: Will the Leader of the House tell us the business for next week?
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Sir Geoffrey Howe): Yes, Sir. The business for next week will be as follows:
MONDAY II DECEMBER—Second Reading of the National Health Service and Community Care Bill (2nd Day)
Motion to take note of EC documents relating to the 1990 EC Budget. Details will be given in the Official Report.
Motion to take note of EC documents relating to Community research and development. Details will be given in the Official Report.
TUESDAY 12 DECEMBER—Until about seven o'clock, there will be a debate on a motion on war crimes.
Motion on the Electricity Supply (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Order.
Motion on the Ministerial and Other Salaries Order.
The Chairman of Ways and Means has named opposed private business for consideration at seven o'clock.
WEDNESDAY I3 DECEMBER—Opposition day (1st Allotted Day). Until about seven o'clock there will be a debate entitled "Government policy and its Effects on Mortgage Costs and Housing". Afterwards there will be a debate entitled "Famine in Ethiopia", both debates will arise on Opposition motions.
Motion on the Education Reform (Northern Ireland) Order.
THURSDAY I4 DECEMBER—Until about seven o'clock, a debate on a motion to take note of EC documents relating to fisheries arrangements for 1990.
Second Reading of the Landlord and Tenant (Licensed Premises) Bill
Motions on the Supply of Beer (Tied Estate) Order and the Supply of Beer (Loan Ties, Licensed Premises and Wholesale Prices) Order.
FRIDAY I5 DECEMBER—Private Members' motions.
MONDAY I8 DECEMBER—Second Reading of the Broadcasting Bill
Mr. Speaker, the House will wish to know that, subject to the progress of business, it will be proposed that the House should rise for the Christmas Adjournment on Thursday 21 December until Monday 8 January, and it is not intended to take questions on Thursday 21 December.
[Monday 11 December 1989
(1) Relevant European Community Documents

(a) COM (89)175

Preliminary Draft Budget of the European Communities for 1990

(b) 8271/89

The Draft Budget of the European Communities for 1990

(c) 9704/89

Draft Budget of the European Communities for 1990: changes proposed by the European Parliament

(d) 8848/89

Letter of Amendment No. 1 to the Preliminary Draft Budget of the European Communities for 1990

(e) 9627/89

Letter of Amendment No. 2 to the Preliminary Draft Budget of the European Communities for 1990

Relevant Reports of European Legislation Committee

(a) HC 15-xxxii (1988–89), para 3

(b) HC 15-xxxvii (1988–89), para 3

(c) HC 11-iii (1989–90), para 4

(d) HC 15-xxxvi (1988–89), para 8

(e) HC 15-xxxviii (1988–89), para 8

(2) Relevant European Community Document

8375/89

Community Research Framework

Relevant Reports of European Legislation Committee
HC 15-xxxvii (1988–89), para 1 and HC 11-ii (1989–90), para 2
Dr. Cunningham: I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. Will the Leader of the House assure us that his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will make a full statement to the House on her return from the Strasbourg summit?
Has the attention of the Leader of the House been drawn to the report on drug trafficking from the Select Committee on Home Affairs published today? Does he recognise that people in Britain will be astonished and horrified to learn that some £2 billion is currently calculated by that Committee to be in British banks as a result of criminal activities by drug traffickers? Since it is unreasonable to expect the Government to be able to respond to that report in tomorrow's debate, will he assure us that the Government will respond to it with urgency and that the House will soon have an opportunity to debate the Government's response?
May I ask in the interests, I believe, of right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House, whether the Leader of the House will ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to expedite publication of the ombudsman's report into the Barlow Clowes affair? Does he accept that it would be unreasonable and, indeed, unacceptable for that important report, which affects many thousands of our constituents, to be unduly delayed by the Department of Trade and Industry?
With that Department in mind, and given the recent exchanges in Prime Minister's questions and the disclosures by my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) today, does the Leader of the House accept that being economical with the truth seems to have been elevated to a principle of government, particularly by the Department of Trade and Industry? Is it not now more urgent than ever to have a proper debate about that Department's handling of the British Aerospace purchase of Rover and the Department's rather unhappy, to say the least, involvement in it?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: On the hon. Gentleman's first point, about the suggestion that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister should make a statement following her return from the Strasbourg summit, he is aware of the custom in that respect, and I shall convey his remarks to my right hon. Friend.
As for the hon. Gentleman's second point, about the Home Affairs Select Committee's report on drugs, I have, sadly, to say that it is almost impossible to surprise me about the scale of the accumulation or handling of money in relation to drugs, which is always more substantial than one expects or fears. That is why the Government have taken the action that they have to trace and confiscate the proceeds which accrue to convicted drug offenders. We

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will continue to take effective and energetic action in so far as we can. There is, of course, a debate tomorrow. There will be a response to the Select Committee's report in due course. The fact that these matters pile upon us almost week after week underlines the seriousness with which the House views this important subject.
As to the hon. Gentleman's third point, the Government are conscious of the distress and hardship that has been caused to many hon. Members' constituents, including, no doubt, some of the hon. Member's and mine, by the collapse of Barlow Clowes. We are all aware of the understandable desire of everyone concerned to get the matter resolved as quickly as possible. At the moment, the Parliamentary Commissioner's draft report is with the Department of Trade and Industry and he will receive from that Department its considered response as quickly as possible. I do not believe that it will be possible for the House to debate the matter until the report has been finalised, but everybody is well aware of the need to press ahead with it.
Finally, I come to the point which was raised more tendentiously by the hon. Member. It seems that prejudging issues before they have been fully studied is becoming a principle of opposition. The sale of the Government's shareholding in the Rover Group is, as the House well knows, still under investigation by the Public Accounts Committee, which will report in due course. I think that the House should await its report.
Mr. Edward Heath: Will my right hon. and learned Friend reconsider his proposal to allocate only half a day to the debate on alleged war crimes on Tuesday? He especially will appreciate that this matter is of the utmost importance, and that many right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House want to take part in the debate. If the proposals which have been discussed and which apparently will govern the Government's actions were put into effect, they would involve basic changes in our constitutional practice and our legislative and judicial system. The shortage of time will be even greater if our right hon. Friend the Prime Minister decides to make a statement on Tuesday about the Strasbourg meeting. That will take up the first three quarters of an hour, or an hour. I ask my right hon. and learned Friend to reconsider and to give us a day's debate on a matter which is vital to the House and to those who are alleged to be involved.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I do not, of course, under-estimate the importance of this matter, but when deciding the length of time that should be available, we had also to consider the need to get ahead with the matter, in accordance with earlier undertakings, before Christmas. I can assure my right hon. Friend that the debate will last for the full three hours. It will not be curtailed by any time taken up by any statement that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister might make. Moreover, the commencement of private business will be deferred to allow the debate to continue, although private business will also have its full three hours.
Mr. James Wallace: In relation to another debate next week, the Leader of the House may not be aware that our last annual fisheries debate was truncated to just over an hour and a half because of
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business questions and a statement. Given that it is accepted on both sides of the House that fishing is in an acute state of crisis, will he give a clear undertaking, similar to the one that he just gave, that at least three hours will be given to the debate?
Secondly, the Leader of the House will have heard at Question Time about homelessness and that this week Shelter Scotland reported a 76 per cent. increase in homelessness in the past six years. Within a mile of this place people are living rough in the streets. Can we have another debate on homelessness before Christmas?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I am afraid that I cannot give any undertaking in response to the hon. Gentleman's last point. On his point about the debate on fisheries, it is the intention that the debate should last for the full three hours.
Mr. Kenneth Hind: My right hon. and learned Friend will be aware that, after the Strasbourg summit, there will be a great deal of anxiety about the future of Europe, particularly in view of the discussions on the social charter and the effect that Germany's changed policy towards stages 1, 2 and 3 of Delors will have on thinking. Today it was announced in a Liverpool university study that the jobs of 500,000 people will be lost should the Government agree to the social charter in its present form. Given that, post-Strasbourg, there will be an entirely different attitude to Europe and that Governments' positions will have changed, will he give time in the near future for a debate on this most important matter?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: My hon. Friend is right to remind the House of the importance of the events taking place in eastern Europe and about the importance of the European summit, which takes its place in a long line of such regular events. As my hon. Friend knows, we had a debate within the past seven days on East-West matters. It is interesting to note how much time in the programme for next week is taken up by debating various aspects of the Community. I cannot promise any additional separate debate on Europe in general, but I have the impression that European issues will not long be far from the agenda of the House.
Mr. Alfred Morris: Will there be a ministerial statement of any kind on war widows' pensions next week? If not, will there be one before Christmas?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said, the matter is being considered in the hope that a statement can be made at an early stage. I hope that that will meet the right hon. Gentleman's point for the moment.
Dr. Alan Glyn: Will my right hon. and learned Friend reconsider the proposition of my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath)? The matter of war crimes has reached the stage where it attracts considerable public attention and it should be given time for fuller debate.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: It is for the reason given by my hon. Friend that we have arranged that the time allotted for the debate will not be curtailed by other business.
Mr. Dafydd Wigley: Is the Leader of the House aware that there is considerable feeling in Wales about the need for a new Welsh language Act? Is he further aware that the Welsh Language Board set up by the Welsh Office has reported back with a draft Act? Even if he cannot give a commitment to bring forward legislation, will there be a debate in the immediate future?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: Even if I am not immediately aware of that matter, the Secretary of State for Wales is. There is, no doubt, the prospect of the regular St. David's day debate, which is coming up soon.
Dame Peggy Fenner: Given that I cannot put this question to the Chairman of Ways and Means, what action can be taken on the Floor of the House to ensure that the private Bills objected to by one Opposition Member or another throughout the last weeks of the previous Session—
Mr. Dennis Skinner: Including one of yours.
Dame Peggy Fenner: Including one of mine, and the vital Medway Tunnel Bill—can proceed?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: As my hon. Friend is aware, the supervision of private Bills is under the surveillance of the Chairman of Ways and Means. Many hon. Members on both sides are rightly anxious about the question that she raised. The revival motion, which includes all the Bills which the Chairman of Ways and Means has set down for debate on Thursday 9 November, is on the Order Paper for debate on Tuesday 12 December. It must be hoped that that motion will help to carry forward the mass resurrection of private Bills, to which many hon. Members look forward.
Mr. Robert Hughes: Does the Leader of the House accept that, in next Thursday's debate, it would not be acceptable for the Government simply to reject the preposterous proposals by Commmission Marin, the Fisheries Commissioner, and to say that they have succeeded in reaching agreement on the two low levels proposed by the Commission, and that he will table a motion in better terms which will allow the House to decide how fisheries should be managed in future?
Recently, reports have been published by a man called Williams on agricultural education in Scotland. Since Scots Members are denied the opportunity to discuss the report in the Scottish Affairs Select Committee, because we have none—it is an ideal subject, as there are profound changes—will the Leader of the House assure us that there will be an opportunity to debate the issue before the Minister takes his decision, which I believe is expected to be before Christmas?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I am afraid that I cannot give any undertaking in respect of the hon. Gentleman's second point. All I can do is draw the matter to the attention of my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland. The Commission's proposals are the background to the debate, and are expected to be available on Friday 8 December. I cannot offer any undertaking about the response that my right hon. Friends may make in their discussion on these matters.
Mr. Jim Lester: In view of the considerable concern still felt in all parts of the House
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about the progress of negotiations towards the involuntary repatriation of Vietnamese boat people, will the House have an opportunity to consider that important question before Christmas and before any final policy statement is made?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I know of my hon. Friend's continuing interest in this matter and of the interest expressed in all parts of the House. I hope that there will be an opportunity for the House to debate the matter before long.
Ms. Mildred Gordon: May I call the attention of the Leader of the House to early-day motion 153?
[That this House notes with concern the results of a gallup poll conducted by Channel 4 Television showing that every year over eight million obscene telephone calls are received by women in Britain and that every day more than two thousand of these calls also threaten violence, that a number of women terrorised by such repeated calls move house or have mental breakdowns, that nevertheless telephone companies and the police rarely give this matter priority or attempt to trace the offenders, that the penalty for sending obscene letters through the post, Malicious Communications Act 1988, is higher than for making obscene calls, Telecommunications Act 1984, that fifteen per cent. of the callers know the woman they call, though the woman may not know them, and that some rapists also make obscene calls which are themselves a form of violence and an invasion of privacy; and therefore asks the Home Secretary to set up an inquiry into the extent of this problem to examine the work of the special department of Bell Telephone Incorporated of New Jersey, United States of America which helps victims trap offending callers, to take measures to improve the rate of detection and conviction of offenders and to take steps leading to the amendment of the said Telecommunications Act 1984, section 43 increasing the penalty; and calls upon the Director General of Telecommunications to make a condition of granting licences to British Telecom and Mercury that they each set up a department at their own expense to trace obscene phone calls when requested to do so in writing by victims.]
A similar motion tabled in October was supported by 185 Members from all parties. There are 8 million obscene telephone calls a year, of which 3,000 every day threaten sexual attack, murder or other forms of violence. The crime is committed more frequently than any other in the British crime survey. Effective measures are taken in the United States of America, but little is done to track offenders in the United Kingdom.
There is mounting anger and anxiety about this form of violence against women which is socially unacceptable. Will the Leader of the House arrange a debate so that the House may consider the matter thoroughly and see what can be done both for offenders and for victims?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: Without intending to be discourteous to the hon. Lady, her question was of sufficient length to amount almost to a debate in itself. Obviously she is right to attach importance to dealing with this obnoxious practice, and it is right that we should do all we can to stop it. I shall bring the matter to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary as quickly as possible.
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Can my right hon. and learned Friend do anything to expedite the Kings Cross Railways Bill, which is extremely important to the north-west of England, ahead of the Channel tunnel, and which is stuck because Labour Members are not attending the Committee?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I do not think that I can do anything directly about that matter, but my hon. Friend is right to draw attention to it. The anxiety she expresses underlines the importance that we all should attach to ensuring the continued effective operation of the present procedure for private Bills. I say that without prejudice to the need to re-examine that procedure in the long term.
Mr. Alex Salmond: May I return the Leader of the House to the fisheries debate next Thursday? Given that the opportunities since the summer to debate this vital industry have been in minority party time forced by me and my Scottish National party colleagues and by the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood), is it not now incumbent on the Government to allow at least a full day's debate on the crisis enveloping this vital industry in Scotland?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: It would not doubt be desirable to allow a full day's debate on almost everything—I do not mean any unkindness when I say that. It is simply not possible to fit matters in on that basis. We have made three hours available, however, for the important debate on fisheries, to which the hon. Gentleman has drawn attention. Again, in response to requests from both sides of the House, we are devoting two days and not one to the National Health Service and Community Care Bill. One cannot respond to every request by expanding time.
Mr. Ian Gow: However unusual, even unprecedented, it may be, may I ask the Leader of the House to reconsider the request put to him by my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath)? The assurance that my right hon. and learned Friend gave is wholly inadequate. If we are to debate this matter for three hours only, will that not mean that only one and a half hours will be available for Beck Banchers? Surely the proposal will involve retrospective legislation should the Government decide to proceed. My right hon. and learned Friend is a former Law Officer. Does he not agree that one and a half hours for Back Benchers to discuss a matter of such importance is wholly inadequate?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I understand, of course, the point raised by my hon. Friend. The debate is not likely to take place on the basis of speeches from Front Bench spokesmen with concluding speeches of comparable length from those spokesmen. The debate will take place on a motion already on the Order Paper tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Sir B. Braine) and the interventions from the Front Bench will be more modest in length, because, essentially, this is a matter for the House to express a view. On that basis, the full assurance of time for which we have made arrangements has been seen as sufficient. Given all my respect for my hon. Friend, he is making a suggestion that is almost without precedent.
Mr. David Winnick: Does not the Leader of the House recognise that, despite what he has just said, it is farcical that such an important issue of
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whether the law should be changed on alleged war criminals should have only three hours allocated for its discussion? As I understand it, you, Mr. Speaker, will have no authority under the appropriate Standing Orders to impose a time limit on speeches. Therefore, a number of Back Benchers who want to express a view will have absolutely no chance of doing so, especially those who are not Privy Councillors. Is it not possible, even at this late stage, for the Leader of the House to understand the strength of feeling on both sides of the House? If we are to have such a debate, at least five or six hours should be allocated to it. Has the Leader of the House so firmly made up his mind that there is no room for flexibility?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I do not wish to appear insensitive or inflexible, but I am trying to fit a great deal of the work into the time available for it. The decision taken to recommend the time currently proposed came after wide consultation. It should not be necessary for the House to have an order imposed upon it from the Chair to limit contributions on such a subject. I hope that hon. Members will be able to make the best use of the time we currently propose.
Mr. Richard Holt: My right hon. and learned Friend will be aware that the overwhelming majority of my constituents still resent the fact that they are no longer able to call themselves Yorkshiremen because of the creation of the county of Cleveland. Because of that quirk and line on the map, brought about by bureaucracy, all my constituents will be paying approximately £100 a head more under the community charge than they would if they were still in North Yorkshire. Given that anomaly, is it not time that the Government reconsidered local government boundaries and restored my constituents to their natural heritage?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I understand the instinct that prompts my hon. Friend's question. I shall be visiting what I still call Yorkshire tomorrow. I cannot undertake, least of all retrospectively, to effect the change for which he understandably presses.
Mr. David Steel: Given his previous responsibility as Foreign Secretary, the Leader of the House will agree that the Strasbourg meeting this weekend, to which the Prime Minister has gone, is not just a routine Council of Ministers meeting, but is, potentially, one of historic and crucial importance to all Europe. Given that the Prime Minister may be alone at that meeting, unless she takes the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) with her, and if that summit goes wrong, surely we should have a debate rather than just a statement on it before Christmas.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I understand the importance that the right hon. Gentleman attaches to this, as to every summit of this kind. The House has a well established procedure in these matters. The Opposition Front Bench has asked me to request a statement following such a meeting. It is not impossible for a debate to be arranged subsequently in special cases on special topics, but I do not have that in mind at this stage.
Sir Richard Body: As we do not wish to waste our time in the House, as we did in the last Session, by passing legislation which the European Commission subsequently tells us we should not have

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passed—it said that we were naughty boys and girls—will my right hon. and learned Friend confirm that the legislation which he has in mind has been cleared by the European Commission? In that way, we will not have our time wasted as it was with the Merchant Shipping Act 1988.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: My hon. Friend will understand that the Government seek always to propose legislation that is compatible with our treaty obligations, including our obligations under the European Communities Act 1972 and its associated treaties. This is always subject to any rulings that may be made in accordance with those treaties by the European Court of Justice. That has been the position since the House passed the European Communities Bill.
Mr. Doug Hoyle: Will the Leader of the House look at early-day motion 120 on the future of the Export Credits Guarantee Department?
[That this House notes that the future of the Export Credits Guarantee Department is under consideration by the Government; recalls that the Kemp Report recommended: (a) that there was no alternative to a Government scheme for long-term and project business if British exports were to remain competitive and (b) that the Insurance Services Group should become a Government-owned company with a view to the eventual introduction of private capital; is concerned that the Treasury Memorandum to the Trade and Industry Select Committee shows the maximum possible short-term loss, if Government support for the Project Group is withdrawn, would be £1,500 million or 2 per cent. of annual exports; insists that the Export Credits Guarantee Department's interest rate stabilisation function be maintained; and believes that any withdrawal of Government support for long-term and project export business would be gravely damaging to the United Kingdom's trade position.]
The right hon. and learned Gentleman will see that, if support for the project group is withdrawn, that will affect £1·5 billion, or 2 per cent. of our exports. That is causing great concern to industry. Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to make an early statement on the Kemp report and thereby remove this cloud which is hanging over British industry and affecting our export drive?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: The hon. Gentleman draws attention to an important matter. The interdepartmental working group which has been formed to consult interested parties and offer advice to Ministers on the Kemp review has recently submitted its report to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. The recommendations are being considered by Ministers. Obviously, we are aware of the wish of all parties for us to come to an early conclusion.
Mr. Rupert Allason: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that, in July this year, the Government announced the calculation for the Government contribution towards the community charge, which is known by the acronym GREA, meaning grant-related expenditure assessment? More recently, a new figure, the SSA—standard spending assessment—has been announced, with Tuesday given as the time limit for consultation. Will my right hon. and learned Friend please find time between now and Christmas for a debate on the
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crucial shortfall which has affected many local authorities—including mine, which has been affected by a 13·5 per cent. reduction in Government support?
This means that between, now and April, my local authority, Torbay will have to find about £2 million in savings. It is impossible for the authority to achieve that in this short time. As my area is just the sixth largest net loser in this exercise, will my right hon. and learned Friend find time to debate this important matter?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I am afraid that I cannot offer the prospect of time to debate the matter in the way suggested by my hon. Friend. I shall bring his point to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment. In due course there will be an opportunity for a debate on this subject, but not in the way suggested by my hon. Friend.
Mr. Dave Nellist: Can the Leader of the House explain why another week has gone by without a statement or a debate in Government time on the three-month-old ambulance dispute, which now involves a lockout in London and many other areas? Is he aware that yesterday, many thousands of workers took solidaritary strike action in support of the caring women and men of the ambulance service?
Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that there is a growing demand among trade unionists for a recalled Trades Union Congress to set a date for a national day of action to support the ambulance crews and events in the National Health Service? If he insists on prolonging this dispute through Christmas and if a life is lost, responsibility for that action will lie with the Secretary of State for Health, the Prime Minister and the Government. If half a million people can be brought into Wenceslas square, there are a million people who are prepared to come down to Trafalgar square in defence of the ambulance workers.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I do not believe that the point made by the hon. Gentleman is made any more impressive by the volume with which he chooses to deliver it. The facts are well known. The Association of Professional Ambulance Personnel is balloting its members individually on an improved offer made by the management side on 5 December. That improved offer is based on a proposal put forward on 17 November by Duncan Nichol, the National Health Service chief executive, but the other unions—this is the important point—have been unwilling to return to negotiations. The offer has been extended to all staff. The other trade unions should let their members decide on the offer, instead of continuing action against the patients.
Mr. Steve Norris: Does my right hon. and learned Friend recall that on this occasion last week I asked him for an urgent debate on the licensing procedures established under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986? Will he note that since then I have received an answer to a number of parliamentary questions to my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department? All those responses have been cloaked in secrecy.
Will my right hon. and learned Friend further note that the hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. Crowther), who was Chairman of the Standing Committee when the Bill in question was before the House, has independently confirmed that at no time during debate on the Bill was it

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ever suggested that licensing reports under the subsequent Act would be made secret? Will my right hon. and learned Friend now reconsider his decision and call for an early debate on this important topic so that we can find out what is going on under the licensing arrangements made under the Act?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I clearly need to find out more about the background to my hon. Friend's point before giving a confident answer. I congratulate him on the tenacity with which he raises it, and I shall make sure that it is looked into.
Ms. Diane Abbott: May I draw the attention of the Leader of the House to early-day motion 159 on the subject of dangerous microwave ovens?
[That this House notes the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food's recent tests on microwave ovens; notes that 32 of the 102 ovens tested failed to heat properly; further notes that these ovens are potentially dangerous and further notes the Minister's refusal to publish the names of the dangerous ovens; and calls upon him to place this information in the Library in the interests of public health and safety.]
Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware of the enormous public disquiet occasioned, first, by the evident reluctance of Ministers to bring forward important information about dangerous ovens until pressed to do so by the public and by Labour party Front Bench spokesmen? It has been occasioned, secondly, by the fact that the Minister seems to have undertaken testing on condition that he would not let the results be known. Thirdly, disquiet has been caused—
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Lady must ask for a debate, not go into detail.
Ms. Abbott: Given the disquiet about the fact that in the end information about a food safety issue had to be put out by the manufacturers rather than by the Ministry, will the Leader—
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Lady is going through the arguments that were raised yesterday at some length. She must ask for a debate.
Ms. Abbott: Can we have an urgent debate on food safety matters, because the Government have yet to persuade the public that they put the interests of the public above those of manufacturers?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: This is one of the more fanciful requests made to me since I have been doing this job—
Mr. Tony Banks: Stick around.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: The fact is that, on Monday 4 December, a report published by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food drew attention to tests on microwave ovens of this kind, and within three days of that, it was the subject of a statement to the House yesterday by my right hon. Friend, who answered all the questions effectively. We have therefore taken action with extreme promptitude to meet the hon. Lady's point.
Mr. Tony Marlow: May I support the request by the hon. Member for Copeland
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(Dr. Cunningham) for a debate on the subject of Rover and British Aerospace, so that we can find out from the superannuated student leader who speaks for the Opposition on this subject what it is that the Opposition really want? Do they want to renationalise Rover, thereby spending thousands of millions of pounds of public money on policies acceptable to their trade union paymasters, or do they want to sell it off to foreigners on the basis that Rover can be closed down, we shall have no car manufacturing left in this country and thousands of jobs will be lost?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: My hon. Friend gives some reasons why he might be expected to take a prominent part in any debate of that kind. Such a debate should await the report of the Select Committee that is investigating.
Mr. Terry Davis: In view of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's suggestion that the House should await the report from the Public Accounts Committee about the acquisition of the Rover Group by British Aerospace before debating the issue, will he assure us that in due course there will be a specific debate on that report, especially as it is now crystal clear that the Government's contribution of £9·5 million towards the acquisition of the minority shareholding was deliberately fixed at that level to avoid the need for a debate in the House?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: On this matter, as I have said already, it would not be appropriate to come to a decision until we have the report of the Select Committee before us.
Mr. Michael Latham: Regarding next Tuesday's Adjournment debate on the desperate state of the Leicestershire knitwear industry—in which, subject to your permission Mr. Speaker, I shall ask all Leicestershire Members to take part if they so wish—will my right hon. and learned Friend do his best to stress to the Minister responsible for trade that he should come to the House and give a positive response to concerns about the desperate state that the industry is facing?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I know the importance that my hon. Friend rightly attaches to the subject of that debate and I shall certainly underline that to the Minister who will reply to the debate.
Mr. Keith Vaz: Could we have a ministerial statement on the present operation of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board? Is the Leader of the House aware that currently there is a backlog of 85,000 cases and that three quarters of those people have been waiting for over a year? Does he agree that it is a tremendously onerous burden on those who have been waiting for compensation, some of whom have suffered from crimes of violence, that they should have to wait for over a year to get compensation from the board? Will he ask the Home Secretary to make a statement to the House on this important matter?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: Since I think that I can claim that the board was established following the passage of a resolution at the Conservative party conference in Brighton in 1962 that I had the honour to propose, I certainly do not need to be reminded about the importance of the work of the board. I shall bring the matter to the attention of my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary.
Mr. David Madel: On the highly contentious matter of the war crimes debate, may we take it that one of the Front-Bench speakers will be the Attorney-General who can give us his opinion as a Law Officer of the Crown about whether we should proceed? Secondly, may we also take it that Ministers will give us information about this matter additional to what has already been published?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I cannot give any undertaking of that kind on behalf of my right hon. and learned Friend. I am sure that my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary will speak if he catches your eye, Mr. Speaker, in that debate. I shall draw my hon. Friend's point to his attention.
Mr. Allen Adams: I am sure that the Leader of the House is familiar with yesterday's edition of the Glasgow Evening Times, in which it is alleged by a Dr. Matthew Dunnigan that some patients in a psychiatric hospital in Glasgow have starved to death because there was not enough staff to feed them. If that has happened in Glasgow, I am sure that it happens in Manchester, London and Birmingham. Is that not important enough to initiate an emergency debate next week on the treatment of patients in psychiatric hospitals?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I cannot claim to be immediately familiar with the important organ to which the hon. Gentleman draws attention, nor, therefore, with the facts or allegations contained in the report. However, I shall draw the matter to the attention of my right hon. Friends.
Mr. Max Madden: May we have a debate before Christmas on the conduct of local government in Bradford, which is characterised by extreme Right-wing political prejudice and administrative incompetence, the latest examples of which are highlighted in early-day motions 139 and 165?
Mr. Speaker: Order. Only one early-day motion may be mentioned. The hon. Gentleman may remember that.
Mr. Madden: One will do, Mr. Speaker, and I will refer to early-day motion 139.
[That this House calls upon Conservative-controlled Bradford Metropolitan District Council to fund the following voluntary organisations: Bradford Council for Voluntary Service, Bradford Law Centre, Bradford Resource Centre; Bradford Community Arts Association, Acorn Video, Playspace, Community Health Project, Relate, Keighley Local Enterprise Agency, Asian Family Counselling, Afro Caribbean Women's Association and the Federation of Voluntary Management Committees, and believes it vital that Bradford's Voluntary Sector is maintained so that it may give support, help and advice and confidence to the poorest and weakest people in the district.]
Is it not extraordinary that the hard-faced and hard-hearted Conservative leaders of Bradford city council are much less prepared to consider the social implications of their policies than was the Prince of Wales on his welcome visit to the city today? He listened to protesters against cuts in council services, accepted a letter explaining the reasons for their protest, and clearly showed much more compassion and concern than the Conservative leaders who caused all the trouble in the first place.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: The hon. Gentleman can put his own gloss on the facts as he pleases. It is those Conservative leaders who have listened to the voices and the advice of the electorate of Bradford who have been elected to run the council there, and who are doing so with considerable success.
Mr. David Wilshire: At the risk of being misunderstood, I wish to make it known that I agree with one of the comments of the hon. Member for Coventry, South-east (Mr. Nellist). I believe that the House should have a chance to debate the ambulance dispute. I ask my right hon. and learned Friend to find time to allow a debate on early-day motion 152.
[That this House agrees the urgent need to solve the ambulancemen's dispute; notes the differing levels of skill deployed; and believes that while paramedics should be rewarded for their special training, most ambulance journeys are routine transport functions which could be carried out by taxis or otherwise sub-contracted at great saving, which could be used to pay better wages to those who merit it.]
The motion observes that those with paramedical skills deserve more money and could be paid more money if those who provide the taxi service were subjected to competitive tender. The money saved could be paid to those with extra skills.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: The House has already had an opportunity to discuss the ambulance dispute on more than one occasion. The Opposition have not taken advantage of the day available to them next week to discuss it. I shall draw the point made by my hon. Friend to the attention of my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Health.
Mr. Tony Banks: Is the Leader of the House aware that, this week, a Japanese whaling fleet will set about the slaughter of about 200 minke whales in the Antartic? Will he please arrange for an urgent debate on this subject so that the detestation of the House can be conveyed in a direct form to the Japanese Government? The slaughter will be carried out in the name of scientific whaling. It is rather surprising that whale meat turns up in Tokyo restaurants and costs about £70 per pound. The actions of the Japanese are disgraceful and disgusting, and the House must have an opportunity to say so.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: The hon. Gentleman has had the opportunity to make an important point on an important subject. He is right to say that Her Majesty's Government and the House are concerned about the general issue to which he draws attention. I cannot comment on the particular point which he has raised, but I shall bring it to the attention of my right hon. Friend.
Mr. Ivor Stanbrook: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that it is disgraceful that he should have allocated only three hours for discussion of a war crimes motion? Is his political judgment so poor—[HON. MEMBERS: "Shame."]—that he thinks it possible to deal with a subject that is so fundamentally important to our criminal justice system so briefly? Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware also that the other place debated the matter for a whole day and that most of those who contributed to the debate were against the proposals set out in the report of the war crimes inquiry, yet they were not called upon to come to a decision?

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My right hon. and learned Friend is asking this place to come to a decision when an inadequate time has been provided for a debate. Surely we must have a much longer period to discuss a matter of fundamental importance to our criminal justice system.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I do not accept my hon. Friend's judgment upon my judgment. It must be said that the debate which took place in another place did not take up the whole parliamentary day. The recommended time available for the debate has been arranged after quite wide discussion and consideration.
Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: I thank the Leader of the House for finding two and a half hours to discuss the Census Order 1989. As it has been decided to discuss it in Committee, will the right hon. and learned Gentleman consider the problems of voting that will arise? Many people are concerned that census information is to be published on the basis of postal codes, with the implications that we shall get far more junk mail and that there will be redlining by building societies and insurance companies. The voting procedure will be extremely complicated if there has been a debate in Committee. Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman ensure that the amendments to the order can be voted on by the whole House?
Sir Geofrey Howe: The hon. Gentleman made so many points in such a short time that I cannot undertake to accept any of them. I have no doubt that he will have the opportunity of advancing them in the Committee to which the order has been referred.
Mr. Dennis Skinner: When will the Leader of the House arrange for a statement to be made on the erection of gates outside No. 10 Downing street? When are we to know exactly why the Prime Minister is building a Berlin wall-type monument? Why do we not open up No. 10 Downing street like Wenceslas square? Let the ambulance workers come and protest. Let those who are living in the cardboard society protest outside No. 10. If it is good enough for those in east Europe, it should be good enough here.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: If a statement is calculated to provoke that sort of observation from the hon. Gentleman, that seems to be a good reason for not making such a statement.
Mr. Ian Bruce: Will my right hon. and learned Friend consider having an early debate on the subject of salmonella in eggs? He will recall that a year ago it was a crisis issue. British farmers have to comply with stringent regulations to ensure that no salmonella gets to the consumer, yet imported eggs, despite the common agricultural policy, are not subject to such regulations. I feel that we should have an early debate on the matter.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I cannot offer the prospect of a debate, although there is always an opportunity for my hon. Friend to seek to raise the matter on the Adjournment.
Mrs. Margaret Ewing: While we are most grateful to the Leader of the House for his positive response to a request to extend the debate on the National
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Health Service reforms, may I ask him to apply the same standards to the Scottish fishing industry? Does he accept that the three hours per year allocated by the Government are not adequate to consider an industry that is responsible for 30,000 jobs in Scotland? Is it possible to have a full day's debate on that matter?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her opening remark, and I am sorry that I cannot respond with similar generosity to her main point. It is necessary to discuss the matter on the basis of the documents that underlie the debate, and it is the right procedure to conduct matters in this way.
Mr. Harry Greenway: May we have a debate next week on local government expenditure, so that I can put the worries of my constituents before the House? Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that the Ealing Labour council has doubled the rates in two years and cut expenditure on education by £2·5 million this year, with reductions also in street cleaning and refuse collection? is he further aware that, at the same time, the council has made provision for an annual expenditure of £3,000 for the removal of unwanted body hair from women?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: My hon. Friend is another example of an hon. Member whose ingenuity makes it almost unnecessary to have the debate for which he asks.
Mr. Harry Barnes: Can we have a debate on Northern Ireland in prime time? It appears that Northern Ireland is dealt with badly in this House. There should be a debate about its social and economic development. Appropriations were discussed earlier this week and hon. Members from the four Northern Ireland parties and the Labour party suggested that more money should be spent on social welfare. Can we debate that matter when the House is full so that other hon. Members can be involved in the debate, not just those from Northern Ireland and Opposition Front Bench spokesmen?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I cannot promise an affirmative answer, but the hon. Gentleman will recall that more than half the parliamentary representatives of Northern Ireland had the opportunity to speak during the debate in response to the Gracious Speech.
Mr. Tony Favell: During Home Office questions this afternoon, it was announced that my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary would introduce regulations to tighten the law on gun clubs following two incidents in Greater Manchester, and in particular the murder of two people in Stockport by a temporary member of a gun club.
Can my right hon. and learned Friend say whether there will be a debate on the Floor of the House, especially in view of the fact that since that incident, a journalist has managed to get into that gun centre and use a ·22 pistol without holding a firearms certificate?
Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that there is widespread aversion to the use by many gun clubs of targets that depict human beings? That is forbidden in Germany and Belgium and, quite honestly, my constituents and I consider it to be a sick practice for people to shoot at human-shaped targets for sport.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: The point raised by my hon. Friend is obviously one to which he attaches understandable

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importance, but I cannot at this stage do more than promise to bring it to the attention of my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary.
Mr. Jeremy Corbyn: Will the Leader of the House arrange for the Home Secretary to make a statement next week on the treatment by police of the Guildford Four, who were released by the Court of Appeal last month? Is he aware that, four days after being released, Gerard Conlan was harassed and held in a police car by the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Belfast, and that, two days ago, Paul Hill, while on his way to Dublin by Aer Lingus, was stopped at Heathrow airport, held for 25 minutes and questioned by officers of the Metropolitan police?
Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that many people believe that that amounts to the harassment of four innocent people? From the tenor of the conversation between the police and Paul Hill during his interrogation at Heathrow airport, it is apparent that they are under police surveillance at all times.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I have no means of corroborating, one way or the other, the hon. Gentleman's allegations. All that I can do is to draw them to the attention of my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary.
Several Hon. Members: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: Mr. Boyes, to ask a business question.
Mr. Roland Boyes: I thank the Leader of the House for his letter of 28 November 1989, in which he disappointingly rejected the opportunity for a still photographer to work in the House. It is incredible that eight television cameras can be beaming what is happening in the House all around the world, but we cannot have a proper historical record of what happens here through the use of a still photographer. Will the Leader of the House make a statement on this, so that hon. Members can express an opinion about it? We are losing a great and important historical opportunity by turning this suggestion down.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I know that the hon. Member takes an enthusiastic interest in photography, and I am glad that he was able to make this point to me. The matter has been considered by the broadcasting Select Committee. As a result of modern technology, it is possible for the feed going out on the television cameras to be used to produce still photographs by means of freezing frames. It is possible for any others who have access to that feed to do the same on the equipment that they use, so potentially a number of people are in a position to take still photographs from that source. The Select Committee has concluded that that is the right way at the moment.

Points of Order
4.21 pm
Several Hon. MembersOn a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: Order. I will take the points of order, but they must be matters for me, because we have an important debate today.
Mr. Dave Nellist: I rise to ask about a point arising out of the answers from the Prime Minister and the Leader of the House on the privatisation of the Rover group. Mr. Speaker, are you now prepared to accept a motion for the Adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 20 for an emergency debate on the letters from 6 to 12 July 1988 between Lord Young and the chairman of British Aerospace over the graft, sleaze and corruption that were involved in that privatisation deal?
Mr. Speaker: I cannot accept a motion on that subject. The matter is under investigation by the Public Accounts Committee.
Mr. Harry Barnes: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. During business questions, my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Madden) asked a question that involved him mentioning two early-day motions, and you ruled that he could mention only one. Is that the practice? My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), in earlier business questions, reeled off several early-day motions attacking the Prime Minister. Is it all right to quote several early-day motions to attack the Prime Minister, but not to use several in relation to Bradford?
Mr. Speaker: Obviously, the hon. Gentleman was not in the House when I made a statement, following that incident, about the number of early-day motions to be mentioned at business questions. If he will come to me later, I will give him the reference and he will be able to look at it himself.
Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Last night, in the debate, I drew attention to the allegations that the Government were in breach of European Community directives in respect of contracts given by the Crown Suppliers to its contractors. These contracts covered tens of millions of pounds-worth of business. In the debate, the Secretary of State gave an undertaking to the House that those allegations would be dealt with "comprehensively" in the reply from the Under-Secretary. Despite being pressed, the Under-Secretary refused to comment on those matters in his wind-up speech. Will you deprecate the actions of the Secretary of State, who gave solemn undertakings that replies would be given but, when the chance came and the Under-Secretary gave his reply, no reference was made to those matters because the Government wish to hide them under the carpet?
Mr. Speaker: That is a very old complaint. The answers that hon. Members receive are frequently not to their liking, but that is not a matter for me.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: There was no reply at all.
Mr. Speaker: It is not a matter for me what answers are given.
Mr. Tim Devlin: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Each day, four tonnes of waste paper are taken away from the House. Will you tell those who compile the vote each afternoon that it is only necessary to list, say, the first 20 questions on each subject? There is no need to tell me that my question to the Prime Minister is No. 156.
Mr. Speaker: The Select Committee on Procedure is looking at that very matter.

CIVIL AVIATION AUTHORITY (BORROWING POWERS) BILL
Ordered,
That the Civil Aviation Authority (Borrowing Powers) Bill be referred to a Second Reading Committee.—[Mr. Chapman.]

Orders of the Day
  National Health Service and Community Care Bill

    IST ALLOTTED DAY
    Order for Second Reading read.
    [Relevant documents: Eighth Report from the Social Services Committee, Session 1988–89, Resourcing the National Health Service: the Government's plans for the future of the National Health Service, (House of Commons Paper No. 214-III, 1988–89), the Government's reply to that Report (Cm. 851), the Second Report from the Social Services Committee, Session 1984–85, "Community Care with special reference to adult mentally ill and mentally handicapped people" (House of Commons Paper No. 13-I 1984–85), the Government's reply to that Report (Cmnd. 9674), "Community Care: Agenda for Action" (1988 HMSO), and the White Paper "Caring for People: Community Care in the next decade and beyond" (Cm. 849 )]
    Mr. Speaker: Before I call upon the Secretary of State, I must tell the House that the instruction in the name of the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) and other hon. Members is not in order. However, it will be in order to advocate the specific grants referred to in the instruction in the course of the debate.
    There is great demand to speak in this debate and on Monday, so I propose to limit speeches to 10 minutes this evening between 7 o'clock and 9 o'clock.
    Miss Ann Widdecombe: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In addition to the instruction on the Order Paper to which you have referred, there is also a motion in the name of the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) and other hon. Members. My name appears as a signatory to that motion. I am not a signatory to that motion. I do not in any way approve of it, and I would ask you to rule it to be invalid because the House has been misled.
    Several Hon. Members rose—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. Let me deal with one thing at a time. I understand that the hon. Lady's name was included with a number of others when the motion was handed in to the Table Office. It was accepted in good faith, but if it was included by mistake, I shall have the matter looked into.
    Mr. Gerry Hayes: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am a member of the Select Committee on Social Services and I was present at the meeting when the decision was made. I support what my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone (Miss Widdecombe) said. There was no malice or dishonesty on the part of the Select Committee, but it may be a matter for the Select Committee on Procedure to consider. It cannot be right for hon. Members to have their names included because a course of action has been decided upon. I was able to have my name removed yesterday because I could prove that it should not have been included, but because my hon. Friend could not be present, she was unable to do so. That cannot be a satisfactory practice.
    Mr. David Sumberg rose—
    Mr. Speaker: If the point of order refers to the same matter, I will take it, but it will delay matters.
    Mr. Sumberg: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. This is a serious matter for my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone (Miss Widdecombe). She is an assiduous Member of the House and attends regularly, but if she had not seen today's Order Paper she would have been put in an embarrassing position. Will you look at this serious matter to prevent it happening again?
    Mr. Speaker: This has been going on for many years. When the motion was submitted by the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) it included the names now on the Order Paper. The disagreement should be taken up with the hon. Gentleman, not with the Table Office, which accepted it in good faith.
    Mr. Dennis Skinner: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I think that I have got to the bottom of this. Select Committees tend to be consensus-minded and there is a tendency for whoever is in charge to say, "Well, I will stick all the names in because we agree on everything else." The nods and the winks took place, all the names went down and then the Tory Members, realising that they would embarrass the Government, tried to run away from their responsibilities. That is the top and bottom of it. One had the nous to get his name off in time and the other did not turn up to get it off.
    Mr. Speaker: We had better get on with the debate.
    4.28 pm
    The Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Kenneth Clarke): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
    This debate is an important stage in the bold reforms of the National Health Service on which the Government have embarked. Those reforms were inspired by a vision of what a good public service ought to be like in the 1990s, and I believe that when we pass the Bill we shall indeed have produced a better Health Service for the next generation.
    There is, I think, a broad measure of agreement between us, and certainly among the public, about the kind of NHS that we want for the 1990s. Such a service should, in our view, be based on the fundamental principle—adhered to by all parties in the House—that free medical treatment should be provided regardless of means and financed largely by general taxation. The service should be well funded, which is why we have been putting such substantial additional resources into it: the two most recent public spending round settlements have increased the cash available to it by more than 20 per cent., or over £5 billion. At the same time, it is important for a modern public service to be efficient, and to avoid waste wherever that is practicable. No one can really be committed to a caring service without being committed also to raising efficiency levels whenever possible.
    We believe that the service should be well led locally by people who are respected in their own communities—and led in a way that enables people to make clear decisions about priorities that reflect the wishes and choices of the local population. We want staff to be well motivated, knowing what their respective clinical units are expected to deliver to the NHS and what resources are available for the
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    purpose. Much of the low morale of recent years has arisen because many staff are frustrated by the muddle that often features in NHS decision-making and objectives.
    Above all, we want a service that will be responsive to the patients that it serves, delivering high-quality, caring and friendly personal service.
    I trust that we all hope and believe that we can create that kind of first-class public service by building on the foundations of our present National Health Service. Nevertheless, we believe that there is much room for improvement in the way in which the service is run, and in the quality of the care that it delivers. We all respect the NHS as one of the great British institutions—indeed, we probably all love it for being an old, traditional, national institution—but, if it is to remain a great public service in the forefront of the world's health care systems, we must raise standards everywhere to the highest level; and we must be prepared to contemplate change when that change is for the better. Certainly, when we are devoting ever more huge sums of public money to the service, we have a duty to ensure that that money is spent in the most effective way possible.
    All hon. Members are constantly reminded by their constituents of the highest-quality care that is often—indeed, usually—received by patients seeking treatment of all kinds. We need not look far, however, to see wide variations in performance between different parts of the service, leading to equally wide variations in the quality of care that patients can expect. I sometimes think that patients do not complain enough about the chance factors that can determine whether the locality in which they live can provide a good standard of family practitioner service, for instance. Such services are much better in the prosperous rural and suburban parts of the country than in many of our poorer inner-city areas.
    Patients also tolerate variations in the times for which they must wait for treatment, and in the standards of care or even facilities available in different areas. Most people are familiar with the variations in the effectiveness of prescribing practice, and in the extent to which it is prudent and careful, avoiding waste of money or even risk to patients. I have already mentioned in previous speeches the 2·5 tonnes of drugs that were handed in in Yorkshire during our three-week campaign, and 1 million tablets were handed in in the space of two weeks in the counties of Avon and Somerset. My private office was recently sent 22 vials of a drug costing £9·50 per vial, which had been returned to a pharmacist in Newton-le-Willows. They had been prescribed on a twice-monthly basis, but the patient had not got around to taking the drug or opening the vials.
    Prescribing costs vary considerably. One practice with a list of 7,000 patients, only an average proportion of whom are elderly, is currently spending about £800,000 a year on drugs: that is 185 per cent. above the average for its family practitioner committee area. The phrase "above the average" is a little misleading. That practice is so out of line with all its neighbours that every other practice in the family practitioner committee is at least 5 per cent. below the average for the FPC because that practice is spending so much more than the others.
    Mr. Gareth Wardell: Is it not important that drugs that are prescribed for elderly people in particular should be taken? Drugs that are prescribed are often not taken because there is no adequate supervision at home.
    Mr. Clarke: I accept that there is a wide variety of reasons for drugs not being taken. There are repeat prescriptions for many patients who have not seen their doctor for a long time. Drugs can be prescribed automatically and the doctor does not know whether the patient is taking them. No one should defend the wasteful prescription of drugs. The National Health Service needs to introduce effective methods to ensure that variations in the prescription of drugs do not occur.
    Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way on that point?
    Mr. Clarke: No. I shall return to prescribing costs when I deal with indicative drug budgets.
    There are also wide variations in the performance of the hospital services. That is most apparent in the time that people have to wait for particular services. It is all too easy with waiting times, as with everything else, to put it all down to lack of money. For years and years the Opposition and far too many people in the National Health Service have said that whenever there is a variation in performance it is due to lack of resources. Variations in performance can never be attributable to resources. Variations reflect local efficiency and effectiveness in making the maximum use of all the resources, including cash, at their disposal.
    There is a variation in performance when one considers theatre sessions cancelled in different district health authorities. The worst districts cancel one in six theatre sessions. The best districts cancel only 1·3 per cent. of their theatre sessions—in other words, one in 77 theatre sessions. Far more work is done in a district where only one in 77 of the theatre sessions is cancelled than in another district where the performance is so poor that one in six of the theatre sessions has to be cancelled.
    To give similar statistics about the number of operations per scheduled session, in the worst 10 per cent. of districts, according to the best measure of performance that we have, the average is 3·29 cases per session. In the best 10 per cent. of districts, there are 5·19 cases per session. In the best districts, therefore, half as much again is done per session compared with the worst 10 per cent. In a statement that was issued in the summer, the previous Minister for Health said that, if all our districts could raise the efficiency of their management of theatre sessions and waiting lists to the level of the best, we should be very near to eliminating most of the waiting time.
    Mr. Graham Allen: The Secretary of State will be aware that quite recently the Public Accounts Committee closely examined operating theatre use. The Committee found that operating theatres are used as a financial regulator by local hospitals and that, were they to be run at full efficiency, they would come up against financial constraints that the Secretary of State has imposed.
    Mr. Clarke: If the PAC said that—I think that was a bit of a paraphrase—I do not agree with all of it. I agree that one of the weaknesses of the present system is that if an efficient district increases its throughput of patients and raises its work load it finds, in the unreformed National Health Service, that it comes up against financial constraints. The districts that do not increase their
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    throughput do not get into such difficulties. It is no good saying that the only reason for variations is lack of resources.
    To take the Sheffield district health authority as an example, great variations are to be found in different parts of the service. There are some examples of excellence, but there are others where a great deal could be done to improve the service.
    Let us consider what is good about the Health Service in Sheffield. The authority has a new department to give stereotactic radio surgery at Weston Park hospital. It is an advanced form of radiotherapy, which makes the hospital a world leader. Heart transplantations are about to start at the Northern General hospital from 1 April next year. There is a lithotripter at the Royal Hallamshire hospital, which is at the forefront of treatment for gallstones, and clinical services for patients with diabetes there are amongst the best in the country. Pioneering work is being done. The spinal injuries unit in Sheffield is one of the two biggest centres in Britain. However, Sheffield combines those good points with the huge waiting list for trauma and orthopaedic surgery and one of the longest waiting lists for routine orthopaedic surgery in the country.
    In the course of the waiting list initiative, we are subjecting such districts to studies. We have studied 22 with the longest waiting lists. The main cause for long waiting lists that emerged in Sheffield was the under-use of theatre sessions and the low level of work by surgeons in relation to a high level of surgical manpower—higher levels than those in 80 per cent. of other district health authorities.
    Even though the Sheffield district has teaching responsibilities, there are few provincial teaching authorities with such consistently low output per surgeon and per theatre. It has low activity per surgeon and a lower number of cases per theatre session than one would expect, with huge variations between individual surgeons. Other districts had a better case for resources from the waiting lists initiative when we were deciding how to put the money to best effect to increase the number of cases treated.
    In Sheffield we have had co-operation, and an agreement to tackle the management and work load problems, and given some extra money to set new work load targets, to increase the throughput and to improve waiting list management.
    All that can be done when the cause of deficiencies is tackled and when the argument that they are all due to the Government's underfunding of the Health Service is not simply accepted, and when the co-operation of local doctors is forthcoming. As the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) pointed out, further reforms are needed because we have to ensure that money is distributed in the service so that, when the work load increases, patients can be dealt with more effectively, GPs will be attracted to refer more patients to a unit and the resources will be there to back up that improved performance.
    At the moment, efficiency tends to be penalised due to the way in which the Health Service is run. In the future, we will ensure that those authorities that are efficient or that raise their efficiency thrive by attracting more work.
    Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: My right hon. and learned Friend must be aware that a very expensive lithotripter was installed at Withington hospital

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    to serve the whole of the north-west two years ago—it cost almost £1 million. In the first year it was allowed 400 cases fully funded, but unfortunately Withington hospital has now run out of its budget and has done 400. It is trying to persuade hospitals like mine to pay £500 to take people there to have their gallstones removed. The alternative is to have to spend between seven and 10 days in hospital for an operation. Can my right hon. and learned Friend persuade the regional health authority to fund more of those operations to remove gallstones?
    Mr. Clarke: A lithotripter lends itself to doctors arranging to have a given quantity of work done for their patients, because they believe that that method of treating gallstones is preferable to intervention by surgery and they can give the resources to the particular unit that they want to deliver the service. At the moment, because we do not have the ability to enter into contracts that the Bill will give the Health Service, my hon. Friend is reduced to lobbying the regional health authority and, in Withington, great confusion occurs about where money is going, and how much it may be able to divert into the lithotripter.
    When the Bill becomes law, we will have clearer, better ways to organise the distribution of money—for example, in this case to the Lancaster district health authority, if it wishes to use its resources to provide a particular system of care.
    So far, I have described the objectives for the Health Service and the problems that need to be tackled. We seem to be a long way from the attitude in many of the debates in which I took part in the summer, and a long way away from the initial reaction from too many people in the National Health Service. I shall not go back over that old ground, because the atmosphere seems to be improving. Unfortunately, there have been attempts to frighten patients by inventing a series of claims that had nothing to do with the White Paper, the Bill or any of the reforms that someone like me, who is committed to the National Health Service, is likely to put forward. I have been accused of sending people 60 miles to hospitals that they do not want to go to. People have said that doctors are running out of money that they need for drugs. The other day, it was hinted that expectant mothers may lose local obstetric services because of our proposals. That is nonsense. No right hon. or hon. Member would suggest any of that rubbish.
    Now that the proposals are being discussed on the Floor of the House, and we have left the posters and the postcards behind, we can move to a serious discussion of what the reforms are about. The hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) promised me hundreds of thousands of postcards but he could find only 50,000—obviously membership of the Labour party is falling to a greater degree than even I would have expected. Now the debate will have to move from fantasy to reality.
    Mr. Rhodri Morgan: The Secretary of State says that we have been spreading scare stories about the problem of patients going 60 miles to hospitals that they do not want to go to. If he confers with the right hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Walker), he will find out that a hospital in my constituency has been working on a proposal since 1 December that will involve patients being sent 160 miles for surgery. Previously they would have had surgery at a local hospital. Will the Secretary of State tell his colleague that it is not a scare story, but reality? The
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    same thing could happen in several other hospitals in Wales, and instead of people being able to have surgery locally, they will be taken long distances.
    Mr. Clarke: There will be Welsh wind-up speeches tonight, and hon. Members from both sides of the House will have an opportunity to comment on that, so I shall not intervene in the affairs of South Glamorgan. The Health Service in Wales has benefited from expansion and increased expenditure that at least matches that in England, for which I am responsible.
    Of course, people may choose to travel some distance for better service. That possibility will be more available in the future. It is not true that the White Paper reforms will lead to people having to go miles down the road to have cheaper services.
    Mr. Barry Jones rose—
    Mr. Clarke: I shall not give way on the subject of south Glamorgan.
    Mr. Tony Marlow: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It could be argued that this is the most important Bill of the Session. So far, a series of hon. Members have got up and abused the procedures of the House, because it is stuffed full of television cameras, by raising constituency points. I wonder whether you could help the House to keep to issues of principle rather than allow pettifogging matters, aimed at gaining support from constituents, to be raised.
    Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean): Order. We had better get on.
    Mr. Clarke: The hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mr. Jones) is winding up tonight on behalf of the Opposition. Some hon. Members wish to intervene about South Glamorgan. I am not responsible for that. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales is responsible for South Glamorgan, which is an extremely successful district health authority.
    Mr. Barry Jones rose—
    Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order.
    Mr. Clarke: With the greatest respect, I would not normally refuse to give way to the hon. Gentleman but I cannot be expected to diverge into discussions about the work of a health authority for which I have no departmental responsibility. When my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Wales replies, I am sure that he will be delighted to talk about the arrangements for care there.
    Mr. Robert Hughes: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it not intolerable that the Secretary of State should spend two thirds of his speech so far dealing with detailed matters in specific health authorities, but refuses to give way to Opposition Members who wish to raise issues relevant to other specific health authorities?
    Mr. Deputy Speaker: The Secretary of State must be allowed to make his own speech in his own way.
    Mr. Clarke: I quoted the example of Sheffield, with which nobody quarrelled, so it was an excellent example of a national point. I cannot be expected to trot around the House dealing with district health authority after district

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    health authority. Many Adjournment debates are held in which such issues are dealt with by my hon. Friend the Minister.
    Mr. Ray Powell: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The Secretary of State said that he does not have a certain responsibility. I assume that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has responsibility for the whole of the Bill as he is presenting it, so he should answer questions about the whole country, including Wales.
    Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind the House that, as Mr. Speaker said at the beginning, a very large number of right hon. and hon. Members wish to speak in the debate. I think that we should get on with it.
    Mr. Clarke: I knew that it was a mistake to say that the debate was moving on to more sensible ground than it has been on for most of the summer, but I believe that to be the case. We should build on what is accepted by everyone in the service.
    Hon. Members will have seen a press statement put out by the professions last week that still contained many criticisms of proposals in the Bill, which had then just been published. The press release included the following passage, which I commend to the House:
    "We wish to work with the Government, not against it, because like the Government we are committed to the principle of a National Health Service financed out of public funds and free at the point of delivery. We welcome the Prime Minister's statement that her sole aim is to develop a better Health Service, and we share this aim. We wish to co-operate in the improvement of standards through professional audit, through proper resource management, through research into disease prevention and treatment, including the most cost effective methods of care, and through the introduction of better information technology to enable informed management decisions to be taken."
    The professions then made general criticisms which I have rebuffed. Some of the wilder ones that caught the headlines seem to have no sensible or factual basis. The Bill accepts that common ground, which is the widely accepted need to improve resource management and for quality control and the provision of a good basis for education and research, and enables us to put into effect the benefits of better resource management, which will be more effective patient care.
    Mr. Michael Foot: As the right hon. and learned Gentleman has thought it worth while to quote to the House the representations made by people in the service, why did the Prime Minister refuse to receive a delegation of them so that they could put their case directly?
    Mr. Clarke: Because she referred the leaders concerned, as she would in any other similar case, to me and my colleagues as the Ministers responsible. Indeed, I had met all those people frequently during the previous few months. We recently answered a parliamentary question which showed that my ministerial colleagues and the chief medical officer could easily produce a list of well over 100 meetings with leaders of the medical and nursing professions during the past six months. I have no doubt that we shall have more. There have been constructive meetings designed to ensure that we implement the
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    changes and get the benefits of better information technology and quality control, which will be welcomed as we go along.
    Mr. Nicholas Winterton: If my right hon. and learned Friend is so determined—rightly—to press ahead with resource management, which is so important for the efficient management of the Health Service, why was he not prepared to analyse and properly assess the resource management initiative in six hospitals, most of which the Social Services Select Committee visited during its recent inquiry, before rushing forward into the dark with unproven proposals which could do so much damage to the Health Service? I might add that those resource management initiatives were fully supported by everyone in the Health Service.
    Mr. Clarke: We shall evaluate those six initiatives. Everybody accepts the need for better resource management in the Health Service. Change cannot be made conditional on a protracted academic appraisal of six particular experiments. Of course, we shall build on the experience of those experiments—
    Mr. Winterton: My right hon. and learned Friend set them up.
    Mr. Clarke: And, of course, we set them up. We shall evaluate them. We did not set them up, however, on the basis that nothing would be done anywhere else in any other hospital until Brunel university had finished the evaluation. The crying need for resource management is obvious. The pace at which we proceed must, with respect, be somewhat more purposeful.
    I always tell the business men whom I introduce to give advice on better management in the Health Service that, when they go into the public service, they must expect the clock to go rather more slowly than they have experienced in any other organisation. Sometimes, however, people in the Health Service want to make the clock crawl. They contemplate years of discussion before getting on with implementing such obvious improvements as a better system of financial management.
    The Bill will enable us to build on the progress being made in resource management. It will enable money to be spent more sensibly and effectively. The key theme of the proposals is to have more real responsibility for decision making at the local level. We are putting it in the hands of the managers, doctors and nurses who are delivering care in hospitals and units. It has been the common experience for years that most people in the Health Service have, until I proposed the reforms, suffered from the feeling that there are far too many layers of authority above them and far too many constraints on running units better. The Bill will give much more automony within the Health Service to the people who are delivering care.
    We need better decision making, which depends on better local leadership. Clauses 1 and 2 reconstitute district health authorities and the bodies who are responsible for decision making. The aim is to make them smaller and more effective. In my opinion, health authorities have never been able to make up their minds whether they are a kind of local government committee or a decision-making executive body for the health authority. We obviously want smaller, more effective decision-making bodies.

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    We are bringing executives in for the first time. We are building on all we have achieved with the introduction of general managers. It is absurd that there have been no executives on the boards. They have had to sit and watch. Others debate an agenda which, in the opinion of some executives, sometimes bears little relation to the real decisions and problems that face the authority. There will be a combination of chairman, non-executive members—local people appointed for the individual contribution and skills that they can bring—and executives. That will create a fuss because we are removing the arrangement by which local authority members are put on as of right.
    I quite expect many non-executive members to combine their public service on a health body with service as local councillors, but the system under which local authority representatives go directly on to the health authority does not always produce desirable results. Recently, there has been a growing tendency, sometimes by supporters of my party and frequently by supporters of the Labour party, to put on local authority members who are mandated to pursue local political aims, and then to remove them when changes of political control or nuances in the local Labour group determine that a new political input must be made.
    Mr. Harry Greenway: Will my right hon. and learned Friend make it clear whether family practitioner services authorities will employ medical advisers to examine the effectiveness of prescribing? If so, will they consider quality as well as expense?
    Mr. Clarke: Yes, surely. FPSAs will certainly need professional advice when deciding on prescribing practices. The judgments that may in some cases have to be made about the prescribing practices of individual general practitioners or partnerships will be made by people who have professional qualifications and are therefore able to do so. Nobody will evaluate prescribing habits solely on the ground of cost. That is not my point. The quality of prescribing and the necessity for it in such quantity will also be considered in each case.
    The Bill also introduces the possibility of a quite new method of distributing taxpayers' money. In future, it will be distributed according to a method which is loosely called contracts, but I should make it clear that it is certainly not my intention that any of the agreements about what service a unit should provide in exchange for a given level of resources should be made the subject of litigation between different parts of the Health Service, or be subject to over-legalistic interpretations.
    The Bill allows NHS bodies to make administrative arrangements with each other for the provision of services as they have not been able to do previously. Those administrative arrangements will be a network of agreements whereby a district health authority or a general practitioner, using the funds he holds in his budget, will decide which unit they want to provide a given level of service and, when they have stipulated what they want and the quality that should be achieved in exchange, an agreed sum of resources will be accepted by the unit to deliver it.
    It greatly alters the responsibility of people in the NHS. District health authorities will find their role considerably changed. They will have a vital responsibility to act on behalf of all the residents in their catchment area. They will need to assess the health needs of their districts and identify where the local service is not as good as it might be and could be improved. They will have to determine
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    what is required to provide a reasonably accessible comprehensive service in each locality. The money will be placed in their hands to finance the best pattern of service for patients.
    District health authorities will enter into agreements with hospital units to specify what is required in terms of both quality and quantity. I expect that at first they will be broad-brush agreements. Nevertheless, authorities will stipulate a level of service in exchange for an agreed level of resources. As we develop the concept of resource management, both sides of the bargain will wish to include more sophisticated terms and details.
    To go back to the jargon, we have stressed in the Bill and in the working papers that support it that district health authorities must respond to the wishes of general practitioners in placing contracts. In putting agreements in place, they will have to find out about GPs' referral patterns and reflect them wherever practicable and sensible. In their turn, GPs as well as the district health authorities will reflect the wishes of their patients both in terms of convenience of locality and expectations of service and allow for a reasonable degree of patient choice, which we on this side wish to reinforce in every case.
    Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours rose—
    Mr. Clarke: I shall give way in a moment. The system will allow for individual referrals to be made and financed properly within the contractual system that we propose.
    Mr. Campbell-Savours: Does the Secretary of State understand that many of us find it difficult to accept his reassurances because it was he who came to the House only just over a year ago to give us reassurances about the sale of Rover to British Aerospace? He was the Minister responsible for misleading the Commons on issues which are now being unravelled in the midst of a row. How can he expect Parliament and the British people to believe a word he says on the basis of his track record?
    Mr. Clarke: If it were in order to do so, I should give way to the desire that I have had for the past few weeks to join in the exchanges on the sale of the Rover Group to British Aerospace. I have listened to a great deal of rubbish from the Opposition about the sale, under which a company was transferred into the hands of an extremely successful British engineering company and taxpayers were relieved of the risk of losing millions of pounds on the scale previously incurred under public ownership. I think that if I digressed further, you might call me to order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I look forward to answering on that matter when I have the chance.
    To return to contracts, I realise that it is difficult for those who work in the service to become familiar with the concept. It is a concept that is easy to attack. It is worth while bearing in mind the fact that the network of agreements will involve people making considerable choices about where best to place a service and how best to allow for patient referrals and make sure that the service provided is properly integrated and not broken up. The first key point that I would emphasise is that we intend and shall insist that all decisions about placing contracts will have as much regard to the quality of service that the district health authority and GPs seek as to cost.
    Some critics have attacked the system on the basis that doctors will be made to obtain the service from wherever it is cheapest. That is nonsense. Every hon. Member in the

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    House makes the same judgment when he or she is ill as GPs and people outside the House make. The first thing that one wishes to know is where one will be best treated. Judgments about quality are as important as judgments about cost.
    As I have already said, one great benefit of the system will be that where a unit is efficient, it will no longer have to cut back towards the end of the year, perhaps by closing wards, because it has outstripped its budget, however fast that budget has grown. In future, it will be possible to stimulate good performance in the Service. People are committed to their own units, hospitals and clinical units. In future, units will thrive and attract more patients to the extent that they succeed in cutting waiting times and demonstrating a high quality of care. By providing a friendly personal service they will be more likely to attract referrals and contracts from their district health authority and surrounding authorities and thereby increase their resources.
    Mr. Simon Hughes rose—
    Mr. Robert Hughes rose—
    Mr. Clarke: That will be the opposite of the present position. I do not wish to attribute ill will to anyone in the Health Service, but no one has an incentive to reduce waiting lists. People strive to do so because they want to keep up with the work, but no reputable consultant would be without a waiting list, because it is a badge of status. District health authorities are not anxious to reduce waiting lists, because they are used by Members of Parliament to reinforce authorities, claims for more resources. We shall have to take care that our waiting list initiative does not reward units for having a long waiting list.
    Mr. Brian Sedgemore: Cheek.
    Mr. Clarke: It is no use the hon. Gentleman saying, "Cheek." No doubt if he were making his speech he would say that waiting lists were good for private practice. I would not allege that that plays too great a part in keeping waiting lists high.
    In future, units which succeed in reducing waiting times will have more prospect of attracting patients, and NHS resources will flow in with the patients. That is one of the main ways in which the Bill will reduce waiting times, when it is fully implemented.
    Mr. Simon Hughes: The precondition for what the Secretary of State says about the relationship between districts and hospitals is NHS trusts, for which the Bill provides. The Secretary of State will be aware that people have an honest fear that, because the contract will be placed by the district with the best hospital, it will not necessarily be given to the local hospital. If the Bill is all about choice, why does the Secretary of State not amend his plans in this respect, as some of his colleagues did in other legislation last year, to allow people who work in or use local NHS hospitals to choose by voting whether the hospital should become an NHS trust instead of a decision
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    being imposed on them by the Secretary of State? That happens in schools and in housing action trusts, so why not in hospitals?
    Mr. Clarke: The hon. Gentleman is mistaken in one of his premises. It is not the case that the so-called contract system that I have just described will apply only where there is a self-governing NHS trust. What I described is a key element of our NHS reforms and will apply to the whole National Health Service, both to hospitals and community units. It will apply to hospitals run by the district and to those which are self-governing NHS trusts. The difference with a trust is that it will play its part within the system with a local board to manage it and make the day-to-day decisions. Hospitals run by the district will continue to be managed directly. I shall come to NHS trusts later—they are dealt with in the next part of the Bill.
    Mr. Simon Hughes: Why not let them decide?
    Mr. Clarke: On the matter of who decides, we have always said that we shall consult on applications from hospitals to become self-governing trusts. I cannot receive such applications until the Bill has Royal Assent. People contemplate, "What if one has a self-governing trust?" Propositions will not even be worked out until next summer, and they will include plans for the development of services. We can have proper consultations then. I suspect that that is one of the many strange leaflets kicking around the Health Service on the subject of self-governing hospitals.
    Several Hon. Members rose—
    Mr. Clarke: I am happy to talk about the creation of NHSTs, if hon. Members wish to return to that point, but first I should like to stress the main point of the Bill.
    These self-governing hospitals—that is what people want to call them—or NHSTs will be firmly anchored in the NHS. The clause provided for that. They set out the procedure for establishing the new bodies, their specific powers and freedoms, my reserve powers, which will ensure that they continue to meet their NHS obligations, and the basis of their funding. On establishment, the trusts will have boards of directors with substantial health, professional and outside expertise to provide the necessary range of skills and strong leadership on the ground. There will be special provision for medical school or university representation on boards should it be needed.
    Schedules 2 and 6 set out the freedoms of the NHSTs which we have been expounding since we produced the White Paper. They include the freedom to employ their own staff, to conduct research and to provide facilities for medical education and other forms of training. NHSTs will have the same income-generation powers as other health authorities. The schedules also contain safeguards in the form of specific powers of direction which the Secretary of State will have over the trusts. These powers will allow me and my successors to direct all trusts on matters of safety or ethics where a common policy will be pursued throughout the Health Service and, in exceptional circumstances, to direct an individual trust where there is justified cause for concern.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-West (Dr. Hampson), who told me that he had to leave to catch a train to his constituency, whispered to me about educational research. I referred him to the powers which cover the provision of education and research and the

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    powers of the Secretary of State to insist that proper arrangements are made in the unlikely event that any self-governing trust would wish to cease to play its part. The Government are certainly committed to high quality medical research and education in the Health Service and we propose to ensure that self-governing trusts play their part.
    Mr. Derek Fatchett: The Secretary of State mentioned his discussions with the hon. Member for Leeds, North-West (Dr. Hampson). Earlier he seemed to deny that health authorities had been spending taxpayers' money on working up proposals for hospital trusts. Where in the Leeds Western health authority does money come from to employ the consultant, Professor Bosanquet, and to produce and publish a report which advocates that Leeds general infirmary should become a hospital trust? Where is the legal power to spend that money, particularly bearing in mind that at a formal meeting the health authority voted against the proposal for the infirmary to become a hospital trust? Where is the power, or is taxpayers' money being used without legal authority?
    Mr. Clarke: I know from my information that nobody is exceeding his legal powers in the Health Service or my Department. For as long as I can remember when a Government announce policy changes, a White Paper or an intention to legislate, it has been the obvious sensible practice for preparatory work to be done and for people to exchange ideas with the Government on how the concepts might work out in practice when they are introduced. The hon. Gentleman will know that that is the subject of litigation. Professor Harry Keen at Guys has been passing the hat round to employ lawyers to argue this for him. I would not dream of intruding on the litigation that will ensue. I am satisfied that we are acting within our legal powers and that what we have done is not out of line with previous practice. No doubt in due course that will be determined by the courts.
    Mr. Matthew Taylor: Will the Secretary of State give way?
    Mr. Clarke: With the greatest of respect, I am sure that the courts will be seized of this and I do not think that the House should spend more time on it. What we are doing is not out of line with usual practice. It is most certainly not an unlawful use of money. Professor Harry Keen and his colleagues think otherwise, so the whole matter is sub judice and will be determined by the courts.
    Mr. Taylor: Will the Secretary of State give way on a different point?
    Mr. Clarke: No; first, I should like to make a little more progress on NHSTs. I do not think that at the moment there is a proposal coming from Cornwall.
    Throughout the country, partly as a result of this preparatory work, I detect mounting enthusiasm among many people in the service and among units and hospitals of all kinds about the possibilities that may arise from the establishment of NHSTs. It is not true, as some commentators have claimed, that interest is confined to the giant hospitals. Some small units have expressed interest. Indeed, interest has been expressed from outside the hospital service altogether. In some places, community services are being put forward and two ambulance services
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    are contemplating self-governing status inside the Health Service. They see the possibility for new freedoms for local people and new opportunities to develop their services.
    Many doctors and nurses have for years been frustrated by the constraints which in the olds days the bureaucracy of the NHS, through my Department, RHAs and DHAs, undoubtedly used to impose on their ability to work as they wished. All those who work in the NHS have a great sense of pride and it is strongest when it is attached to a particular hospital or unit. That can be used for the benefit of all by developing the NHST concept.
    Success will depend above all on the strength of local leadership that emerges and the quality of the plans for the future of the unit which are produced. Sensible local discussion and the eventual decision must wait for the production of those plans so that their quality can be evaluated.
    For some reason, the Labour party has latched on to self-governing hospitals as a focus for opposition. The enthusiasm of the Labour party and trade union movement for bureaucracy and red tape knows no limit. The most amazing nonsense is being canvassed in support of votes. The hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) is the latest to impress that on me. People have been told that these units are opting out of the NHS, a point which I have dealt with; that this is a step towards privatisation, which nobody believes any longer; that it is the end of job security for the staff; and that vital local services will be closed in the interest of seeking profitable areas. I look forward to any hon. Member describing in Committee how that nonsense is to be put together. In places such as Redditch, the local council has spent a fortune of ratepayers' money to put out tendentious leaflets, with the result that people write back to say that they are against the curious nature of the proposals described.
    Given that plans are beginning to develop in parts of the Service, next summer proper plans will be proposed by the Secretary of State in the normal way and consultations will take place. I am sure that in Committee we shall have many Divisions. Nobody has explained to me who on earth the electorate would be in those decisions, because hospitals do not belong to any particular section of the public. Even the Labour Government in their more foolish moments when they were responsible for these matters never held a referendum on local management structures for the Health Service, so far as I am aware. That is not a sensible way to run any service.
    Mr. Tom Clarke: The Secretary of State will recall that he has been on his feet for almost exactly 50 minutes.
    Mr. Kenneth Clarke: There were many interventions.
    Mr. Tom Clarke: I accept that there were interventions. In that time the Secretary of State has not said one word about community care, which appears in the short title of the Bill. Is that consistent with the low profile of the Griffiths report, the publication of the White Paper the day after the House adjourned and the Government's low priority for the whole issue?
    Mr. Kenneth Clarke: I apologise for the length of time that I am taking. I believe that the television cameras stopped transmitting at 5 o'clock and I thought that that might reduce the number of interventions that I would be

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    obliged to take during my speech. I am talking faster than usual, because I share the hon. Gentleman's concern for the community care part of the Bill, which is vital and must be subjected to debate over the next two days. I shall anticipate what I intended to say later, which is that my hon. Friend the Minister for Health will reply to the debate on Monday. She has particular responsibility for community care and will put heavier emphasis on it in her speech than it seems I am likely to have time for in mine. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is an equally important subject.
    The Bill paves the way for GPs' fund holdings. As everybody, knows, I frequently state my enthusiasm for the family doctor service in the British NHS. It must play a key part in any service which is truly patient-oriented. The new contract will raise the quality and boost the service to the public. The system will also give GPs much more influence over what resources are spent on and much more contact with their DHAs than ever before.
    The proposals for fund-holding general practitioners will give those who choose to develop it the opportunity to provide the patients in their practices with high-quality care. It will give GPs much greater control over the resources they deploy in any event in their referral patterns and much more influence that they have ever had over the development of the local services used by their patients.
    The Bill provides the framework for the scheme to get under way, and I trust that it will be welcomed as it gets better understood. I never understood why the British Medical Association opposed the proposal, as I felt it was on the wrong side of the barricade. The BMA represents GPs in particular and it should have recommended to the Government a system that placed funds in the hands of GPs and gave them more influence over how resources are deployed.
    If I said that doctors would abuse that power, refuse the treatment needed by their patients or seek to make a surreptitious profit out of it, the BBC—sorry, I mean the BMA,in fact—the BBC and the BMA—would get extremely excited about my disgraceful slur on the medical profession. The BMA has occasionally argued that it does not believe that all its members would use those powers properly. I hope that, eventually, the BMA is on the right side of the barricade as fund-holding for general practice is an exciting concept for family doctors of which many will want to take advantage.
    During the discussion of the Bill, we shall issue the programme needed for GP practice budgets in the near future.
    Mr. Nicholas Winterton: What level of budget?
    Mr. Sedgemore: What level of budget?
    Mr. Skinner: What level of budget?
    Mr. Clarke: When three of the noisiest Members of the House make a sedentary intervention, I feel obliged to respond to it, but I do not believe that two of them understand the matter. In reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton), in the first place the budget will be negotiated by the practice contemplating having that fund-holding budget with the regional health authority as the Bill provides. Eventually
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    we hope to devolve the negotiating responsibilities to the family practitioner service authorities, which will replace the FPCs.
    I have dealt already in passing with prescribing budgets, but I shall do so again now. Clauses 17 and 31 contain the proposals for indicative prescribing budgets. "Indicative" is the key word. Those budgets will be targets that will be assessed as a reasonable expectation of what the prescribing costs should be for a practice. If a practice goes above that expectation it may well be obliged to answer to a professionally qualified group and to give an explanation as to why its prescribing costs are out of line.
    The indicative prescribing budgets will be the machinery whereby the regional health authorities and the FPCs can manage prescribing costs more effectively than they have in the past. In that way, money will be targeted on effective patient care.
    Sir Michael McNair-Wilson: If it is true that GPs will be able to prescribe whatever drugs they believe necessary and that that will not be a limiting factor on their drug budget, will the same be true of hospitals when a wonder drug is created? What will happen if a hospital wants to prescribe such a drug to its patients, but its existing budget is inadequate?
    Mr. Clarke: Hospitals have always had to provide for their drug costs within the cash-limited provision. When a wonder drug is created, it has an inevitable impact on cash limits and, inevitably, it forms part of the claims that the Department of Health makes year in, year out, on the Treasury. In health care, when deciding what one must spend, one must pay regard to advances in the pharmaceutical industry. It is our intention that hospital and community service budgets and the GP indicative budget should reflect such expensive advances. Such advances are often counterbalanced by other medical advances that produce lower-cost alternatives to expensive hospital care for which GPs may opt. We must manage the budgets with common sense to ensure that essential needs are met and the best value obtained throughout the Health Service.
    Clause 19 and schedule 4 allow the Audit Commission to take over the statutory audit of Health Service bodies from the Department of Health and the Welsh Office. My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland will introduce an amendment in Committee to permit a similar transfer of responsibility to the Commission for Local Authority Accounts in Scotland. My right hon. and learned Friend has taken no decision on whether to transfer his responsibilities, but he wishes to remove the statutory bar to the Scottish body taking on that role. He will make a final decision in the light of his review of the current arrangements for NHS statutory audit in Scotland.
    The hon. Member for Monklands, West (Mr. Clarke) has already said that the Bill covers the legislation needed to implement the White Paper "Caring for People". Fortunately, we have a two-day Second Reading debate so that we can cover the NHS reforms and the future of care in the community. The policy aim of the Government is to give a better deal for people who need care in or near their own homes and a better deal for the relatives and friends who make considerable sacrifice to care for them. We announced our proposals first in the House and then in the

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    White Paper. The Bill builds on the existing powers of local authorities—they have many existing statutory powers—and gives them new supplementary powers.
    The key policy changes mean that we shall move to a system where local authorities clearly have the overall role in community care. They will provide services based on a proper assessment of the needs of individuals. They will use that assessment to make a more suitable provision for services than has sometimes been made in the past when there was an undesirable bias towards social security support for patients in private nursing homes. That was done without first exploring the possibility of the provision of better services in or near the patient's home. We shall also require local authorities to produce community care plans and added powers will be given to my inspectorate to check on their performance.
    I have largely concerned myself with the NHS. I believe that the Bill paves the way for fairly rapid progress towards big improvements to the NHS. Some critics say that the pace is too fast, and I do not know how long they will want to take debating the Bill in this House. The talk is always about the need for pilot schemes and experiments to test our proposals. So far, the critics who have advocated pilots to me do not appear to know what they mean. Some people have asked me why we do not try out part of the reforms in a certain area of the country, but, in my discussions with them, no sensible explanation has been produced as to exactly how such an experiment would be made. One cannot pilot any of the things we are proposing without the legislation to enable the health authorities to establish a network of agreements under the new arrangements that we contemplate.
    There is plenty of experiment built into what we are doing. The ideas on the NHS trusts and GP fund holding will be developed by people inside the Health Service who have chosen to come forward to volunteer to work out the details with the Government. The whole process of reform will be based on working with people in the Health Service who want to see us make a success of our proposals. We shall learn from experience as we go along. I am sure that, at first, most parts of the country will use the contracts to put in place the existing pattern of care with which they are familiar. Once it is established what service is delivered with what resources, everyone will take advantage of the opportunity for choice offered by the new arrangements.
    I trust that the debates in this House will enable us to reassure and appease the fears expressed by the professions. I hope that we explain to them that we shall learn from experience. Above all, we will be able to explain what we are doing for the patients. Patients are looking for shorter waiting times, a better appointments system and a much more personalised and friendly service. They want to know that everyone in the Health Service is striving for higher standards of care.
    The critics of the reforms are trying to scare the life out of patients by suggesting that basic services will be lost. Those criticisms are not in the public interest. We are aiming for a better NHS for all, free for the patients regardless of need, financed out of taxation. We are looking for a great public service.
    When we give the Bill a Second Reading, we shall give the NHS a new lease of life. We shall put it in good shape to provide an even better service in the next 40 years than it has provided for our people in the past 40 years.
    5.28 pm
    Mr. Robin Cook: For the avoidance of doubt, it may be helpful to the House if I say at this stage that the Opposition do not propose to table a reasoned amendment before Monday. We are fundamentally opposed to the principle of the Bill and shall vote against it on Second Reading. We believe that it will destroy the public sector ethos of the National Health Service, and that it is designed to do so. Should the House be so illadvised as to pass this measure, it will prove in the future as unworkable as it has already proved unpopular in the present.
    The Secretary of State and I have frequently jousted over the past 18 months since he returned to his office at the Department of Health. This is only the second time that he has appeared at the Dispatch Box with legislation since his return. The last time that he appeared before the House with legislation was a year ago, when he appeared in order to defend the abolition of the free eye test. I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will forgive me if I begin by reminding him of the terms in which lie recommended that measure to the House. He told the House that he did not believe the optometrists when they warned that abolition would result in what he described as an eye charge of "anything up to £10". The right hon. and learned Gentleman went on to ask the House this question: even if there were a charge of anything up to £10 for an eye test, how many people would be deterred by it?
    Earlier this week, fortunately, we had the latest return of the quarterly survey of the Association of Optometrists. It shows that the Secretary of State was right to advise the House that we should not believe that the charge for an eye test would be anything up to £10. In fact, the average has been between £11·50 and £12 per eye test.
    We are able to see from that survey the answer to the question put by the Secretary of State when he recommended that legislation to the House and asked how many people would be deterred by it. On the present trends revealed by that survey for the first six months of this year, we are on course for 2·5 million fewer eye tests than in the year before. That is the result of the measure that the Secretary of State last recommended to the House. By commercialising the eye test, he has removed a public service and has seriously damaged a vital screening service. It is against that record that we must measure his promises on this Bill.
    Mr. Kenneth Clarke: I promise that I will not intervene often, but the hon. Gentleman has specifically raised this point. He knows perfectly well that the figures which he uses reflect the inevitable fall in the number of eye tests. There was a terrific increase in the number of eye tests taken out before April last year. People have the test once every two years. Everyone in the profession will tell the hon. Gentleman that it is nonsense to suggest that the number will not return to normal in due course. If the hon. Gentleman wants to have a free eye test, I can refer him to an optician service on Walworth road which is only one of many offering such free eye tests.
    Mr. Cook: I am glad that the Secretary of State gave me that opening. I have heard him make that point before. The facts, as confirmed by his Department in parliamentary answers to me, show that in 1988, in the period after the announcement that a charge would he introduced for eye tests, the number of eye tests increased

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    by 400,000. That is less than the increase in 1987, before the announcement, when the number increased by 600,000. In 1988, the increase was less than the year before.
    Mr. Bill Walker rose—
    Mr. Cook: The Secretary of State chose to intervene and I think that he can claim precedence even over the hon. Member for Tayside, North.
    The increase last year was 400,000, less than the average for the previous two years. Because of the introduction of the charges, there has been a reduction not of 400,000 but of 2·5 million. That dramatic drop plainly shows that many people now find that the eye test is priced beyond their reach, although their sight may be fading and an eye test may well reveal much more serious medical problems than the mere failing of their eyesight.
    Mr. Bill Walker rose—
    Mr. Cook: I shall not give way at this point.
    It is against that record of the promises of the Secretary of State—that there would not be charges of anything up to £10 and that they would not deter people—and the record of what happened when he put the eye test on a commercial footing that we must measure his proposals in the Bill to put the whole NHS on a commercial footing. Once again, the Secretary of State is doing this on the basis that he does not believe the warnings of the professions that care for the patients. Once again, the House is being presented with a measure on the now familiar basis that this Secretary of State knows better than any of the people who care for the patients.
    The Secretary of State had the temerity to refer to a changing atmosphere among professionals and hospitals towards his Bill. It took brass neck to make that claim the day after the case for a judicial review was won on an application by over 3,000 consultants—10 times the number of doctors that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has been able to recruit for his own entryist front to support the White Paper.
    The Secretary of State is fond of claiming that 80 per cent. agree with the objectives of the Bill. At the beginning of his speech, he claimed that the whole House agreed with the Bill's general objectives. That is hardly surprising, given the bland nature of those objectives as frequently stated by the right hon. and learned Gentleman. Those objectives are to increase patient choice, devolve more decisions to local level and improve value for money.
    The argument turns not on whether we all agree with those platitudes but on whether the Bill is any more likely to achieve any of them than it is to promote warmer winters. The Secretary of State uses the language of contract. As a barrister, he will know that the sensible thing to do with a contract is to study the fine print. I therefore warmly commend to the House the idea that it examine the fine print of the Bill to see whether it matches the rhetoric that we are promised by the Secretary of State.
    Mr. Hayes: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
    Mr. Cook: I am happy to get my weekly intervention from the hon. Gentleman over as quickly as possible.
    Mr. Hayes: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I have listened closely to every speech that he has made on this subject. It is clearly time that he came clean and told the
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    House whether he is committing his party to reject money travelling with the patients. For the first time, this will mean giving hospitals the financial incentive to treat more people. Is the hon. Gentleman committing his party to rejecting the idea of doctors and consultants finding out their basic unit costs so that they can treat more people more effectively? Is he going to commit his party to rejecting medical audit resource management? The hon. Gentleman should tell us the answers. We have a right to know, and so do the electorate.
    Mr. Cook: I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Gentleman. There is nothing in the Bill about a medical audit. If he is thinking of voting for the Bill because he supports the idea of a medical audit, I would strongly recommend that the hon. Gentleman—I would warmly welcome his joining me in the Division Lobby—think again about where he will cast his vote. Of course we do not oppose the idea of money following the patient. The question is whether the Bill does anything to provide for money following the patient, rather than providing for a situation in which the patient follows the money and the contract. I shall explain that point when I reach that passage in my speech.
    Let us begin with the patient. The Secretary of State has frequently said—as he said again this afternoon—that his Bill will increase patient choice. The phrase which was in vogue in January when the White Paper was unveiled was that it would "put the patient in the driving seat". There is not much for the patient in the Bill. I have had the Bill read from cover to cover, and we could find only one reference to the word "patient" in the Bill. It is found in clause 14 where, characteristically, the word "patient" arises solely as a basis on which the money to be paid to the doctors is counted.
    How little choice will be given to patients by the Bill is graphically revealed by the fact that there is to be no consultation with the patients. In February, the Secretary of State made a speech in which he said that his proposal would encourage
    "local pride in our hospitals"
    and would give local people
    "more ability to take the big decisions in their own part of the service."
    What could be a bigger decision than whether one's local hospital goes into one of the NHS trusts and out of the local district health authority? Yet that big decision is to be taken without the by-your-leave of the patients of that hospital service. The person who takes it is the Secretary of State; clause 5 simply states:
    "The Secretary of State may by order establish … NHS trusts."
    I must draw the attention of the House to the fact that, ironically, schedule 2 stipulates that there must be consultation before such a trust is wound up. In other words, there will be more consultation before such a trust can opt back into the NHS than before it can opt out in the first place.
    Any doubt about whether there will be greater choice for local people in what happens to their local service is removed by the advice on self-governing trusts that the Secretary of State has sent to health authorities:
    "It would not be sensible to organise ballots of staff or any other groups with an interest."
    This Bill does not extend choice to patients. The Secretary of State is terrified to offer them the choice, because he knows that they would give these plans the

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    thumbs down. I had not intended to refer to this, but since the Secretary of State mentioned it, I shall. The ballot in Redditch was held in a borough in which 57 per cent. of the electorate voted—a commendable turnout for a local vote. It is not a Labour stronghold; it is represented by one of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's colleagues in Government. In a large turnout in an area that is not in our Labour heartland, 81 per cent. of those responding declared themselves not in favour of the Alexander hospital opting out.
    It will not do to dismiss this result by saying that the wrong type of leaflets were given out. This type of result is known as democracy. It would be flagrantly undemocratic if, as well as ignoring the views of those who work in hospitals, the Secretary of State were now to ignore the choice of the patients they serve.
    There is another collision between all the promises of choice and local decision-making. That collision is to be found in the composition of the new district health authorities which exclude anyone who might choose to do something different from what the Secretary of State wanted. Out go the representatives of local authorities, who are the only people in the health authorities who are elected by patients. Out go the representatives of the professions that treat the patients. Instead, everyone on every district health authority will be appointed by the regional health authority, and everyone on every regional health authority will be appointed by the Secretary of State.
    Just in case someone with an independent mind slips through this process, out goes the tradition of voluntary services on health authorities. All the non-executive directors are to draw a salary, at a total cost of £10·5 million, which is more than the entire budget for all the community health councils in England and Wales to represent the views of patients.
    The Secretary of State has not come up with a system in which health authorities will be staffed by people who are respected in their local communities, as he put it. He has come up with health authorities that will have no pretence of representing local choices or interpreting local preferences. He has come up with a board of management that will exist to implement central policy—exactly the sort of machinery of the clapped-out centralised state which is being dismantled all over eastern Europe.
    I know that the Secretary of State will say that this is not the sort of choice he meant, that he meant more choice for individual patients. So let us look at what will happen to them. This brings me also to the point made by the hon. Member for Harlow. There will be less choice for individual patients: less choice over which hospital to go to, for instance. The patient will go where the district health authority has placed a contract. It is curious to claim that that means money following the patient. I invite the hon. Member for Harlow or any of his constituents, once this Bill is law, to turn up at any hospital of their choice at which the district health authority does not have a contract and to tell that hospital, "It is all right—the money will follow me afterwards." Anyone who did that would be lucky to get past the reception desk.
    Mr. Hayes: The hon. Gentleman is not quite accurate; indeed, he is wholly inaccurate. He should look at the Department's guidance to district health authorities which, at this very moment, are exercising their right to speak to doctors on their referral practices.
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    The hon. Gentleman should be honest enough to tell the House that the referral practices of general practitioners will remain the same.
    Mr. Cook: That is not so. Under this Bill, the GP will not have the opportunity to send his patients to hospitals at which the district health authority does not have a contract. Nowhere in the Bill is that right of the GP defended.
    If the hon. Member for Harlow turns up at a hospital in these circumstances, he will be asked where the money is coming from, and that is a question that the House should ask in a more general context. I have, as the Secretary of State knows, just completed a survey of the financial state of health authorities. It showed that three our of four—
    Mr. Nicholas Bennett: At House of Commons' expense.
    Mr. Cook: I am delighted to tell the hon. Gentleman that two out of three general managers were content to reply to me, not to him. Three out of four of those responding reported that they were under-funded for present levels of service. All those three quarters are now taking emergency measures to avoid a deficit. Many of them are closing beds and freezing vacancies. Some of them are cancelling operating sessions and will no doubt feature in a future league table drawn up by the Secretary of State as people who are under-managing and under-performing.
    In a rare passing moment, I shall seek some common ground with the Secretary of State. I agree that some of the variations in performance are not related to resources. Having looked at the figures, I agree that that is manifestly true, but as I have acknowledged that, I invite the right hon. and learned Gentleman to acknowledge that most of the frozen vacancies and cancelled operation sessions revealed in my survey are due to a shortage of resources. The financial pressures do not vary; the picture of financial pressure is the same in every region in Britain.
    In the north, Newcastle district health authority reports under-funding by £2 million—a gap that it cannot fill without redundancies. In the midlands, Rugby reports that next year looks particularly grim. In the south, East Hertfordshire reports that the short-term outlook is extremely bleak. And Barnet district health authority, covering the constituency of the Prime Minister, reports that it is closing 10 paediatric beds and 14 gynaecological beds. That is the state of the Health Service after 10 years of her stewardship—[Interruption.] I am sure that the hon. Member for Harlow will return to the Chamber to intervene before I can finish.
    There is a desperately worrying message for the hon. Member for Harlow, before he departs, and for all other Conservative Back Benchers in the results of my survey. I have been interrupted by enough Back Benchers in the past few months to know that every single one of them believes that it is his hospital that has a problem of success and a financial problem because it is treating more than its fair share of patients. They all believe that, when money follows the patient, the financial pressures will be magicked away.
    I have never yet been interrupted by a Conservative Back Bencher anxious to tell me that the staff at his or her hospital are pretty useless and treat fewer than their fair share of patients, and that the sooner the Bill is passed the

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    better because then the money from the hospitals in their constituencies can be transferred to the over-performing hospitals in the constituencies of their neighbours. I can understand why they do not make that point. It is not that they do not relish the thought of the local paper holding its front page to capture their remarkable statements. It is because, as this survey shows, across Britain—
    Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Statistics prove that we take in 29 per cent. from outside our district.
    Mr. Cook: All Conservative Members share the hon. Lady's view—that is precisely my point. Everyone's hospital has the same desperate problem of trying to make ends meet, and most hospitals cannot do that without a deficit. Conservative Members deceive no one but themselves by believing that the under-funding of the hospitals that they represent will disappear under this monumental and monumentally irrelevant upheaval in the administration of the NHS.
    The Secretary of State assures us that, if this upheaval does not produce more choice, it will at least result in value for money. He will apply the magic potion of competition, as a result of which we will apparently achieve more output for the same input. The right hon. and learned Gentleman has certainly mastered the language of competition. I read with fascination last night the circular that his Department has issued to health authorities on the pricing of contracts. [Interruption.] My hon. Friends elected me to carry out these distasteful tasks on their behalf.
    The circular contains a section headed, "Competition and the invisible hand". Someone from the Adam Smith Institute obviously slipped into Richmond terrace by the back door. I shall quote two sentences from the section. The circular says:
    "it may be desirable, to have a 'spot' market as well as a long-term market. It may also be desirable to cater for peak and off-peak demand by differential pricing."
    Even more remarkable than reading through such circulars, I have waded through the submissions sent to the Secretary of State by hospitals that seek to be self-governing. I know that such language is also catching on with district general managers. Basildon and Thurrock say that they want to set up a self-governing hospital to prevent what they describe as "predatory hospitals" picking out their patients. The use of such language shows how quickly the new market discipline leads to the end of other hospitals being regarded as colleagues in the same service and the start of their being seen as competitors in the same market.
    South Yorkshire set up a task force to advise on the change in management that was necessary to make self-governing hospitals work. One of the major injunctions that came back to the management of that hospital was the wonderful advice that, in order to maintain its market share, it should "keep changing the product lines."
    Mr. Bill Walker: The hon. Gentleman declined to give way before. He is speaking about competition. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman is usually polite; the fact that he did not give way must mean that he was on a weak spot. He is aware that, competition in Scotland resulted in extensive advertising for free eye tests. That has been going on for some time in Scotland.
    Mr. Cook: Plainly, the hon. Gentleman had only one matter to raise in an intervention, and when he was allowed to make it it was the only point that he could raise. I am aware of the company that is advertising free eye tests and have had some correspondence with it. The company is Duncan and Todd. Before it issued the advertisements for free eye tests, it got in touch with me to seek my assurance that the next Labour Government would abolish the charges for eye tests, because only on that basis could it carry the two-year loss of providing free eye tests. That is the reality of the advertisements to which the hon. Gentleman refers.
    Conservative Members are so besotted with the market that it is an article of faith with them that haggling in the marketplace is the best way to achieve efficiency, even in health care. I view with profound distaste the allocation of health care discussed in the patter of a salesman. I do not want a health service of spot markets, predatory hospitals and product lines. I want it run as a public service to meet the need for health care and not the need to cater for market demand.
    Thousands of consultants and sisters and even district general managers will take the deepest offence at the Secretary of State's remark that no one has any motive to cut waiting lists. That remark betrays the fact that the Secretary of State does not understand what motivates professional commitment to a service to patients. Of course he meant that no one has any financial incentive to get rid of waiting lists. That confirms that Ministers are incapable of recognising any motivation that is not financial. I shall be happy to be disabused of that view if the Secretary of State can do so.
    Mr. Kenneth Clarke: I am used to the hon. Gentleman giving dark paraphrases of what he says I have said, and I am used to some of my critics outside leaping on to those paraphrases. I said that the present system gives no incentive to anybody to reduce waiting lists, and that is true. I described how the new system would give rewards and incentives in terms of resources for the unit if waiting lists were brought down. The hon. Gentleman is extracting curious phrases from the thousands of pages that he has read. As a would-be Secretary of State for Health, is he talking about the prospect of handling £28 billion of public money without any regard to elementary financial management and with a disdain for any system of matching resources to the work load?
    Mr. Cook: The Secretary of State confirms exactly the interpretation that I put on his remarks. He sees only a financial incentive and does not recognise the clear motivation of the staff in the Health Service to tackle waiting lists. He is perfectly right to anticipate the next Labour Government; I am pleased to hear that from his own lips. He is concerned about what we will do. I assure him that I do not believe that spot markets are the best way to allocate £20 billion within the Health Service.
    Mr. David Nicholson: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
    Mr. Cook: No. I have given way twice to the Secretary of State, who must take precedence over the Back Benchers. The more he intervenes, the more difficult it is to give way to Back Benchers, much as I should like to give way to the hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. Nicholson).

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    We are being offered an eccentric market, in which there will be no consumers. It is not the patients who will strike the bargain about where they go and what is to be done to them. Health authorities will bargain with one or other, and the vast majority of those health authorities are already in deficit. They will not bargain about quality, because, as a result of the financial pressures on them, they will be obliged to go where care is cheapest.
    There are some missing commitments in the Bill. It contains no commitment to ensuring that quality is reflected in the contract; nor is there a commitment to the core services that are promised to self-governing trusts. In the absence of legal protection for those core services, we know what will happen. We can predict now which services the hospitals are most likely to shed. They will be chemotherapy, renal dialysis, geriatric care and community psychiatry—all the specialties which require a long-term commitment to high expenditure, with a low expectation that the patient can be finally cured and taken off the books. We can predict what will happen, because those are precisely the procedures that the private sector will not touch because they cannot be delivered at a mark-up. Whether the end result of all this is value for money is a matter of taste.
    I noted the candid evidence of Dr. Ken Grant, who is the district general manager of City and Hackney. He has been one of the star turns at the conferences trying to make sense of the White Paper for the last nine months. My hon. Friends will know about Dr. Grant. Last week, he made the candid statement that at the moment, when St. Bartholomew's accepts an emergency admission from another district, it has an incentive to keep down the costs because it will be left with the bill. He said that, under the new scheme, St. Bartholomew's would have the incentive to do as much as possible to that patient in order to generate income from the health authority that will pick up the bill.
    That is a perfectly rational response to the market opportunity with which Dr. Grant has been presented, and it would be wrong to criticise him for it. As a manager, he had a predictable solution to the problem that he had identified: his solution was more managers to comb through the bills to make sure that they were not being rooked.
    There is one stark consequence of the Bill, and that is more administrative staff to try to make it work. The memorandum to the Bill states that we shall require 3,800 additional staff. I thought that it was a piece of unusual impertinence by the Secretary of State to accuse Opposition Members of being in favour of bureaucracy. The additional bureaucracy will cost him £200 million. Whether that is desirable expenditure is, I suppose, a matter of taste. I find it an odd priority in a Bill that is supposed to be about value for money, when health authorities throughout Britain are freezing vacancies because they cannot afford to pay the nurses and doctors to fill them.
    I cannot see that the nation has received value for money from the White Paper entitled "Community Care". It was published on the Thursday of one week and the clauses of the Bill that is now before us fell fully formed on the Wednesday of the following week. I know of the Government's perfunctory commitment to consultation, but I believe that this time they have set an all-time record.
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    As the White Paper was published only as a collector's item, the Secretary of State might have been advised to spare the taxpayer the expense of footing the bill.
    There is nothing in the Bill on community care to show that the Secretary of State has heard the criticism that broke out on the publication of the White Paper. I found it regrettable that, in a speech which lasted a full hour, the right hon. and learned Gentleman was able to find only one minute to discuss community care.
    Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: My right hon. and learned Friend explained why.
    Mr. Cook: The Secretary of State said that the Minister for Health will refer to community care when she replies to the debate late on Monday night. This is a two-day Second Reading debate, and the Secretary of State might legitimately be expected to set out the priorities for debate and the ground to be covered, and at least one of the priorities is the future of community care.
    We find that even the rhetoric of competition parts company with sections of the Bill. There is no perfect competition to be found. Roy Griffiths proposed that there should be a level playing field for fair competition between the public and private sectors, and the Opposition are prepared to go snap on that. We are happy to accept the challenge of competing with the private sector at level weight. I believe that, without a partnership between public and private provision, we have no hope of meeting the explosion of need of the very elderly in the next 10 years.
    Instead, the Bill offers us a rigged market. Perversely, someone retains his right to public benefits, income support and housing benefit only if he goes into a private residential home. If he goes into public residential care, he will have no right to public benefits. It would be difficult to produce a more flagrant example of unfair competition.
    What happened to choice? Why should those who go into residential care not have a free and fair choice whether they go into public or private care? The purpose of the rigged market is clear: it is intended to reduce available choice by obliging local authorities to privatise their homes so that they may qualify for subsidy from public benefits. It is not only local authorities that are worried. The Spastics Society stated:
    "We are deeply concerned about any assumptions that the public provision of care for disabled people can be in the main shifted to the private and not for profit sector without devastating consequences for disabled people."
    What about the choice of those who live in residential care homes that are provided by local authorities? Should not they be able to choose whether their home stays in the public sector or is sold to the private sector? There is no such right in the Bill. The Government are fond of talking about individual choice, but they have produced a Bill that is curiously silent on the rights of the user of the service. Not once in the Bill is the user of community care services mentioned. Nor are carers mentioned.
    The National Carers Association responded to the White Paper on care by saying:
    "The White Paper contains all the right rhetoric about. helping carers, yet in spite of a 106 page document the practical reality of how this will happen is still unclear."
    It is even more unclear after the printing of the Bill. The Bill does not once mention carers, does not give them one new right, does not place on local authorities one new duty in respect of care, and does not place upon them an

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    obligation to assess the needs of carers, or even to consult carers about the community care services that they provide.
    In the clauses on community care, we find the widest chasm between the promise of local decision making and the reality of central control. This is not a Bill that gives power to local authorities. Instead, the Bill gives all the powers to the Secretary of State. I have been through the Bill and I have counted the number of times that the Secretary of State is mentioned; the total is 127 times. That does not include the references to the Secretary of State for Scotland. The Secretary of State for Health is the one who will make the regulations. It is he who will lay orders and give directions.
    I understand that it is fashionable to describe this arrangement as enabling legislation. That is a misuse of our language. This is not an enabling Bill. It is a Bill for arbitrary government by whomever happens to be Secretary of State at the time. We know who the present Secretary of State is. I have no doubt that in his own way he is lovable. We have certainly grown to know his face. He has been in his present post since July 1988, and the Bill will not become law until April 1991. That is a long time for anyone in this Government to hold office. We all know that by April 1991, the Secretary of State will want to be at Victoria street, Marsham street or the Paris embassy at rue du Faubourg St. Honoré. He wants to be anywhere but on the bed of nails at Richmond terrace.
    What if, in April 1991, the Secretary of State for Health is the right hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley)? What use would he make of the powers that he would then hold? What powers will he inherit? Clause 44 sets out the Secretary of State's duties in respect of community care:
    "every local authority shall exercise their social service functions in accordance with such directions as may be given to them under this section by the Secretary of State."
    That is all we are told. We are not given any guidance on what the directions might be.
    I must be fair and candid to the House and say that there is a limitation of the directions. There is one qualification of what the direction must be. Clause 44 (2)(a) states that the directions
    "shall be given in writing".
    That is the sole restriction on what direction the Secretary of State may give to local authorities in their use of community care powers. Even Erich Honecker would not have imagined that he could give directions that were not in writing. Clause 44 gives whomever is the Secretary of State the power to use directions without even the process of scrutiny of parliamentary approval, in so far as I can describe the rubber stamps on the Benches behind the Secretary of State as a process of scrutiny.
    We are talking of directions to health authorities that have not been appointed by the Secretary of State. I ask my hon. Friends to mark this well: they are directions to local authorities elected by local people and accountable to local people. That brings us to the greatest reason of all for suspecting that rhetoric is running ahead of reality in the Bill.
    The Government and the Bill are loading local authorities with responsibilities without disclosing what they will do to increase resources for local authorities. Here is another major departure from the Griffiths report.
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    There is no ring-fenced grant for community care for local authorities. Any money that is provided for community care will disappear in revenue support grant.
    There are two critical problems, the first of which has been mentioned by the president of the Association of Directors of Social Services, John Rea Price. He asked, "What will happen to my authority?". His authority is Islington, which receives no revenue support grant. In other words, there is no grant for the money to disappear into. There are not many such authorities in Britain, but they are almost all inner-city areas with massive social problems. Their populations all need community care. It would be ludicrous if they were to have the liabilities under the Bill but, thanks to the funding arrangements, not a penny in grant to meet them.
    The second problem is that already the revenue support grant bears no relation to the revenue that it is supposed to support. One Conservative Member referred to overspending authorities as Labour authorities. I must tell him that nine of the 11 authorities in England and Wales are overspending under the official definition, whether Labour or Conservative. In those circumstances, any additional money provided through the revenue support grant will be barely noticeable against the growing gap between the grant received and the services that authorities are supposed to maintain.
    We know that the Secretary of State knows that. We know that he understands full well just how stretched on the rack those local authorities are. We know that he understands how difficult it will be for them to shape up to the new responsibilities without new resources. We know all that because the obligation in the Bill is limited to an obligation to assess people for the community care service; it is not an obligation to deliver that service once there has been an assessment. As the National Council for Voluntary Organisations observed:
    "Assessment without action, or a place on a waiting list is of little value to someone in need of care and support."
    We also know what will happen when those waiting lists for community care services develop. From the Secretary of State's past performance, we can predict that the moment that those waiting lists of people who have been assessed but for whom there are no resources available appear, the Secretary of State will put the blame on poor management by directors of social services.
    I shall conclude by trying to seek the common ground, desperate though that search is. On one point I will commend the Secretary of State; on one point I will pay tribute to him in recognition of what he has done this day. The Bill that he has presented to the House is, without question, the most fundamental change to the National Health Service in its 40 years. The Bill will change a public service into a business enterprise, in which the motivation will no longer be which treatment is most needed by the patient, but which treatment yields the highest mark-up for the hospital. It will change an integrated service of primary care, hospital care and community service into a fragmented service in which the new relationship between the divided units no longer will be co-operation with one another but competition against one another. It will change a service in which the objective is to give the patients the treatment they need at the hospitals of their choice into one in which they get the treatment for which their health authority has taken out a contract or which their general practitioners can afford at the hospitals that offer it most cheaply.

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    I do not deny that the Secretary of State has the power to do these things. I am confident that the Whips will deliver a majority on Monday evening and give him a Bill that gives him even more power. However, I deny that he has the mandate to use those powers for a Bill so unpopular that its passage through this House will be as much an affront to democracy as a threat to the NHS.
    The Secretary of State tonight spoke for the Conservative party; he did not speak for a Government who represent the people of this country. In this debate, it is the Opposition who speak for the people outside. At the end of the debate, we will vote the way they would vote if they were admitted to this Chamber—we will vote to throw out this prescription for a commercialised Health Service.
    6.14 pm
    Sir George Young: Listening to the phrases used by my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State to describe the reforms in the Bill, I thought that they seemed familiar—promoting competition and choice; making the system more responsive to the consumer and less dominated by producer interests; pushing decision-making down the management tier; and promoting efficiency. In fact, those were the phrases used in the Education Reform Act.
    The parallels between reforms in this Bill and those in the Education Reform Act are striking, and hon. Members on both sides of the House could learn much by considering them in tandem. For example, the proposals for grant-maintained schools are replicated by those for self-governing hospitals, giving a measure of independence and local autonomy within the state-funded sector. Those for local management of schools are replicated by those for general practitioners to become fund holders, allocating resources as closely as possible to the point of consumption. The proposals for open enrolment and funds following the pupil are paralleled by those that facilitate switching one's GP and greater reliance on capitation, so rewarding popular provision and making the system more responsive to the consumer. National curriculum and assessment are paralleled by the proposals for medical audit to try to measure output and value for money, to raise standards and to determine where improvements might be made.
    The philosophy behind the Bill is not new; it is wholly consistent with a similar reform to another part of the welfare state, with high political stakes, that touches most of our lives. I draw much comfort from that parallel, and also the opportunity to learn some lessons. I remember when the education reforms were launched, before the last election. I do not doubt that, initially, they were a political minus. They were not popular on the doorstep. At that time we were told that it was wrong to apply the sort of concepts that I have described to state education. There was dismay at the violent reaction from the producer interests—principally the National Union of Teachers. There was a confused response from the Government to some fairly basic questions, giving the impression that the proposals had not been thought through.
    Two years ago, Conservative Members spent a great deal of time explaining what was going on to school governors, parent-teacher associations and parents. Much of the time was spent fighting fiction and we also had to listen to the Opposition making the same sort of speeches
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    as the one that we have just heard from the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook). I do not expect Opposition Members to agree, but I believe that those educational reforms are now a political plus. There are still difficulties, to which I shall refer in a moment and from which we must learn, but the debate matured, the argument developed and it was won.
    The new language, the new ideas, have taken root. Concepts that were derided three years ago are now quite popular. I speak not as a Conservative Member of Parliament but as a parent and school governor in saying that concepts such as national curriculum and assessment, local management of schools, open enrolment and grant-maintained schools are popular and accepted.
    The conclusion that I draw from that parallel, which is relevant to today's debate, is that people do not rule out radical change to the welfare state, provided that the basic principles are left untouched—free at the point of use, available to all, funded out of progressive taxation. Indeed, there is much evidence that there is an appetite for change once it has been properly explained, and a warm welcome for it when it is implemented.
    Mr. Matthew Taylor rose—
    Sir George Young: I am prepared to give way only once, in an attempt to reduce the average length of speeches.
    Mr. Taylor: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making me his No. 1 choice. The hon. Gentleman has drawn a number of parallels between this Bill and the Education Reform Act. He suggested that, provided it was set out within the right framework, radical reform was acceptable. One of the differences between opting out of schools and the proposals for hospital trusts is that there is no intention to provide any process of consultation with the users in the way that there is with parents in schools. How does the hon. Gentleman feel about that?
    Sir George Young: The users of a school are relatively easy to define, but the users of a hospital are not. That is an easy point with which to deal. I have now provided the one opportunity for Opposition Members to intervene.
    There are lessons to be learned from the debate. First, changes must be adequately resourced. Secondly, the time scale needs to be realistic. Thirdly—and crucially—high staff morale is essential if the benefits are to be secured. In the same way that we cannot achieve our educational objectives without teachers, so we cannot achieve our health objectives without the enthusiastic commitment of NHS doctors and staff.
    It is all very well Conservative Members of Parliament declaring themselves content with the philosophy of the Bill, but what will happen on the ground to convince the voters that we are right? I shall look briefly at the impact of our reforms at primary care level and assess the medical and public response. I choose primary care for a number of reasons. First, the units—basically, general practitioner practices—are far smaller than the other units in the NHS—basically, hospitals. Therefore, it is easier for them to respond than it is for an organisation that is, inevitably, more bureaucratic. Secondly, the units are run by independent contractors and are more likely to display an entrepreneurial flair. Thirdly, what happens in a GP practice is loosely defined. In my view, general practice is what is done by general practitioners. Therefore, it is easier

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    for them to respond pragmatically to changing consumer demand and raised expectations than it is for other parts of the NHS, where contracts may be more rigidly defined.
    Politically, what happens at GP level is crucial, because for most of us this is the only experience of the NHS. Every year, two thirds of us visit a GP, and the average constituent goes to the GP four times a year. Nine tenths of consultations go no further than the GP practice, so it is here rather than at hospital level that we shall be judged. The hon. Member for Livingston was a little misguided in spending nearly all his time on the hospital service and saying almost nothing about the GP service.
    The combination of advertising, leading to raised expectations the changed capitation arrangements and the facilitation of switching will have the most dramatic effect on primary care that the NHS has ever seen. I speak as someone who represents an urban seat, with many practices within the reach of most constituents. I recognise that the position will be different in the rural areas. In a nutshell, what will happen is that market forces will work. There will be competition and choice, and this will push up standards.
    For example, it may become known at one medical centre there is a creche where parents can park their children while they have a consultation—if not every day then perhaps on some days. The word will get around that that practice offers that service. Another practice may be offering minor operations at the centre, dealing on the spot with cysts, verrucas and warts. Others may have negotiated special deals with local keep-fit centres and health clubs, perhaps with discounts for their patients. Others will have clinics for those with particular needs such as arthritis and diabetes, or slimming groups. We could see more chiropody and counselling at GP level. A variety of services will be developed, making it less necessary to visit hospitals.
    Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Will the my hon. Friend give way?
    Sir George Young: I shall give way to my hon. Friend when I have finished this point, but that will be the last time that I shall give way.
    It is not unthinkable that, in some of the larger practices, they will take X-rays, saving patients the bother of going to hospital. After all, that has now become routine at the dentist. There may be other services that no one practice can provide on its own, but that collectively, a number of practices can provide to improve the quality of care. There will be enormous pressure to improve premises, to the benefit of the patient, and to improve what one might call customer relations, such as more helpful receptionists and less queueing.
    Mr. Winterton?: My hon. Friend is implying that these facilities and activities are not already provided by the large majority of practices. Will he comment on that, and also on the fact that the guru who advised the Government on the changes, Professor Alain Enthoven, has expressed deep concern that fund-holding practices cannot properly or even effectively operate on a practice of only 11,000 patients?
    Sir George Young: The very next sentence in my notes says that some of this exists already. However, what does
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    not exist is the pressure to improve. There is little awareness of what is available in the more progressive practices. Expectations of what one should get from a GP are low. The Bill's provisions will result in more choice, more competition, more variety and an incentive to improve that does not exist at the moment. Some GPs will decide that this is not for them, but others will seize the opportunities available and dramatically improve services.
    In two years' time, as we approach the election, people will be confronted by different rhetoric from the two sides of the House. We shall be talking in terms of billions of pounds spent—something that people seem reluctant to believe, and have difficulty in understanding. The Opposition will be full of their usual doom and gloom. I shall ask my constituents to judge for themselves, by their own experience of what has happened.
    For that to be a successful test, we must learn from education. We need to examine resources, timing and morale. On resources, as we move over from a system where the producer is king to one where the consumer is king, there will be even more pressure for more resources. If the money is to follow the patient, the patient must have a full wallet. Otherwise, the patients will become impatient. The new system will quickly identify where supply is failing to meet demand. For our philosophy to succeed, there must be adequate funds.
    What terrifies most of the GPs to whom I have spoken is timing. They are not all hostile to the concepts in the Bill, but the data that they need to give to the family practitioner committee and the district health authority are not data that they have at the moment. Nor do they have the information technology to identify, that data. I ask the Government to look again at some of the time scales to see whether we are not trying to do too much too quickly.
    The third factor is morale. To achieve the higher standards of health care that we all want to see, we need an NHS in which the staff feel appreciated and are well motivated. We must do even more to win over their hearts and minds and show all of them that what they do commands our respect and appreciation. At the end of the day, they deliver health care, not us
    In the time available, I have not touched on much of the Bill, and in particular have not mentioned community care. However, I hope that I have said enough to show that I have faith in the reforms and that I look forward with confidence to their introduction.
    6.26 pm
    Mr. Michael Foot: The hon. Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young) has already referred to the crucial aspect of the debate—the feeling of those who will have to operate the service. Before talking about that, I shall make two brief personal references. I am the only Member who was here in 1948, when the original Bill went through the House. Even more appositely, I have recent experience of the NHS. I had two operations done at once. When I went to another consultant in the same hospital, rather boasting about this achievement and thinking that I had got it purely on medical advice, the consultant who was dealing with a different part of my anatomy said, "At any rate, that will have saved the NHS some money." I am glad that I have done so, as I am interested in how much money the service gets.

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    I thought that the Secretary of State would have come here with a little humility after all these weeks and months of debate. I thought that he would have listened a little to what has been said by people outside this place. I was staggered when he quoted only one sentence from the document presented to the Government a week ago by the bodies representing all the people who work in the NHS. They include not only the unions, whom the right hon. and learned Gentleman is so eager to deride at every opportunity, but the nurses, all the royal colleges and the British Medical Association. They all joined to make representations to the Government at the last moment, to try to put their case. The Secretary of State merely picked out one sentence, trying to suggest to those Tory Members who might be innocent enough to believe it that there had been some change in the attitude of those who will have to put into operation the proposals that the Government are seeking to force on them. There has been no change in the attitude of all those bodies, and that is not just due to propaganda.
    I hope that everyone working in the NHS will listen to, or read, the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook). I am sure that they will have great respect for what he has done, and the way he has put his case, ever since these proposals were introduced. He was never better than he was today. To surpass even his own previous performances took some doing, but he did it and he tore the Government's case to tatters.
    Why do the Government not stop for a few minutes—the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young) had enough diffidence to do so—to ask themselves why their policies are so unpopular, why their proposals do not command any real support among the vast majority of people who know about the service, be they the doctors, the nurses, the patients or anyone else involved in the service? Why have the Government been unable to persuade them? Do they not have the humility to wonder whether there might just be some defect in their proposals which has led to that extraordinary situation?
    The Secretary of State was appointed to his job as the greatest of the communicators, but he must be the most misunderstood man of the century. Apparently, nobody knows what he has been saying. He has had plenty of opportunity and has spent huge sums of taxpayers' money to speak at the top of his voice, but still he is not believed.
    When I was in hospital the other day I did my best to defend the right hon. and learned Gentleman; to see what his good qualities might be. I was asked whether I thought that he was all had. I stopped for a moment and I did my best to think, as I am thinking now, what I could say in his favour. The best thing that I could think of is the fact that he is a supporter of Nottingham Forest, but if my friend Brian Clough managed Nottingham Forest in the way the Secretary of State has managed the NHS he would be reapplying for readmission to the fourth division.
    The right hon. and learned Gentleman should have learned from his follies and mistakes. Right at the beginning he made an appalling mess of the nurses' regrading, which was carried out so inefficiently and insensitively that there are still many scars. As the right hon. and learned Gentleman said, huge sums of money were spent on the regrading process, yet far from in any way improving the atmosphere in the service, it has done the exact opposite. I checked last week, and even today in Wales, and no doubt in many other parts of the country, great soreness remains among vast numbers of nurses
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    about the way in which the regrading was done and the way in which they were misused and misled. That is still creating grievance in the service.
    One would have thought that the right hon. and learned Gentleman would think about that and consider some other way of going about his reforms, especially since the source of all the suspicion in Britain is the way in which the plans were originally devised.
    When Aneurin Bevan set up the Health Service, he said that a way would be needed to inquire into the service every five or 10 years to see what improvements could be made and whether it could be enlarged, using the experiences that had gone before. He put forward such an argument on every Bill that he introduced. Of course he wanted to see such a process in the NHS. It was never dreamed then that the NHS would be kept on exactly the same lines as it was when it was first introduced.
    The Labour party has never been against making changes in the NHS to make it greater, and I am sure that the next Labour Government will do exactly that. But the present Secretary of State and the Government began in the worst possible way, and that was the origin of the deep and justified suspicion about all their proposals—whether for general practice, for the NHS or for community care, on which the Government have consulted a bit more but not much more.
    The Government did not consult at all. A committee presided over by the Prime Minister was charged to try to produce some proposals for the NHS which would satisfy the Prime Minister—the very worst way of going about it. The Secretary of State was not even on the committee. He chose to take on the job when the Prime Minister was showing greatest omniscience or omnipotence—whatever one likes to call it—when she thought that the Government had absolute power to do whatever they wanted. The Secretary of State is a clever fellow, but his ambition got the better of his political intelligence at that time. He took the job and now he is landed in it. Every time he gets up to speak he is even more unconvincing, and he has never been more unconvincing than he has been today.
    Mr. David Nicholson: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. It is always difficult to find a full stop in his remarks.
    Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether it is still Labour policy to abolish competitive tendering in the NHS and whether the Labour party will continue the vendetta against private practice that the Government of which he was a member carried on? If so, how will that help the NHS?
    Mr. Foot: There was no vendetta against private practice. The Labour Government carried out the measures that they said that they would carry out and introduced many measures for enlarging and protecting the NHS and some of its essential principles. I shall come in a moment to what should figure most prominently in a new Labour Government's plans for the NHS.
    It is the origin of the Government's proposals that poisoned them right from the beginning. That is the reason for the strength of opinion throughout the country. The right hon. and learned Gentleman should have understood that. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? No one could get good reform for the NHS out of a committee presided over by the Prime Minister, who was

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    eager to discover some means—she did not want to use the word "privatise"—to twist the Health Service into something different. The Prime Minister has no need to worry when such charges are made against her. She is supposed to be a great conviction politician. Presumably, one of her convictions is that Socialism is wrong.
    Yet Socialism was embedded and entrenched in the NHS from the very first. The right hon. Lady says that she will kill Socialism in Britain, but she cannot do that without killing the NHS. To make a frontal attack would be too damaging, so the Government have carried their intentions through in a surreptitious way, which my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) has exposed. But they will not succeed because they have not been able to carry any significant section of opinion with them. One of the principal reasons for the change in mood throughout the country, and one of the principal reasons for the Government's coming defeat, is what the Prime Minister has tried to do to the NHS. Most Conservative Members know the truth of that.
    The question is how much damage the Government will be allowed to do in the meantime. Anyone who accuses the Labour party of using the arguments about the NHS for partisan purposes, should recall the offer made by my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston on behalf of the Labour party in May, before the Bill was introduced. From the point of view of political advantage, it was not an easy proposal, but from the point of view of protecting the Health Service, which we want to build up in a proper way when we get the chance, it was a good proposal.
    My hon. Friend suggested that we should not go ahead with the Bill but should let the electorate decide what kind of Health Service they want. They did not have a chance to do that at the last general election because the Government's proposals were not before them. My hon. Friend suggested in May that the electorate should be allowed to decide at the next election. We shall indeed decide then, of course, but shall we be allowed to decide before all the changes and convulsions in the NHS are introduced, with all the damage that could be done? That would be much fairer. If the Government had any desire to protect the NHS they would have accepted that proposal. As I said, it would not necessarily be to the Labour party's political advantage, but it would have meant that the British people would have the fair choice of deciding whether they wanted the Labour party's proposals or the Government's proposals. If the Government had had any faith in their proposals, they would have accepted that proposition then.
    It is quite improper for anyone to suggest that the Labour party has used the great argument about the National Health Service for its own partisan purposes. We have been eager to protect the NHS and its future, because we believe that the service is the greatest domestic achievement of any Labour Government in modern times and we want to ensure that we have a chance to build it up properly. I am sure that my hon. Friend will be there to do that.
    We shall want—among other things—to carry forward some of the reforms that were initiated in 1948. No one claimed then that the NHS had been founded on a democratic basis—indeed, the co-operation of doctors and other staff would never have been secured if that had been
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    the case—and a national scheme had to be devised to take over many local government operations. Nevertheless, Aneurin Bevan and the others who introduced the scheme always argued that a much firmer democratic basis must be re-established in the NHS.
    Mr. David Nicholson: More power for the trade unions.
    Mr. Foot: Certainly it was thought that the new democratic system should be partly union based, in that those who worked in the service should have their say; more important, however, it was felt that it should have a basis in local government. The Prime Minister and the Government hate local government almost as much as they seem to hate the trade unions, but they have been logically forced to return to it by the sheer need to do something about community care. Their scheme is still half-baked; it is time for them to discuss it much more openly with local authorities, and to give those authorities the chance to make a full contribution that they never gave to those who work in the Health Service.
    The National Health Service is one of the main issues on which the next election will be fought. I have no doubt that the country will make up its mind that it needs the Opposition's proposals for the protection of the existing service, and for its future. I congratulate my hon. Friend and his colleagues on the steadfastness with which they have put the case for the whole country, and on their refusal to be led astray by any of the diversions prepared by Conservative Members. They have made a great contribution to the welfare of the whole country.
    6.43 pm
    Sir Michael McNair-Wilson: I shall not follow the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot), except to say that it is clear from his speech that even an old Socialist will become inherently conservative as he grows older. The right hon. Gentleman's vision of 1945 is so perfect that, 40 years later, he believes that it cannot be improved upon; yet he knows that he was part of a Government who reduced expenditure on the same National Health Service that he is now lauding to the House. He also knows that it is Government's responsibility to manage the affairs of this country as they think best at any given moment, and to accept the economic circumstances in which such services can be provided.
    I do not criticise my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State or the Government in any way for taking on themselves the task of looking at the NHS 40 years after its inception, or for asking whether its structures are as perfect as the right hon. Gentleman would have us believe or whether they can be greatly improved—not only to make the service better for those who work in it, not only to maximise its assets, but, most important of all, to ensure that the patients who are its customers benefit from the best treatment available.
    Having said that, I must also say with some regret that the Bill, in my view, has missed a golden opportunity. Both the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) and my right hon. and learned Friend talked about patients, but the Bill makes no reference to their rights; I wish that it did.
    The Health Service, as we all know, is available free at the point of use. It is about making people better—as many as we can, as often as we can and as effectively as we can, both economically and clinically. When, as sometimes

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    happens, it fails to offers the service that we can reasonably expect, we are right to ask for explanations and apologies—and, I believe, for compensation for medical accidents without recourse to law. We, the patients, have entrusted ourselves body and soul to the medical staff to be made well: they have a duty to tell us what went wrong, and to compensate us if they have made a mistake.
    I know that that is contentious, but I do not believe that we can continue much longer with the present compensation scheme, in which negligence is the sole reason for an offer of compensation. I am sorry that the Bill has done nothing to redress what I believe to be wrong, or to establish patients' rights more firmly—as firmly as they were spelt out in the patients' charter, that I drew up with the Association of Community Health Councils for England and Wales and presented to the then Secretary of State at the beginning of 1987.
    Because of my views on the need for the service to meet patients' requirements, I strongly support the concept of medical audit. That concept is inherent in the White Paper, whose intention was to raise standards generally. The Bill provides for the involvement of the Audit Commission, which will bring about a similar effect in a different way.
    Audit can be clinical or managerial: it can be assessment of medical practice, or a check on how resources are being used. Either way, it measures performance, and that has been one of the shortcomings of the service hitherto. The structure that we intend to use for clinical audit, involving the royal colleges, will require many man hours of consultants' time if it is to be effective, and will thus be a costly exercise. Extra resources will be needed if it is to be done properly, and it must be done properly if it is to be of real value.
    If we have audits, what sanctions will go with them? Will their findings receive a public airing, or will they be confidential? Will access to the findings of a clinical audit be restricted to the doctors involved? Can a health authority be censured for poor performance, and required to do something about it? That is what patients will want to know—or, at any rate, what their representatives on the community health councils will want to know.
    Perhaps, at long last, medical audit will provide some yardsticks for clinical competence. If it achieves its aim in making a contemporary assessment of a doctor's ability, it may shed light on whether—as a result of the speed with which medicine is progressing—retraining should be part of the work experience of doctors.
    Ever since the Secretary of State gave me an assurance earlier this year that no chronically sick person would ever go without the drugs that he or she required from a GP, I have found it difficult to be convinced by those who have spread scare stories suggesting that the effects of indicative drug budgets would be detrimental to patients.
    The national drugs bill is huge, but I do not doubt that most of it is wisely spent. However, we all know of doctors who prescribe six months' supplies of drugs, such as sleeping tablets, without ever considering whether the drugs are really needed or whether another course of treatment might be better for the patient. We know that 27 million tranquillisers are given out anually and that some doctors prescribe without a thought as to the price of the drug, or whether there is a cheaper generic substitute.
    We all know that antibiotics given to cure an illness are thrown away before they are fully used up, simply because we are feeling better and have no further need of them. Patients seldom stop to think that they are throwing away
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    public money. I do not think that it is unreasonable to ask the medical profession to have a care about what they prescribe; it is being paid for out of public money. That should not inhibit their clinical judgment, and from what my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State has said, it clearly will not do so. However, it should make them more conscious of value for money. That point will not be lost on the drugs industry, efficient though it is.
    I was grateful for the Secretary of State's answer to my question about hospital drug budgets. However, wonder drugs do not always receive the financing that they require. I personally am able to talk about a drug called erythropoetin, which is given to kidney patients who are receiving dialysis treatment. I am such a patient, and I can assure my right hon. and learned Friend that it is a wonder drug for kidney patients. It overcomes acute anaemia, it returns their haemoglobin to a normal level and it gives them back the energy that they lost when their kidneys failed. However, the hospital that is looking after me is funded for only half the number of kidney patients that could benefit from that drug.
    I hope that the Department will examine again the possibility of finding sufficient money to fund a new drug when it comes on the market. It can, as in the case of erythropoetin, completely change someone's physical characteristics for the better. It is not good enough simply to say that the amount of money that can go into a hospital's drug budget is restricted and that the hospital must decide how to spend it. If we want to make progress with drugs research, we must provide the finance to make the wonder drugs available to the largest possible number of people.
    I am concerned about an apparent overspend in West Berkshire health authority's drug budget during the first part of this year on acute cases. Taken together with other projected overspends, the authority will have to make reductions if it is to stay within its overall budget. Certain expenditure savings are possible without affecting patient care. However, in a letter to me, the chairman of the authority said:
    "To a great extent the severity of the forthcoming winter will control the success of this exercise. Inevitably there will, in any event, be a reduction in elective surgery."
    That suggests to me that the two general hospitals in Reading are working within too narrow financial restraints. Some of the £33 million that, it was recently announced, will be used to help to reduce waiting lists may come our way. The abolition of the Resource Allocation Working Group formula, which has kept the Oxford region under-funded for so long, will improve our cash flow.
    Perhaps we shall not have a severe winter, or an epidemic, but there are inescapable grounds for concern in the case of all of us who may need to use those hospitals this winter. I wonder why, year after year, we never seem to get the funding quite right. After April 1991, with the introduction of contracts between health authorities and hospitals, under which the health authority purchases health care from a hospital, that position will change. The audit may show up management shortcomings and even places where either savings can be made or resources generated.
    We shall always want to use our district hospitals whenever possible because of the benefit of local access and family support, but the Bill will result in health authorities having a new discretionary power to buy

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    services that cannot be provided locally at an economical price and to use the hospital facilities of other district health authorities to meet the needs of patients living on their periphery, if that is more convenient for the patient. By the same token, district health authorities may well see the advantages in encouraging local hospitals to specialise and so attract external contracts.
    To revert to kidney patients. I think that it is possible that, as a result of the Bill and of the fact that the money will go with the patient, district health authorities which are currently sending their kidney patients for dialysis to hospitals that are often a very long way away from where they live, will treat those patients in the local hospital. They will set up small dialysis units, because they will have more money with which to create them. That is a positive example of the benefits that the Bill will provide for a particular group of patients whose needs are not met under the existing structure.
    That is an example of one group of patients about whom I know quite a lot. Perhaps I ought to have declared an interest and said that I am the president of the National Federation of Kidney Patients Associations. The money will go with the patient and the district health authority will have sufficient finance to set up dialysis units, of whatever size is needed, for its own patients.
    The introduction of block contracts will result in new financial incentives for the Health Service. It should create healthy competition and an effective internal market, in which hospitals will consider what they can do best to maximise their assets. There will be performance audits to improve clinical care and quality of service. Practice budgets will give groups of doctors a new freedom to get the best for their patients. Some self-governing hospitals will be able to take responsibility for their budgets and for the way in which they manage their facilities and set out their stall.
    The reforms will take time to shake down and to work effectively and efficiently. No doubt changes will be made as we learn from experience. That is how it is with all reforms. I end, however, as I started, by reminding the House that the changes brought about by the Bill will be a success only when patients say that they are successful. They are the customers of the health care provisions that we make. They will decide whether, after 40 years, we have crafted a National Health Service that, to quote the Prime Minister, is so good no one will want to go privately. I believe that the Bill is an important step in that direction. I wish it well.
    Several Hon. Members rose—
    Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): Order. It might be sensible if I were to remind the House that Mr. Speaker has decided that the 10-minute limit on the length of speeches should apply between 7 and 9 o'clock.
    6.57 pm
    Mr. Charles Kennedy: No hon. Member doubts what has been said by the hon. Member for Newbury (Sir M. McNair-Wilson) about his personal experiences, or the sincerity with which he speaks. It is always a pleasure to hear him speak in Health Service debates.
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    The hon. Gentleman legitimately criticised certain aspects of the Bill. I agree with him. Not the least of those criticisms is the fact that patient rights are given little prominence. The Secretary of State said little about those rights today. However, I do not share the hon. Gentleman's optimism about other aspects of the Bill. It can be understood only in the context of Conservative party thinking on the subject. During the last decade, the Government have come to believe that they know the price of everything. The Bill is the apotheosis of that process. However, they have revealed that they know the value of nothing. Nowhere is that more clearly demonstrated than in their proposals for the National Health Service.
    Throughout the last decade, the Government have been singularly unsuccessful in persuading the British public, in the Prime Minister's famous phrase, that the Health Service is safe in the Government's hands. Opinion poll after opinion poll throughout that period has demonstrated that they have not persuaded the British public to that view. Personal experience at community level has underscored that point. People have seen the distance widen between the rhetoric of Ministers at the Dispatch Box and on national platforms and the reality of what is happening to the NHS. They have witnessed forced cuts, ward closures and a general decline in morale among so many of the professionals within the NHS.
    Perhaps it reached its most farcical climax under the present Secretary of State during the difficulties and the controversy, referred to by the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot), which surrounded the nursing profession in the summer of 1988. The Secretary of State disappeared out of the country and the service appeared to be rudderless. More time and money seemed to be spent by the press trying to track down the Secretary of State abroad than the police devoted to trying to locate Lord Lucan. The difference between Lord Lucan and the Secretary of State is that Lord Lucan got away with murder before he left the country, whereas the Secretary of State has been trying to get away with ministerial murder since he returned from that summer sojourn.
    The proposals were made by the Prime Minister and handed to the right hon. and learned Gentleman by his hapless predecessor. This is a fundamentally bad Bill for Britain.
    It is worth taking the Government at face value and considering the thrust of their approach. Their White Papers are called "Working for Patients" and "Caring for People". I echo the words of the hon. Member for Newbury (Sir M. McNair-Wilson) and ask to what extent the Bill enhances, strengthens and extends patients' rights within the Health Service. The conclusion has to be, emphatically, that it does not.
    Hospital trusts, budgets and contracts and the language used by the Secretary of State in his opening speech are all designed to enhance competition through the diversion of financial resources, rather than through the extension of consumer choice.
    I shall give two examples. The first is hospital trusts. Several of my hon. Friends have challenged the Secretary of State during the debate to say why, if patients are to be of paramount importance, there is no inbuilt mechanism for them to be consulted about the future of a hospital, when it makes a fundamental decision about opting out of the Health Service—or, if the Government do not like that expression, deciding on hospital trust status.

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    Secondly, when we consider the new three-year contracts to be held by health authorities and GPs for care at a hospital which has put in a bid for a particular type of treatment, our main worry must be that the motivation for sending a patient in a particular direction will be financial rather than consultative or allowing the patient the right to choose the treatment and the most practicable hospital for it to be carried out.
    The Government claim that patients will be all-important, but the truth is that, given the motivation behind the Bill and the mechanics involved in it, their position will be devalued.
    On the principle of general practitioners' rights of referral, the Department of Health has said that they
    "cannot be interpreted as a licence for GPs to disregard the contractual arrangements … a presumption of the right to make an extra-contractual referral cannot be a guarantee that the DHA would in all cases meet the cost".
    That is the proof of the pudding. Money is talking in all the decisions and the new mechanisms that are being set up. As many right hon. and hon. Members have already said, what is worse is that none of the available evidence shows that the Department has a clear conception of that.
    Even more important is the fact that GPs, in order to make correct, informed decisions about a patient, will require a degree of information technology, recall facilities, and computer links within the National Health Service, which they simply do not have.
    Today I heard evidence from a number of hospitals, some of which are potential bidders for trust status in two years' time. They said that they need time to bring information technology facilities up to scratch to meet the provisions of the Bill if they are to achieve independent hospital trust status. The Bill will be £6 million a time. I think that the Select Committee has examined that and come up with evidence for it.
    Where is the money to be found for the necessary upgrading of information technology to make a success of the scheme, and to enable the necessary take-up of the innovations proposed by the Secretary of State? I do not base my arguments on the grounds used by the Opposition, because we are opposed to their scheme, but on those laid down by the Government. It has not been costed properly. A consultant surgeon, James Appleyard, perceptively wrote:
    "No responsible and ethical business would undertake such an untried venture without the full costs and appropriate information technology to ensure these are valid and up to date."
    The best place to discover the possibilities of failure and abuse is in a letter to health authority chairmen and managers from the Department of Health, entitled "Pricing & openness on Contracts for health services" which states:
    "Monopolists will have an incentive to restrict supply, to drive up price and either to inflate profits or costs. Buyers will be offered lower quantities at higher prices than would otherwise be the case … information about quality and price is generally poor … hence buyers are in a weak position to make meaningful price and quality comparisons and to shop around".
    I do not like the terminology, but let the Department speak for itself:
    "All of this suggests that we will not always be able to rely on actual competition, potential competition or bilateral monopoly to ensure that the NHS internal and external markets work effectively".
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    That is the advice sent out by the Department of Health, not an Opposition spokesman or a critic from within the Health Service.
    Opposition Members should not feel so sad or frustrated about the Secretary of State. We know that he does not listen to nurses or to patients, he does not pay any attention to doctors and he rides roughshod over views expressed in Parliament. We can seek reassurance from the fact that he does not pay a blind bit of notice to what his own Department are saying about the centrepiece of the proposal—the flagship of self-governing hospitals. We will deal with that in detail in Committee, but I shall touch on three important issues.
    First, the proposal turns the clock back. As the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent said, there has been a steady, if not always perfect, attempt to expand a truly planned National Health Service. Enshrined in that aim was the belief that, wherever one lived, one should have access, as far as possible, to the same level of treatment. The proposal can only erode that principle.
    Secondly, the proposal will further entrench the importance of cash over care, with the result that the less profit-making services will have to be sacrificed to build an attractive and glamorous national image. The services that are most likely to go are basic services to the local community, such as geriatric and maternity services. I find it amazing that the Secretary of State could not say any more about that issue in his opening speech. We shall seek further clarification about what the Government and the Department think constitutes a core service that must be maintained by a district or regional general hospital.
    Mr. Matthew Taylor: I have handed to the Secretary of State today a petition with 7,500 signatures from my constituents, who are concerned about the proposals. Are the problems of the scheme not best illustrated by hospital trusts? People feel that they are not being consulted about the future of a National Health Service that they are proud of and depend on. That problem is stirring up concern among ordinary people, not just among doctors and Front-Bench Labour or Conservative spokesmen.
    Mr. Kennedy: I am grateful to my hon. Friend and pay tribute to the work that he has done in his constituency to alert people to the dangers. I know of one direct consultation exercise. It was conducted in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown). Some 96 per cent. of those who registered an opinion were unambiguous about their desire for the local hospital not to opt out of the National Health Service. That was a very good judgment.
    Education and training is a deep worry to the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals.
    Mr. Tim Devlin rose—
    Mr. Kennedy: I shall not give way.
    Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Member has already overrun his time.
    Mr. Kennedy: With deference to the Chair, I am trying to finish my speech.
    Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am required to ask the hon. Member to finish his speech.
    7.10 pm
    Mr. James Couchman: It is flattering to have the whole Liberal doughnut to speak to. Perhaps Liberal Members will leave quitly.
    I have taken a part in the management of the Health Service for much of the past 15 years, from membership of an area health authority and chairmanship of a social services committee in the middle 1970s to the chairmanship of a district health authority in 1982. My first year here was spent on the Social Services Select Committee, before I was invited to join the Department of Health and Social Security team as Parliamentary Private Secretary to my right hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr. Newton).
    From those diverse vantage points, I have become convinced of the urgent need for reform of the National Health Service. It has tottered from one crisis to the next for all of those 15 years. The symptom of the crisis has usually been a comparatively small apparent shortfall in the NHS budget. There appears to be a recurring £200 million shortage which suddenly manifests itself around Christmas time and causes panic among managers, who always try to resolve their imagined problem by closing beds, wards, or even hospitals, and by curtailing other sharp-end patient services. I deliberately used the terms "apparent shortfall" and "imagined problem", for £200 million represents less than 1 per cent. of the Health Service's enormous budget, and it requires much more sophisticated financial management to foretell an overspend of less than 1 per cent. four to five months before the end of the financial year.
    Just two years ago, when my right hon. Friend the Member for Braintree was Minister for Health, there was a particularly severe dose of the pre-Christmas wobblies. As ever, 100 per cent. of the service was plunged into crisis for a 1 to 2 per cent. predicted cash shortfall. After some especially unsavoury examples of shroud-waving around the country, additional money was given to the Health Service, but the time had finally come to investigate the cause rather than the symptoms of the recurring crisis.
    A committee to review the Health Serice chaired by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was convened. The result was "Working for Patients", which I welcome, for it challenges some of the most sacred cows of the service. The review recognises for the first time—the Bill tries to tackle it—the essential changing nature of health care, from the fairly simple public health service remedies of the 1940s to all the marvellous modern techniques which we increasingly regard as commonplace today. It recognises that the Health Service has become a victim of its own success, as each new therapy, whether surgical or medical, adds to everybody's life expectancy, but particularly that of the very elderly, and produces its own waiting list.
    The Labour party uses waiting lists, or waiting times, as a stick to beat the Government because the last time Labour Members were in government, they allowed their union paymasters to force the devastating strike that we now remember as part of the winter of discontent. They remember the mismanagement of the economy, which led to the International Monetary Fund demanding major cuts in public spending, and the effect that that had on the NHS. The increase in waiting lists to an all-time record in 1979 was indeed a measure of failure. I believe that, today, the waiting list is largely a measure of the NHS's success.
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    There was no waiting list in 1959 for hip joint replacement or coronary bypass grafts. Those techniques were at an early stage of development. The lack of waiting lists for those and many other procedures was hardly a measure of success. Today, the waiting list is a good indication of people's vastly increased aspiration for life-saving and quality-of-life-improving treatments.
    The review also recognised the rigidities in the present system which arise out of the NHS's very size, its massive work force, its inertia and the inefficiency with which its resources can be deployed. In short, the review recognises the near-impossibility of managing the Health Service in its present corporate or conglomerate form, and seeks to break it up into smaller, more manageable, and more reactive parts.
    Waste is endemic in all very large organisations, and the Health Service is typical of that. Successive reorganisations have recognised, but not tackled, that problem of waste of resource, largely because they have not recognised the fundamental inefficiency of a vast monopoly purchaser of health care which is also a vast monopoly provider. The Bill tries to tackle that, but of course the Labour party, with its reverence for Aneurin Bevan's memorial, and its consciousness of its trade union masters, recognises the great danger of fragmentation to the trade unions. The Health Service is uniquely vulnerable to industrial dispute because of its national negotiating machinery and national wage agreements, which take almost no note of local circumstance. There is no doubt in my mind that it is this aspect of self-governing trusts which most frightens Opposition Members—that local pay and conditions will be negotiated without reference to the thrall of national union leaders.
    The emphasis which the review and the Bill put on outcomes is to be welcomed. Medical accountability and clinical audit are long overdue. I believe that the vast majority of good clinicians will welcome the opportunity to have their dedicated efforts measured against sensible benchmarks. If the monitoring process highlights those few whose productivity is compromised either by idleness or by their assiduous promotion of their private practices, the Health Service will be the winner.
    It is in regard to the outcomes that I should like to express one of my two reservations about the Bill. I refer to indicative drug budgets. I must declare that I have had many discussions with the pharmaceutical industry, and I have lately advised one company on matters pertaining to the Bill. It makes no sense to save a few pounds by denying a patient the most modern and efficacious medication if the outcome is that he or she lands up in hospital. That is a poor outcome for the patient, and a poor outcome for the service, but it is a risk if the only sanctioned or monitored measure of a doctor is his prescribing habits. Doctors who have practice budgets will have wider choices to make, but those without practice budgets may have care only for their indicative drug budget.
    I should like to give an example of an extreme case. The new British drug eminase is a thrombolytic drug with the most exciting potential. It is given as a one-shot emergency injection to heart atttack victims. It dissolves the life-threatening clots and limits the amount of heart muscle that is destroyed by the atack. Moreover, its chemistry controls the rate of delivery over several hours. It is a very clever drug which markedly improves the

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    immediate prognosis for the patient, reduces the time likely to be spent in intensive care and reduces the likelihood of the victim being left a cardiac cripple.
    Eminase offers excellent outcomes all round, but it is expensive. It costs about £500 for the single emergency shot. I should like to think that no doctor is mindful of his indicative drug budget when I fall victim to a heart attack and my condition indicates the need for an urgent shot of eminase.
    While considering how to bring into line the minority of general practitioners who are bad prescribers—it is worth noting that under-prescription can be as detrimental as over-prescription—it behoves my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State to remember his days at the Department of Trade and Industry, and the battle for a positive trade balance. The pharmaceutical industry is a rare star in that area, having an annual positive trade balance of some £850 million, but it is an industry in which decisions about investment are particularly susceptible to whether the market is perceived to be hostile or favourable. Investment decisions about where to put new research and development, manufacturing and distribution, especially by multinationals, but also by British companies, will determine whether that favourable trade balance is maintained.
    The Henley centre has recently suggested that imprudent implementation of the White Paper proposals could be highly detrimental and cost far more than will he saved by the indicative drugs budget. That would be a poor outcome.
    My second reservation is about the explanatory memorandum, which sets out in bland terms the costs of the Bill in financial terms and in manpower. That section sends shivers down my spine, for I have watched at first hand as a district health authority chairman the Health Service's infinite capacity for creating bureaucracy. The systems under which the purchaser, whether health authority or general practice, will contract with the provider for services offers scope hitherto undreamed of by bureaucreators. The method of tracing through and monitoring payment for service by the Health Service to the Health Service could make the reorganisations of 1974 and 1982 look positively transparent. Beware of the bureaucreator, who is already alive and well and flourishing among the regions, including my own region of South-East Thames.
    As a former chairman of social services, I should have liked to speak about the community care proposals but I hope that I shall be allowed to contribute to the debate on them in Committee. I recognise that many other hon. Members wish to speak tonight. I believe that the Bill will take the NHS into the 21st century in a healthy and vigorous form. I wish it well and will support it enthusiastically.
    7.21 pm
    Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: For 10 years I have listened to Conservative Ministers say how strongly they are committed to the National Health Service and how simply it could be improved if only it had less money at its disposal. "Efficiency, efficiency, efficiency", we are told. More than one reorganisation of the Health Service has been masterminded by the great brains of the Conservative party resulting in chaos from which it usually takes the NHS a considerable time to
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    recover. But the present Bill is a real corker. One might call the ability to produce such a Bill a unique gift, even for the Conservative party. It is a Bill spawned in dislike, produced out of ignorance and apparently being pushed with malice.
    The Secretary of State seems to have come to the House today, not to detail the changes that he genuinely believes will produce positive results for patients but to say that people in the Health Service who do not instantly agree with the mess of pottage that he is presenting to them are automatically ignorant, incompetent and malicious. That is the only explanation for his constant attacks on all sections of the NHS. He says that consultants keep up their waiting lists as part of their prestige, the nurses questioned their upgrading because they did not understand that it would put them on a better footing, and that the ambulance men must be starved into submission because they are just taxi drivers who do not understand patient care. I find that despicable. There are no words strong enough to condemn the performance of a Secretary of State who is not stupid and who knows that what he says is based irrevocably in deep contempt for the NHS.
    The Conservative party has opposed every positive move since the Health Service was first suggested, and now it is coming forward with suggestions somehow to transform the NHS into a commercial organisation. I have received in my post an interesting glossy brochure emotively headed, "Not for Sale". One might think that that referred to some political party, but not on your life: it refers to the creation of hospital trusts among the mid-Cheshire hospitals. The brochure contains pictures of the district general hospital—in the centre of my constituency and the only one for a considerable distance—and the Victoria infirmary, telling us that they are not for sale.
    Only towards the end of the brochure is one told that other hospitals will not be included in the opted-out independent NHS trusts. Those hospitals have one thing in common—all of them provide high-cost, important, long-term services for the mentally handicapped, for psychiatric and geriatric patients, and for others who require support services due to long-term chronic illness. The hospitals involved have one other thing in common—all have large acreages of land suitable for sale by an independent trust.
    The Secretary of State says, "Don't worry, we shall have contracts," and that they will not really be contracts but agreements. If anything makes the hair on the back of my neck wave, it is a barrister who tells me, "Don't worry, it is not what it says but what I say it says." A contract is a contract. What will happen to services which are not provided to a standard that the people responsible for the bills regard as acceptable? Will there be constant litigation between sections of the NHS? When GPs find that they cannot obtain suitable services from hospitals, will they take some form of legal action against the hospitals concerned? It may seem absurd, but in my view it is all too possible.
    What will happen under the Bill is quite different. It will be particularly damaging for rural general practices in my constituency. It is not true that the Bill will help women doctors. Many women doctors who have families like to provide single-session services, not just to keep up the standard of their medicine but to provide a useful service. General practices faced with a limited budget—we have been given no assurance that they will have sufficient

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    resources to run a proper service—will almost automatically cut down on use of single-session part-time doctors because, even if those doctors provide an essential service, the doctors in the practice will prefer to provide the service themselves even if it is less adequate. So long as they deal with sufficient numbers, that will be all that counts. They will say, "We can provide a sufficient level of care to ensure that we can put in the figures at the end of the quarter and get the cash back." That will be an increasingly frequent occurrence and those who wish to continue working on a single-session basis will have real problems.
    There will also be problems of trust between patients and GPs. General practice is, after all, the best way of delivering health care to patients when they most need it. GPs are the best clinicians and they know when people need to talk and when they need medication. The GP should provide the services that have been paraded before us this evening as though they were revolutionary innovations. Twenty-four years ago I worked in a general practice where it would have been regarded as a disgrace not to be able to take out a verruca without being told by someone else that it was a brilliant idea.
    We are talking not about the level of patient care but about money and the provision of more accountancy services. We are constantly being told of the huge sums put into the NHS in the past three years, but where has that money gone? It has gone to provide accountants and the modern equivalent of the cash register—the computer. Like all good computers, the NHS computers will no doubt lose as much detailed NHS work as they manage to lose political work.
    There will be a fragmentation of the NHS. That was the word used by the Secretary of State. That is clear from the brochures that have been circulated to staff and it is clear to everyone who looks at the details of the Bill. The balkanisation of the NHS is what the Bill is all about. Increasingly, hospitals will compete with and not complement one another. They will not say, "Where are the services that are helpful?" They will not talk to GPs about the need to plan the integration of services so that practice nurses, physiotherapists and others can be provided. The Labour party has been asking for that for the past 10 years, ever since the massive investigation into NHS needs which was wholly ignored by the incoming Conservative Government.
    I am still a softie at heart and I want to believe that the good, kind gentlemen in the Conservative party mean what they say when they talk about their commitment to patient care. Throughout the passage of the Bill, there will be repeated opportunities for them to prove that. They will be able to tell us how rural practices will carry on, and how inner-city practices, which already have difficulties with shifting populations, will be able to show that they have maintained the level of specialised care that they are told is essential. Conservative Members can also explain to us how the staff and, above all, the patients in my constituency are to discover what core services are.
    The Bill does not make it clear what core services will be, but I can tell the House what the core of the Bill is—it is a deep contempt for the concept of the National Health Service, and the sooner the Government make that plain, the sooner patients will tell them where to go.
    7.31 pm
    Mr. David Atkinson: This has been an exciting week in the Health Service for my constituents. On Monday, phase 1 of our new Bournemouth general hospital opened its doors to patients. It is a magnificent hospital, of which the East Dorset health authority has every reason to be proud. I congratulate all those responsible for it.
    I take this opportunity to pay particular tribute to the people of Bournemouth and the surrounding districts for raising £2 million for the new Bournemouth hospital appeal. That enabled this already well equipped, new hospital to have the additional facility of a body scanner, which I had the pleasure to see in operation on Monday.
    It would be well to remind the House, if it needs reminding after three Adjournment debates on this subject, why there were delays in starting the hospital. It was planned to be built more than 10 years ago, but together with many other hospitals it was a casualty of the cuts which the Labour Government imposed on their hospital building programmes. On behalf of my constituents and my hon. Friends the Members for Bournemouth, West (Mr. Butterfill), for Christchurch (Mr. Adley), for Poole (Mr. Ward), for Dorset, North (Mr. Baker) and for New Forest (Sir P. McNair-Wilson), I thank my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State and the Government for making the money available for phase 1 to be completed and for the second phase now to commence.
    Now I must be a little critical of my right hon. and learned Friend. I regret that he has combined in one Bill his White Paper proposals on the NHS with his White Paper proposals on community care. I know that the Bill is comparatively short, but these are two vital and distinct matters. One is primarily concerned with returning people to health, while the other is about keeping people in health at home. However, I welcome the Government's response to the Griffiths report, confirming his recommendation that it will be for local authorities to prepare plans for community care.
    I wish to draw attention to several points which arise from the Bill and I look forward to hearing the response of my hon. Friend the Minister for Health on Monday. First, the need to ensure that schizophrenics are registered with a GP or are on a psychiatrist's out-patient list appears to have been overlooked. Clause 3 is not definite on that point. Secondly, mentally ill people are prone to moving around and to be of no fixed abode. How, then, will remuneration for health authorities on the basis of residence be made? Should the provisions in the Bill not be clearer on that? Thirdly, clause 41 does not make it clear that local authorities should agree their plans for community care with health authorities, as the White Paper suggested. I should be grateful for confirmation that the Bill provides for that. Fourthly, clause 46(3) provides for Scottish health boards to consult voluntary organisations in preparing their community care plan, but there appears to be no similar provision for England and Wales. I should be grateful for a response on that.
    As one who helped to steer through the Schizophrenia After Care Bill [Lords] during the past Session, I was dismayed that clause 42 does not provide for community care packages for mentally ill patients to be specifically linked to their discharge from hospital. It is essential that this legislation is wholly meaningful for the mentally ill,

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    particularly for schizophrenia sufferers. The House will be aware of the widespread public awareness, support and concern for care of the mentally ill. Social workers will require new and specific training in the needs of the mentally ill to satisfy the complex community care needs which they will inevitably face. That will represent one of the major challenges of this legislation for local authorities.
    I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend on sticking so firmly to his original proposals, despite the unethical and highly misleading campaigns of the BMA and other unions. I welcome the opportunity for hospitals to free themselves from bureaucratic health authority control by applying to become self-governing trusts, if that is what they want. One of the essential points, which has not been accepted, is that that is voluntary and for local hospitals to decide.
    All but one hospital in my health district have signalled to my right hon. and learned Friend their interest in becoming self-governing because of the opportunities that they foresee in developing the services and treatments which local patients and doctors want and which they can offer in services elsewhere. I expect that hospitals will return to being much more like the local community hospitals—which they were before nationalisation.
    I welcome the opportunity for larger general practices to apply to manage their funds, if that is what they want. Again, it is entirely voluntary. In October I had a meeting with most of my GPs to discuss the contents of the White Paper, and, yes, I was disappointed that so few saw the advantages to develop their practice which would come with having their own budgets or the greater flexibility on treatment and waiting times for patients. Many of my doctors fear future underfunding, conflicts between partners, conflicts with the local family practitioner committee, conflicts of interests with patients and the need to employ accountants to control their budgets. I appreciate those fears, but I hope that practices that recognise the advantages and volunteer to have their own practice funds will prove that those fears are groundless.
    I welcome the introduction of indicative drug budgets which build on the experience of the limited list, encouraging more cost-effective prescribing, which will release more resources to be spent elsewhere in the NHS. However, I must voice the concerns of some members of my local health authority who feel that the proposed smaller membership may mean too few members capable of adequately fulfilling the responsibilities and considerable commitments which membership entails. They also fear that there will be insufficient scope for a broad base of experience and representation.
    A number of hon. Members have already said that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister supports the reforms. She does so because she wants the NHS to be so good that no one will want to go private. The proposals are the last chance for the NHS to remove all the reasons why people are still prepared to sacrifice and to pay twice for an alternative service. If the reforms are not allowed to improve the service to patients so that waiting times are reduced a two-tier service will inevitably follow with the NHS as the safety net. My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State has repeatedly said that he does not want such a service. It must be in the interests of all those in the NHS to make the proposals work.
    7.40 pm
    Rev. Martin Smyth: I welcome the opportunity to follow the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Atkinson). I support his plea in aid of the mentally handicapped and schizophrenics. I also underscore what he said about local management. When the Secretary of State spoke about local management I began to wonder whether I was reading the Bill and the background to it in the same way as the right hon. and learned Gentleman. He talked about the need for smaller and more effective leadership and I can understand that. When he spoke of better local leadership, however, I could not understand him. He spoke about looking for respected people in the community to provide that leadership, but appears that locally elected representatives will be dropped. I find it strange that one should remove the local input and yet still expect the local leadership to be better than in the past.
    I support the motion tabled by members of the Select Committee on Social Services which calls for a Special Standing Committee to be established after the Second Reading. Such a Committee would offer an opportunity to listen to and to cross-examine those involved in the NHS. That Committee hearing would last three days at the most and I believe that it would enhance the passage of the Bill.
    I recognise that it is not always possible for Ministers t o listen to everybody. Last week some people were so keen to speak to the Under-Secretary for Northern Ireland with responsibility for health care that they pursued him over a roof. In the confines of the Committee Room I should like to think that the Committee, in the presence of the Minister, would be able to cross-examine NHS staff much more effectively.
    Proper consideration should be given to special financing. When it was proposed that the finance specifically set aside for community care should be ring-fenced a Minister said that that meant that trust was not put in local authorities. The harsh reality is that the Government have rate-capped local authorities and come down on them in different ways. If the House budgets funds for community care, they should not be frittered away on other local authority services. If extra money is needed it should be raised in some other way and should not be taken from the funds for community care as that deprives people who require that care.
    The National Consumer Council has pointed out that consumer input on the community care provisions in the Bill is inadequate. There is also no means by which local authorities can have a say and no provision for an appeal system to ensure that patients are treated where they want to be treated. In the Bill, no mention is made of community health councils. As far as I can tell, there is no requirement properly to consult those councils on community care plans. There is no provision for an appeal against a local authority social services department decision on community care, and there is no duty to assess that care. I know that that remark will be met with an immediate response that there is such a duty to assess. If one looks carefully at the Bill, however, it is clear that the duty to assess operates only when a need is identified. I believe that that leaves the door wide open.
    When the Bill is in Committee I hope that careful examination will be made of its implications for the Disabled Persons (Services, Consultation and Representation) Act 1986. All over the nation the cries are

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    for the implementation of sections 1, 3, 2 and 7 of that Act. The White Paper promised that those sections would be implemented in the Bill, but there is no mention of that.
    One of my medical friends in Northern Ireland who is generally sympathetic to the proposals wrote to me about one aspect which he felt limited the original emphasis of the Bill—patient choice. It appears that authorities and health boards will have the right to restrict the choice of the GP and the patient to be referred to a particular hospital if those bodies have no contact with that hospital. Perhaps that decision can be defended in terms of distance and finance, as suggested by the guidelines, but how does one equate finance with providing the right treatment for a patient? How does distance come into it when we have already heard about people being referred to a hospital 160 miles from their home? If the doctor and his patient believe that that is the place where he should receive treatment, why should an authority or a health board have the right to say no? That important consideration should be borne in mind.
    As I represent a university constituency, I am especially concerned about research. The Bill provides little to require the NHS trusts to undertake and to commission such research. They are empowered so to do, but they are not required to do so. That will have an adverse influence on the proposed reforms.
    I do not wish to prolong my contribution as I want other hon. Members to be able to participate. My specific request is for the appointment of a Special Standing Committee which can consider ring-fencing the necessary finance.
    7.47 pm
    Mr. Nicholas Winterton: I am delighted to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth). He and I have served on the Select Committee on Social Services for many years. The views that we express have been gained from the experience and knowledge derived from many years of service on that Committee.
    I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham (Mr. Couchman) who sadly is no longer in his place, on the mention that he made of the indicative drug budget. The Government will neglect at their peril the pharmaceutical industries of the country. They make a major contribution to our balance of trade and they generate a surplus of more than £850 million. If we proceed with some of the proposals in the White Paper that seek, unjustifiably, to contain prescribing, we shall drive investment out of this country to the detriment of employment and the economy of our nation.
    I speak with a constituency vested interest as ICI Pharmaceuticals, a massive employer in this country, employs some 5,000 people in my constituency. It puts about £50 million a year into new investment. We should bear such investment in mind. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham has said, however, it is most important that the people who require treatment feel that they will get the best possible medication that they require.
    When new drugs come on to the market and do dramatic things—such as the drugs to which my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham referred—people should not be deprived of that beneficial medication
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    because of cost, especially as it often probably means that if they do not have it, they will spend much longer in hospital. That is far more costly to the health service, whether in the private sector or the NHS.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, South (Mr. Devlin) should look at the American experiment. The Americans have tried formularies, which is the direction in which we are moving. That has imposed an extra cost on health service expenditure in that country. Medication can reduce the need to put a person in hospital.
    I do not support the Bill and I will not vote for it on Monday evening. It is severely flawed and, in the limited time available, I intend to tell the House why. I do this not for reasons of prejudice or malice but from the immense knowledge which I have managed to glean from the more than 14 years that I have been on the Social Services Select Committee and its predecessor. The White Paper "Working for Patients" and the Bill, which implements its reforms, propose to improve cost and outcome information and tackle the problems arising from what many may describe as the lethargy of the medical profession in monitoring and evaluating its services.
    The NHS could be improved considerably with the reforms contained in the Bill. Those reforms may enable the objective of the NHS—to provide health care on the basis of need, measured by the capacity of the patient to benefit from care—to be achieved much more cost effectively. I accept that view. I believe that the objectives behind the Bill and the White Paper are laudable in every way.
    However, the other proposed reforms in the Bill—GP budget holders, or fund-holding practices, independent NHS hospitals and tax breaks to increase the purchase of private health care insurance by the elderly—may undermine the NHS as we know it. As a Tory, I am deeply committed to the NHS. There are many within the independent and private hospital sector who are deeply unhappy about what the Government are doing because they believe that it will prejudice them in acting complementary to, not in competition with, the NHS.
    These other reforms—GP budget holders, independent NHS hospitals and tax breaks—may undermine the NHS, but of the three, the independent NHS hospitals may have the greatest adverse effects on access, quality and costs. With independent NHS hospital managers free to fix pay and prices and the removal of the NHS monopoly on purchasing power, which has held costs and expenditure in check, there is likely to be massive cost-inflation. If the Government hold cash limits, district general manager budget holders will face increasing pressures and the quality of care is likely to be eroded, as was shown in evidence to the Select Committee. If due to these pressures the NHS produces increased waiting lists and times and declining quality of care, the incentive to buy private health care insurance will be sharply increased.
    The overall effect of these pressures may be increased expenditure on health care which is financed largely from private sources. Much of this increased expenditure may well represent increased rewards to providers rather than increases in the volume and quality of health care for United Kingdom citizens. This outcome—increased expenditure on health care from private sources—may be the Government's implicit objective. Their explicit objective is to defend the NHS, but that objective may not be achieved through the existing provisions of the White Paper, which are encapsulated in the Bill.

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    The likely outcome of these proposals is greater inequality in access to health care, provision of health care of inadequate quality and cost-inflation. [Interruption.] I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State is listening. Sadly, the Government appear from time to time not to listen to those who have some knowledge. I am delighted that my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State said in responding to my intervention that I had some knowledge of this matter.
    Having well and truly put my views on the Bill as it relates to the reforms to the Health Service, I should like to put my worries about community care. We are moving much too fast. The policy of community care is being introduced too rapidly, too soon and for the wrong reasons. It is returning patients to a community which is unwilling and unable to welcome them. We are losing centres of excellence and denying some patients the security and stability which they need and which they can find only in long-term residential care. Before disposing of all these centres of excellence, I hope that we will think again to ensure that we are genuinely improving the lot of the mentally ill, the mentally handicapped, those suffering from Alzheimer's disease and the elderly who need residential care.
    My county of Cheshire, which is Labour-controlled with Liberal support, is being forced to dispose of its residential homes. This is disastrous. It is wrong that the private sector should have a monopoly of care for the elderly. I do not believe that the monitoring of the private sector is likely to be adequate.
    We are perhaps debating one of the most important Bills of the past 10 years, not just of this Parliament. I therefore hope that, in Committee, the Government will listen closely and sensibly to the amendments that are proposed. I regret that I cannot support the Bill in the Lobby on Monday evening.
    7.57 pm
    Mr. Jack Ashley: The views of the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) on community care are respected on both sides of the House and, as usual, they were vigorously expressed. The Government's proposal to end Crown immunity for all Health Service bodies is welcome, but suspect. If the Government are converted to my belief that Crown immunity is an unjust anachronism, all Crown immunity should be abolished, but that is not happening. Crown immunity cannot apply to private institutions. The Government are obviously paving the way for the future, privatising by this selective means. That is deplorable if health services are privatised.
    Millions of people rely on community care for their wefare. The Bill is crucial to them, and I am glad that this matter has been raised in the debate. However, there should have been a separate Bill to ensure proper consideration of that aspect of the problems. I ask for a commitment from the Minister that discussion of the community care clauses will not be guillotined in Committee.
    Disabled people demand very little, but they ask for some fundamental rights. Section 4 of the Disabled Persons (Services, Consultation and Representation) Act 1986 gives them the right to assessment of their needs, if they request it, but they also want the right to make
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    representations about that assessment. They want the ordinary right to appeal against decisions. Above all, they want the right to properly funded community care.
    Assessment is the key to the new system, but unfortunately the way in which it will operate has been left entirely to the discretion or whim of local authorities. There are no requirements for local authorities, there is no guidance, and they are not committed to involving the disabled person in the way proposed in section 3 of the Act. There is also no right of appeal. Local authorities—the good and the bad—can do as they please, and there are some very bad ones. The Government are abdicating their responsibility.
    Who would be assessed and reassessed under this provision? Reassessment can be as crucial as assessment. If this Bill had been in force, would deaf-blind Beverley Lewis, who died weighing four stone, have been reassessed? Would her life have been saved? Would disabled people and their carers be affected by the Bill? They are now at the end of their tether, trying desperately to cope. The answer is that Beverley Lewis would not have been saved; nor would severely disabled people be affected, because the Bill will do nothing to avert future tragedies in community care or to raise the present inadequate levels of care. The provisions of the Bill give local authorities the right to assess on whatever criteria they choose—it is a charter for evasion. It is essential that section 3 of the 1986 Act be implemented. It is also essential that centrally decided requirements be placed on all local authorities.
    The Bill and the White Paper on which it is based view community care provision from the providers' perspective, not from that of the consumer. The truth is that the Government have been worried by the escalating costs of care in private residential homes and have decided to put a stop to them. They thought that they would ditch that commitment, and indeed they have done so. They are now talking in terms of administrative change, cost-effective provision and simplicity—fine-sounding words which permeate the White Paper and the Bill, but little attention is paid to the level and quality of care for the consumer.
    The specific grant to local authorities for people with mental illness is welcome, but it has not been ring-fenced. That means that it will be vulnerable to the vultures. One of the main failures of the Bill is the refusal to allocate a specific grant for community care in general, as Griffiths recommended. The Government apparently intend to provide additional resources only for demographic change and for the new tasks related to the new procedures, but they have failed to recognise that today's unacceptable black spots of community care must be erased and that community care money must be used only for the people for whom it is intended. We do not want councils to spend the money on bypasses and other daft things. The Griffiths proposal will come to naught if his recommendation for a specific grant is disregarded. Nothing could be more crucial for the future of community care.
    Devoted family carers are the kingpins of community care, but despite the bromides there are no specific proposals to help them—merely a mention in the White Paper that, when possible, their ability to continue to provide care should be considered and their participation included in the assessment. Who is to say whether that is possible? Again it will be the local authorities.
    The Bill fails to recognise the army of carers who are being exploited and overstretched, many of whom are

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    themselves very frail. No one should be forced to care for a disabled relative if they feel that they cannot handle it, but local authorities are only too happy to turn the problem over to the family. Some local authorities are very negligent, and that is intolerable for the carers. There should be a commitment to seeking out carers, easing their burden and recognising that they should not be pushed to the point of total exhaustion.
    I make this appeal to the House. The problems of carers and of disabled people will not be solved by the Bill, which fails to provide them with essential rights. It also fails to provide adequate cash and to provide comfort for carers. I hope that the Government will listen to the voices of disabled people, carers and voluntary organisations, and think again.
    8.6 pm
    Mr. Bill Walker: The right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) has a distinguished record of defending the interests of the disabled, and I am sure that his words have been listened to with care throughout the House.
    The proposals in this Bill are designed to increase choice in the National Health Service and make the service more responsive to patient needs. The Bill is also designed to raise standards of care in all health board areas and to bring them up to the level of the best. It is also designed to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the services provided by the Health Service, and to ensure that the maximum possible resources go directly into patient care.
    The Bill must be seen against the background of the continuing increase in Government support for the NHS—in the amount of taxpayers' money going to the service.
    In Committee, I believe that we shall have ample opportunity to study the Bill's details in depth, and in the limited time that I have this evening no one would expect me to do that now.
    It will come as no surprise that I want to concentrate on the Scottish aspects of the Bill. Reaction in my constituency to the Government's proposals can best be described as mixed. Some in the Health Service are wholly opposed and have made their views clearly known. I have met a number of those who are concerned, but they are unable to define precisely the causes of their worry. I know that because I have had a number of meetings with people in the Health Service—with GPs and others. I am pleased to inform the House that others have seen the proposals as a means of obtaining long-promised but never delivered new facilities.
    I cite, for example, the county town of Forfar in Angus which, 25 years ago, was promised a new community hospital. Twenty-five years later it is still waiting.
    Forfar GPs are trying to set up a budget. They are supported by many people in the area and are looking at the possibility of a self-governing hospital trust. That is no surprise to me, because I have always viewed health as I view education. In the House, a great deal of rot is talked about rural areas. My constituency covers 2,000 square miles of rural Scotland and I think that I can claim to know something about the problems of hospitals and Health Service facilities in rural Scotland.
    There is a good Health Service in north Tayside and we are proud of it. However, it can and must be improved to
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    meet the demands of today. The Service is far better than it was 10, 20 or 30 years ago, but it must continue to improve because the demands upon it increase every year. Stracathrow hospital is not in my constituency but my constituents use its services and the GPs regularly use it. There have also been rumblings of interest about a self-governing trust for that hospital.
    Anyone with any sense realises that the changes proposed in the Bill are fundamental and will cause concern. It is up to us to deal with that concern and we must get through to the people to make them understand. Our education reforms are beginning to be appreciated and understood and people are supporting them in my constituency and looking at self-governing schools. It was once suggested that no rural school would consider that. The school that I have in mind is very rural because it is in one of the remote parts of my constituency.
    We must first deal with the misinformation that is being spread about the Bill. It is also important to recognise that there are problems within the British Medical Association. Its negotiators are not trusted and their recommendations have been rejected. That is hardly the way to move forward. I draw the attention of the House to early-day motion 63 about the leak of a BMA letter. The motion, in the name of the hon. Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden (Mr. Galbraith) who speaks for the Opposition on Scottish health matters, states:
    "That this House condemns the leak of a confidential letter from the BMA to the Scottish Office; and asks for an investigation to find out who was responsible for this letter coming into the possession of the Sunday Times (Scotland)."
    I tabled an amendment to the motion. It says:
    "Line 1 leave out from 'House' to end and add 'notes that a copy of the BMA letter, which is not confidential, has been placed in the Library where honourable Members can note that the British Medical Association Scottish Office is not interested in negotiating a special deal for Scottish general practitioners'."
    That comes out clearly in the third paragraph of the BMA letter, which says:
    "The first point to make is that there is no question here nor has there ever been of making 'a special deal' for Scottish GPs."
    That is news to the GPs in Scotland and to most of us. We always thought that we negotiated things differently for our separate Health Service in Scotland, but now we are told that Scottish GPs cannot be treated differently as they have been for a long time. When the BMA is so divided and uncertain, one must be careful about what one takes from the kind of literature that the BMA has been putting out.
    I repeat that there is a superb Health Service in north Tayside. That is because it is a lovely part of the world in which to live. We have no problems about recruiting teachers or doctors or anyone else from the professions because people go there for the quality of life.
    Another reason for our good Health Service in that area is the spending by the Government. That needs to be mentioned. It has been said that the only thing that Conservative Members talk about is expenditure. I have news for everyone. If we had not spent that money, hon. Members would be talking about the lack of expenditure. The planned spending in Scotland for 1989–90 is £2,800 million. In 1990–91, that will be increased by £220 million. That will bring expenditure on the Health Service in Scotland to over £3,000 million. That is an interesting

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    figure because it is three times the size of the Health Service budget 10 years ago when we came to office. Spending on health in Scotland is now £550 per head.
    Mr. Devlin: It is far too much; more than in England.
    Mr. Walker: It is not far too much. It is what is needed. The proposals in the Bill, which I support, require additional funding and the Government have pledged that. That is unlike the Labour party, which sets out what it will do but when it comes to office it cuts expenditure and hospital building programmes. This Government make a pledge and then deliver.
    Since 1979 there have been 61 major new hospital developments in Scotland, providing 6,777 beds, and there are 40 major hospital developments in the pipeline. That is a 44 per cent. increase over the rate of inflation since 1978–79. If I had gone to the electorate in 1979 and said that we would increase expenditure by 44 per cent. on house and hospital building programmes people would have laughed at me, but that is what has happened. More people are being treated than ever before both in and out of hospital and we have more doctors, dentists and nurses.
    Madam Deputy Speaker (Miss Betty Boothroyd): Order. I regret that I have to call the hon. Gentleman to order. His time is up.
    8.17 pm
    Mr. Jim Cousins: As the Secretary of State suggested, clause 4 of the Bill, which introduces the concept of universal contracts, is at the heart of the proposed legislation. Section 8 of the White Paper on community care, which makes the disastrous distinction between the cost of care and the cost of keep and attempts to stitch plans together for people on the basis of that distinction, is at the heart of the White Paper. That is where the difficulty lies. For many years the Government have tried to operate a network of clumsy cash limits. The Bill does not lead us away from those limits but clones and reproduces them on a massive scale. Through the network of care plans, keep plans and universal contracts, it extends those cash limits into every region of the service, thus controlling the experience of every patient.
    Eminase has already been cited as a drug treatment which is difficult to fit into a contract, format. Another example is hormone replacement therapy. How do we put speech therapy into a contract, when 80 per cent. of referrals come not from doctors but from schools, health visitors, self-referrals and concerned parents? The Government will have to face those difficulties.
    My city of Newcastle upon Tyne has one of the six centres of the resource management initiative. The products of that initiative are interesting. They clearly show that, given time and money—far more time and far more money than the Bill allows—one can formulate the cost of individual patient treatment plans. That can be done by eliminating the costs associated with long-term support which is hard to fit into the format. The result will be a system which cannot survive in a system of block contracts which are looked upon as rationing cards, whereby every patient is treated as a unit with absolutely identical needs. That is the deficiency of the contract system, and that is where it will fail. In the same hospital at Newcastle, which is a world centre for transplant surgery, no food is served from 5 pm until 8 am the next
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    day. Only a few weeks ago, patients were asked to bring pillows because they were in short supply. That situation will be reproduced on a massive scale if the Bill is implemented.
    There are further examples of the same sort in the same city. The regional health authority is privatising some of its staff and handing them over to a company which includes BUPA membership in its employment contract. There could be no greater testimony to the direction in which such a system will lead us. In the same city we have one of the finest networks in Britain of community residential care provision for the mentally handicapped. As a cost-saving measure, and to meet the needs of community care within the administrators' understanding of the Bill, those facilities will be disposed of to the private sector. That will be a calamity and a disgrace.
    In the same city, the regional blood transfusion service—responding to the terms of the Bill—is proposing to convert itself into a trading agency which will sell blood to hospitals. Blood that is freely given will be converted into a commodity that is traded. It will be sold to hospitals.Is that the sort of spot market in blood to which my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) referred in his compelling and brilliant speech? That, too, is a disgrace.
    As my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston said, the lines of power in the Bill all radiate from the Secretary of State. That is its central defect. But the lines of responsibility also lead back to the Secretary of State, and it is for that reason that Conservative Members will regret the confetti of controls and cash limits that they are creating.
    8.22 pm
    Mr. Quentin Davies: The essence of the debate is that the Opposition seem determined to present themselves as the defenders of the National Health Service in its present form and to be blind to its shortcomings and deficiencies. The Government have recognised those shortcomings and deficiencies and—in my view with considerable courage—are trying to remedy them.
    What are the key deficiencies? First, there are the excessively long average waiting times for a range of non-emergency hospital treatments, including some key areas of elective and orthopaedic surgery. Ours is the only country in the European Community to suffer from that problem on such a scale. No Member of Parliament should remain content with that. I refer advisedly to average waiting times and not to waiting lists. It might be satisfactory to have 2 million people waiting a month, on average, for non-emergency operations, but to have 100,000 people waiting 20 months would be entirely unsatisfactory. I hope that the Opposition will recognise that important distinction.
    Secondly, there is a lack of patient choice in the NHS, which means that, against a background of generally dedicated and devoted care, for which many of my constituents and members of my family are deeply grateful, there are too many instances of perfunctory or arrogant care. There are take-it-or-leave-it attitudes—for instance, or "Strip off and wait for three hours"—and I fear that such attitudes are inseparable from monopoly provision in any area of human activity.

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    Thirdly, and most seriously of all, is the slow rate at which new life-saving therapeutic and diagnostic techniques, even those invented in Britain, have been incorporated in the NHS. I have in mind the number of kidney dialysers per 1,000 people in this country compared with the number elsewhere in the western world. I think, too, of the insufficient use in Britain of colorectal scanning, computerised tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, ultrasound scanning and other diagnostic techniques. I have the figures on MRI and CT, thanks to a recent answer from my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State. There are 198 CT scanners in this country, compared with 450 in West Germany, 3,000 in Japan and 3,600 in the United States. In the United States there are 1,300 MRI machines, compared with 275 in Japan, 85 in West Germany and 15 in the United Kingdom.
    We pay a heavy price for that. The figures reinforce the conclusion that the NHS has had a tendency over the past 40 years to be not so much the National Health Service as a national illness service. We neglect modern diagnostic techniques at our peril. In the past half century, as in the first half of the century, the general health of the population has improved markedly, but in the second half it has improved at a much slower rate than the average rate of improvement in the rest of the western world. In 1948, we were in the first quartile among western countries for life expectancy and the last for infant mortality. I fear that we are now in the third quartile in both respects. We should not be satisfied with that.
    The Opposition have a simple answer to such problems. It is a mindlessly simple answer—the five-word answer "Throw more money at it". If one thing has been proved by the Government's experience, it is that throwing more and more money at the NHS is not a sufficient response. Of course we must spend more money on the nation's health, and we have thrown enormous amounts of new money at it, yet by all available measures patient satisfaction has continued to decline. I fear that that demonstrates incontrovertibly that the money has too often been spent by the wrong people in an inefficient way or on the wrong things.
    I shall give four important examples of how spending has gone badly wrong. First, until now there has been no effective cost information in the NHS. Managers have not known whether it was cheaper to perform operations, or to deliver other treatments in their own units or to farm them out to the private sector. They have not known their own costs. My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State and his predecessor, for the first time since 1948, have now addressed that problem.
    Secondly, until now there has been no notion of depreciation in the NHS. That is extraordinary. The idea of taking rational management or investment decisions without any idea of the cost of capital is ludicrous. Yet until my right hon. and learned Friend came along, that was exactly the position in the NHS.
    Thirdly, there are perverse incentives, some of which my right hon. and learned Friend mentioned briefly today. Time and again performance is penalised and failure or mediocrity rewarded. The hospital manager who increases his throughput runs through his budget and is penalised. The manager who wishes to stay within his budget by
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    cutting his variable costs and leaving wards empty at the end of the year is patted on the head. Under the Resource Allocation Working Group system, a health authority which has been successful in improving the morbidity rate in its area to a greater extent than the national average will be penalised. For the first time, my right hon and learned Friend has faced these problems head on, and these at least of the bad practices of the past are coming to an end. I thank the Lord for that.
    Fourthly, I come to the heart of the great devotion which Opposition Members have to the present structure of the NHS, including the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot), for whom I have the greatest personal regard. Opposition Members display this great devotion precisely because the NHS enshrines to the supreme degree the model of paternalistic, bureaucratic provision which lies at the heart of Socialism.
    The great and the good in Westminster and Whitehall decide what proportion of national income should be spent on health. That money is handed down through the RAWG system to the regions. They arbitrarily and unaccountably distribute it to district health authorities, which equally arbitrarily and unaccountably allocate it to whatever purpose they choose—more intensive care beds, another orthopaedic unit, more chronic care for psychiatric and geriatric patients or just doing the garden or painting the staff canteen. There is no assurance that the actual distribution of resources and the pattern of outputs under this system will in any way correspond to what would be the aggregate choice of patients if they could express such a choice. There is every reason to suppose that, as the volume of outputs and services under such a system increases, the correlation between that selection and potential patient choice declines.
    This is a historic moment in the NHS because the Government have had the courage to face those problems head on. In all the years that I have taken an interest in politics—long before I came to this House—I have never known as man so subject to such sustained, ill-informed and hysterical vituperation as my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State. I have also never known a man who would be less affected by it than he appears to be. I salute his courage and greatly support his Bill. I look forward to supporting both him and it during its passage through the House.
    8.31 pm
    Mr. Jeremy Corbyn: For the greater part of the past two hours, there has been no Minister in the Chamber. We are now graced with the presence of the Adam Smith look-alike, who has just returned to the Chamber but who is not even replying to the debate. It is disgraceful. The Government claim that the Bill is important and they have spent £5 million telling people how good it is, yet Ministers cannot be bothered to be here to listen to hon. Members responding to the Government's consultation and the Government's publicity.
    There is a fundamental difference between the two sides of the House. We believe that health care should be a right, free at the point of use for everybody irrespective of background, social standing or ability to pay. The hon. Member for Stamford and Spalding (Mr. Davies) is a good, true Tory who understands only pounds and pence. He understands only the cost of something—he does not have any idea of the value of anything.
    Mr. Davies rose—
    Mr. Corbyn: No, I shall not give way.
    Mr. Quentin Davies: The hon. Gentleman has spoken about me in the most unflattering terms.
    Mr. Corbyn: I am not giving way. Mr. Davies rose—
    Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) is not giving way.
    Mr. Corbyn: Hon. Members are limited to 10 minutes. The hon. Gentleman had plenty of opportunity to tell us about the value of the market economy in health care. I think that I should take this opportunity to tell him about the value of socialism in health care.
    Does the hon. Gentleman honestly believe that everything should be bought and sold? Must every operation be judged against its cost? At no time did the hon. Gentleman mention the convenience of the patient, his safety or his comfort. He knows that the Bill's aim is for every hospital to become a company. Every doctor must look to his accountant before doing anything—
    Mr. Quentin Davies: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Would it not be in accordance with the best traditions of this House for an hon. Member who attributes to me opinions that I did not express, and who is giving a summary of my speech that I seriously dispute, at least to give way to allow me to correct the position?
    Madam Deputy Speaker: The hon. Gentleman has made his point, but it is for the hon. Member who has the floor to decide whether to give way.
    Mr. Corbyn: I plead for injury time because of that intervention.
    Madam Deputy Speaker: I am not sure that the hon. Member will get it.
    Mr. Corbyn: The House can judge for itself which side of the argument it wished to support. The problem for my constituents is that for many years there has been persistent underfunding of our health authority, which each autumn leads to the spending crisis faced by most inner-city health authorities. My authority has met that crisis by taking more than 100 beds out of use. That is happening throughout the country and is a measure of the crisis in health care.
    Conservative Members lecture us and claim 10 years of success under successive Secretaries of State, yet hospitals and wards have been closed. I accept that new hospitals have been built, but there are fewer beds available, there is a worse service and there are longer waiting lists than there were 10 years ago. Conservative Members should recognise those facts. They should study a few of the international comparisons. By every index on health spending in industrialised countries, this country comes very low if not bottom. The solution is not to bring in the accountants, the market economy, the sales people and the idea that every hospital must have a commercial manager to decide what can be sold to make some money; the solution is to begin thinking about the health needs of our people.
    Why is the life expectancy of working-class people shorter than that of middle-class people? Why do people living in overcrowded accommodation have a shorter life
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    expectancy than those living in salubrious suburbs? Why do children living in high-rise council flats or the slums in every one of our major cities suffer more bronchial problems than children living in suburban areas? Why are all those inequalities in health ignored by the Government in favour of the market economy? They know that the market economy means that those who can afford to pay can buy their way past the queues. The Bill is a massive attempt to privatise the entire National Health Service by stealth.
    The other matter that I wish to raise, and which predict will be guillotined off the agenda in Committee, is that of community care. Conservative Members have lectured us for a long time about the needs of community care. Those who honestly believe that community care is working should, when they leave the House tonight, walk across the river, go along the south bank and talk to those: living in cardboard city. They should talk to the people at Charing Cross station. There are 10,000 people sleeping on the streets of this city; some, although not all, have been in long-stay institutions. There is not much community care for them in living in a cardboard box outside a tube station on a cold winter's night in London. That is the sort of issue that should be dealt with in the Bill. It is the reality of the inequality of health care, the inequality of life expectancy, the inequality of community care—inequalities that are exacerbated, not lessened, by the Bill.
    I make no apology for being sponsored by the National Union of Public Employees. The question of very low pay for Health Service workers is not dealt with by the Bill and neither is the question of their conditions if a hospital decides to opt out. They are not protected—they are given away, along with the hospital, to any trust that it chooses. There is an attempt to break up the national negotiating machinery that has been some protection for some of the lowest paid and most dedicated people in the NHS.
    The Government often lecture us on the freedom of choice—the freedom to lead one's life as one wishes. It is true that there is freedom of choice. We are all free to go out and buy a Rolls-Royce—the only problem is that 98 per cent. of the population cannot afford it. We are all free to buy a house—the only problem is that as thousands cannot afford to do so they go homeless. We are all free to pay high rents—the problem is that most people are too poor to pay them. The Government now say that we are free to choose the health care that we want. The Prime Minister said that she wants her health care when she wants it, how she wants it and from whom she wants it. For her there is freedom of choice, but for the majority of the population there is not.
    The Government talk about protecting and defending democracy in this country. Every health authority that has, in the past 10 years, attempted to stand up against the Government's attempts to cut resources and, when, RAWP was in operation, to take money away from inner-city areas, found itself in receipt of a letter either from the chair of the regional health authority or from the Secretary of State, announcing that its services were no longer required because it had attempted to represent its community. Now, what vestiges of democracy remain in local health authorities will be taken away by the Bill because health authorities will be stuffed full of placepersons put there by the Secretary of State, and representing the local business community. The idea that local authorities have no part to play in health matters is both insulting and disgusting.

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    The centralisation of powers that the Secretary of State is taking unto himself through the Bill would do credit to the most authoritarian of states. He should remember that what comes out from Richmond terrace to the health authorities also goes back to Richmond terrace and when an election finally comes, people will have one person and one person alone to blame for the inadequacies of their Health Service, and that is the Secretary of State.
    Many of those who work in the NHS, as nurses, ancillary workers such as porters or gardeners, doctors or consultants and all those who work in community care, attendance or long-stay institutions, are frightened and fearful of the Bill. There is little protection for them. There is no ring fencing to protect the salaries of those who are transferred. There is no protection for the money transferred into local authorities from the long-stay institutions. The treatment that the Government mete out to the ambulance workers, in their attempt to destroy the dispute when those workers are providing the only real emergency service, shows the Government's contempt for people who are genuinely trying to run a Health Service. The Bill may not be defeated in the House, but it will be defeated eventually, because the principles on which it is based are wholly and odiously wrong.
    8.41 pm
    Mr. Andrew Rowe: This autumn, our youngest child, an extrovert and articulate girl, went away to university. Soon after she arrived there, she telephoned home. It was, in family terms, an epoch-making call. It lasted for three minutes and ended when she said, "Must stop, can't afford any more." It was her first telephone call as a budget holder. How many parents recognise the changes in behaviour that come when their children have to start paying for the services that they use? Even when the budget is £28 billion, the same principles are at work.
    The hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook), like a Savonarola of the social services, is roaming the country urging citizens to burn the Bill on a bonfire of Socialist sentimentality, just as his Florentine predecessor forced Botticelli to burn his easel and paintbrushes in front of the Duomo. I am not suggested that my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State is the Botticelli of the Front Bench, but I am clear that subsequent generations would be impoverished if the Bill were to be destroyed.
    The hon. Member for Livingston excoriated the Bill for leaning on incentives, where he would trust that enormous sum solely to the staff's good will. I share his admiration for the generosity and altruism of NHS staff at all levels, but under the present system, the disincentives are acute. For example, what about the departmental head who, in my district health authority, on his own initiative saved the hospital thousands of pounds, but saw it all disappear into the district funding and found his enthusiasm for making further savings sorely blunted?
    We are talking not about personal gain, but about the salutary effect of letting staff see gains for their own unit as a result of their better use of their resources. What about the supplier to a great hospital, who, week in and week out, sees over-ordering of perishable goods, but sees no evidence of management concern about it?
    "Cost-effectiveness" is not a dirty phrase. It is not, as the hon. Member for Livingston and his friends suggest, a
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    device for making cuts. Rather, it is a necessary discipline for ensuring that money is spent on patient care and not on wasted food or dependence-generating tranquillisers. The Government will always find it hard to win the rhetorical argument on the NHS, but they have to find the money. They do that very well, as is shown by the 25 per cent. increase in cash terms in the past two years.
    The hon. Member for Livingston and his colleagues have no such need. They can, as they have done again today, leave the nation with the implied suggestion that, if they were in power, the resources for the NHS and for community care would somehow be limitless. That works because all of us would love it to be true and because the public, after 10 years of Conservative increases in NHS funding, have forgotten just how deep and savage were the cuts made in NHS funding by the Labour party when in power.
    I do not wish to follow my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State down his path of leaving community care to another occasion. I have already told him and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House that it would be a disaster if the partisan dispute over the NHS proposals cut out a full and proper debate on the Bill's proposals on community care. Those proposals are both important and overdue. The level of service depends on the level of resources available, but the Bill sets out to do what Griffiths saw it was vital to do—make the best use of whatever level of resources is achievable at any particular time, and remove the perverse incentives that waste money by making it hugely profitable for a local authority to send clients into expensive residential care at the expense of the Department of Social Security, when it would be both cheaper and better care to keep them in their own homes at local authority expense. That is an important advance, and it has met with widespread approval.
    The Bill requires local authorities to create a care plan for every client, and that, too, is an advance. However, in Committee, we shall need to look in detail at how that should be done. First, we must make sure that the client is properly heard. The Bill must have no more to do with paternalist prescription; we must listen to the client's preferences. Where a client cannot state them for himself, he should be afforded a friend or volunteer to speak for him.
    We must make sure that the assessment is well founded. It will be no service to anyone if the natural suspicion and ignorance that social services staff have of NHS staff and vice versa leads to lopsided and partial assessments. For example, the contribution that can be made by occupational therapists, speech therapists, voluntary alcohol abuse counsellors and so on has to be understood and incorporated in the assessment. That will mean a large exercise in co-operative working, and to the extent that it can be addressed by training, that joint training should be started now.
    I welcome the recognition of voluntary organisations, which have done so much to pioneer new patterns of caring and carried so much of the load that the aging of our population, and their rising expectations, lay upon them. I share their unease lest their initiatives and priorities should be distorted by having too many public priorities pushed upon them. A huge amount of work must be done in the development of community care, and my time is too short to go through it all. The truth is that we shall always have a crisis, both in health and in community care, because the expectations of the public rise, quite

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    properly, every year and there is no possibility whatever of any Government ever being able to provide enough resources to meet the growing needs that our own success in solving many problems has called into being.
    Ring fencing is not the answer. Everybody who has a special interest in politics, whatever it may be, clamours to have that part of Government expenditure which is devoted to their interests ring-fenced. Somehow that seems to be a way of keeping the thieving hands of more powerful committee chairmen off their precious budget. Ring fencing is a recipe for conservative structural developments. The moment someone is inside a ring fence, he is reluctant to pioneer services which spread outside it; most of the advances in community care, and many of the advances in health care, will come from that kind of lateral pioneering co-operation between services which, if they were ring-fenced, would never extend a hand across the boundary to one another.
    8.50 pm
    Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones: I listened with great care to the Secretary of State. He was at great pains to explain once again to the House that the Government's plans for the NHS will not lead to privatisation. But it is not so much the right hon. and learned Gentleman's speech that worries many hon. Members, as the Bill, because in many respects privatisation is clearly behind it.
    When one looks at the new-style management of the district health authorities, as they are to be called, and the family practitioner services authorities, as the family practitioner committees are to be called, it is clear that they are to be run along the lines of private companies. In other words, there will be no room on the new-style boards for local authority representatives. As other hon. Members have said, that is a retrograde step.
    Paragraph 8·5 of the White Paper says:
    "The Government believes that authorities based on this confusion of roles would not be equipped to handle the complex managerial and contractual issues that the new system of matching resources to performance will demand."
    That is the official reason why local authorities are not to be included on the new management-style boards. But the real reason is that the Government believe that local authorities will not do what they are told—that they will not he party to cuts in health provision.
    Another vital point is the way in which the Government seem to want to set up NHS trusts. In particular, the management boards of those trusts will have no provision to ensure that patients' needs are taken into account. In the White Paper, the Prime Minister says that the needs of the patient are to be paramount. But when one considers the way in which the new trusts are to be set up, one sees that there is no way in which patients are to be consulted. In Committee, we shall need to look at ways in which patients are represented on those boards at area or district health authority level and in the trusts.
    We shall also need to consider the way in which the NHS contract principle is included in the Bill. Traditionally, the Health Service has been based on the statutory responsibility of hospitals to provide care. In the private sector, there is a contractual relationship. It is that contractual relationship that is now being brought into the Health Service between health boards and those services which provide health care. We are moving away from the
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    traditional statutory responsibility to provide health care that we have known in the Health Service and into a contractual conception.
    A general practice which is large enough will be given a budget, which will clearly be cash-limited because budgets cannot mean anything else. If a practice is not big enough to acquire a budget, the district health authority will force doctors to choose health care for their patients, not according to their needs but according to the cost of that provision. In other words, as the cash limits bite, they will be shunted from hospital to hospital.
    All the provision for a privatised Health Service—the NHS trust hospitals, the new board managements and GP budgets—are now in place. We may not have a Secretary of State today who believes in a privatised Health Service, but if a future Secretary of State does, the structures are there. It is only a small step between the Bill and a fully privatised service.
    Hon. Members on both sides of the House have said that the great danger is that that will lead to a two-tier Health Service. Moreover, it will mean that the Health Service provision in rural areas will be drastically affected. There is no question about that.
    The Bill's central provisions are completely irrevelant to Wales. I asked the Secretary of State for Wales two questions, which were answered yesterday. First, I asked how many hospitals in Wales want to opt out under the new system. The answer was none. That is because no GP in Wales wants a budget, and so cannot buy in services. There is no private provision in Wales. As the White Paper makes clear, that is underdeveloped. Therefore, the hospitals cannot buy in from the private sector. That is completely irrelevant. Secondly, I asked how many general practices in Wales want their own budgets. The Secretary of State made it clear that none of them wants that.
    Those provisions are irrelevant to Wales, and in Committee we shall be seeking to exempt Wales from the Bill. If the Committee will not agree to that, the only sensible course will be for each area health authority to have a referendum of all the electors in that authority to decide whether a hospital should opt out. Consultation is not sufficient, because all the patients who may be affected by such a decision should be consulted in a referendum.
    I welcome the news that local authorities are to be given responsibility for assessing the needs of individuals: that seems sensible. However, as Opposition Members have pointed out, there is no obligation on local authority social services departments to carry out such assessments, and I feel that we should do something about that.
    I disagree with the hon. Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe), who said that funding for community care should not be ring-fenced. He should look at the submission sent to all hon. Members by the voluntary agencies and local authorities that will have to operate the scheme. They all say that, unless a community care budget is specified, money will simply go into the local authority pot without being earmarked for community care. Such specification is necessary to ensure that both current and future needs are met. If there is to be a partnership between the social service departments and the voluntary agencies, they must know how much they can spend on community care from year to year.
    We in Wales have a passion for the Health Service, and we speak of it with passion. We know that its guiding principles were based not in City boardrooms but in the mining communities of Wales, Scotland and northern

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    England. Those principles were born not in the rich pastures of the south-east but in communities that have had to fight for everything they have ever owned. If the Government will not pay attention to the need to retain the Health Service as it is—free at the point of delivery for every patient who needs it—the people will vote them out in the next election.
    9 pm
    Mr. Tim Devlin: As the hon. Member for Ynys Mon (Mr. Jones) has just said, the National Health Service is every bit as valued in the north of England as it is in Wales and Scotland. It is valued, indeed, throughout the length and breadth of the country, for it is a national Health Service—and it is in pretty good shape, considering that it is 41 years old this year.
    Despite soaring costs and increasing demand, coupled with the pressures of an aging population and expensive leading-edge technology, the service is still free to all, and funded mainly from taxation. It is still equally available to all types of patients from all parts of the country. It still provides a system of primary health care, giving each person his or her own GP, and a referral system for specialist consultations of every kind. It is still highly regarded internationally, and it provides good-quality training for doctors who come here from all over the world. Each and every one of us, whether we are for or against the reforms suggested by my right hon. and learned Friend, should begin our speeches by paying tribute to an excellent service in which many people give of their best to provide help for us all.
    The Government, however, have played an essential part. It is their fine record in running the nation's economy soundly that has enabled total spending to rise from £166 per head in 1979–80 to £444 per head in 1989–90. My hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) suggested that we should fund any treatment that came on the market regardless of cost, but I cannot stand idly by and listen to such a suggestion. I have seen at first hand— because all my family were in the NHS—the effect of diverting resources to expensive procedures with indifferent or uncertain outcomes, at the cost of many thousands of "bread-and-butter" operations which could otherwise be carried out. Under the last Labour Government, a Royal Commission found that, even if the country spent its entire gross domestic product on the NHS, there would still be unsatisfied demand for services.
    The hon. Member for Ross, Cromarty and Skye (Mr. Kennedy) asked us to look at our own communities, and when my hon. Friend the Member for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker) was looking at his, I happened to remark jovially —and jokingly, I must add—that spending in his region was too high. Spending per head on the NHS is indeed far higher in Scotland than in England, but after tabling some parliamentary questions I have been able to obtain the figures for my part of the country. Hon. Members may think that I am going to recite the usual cash figures—revealing that in 1982 the figure for the northern region was £520 million, compared with £802 million this year —but I have had all the figures recalculated at constant 1989–90 prices. In 1982, the figure was £741·8 million, while in 1989—at constant prices—it had reached £846·8 million. That is a significant improvement.
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    Services have also improved. In 1983, 409,000 in-patients were treated in the north; by 1988, the figure has risen to 462,000. The number of new out-patients rose from 550,000 to 590,000. None of that is possible unless the money can first be made available by running the economy correctly. There are 22 major capital schemes worth over £1 million under way in the Northern Region health authority. That has to be compared with the cut of over one third in the region's funding that was imposed by the last Labour Government.
    My own hospital, North Tees, has only just been given the new roof that it should have had in 1977, but for the cuts that were imposed by the last Labour Government. The figures for the Darlington, North Tees and South Tees health authorities show that there has been a significant improvement in their funding under a Conservative Government.
    Amid all the good news, however, a major case for change can still be made. It is not quite a mid-life crisis; I shall be 40 in 10 years, and I should not like to have to regard myself then as being old. A structural change is needed. Woman's Realm asked 10,000 of its readers what they expected from their GP services. Less than half of those who responded thought that their GPs were sympathetic and took their problems seriously; 60 per cent. considered that most GPs were helpful, whereas 43 per cent. were only "satisfied" with the treatment that they had received.
    A recently undertaken "Which?" survey commented that the
    "Consumers' Association welcomes the stated objectives of the Bill. In particular we applaud the Government's commitment to putting 'the needs of the patient first.' Consumers' Association wants consumers to have a greater choice of better quality health care, wherever they live. In pursuit of these objectives we support the major principles behind the Bill—of promoting efficiency and value for money; bringing all parts of the NHS up to the standards of the best; and developing a system which rewards those who work hardest."
    The standard of care in and the performance of different hospitals varies greatly. The average stay in hospital for the same treatment varies from three and a half days to nine and a half days. The average cost of treatment can range from £450 to £1,300. How can that possibly be justified? It must be right in a compassionate society to seek to maximise the performance of a service that has to rely on limited resources. However great those resources may be, that will always ultimately be limited.
    The hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) said that there should have been consultation before the reforms were implemented. However, the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) said that, when the National Health Service was established, there was no consultation —for the very good reason that the Labour Government knew that a National Health Service was not what the providers of health in the country wanted. It is interesting to note the different arguments on just that one point.
    Payment should be linked to performance. The Bill will ensure that additional payments are made to general practitioners for health screening, the elderly and patients with persistent health problems. Additional money will be provided for those who work in the inner cities, under the Jarman index. Additional money will also be provided for those who work in distant rural areas. All the various factors that ought to be taken into account will be taken into account.

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    GP practices will be provided with much greater powers as a result of the budget-holding provisions in the Bill. It is right to make the point that many practices do not yet possess the information technology that they will need if they are to carry out their responsibilities. Many forward-looking practices have, however, already installed the technology. Many of the GP practices in my constituency and in other areas have already bought computers and are considering how they can best improve the range and quality of the services that they offer to their patients. The real power of this reform is that it is patient-led and patient-driven. It is up to the patient to obtain more information about health services in his area. He has to make the comparisons and find the doctor who suits him best.
    As for hospitals, the funding will, quite rightly, follow the patient. However, a contracting system, which is regarded as the central provision of the Bill, already exists in many parts of the country. The waiting list initiative has already been introduced on a contractual basis. It is only right that we should cease rewarding the bad performers in the Health Service.
    There are two adjacent health authorities in my constituency. One has a waiting list in one specialty and the other does not. The Government came along with their waiting list initiative and paid money to the poor performer—the authority with the waiting list. The authority without a waiting list came to me and said that they had never had a waiting list for that particular discipline but, for the first time, they thought that it might be a good idea if they did, because otherwise the money would go to the authority across the river. I have never understood why that kind of resource allocation took place. Managers who save money by making sensible economies within their local unit find that the money is taken away and reallocated to a less efficient manager. That cannot be right.
    Surgeons within the Health Service know which are the bad surgeons and which are the good—my father is a surgeon. They know which surgeons turn out a large number of good quality operations, and which turn out either a low quantity or low quality. Good surgeons are happy to bid for work from other areas. We must get rid of the boundary problem that prevents patients from going across the river, or across the line. Then improvements will follow and that will be the reward for popular and successful units.
    Ms. Harriet Harman: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
    Mr. Devlin: I am trying to get on as quickly as possible, and I am sure that the hon. Lady will have many more opportunities to speak about health than I shall have.
    Let us consider the information that is available at the moment. For example, only recently have figures for post-operative complication rates become available. The confidential inquiry into peri-operative deaths showed that some 1,000 unnecessary deaths each year result from inappropriate surgical procedures. That information has only recently become known because the Government, during the past 10 years, have progressively increased information requirements and the information technology to bring them to light.
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    The internal market will result in patients being referred to more specialised units, and that will mean that costly, post-operative complications must decrease.
    I welcome the fact that audit is part of the Bill, as it is critical to its success. Unless clinicians can get to grips with their costs, we will never get to grips with the overall funding problems of the NHS. People must know what they are expected to do. Clinicians must realise that they have a responsibility to manage expensive resources well.
    In an article in the Daily Mail on 27 November 1989, Dr. Colin Leon said:
    "It's about time the medical profession accepted the need for some kind of accountability. We spend public money so should be called upon to explain what we do with it."
    He continued:
    "I have always voted Labour and have always believed socialism to be more attractive than capitalism, but I do not share Labour's belief that the Health Service is under threat from these reforms."
    Consultants have a closed shop and they must regulate themselves. The royal colleges do not deny the need for change in the NHS. There are several pleas for improvements of the NHS, resourcing must be made available for information technology, and more imaginative powers are needed for patients.
    I say to Ministers that if we are to gain the hearts and minds of the British people, we have to explain, in a patients' charter, exactly what rights and abilities they will have after legislation has been passed. That is the one thing that is not in the Bill, and it should be in it. That would solve all the arguments for us. If we were able to present a shopping list of rights and abilities for patients vis-a-vis their own doctor, or hospital and other NHS, services, they would be a lot happier.
    At the top of the shopping list, they would see the one thing that we should have made clear time and time again —that there is no proposal in the Bill for any hospital to be privatised. No one can opt out of the NHS, and it will be disciplined—business not oriented. The service will be better organised and better disciplined. I commend the Bill to the House.
    9.14 pm
    Mr. David Hinchliffe: I shall concentrate on community care and express some regret that the Secretary of State for Health had to be reminded by Opposition Members that it is affected by the Bill. It is quite clear that there is an urgent need for change in the Government's policies on community care, and the reasons are precisely the legacy of the policies they have pursued since 1979.
    One of my worries is the indecent haste with which large psychiatric hospitals are being run down because of financial pressure on the Health Service. That process is also influenced by performance-related pay for general managers, who have had incentives to get people out into cardboard boxes, rather than proper community care, and have discharged patients in questionable circumstances.
    The huge explosion in private institutional care is the direct result of the publicly funded experiment in free-market provision. People are being forced into institutional care because of the contraction of an alternative to it in their communities.
    A letter from Pat and Michael Frobisher, who live in Walton in Wakefield, arrived on my desk here last week. With their permission, I should like to quote it, as it illustrates my argument. Pat Frobisher writes:

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    "Michael was diagnosed with MS in 1970. I have nursed him since he gave up work in 1975. I had help from a nurse to bath him once a week after 1981 and respite care one week in 6 in the YDU at Pinderfields since then. Last year, in 1988, I begged for more help from the Health Authority. No dice. No money. No staff—consequence, I collapsed in July 1989 and Michael had to go into care, the one thing we had hoped would never happen."
    He was moved 15 miles away from Wakefield to a private home near Goole.
    Pat Frobisher then mentioned costs, saying that they are covered by the Department of Social Security and a small occupational pension, which gives them an income of £245·05 a week. The letter continues:
    "The fees at Greenacres are £245 pw, leaving Mike 5p per week spending money."
    As a result, the family are having to sell their house in Wakefield to raise money to pay for the man's care, simply because domiciliary support is not available. I telephoned Mike Frobisher today to ask his permission to use the letter. He reminded me that we had met—when I spoke at a meeting to try to keep open the younger disabled unit at Pinderfields hospital at Wakefield because it was threatened with cuts by the Government whose performance we have heard praised by Conservative Members throughout the debate. What I have described is the reality of Government policy. People are being forced into institutional care because domiciliary provision has disappeared in many areas as a direct result of Government cuts.
    The Bill's parentage is highly questionable. The motivation behind it is financial and ideological. It is a clear attempt to reduce Government spending. There is deep anxiety about the financial mess that has arisen because of the open-ended income support of private care. The Bill is a deliberate attempt to shift the burden of funding residential care away from the Department of Social Security to the backs of local authorities. The Government continue to regard community care as a cheap option. It is a disgrace that the Bill fails to finance the resource requirements that have been identified by many, including the Association of County Councils. Professional training and resourcing requirements are not being funded in the Bill.
    The Bill is ideological because it attacks local authority provision and discriminates in favour of the voluntary and private sectors. That discrimination against local authority is indefensible. They will no longer be able to provide part III accommodation and residential care, which, as everyone knows, is a safety net for people whom the private sector reject.
    I support the voluntary sector—I am aware of the many initiatives taken by voluntary groups—but it is patchy and uneven. The many representations that hon. Members receive from such organisations show that they do not want to play the role envisaged for them in the Bill.
    There is deep anxiety about the implications of the market forces approach. Experiments in such an approach to private institutional care provide clear evidence that market forces do not lead to improved quality. Problems after problem in the private sector has forced the Government to bring forward the Registered Homes Act 1984 to tidy up the problems faced by people in private homes and the scandals that continue to occur in the private sector.
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    I find the issue of choice interesting. Genuine choice in residential care would mean leaving vacancies. How many owners of private homes will say, "We believe in choice, so we will leave three or four vacancies"? The idea that choice can be provided in community care is a myth.
    In the debate on the Queen's Speech, I said that competitive tendering for care was offensive, and irrelevant to the care that our welfare state should continue to provide.
    My time is virtually up. Once again I am at the dog-end of the debate. I seem to manage to have this slot every time that I speak in the Chamber. In Committee, the Opposition will put forward radical alternatives to institutional provision. Let us get away from the legacy of the workhouse. Our alternatives will be to bring about an intensive domiciliary support service, to keep people out of institutional care rather than force them into private homes as the Government have done.
    I am proud to boast that I have been personally involved in community care. The community care provisions in the Bill are clearly an afterthought, as was the Secretary of State's reference to it towards the end of his speech. The Bill is a dog's breakfast. It is inappropriate to say that it makes sensible provision for community care. It will compound, rather than correct, the appalling consequences of 10 years of Conservative policy in that area.
    9.23 pm
    Mr. Barry Jones: I am glad to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe), who always speaks with insight and conviction.
    My right hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) said that he was here in 1948, when the original NHS Bill was introduced. We know from his speech that he has just had an operation, so he has sampled the NHS many years later. He congratulated my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook)—rightly, in the view of all hon. Members on this side—on his superb speech. He made many points, but he will agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent that the Prime Minister wishes to twist the NHS into something else.
    As my right hon. Friend knows, the Bill is greatly disliked throughout the length and breadth of Wales. In an intervention, the hon. Member for Lancaster (Dame E. Kellett-Bowman) asked about lithotripters for the treatment of kidney stones. Why do the Government consider that it is permissible for Wales to be without those machines? Why should the people of Wales, who fall prey to kidney stones as much as any other people, not have that treatment? These machines are in Leeds, Sheffield, Bristol, Manchester and Scotland and there are two in London, but none in Wales. Will the Under-Secretary of State tell us whether the Bill will guarantee these long overdue machines for Wales?
    The Secretary of State for Wales will not take part in our debates on the Bill, yet this is the most important Second Reading debate in this Parliament. Why has he resolved not to speak? Perhaps he is ashamed of the Bill. Perhaps he dislikes the tinge of commerce that runs through it. Perhaps in Cabinet Committee he lost the fight against hospital trusts in Wales, but his name had to go on the Bill, or he could not stay in the Cabinet. That was the price of high office. This wretched Bill appears to be the

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    price that he had to pay to remain in office. It is regrettable that he is not even in the Chamber for this greatly important debate.
    Wales comes at the bottom of too many tables of social indicators. We are the land of low wages. We tend to be at or near the top of any assessment of poverty, ill health and poor housing. Our anxiety is that the Bill overlooks the interests of the average family on low wages. Until now, that family has had the guarantee of a comprehensive Health Service, free at the point of use—a compensation, a buttress and an insurance for families who find it hard to make ends meet. In this Bill we see the first disturbing signs of the erosion of the concept of a comprehensive Health Service. The Bill raises doubts for the retired miner in Tymbl or Blaenavon, the quarryman's widow in a terraced house in Blaenau Ffestiniog and the unemployed steelman in Shotton.
    The great Aneurin Bevan in Mr. Atlee's Administration bequeathed the NHS to our people. The NHS was conceived and nurtured in Wales, where in the different communities miners and quarrymen initially banded together to provide basic health care. Many will agree that the NHS has bound us together as a society. It represents the pursuit of a humane and social objective: that the sick should receive treatment of the highest possible quality because they are sick, not because they are rich.
    The Bill is irrelevant for Wales. There are barely 13 general practices of the required size. So far, there is not one application for a hospital trust. The plans are deeply unpopular throughout the length and breadth of Wales. That partly explains our magnificent parliamentary election successes throughout 1989. We can say without a shadow of doubt that there is no mandate for the Bill in Wales—none whatever.
    The Conservatives are a minority party in Wales. This Bill is a home counties solution to the Health Services problems. It is the socially divisive Cabinet politics of the south-east of Britain. Without a shred of support for it in Wales, it is yet another example of the north-south divide.
    The Bill fails to address the problems of health inequalities. The Bill sees the model patient as a person in a health supermarket or in Marks and Spencer, with time and money to spend choosing health care from among the many goods on sale. That is not true of most people who use our health services. The Bill's proposals will make the Health Service less accessible to those most in need, especially the elderly, the disabled and those with mental health problems. The poor already have difficulty in getting the best out of the Health Service. All those people may need to see a doctor more often and receive more treatment in hospital than others.
    In Wales we have areas of social and economic disadvantage that are among the worst in Britain. This decade, unemployment, poverty and industrial decay have increased enormously. Those social and economic disadvantages are shown in major health indicators—41 per cent. of Welsh people report long-standing illness, compared with 33 per cent. in England and 31 per cent. in Scotland. In Wales, child health is poorer than in the rest of Britain and there are 5·2 stillbirths per 1,000 live births. The mortality rate among children under one is much higher than in England or Scotland. Such health disadvantages are often a function of the Welsh industrial history. The death rate among men in Wales from bronchitis, emphysema and asthma are much higher than in Britain.
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    It is also true that Wales is a black spot for heart disease. The Welsh heart health survey, the most comprehensive survey of its kind, found that deaths from heart disease among women increased by 25 per cent. between the years 1970 and 1980. Heart disease accounted for half of all deaths in Wales in the survey year—something like 10,000 men and women. In the Rhondda valley, the mortality rate is 20 per cent. higher than the British average.
    Comprehensive health services, within easy reach of all, are absolutely vital to the Welsh people. The proposals in the Bill will not provide those services. Local accountability of the Health Service will also be reduced by the Bill. The number of community health councils in Wales will be reduced from 22 to nine, but the changes to the Health Service will make those councils more not less important. The proposals mean, however, that patients will be more remote from health care. If there are fewer community health officers, there will be less local representation and less local accessibility to the Health Service.
    The chairman of the Society of Community Health Council Secretaries in Wales, Mr. Ivor Roberts, has told me that the proposals are incompatible with the supposedly "consumer-orientated" aims of the Bill.
    The changes are unwelcome. We know that the aim of community health councils in Wales is to enable people to participate in the planning and running of the Health Service. The proposal to reduce the number of such councils from 22 to nine is a retrograde one. It will mean that the Health Service is less accessible—more distant from, and less responsive to the needs of, the communities that it seeks to serve.
    A number of hon. Members have already expressed great concern about community care. The provision of the highest quality community care to our elderly and mentally and physically handicapped is of the utmost importance. Wales has the second highest proportion of elderly people of any part of Britain. Wales has a higher proportion of elderly people in local authority residential homes than the United Kingdom average. The number of severely handicapped adults in Wales is more than double that for Britain as a whole. The Bill's proposals are just not good enough to meet the challenge.
    If the Bill is enacted, there will be a problem with travel and access. People may be expected to travel to hospitals in other areas to avoid waiting. However, for those with mobility problems—the elderly, the disabled and the poor —this may be impossible. For everyone, it will be harder for families and friends throughout Wales to visit. The problem will be particularly great in rural areas, where patients already experience longer travelling times than people in other areas. Bus and train services are not as good as they were 10 years ago.
    For women, the great users of health services, travel can be a particular hardship in Wales. Difficult and expensive journeys may deter some women from attending clinics for antenatal and post-natal care. Increased travelling costs to more distant maternity units could create financial pressures for those with incomes just above the level of eligibility for financial help for travel. The problems are even greater for parents with sick or handicapped children who need to remain in hospital or return there regularly.
    It is no exaggeration to tell the House on behalf of the people of Wales that this measure is of great concern to people with children in hospital, to people who are in great pain who are in hospital for a long time, and to the

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    terminally ill. Modern hospitals' care of children relies heavily on the participation of parents. How will that be possible if the hospital is distant from home?
    I want to pose some questions which I hope will be answered by the Under-Secretary of State. Has the Bill been costed? What do the changes mean in real terms? Will there be the manpower with sufficient skills to implement the proposed changes? If these supposedly massive amounts of money are available, the nurses in Wales ask this question: why cannot the money be given now for patients' care?
    There are no proposals for ballots. The changes will occur over very short time scales. It looks as though there will be greater centralisation of the control of the Health Service in Wales. It is a cheek to push the Bill in Wales. Waiting lists are already a disgrace. We have seen hospitals and wards close and the loss of many beds. The Government have imposed eye test charges. They are increasing the cost of dental examinations. The Government have given well-off older citizens tax relief, should they go for private treatment. Many hon. Members have said what must be the truth—the morale of those who work in the service is very low.
    It is no exaggeration to say that in Wales the Health Service is the people's health service. Now, it is free and accessible to all, but the Bill has no support in Wales. No Conservative Back Bencher from Wales will say that it has support. I challenge any of them to say that they will support it. There are no such Back Benchers here tonight. The Secretary of State for Wales is not here. They have run away. They are afraid, and know that there is no support for the Bill. In the Vale of Glamorgan parliamentary by-election, the proposals on the Health Service constituted one reason why the seat was gained by Labour from the Conservatives. We had a great deal of help from the Secretary of State for Health, too. His proposals helped us to win the seat.
    The people of Wales are not behind this Bill; those who work in the Health Service will have none of it; the community health councils are critical; patients and voluntary groups are almost universally opposed. Opinion in our country of Wales is that the humane and magnificent aims of the Health Service are under threat and that the Government are up to no good. We all believe in Wales that we shall lose if Government Whips push this measure through against the interests of our people.
    The Government have a clear choice: they can abandon dogma or face the loss of parliamentary seats throughout Wales. Even if they will not listen to public opinion, perhaps they will at last listen to their own voters. This Bill should be dropped and Wales should be exempted. I am sure that we shall vote against it next week.
    9.41 pm
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Ian Grist): That was a miserable speech, but it was in line with what one usually hears from the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mr. Jones). I shall be going to his county tomorrow to see the great new hospitals that have been built there under this Government—Maelor Wrecsam and Ysbyty Glan Clwyd. I hope to learn there of the support that we have gained for building the hospitals
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    that the hon. Gentleman so signally failed to build when serving in my position for five years under the Labour Government.
    When the Labour Government were in power, expenditure on the Health Service rose by only 6·6 per cent. in real terms, whereas I am delighted to say that, in the district health authority serving Alyn and Deeside, it has risen under this Government by no less than 46 per cent. in real terms. That is the measure of the difference between the Conservative record and Labour promises.
    It is remarkable to hear the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside talking about waiting lists, doctors and nurses and the need for greater resources. When he was in power, nurses' pay fell by 20 per cent. in real terms. Hon. Members who were in Parliament then will remember nurses complaining to them. The same applies to the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot), who made a heartrending speech about the Health Service, claiming that it was Socialism in action. We do not accept that; nor do the people who worked in the service and suffered under the Labour Government.
    Of course we are sorry about the disputes in the service, but they are as nothing compared with the industrial action in the Health Service in the last months of the Labour Government. It is no wonder that the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside and the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent feel guilty when they reflect that, if we had continued nurses' pay at the level at which it stood when we came to office, it would be worth £68 per week less, than it now is. Consultants would be paid £63 per week less and the average remuneration of GPs in Wales would have to fall by £94 per week to bring it to a level comparable with that in the last year of the Labour Government. When the hon. Gentleman had the power to act, he paid nurses, doctors and consultants miserable sums. There was no capital expenditure, there were 7,000 fewer front-line staff in Wales—including nurses and doctors—and the hospital service was treating 400,000 fewer patients every year.
    Practice funds have been discussed in today's debate. They will give GPs much greater freedom to be masters and mistresses in their own houses and to deploy their resources in such a way as to enable them to provide patients with the high quality care that they want and need. Hospitals will become more responsive to the needs of GPs and their patients, as GPs will obviously choose those which offer the best quality services with the shortest waiting lists. Practice fund holders will also be able to transfer funds between different elements of their budget. That will provide them with greater flexibility in meeting the needs of their patients. Greater freedom in managing budgets will also enhance their clinical freedom and they will be able to make savings from the fund which can be used to provide improved patient care.
    As with National Health Service trusts, we want GPs to be attracted and not compelled towards becoming fund holders. If GPs consider that funds are not in the best interests of their patients, no pressure whatever will be placed on them to accept funds against their better judgment. In addition, before any practice is allowed to hold funds, the Secretary of State will have to be satisfied that the practice has the capacity to manage them efficiently and in the best interests of patient care.
    Full discussions will be held with a practice which applies to hold funds so as to take account of its particular circumstances and the composition of its practice lists.

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    There will be safeguards to ensure that any unforeseen circumstances leading to a need for additional expenditure on patient care can be accommodated. In short, funds will be set up and run in such a way that patients will receive all the care that they need within a structure which provides much more directly for the GP taking into account the wishes of the patient to ensure the best quality care.
    The Bill also provides a framework for more effective prescribing by GPs through our proposals for indicative drug budgets, to which several hon. Members have referred. Doctors will be given an indication of what their expenditure on medicines should be, based on the age and range of patients treated. If they spend more, as they may, they will be expected to show that there were good medical reasons for so doing. If they can show such reasons, that will be the end of the matter. Any necessary follow-up on GPs who appear to be prescribing irresponsibly—and irresponsible prescribing damages patients—will be undertaken by senior and experienced doctors whose aim will be to help GPs maximise patient care.
    The proposals for indicative drug budgets have been the subject of dreadful misrepresentation. I emphasise that they will be indicative, exactly as they are described. They will not in any way infringe the right of medical practitioners to prescribe all the drugs that their patients need. The scheme will provide GPs with an incentive to examine critically their prescribing patterns and costs. Every patient being cared for by a general practitioner will, of course, always be able to get the drugs that he or she needs, including high-cost medicines, for as long as they are needed. I hope that that meets the fears of my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Sir M. McNair-Wilson) who spoke so feelingly.
    Mr. Alun Michael rose–
    Mr. Grist: I am sorry, but I will not give way at this stage.
    Indicative budgets are not cash-limited and the Bill exactly replicates existing provision about cash-limiting expenditure in the family practitioner services.
    I come next to the part of the Bill which provides the necessary framework to carry forward our proposals for community care, about which many hon. Members were extremely interested. Details were set out in the White Paper "Caring for People". The broad thrust of the proposals has been welcomed by many people, including those whom I met on Monday at a meeting with the social services chairmen and directors in Wales. The proposals place a clear responsibility on local social service authorities in co-operation with medical, nursing and other interests, to assess the social care needs of their population and to design and make arrangements for the delivery of appropriate packages of care that will meet the needs of individuals.
    Mr. Nicholas Winterton rose—
    Mr. Grist: No, I am sorry, but I will not give way.
    Many people have benefited from the expansion of the independent sector, about which the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe) spoke, and nursing home care which has been made possible by massive new expenditure through the social security system. In Wales alone, the numbers have quadrupled, to about 12,000 during the
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    Government's period of office. As the hon. Member for Wakefield said, that care has not always been the most appropriate for individuals.
    The present funding arrangements that have created the incentive to place people in private residential or nursing homes, irrespective of whether that was the type of care that they wanted or needed, will end. From April 1991, there will be a phased transfer from central Government to local authorities of resources to enable them to carry out their new role. The details of the resources involved will be determined in next year's public expenditure deliberations. It was extraordinary to hear the champions of local authorities sound off so suspiciously about their colleagues in local government who they suspect will misuse those funds. I include in that my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton), who was not too friendly last night either.
    In Wales, the new arrangements will build upon strategies and initiatives that we have embarked upon already in respect of services for those with mental handicap and mental illness, as well as services for the elderly, which have been widely praised by many, including Opposition Members. For example, I think that the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Mr. Jones) has praised the efforts that have been made under our mental illness and handicap strategy. I do not think that I would be going too far if I suggested that the Government's approach to future arrangements for community care for the whole of Great Britain may owe something to our pioneering initiatives in Wales. I sincerely believe that they provide the opportunity to develop quality services that will sustain local communities and maximise the independence of individuals. It is the framework that we need to meet the demographic and social changes that we face over the next decade.
    I had hoped that the contributions of Opposition Members would have been rather more constructive than they have proved to be. There are objectives underpinning our proposals which I hoped we could all share. The Opposition are making a serious error of judgment in the way that they express total opposition to our proposals. As the debate unfolds during the passage of the Bill, more and more people will understand that the increased pressures to improve services that will be placed on the NHS in the next decade and beyond as a result of increasing numbers of elderly people and other social changes, as well as from the continuing advance of medical science and the growl :h of available treatments, can be met only by the programme of reform which the Government propose.
    Mr. Rhodri Morgan: Will the Minister give way?
    Mr. Grist: No.
    They will see, as many see already, that the Opposition are bankrupt of real ideas for improving the Health Service. Hon. Members who represent Welsh constituencies had a good chance to speak about these matters in the Welsh Grand Committee about three weeks ago.
    Mr. Morgan rose—
    Mr. Grist: If extra expenditure alone—
    Mr. Morgan: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it in order for the Minister to fail to give an explanation of how

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    it is that, in advance of the Bill becoming law, he and his boss have decided already to implement part of it in my constituency since December—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. Hon. Members from the Back Benches and from the Front Benches make their own speeches. The debate will continue for 10 minutes more.
    Mr. Grist: The hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. Morgan) has shown that he has not read the Bill and that does not understand what it is about.
    Opposition Members have gone on about expenditure. If that alone were the answer, we should not have a problem today. Since 1978, spending on the Health Service in the United Kingdom has increased massively from £8 billion to £26 billion in 1989. I have no doubt that the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside will remember with satisfaction that when he was a member of the Labour Government and a Minister with responsibilities for health, he cut expenditure on the NHS by no less than 23 per cent. in one year. That must be compared with the growth of over 25 per cent. that we have provided in Wales alone this year. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Atkinson) said, his spanking new hospital was delayed for 10 years.
    The Treasurer of Her Majesty's Household (Mr. Tristan Garel-Jones): And mine.
    Mr. Grist: Indeed, many of us can say the same thing. It is the reversal of the position which prevailed under the previous Labour Government, which explains why the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) finds it so difficult to understand where all the money has gone. It has gone on new hospitals, new units, new drugs and a vastly increased work force in the Health Service.
    I suppose that it is just possible for the Opposition to fool some people about their intentions and their earnestness, but I doubt whether they will ever be able to convince the public that they could manage the economy well enough to create the resources that are needed for the NHS. Even if they were able to do so, would they convince anyone that they would not fritter the money away on the pay of those employees in the NHS who threaten the loudest?
    In another sense, resources lie at the heart of the matter. I hope that we can all share the objective or overriding aim of ensuring that we derive maximum benefit from the massive resources that we are investing in the NHS so that we can be sure that every pound purchases the greatest possible amount of direct patient care. We have been accused of pursuing market ideology, but Opposition Members are the ideologues. They are hidebound in the way in which the cling to a structure and an organisation which is monolithic, over-bureaucratic and corporatist. It is too distant from those whom it is meant to serve.
    The fundamental aim of our proposals is to make the Health Service more responsive to the needs of patients and to provide a widening choice. We shall do that be delegating responsibility to local level, by developing more patient-centred treatment and care and by increasing the accountability of those in the front line who deliver the patient care and the managers in the authorities providing the conditions in which front-line staff work.
    568
    Opponents of our proposals have consistently failed to recognise the crucial and strengthened role of the district health authorities. For the first time, the authorities will be funded on the basis of their resident population. They will have a clear duty to ensure that the health needs of that local population are properly met.
    Each health authority will need to carry out a systematic assessment of the health status and needs of its local population. The director of public health medicine in each district will be responsible for carrying out that assessment, in consultation with clinicians in hospitals, with general practitioners and with other interests. Their task will be to identify local needs and priorities and to ensure that people have access to a comprehensive range of high quality, value-for-money services from the hospitals and units judged best able to deliver them.
    Complementary to that will be the duty that we intend to place on social service authorities to produce social service plans in collaboration with health authorities, voluntary bodies and the users of services and their representatives. They must set out how they intend to ensure the provision of quality social care for people in their homes and their communities. Taken together, our proposals will lead to a systematic assessment of people's health and social needs and the planning of comprehensive services to meet those needs.
    Central to our approach is the need to devolve responsibility for the day-to-day provision of services to local unit level, thereby freeing district health authorities to concentrate on their principal task of assessing the needs of those for whom they are responsible and ensuring that those needs are met by service providers—[Interruption.]
    Mr. Morgan: Will the Minister give way? It will give him time to find his place in his brief.
    Mr. Grist: That does not matter—I have plenty of brief.
    Our approach builds on the acknowledged success of the progressive introduction of general management at all levels of the NHS—which, of course, Opposition Members resisted so bitterly. Our proposals for new, streamlined health authorities will make them far better equipped to perform those functions. Listening to our opponents' views, I fail to understand what can be so terribly wrong with a system of which the overall objective is to achieve better value for money so that more resources can be released for direct patient care. Our opponents do not like that approach—
    Mr. Ray Powell: Perhaps I can help the Minister—
    Mr. Grist: Our opponents—
    Mr. Powell: I want to help the Minister.
    Mr. Speaker: Order. I do not think that the Minister needs help.
    Mr. Powell: I am thinking about—
    Mr. Speaker: Order.
    Mr. Grist: I should have thought that the hon. Gentleman would welcome the remarkable new hospital that we built in his constituency—
    Mr. Powell: The hon. Member for Watford (Mr. Garel-Jones)—
    Mr. Speaker: Order.
    Mr. Powell rose—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. I am on my feet.
    Mr. Powell: I heard the hon. Member for Watford call me a cheat.
    Mr. Speaker: Order. I did not hear that.
    Mr. Powell: The hon. Gentleman should withdraw. I would not call him a cheat. If it were anyone else, Mr. Speaker, you would ask him to withdraw. He referred to me as a cheat. I ask you to use your authority to ask him to withdraw his remark. Otherwise, I shall have to take the matter further.
    Mr. Speaker: Order. Let us calm down. Did the hon. Member for Watford (Mr. Garel-Jones) mention that word?
    Mr. Garel-Jones: Yes.
    Mr. Speaker: Please apologise.
    Mr. Garel-Jones: I apologise.
    Mr. Grist: I think that the hon. Member for Ogmore should be grateful to the Government—
    Mr. Barry Jones rose—
    Mr. Grist: Not again.
    Mr. Jones: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. We did not hear the hon. Member for Watford (Mr. Garel-Jones) apologise.
    Mr. Speaker: Will the hon. Member for Watford apologise a little more loudly please?
    Mr. Garel-Jones: At your request, Mr. Speaker, I apologise to the hon. Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell).
    Mr. Grist: I hope that the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside is pleased with that. I am staggered by the opposition of Labour Members, who have so misunderstood and misrepresented the aims and purposes of our proposals. I have twice been in hospital this year, and my wife and younger son have also been in hospital, all of us as patients of the NHS. I cannot speak highly enough of the care, skill and dedication of our health staff. It is to give them more fulfilling careers, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) pointed out, and to give even better treatment to their customers—us, as patients—that I commend these proposals to the House. I look forward to the Committee debates, in which they will be examined in detail and when the public will learn precisely what is in the legislation instead of listening to the rubbish that they have heard from Labour Members, their trade union friends, the British Medical Association and many others.
    [It being Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.]
    Debate to be resumed upon Monday 11 December.

STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS, &c.

  LIQUOR DUTIES
  Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 101 (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.).
  That the Alcoholic Liquor Duties Act 1979 (Repeal of Section 31) Order 1989 (S.I., 1989, No. 2098), dated 14th November 1989, a copy of which was laid before this House on 15th November, in the last Session of Parliament, be approved.—[Mr. Greg Knight.]
  Question agreed to.

  PIGMEAT PRICES
  Motion made, and Question proposed, pursuant to Standing Order No. 102 (Standing Committees on European Community Documents).
  That this House take note of European Community Document No. 8680/89 relating to pigmeat prices; and supports the Government's intention to negotiate measures which take account of the interests of consumers and pigmeat producers in the United Kingdom.—[Mr. Greg Knight.]
  Question agreed to.

PETITION

  Roads (South London)
  Mr. Humfrey Maims: The petition that I present is signed by a vast number of people from all over London, particularly from south London, many of them from the borough of Croydon, which you and I, Mr. Speaker, have the honour to represent. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Sir W. Clark) is here tonight, as I would expect, given his association with this matter.
  The petition contains over 10,000 signatures. Greenlink of Croydon and Mr. Delamore are closely involved. It urges the Secretary of State for Transport not to proceed with his plans for major new roads, which would be so damaging to the environment and the interests and welfare of residents not only of Croydon but of London and south London in particular. It says:
  Wherefore your petitioners pray that your Honourable House urges the … Secretary of State for Transport to recognise the great concern caused to the community in Streatham by the major road-building options contained in the … South London Assessment Study and by other major roadbuilding proposed or planned for South London, in particular the East London River Crossing; and that the manner of recognition should be as follows:-

  (1) He should dismiss all options in the London Assessment Studies which propose major building.

  (2) He should cancel the plan to build the East London River Crossing.

  It also suggests that he should promote investment in a
  major improvement of the public transport infrastructure.
  It ends:
  And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray &c.
  To lie upon the Table.

Voluntary Nature Conservancy Movement
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Greg Knight.]
10.2 pm
Mr. Ron Davies: I asked for this debate because I am greatly concerned about the Government's policy for the nature conservation movement and I am glad to note that my hon. Friends the Members for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael), for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy) and for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar), who speak for the Labour party on Welsh and Scottish matters, are here for this debate. I know that they share my concern.
There is a mood of great uncertainty within the nature conservation movement, as the traditional financial grants from the Government, via the Nature Conservancy Council, are awarded on an annual basis rather than, as they used to be, on a three-year rolling programme. This reflects the uncertainty over the fate of the NCC, and the most immediate effect is to lower staff morale. A further serious concern of these bodies is the haemorrhage of personnel that they have suffered since the end of the community programme. According to the Royal Society for Nature Conservation, since the change from the community programme to employment training, the number of trainees working for naturalist trusts has declined from 2,300 to 600, and the number of trusts participating from 37 to 30. The implications for conservation work on the ground are obvious.
However, much the biggest concern of the voluntary conservation organisations is the dark shadow that has been cast over nature conservation in Great Britain by the intended dismemberment of the Nature Conservancy Council.
The Conservative party's desperate wish to increase its support in Scotland is behind the ambush, for that is what it was, with even the chairman of the NCC, the body that is responsible for assisting the voluntary movement, deliberately kept in ignorance.
The Tory party's centralising policies have made it deeply unpopular in some areas of the United Kingdom. Thinking that that unpopularity would be mitigated in Scotland if it masqueraded as the party of devolution, the Government have dreamt up a scheme which achieves two of their objectives at once. By dismembering the NCC and weakening conservation, they can encourage their remaining supporters in Scotland, who have forestry and land-owning interests. Simultaneously, they have wasted the genuine opportunity that exists in the Principality for closer co-operation between the NCC and the Countryside Commission by tossing Wales into the melting pot with Scotland and dressing it up as devolution.
The hostility of some vested and landed interests in Scotland to the NCC is well known. Mr. Ian Prestt, the director general of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Europe's largest voluntary conservation movement, with more than 600,000 members, said:
"What they want is a body which does not stand up for conservation and cannot press the conservation case".
One of the main battlegrounds between those interests and conservationists has been the Flow country of Caithness and Sutherland. Here the Government sold the pass when they accepted the report of the Highland regional council and agreed that a further 100,000 hectares
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of prime land should be afforested. The NCC was opposed to any further afforestation but it was overruled and, to add insult to injury, the Secretary of State for Scotland decided to change the rules. In future, the NCC was to be allowed to give its opinion on afforestation only where sites of special scientific interest would be affected.
But that was not enough for the landowners of Scotland. According to the publication Forestry and British Timber, September 1989, a new organisation was needed which would
"sweep away the dross created by indiscriminate conservation."
In meeting that demand the Secretary of State for Wales and for Scotland have committed the Government to a political gamble, hoping to increase the measly 16 per cent. of parliamentary seats which they currently hold in those two countries. The stakes are a mitigation of the Government's deep unpopularity in Wales and Scotland on the upside, versus further damage to the Government's bogus green credentials on the downside.
That is how I see the situation, but just in case the Minister does not share my analysis—unlikely, but just in case—let us look at some reactions of the experts to the Government's proposals. We could not do better than to start with the views of a man who has given his professional life to nature conservation and who rose through the ranks to become chief scientist at the NCC —Derek Ratcliffe. He was singled out by the chairman of the NCC in his annual address a couple of weeks ago when he said:
"his contribution to the conservation of Britain's wildlife, in particular its birdlife, is almost unparalleled and should not be allowed to go unnoticed."
Dr. Ratcliffe's distinguished work as a naturalist and scientist is combined with a level of respect and popularity within conservation circles such as to make his views indispensable to any informed discussion of nature conservation, statutory or voluntary. Writing in The Times on 15 July, he said:
"The Government's proposals to dismember the NCC and amalgamate its functions with those of the countryside commissions in Scotland and Wales are a potential disaster for nature conservation in Britain."
He went on to say:
"Just when growing awareness of the global scale of environmental problems demands increasing integration of conservation policies internationally, Nicholas Ridley takes the pervesely backwards step of pulling apart the national official agency for nature conservation."
Another important figure in the NCC until recently was Lord Buxton. In resigning from the NCC council after 40 years of involvement in nature conservation, he said:
"I am unable to go along with purely political decisions which in a UK environmental context look trivial and opportunistic. Nor, as a Conservative supporter, do I believe that the proposals will gain anything with the electorate north of the border, whereas they may do serious damage to the party's conservation standing throughout the rest of the United Kingdom."
To those distinguished voices can be added those of senior figures in the Royal Society for Nature Conservation, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers, the Council for the Protection of Rural England, the Council for the Protection of Rural Wales, the Association for the Protection of Rural Scotland, Wildlife Link, Scottish Wildlife and Countryside Link, the Ramblers Association, the Open Spaces Society, the British Trust for Ornithology, the Scottish Wildlife Trust Ltd., the Fauna

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and Flora Preservation Society and the Marine Conservation Society. I could go on and on. The views of those and other organisations represent as complete a rejection of the Government's plans as could possibly be found.
Faced with that, the Government brought out in Scotland what they described as a consultation paper. Perhaps the Minister can tell us why they did not do likewise in Wales. If the Government are concerned to support the voluntary nature conservation bodies in Scotland and Wales—to encourage them, to nurture their work and to improve their morale and increase their enthusiasm—why did they not see fit to consult them?
The groups to which the document was sent were hand-picked, and it might therefore have been expected to be well received. The Secretary of State for Scotland claims that 98, or over 60 per cent., of the responses were in favour. Of course, with such an exercise, it is possible to fix the desired figures in advance with a fair degree of accuracy. The Secretary of State might have obtained 100 per cent. support if he had sent his consultation document only to foresters and their accountants.
Other scrutineers, however, have come up with figures very different from his 60 per cent. claim. According to the NCC trade unions' interpretation, only 14 per cent. of responses were unequivocally supportive; 45 per cent. were equivocal, 39 per cent. opposed and only 2 per cent. indeterminate. I will take their assessment rather than that of the Secretary of State, of whose claim Scottish Friends of the Earth said:
"Only a statement which clearly recognises the fact that the Scottish Office has not won approval for their proposal to split the NCC would have been credible. Anything else is bald deceit".
Talking of bald deceit, something close to that was practised by the Secretary of State for the Environment when he put out a press briefing to the effect that the Leader of the Opposition supported the break-up of the NCC. That referred to an acknowledgement sent by my right hon. Friend's constituency secretary to the Welsh committee of the Countryside Commission, thanking it for sending a copy of its annual review, which contained a passage welcoming the proposal to establish a countryside council for Wales. Unbelievably, that was presented to the press as my right hon. Friend's welcoming the break-up of the NCC.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Mr. Kinnock ) has made no secret of the fact that, as a Welsh Member of Parliament, he is in favour of strengthening nature conservation in Wales. No one who is serious about that goal believes that breaking up the NCC is the way to achieve it, and that is why the Opposition's line—in the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould), the shadow Secretary of State for the Environment—is, "Don't dismember the NCC."
My hon. Friend's view is also that of the voluntary conservation organisations, which share my assessment of the political dimension that I outlined earlier. Their concerns stem from the apprehension that the proposal is politically inspired and intended to weaken conservation. Obviously, splitting the NCC will direct its limited resources into duplicating administrative services, and will lead to a reduction in conservation work on the ground by both the voluntary bodies and the NCC.
More seriously, nature conservation in a small island such as Britain needs to be seen from a national or, better
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still, an international perspective. It is becoming universally recognised that, when it comes to issues of the environment, country borders count for nothing. The Department of the Environment recognises that: it was the Department that said, in its March 1989 document "Environment in Trust":
"The environment knows no boundaries. Many … issues go beyond the borders of individual countries".
According to the director general of the RSPB,
"A GB approach is absolutely essential. Our islands share so much in common that political boundaries are really irrelevant when considering habitats and species. Of more relevance are the coasts, lowlands and uplands, and a measure of each is found in each country. The SSSI system takes full account of this GB approach. The fact that Scotland has large areas of peatland could lead a Scottish-based body to set priorities which do not take into account the truly international significance of the peatlands. Thus for parochial reasons, a few SSSIs would suffice; what then for the great majority of the Flow Country?"
At the heart of the matter are the responsibilities that the whole of Britain has for our remaining wildlife heritage. When seen from a Great Britain perspective, relatively little remains, so a high premium is put on what is left. When seen from a purely Welsh or Scottish perspective, a much higher proportion of the wildlife assets remain, so sites will tend to be treated as less valuable. That is inevitable, if the country agency is only, as the Government acknowledge, responsive to that country's needs.
The environment is one particular area where devolution of powers is entirely inappropriate, for two reasons. First, the highly complex interrelation of environmental factors pays absolutely no respect whatever to our artificial political boundaries. Secondly, if we possess a dwindling asset which benefits all of us, in Britain and the wider world, it is ridiculous to assess its value only from the perspective of those lucky enough to live alongside. It belongs to all of us, not just those few.
It is precisely because it is natural—or God-given, to the religiously inclined—that we should all have a say in determining its fate. Therefore, the decisions that affect our common heritage must be made at a high level, following common principles. Natural and environmental assets are unique. Therefore, they are uniquely unsuited to devolution. I stress that, in case it be thought that I am against devolution in general.
Even with a unified science base—or a genuinely independent co-ordinating committee, which is a million miles from the farcical body suggested by the Government. —there are worrying portents for conservation action. The unified science base is not an end in itself, except in so far as it avoids duplication of effort and maintains consistent standards. It is only a means to objective assessment of scientific value. That is but the first step in the NCC's function, and a first step in the process of nurturing the voluntary bodies that do so much to identify the critical sites.
Equally important is the way in which that science is interpreted, the policy determined, and conservation action then taken. If the whole process is devolved, a divergence of results between the bodies of different countries is inevitable. The country with the poorest track record on conservation will have even greater scope to weaken conservation action on the ground. The Scottish establishment at least gets what it wants.
In case the Minister were to think that it is just the entire voluntary conservation movement and the Labour

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party that are opposed to the plans for the NCC, I should like to give the views of those who actually work for the organisation—those of whom the NCC chairman said in presenting his annual report:
"The country is lucky to have such a dedicated and hard-working body of people as the staff of the Nature Conservancy Council. With them, dedication is a way of life. The best thank you we can give them is not to let them down."
I have heard that six of their number in Scotland, and six in Wales—12 out of 1,100—support the Government's proposals. Those figures may not be quite right, but what is beyond doubt is that the overwhelming majority are bitterly opposed. Sir William Wilkinson, in his last term as chairman of the NCC, has the support of those dedicated individuals, as they have publicly made clear. He in turn does not want to let them down. He will be forced to do so if the Government persist in their tragically misguided purpose.
I appeal to the Minister to heed the advice contained in a recent Conservative Bow Group pamphlet which said:
"This change is, with respect, a serious mistake … In splitting up the NCC, the Government will be weakening (possibly deliberately) the official conservation agencies. To split up the NCC, as proposed by the Government, would require primary legislation. The Government should not proceed with this, either in the Green Bill or in the Planning Bill".
On this issue, I am happy to let that Conservative pamphlet have the last word.
If the Minister is sincere in his commitment to support the voluntary bodies I have mentioned which are concerned with saving the things that are precious in our natural heritage, and ensuring its protection, then he must announce that he will give them support. The most important way in which he can demonstrate that is by showing that the Government have had a rethink on this matter, which is central to nature conservation.
10.20 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory): I congratulate the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Davies) for securing a debate on Government support for Britain's voluntary nature conservancy movement. I recognise that the hon. Gentleman has taken a great interest in the countryside over the years, and I acknowledge his commitment, although I disagree with much of what he has said this evening.
In the minutes remaining, I shall respond to the points the hon. Gentleman raised about the Nature Conservancy Council, but first, I wish to consider the important role that voluntary organisations play. Generations of people have expressed a love of our natural heritage and, for many years, the voluntary bodies have acted as a catalyst to heighten public awareness and to convert concern into practical activity. For example, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which the hon. Member mentioned, is celebrating its centenary year.
The voluntary sector has shown that it can educate the public about many issues and harness the necessary resources, enthusiasm and commitment for nature conservation. That has been in line with the Government's philosophy, which is to encourage and enable people to
576
help themselves. For those reasons, we are firmly committed to continue to support voluntary organisations.
I shall show that that support is substantial. It is channelled into many areas through Government agencies such as the Nature Conservancy Council, which runs its own grant programmes. It is also supported directly through the special grants programmes of Government Departments, including my own, and through participation in business sponsorship schemes, which we strongly support.
As one might expect, the NCC, which is funded by my Department, is the chief donor of grants for nature conservation. Under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, the council may give a grant for any purpose
"which, in their opinion, is conducive to nature conservation".
Since the Government took office, they have increased the council's grant in aid, in real terms, by more than 160 per cent. If the hon. Member for Caerphilly is saying that that is too little, then he must be ashamed of the level of funding achieved when his own party was last in office.
Mr. Ron Davies: Do not be cheap.
Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: Next year, the council will have some £4 million more to spend than this year, which is an increase above the rate of inflation. During the next three years we aim to increase funding of the NCC by 21 per cent. I think that the hon. Gentleman will agree that that is a substantial sum, bearing in mind that further money will be available for the reorganisation of the NCC that we are contemplating.
The increase in funding next year will enable the council to increase the already significant amount it gives in grants. It is proposing to increase the funds allocated by almost 50 per cent., from £1·85 million this year to £2·7 million next year.
In general, it is for the NCC to decide how the funds should be allocated, but I understand that in recent years about 80 per cent. of the grants have gone to voluntary organisations.
The hon. Member expressed concern about the effect of our plans to restructure the NCC. He suggested that that would drastically alter the council's activities. I emphasise that there are no proposals to change its functions or powers. It will be an administrative and structural change only, and the new agencies will inherit, among other things, the council's grant-giving capacity.
The hon. Member suggested that there is almost universal hostility to these proposals in Wales. I do not think that that is the case. Indeed, we have had support from unexpected quarters. The hon. Member will know that we have a letter dated 5 November from the office of the Leader of the Opposition, saying that the right hon. Gentleman
"welcomes the proposal to establish a Countryside Council for Wales."
Mr. Davies: The Minister clearly did not listen to what I said. I referred to that letter and explained that it was from a secretary in the Leader of the Opposition's Office. The letter made it clear that that was a specific reference to the establishment of a new body for Wales. I also stated that the official policy of the Opposition, endorsed by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, was expressed by our shadow Secretary of State for the Environment. In brief, it is, "Don't dismember the NCC."

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That is the official policy endorsed by the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Secretary of State. I hope that the Minister will not try to take us down that diversion for the remainder of this debate.
Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: I understand that there has been a change of policy on the Labour side. This may be another U-turn. The Countryside Council for Wales, which was referred to in that letter is clearly the type of structure that we are proposing to set up. The right hon. Member's initial reaction was favourable.
Others have supported our proposals. The Welsh nationalists do not necessarily reflect all Welsh opinion, but I noticed that the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Dr. Thomas) said on 17 July:
"we welcome the fact that the Government have established an independent conservation body for Wales which the previous Labour Government failed to do."—[Official Report, 17 July 1989; Vol. 157, c. 9.]
The hon. Member for Caerphilly himself said on 21 July, in more grudging tones:
"I recognise that there is some merit in merging the NCC and the Countryside Commission in Scotland and Wales".—[Official Report, 21 July 1989; Vol. 157, c. 710.]
I accept that he went on to express major anxieties about that, but his initial reaction was not unfavourable.
We have been, and still are, in discussion with the NCC about the proposals. I draw the hon. Member's attention to a press release issued by the council's distinguished chairman, Sir William Wilkinson, on 13 November, in which he said that there was virtual unanimity on four issues, the most important of which was the first. He said:
"there was agreement that independent, properly resourced … Country Agencies with full appropriate scientific back up would provide the required support for nature conservation in their Countries, each reporting to its Secretary of State."
He also called for the establishment of a co-ordinating committee with an independent chairman. We are still considering the suggestion of a chairman, but we entirely agree that a co-ordinating committee should be set up by statute. We agree that the new country bodies should have a strong scientific base—an issue the hon. Gentleman raised. We also agree that there should be appropriate arrangements for handling Great Britain and international issues on a co-operative basis between the new bodies. We shall meet that requirement fully.
The legislation that we are proposing will establish a joint statutory committee to enable the three countries' councils to carry out their statutory joint functions—to provide advice on Great Britain and international issues,
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as suggested by the hon. Member. We are proceeding with that because we think it right for conservation purposes. We need to modernise the nature conservancy structure. There is widespread support for that. We believe that we can increase the effectiveness of the council at grass-roots level by devolving responsibility to the countries. In addition, that will give improved accountability to Ministers in each of those countries.
In the few remaining minutes, I shall touch on other sources of grant. My Department has substantial special grant programmes which are of assistance to the voluntary organisations mentioned in this debate. We provide under these programmes direct funding to voluntary bodies. In the current financial year, my Department has allocated well over £700,000 to 35 voluntary organisations involved in protecting and enhancing the environment and in environmental education. In Wales, more than £130,000 has been allocated to 21 groups. It is not always possible to continue funding all groups at the same level for ever. We wish to include new groups from time to time. It is not right that all voluntary groups should consider that they have permanent funding from Government sources; in some cases, that may undermine the voluntary spirit which we seek to foster.
We have a good record, not only on maintaining but on increasing funding. The sums are not always large. Some go to modest projects, such as grants to the Irish sea study group which is co-ordinating scientific knowledge of the Irish sea. Other grants are much larger, such as the £68,000 for the Royal Society for Nature Conservation.
Finally, business sponsorship is important. Our role is not just to give grants but to channel funds from other sources into the voluntary nature conservation movement. That is why we launched the concept of business sponsorship of conservation in 1983. That has been highly successful. Government support for the nature conservancy movement has been substantial. We have always recognised the enormous contribution to practical conservation on the ground made by the voluntary sector and we shall continue to do so.
I shall end as I began, by thanking Britain's voluntary nature conservation movement for its energy, commitment and hard work. It will be enhanced rather than damaged by our proposals to reorganise the NCC along country lines.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-eight minutes to Eleven o'clock.

EMPLOYMENT

  Earnings
  Mr. Austin Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment whether he will publish in the Official Report a table providing similar information for male and female self-employed workers, as that contained in his answer of 15 November, Official Report, column 279.

  Mr. Nicholls
  Comparable information for the self-employed is not available.

  Public Appointments
  Mrs. Roe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many persons above the age of(a) 60, (b) 65 and (c) 70 years he has appointed to public bodies in each of the last 10 years.

  Mr. Eggar
  My right hon. Friend is responsible for some 6,000 appointments to a range of executive, advisory, tribunals and other public bodies. The information requested is not readily available and could not be assembled without disproportionate cost. Public bodies sponsored by this Department are listed in the Cabinet Office publication "Public Bodies 1988" available in the House of Commons Library.

DEFENCE

  Compensation
  Mr. Yeo
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what sums have been paid in compensation in each of the last three years to the families of soldiers killed in Northern Ireland; and how many cases were involved.

  Mr. Archie Hamilton
  Claims for compensation from families of soldiers killed in Northern Ireland as a result of criminal acts, including terrorist activity, are considered by the criminal injuries compensation division of the Northern Ireland Office. My Department has made one payment of £15,000 to the family of a soldier killed in the Province, not as a result of a criminal act but on the basis of legal liability at common law.

  Mr. Yeo
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what sums have been paid in compensation in each of the last three years to farmers whose livestock or livelihood have been affected by low-flying aircraft; and how many cases were involved.

  Mr. Archie Hamilton
  I regret that the information requested is not readily available and could be provided only at disproportionate cost and effort.

  Officers (Sexual Offences)
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many officers of the armed forces have been dismissed from the services for sexual offences in each year since 1979.

  Mr. Archie Hamilton
  The information requested is readily available only for the years 1984 to 1988.

  During that period two officers were convicted by court martial and dismissed from the services for sexual offences, the first in 1985 and the second in 1988.

  Officers (Drugs)
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many officers of the armed forces have been dismissed from the services for using drugs or drug-related offences in each year since 1979.

  Mr. Archie Hamilton
  The information is readily available only for the years 1984 to 1988.

  During that period one officer was dismissed, in 1986, following a court martial for drug-related offences.

  Combat Body Armour
  Mr. Madden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will ensure that combat body armour is introduced into general service in 1990; and when he expects to place contracts with manufacturers to supply it.

  Mr. Alan Clark
  It remains our intention to begin to introduce combat body armour into service in 1990. We expect to invite manufacturers to tender in early 1990.

  Home Ownership
  Mr. Brazier
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what is the level of home ownership today among(a) married and (b) all personnel in (i) the Royal Navy. (ii) the Army and (iii) the Royal Air Force.

  Mr. Neubert
  We estimate that for married personnel the proportion of home owners is:

  per cent.

  Royal Navy

  75

  Army

  26

  Royal Air Force

  49

  For all personnel the proportions are:

  per cent.

  Royal Navy

  48

  Army

  16

  Royal Air Force

  34

NATIONAL FINANCE

  Charities
  Mr. Hanley
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what representations he has received about what the value added tax and corporation tax liability for charitable organisations receiving contributions from consumers using certain specified credit cards will be; and if he will make a statement.
  309
  Mr. Ryder
  None. Customs and Excise and the Inland Revenue have identified a value added tax and corporation tax liability in a number of affinity credit card schemes which they have examined. The two Revenue departments are considering each scheme on its own merits.

  Long and short-term nominal interest rates

  United Kingdom

  West Germany

  United States

  Japan

  three month

  10 year

  three month

  10 year

  three month

  10 year

  three month

  10 year

  January

  13·1

  10·0

  5·7

  6·7

  9·3

  9·3

  4·6

  4·9

  February

  13·0

  9·8

  6·5

  6·9

  9·6

  9·4

  4·7

  4·9

  March

  13·0

  9·9

  6·6

  6·9

  10·1

  9·6

  4·8

  5·1

  Apri

  13·2

  10·2

  6·4

  6·9

  10·0

  9·4

  4·7

  5·2

  May

  13·1

  10·1

  7·0

  7·0

  9·7

  9·0

  5·0

  5·3

  June

  14·1

  10·6

  7·0

  6·8

  9·2

  8·5

  5·4

  5·3

  July

  13·9

  10·2

  7·1

  6·7

  8·8

  8·2

  5·5

  5·2

  August

  13·9

  9·9

  71

  6·7

  8·8

  8·3

  5·5

  5·1

  September

  14·0

  10·2

  7·4

  6·9

  8·8

  8·4

  5·6

  5·3

  October

  15·0

  10·5

  8·1

  7·0

  8·7

  8·2

  6·1

  5·3

  November

  15·1

  10·6

  8·3

  7·4

  8·4

  8·0

  6·8

  5·6

  Source: National sources.

  Market Research
  Mr. Blunkett
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many market research and sample surveys were carried out by or for his Department in the last 12 months; what was the cost of each; what was the total cost; how many were carried out in-house; how many were carried out for his Department by outside organisations; and what percentage of the total expenditure was paid to outside organisations.

  Mr. Ryder
  No market research or sample surveys have been undertaken for or by Her Majesty's Treasury.

  Public Appointments
  Mrs. Roe
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many persons above the age of(a) 60, (b) 65 and (c) 70 years he has appointed to public bodies in each of the last 10 years.

  Mr. Ryder
  The information sought could be obtained only at disproportionate costs.

  Civil List
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what was the total amount payable under the Civil Lists Acts to the royal family for each year since 1979 and for the present year.

  Mr. Major
  Following is the information:

  Payments for the Civil List under the Civil List Acts 1937, 1952. 1972 and 1975

  Repaid by Her Majesty The Queen

  Year

  £

  £

  1979

  2,996,600

  218,200

  1980

  3,791,350

  263,800

  1981

  4,249,273

  285,073

  Interest and Exchange Rates
  Mr. Austin Mitchell
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what were the short-term and long-term interest rates in each available month of 1989 in(a) the United Kingdom, (b) West Germany, (c) the United States of America and (d) Japan.

  Mr. Ryder
  Short-term and long-term interest rates in each completed month of 1989 are given below. The short-term rates given are three-month money market rates and the long-term rates are for 10 year Government bonds.

  Payments for the Civil List under the Civil List Acts 1937, 1952, 1972 and 1975

  Repaid by Her Majesty The Queen

  Year

  £

  £

  1982

  4,616,683

  304,700

  1983

  4,833,900

  318,300

  1984

  5,017,000

  331,000

  1985

  5,180,100

  341,900

  1986

  5,400,600

  355,600

  1987

  5,661,200

  371,700

  1988

  5,922,300

  386,600

  1989

  6,195,300

  400,100

  German Democratic Republic
  Dr. Marek
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to his answer of 28 November, if he will identify what figures are available to him for the gross national product per head of population for the German Democratic Republic and those aspects in which they are not fully comparable.

  Mr. Ryder
  [holding answer 4 December 1989]: Figures describing the economy of the German Democratic Republic are available from the United Nations in "National Accounts: Main Aggregates and Detailed Tables, 1986". Dara are also given in the "World Bank Atlas, 1987". Both publications are available in the Library of the House. As for many of the centrally planned economies, this information on economic activity is prepared in accordance with the United Nations system of material product balances (MPS), which differs from the United Nations system of national accounts (SNA) used to describe market economies.

  Nationalised Industries
  Mr. Hood
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will name each of the chairmen of the nationalised industries; and if he will give details of salaries and other remunerations applicable to each.

  Mr. Norman Lamont
  [holding answer 6 December 1989]:The information requested is set out in the table:

  Chairman

  Nationalised Industry

  1Salary £

  Sir Robert Haslam

  British Coal

  160,000

  Sir Robert Reid

  British Railways Board

  90,950

  Mr. C. Campbell

  British Shipbuilders

  21,675

  Mr. D. Ingham

  British Waterways Board

  33,700

  Mr. C. Tugendhat

  Civil Aviation Authority

  60,000

  Sir Philip Jones

  Electricity Council

  94,380

  Lord Marshall

  Central Electricity Generating Board

  111,000

  Mr. J. C. Smith

  Eastern Electricity Board

  57,390

  Mr. J. F. Harris

  East Midlands Electricity Board

  57,390

  Mr. J. J. Wilson

  London Electricity Board

  57,390

  Mr. B. H. Weston

  Merseyside and North Wales Electricity Board

  57,390

  Mr. B. S. Townsend

  Midlands Electricity Board

  57,390

  Mr. D. Morris

  North Eastern Electricity Board

  80,000

  Mr. K. Harvey

  North Western Electricity Board

  49,005

  Mr. G. A. Squair

  South Eastern Electricity Board

  57,390

  Mr. D. A. Ross

  Southern Electricity Board

  57,390

  Mr. J. W. Evans

  South Wales Electricity Board

  57,390

  Mr. A. W. Nichol

  South Western Electricity Board

  57,390

  Mr. J. Porteous

  Yorkshire Electricity Board

  57,390

  Mr. W. Newton

  London Regional Transport

  80,000

  Mr. M. Joughin

  North of Scotland Hydro Electric Board

  39,750

  Sir Bryan Nicholson

  Post Office

  102,000

  Full time teacher vacancies in maintained primary and secondary schools in Cheshire: January 1984–January 1989

  1984

  1985

  1986

  1987

  1988

  1989

  Primary vacancies:

  —number

  —

  —

  —

  —

  23

  11

  —as a percentage of full-time primary teachers in post

  —

  —

  —

  —

  0·7

  0·3

  Secondary vacancies:

  —number

  40

  13

  19

  31

  31

  13

  —as a percentage of full-time secondary teachers in post

  0·9

  0·3

  0·4

  0·7

  0·7

  0·3

  Mrs. Ann Winterton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what information he has concerning the number of teachers who have left posts in Cheshire during the last 12-month period for which figures are available; and what was the comparable figure in each of the previous five years.

  Numbers of teachers in Cheshire leaving full-time service in maintained nursery, primary and secondary schools (MNPS): March 1982–March 1987

  Year ending 31 March

  1982

  1983

  1984

  1985

  1986

  1987

  per cent

  per cent

  Left full-time service in MNPS in Cheshire of which:

  —

  —

  —

  —

  615

  (7·8)

  580

  (7·5)

  —to full-time service in MNPS elsewhere in England and Wales

  —

  —

  —

  —

  95

  (1·2)

  100

  (1·3)

  —to full-time service in other parts of the maintained sector in Cheshire and elsewhere

  —

  —

  —

  —

  20

  (0·3)

  30

  (0·4)

  —no longer in full-time service in the maintained sector in England and Wales

  586

  511

  626

  556

  500

  (6·4)

  450

  (5·8)

  Note: The figures in brackets for 1986 and 1987 express the numbers leaving as a percentage of all those in full-time service in maintained nursery, primary and secondary schools in Cheshire at the beginning of the year.
  312

  Chairman

  Nationalised Industry

  1Salary £

  Mr. I. S. Irwin

  Scottish Transport Group

  59,825

  Mr. D. J. Miller

  South of Scotland Electricity Board

  66,900

  Mr. B. Henderson

  Anglian Water Authority

  43,860

  Sir Michael Straker

  Northumbrian Water Authority

  30,638

  Mr. D. Grove

  North West Water Authority

  61,275

  Mr. John Bellak

  Severn Trent Water Authority

  49,020

  Mr. W. Courtney

  Southern Water Authority

  43,860

  Mr. Court

  South West Water Authority

  51,063

  Mr. R. Watts

  Thames Water Authority

  49,020

  Mr. J. Elfed Jones

  Welsh Water Authority

  43,860

  Mr. N. Hood

  Wessex Water Authority

  40,850

  Mr. G. Jones

  Yorkshire Water Authority

  54,025

  1 Actual salaries. Some Chairmen are part-time.

  Chairmen are also eligible for performance bonus schemes with a maximum limit of 25 per cent, of salary.

EDUCATION AND SCIENCE

  Teachers (Cheshire)
  Mrs. Ann Winterton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what information he has concerning the number of teaching vacancies in Cheshire at present and in each of the previous five years.

  Mr. Alan Howarth
  Numbers of full-time teacher vacancies in Cheshire are given in the table. Information on primary vacancies was not collected prior to 1988.

  Mr. Alan Howarth
  The year to 31 March 1987 is the most recent for which figures are available. Detailed comparison with data from previous years is not possible prior to 1986. The figures are given in the table including more limited data for earlier years.
  313
  Mrs. Ann Winterton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what recent representations he has received concerning morale in the teaching profession in Cheshire; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Alan Howarth
  My right hon. Friend has received a number of letters recently from teachers in Cheshire about morale in the profession. He recognises the demands on teachers, and has on many occasions paid tribute to their hard work and professionalism.

  Head Teachers (Yorkshire)
  Mr. Lofthouse
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what response he has made to the letter from head teachers at schools in Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley.

  Mrs. Rumbold
  All letters to this Department will continue to receive appropriate replies which I hope the recipients find helpful.

  National Curriculum (Technology)
  Mr. Pawsey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science when he intends to publish for consultation the draft order with attainment targets and programmes of study for technology in the national curriculum.

  Mr. MacGregor
  I have today published for consultation the draft order with an associated document setting out the attainment targets and programmes of study for technology in the national curriculum for pupils aged 5 to 16, as I am required to do by section 20(5) of the Education Reform Act 1988. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales is consulting on the draft order under the provisions of section 21(3) of the Act. Copies have been placed in the Library.

  The draft order has been prepared in the light of advice from the National Curriculum Council, following its consultations on our proposals published last June. I have accepted the council's recommendations for attainment targets and programmes of study as a basis for further consultation. The consultation period ends on 19 January 1990. I intend to make the final order in March 1990, in good time for implementation from the following autumn term.

  The development of practical capability is a major objective of the national curriculum. The proposals in this draft order provide a focus for a wide range of practical activity in schools. Our aim is to secure a significant improvement in the design and technological capability of young people which will be of benefit to them as individuals and to the economic future of the country.

  Research Councils
  Mr. Bermingham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what proportion of the research grants of each of the research councils was spent on equipment by recipients in each of the last five years for which figures are available; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Jackson
  [holding answer 30 November 1989]: Details of capital expenditure as a percentage of total research grant expenditure for each of the research councils, for the last five years for which outturn figures are available, are as follows:
  314

  1984–85

  1985–86

  1986–87

  1987–88

  1988–89

  AFRC

  10·3

  14·8

  11·1

  8·9

  17·7

  MRC

  13·8

  10·8

  9·3

  10·4

  10·2

  NERC

  7·7

  12·5

  11·0

  9·1

  8·7

  SERC

  26·3

  32·8

  31·2

  28·9

  27·2

  ESRC

  1·0

  1·4

  0·9

  1·2

  3·3

  Separate figures for equipment are not available.

ATTORNEY-GENERAL

  Sentencing
  Mr. Gerald Howarth
  To ask the Attorney-General how many cases of alleged over-lenient sentencing have been referred to the Attorney-General under the provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 1988; and how many sentences have been revised upwards in consequence.

  The Attorney-General
  Sixty-one cases of alleged unduly lenient sentencing have been referred to me. I have applied for leave to refer the sentencing in nine cases to the Court of Appeal. Leave has been granted in five such cases and sentences have been increased in four of the cases. I have withdrawn two cases in the light of later information and the remaining two cases await consideration by the court.

  Jurors
  Mr. Ian Taylor
  To ask the Attorney-General what plans he has to review the procedures concerning the payment of compensation to jurors for loss of earnings.

  The Attorney-General: There are no plans to review the procedures concerning the payment of compensation to jurors for loss of earnings.

  Magistrates Courts
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Attorney-General if he will list the names and numbers of magistrates courts in England and Wales stating(a) how many justices are at each court, (b) how many are women, (c) how many are black and (d) how many are Asian.

  The Attorney-General
  The question could be answered only at disproportionate cost.

  Law Officers (Court Appearances)
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Attorney-General in how many court cases he, his hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General, or any Law Officer have appeared as Law Officers from 1970 to 1989 inclusive.

  The Attorney-General
  The information sought by the hon. Member is not readily available and could be obtained only at a disproportionate cost. The Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General have each appeared in five court cases since assuming their present offices in June 1987.

  County Courts
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Attorney-General what is the annual cost to the Exchequer of all the county courts.

  The Attorney-General
  The cost for the financial year 1988–89 was £134·3 million. This cost includes judicial salaries and fees, central overheads and superannuation costs.

  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Attorney-General how many cases were dealt with in the county court of all subject headings for the years 1980 to 1989 inclusive.

  The Attorney-General
  Figures on the number of cases dealt with in different categories within the county courts for the years 1980 to 1988 are to be found in the Lord Chancellor's Department's annual publication "Judicial Statistics". Figures for 1989 are not yet available.

  High Court Judges
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Attorney-General if he will list the numbers of High Court judges currently serving on the bench; and how many fall into the age groups(a) 40 to 45 years, (b) 46 to 50 years, (c) 51 to 55 years, (d) 56 to 60 years, (e) 61 to 65 years, (f) 66 to 70 years, (g) 71 to 75 years and (h) over 75 years.

  The Attorney-General
  There are currently 81 serving High Court judges. Their ages are as follows:

  Number

  40 to 45 years

  None

  46 to 50 years

  2

  51 to 55 years

  27

  56 to 60 years

  23

  61 to 65 years

  14

  66 to 70 years

  9

  71 to 75 years

  6

  Over 75 years

  None

  Legal Aid
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Attorney-General how much public money has been expended under the green form scheme(a) by area and (b) under subject headings; and how many people have been assisted for each year since its inception.

  The Attorney-General
  Since the start of the green form scheme in 1972 the legal aid annual reports have included these statistics. The reports are laid before Parliament each year and are available in the Library.

  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Attorney-General how much public money has been expended by the legal aid fund for

  1985 £

  1986 £

  1987 £

  1988 £

  Solicitors

  33,722,547·76

  36,360,110·42

  42,601,012·57

  47,591,306·36

  Barristers

  34,316,242·71

  38,931,994·65

  49,225,506·01

  52,494,458·56

  Total

  68,038,790·47

  75,292,105·07

  91,826,518·58

  100,085,764·92

  No separate information on disbursements for criminal legal aid in higher courts is held at national level. Any other information can be obtained only at disproportionate cost.
  316
  each year since its inception; and how many persons have benefited from the assistance of the legal aid fund for each year for (a) criminal legal aid and (b) civil legal aid.

  The Attorney-General
  All information available since the start of the scheme in 1949 is contained either in the legal aid annual report or in the judicial statistics of the Lord Chancellor's Department which are laid before Parliament and are available in the Library. Any other information can be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  Members of Parliament
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Attorney-General how many serving Crown court recorders or circuit judges are hon. and learned Members.

  The Attorney-General
  Seven hon. and learned Members hold appointment as Crown court recorders. Of that seven, two are Government Ministers, and do not sit judicially. No circuit judge is an hon. and learned Member.

  Courts and Legal Services Bill
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Attorney-General (1) what is his estimate of the cost implications of the new Courts and Legal Services Bill, as outlined in the Gracious Speech;

  (2) if he has costed the implications of his new Bill on legal services, as announced in the Gracious Speech.

  The Attorney-General
  The costs of all provisions in the Courts and Legal Services Bill, introduced yesterday, are estimated at £5·1 million in the first full year. Some £2·1 million of this relates to the provisions on legal services.

  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Attorney-General when he intends to publish the Courts and Legal Services Bill.

  The Attorney-General
  It has been published today.

  Solicitors and Barristers
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Attorney-General what sums have been paid out in legal aid fees to(a) solicitors and (b) barristers in England and Wales in terms of (i) fees and (ii) disbursements for each year since 1969.

  The Attorney-General
  All information available about civil legal aid and legal aid in the magistrates courts is contained in the legal aid annual reports. Total expenditure on solicitors' and counsel's fees and disbursements for criminal legal aid in the higher courts in each year since 1985 is as follows:

  Duty Solicitors Scheme
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Attorney-General if it remains the Government's intention to commit the resources required to secure full implementation of the duty solicitors scheme.
  317
  The Attorney-General
  The Government will continue to provide the resources required.

  Advice and Assistance Schemes
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Attorney-General what comparative research he has commissioned to consider the way in which other countries operate emergency advice and assistance schemes.

  The Attorney-General
  No such research has been commissioned into the provision of emergency advice and assistance overseas.

  Legal Advice (Police Stations)
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Attorney-General what steps he is taking in the light of the report on the duty solicitors scheme to ensure full implementation of the rights to access to legal advice at police stations.

  The Attorney-General
  The research report on the advice and assistance at police stations scheme has been made available to the Legal Aid Board which is reviewing the arrangements for providing duty solicitor advice. It expects to issue a consultation paper early next year.

  The report has also been made available to the Home Office which is reviewing the codes of practice under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984.

NORTHERN IRELAND

  House Purchase (Carrickfergus)
  Mr. Beggs
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what action is being taken by Her Majesty's Government to assist tenants of houses in Unity street, Carrickfergus, to purchase these properties from the Charles Legg Trust.

  Mr. Cope
  The solicitor acting on behalf of some of the tenants of houses belonging to the Charles Legg Trust in Unity Street, Carrickfergus, has brought this matter to the attention of the Department of Finance and Personnel. There are apparently no effective trustees at present. The Department is therefore making inquiries with a view to the appointment of the new trustees, who will be in a position to deal with the tenants' application for the purchase of the properties in question.

  Student Loans
  Mr. McGrady
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland when he last met representatives of the National Union of Students and the Union of Students in Northern Ireland to discuss top-up loans for students; and if he will make a statement.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  No such meetings have taken place. However, I discussed top-up loans at a recent meeting with representatives of the university of Ulster which included members of the university's students union.

  Social Fund
  Mr. McGrady
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what was the financial amount allocated to each social security office in South Down in the financial 318
  year 1 April 1988 to 31 March 1989 and from 1 April 1989 to 31 October in respect of the social fund by central Government; how much of this amount was actually spent in each office; and whether the Government will carry out a review of the social fund system in Northern Ireland.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  Allocations are made for a full year. Information on the amounts allocated for 1988–89 and 1989–90 and on monthly expenditure is available in the Library. The Government continue to monitor the operation of the social fund, but there are no plans for a review of the scheme.

  Police
  Mr. Mallon
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many people claiming Irish nationality are currently employed as(a) full-time members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and (b) members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary reserve.

  Mr. Cope
  The Chief Constable of the RUC had advised me that the information is not available in the form requested and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  Mr. Mallon
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what is the total number of people whose applications for employment for the post of traffic warden were refused by the Northern Ireland police authority on the grounds that they did not hold British nationality since 1980.

  Mr. Cope
  The Police Authority for Northern Ireland has advised me that the total number is not known as records are not maintained in the form requested. However, the hon. Member will be aware that one recent application has been refused on nationality grounds.

  Mr. Mallon
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what is the total number of people who were refused employment as full-time members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary on the grounds that they did not hold British nationality since 1980.

  Mr. Cope
  This information is not available. People, including those who are not British citizens, are eligible for appointment to the Royal Ulster Constabulary or any other United Kingdom police force providing that they are able to fulfil the criteria set out in my answer to the right hon. Member for Strangford (Mr. Taylor) in the Official Report on 16 November 1989, at column 401.

  Attendance Allowance
  Mr. Mallon
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many people who have been in receipt of attendance allowance at either(a) the higher rate or (b) the lower rate have had their attendance allowance reduced in each year since 1983.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  The number of people receiving either the higher or lower rate of attendance allowance who were not awarded any further allowance at the renewal stage of their claims was as follows:

  Higher rate

  Lower rate

  Total

  1983

  127

  467

  594

  1984

  128

  524

  652

  1985

  132

  515

  647

  319

  Higher rate

  Lower rate

  Total

  1986

  171

  412

  583

  1987

  82

  227

  309

  1988

  77

  231

  308

  11989

  41

  141

  182

  1 To date.

  Information is not available about the number of people whose award at the renewal stage was reduced from the higher to the lower rate of attendance allowance.

  Mr. Mallon
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland on how many occasions the present general practitioner of an applicant for attendance allowance was present when their medical assessment for eligibility for the allowance was carried out in the last year.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  All applicants for attendance allowance are medically examined, but information is not recorded about whether or not their personal general practitioners are present at the examination. Neither the applicants nor their personal general practitioners are present when the reports of the medical examinations are considered by the attendance allowance board or its delegated medical officers.

  Rivers and Lakes
  Mr. Mallon
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will give details of each river in(a) Newry and Mourne district council area, (b) Armagh district council area and (c) Fermanagh district council area which is maintained by the Department of Agriculture drainage division, as a designated watercourse.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  I will write to the hon. Member.

  Civil Service
  Mr. Mallon
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will give details of the procedures for appealing against decisions of the Department of the Environment's promotion selection boards.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  The Northern Ireland Civil Service pay and conditions of service code contains no provision for an appeal against the decision of a departmental promotion board.

  A candidate who is dissatisfied by the results of a promotion board may refer the matter to the PCA, EOC or FEA where the grounds for dissatisfaction are maladministration, equal opportunities or fair employment.

  Prison Officers
  Mr. Patrick Thompson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland whether arrangements are being made to pay prison officers in the Northern Ireland prison service arrears of lodging allowance in the light of the negotiated settlement of a civil claim taken against his Department.

  Mr. Cope
  The civil claim in question related to the question of entitlement of lodging allowances under the Civil Service regulations for periods of detached duty, where prison officers were provided with official accommodation. The regulations provide for an abatement of certain detached duty allowances in these 320
  circumstances and until 1972 they provided for payment at half-rate in the case of lodging allowance. It has now been settled that from July 1972 the abatement to half-ra te lodging allowance was not in accordance with the Civil Service code. Accordingly, following negotiations between the Prison Department and the POA(NI), agreement has been reached and arrangements are being made for paying arrears of the allowance due to those prison officers who had an entitlement covering the period July 1972 to March 1982.

  Vibration White Finger
  Dr. Godman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what was the number of applications made by applicants claiming to suffer from vibration white finger, under regulation 13 of the Social Security (Industrial injuries and Diseases) Miscellaneous Provisions Regulations 1986, at local offices of his Department in(a) Belfast and (b) towns throughout Northern Ireland in each of the past two years and in the current year up to the most recent date; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  [holding answer 6 December 1989]: We are aware of no such applications in Northern Ireland to date.

ENVIRONMENT

  Energy Efficiency
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what finance is being planned by his Department for the next five years to assist householders in energy efficiency and saving.

  Mr. Chope
  Under the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 we are introducing a new system of renovation grants which will enable local authorities to assist householders to carry out a range of measures to improve the energy efficiency of their properties. There will be no limit on the proportion of their housing resources that councils will be able to devote to these purposes.

  Right to Buy
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many council houses have been sold to former council tenants under the right-to-buy legislation; what percentage of the total council stock they represent; how many council houses were built by the local authority over the same period; and how many people are on council housing waiting lists for each local housing authority in the country.

  Mr. Chope
  A table showing each local authority's total sales under the right-to-buy legislation including the percentage of April 1979 stock sold was laid in the Library on 5 December 1989.

  Reported annual housing completion figures for 1980 to 1987 appear in "Housebuilding in England by Local Authority Areas: 1980 to 1987". Figures for 1988 and the first quarter of 1989 are given in tables 1 (b) and 1(a), respectively, of issue 90 of "Local Housing Statistics". Copies of both publications are in the Library.

  The numbers of households on waiting lists was reported by local authorities in their annual housing

  321
  investment programme returns (HIP1) and appears in column B51 of "HIP1 All Items Print (1989)". A copy of this document is in the Library.

  House Prices
  Mr. Austin Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what was the ratio of house prices to median, quartile and decile incomes of full-time adult male manual and non-manual workers in April 1979, April 1988 and April 1989; what was the effect on prices of the increase in the incomes of highly paid non-manual workers; and what action he will take to ensure that houses are no less affordable to the median manual worker than in 1979.

  Mr. Chope
  The available information is as follows:

  Ratio of average house prices to annual earnings:1 Great Britain

  April

  Lowest decile

  Lower quartile

  Median

  Upper quartile

  Highest decile

  Manual men

  1979

  5·9

  4·9

  4·0

  3·3

  2·7

  1988

  7·5

  6·0

  4·7

  3·8

  3·0

  1989

  7·9

  6·3

  5·0

  3·9

  3·1

  Non-manual men

  1979

  5·4

  4·4

  3·4

  2·7

  2·1

  1988

  6·2

  4·6

  3·4

  2·6

  1·9

  1989

  6·5

  4·8

  3·5

  2·7

  2·0

  Sources: New Earnings Survey—Department of Employment. Full-time men whose pay for the survey period was not affected by absence. Weekly averages have been converted to an annual amount (× 52).

  1 5 per cent. sample survey of building society mortgage completions-Department of the Environment.

  House prices are determined between individual buyers and sellers. No Government have sought to dictate the price at which houses must be sold. We have no plan to do so.

  Water Distribution, London
  Mr. Malcolm Bruce
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement on the level of London's water table.

  Mr. Howard
  I have asked the National Rivers Authority to undertake the monitoring and predictive modelling of the water level (under London) and to publish the results; to examine the potential for increasing water abstractions from the aquifer below London; and to examine the feasibility and costs of a permanent dewatering scheme. They are proceeding with this work.

  Housing Benefit
  Mr. Lofthouse
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what steps he is taking to ensure that local authority tenants do not subsidise housing benefit payments as a result of increases due to relaxed entitlement criteria not being met in full by central Government funding.

  Mr. Chope
  I assume the hon. Member is referring to the arrangements whereby rent officers determine, for housing benefit subsidy purposes, whether rents are at a reasonable market level. Where a rent is above this level, and the claimant is in a vulnerable group, the local 322
  authority is required to consider whether it is reasonable to expect him to move, before restricting housing benefit. If the local authority decides that benefit cannot be restricted, 50 per cent. subsidy is paid on that part of the rent which is above the rent officer's assessment. These arrangements apply only to deregulated private sector rents, not to council rents. Any costs not met by subsidy must be debited to an account other than the housing revenue account, and in consequence none of these costs will be a charge to the authority's own tenants.

  Local Government Finance
  Mr. Ralph Howell
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he will estimate(a) the number of extra staff and (b) the extra expenditure arising from the changes to the community charge announced in October.

  Mr. Chope
  An estimate of the administrative costs of the community charge transitional relief scheme will be made in the light of a study being undertaken for the Department by Peat Marwick McLintock and discussions with the local authority associations.

  Mr. Stern
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many English shire counties are anticipated, in his published calculations, to levy a higher community charge than Avon.

  Mr. Chope
  Counties will not levy community charges. If all English authorities spend the amount needed to provide a standard level of service, the community charge could be the same throughout England. Any spending above this standard level will increase the community charge.

  The provisional figures placed in the Library on 6 November suggest that the community charge for standard spending in 1990–91 will be about £278. The assumed spending by Avon county council would add a further £18 to the community charge in each Avon district. On the same basis, six other counties would add a larger sum to the community charge for standard spending than Avon.

  Mr. Gould
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how much he plans to spend promoting community charge benefits and transitional relief; and if he will reimburse local authorities for any expenditure they incur in dealing with correspondence and contacts arising from Government advertising.

  Mr. Chris Patten
  The cost of the advertising campaign is commercial in confidence and will remain so until such time as the agency has completed negotiations with the media for advertising space.

  The Department has commissioned a study by Peat Marwick McLintock into the administrative costs of the community charge transitional relief scheme. Decisions about the arrangements for meeting these costs will be made in light of the consultants' report and discussions with the local authority associations. I have made clear that authorities' reasonable costs will be reimbursed fully.

  Mr. Gould
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will place in the Library(a) his Department's briefing to those advertising agencies invited to tender for the work on his proposed advertising campaign to encourage take-up of community charge

  323
  benefits and transititional relief, (b) the creative brief prepared by Ogilvie and Mather and (c) the media strategy and the media plan for the campaign showing in particular the timing and positioning of press and television advertisements and indicating the social and income groups of the target audiences.

  Mr. Chris Patten
  Agencies were invited to tender for a campaign intended to ensure that those eligible are aware of entitlement to community charge benefit and transitional relief. The campaign will be targeted primarily at the relevant socio-economic groups with an element aimed at those who advise or care for people who may be eligible. The campaign will make use of television, radio and the press. Appropriate bookings in the media are being made.

  Mr. Gould
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what correspondence his Department has had with(a) the Independent Broadcasting Authority, (b) the Independent Television Authority and (c) the Advertising Standards Authority about his proposed community charge benefit and transitional relief advertising campaign; and if he will place copies of the correspondence in the Library.

  Mr. Chris Patten
  My Department has sought clearance from the Independent Television Authority and the Independent Broadcasting Authority for the proposed television advertisements, as all potential advertisers are required to do. There is no similar requirement in respect of the Advertising Standards Authority.

  Palace of Westminster
  Ms. Walley
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will arrange an immediate inspection of floor coverings in the Palace of Westminster and arrange for the replacement of those which would be unsafe within the terms of the health and safety legislation.

  Mr. Chope
  The parliamentary works office already carries out regular inspections of the floor coverings in the Palace of Westminster. It also undertakes an annual replacement programme, as well as dealing with particular problems as they arise. If there is any particular area which the Member thinks presents a hazard perhaps she would let me know.

  Ms. Walley
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will ensure that all electric light bulbs in the Palace of Westminster are in working order and replaced when they are not.

  Mr. Chope
  It is already the practice to ensure that electric light bulbs in the Palace of Westminster are in working order, but if the Member happens to know of any which are not perhaps she would let me know.

  Public Appointments
  Mrs. Roe
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many persons above the age of(a) 60, (b) 65 and (c) 70 years he has appointed to public bodies in each of the last 10 years.

  Mr. Christopher Patten
  This information is not held centrally in my Department, and the information required could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

  Oakland Developments Ltd (Report)
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he has received a copy of the report "Racial Discrimination in Property Development," on Oakland Developments Ltd., Leicestershire; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Chope
  My Department received a copy of the report when it was published. We support the work of the Commission for Racial Equality and have provided powers through legislation under which they can produce a code of practice on housing.

  British Rail Subsidy
  Mr. Malcolm Bruce
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what discussions he has had on the environmental implications of a reduction in the public subsidy to British Rail; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Trippier
  Decisions on the level of subsidy for British Rail are for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport whom I congratulate on his commitment to the highest investment levels in British Rail for a quarter of a century.

  Carnwath Report
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many representations he has received following publication of the Carnwath report.

  Mr. Moynihan
  Ninety-six, from organisations arid individuals who responded to my Department's invitation to submit comments.

  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when the Government propose to introduce legislation to implement the proposals in the Carnwath report.

  Mr. Moynihan
  As soon as parliamentary time permits.

  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment which recommendations of the Carnwath report the Government are prepared to accept.

  Mr. Moynihan
  The Government generally welcome the report's recommendations as a means of strengthening the present enforcement provisions in the Town and Country Planning Act 1971, subject to further detailed examination of the practical implications of some of the recommendations.

  Departmental Expenditure
  Mr. Fisher
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what was the expenditure by his Department in the last financial year on(a) heritage, (b) archaeology and (c) royal parks.

  Mr. Trippier
  In 1988–89 expenditure on heritage, including archaeology, the royal palaces, grant-in-aid to non-departmental public bodies such as English Heritage, and other heritage activities, was £122·2 million. This figure also includes the costs of departmental staff concerned with these areas of heritage. Government money for archaeology is channelled through English Heritage which, out of a total grant of £66·1 million in 1988–89, spent £7·1 million on this aspect of its work. Expenditure on royal parks was £14·1 million.

  Groundwork Foundation
  Mr. Madden
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how much funding his Department has granted the Groundwork Foundation in each of the last three years; in which areas the Groundwork Foundation intends to establish environmental trusts next year, funded by his Department or local authorities; and what contact there has been between his officials, representatives of the Groundwork Foundation and elected members or officials of Bradford council about Bradford council making a grant available for 1990–91.

  Mr. Trippier
  The Department took over the core funding of the Groundwork Foundation and trusts from the Countryside Commission on 1 April 1988, through the commission continues to pay project grants to individual Trusts. We allocated £1,500,000 to Groundwork for core-funding in 1988–89 and £1,743,000 in 1989–90.

  The foundation plans to establish five trusts in 1990–91, in Bolsover, Blackburn, Nottingham, Bradford and Islwyn. The core costs of these trusts will be funded by the Department, local authorities and the private sector.

  I understand that an officer of the Groundwork Foundation has met the leader of Bradford city council, Councillor Eric Pickles, and council officials to discuss the council's request to the foundation to establish a trust in their area.

  Local Authority Dwellings
  Mr. Simon Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) how many local authority dwellings that were vacant on 1 April, for six months or less, were(a) available for letting, (b) to be let after minor repairs, (c) to be let after major works and were undergoing such works, (d) to be let after major works and were awaiting such works, (e) awaiting sale, (f) awaiting demolition and (g) empty for other reasons, and if he will give this information for (i) inner London, (ii) outer London, (iii) metropolitan areas outside London, (iv) the south-east outside London, (v) all non-metropolitan areas, and (vi) England as a whole;

  (2) how many local authority dwellings that were vacant on 1 April, over six months and up to a year, were (1) available for letting, (2) to be let after minor repairs, (3) to be let after major works and were undergoing such works, (4) to be let after major works and were awaiting

  Available for letting

  To be let after minor repairs

  To be let after major works

  To be sold

  Awaiting demolition

  Empty for other reasons

  Undergoing works

  Awaiting works

  Local authority dwellings vacant for six months or less at 1 April 1989

  Inner London

  1,700

  1,900

  500

  500

  400

  0

  700

  Outer London

  1,200

  2,000

  300

  300

  100

  0

  300

  Metropolitan areas outside London

  7,300

  11,500

  2,100

  1,600

  400

  1,000

  2,700

  South East outside London

  1,500

  1,300

  700

  300

  100

  300

  100

  All non-metropolitan areas

  8,000

  9,700

  3,500

  1,400

  500

  1,000

  700

  England

  18,300

  25,000

  6,400

  3,800

  1,400

  2,100

  4,600

  Local authority dwellings vacant for over six months and up to one year at 1 April 1989

  Inner London

  400

  400

  600

  300

  200

  100

  400

  Outer London

  200

  200

  200

  100

  0

  0

  100

  Metropolitan areas outside London

  1,000

  900

  1,100

  600

  300

  1,300

  1,500

  South East outside London

  100

  0

  300

  100

  100

  200

  0

  All non-metropolitan areas

  400

  0

  1,500

  600

  500

  700

  300

  England

  2,000

  1,800

  3,200

  1,400

  1,000

  2,000

  2,400

  Local authority dwellings vacant for over one year and under two years at 1 April 1989

  Inner London

  200

  300

  500

  600

  400

  100

  200

  Outer London

  100

  100

  100

  100

  0

  0

  100

  326
  such works, (5) awaiting sale, (6) awaiting demolition and (7) empty for other reasons; and if he will give this information for (a) inner London, (b) outer London, (c) metropolitan areas outside London, (d) the south-east outside London, (e) all non-metropolitan areas, and (f) England as a whole;

  (3) how many local authority dwellings that were vacant on 1 April, for over two years, were (1) available for letting, (2) to be let after minor repairs, (3) to be let after major works and were undergoing such works, (4) to be let after major works and were awaiting such works, (5) awaiting sale, (6) awaiting demolition and (7) empty for other reasons; and if he will give this information for (a) inner London, (b) outer London, (c) metropolitan areas outside London, (d) the south-east outside London, (e) all non-metropolitan areas, and (f) England as a whole;

  (4) how many local authority dwellings that were vacant on 1 April, for over a year and under two years, were (1) available for letting, (2) to be let after minor repairs, (3) to be let after major works and were undergoing such works, (4) to be let after major works and were awaiting such works, (5) awaiting sale, (6) awaiting demolition and (7) empty for other reasons; and if he will give this information for (a) inner London, (b) outer London, (c) metropolitan areas outside London, (d) the south-east outside London, (e) all non-metropolitan areas, and (f) England as a whole;

  (5) what was the number of local authority dwellings on 1 April, in (a) inner London, (b) outer London, (c) metropolitan areas outside London, (d) the south-east outside London, (e) all non-metropolitan areas, and (f) England as a whole.

  Mr. Chope
  The following are preliminary estimates derived from local authorities' annual housing investment programme returns (HIP1) for April 1989:

  Local authority dwellings1 at 1 April 1989

  Number

  Inner London

  455,900

  Outer London

  303,200

  Metropolitan areas outside London

  1,333,500

  South East outside London

  401,500

  All non-metropolitan areas

  2,084,300

  England

  4,177,000

  1 Including stock outside the local authority's own area.

  327

  Available for letting

  To be let after minor repairs

  To be let after major work

  To be sold

  Awaiting demolition

  Empty for other reasons

  Undergoing works

  Awaiting works

  Metropolitan areas outside London

  500

  800

  1,000

  700

  500

  1,800

  1,700

  South East outside London

  0

  0

  200

  100

  100

  too

  0

  All non-metropolitan areas

  100

  0

  800

  200

  400

  500

  400

  England

  800

  1,400

  2,300

  1,700

  1,300

  2,400

  2,400

  Local authority dwellings vacant for over two years at 1 April 1989

  Inner London

  200

  300

  1,000

  1,000

  1,300

  100

  1,100

  Outer London

  0

  0

  100

  100

  0

  100

  100

  Metropolitan areas outside London

  300

  700

  600

  800

  600

  2,300

  1.000

  South East outside London

  0

  0

  100

  0

  0

  0

  0

  All non-metropolitan areas

  0

  0

  200

  0

  300

  100

  100

  England

  600

  1,000

  2,000

  2,000

  2,200

  2,600

  2,500

  Enterprise Zones
  Mr. O'Brien
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) if he will give the amount of rates that has been forgone in each of the enterprise zones in England and Wales, year by year;

  (2) what is the amount of rates that has been forgone by virtue of the Isle of Dogs enterprise zone.

  Rate Revenue Foregone

  £thousands (outturn prices)

  1981–82

  1982–83

  1983–84

  1984–85

  1985–86

  1986–87

  21987

  ENGLAND

  1st Round Zones

  Corby

  126

  508

  1,146

  1,688

  2,155

  2,896

  8,519

  Dudley

  702

  1,201

  1,231

  1,545

  2,014

  3,076

  9,769

  Hartlepool

  26

  148

  256

  314

  377

  618

  1,739

  Isle of Dogs

  —

  1,254

  1,486

  2,430

  2,324

  2,997

  10,491

  Salford/Trafford

  473

  1,196

  1,592

  2,097

  3,094

  14,938

  13,390

  Speke

  516

  1,174

  936

  1,484

  1,853

  1,838

  7,801

  Tyneside

  1,416

  2,582

  2,942

  3,260

  4,036

  6,931

  21,167

  Wakefield

  250

  393

  481

  532

  845

  1,171

  3,672

  2nd Round Zones

  Allerdale

  —

  —

  59

  127

  200

  402

  788

  Glanford

  —

  —

  —

  66

  78

  117

  261

  Middlesbrough

  —

  —

  0

  241

  540

  655

  1,436

  North East Lancashire

  —

  —

  63

  259

  431

  709

  1,462

  North West Kent

  —

  —

  89

  886

  1,384

  1,808

  4,167

  Rotherham

  —

  —

  71

  252

  658

  905

  1,886

  Scunthorpe

  —

  —

  26

  260

  626

  942

  1,854

  Telford

  —

  —

  0

  225

  1,068

  1,278

  2,571

  Wellingborough

  —

  —

  14

  74

  240

  1,081

  1,409

  WALES

  1st Round Zone

  Swansea

  455

  1,007

  1,038

  1,239

  1,636

  1,763

  7,138

  2nd Round Zones

  Delyn

  —

  —

  220

  367

  401

  506

  1,494

  Milford Haven

  —

  —

  —

  259

  409

  489

  1,157

  1 Subject to audit.

  2 Designation to March.

  Mr. O'Brien
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) what is the total amount of capital allowances claimed in each of the enterprise zones in England and Wales, year by year;

  (2) what is the total amount of capital allowances claimed so far in the Isle of Dogs enterprise zone.

  Mr. Moynihan
  Because of the extent of estimation involved the information requested is not available for individual enterprise zones.
  328
  Mr. Moynihan
  The information requested to the latest date available is shown in the table.

  "On the Record"
  Dr. Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make it his policy to obtain for his departmental library a copy of the video and transcript of the BBC1 television programme "On The Record," broadcast on 26 November.

  Mr. Trippier
  My Department already has copies of the transcript. It is unnecessary to have a copy of the video.

  Green Dowry
  Dr. Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how much of the green dowry announced by the Minister for Water and Planning has been allocated to North West Water.

  Mr. Chris Patten
  It is expected that North West Water Group plc will receive £329·7 million in cash.

  Mersey Basin
  Dr. Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will list for the financial years 1987–88 and 1988–89 any grant award made from the European regional development fund for sewers and sewerage works in the Mersey basin, showing also their value and application.

  Mr. Chris Patten
  North West Water Authority received £26·7 million in ERDF grants in 1987–88 and £8.9·million in 1988–89. Much of this was to finance schemes in the Mersey basin.

  Customer Services Committees
  Dr. Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will list the name and organisation represented by each member of each customer services committee.

  Mr. Chris Patten
  No. Appointments to the customer service committees for the water industry are a matter for the Director General of Water Services. I understand that the director general is currently considering nominations received from a large number of interest groups and individuals and that he hopes to announce the membership of the committees in the near future.

  Surface Water
  Dr. Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what research is being done or has been commissioned by his Department in respect of surface water quality.

  Mr. Chris Patten
  We have let the following research contracts since 1 November 1988 concerning surface water quality:Estimation of contaminant loads in rivers;
  Strategic river eco-system studies;
  Aerial inputs to the Severn Estuary;
  Effects of the Kielder reservoir on the River North Tyne;
  Health effects of sea bathing;
  Analysis of technazene and its breakdown products;
  Effect of sediment metals on estuarine benthic organisms;
  Biological effects of contaminants workshop;
  Fish farm chemicals in sea locks;
  Diffuse pollution from land-use practices; and Sediment water contaminant exchange.

  Three Graces (Statue)
  Mr. Neil Hamilton
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he will take enforcement action in respect of the statue of the Three Graces previously at Woburn abbey.

  Mr. Trippier
  My right hon Friend has considered the question of the Three Graces very carefully following a330
  request from the Office of Arts and Libraries for a view as to whether the statue was included in the listing of Woburn abbey.

  On the basis of the information before my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, and in the light of legal advice, it appears that the Three Graces should be considered as part of the listed buildings, as both the Temple—which is listed—in which the statue was originally situated, and the plinth on which the statue stood, 'had been specifically designed to house this statue for the purpose of permanent display. However, there is some evidence to show that the statue had previously been moved from its original position at least once, quite apart from being moved for the purposes of exhibition.

  My right hon. Friend notes that the local planning authority has decided against taking listed building enforcement action. He has therefore considered whether he should use his own discretion to take such action. On the evidence at present before him, he has decided not to do so.

  He is not satisfied that it is in general an appropriate use of listed building legislation to control what would widely be thought to be chattels. Nor is he satisfied in the present case that it would be appropriate to require the return of the statue to a sculpture gallery, of which the Temple is a part, which has effectively changed the character.

  My right hon. Friend considers that the whole issue of controls over movable fixtures in listed buildings needs examination. He proposes to consult about what guidance should be given on this issue and whether there is a case for amending legislation. In this connection he welcomes the fact that the chairman of English Heritage has convened a meeting of expert and interested bodies to discuss the matter in the new year.

  Air Pollution
  Mr. Sedgemore
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment at how many sites air pollution levels are monitored.

  Mr. Trippier
  [holding answer 24 November 1989]: Air pollution levels are monitored on behalf of the Department of the Environment, at 390 sites as follows:

  Pollutant

  Sites

  Ozone:

  17

  Carbon monoxide:

  6

  Nitrogen oxides:

  12

  Acid deposition:

  32

  Atmospheric hydrocarbons:

  2

  Trace gases:

  1

  Atmospheric chemistry:

  2

  Smoke/sulphur dioxide

  Directive sites:

  287

  Sulphur dioxide:

  7

  Lead:

  19

  Multi-element sites, including lead:

  5

  Total

  390

  There are also monitoring sites under the aegis of other bodies.

  Pollution
  Mr. Andrew F. Bennett
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) how many industrial pollution incidents of rivers have been prosecuted in each of the last five years; and which companies have been involved;

  (2) what percentage of reported industrial pollution incidents of rivers have not led to prosecution in each of the last five years;

  (3) what percentage of reported pollution incidents have not resulted in prosecutions in each of the last five years.

  Mr. Howard
  Information on the number of reported water pollution incidents and the prosecutions brought by former water authorities up to 1987, has been published in the annual "Digest of Environmental Protection and Water Statistics", copies of which are available in the Library of the House.

  Information on the number of incidents attributable to industrial causes, and the number of resulting prosecutions is available only for 1986 and 1987.

  Information on the companies that have been prosecuted is not held by the Department.

  Water Authority

  Number

  Number tested

  Works in breach of consent

  Number

  Percentage of works tested

  1986

  1987

  1988

  1986

  1987

  1988

  1986

  1987

  1988

  1986

  1987

  1988

  Anglian

  782

  760

  775

  774

  754

  748

  309

  260

  208

  40

  34

  28

  Northumbrian

  196

  182

  178

  196

  182

  178

  37

  27

  26

  19

  15

  15

  North West

  458

  448

  441

  458

  448

  441

  62

  55

  43

  14

  12

  10

  Severn Trent

  773

  753

  808

  762

  742

  751

  179

  160

  112

  23

  22

  15

  Southern

  282

  274

  273

  282

  274

  271

  54

  39

  41

  19

  14

  15

  South West

  226

  226

  232

  188

  219

  228

  55

  65

  67

  29

  30

  29

  Thames

  374

  382

  378

  374

  379

  378

  67

  70

  60

  18

  18

  16

  Welsh

  803

  764

  710

  668

  611

  650

  112

  108

  107

  17

  18

  17

  Wessex

  272

  272

  272

  272

  270

  272

  39

  29

  17

  14

  11

  6

  Yorkshire

  380

  360

  360

  380

  351

  354

  88

  74

  61

  23

  21

  17

  England and Wales

  4,546

  4,421

  4,427

  4,354

  4,230

  4,271

  1,002

  887

  742

  216

  195

  168

  Mr. Andrew F. Bennett
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what plans he has to increase the penalties for industrial pollution of the rivers.

  Mr. Howard
  [holding answer 4 December 1989]: The maximum penalties which may be imposed by magistrates for offences under section 107 of the Water Act 1989 are fines not exceeding £2,000 and terms of imprisonment of up to three months. However, on indictment in the Crown court there is no limit on the fine that may be imposed and terms of imprisonment can be up to two years. Penalties for pollution offences are kept under review although there are no immediate plans for increasing them.

  Mr. Andrew F. Bennett
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what plans he has to reform the system of deemed consents for discharges into rivers.

  Mr. Howard
  [holding answer 4 December 1989]: The arrangement for granting deemed consents was a transitional provision introduced under earlier legislation and, most recently, under part II of the Control of Pollution Act 1974, relating to those categories of discharges, chiefly into coastal and estuarial waters, which were brought under control for the first time. This arrangement applied only to applications received by 14
  332
  Enforcement of water pollution controls—including the compilation of relevant data—is now the responsibility of the National Rivers Authority.

  Mr. Andrew F. Bennett
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) how many non-compliant sewage works there were in each of the water authority areas during 1988;

  (2) what percentage of the total number of sewage works in England were non-compliant during each of the past five years;

  (3) what progress has been made in reducing the number of non-compliant sewage works.

  Mr. Howard
  [holding answer 4 December 1989]: Information on non-compliant sewage treatment works was first collected by the Government for 1986. Numbers of sewage treatment works operated by each water authority with numerical discharge consent conditions, together with the numbers tested by each authority and found non-compliant in 1986, 1987 and 1988, are listed. The results show a steady reduction in the proportion of non-compliant works from 23 per cent. in 1986 to 17 per cent. in 1988.

  Further improvements will result from the major capital programme to bring substandard sewage treatment works into compliance with their discharge consents.

  October 1987, on which basis deemed consents were granted with the expectation that they would be reviewed and substantively determined by October 1992. It now falls to the NRA to complete this process.

  There are no plans to reintroduce the procedure.

  Water Privatisation
  Mr. Austin Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment whether the accountancy firm which reported on the water privatisation prospectus has at any time since January 1979 been(a) criticised by the Department of Trade and Industry inspectors in any of the reports and (b) criticised by the disciplinary committee of the accountancy profession as lacking in professional conduct efficiency or competence; and whether either of these two points are mentioned in the prospectus.

  Mr. Howard
  [holding answer 30 November 1989]: One of the firms which reported on the water privatisation prospectus had been previously criticised in inspectors' reports published since 1979 and subsequently by the accountancy profession's joint disciplinary scheme. I understand that the cases related to audits conducted in the period 1972–75; the partners involved were not members of any of the reporting engagement teams for

  333
  water privatisation. The Government and their advisers are satisfied that this is not material as far as the prospectus is concerned.

  Caravan Sites
  Mr. Madden
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) if he will list those local authorities which have responded to the application to designate permanent caravan sites in Bradford; and if he will summarise each response which has been submitted;

  (2) whether he has received an application from Bradford council to designate permanent traveller sites in Bradford; if he will give details of the grounds on which the application is based; if he will place copies of the

  Consultee

  Response

  Metropolitan borough of Calderdale

  No observations.

  Leeds city council

  No objection.

  City of Wakefield metropolitan district council

  No objection.

  Lancashire county council

  No objection subject to assurances that Bradford will not seek to transfer gypsy families from Bradford to Pendle.

  Craven district council

  Support application.

  Borough of Pendle district council

  No objection.

  North Yorkshire county council

  Object because it would increase gypsy problems particularly in Harrogate and Craven districts.

  Kirklees metropolitan council

  No response.

  Bradford chamber of commerce

  Support application because of nuisance of unauthorised encampments on unsuitable sites and the shortage of land available for industrial/commercial development.

  Bradford Travellers' Action Support Campaign

  Objects because of councils policy of evicting gypsies off unauthorised sites the poor quality of existing sites and the perceived lack of legal grounds for granting designation as a matter of expediency.

  National Gypsy Council

  Response awaited.

  I will arrange for a copy of the City of Bradford metropolitan council's designation application to be placed in the Library of the House shortly.

HOUSE OF COMMONS

  Passes
  Mrs. Ann Winterton
  To ask the Lord President of the Council if he will give a breakdown by company of the numbers and categories of security passes giving access to the Palace of Westminster and its associated buildings which are currently allocated to the media.

  Sir Geoffrey Howe
  The Accommodation and Administration Sub-Committee is currently examining the number of Palace of Westminster photo-identity passes held by the media organisations accredited to the House.

  In the course of its inquiry, the Sub-Committee has asked for the same information as that requested by the hon. Member. It is currently being collated, and I will ensure that the hon. Member receives a copy as soon as it is available.
  334
  applications, including responses by local authorities to the application, in the Library; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Chope
  [holding answer 6 December 1989]: An application under section 12 of the Caravan Sites Act 1968 for the designation of Bradford district was received from the City of Bradford metropolitan council by my Department on 27 November 1989.

  The application is made on the grounds that in all the circumstances it is not necessary or expedient to make any further provision for the accommodation of gipsies residing in or resorting to the area of Bradford metropolitan district.

  A list of the local authorities, and others, consulted by Bradford council about the application and the substance of their responses is as follows:

  Mrs. Ann Winterton
  To ask the Lord President of the Council if he will give a breakdown of the numbers and categories of security passes giving access to the Palace of Westminster and its associated buildings which are currently allocated to individuals who are not in receipt of a regular monthly payment from the Fees Office; and if he will indicate the reasons for the allocation of these passes.

  Sir Geoffrey Howe
  Without a detailed check of each photo-identity pass holder's name against the Fees Office salary list, which could be done only at disproportionate cost, it is not possible to provide a definitive answer to the hon. Member's question. However, it would be safe to assume that all or the vast majority of the following pass holders are not in receipt of a regular monthly payment from the Fees Office:

  Category

  Detail

  Quantity

  10

  Members and Officers;

  511

  Residents' families

  11

  Official Commonwealth and Overseas visitors

  3

  16

  CPA and IPU Staffs

  46

  17 and 17A

  Government Departmental Staff

  1,443

  18

  Government Messengers

  234

  19 and 19A

  PSA's staff

  403

  335

  Category

  Detail

  Quantity

  20 and 20A

  Security Force (incl. RBLA)

  473

  21 and 21A

  Post Office Staff

  42

  22 and 22A

  British Telecom Staff

  79

  23 and 23A

  Parliamentary Counsel and Agents

  120

  24 and 24A

  Tannoy/Official Shorthand Writer/

  71

  Westminster Audio and Thomas Cook

  25 and 25A

  Central Office/PLP/Liberal Democrats/

  107

  SDP and SNP staffs

  26

  PSA's Contractors

  543

  27

  Other Contractors and St. Stephens Secretarial Staff

  136

  28A

  Lobby Correspondents

  228

  28B

  Reporters

  130

  28C

  Broadcasting Journalists

  52

  28D

  Overseas Media Representatives

  19

  28E

  Media Messengers and Engineers

  183

  28G and H

  Television Experiment Staff

  28

  30

  Specially Authorised Holders

  56

  31

  Television Personnel (Norman Shaw

  29

  Studios only)

  31A

  Gymnasium Members (Norman Shaw

  126

  Buildings only)

  32

  Whips' Office Staff

  49

  33 and 33A

  HMSO and COI Staff

  155

  E

  MEPs

  33

  In addition to the above, those categories of pass issued to peers, peeresses and their staffs, staff of the House of Lords, and House of Lords sponsored media passes are, of course, not paid from the Fees Office—a total of 1,427 passes.

  Finally, I should mention that some staff of Members, who hold category 9 photo-identity passes, may not be in receipt of a regular monthly payment from the Fees Office.

  Food Hygiene Inspections
  Ms. Walley
  To ask the Lord President of the Council if he will arrange for food hygiene inspections by a qualified environmental health officer of all kitchens and food preparation and refreshment areas serving food to hon. Members, staff and the general public in the House equivalent to the quality and regularity of standards applying to all other workplaces.

  Sir Geoffrey Howe
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply that she received on 10 November. Environmental health officers are invited to carry out food hygiene inspections of all areas for which the Refreshment Department is responsible either as part of a regular programme, or when a need is perceived. The next such inspection has been arranged to begin on 7 December. The regularity at which these inspections are carried out and the standards applied to them are understood to be more frequent and rigorous than applied by the authorities to commercial catering establishments.

  Food Handling Training
  Ms. Walley
  To ask the Lord President of the Council if he will reconsider his decision not to provide food handling training to all catering staff in the Palace of Westminster.

  Sir Geoffrey Howe
  No such decision has been taken. A total of six training courses on food hygiene involving some 260 staff have taken place over the past two years. Another is planned for early 1990 as part of a continuing programme.

  Boxes and Rubbish
  Ms. Walley
  To ask the Lord President of the Council if he will take immediate action to prevent the daily stacking in the Palace of Westminster of carton boxes and rubbish bags which block the corridors, provide a tire hazard and prevent access for people in wheelchairs.

  Sir Geoffrey Howe
  Recognised procedures designed to keep the corridors free of waste and obstacles already exist. These arrangements are, however, under review.

  Petitions
  Mr. Spearing
  To ask the Lord President of the Council if he will state how many petitions were presented in Session 1988–89 and what was the number of occasions when the responsible Department of State declined to make any observations.

  Sir Geoffrey Howe
  Two hundred and twenty seven petitions were presented in Session 1988–89. The responsible Department declined to raise observations on 188 of these.

  Palace of Westminster Telephone Bill
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Lord President of the Council what was the telephone bill for the Palace of Westminster for each year from 1979 to the present date.

  Sir Geoffrey Howe
  Telephone call charges for the Palace of Westminster for the financial years 1979 to 1989 were as follows:

  Financial year ending April

  £

  1979

  306,300

  1980

  255,650

  1981

  368,400

  1982

  492,500

  1983

  470,302

  1984

  437,249

  1985

  499,497

  1986

  488,435

  1987

  481,989

  1988

  474,101

  1989

  559,397

  The above charges are distributed proportionately between the House of Lords, the House of Commons and the Lord Chancellor's Department.

  Party Chairmen
  Mr. Winnick
  To ask the Lord President of the Council whether he will introduce legislation to provide that the chairmen of parties represented in the Commons would need to be elected either by party members or by members of an elected executive.

  Sir Geoffrey Howe
  No. Each party is best left to decide its own arrangements.

PRIME MINISTER

  Lancashire
  Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman
  To ask the Prime Minister if she has any plans to visit Lancashire.

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

  EEC and EFTA
  Mr. Teddy Taylor
  To ask the Prime Minister what consideration she has given to the proposals made by President Mitterrand on Tuesday 5 December, on the future of the EEC and EFTA; and if she will make a statement.

  The Prime Minister
  I refer my hon. Friend to my reply to him of 5 December. We naturally support the closest possible co-operation between the EC and EFTA.

  Eastern Europe
  Mr. Boswell
  To ask the Prime Minister what recent representations she has received about measures to stimulate agricultural supplies in eastern Europe.

  The Prime Minister
  I have received representations from a number of people, including Lady Ryder of Warsaw, about agricultural supplies in Poland. We take their concerns seriously. We are active, both nationally and with our EC partners, to improve food supplies there. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs announced in the House on 29 November a £15 million agricultural project for Poland. In addition the EC has so far supplied some £70 million of food aid to Poland, the proceeds of which will be used to finance improvements in Poland's agricultural industry. The Community has also announced an aid budget for Poland and Hungary in 1990 of £210 million which will be used inter alia to finance agricultural restructuring.

  Hungary
  Mr. David Nicholson
  To ask the Prime Minister if she has any plans for a meeting with the Prime Minister of Hungary.

  The Prime Minister
  I shall be meeting the Hungarian Prime Minister on 13 December during his forthcoming visit to the United Kingdom. I look forward to discussing with him the latest developments in Hungary's progress towards democracy and a number of trade and other issues.

  Water Act
  Mr. Knapman
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will make a statement on the implementation of the Water Act.

  The Prime Minister
  I am pleased to say that implementation of this Act is well advanced, and is the key to even higher standards of drinking water quality, and cleaner rivers and bathing waters.

  West Yorkshire
  Mr. Waller
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will visit west Yorkshire.

  The Prime Minister
  I have no such plans at present.

  United Nations
  Mr. Cryer
  To ask the Prime Minister when she next expects to pay an official visit to the United Nations.

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

  European Government
  Mrs. Gorman
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will make a statement on the latest proposals of the President of the European Commission to create a European Government.

  The Prime Minister
  I understand that M. Delors was speculating on a personal basis about institutional arrangements if the Community were significantly expanded. These are not formal proposals.

  Engagements
  Mr. David Martin
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  Mr. Hayward
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  Mr. Gareth Wardell
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  Ms. Ruddock
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  Mr. Tony Lloyd
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  Mr. Grocott
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  Mr. Moate
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  Mr. Ashton
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  Mr. Haynes
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  Mr. Churchill
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  Mr. McCartney
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  Mr. Sillars
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  Mr. Jessel
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  Dr. Reid
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  Mr. Raffan
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  Ms. Abbott
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  Mr. Tony Banks
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.
  339
  Ms. Mahon
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  Mr. Favell
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  Mr. Eastham
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  Mr. Stern
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  Mr. French
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  Mr. Harry Greenway
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  Mr. Pike
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  Mr. Hanley
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 7 December.

  The Prime Minister
  This morning I presided at a meeting of the Cabinet and had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. I shall depart for Strasbourg later today to attend the European Council

  Public Appointments
  Mrs. Roe
  To ask the Prime Minister how many persons above the age of(a) 60, (b) 65 and (c) 70 years she has appointed to public bodies in each of the last 10 years.

  The Prime Minister
  We do not classify appointments in this way.

  Cambodia
  Mrs. Clwyd
  To ask the Prime Minister how many letters and telephone calls she has received on the subject of Cambodia in the last month; and if she will make a statement.

  The Prime Minister
  I have received approximately 6,900 letters on Cambodia-related matters in the past month.

  Factory Closures
  Mr. Parry
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will meet the hon. Member for Liverpool. Riverside to discuss the implications of the proposed closure of the BAT factory, Liverpool following her promise in the House to meet any hon. Member in whose constituency a factory closure is about to occur,Official Report, 12 February 1981, column 981.

  The Prime Minister
  I will of course always make every effort to meet hon. Members in whose constituencies a main factory closure occurs. Delegations, however, should go to the Minister concerned.

  Downing Street (Telephones)
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Prime Minister how many direct telephone lines are in existence at No. 10 Downing street, London, connecting that address to the Head of Government of any other country; and which countries are so connnected.
  340
  The Prime Minister
  None.

  Berlin Wall
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Prime Minister if she has any plans to visit the Berlin wall.

  The Prime Minister
  I have at present no plans to do so, but my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs visited Berlin on 16 November. I greatly welcome the freer movement which has eased the division of that city.

  Official Duties
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Prime Minister what provision she has made for her official duties to be carried out in the event of(a) her absence abroad or (b) her incapacity through illness.

  The Prime Minister
  During my absences abroad I continue to exercise my official responsibilities. The provision to be made in the event of illness would depend upon the circumstances.

  E1 Salvador
  Mr. Winnick
  To ask the Prime Minister if she herself has made any representations to the United States authorities about the recent murder of six priests and others in El Salvador by death squads alleged to be connected with the El Salvadorian Government; and if she will make a statement.

  The Prime Minister
  No. I refer the hon. Member to the reply given to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Mossley Hill (Mr. Alton) on 30 November by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonweali h Affairs at column 416 from which he will see that the Salvadorean authorities are aware of our views.

SOCIAL SECURITY

  Family Incomes
  Mr. Meacher
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what is the value of total child care assistance, combining tax reliefs and benefits payments, for a man on average earnings with a wife and two children aged five and 11 years in each EEC country in £ sterling equivalents; and what are each of these totals as a percentage of the average earnings in that country.

  Mr. Scott
  Benefit rates for family benefits in each EC member state, converted into sterling using purchasing power parities to give a more accurate reflection of domestic purchasing power, are contained in the Department's "Tables of Social Benefit Systems in the European Communities" which is available in the Library.

  Tax allowances for children in each EC member state are set out in the table.

  It is not possible to calculate the combined effect of cash benefits and tax allowances for a family on average earnings since there are no available statistics on average annual earnings.

  For a full picture one would also need to take account of the impact of social security contributions, which in most EC countries are much higher than in the United Kingdom, but again this is impossible for the family type in question without annual earnings data.
  341
  Tax allowances for children

  Belgium
  Child allowance deducted as percentage of tax amount due. For two children 20 per cent. is deducted.

  Denmark
  No tax deductions are given, but taxpayers with minor children are entitled to various tax-free child subsidies.

  France
  Income divided by co-efficient applicable to family circumstances, (eg three for married persons with two children). Tax tables then applied, and resulting tax is multiplied by same co-efficient to give tax due.

  Federal Republic of Germany
  Deduction of £623 per annum per child.

  Greece
  Allowance for first two children £623 each.

  Ireland
  Allowance of £472 given in respect of an invalid child under 16 years of age.

  Italy
  Each spouse may deduct from his or her tax amount £20 for each qualifying child (ie minor child, disabled child or child under 26 years of age who is studying or learning a trade).

  Luxembourg
  Where taxable income does not exceed £14,423, and if there are four or fewer children, relief is given by dividing income by appropriate co-efficient (eg 3.4 for two children), applying tax table and then multiplying tax due by the same co-efficient. In other cases, deductions for children are made from income tax due, according to family size and income.

  Netherlands
  Allowance of £203 for parents of one of more children under the age of 12. If both parents "work outside the household" they may each claim this amount.

  Portugal
  Deduction of £329 for each child up to 11 years of age, £461 for each child over 11 and up to 24 years of age.

  Spain
  Deduction of £161 from income tax amount for each qualifying child (unmarried, under 25 and supported by taxpayer).
  These figures were valid on 1 January 1989 and national currency has been converted into sterling using purchasing power parities.

  Tenants (Local Authority Reimbursement)
  Mr. Lofthouse
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how much growth is to be allowed in the reimbursement to local authorities for(a) housing benefit in respect of local authority tenants and (b) rent allowances to private tenants for 1989–90 to 1991–92.

  Mr. Scott
  On the basis that subsidy for 1989–90= 100, estimates of growth for the following two years are in the table.

  1989–90

  1990–91

  1991–92

  (a)housing benefit

  100

  107·5

  117·6

  (b)rent allowances

  100

  110·1

  116·2

  Information incorporating the new housing revenue account subsidy will be available in the new year.

  Rent Allowances
  Mr. Lofthouse
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what are the estimated increases in rent allowances for(a) private landlords and (b) housing associations over the next planning period.

  Mr. Scott
  Estimates for the next planning period will be published early in the new year in "The Government's Expenditure plans 1990–91 to 1992–93."

  Public Appointments
  Mrs. Roe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how many persons above the age of(a) 60, (b) 65 and (c) 70 years he has appointed to public bodies in each of the last 10 years.

  Mr. Scott
  As the Department is responsible for 14 public bodies with the present number of appointments totalling over 2,000 I regret that this information could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

  Unclaimed Benefit
  Mrs. Margaret Ewing
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what is his estimate of the underpayment from the Consolidated Fund as a result of failure of potential beneficiaries to claim benefits to which they would have been entitled in each of the last five years.

  Mr. Scott
  The most recent available figures show that 90 per cent. of income-related benefit is taken up by those eligible. Available information is for 1983 and 1985 and is as follows:

  1983 unclaimed (£ million)

  1985 unclaimed (£ million)

  Supplementary Benefit

  570

  550

  Housing Benefit

  Certificated HB1

  1180

  150

  Standard HB3

  2310

  360

  Family Income Supplement

  55

  590

  Totals

  1,115

  1,150

  Source: Technical Notes.

  Notes:

  1 Includes the unclaimed entitlements of Households not receiving HB plus the excess of certificated amount over standard receipt for those eligible to certificated HB but receiving a lesser amount of standard HB. All figures exclude families where the head or spouse is in full-time self employment.

  2 Figures refer to 1984 for HB.

  3 All figures exclude households receiving or eligible for certificated HB.

  4 1983–84; based on pooled FES data for reasons of sample size. Figures exclude families where head or spouse is in full-time self employment.

  5 1985–86; based on pooled FES data for reasons of sample size. Figures exclude families where head or spouse is in full-time self employment.

  6 Detailed analysis on both caseloads and expenditure take-up are contained in the Technical Notes, copies of which are in the Library.

  Benefit Fraud
  Mr. Cartwright
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security whether he will investigate the use of multiple identities by claimants; and if he will make a statement.

  Mrs. Gillian Shephard
  Special investigation teams were set up in all this Department's regional offices earlier this year to combat fraudulent claims involving the use of multiple identities.

  Social Fund
  Mr. Madden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will publish the proportion of social fund expenditure, on a month-by-month basis, which local offices are recommended to spend for each month in the current financial year and for the financial year 1990–91.

  Mr. Scott
  The national profile of anticipated expenditure for 1989–90 is set out in the table. It was devised from an analysis of previous levels of national expenditure, as a guide to assist managers of local offices in planning expenditure of their annual budgets. It is not intended to represent a recommended pattern of monthly expenditure, and managers are free to produce their own profiles to take account of local factors in the area.

  A profile for 1990–91 has not yet been devised.

  National social fund anticipated expenditure profile 1989–90 Percentage of annual gross budget profile

  Month

  per cent.

  April

  7·93

  May

  8·33

  June

  8·33

  July

  8·33

  August

  8·33

  September

  8·02

  October

  8·88

  November

  8·89

  December

  7·75

  January

  7·38

  February

  8·62

  March

  9·21

  Family Credit
  Mr. Squire
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how many families with children with taxable incomes below the tax threshold are in receipt of family credit.

  Mr. Scott
  On the latest available information there are about 85.000 cases where income tax was not being deducted from the earnings of the main earner at the time of the claim for family credit.

  Attendance Allowance
  Mrs. Margaret Ewing
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security (1) what was the total number of applications for attendance allowance received in Scotland in each year since 1980;

  (2) what was the total number of applications for attendance allowance in Scotland which were refused in each year since 1980;

  (3) what was the total number of applications in Scotland for attendance allowance granted at (i) the higher rate and (ii) the lower rate in each year since 1980.

  Mr. Scott
  [holding answer 27 November 1989]: The information is in the table.

  Attendance allowance: New claims received and decided in Scotland 1980 to 1989

  Year

  Number of claims received

  Number of claims decided

  Higher rate

  Lower rate

  Rejections

  1980

  14,694

  3,137

  5,206

  14,973

  1981

  15,200

  3,358

  4,564

  15,460

  1982

  18,118

  4,038

  4,888

  6,561

  344

  Year

  Number of claims received

  Number of claims decided

  Higher rate

  Lower rate

  Rejections

  1983

  18,597

  2,846

  7,795

  9,560

  1984

  22,044

  4,531

  9,348

  9,421

  1985

  23,908

  4,716

  9,472

  9,625

  1986

  25,623

  4,441

  9,232

  10,304

  1987

  29,348

  6,266

  11,374

  10,195

  1988

  34,817

  7,825

  11,816

  13,047

  21989

  26,826

  5,830

  7,740

  9,485

  1 Estimated figures: data for 1980 and 1981 incomplete.

  2 To 30 September 1989.

CIVIL SERVICE

  Health Checks
  Mr. Baldry
  To ask the Minister for the Civil Service what is Civil Service policy on ensuring regular health checks of all Civil Service personnel.

  Mr. Luce
  The health of successful applicants to the Civil Service is assessed on entry and some undergo medical examination. Civil servants in certain jobs are routinely examined at regular intervals because of statutory requirements or the nature of their employment.

  Increasingly Departments are actively promoting positive health in their staff by information and education. Many have arranged routine smear tests for cervical cancer. Fifteen Departments have so far signed up as supporters of the "Look After Your Heart" campaign being run by the Health Education Authority. One component of this campaign is individual fitness testing and blood pressure screening.

  The Civil Service Occupational Health Service is expanding its facilities to meet increased departmental demand for routine health checks, and can offer a range of services from comprehensive executive-type medical examinations to simple screening tests performed by a trained nurse.

  Civil servants are also permitted to have time off work to attend their family practitioners who are being encouraged to offer regular preventive health checks to patients.

  Secondment
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Minister for the Civil Service if he will give the numbers and names of(a) persons currently seconded to the Civil Service from private companies and (b) the companies from which they are seconded.

  Mr. Luce
  My Department's report on interchange in 1988 between the Civil Service and other organisations, a copy of which is in the Library, shows that there were 194 secondments (of three months or more) into the Civil Service from industrial or commercial organisations, and 311 outward secondments (of three months or more) to such organisations last year. The report lists the industrial or commercial organisations which were involved in the secondment. Data for 1989 will be included in the next report, which I hope will be available in the spring.

  Secondments are arranged by agreement between the outside organisation and the Government Department concerned. It would not be appropriate to list the names of the employees of the outside organisations involved without their consent. This could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

THE ARTS

  Public Appointments
  Mrs. Roe
  To ask the Minister for the Arts how many persons above the age of(a) 60, (b) 65 and (c) 70 years he has appointed to public bodies in each of the last 10 years.

  Mr. Luce
  The information is not kept in the form requested, and could be given only at a disproportionate cost.

  Science Museum
  Mr. Fisher
  To ask the Minister for the Arts what information he has on the admission figures for the Science museum in the period October 1988 to October 1989.

  Mr. Luce
  I understand that in the year October 1988 to September 1989 attendance at the Science museum, South Kensington, and its two principal outstations, the National Railway museum, York, and the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, Bradford, totalled 2,387,600.

  Office of Arts and Libraries
  Mr. Fisher
  To ask the Minister for the Arts what was the expenditure by the Office of Arts and Libraries in the last financial year on(a) the arts, (b) museums, (c) libraries and (d) others.

  Mr. Luce
  The expenditure of the Office of Arts and Libraries in 1989–90 was as follows:

  £000

  Arts and the Heritage

  178,548

  Museums and Galleries

  154,066

  Libraries

  79,835

  Office of Arts and Libraries Administration

  1,438

  Road accidents on motorways in which one or more vehicles were stationary on the hard shoulder, and casualties resulting from such accidents: by severity: Great Britain: 1980–88

  Accidents

  Casualties

  Fatal

  Serious

  Slight

  Total

  Fatal

  Serious

  Slight

  Total

  1980

  17

  39

  40

  96

  18

  54

  87

  159

  1981

  18

  29

  51

  98

  27

  69

  102

  198

  1982

  13

  32

  53

  98

  19

  66

  103

  188

  1983

  7

  42

  41

  90

  8

  103

  94

  205

  1984

  14

  40

  40

  94

  17

  60

  104

  181

  1985

  20

  42

  56

  118

  24

  65

  129

  218

  1986

  18

  40

  70

  128

  26

  74

  169

  269

  1987

  17

  50

  55

  122

  19

  68

  137

  224

  1988

  22

  31

  56

  109

  31

  46

  160

  237

  Railways
  Mrs. Margaret Ewing
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how many miles of railways in(a) England and (b) Scotland have now been electrified.

  Mr. Portillo
  At 31 March 1989, BR had 2,443 route miles electrified in England and Wales, and 276 route miles electrified in Scotland.

  Mrs. Margaret Ewing
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will list the total proposed expenditure for the next three fiscal years on railways in(a) Greater London and (b) Scotland.
  346
  Details may be found in Volume 7 of the appropriation accounts for 1988–89, published today (HC 15-VII).

  Arts Council (NAO Report)
  Mr. Fisher
  To ask the Minister for the Arts whether he has received the report of the National Audit Office into the Arts Council of Great Britain.

  Mr. Luce
  No.

  Tate Gallery
  Mr. Fisher
  To ask the Minister for the Arts whether it is his intention to assist the Tate gallery, financially, to acquire Johann Zoffany's portrait of Lord Willoughby de Broke and his family at breakfast.

  Mr. Luce
  The Tate gallery receives an annual grant from my Office specifically for purchases for the collection. The sum allocated to the gallery in the current year for such purposes is just over £1·8 million.

  It is for the trustees of each institution, and not for Government, to decide how and when this grant is spent, and whether to apply to other sources of funds which may be available to them to help with this.

TRANSPORT

  Motorways (Accidents)
  Mr. Hayes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how many road accidents have been reported involving stationary vehicles on motorway hard shoulders in each of the years 1980 to 1989; and how many people were(a) injured and (b) killed.

  Mr. Atkins
  The figures requested are in the following table; accident data for 1989 are currently unavailable.

  Mr. Portillo
  Separate figures for railways investment in Greater London alone are not available. BR plans to invest some £65 million in its Scottish region infrastructure over the next three financial years, and the region will also benefit from wider programmes of investment in new rolling stock.

  Mr. Malcolm Bruce
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport (1) if he will make it his policy to encourage use of British Rail by increasing the public subsidy;

  (2) if he will make it his policy to maintain the real value of the public subsidy to British Rail over the next five years;
  347
  (3) what assessment he has made of the environmental implications of a reduction in the public subsidy to British Rail; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Portillo
  Our policy on subsidies for British Rail remains as set out in the Government's response (HC420) to the Transport Select Committee report on the financing of rail services (HC 383). My right hon. Friend plans to announce shortly new three-year objectives for British Rail.

  Vehicle Emissions
  Mr. Malcolm Bruce
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what steps he is taking to discourage emissions of carbon dioxide from tranport sources.

  Mr. Atkins
  Congested road traffic emits more carbon dioxide than traffic moving smoothly. Congestion will be eased by my Department's £4 billion programme of new construction and improvement of motorways and other trunk roads over the next three years. In urban areas we encourage the development of traffic management measures to keep traffic moving. And we are committed to massive investment in railways£3·7 billion in British Rail and at least 1·7 billion in London Underground over the next three years. However, motorists themselves can make a significant contribution to reducing carbon dioxide emissions by keeping their vehicles well tuned and by avoiding driving practices which waste fuel.

  Ms. Ruddock
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to his oral reply to the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford of 4 December,Official Report, column 3, what mechanical means are to be introduced to limit emissions of carbon dioxide from cars; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Atkins
  When new gaseous emission limits were agreed for small cars at last June's Environment Council the Commission undertook to examine the question of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. It is too early to say what they are likely to propose. Meanwhile, carbon dioxide emissions can be minimised by improving fuel consumption. We urge motorists to keep fuel economy in mind. Smooth careful driving and good regular vehicle maintenance are the key.

  London Underground
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how many complaints he has received concerning the operation of automatic ticket barriers at London Underground stations.

  Mr. Portillo
  Four in the last three months.

  Marine Archaeology
  Mr. Fisher
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how many civil servants in his Department work(a) full time and (b) part time on marine archaeology.

  Mr. Atkins
  The Department of Transport's only responsibility concerning marine archaeology is through its administration of the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973, on which five of the Department's civil servants work for a part of their time, amounting in total to about1/2 man/year per annum.

  Uranium Hexafluoride
  Mr. Malcolm Bruce
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what is the quantity of uranium hexafluoride which has been imported through Newhaven for each of the last three years; whether East Sussex county council is notified in advance of shipments; if he expects the level of trade to increase; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Atkins
  [holding answer 6 December 1989]: There are over half a million movements of radioactive material annually. The Department does not collect information on a routine basis on the ports or airports used for imports and exports of such material.

  All movements of nuclear material are conducted in full compliance with the relevant regulations. In the particular case of uraniun hexafluoride through Newhaven there is no statutory requirement for East Sussex county council to be informed.

ENERGY

  Public Appointments
  Mrs. Roe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy how many persons above the age of(a) 60, (b) 65 and (c) 70 years he has appointed to public bodies in each of the last 10 years.

  Mr. Wakeham
  The figures1 2 are as follows:

  Over 60

  Over 65

  Over 70

  1980

  2

  —

  —

  1981

  —

  —

  —

  1982

  3

  —

  —

  1983

  2

  —

  1

  1984

  —

  —

  —

  1985

  3

  —

  —

  1986

  3

  —

  —

  1987

  1

  —

  —

  1988

  —

  —

  —

  1989

  5

  —

  —

  1 In the case of the electricity supply industry data on appointments made prior to 1985 would be available only at disproportionate costs.

  2 The basis of the calculation is to take account of age at initial appointment only. The figures cover only those industries for which the Department has retained responsibility throughout the period.

  Selby (Mineral Transportation)
  Mr. Lofthouse
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he will list the various costings borne by British Coal North Yorkshire for the transportation of minerals from Selby coal field to the Drax power station.

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

  Combined Heat and Power Schemes
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what is the Government's current policy on combined heat and power schemes.

  Mr. Peter Morrison
  The Government fully recognise the environmental and fuel efficiency benefits of CHP and continue to promote and support the technology under the best practice programme of the Energy Efficiency Office.
  349
  The Government are committed to removing legal and institutional barriers which impede the further implementation of CHP. Under the provisions of the Electricity Act licensed CHP operators will have new powers to break streets to lay heat mains. The Act also enables the Director General of Electricity Supply to collect information to monitor the use and application of CHP. The output fom CHP schemes based on non-fossil fuels such as waste or landfill gas will count towards the non-fossil fuel obligation.

  Investment in CHP is a commercial matter for the operators concerned.

  Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946
  Mr. Malcolm Bruce
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he will review the terms of the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946.

  Mr. Michael Spicer
  We plan to change the basic legislative framework of the coal industry after the next general election.

  French Nuclear Reactors
  Mr. Malcolm Bruce
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what analysis his Department has made of the safety of French nuclear reactors.

  Mr. Michael Spicer
  The safety of nuclear reactors in France is the responsibility of the French operators. The Health and Safety Executive's nuclear installations inspectorate maintains regular contact with the French regulatory authority, the Service Central de Surete des Installations Nucleaires.

  Selby (Colliery Spoil)
  Mr. O'Brien
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy (1) what information he has received from British Coal about sites in the north Yorkshire area for the disposal of waste from the Selby coalfield; and if he will make a statement;

  (2) what information he has received from British Coal concerning the threatened closure of the Selby coalfield because of land disposal problems; and if he will make a statement.

  1980

  1981

  1982

  1983

  1984

  1985

  1986

  1987

  1988

  11989

  Number of Accidents

  10

  7

  7

  7

  5

  8

  7

  3

  4

  2

  Number of Casualties

  14

  12

  11

  12

  9

  11

  14

  3

  4

  2

  Number Killed

  2

  0

  0

  1

  1

  0

  0

  0

  1

  1

  1 Up to July.

  Road and Rail Accidents
  Mrs. Margaret Ewing
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will estimate the total economic costs in Scotland of(a) road accidents and (b) railway accidents for each calendar year since 1978.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  The information on the economic cost of road accidents in Scotland for years 1979 to 1988 is as follows. Information is not available for 1978 nor on the cost of railway accidents.

  Estimated costs of injury and non-injury road accidents in Scotland 1979–1988.
  350
  Mr. Michael Spicer
  The disposal of colliery spoil is a matter for British Coal, and I am asking the chairman to write to the hon. Member.

SCOTLAND

  Water
  Mr. Malcolm Bruce
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on the leakage levels from the Scottish water distribution system.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  The level of leakage was estimated in 1984 to be around 40 per cent. of the total water put into supply for Scotland as a whole, but there were substantial regional variations. It is not practicable to eliminate leakage entirely and depending on local circumstances there will be a level which is acceptable in economic terms.

  Guidance on leakage is given in standing technical committee report No. 26, "Leakage Control Policy and Practice", published by the Department of the Environment and the National Water Council in 1980, but policies are determined locally by the water authorities. A report on public water resources by the Scottish Development Department in 1985 proposed that authorities should aim to reduce leakage by a quarter over a period of 10 years. Progress towards this aim depends on the priority authorities give to the task.

  Motorways (Accidents)
  Mr. Hayes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many road accidents have been reported involving stationary vehicles on motorway hard shoulders in each of the years 1980 to 1989; and how many people were(a) injured and (b) killed.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  The number of accidents and casualties in Scotland involving stationary vehicles on motorway hard shoulders for the period 1980–1989 (up to July) are as follows:

  1£ million

  1979

  757

  1980

  680

  1981

  666

  1982

  682

  1983

  602

  1984

  593

  1985

  601

  1986

  589

  1987

  544

  1988

  547

  1 1988 prices.

  Gaelic Language
  Sir Russell Johnston
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what delays have been experienced in meeting demands for Gaelic medium education in Scotland; what steps are being taken to deal with this; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Lang
  The inter-authority standing group on gaelic education has pointed to teacher supply problems as a source of occasional delay for education authorities wishing to meet local demand for Gaelic medium education. The Northern college of education offers a module in bilingual education as part of its primary teaching degree course and is able to accommodate the small number of students who wish to take it. I understand that other colleges of education are considering the introduction of similar modules. As the total number of teachers being trained increases substantially over the next few years, it is hoped that a greater number will opt to study bilingual education.

  Mr. Malcolm Bruce
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, what account he has taken of public feeling, as expressed in a recent referendum, when deciding his current and future policy on borehole drilling at Dounreay; and if he will make a statement.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  I set out the Government's position on radioactive waste disposal in my reply of 9 November to the hon. Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) column 740. Public concern locally is certainly one of the factors which my right hon. and learned Friend will take into account when making his decision on the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority's appeal against Highland regional council's refusal to grant planning permission for test boring at Dounreay.

  Yorkshire

  Humberside

  North

  South East

  Inclusion

  Liquidation

  Inclusion

  Liquidation

  Inclusion

  Liquidation

  Inclusion

  Liquidation

  1981

  1,800

  120

  310

  30

  800

  110

  20,000

  1,600

  1987

  4,200

  180

  820

  50

  2,500

  170

  71,200

  2,200

  1988

  3,800

  140

  680

  60

  2,000

  170

  62,300

  1,980

  1989 (Q1)

  770

  60

  120

  1—

  300

  20

  22,000

  600

  1— nil or negligible.

  Regional analysis of voluntary liquidations not available.

  More information about companies is available in "Companies in 1988–89" published by HMSO.

  Futures and Options Market
  Mr. Butterfill
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what information he has regarding the total volume traded in the futures and options market for each of the last three years; and what proportion of this was in foreign currency earnings.

  Mr. Forth
  A total of 20·1 million contracts were traded on the six London exchanges in 1986, 33 million in 1987, 38 million in 1988, and 38·7 million in the first nine months of 1989 (51·6 million at annual rate). These volumes refer to contracts cleared by the London clearing house and are the most comprehensive measure of turnover. It is not known what proportion of that volume is transacted in foreign currency.

TRADE AND INDUSTRY

  Textile and Footwear Industries
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many(a) textile clothing and (b) footwear firms he and his predecessor have visited over the last 10 years; and if he will name them and the dates of such visits.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  This information is not available. However Ministers in my Department are fully aware of the concerns of both industries, and in recent months there have been a number of meetings with their representatives.

  Rover
  Mr. Grocott
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how much had been paid by British Aerospace for the purchase of Rover(a) on 1 January 1989, (b) on 1 June 1989 and (c) on the latest date for which figures are available.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  No payment of the £150 million consideration for the Government shareholding in the Rover Group has yet been received. Payment is due by 31 March 1990 at the latest, following the clarification of certain tax matters.

  New Companies and Liquidations
  Mr. Austin Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what was the number of new companies established in(a) Yorkshire, (b) Humberside, (c) the Northern region and (d) the south-east region in 1981, 1987, 1988 and to date in 1989; and how many companies went into liquidation in each of these categories in each year.

  Mr. Forth
  On the basis of current registered office addresses, the information requested is as follows:

WALES

  Valleys Initiative
  Mr. Ron Davies
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will identify those developments in the Rhymney valley which he considers to be directly and exclusively the result of his valleys initiative.

  Mr. Peter Walker
  The following projects and activities, which formed part of the key programmes and initiatives identified in "The Valleys: A Programme for the People", have benefited Rhymney valley in 1988–89 and 1989–90.
  353
  Welsh Development Agency (WDA) programmes

  Rhymney valley projects have been supported to date under the new valleys small loan scheme and the valleys enterprise loan scheme.

  The advance factory and workshop programme includes the following projects which are recently completed or nearing completion:
  Two x 3,000 sq ft factories and two 5,000 sq ft factories at the Heads of the Valleys industrial estate.
  One x 10,000 sq ft factory at the Penallta industrial estate.

  The Following bespoke factories have been recently completed or are nearing completion at the Heads of the Valleys industrial estate:

  A 16,500 sq ft extension to the Massilly UK Ltd. factory.

  A 10,000 sq ft extension to the Britcair Ltd. factory.

  A 75,000 sq ft new factory for Klockner Pentapack Ltd.

  Further developments are proposed at the Heads of the Valleys industrial estate, Penallta and New Tredegar. Work will commence on the provision of 20,000 sq ft of workshops at the Bowen industrial estate in the spring of 1990.

  The land reclamation programme includes six schemes totalling 58 acres currently under way at:

  Windsor colliery 1 and 2

  Bedwas colliery surfaces

  Berth Gron quarry

  Bedwas colliery tips

  Groesfaen remedial works

  St. Cenydd school

  A further 15 schemes involving over 500 acres are planned for future years.

  The agency is supporting environmental improvement schemes at:

  Dafydd Williams park, Caerphilly

  Nelson square

  Llanbradach

  A further eight schemes are planned throughout the Rhymney valley in the coming years.

  The Welsh Development Agency's urban renewal unit are currently undertaking the following projects:

  Environmental improvements to:

  New Tredegar

  Caerphilly town centre

  Ystrad Mynach

  Rhymney town centre

  Environmental action plans are being prepared for New Tredegar, Rhymney-Pontlottyn and the Aber valley.

  Welsh Office Support for Industry

  During 1988–89, 49 projects in the Rhymney valley received offers of RDG II and 13 projects received offers of regional selective assistance or regional enterprise grant with associated investment costs of £19·4 million and the prospect of some 1,000 jobs.

  During 1989–90, to the end of October, two projects have received offers of RDG II and 11 projects received offers of regional selective assistance or regional enterprise grant with associated investment costs of £7·3 million and the prospect of some 200 jobs.

  Urban Programme

  Welsh Office urban programme allocations made in 1988–89 and for 1989–90 include the following projects in the Rhymney valley:

  Redevelopment of Bargoed bus station

  Provision of small workshops, Dyffryn industrial estate

  Provision of small workshops, Lawn industrial estate

  Provision of grants and loans within commercial and industrial improvements areas

  Valley youth enterprise centre, Tredomen workshops

  Provision of workshop units at Bowen industrial estate

  Provision of headquarters for Pontlottyn boys club

  Improvements to Bargoed citizens advice bureau

  354

  Rhymney valley environmental clean-up campaign

  Rhymney valley enterprise agency

  Tyr-y-Berth IT centre

  Rhymney valley handicapped transport association

  Rhymney valley home start

  Restoration of Llancaiach Fawr

  Construction of community centre at Phillipstown, New Tredegar

  Refurbishment of Ystrad Mynach boys club

  Dial-a-ride Rhymney valley

  Grants and loans in Rhymney and Pontlottyn commercial improvement areas.

  Urban Development Grant
  Welsh Office gave final approval of one project for UDG support in 1988–89:
  Development of 23 houses at Cambrian street/Hill street, Rhymney. Since the scheme's introduction in April 1989 urban investment grant has been awarded for the conversion of the former Whitbread brewery in Rhymney into 32,000 sq ft of office space.

  Welsh Office Support for Housing

  In 1988–89 the Welsh Office approved special allocations for the following enveloping schemes:
  Brithdir (185 houses)
  Various block schemes throughout county (342 houses)

  In 1989–90, support has been given for block schemes at Pontlottyn involving 109 houses, and at various other locations throughout the county involving 181 houses.

  Welsh Office Support for Health and Social Services

  Support has been given to the community nursing in the valleys scheme, with two staff operational in the Rhymney valley, with the assistance of 50 per cent. Welsh Office funding.

  This is not a comprehensive list of activities. Further projects are being considered under the headings listed above. In addition the area stands to benefit from initiatives which have a wider geographical coverage and from other ongoing main programmes.

  National Rivers Authority
  Mr. Ron Davies
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales, pursuant to his answer of 24 November to the hon. Member for Caerphilly,Official Report, column 119, if he will make it his policy to send copies of the National Rivers Authority report to the hon. Members for Caerphilly, Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands) and Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) when it is available.

  Mr. Wyn Roberts
  It is for the National Rivers Authority to determine to whom it circulates such reports.

  Homelessness
  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what is the average number of persons registered as homeless by each of the district councils in Wales for the latest available date.

  Mr. Grist
  The number of cases and persons in households accepted as homeless by local authorities during the second quarter of 1989 (April to June) are shown in the following table:

  Number of cases and persons accepted as homeless; April-June 1989

  Welsh districts

  Cases

  Persons

  Aberconwy

  18

  48

  Alyn and Deeside

  53

  130

  Arlon

  6

  15

  Blaenau Gwent

  87

  211

  Brecknock

  25

  60

  Cardiff

  308

  718

  355

  Welsh districts

  Cases

  Persons

  Carmarthen

  16

  43

  Ceredigion

  20

  56

  Colwyn

  12

  42

  Cynon Valley

  41

  119

  Delyn

  80

  217

  Dinefwr

  12

  23

  Dwyfor

  20

  47

  Glyndwr

  8

  17

  Islwyn

  32

  78

  Llanelli

  39

  89

  Lliw Valley

  16

  45

  Meirionnydd

  21

  51

  Merthyr Tydfil

  35

  100

  Monmouth

  32

  77

  Montgomeryshire

  11

  22

  Neath

  77

  142

  Newport

  274

  725

  Ogwr

  148

  389

  Port Talbot

  40

  78

  Preseli Pembrokeshire

  13

  31

  Radnorshire

  6

  12

  Rhondda

  35

  78

  Rhuddlan

  14

  48

  Rhymney Valley

  76

  168

  South Pembrokeshire

  14

  41

  Swansea

  42

  94

  Taff Ely

  33

  95

  Torfaen

  112

  221

  Vale of Glamorgan

  108

  305

  Wrexham Maelor

  103

  176

  Ynys Mon

  6

  21

  Wales total

  1,993

  4,832

  Housing
  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what is the average number of persons registered on the housing waiting list by each of the district councils in Wales for the latest available date.

  Mr. Grist
  The information is not collected centrally.

  Mr. Barry Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what is the increase in real and cash terms in money given to Tai Cymru in the next financial year; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Grist
  We are providing for an increase of over £27 million in the funds made available to Tai Cymru in the next financial year. This is a cash increase of almost 42 per cent. over the previous year and represents an increase in real terms of almost 35 per cent.

  This significantly increased level of public sector investment increases the gross programme for Tai Cymru to over £102 million next financial year. This and the additional private finance levered in through the use of mixed funding arrangement will enable a record number of homes for people in housing need to be provided by the housing association movement in Wales.

  Public Appointments
  Mrs. Roe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales how many persons above the age of(a) 60, (b) 65 and (c) 70 years he has appointed to public bodies in each of the last 10 years.

  Mr. Peter Walker
  It would be disproportionately costly to provide the information required. Wherever possible, however, it is my policy to appoint younger individuals to such bodies.

  Bilingual Road Signs
  Mr. Wigley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will take steps to require that all temporary roadwork signs must be comprehensively bilingual.

  Mr. Wyn Roberts
  The Traffic Signs (Welsh and English Language Provisions) Regulations and General Directions 1985 (S.I. 1985 No. 713) prescribe the bilingual signs which may be used in Wales, including temporary roadwork signs. These regulations are to be reviewed along with the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 1981 (S.I. 1981 No. 859).

  Community Health Councils
  Mr. Alan Williams
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what proposals he has for the financing and composition of the community health councils in Wales.

  Mr. Grist
  Arrangements for the financing and composition of community health councils in Wales are among the issues to be considered in the light of the current consultation exercise on the future structure of community health councils in Wales. A consultation paper outlining my right hon. Friend's proposals to reduce the number of community health councils in Wales was issued at the end of November and comments have been requested by 28 February 1990. A copy of the consultation paper has been sent to all hon. Members in Wales.

  Full-time Education (Staying-on Rates)
  Mr. Barry Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales (1) if he will make a statement on staying-on rates in full-time education in each of the counties of Wales;

  (2) what was the staying-on rate in full-time education by education authority, as a percentage of the population aged 16 years in 1987–88 and 1983–84.

  Mr. Wyn Roberts
  The information is shown in the table:

  Percentage of 16-year-olds staying on in full-time education

  Academic year

  LEA

  Per cent.

  Per cent.

  1983–84

  1987–88

  Clwyd

  52

  49

  Dyfed

  49

  50

  Gwent

  48

  49

  Gwynedd

  49

  54

  Mid Glamorgan

  49

  49

  Powys

  54

  59

  South Glamorgan

  43

  49

  West Glamorgan

  50

  51

  Low Birth Weight
  Mr. Barry Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what was the number of low birth weight babies born; and what it was as a proportion of all births for each Welsh health district for 1983–84 and the latest available year.

  Mr. Grist
  Information derived from all registered births to residents of health districts in Wales is shown in the table:
  357

  Health district residence

  Births under 2,500 grams

  1Number

  2Percentage

  Number

  2Percentage

  Clwyd

  339

  7·0

  333

  6·3

  East Dyfed

  142

  5·8

  162

  5·9

  Gwent

  411

  7·4

  425

  6·6

  Gwynedd

  171

  6·2

  197

  6·5

  Mid Glamorgan

  535

  7·1

  520

  6·6

  Pembrokeshire

  95

  6·9

  106

  7·5

  Powys

  75

  5·9

  78

  5·6

  South Glamorgan

  358

  6·7

  388

  6·4

  West Glamorgan

  302

  6·6

  258

  5·4

  1 Estimated.

  2 Percentage of all births.

  Welsh Development Agency
  Mr. Barry Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what is his assessment of the real terms increase in cash and as a percentage in the Welsh Development Agency budget for 1990–91 as against 1989–90; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Peter Walker
  The information is shown in the following table:

  Gross provision

  On-year increase

  1989–90

  1990–91

  cash

  per cent.

  £m

  £m

  £m

  Cash

  130·4

  150

  19·6

  15

  1989–90 prices1

  130·4

  142·9

  12·5

  9·6

  Note:

  1 Derived using latest GDP deflator.

  The WDA's gross budget for 1990–91 is 76 per cent. more than the 1987–88 budget, an increase of 46 per cent. in real terms.

  Non-manual Workers
  Mr. Barry Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what is the percentage of households whose head is a non-manual worker by education authority.

  Mr. Wyn Roberts
  The latest available information comes from the 1986 Welsh inter-censal survey. The percentages classified to non-manual groups are shown in the following table:

  Percentage of households headed by non-manual1 head, 1986

  County

  Per cent.

  Clwyd

  37·5

  Dyfed

  38·2

  Gwent

  34·2

  Gwynnedd

  43·1

  Mid Glamorgan

  29·9

  Powys

  41·5

  South Glamorgan

  47·3

  West Glamorgan

  35·0

  1 Professional, managers, employers, intermediate and junior non manual. Includes farmers working on own account. Includes retired heads of household whose former occupation was non-manual.

  Third Dee Crossing
  Mr. Barry Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what moneys he intends to make available to the Clwyd city council for the building of the third Dee crossing; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Wyn Roberts
  The capital resources to be made available to local authorities in 1990–91 were announced 358
  on 29 November. They include 50 per cent. transport grant towards the £803,000 Clwyd county council plan to spend on the third Dee crossing. The non-grant element will be covered by supplementary credit approvals.

  Babies (Intensive Care)
  Mr. Barry Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what was the total number of intensive care baby cots available in Wales in 1983–84, or the nearest available year; and what is the number in each health authority and their locations within each health authority.

  Mr. Grist
  The available information, which relates to special care baby cots is shown in the table:

  Average daily available cots 1983–84

  DHA/Hospital

  Per cent.

  Clwyd

  H M Stanley

  19·0

  Ysbyty Maelor

  24·0

  East Dyfed

  Bronglais

  2·0

  West Wales General

  8·0

  Gwent

  Nevill Flail

  15·0

  Royal Gwent

  25·0

  Gwynedd

  St. Davids

  21·0

  Mid Glamorgan

  Bridgend General

  15·0

  East Glamorgan

  10·0

  Merthyr

  8·0

  Pembrokeshire

  Withybush

  13·0

  South Glamorgan

  University Hospital of Wales

  24·38

  St. Davids

  16·05

  West Glamorgan

  Morriston

  14·67

  Neath General

  15·00

  National Museum of Wales
  Mr. Fisher
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what information he has on the admission figures for the National Museum of Wales in each of the past five years.

  Mr. Wyn Roberts
  Reported attendance figures for all branches of the National Museum of Wales in each of the past five years to 1988 are shown in the following table.

  Year

  Attendances

  1984

  758,043

  1985

  765,249

  1986

  723,173

  359

  Year

  Attendances

  1987

  1,036,535

  1988

  838,820

  Teachers (First Aid Training)
  Mr. Roy Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales (1) what proposals he has to ensure that every school has at least one teacher trained in first aid to statutory level;

  (2) what proposals he has to increase the number of teachers trained in first aid both to statutory level and to a lower level.

  Mr. Wyn Roberts
  Under common law, local authorities have a general responsibility to take reasonable care for the health and safety of pupils and students in their care. Their duties as an employer relating to first aid provision are defined in the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and regulations made thereunder.

  Notification of food poisoning1: for the first 11 four-week periods 1988 and 1989

  Number of notifications

  Population

  Rates per 1,0002

  County district

  1988

  1989

  1988

  1988

  1989

  *Alyn and Deeside

  35

  156

  72·6

  0·5

  2·1

  *Colwyn

  69

  102

  54·8

  1·3

  1·9

  *Delyn

  74

  264

  65·1

  1·1

  4·1

  *Glyndwr

  51

  72

  41·5

  1·2

  1·7

  *Rhuddlan

  53

  80

  56·1

  0·9

  1·4

  *Wrexham Maelor

  119

  179

  117

  1

  1·5

  Carmarthen

  29

  30

  55·8

  0·5

  0·5

  Ceredigion

  63

  64

  67

  0·9

  1

  Dinefwr

  7

  15

  38·9

  0·2

  0·4

  Llanelli

  23

  34

  74·1

  0·3

  0·5

  Preseli Pembrokeshire

  114

  71

  70·7

  1·6

  1

  South Pembrokeshire

  28

  25

  41 9

  0·7

  0·6

  Blaenau Gwent

  7

  3

  77·3

  0·1

  0

  Islwyn

  65

  34

  66·4

  1

  0·5

  Monmouth

  13

  20

  81·3

  0·2

  0·2

  Newport

  77

  45

  128·1

  0·6

  0·4

  Torfaen

  4

  7

  92·4

  0

  0·1

  Aberconwy

  28

  22

  54·1

  0·5

  0·4

  Arfon

  13

  10

  55·2

  0·2

  0·2

  Dwyfor

  3

  18

  27

  0·1

  0·7

  Meirionnydd

  2

  12

  31·6

  0·1

  0·4

  Ynys Mon (Isle of Anglesey)

  34

  37

  71

  0·5

  0·5

  Cynon Valley

  15

  19

  64·3

  0·2

  0·3

  Merthyr Tydfil

  5

  10

  58·1

  0·1

  0·2

  Ogwr

  20

  35

  137·5

  0·1

  0·3

  Rhondda

  9

  27

  76·6

  0·1

  0·4

  Rhymney Valley

  36

  69

  104·5

  0·3

  0·7

  Taff-Ely

  8

  10

  94·9

  0·1

  0·1

  Brecknock

  18

  36

  41·1

  0·4

  0·9

  Montgomeryshire

  18

  17

  51·2

  0·4

  0·3

  Radnorshire

  7

  0

  22·6

  0·3

  0

  Cardiff

  289

  450

  283·9

  1

  1·6

  Vale of Glamorgan

  78

  132

  119·5

  0·7

  1·1

  Port Talbot

  35

  41

  49

  0·7

  0·8

  Lliw Valley

  37

  70

  61·8

  0·6

  1·1

  Neath

  61

  71

  65·2

  0·9

  1·1

  Swansea

  219

  328

  186·9

  1·2

  1·8

  Source: OPCS weekly return (WR series). Figures are provisional.

  1 Notifications formally made and cases ascertained by other means.

  2 OPCS mid-year estimates of population for 1989 not yet available, rates for 1989 based on mid-1988 population estimates.

  Note: Just over half (444) of the 853 notifications of food poisoning in the districts of Clwyd in the first 11 four-week periods of 1989 were recorded in the four-week period up to 18 August 1989. It was during this latter period that the major north Wales salmonella outbreak occurred.

  Mr. Michael
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will give the number of reported cases of food poisoning for each district in Wales for each month in the current year, with the comparable figures for 1988.
  360
  By means of the guidance note "Arrangements for First Aid Provision in Schools and Colleges" prepared by the Department of Education and Science and the Welsh Office in consultation with interested bodies and issued, in September 1987, the Government encourage local education authorities to ensure that a proportion of the teaching staff of every school and college should have attended a course of training and have acquired a certificate in first aid, issued by an organisation approved by the Health and Safety Executive.

  Food Poisoning
  Mr. Michael
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will give the number of reported cases of food poisoning per 1,000 of the population for each district in Wales with the comparable figures for 1988.

  Mr. Grist
  [holding answer 30 November 1989]: Available data on recent food poisoning notifications are shown in the following table:

  Mr. Grist
  [holding answer 30 November 1989] :Available data on food poisoning notifications on a four-weekly basis are shown in the tables:
  361

  Notfications of food poisoning1: for each of the thirteen 4-week periods 1988 and 1989

  County Districts

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  122

  132

  Alyn and Deeside

  1988

  1

  1

  1

  2

  5

  6

  7

  5

  5

  0

  2

  0

  1

  1989

  4

  4

  5

  3

  0

  5

  9

  92

  19

  9

  6

  —

  —

  Colwyn

  1988

  11

  1

  2

  4

  4

  14

  4

  8

  7

  5

  9

  11

  2

  1989

  4

  1

  2

  1

  2

  19

  8

  26

  25

  5

  9

  —

  —

  Dclyn

  1988

  13

  2

  1

  1

  4

  16

  8

  5

  13

  4

  7

  0

  3

  1989

  6

  1

  3

  5

  1

  8

  3

  181

  32

  11

  13

  —

  —

  Glyndwr

  1988

  2

  2

  3

  1

  3

  6

  14

  5

  4

  3

  8

  2

  0

  1989

  0

  2

  3

  3

  7

  7

  7

  28

  8

  0

  7

  —

  —

  Rhuddlan

  1988

  11

  0

  2

  8

  4

  5

  5

  8

  3

  2

  5

  2

  1

  1989

  4

  0

  0

  5

  1

  7

  7

  27

  15

  7

  7

  —

  —

  Wrexham Maelor

  1988

  5

  5

  7

  5

  9

  13

  18

  22

  16

  8

  11

  12

  2

  1989

  4

  15

  6

  6

  11

  25

  17

  38

  21

  20

  16

  —

  —

  Carmarthen

  1988

  1

  1

  0

  4

  1

  4

  3

  2

  2

  5

  6

  16

  5

  1989

  0

  4

  0

  6

  1

  3

  1

  2

  1

  10

  2

  —

  —

  Ceredigion

  1988

  3

  2

  0

  2

  5

  10

  8

  6

  13

  7

  7

  3

  3

  1989

  2

  1

  6

  1

  4

  10

  14

  8

  12

  5

  1

  —

  —

  Dinefwr

  1988

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  3

  0

  1

  1

  2

  0

  1

  0

  1989

  2

  2

  1

  1

  1

  0

  4

  0

  4

  0

  —

  —

  —

  Llanelli

  1988

  0

  1

  0

  1

  0

  1

  4

  0

  5

  5

  6

  3

  1

  1989

  1

  1

  0

  2

  0

  0

  4

  5

  10

  5

  6

  —

  —

  Preseli Pembrokeshire

  1988

  4

  4

  22

  16

  10

  13

  16

  5

  5

  11

  8

  21

  9

  1989

  6

  6

  6

  5

  15

  11

  5

  4

  0

  9

  4

  —

  —

  South Pembrokeshire

  1988

  2

  2

  2

  1

  2

  4

  4

  4

  4

  3

  0

  4

  0

  1989

  2

  2

  2

  1

  7

  1

  1

  3

  1

  3

  2

  —

  —

  Blaenau Gwent

  1988

  0

  0

  1

  2

  0

  0

  1

  0

  0

  2

  1

  0

  0

  1989

  0

  1

  0

  0

  0

  0

  1

  1

  0

  0

  0

  —

  —

  Islwyn

  1988

  3

  3

  5

  13

  8

  9

  9

  5

  7

  1

  2

  2

  1

  1989

  1

  1

  4

  7

  2

  1

  2

  10

  3

  3

  0

  —

  —

  Monmouth

  1988

  1

  1

  0

  0

  3

  0

  1

  0

  2

  0

  5

  5

  1

  1989

  2

  2

  1

  0

  1

  4

  0

  4

  0

  5

  1

  —

  —

  Newport

  1988

  4

  7

  1

  3

  9

  6

  7

  14

  4

  12

  10

  3

  2

  1989

  0

  6

  9

  1

  0

  2

  10

  6

  4

  3

  4

  —

  —

  Torfaen

  1988

  I

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  1

  1

  —

  0

  1

  1

  0

  1989

  0

  0

  1

  1

  0

  0

  2

  1

  1

  1

  0

  —

  —

  Aberconwy

  1988

  1

  0

  0

  0

  1

  2

  3

  7

  4

  6

  4

  2

  0

  1989

  2

  2

  1

  1

  1

  2

  0

  6

  3

  1

  3

  —

  —

  Arfon

  1988

  3

  2

  0

  0

  0

  3

  1

  2

  1

  0

  1

  2

  0

  1989

  1

  0

  1

  1

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  5

  2

  —

  —

  Dwyfor

  1988

  1

  0

  0

  0

  0

  1

  0

  1

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  1989

  0

  0

  0

  0

  1

  2

  1

  2

  10

  2

  0

  —

  —

  Meirionnydd

  1988

  0

  0

  0

  0

  1

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  1

  0

  0

  1989

  0

  1

  0

  0

  1

  2

  2

  3

  1

  0

  2

  —

  —

  Ynys Mon

  1988

  4

  2

  0

  6

  6

  3

  1

  2

  6

  3

  1

  1

  3

  (Isle of Anglesey)

  1989

  1

  4

  0

  2

  6

  2

  2

  7

  4

  4

  5

  —

  —

  Cynon Valley

  1988

  2

  1

  1

  1

  1

  2

  5

  0

  0

  2

  0

  4

  0

  1989

  3

  1

  1

  2

  1

  0

  1

  1

  5

  2

  2

  —

  —

  Merthyr Tydfil

  1988

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  1

  0

  0

  4

  0

  0

  1

  1989

  1

  0

  1

  0

  0

  1

  2

  2

  0

  3

  0

  —

  —

  Ogwr

  1988

  0

  1

  0

  0

  2

  3

  9

  4

  1

  0

  0

  0

  0

  1989

  0

  0

  7

  0

  1

  1

  7

  10

  2

  2

  5

  —

  —

  Rhondda

  1988

  0

  0

  0

  2

  0

  0

  1

  3

  1

  2

  0

  0

  1

  1989

  1

  1

  2

  4

  1

  1

  5

  5

  2

  2

  3

  —

  —

  Rhymney Valley

  1988

  1

  1

  0

  1

  4

  6

  5

  12

  2

  3

  1

  3

  1

  1989

  1

  2

  7

  5

  3

  5

  3

  5

  25

  6

  7

  —

  —

  Taff-Ely

  1988

  0

  1

  0

  1

  0

  0

  0

  1

  2

  0

  3

  1

  0

  1989

  0

  0

  0

  1

  0

  0

  0

  3

  4

  1

  1

  —

  —

  Brecknock

  1988

  2

  0

  1

  0

  1

  5

  3

  2

  2

  1

  1

  1

  1

  1989

  4

  1

  0

  4

  6

  1

  3

  3

  10

  2

  2

  —

  —

  Montgomeryshire

  1988

  5

  0

  0

  1

  3

  1

  2

  4

  1

  0

  1

  2

  0

  1989

  0

  0

  1

  1

  2

  0

  1

  4

  4

  4

  0

  —

  —

  Radnorshire

  1988

  0

  0

  0

  0

  3

  4

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  362 363

  Notfications of food poisoning1: for each of the thirteen 4-week periods 1988 and 1989

  County Districts

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  122

  132

  1989

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  —

  —

  Cardiff

  1988

  2

  17

  14

  19

  12

  20

  30

  26

  66

  54

  29

  18

  10

  1989

  23

  43

  29

  24

  25

  31

  31

  66

  89

  43

  46

  —

  —

  Vale of Glamorgan

  1988

  0

  1

  2

  1

  2

  4

  5

  17

  25

  14

  7

  3

  1

  1989

  7

  37

  5

  1

  3

  10

  9

  16

  24

  4

  16

  —

  —

  Port Talbot

  1988

  0

  4

  1

  2

  3

  7

  3

  9

  1

  3

  2

  6

  1

  1989

  0

  0

  4

  4

  5

  12

  5

  1

  2

  3

  5

  —

  —

  Lliw Valley

  1988

  2

  3

  1

  1

  2

  5

  1

  9

  2

  8

  3

  4

  1

  1989

  1

  2

  4

  1

  5

  13

  7

  9

  11

  12

  5

  —

  —

  Neath

  1988

  2

  5

  1

  3

  6

  12

  10

  7

  7

  7

  1

  4

  1

  1989

  1

  2

  6

  4

  5

  13

  11

  5

  8

  7

  9

  —

  —

  Swansea

  1988

  11

  5

  3

  8

  22

  33

  17

  40

  19

  30

  31

  16

  10

  1989

  18

  29

  30

  28

  19

  37

  35

  55

  34

  22

  21

  —

  —

  1 Notifications formally made and cases ascertained by other means.

  2 Data for the last two 4-week periods of 1989 not yet available.

  Source: OPCS Weekly Return (WR Series). Figures are provisional.

HEALTH

  Mentally Ill Patients
  Mr. Pawsey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on the National Health Service and Community Care Bill and services for mentally ill patients.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  I refer my hon. Friend to the reply my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mr. Coombs) on 14 November at column 193, following which the Government's White Paper on community care entitled "Caring for People" was published. I also refer my hon. Friend to the letter my right hon. and learned Friend sent to all members on 20 October 1989 about the implementation of the National Health Service review and its implications for, among other client groups, mentally ill patients.

  Medical Equipment (Advice)
  Mr. Fearn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what is his Department's normal practice with regard to consultation with interested parties and the seeking of external advice before taking a decision to contribute to the funding of the purchase of special medical equipment;

  (2) what is his Department's working definition of external advice used in the context of consultation with interested parties before taking a decision to provide funds for the purchase of special medical equipment.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  There is no set procedures. Each case would be considered on its merits.

  Kidney Stone Patients
  Mr. Rooker
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he plans to take steps to expand treatment for kidney stone patients in the west midlands region.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  The provision of treatment services in the west midlands is a matter for the regional health authority.

  Funding (North Western RHA)
  Mr. Jack
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health which organisations in the north-west have made representations to him on his proposed funding arrangements for the North Western regional health authority for the financial year 1990–91

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  We have received a number of representations about the funding arrangements for the North Western regional health authority for 1990–91 and subsequent years from hon. Members and organisations in the north west including district health authorities and community health councils.

  Nottingham DHA
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what has been the effect of changes to the National Health Service during his tenure as Secretary of State in the Nottingham district health authority.

  Mr. Kenneth Clarke
  In common with the rest of the NHS, Nottingham health authority has continued to strive to provide the best possible service for its population. The district received an initial revenue allocation of £180·7 million for 1989–90 from Trent regional health authority which is a real terms increase of 2·9 per cent. over the previous year and one of the highest increases in the region. The authority is planning to expand its patient services, both in-patient and day cases, during the year. Recent developments include improved facilities at Nottingham city hospital for renal and radiotherapy services and for the elderly mentally infirm. The district has also been working hard to improve its mental illness services and following the development of a range of modern, community-based services was able to close Saxondale hospital, a large institution for the mentally ill, at the end of last year.

  Tower Hamlets DHA
  Ms. Gordon
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will specify the hospitals and services which are included in the bid from within Tower Hamlets district health authority for self-governing status.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  The sponsors of the expression of interest in NHS trust status submitted for the
  365
  London Hospital Group propose to include the London hospitals at Whitechapel, Mile End, and St. Clements together with associated community services to provide the bulk of services currently provided by Tower Hamlets health authority.

  Health Service Reform
  Mr. Blunkett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what estimate he has made of the additional administrative computing and allied costs associated with his proposed changes in the National Health Service, including opting out of hospitals, over the next three years; and what is his estimate of the increases which will be required in numbers of staff in each tier of the National Health Service.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State announced that an additional £82 million is being made available this year, and an additional £257 million next year, to the NHS in England, for initiatives arising from the White Paper "Working for Patients". It is not possible at this stage to estimate the full cost of the changes, because the White Paper builds on developments that have been taking place over a number of years. These include resource management and improvements in management information, including computerisation. In addition, the total cost will depend on such factors as the number of NHS trusts and GP practice fund holders which are approved.

  The changes will increase the efficiency of the service, and create opportunities for achieving better value for money so that extra costs will be outweighed by savings.

  The estimate of the increase in staff needed for the changes includes up to 3,000 at hospital level and up to 400 in regions and family practitioner committees. In the longer term, as regional and district health authorities reduce their own functions, total staffing levels are expected to fall. The number of extra staff needed by the prescription pricing authority, up to 300, is expected to reduce significantly in two or three years.

  Mr. Kennedy
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he has had any representations about the use of National Health Service staff and resources to prepare hospitals and other medical units to become self-governing medical trusts prior to the passing of the relevant legislation; and if he will make a statement.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  No.

  Mr. Kennedy
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will detail in the Official Report any instructions or guidelines he has issued to health authorities, hospitals and any other relevant medical units about anticipating or taking account of possible changes, which may be made to the details of the National Health Service and Community Care Bill during its parliamentary progress; and if he will make a statement.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  It is for Parliament to determine the final form of the National Health Service and Community Care Bill. It would not be sensible to issue instructions or guidance seeking to anticipate such changes (if any) as Parliament may approve. Health authorities are, of course, fully aware of the Government's proposals set out in "Working for Patients", Cm 555. It has frequently been pointed out to them that some of these plans will require primary legislation before they can be fully implemented.

  Patient Records (Ownership)
  Mr. Hayes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he has obtained the views of the Committee on Safety of Medicines, the Medicines Commission or the Medicines Control Agency regarding the opinion offered by Mr. Mummery QC on the ownership of patient records regarding the effects of this advice on clinical research in the United Kingdom.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  Yes.

  Mr. Hayes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what assessment he has made of the implications of Mr. Mummery's opinion on the ownership of patient records for the conduct of fundamental clinical research, clinical trials and post-marketing surveillance studies which involve the collection and analysis of anonymised patient records.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  This is still being considered.

  Mr. Hayes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health whether he has received representations expressing contrary views to those of Mr. Mummery QC relating to the ownership of general practitioners' patient records held on computer; and if he will make a statement.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  Yes. The Government intend to consult interested parties on draft guidance to be issued in January 1990 regarding this and related subjects.

  Prescriptions
  Mr. Jim Lester
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what would have been the cost to the Exchequer over the last 12-month period for which figures are available if all appliance prescriptions written by dispensing doctors in England and Wales had been dispensed(a) by pharmacy contractors and (b) by appliance contractors.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  This information is not available in the form requested and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

  Ambulance Service
  Mrs. Gorman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will estimate the average cost of non-emergency ambulance journeys.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  Information in the form requested is not available centrally. However, the average costs per patient carried and per mile in England for 1986–87, the latest figures currently available, are £13.78 and £1·90 respectively.

  Mrs. Gorman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will estimate the numbers of patients transported by the ambulance service in the most recent year for which figures are available in(a) emergency situations and (b) non-emergency situations.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  The number of emergency and non-emergency patient journeys for 1987–88, by ambulance authority, is given in the table. One patient journey is defined as a single trip to, or return from, a place where a patient receives medical care or treatment.
  367

  Total number of patients' journeys 1987–88 England

  Ambulance authority

  Emergency cases

  Non-emergency cases

  England

  1,851,442

  14,438,568

  Cleveland

  21,918

  221,744

  Cumbria

  13,473

  224,772

  Durham

  26,863

  265,389

  Northumbria Metropolitan

  57,773

  724,951

  Humberside

  39,703

  461,285

  North Yorkshire

  17,620

  236,918

  West Yorkshire Metropolitan

  106,659

  876,540

  Derbyshire

  27,176

  312,637

  Leicestershire

  23,480

  350,151

  Lincolnshire

  14,465

  185,363

  Nottinghamshire

  49,602

  404,703

  South Yorkshire Metropolitan

  41,187

  534,992

  Cambridgeshire

  13,977

  91,312

  Norfolk

  21,667

  202,229

  Suffolk

  9,955

  211,567

  Bedfordshire

  16,274

  127,987

  Hertfordshire

  31,023

  275,063

  Essex

  52,543

  286,745

  East Sussex

  34,520

  279,208

  Kent

  48,925

  458,392

  Surrey

  28,537

  269,245

  West Sussex

  18,786

  156,902

  London Ambulance Service

  383,301

  1,531,179

  Dorset

  20,166

  129,169

  Hampshire

  36,440

  256,148

  Wiltshire

  11,043

  58,274

  Isle of Wight

  3,244

  22,419

  Berkshire

  20,943

  143,561

  Buckinghamshire

  13,062

  154,281

  Northamptonshire

  15,525

  184,835

  Oxfordshire

  9,797

  119,565

  Avon

  26,675

  24,717

  Cornwall and Isles of Scilly

  13,352

  64,206

  Devon

  30,542

  251,200

  Gloucestershire

  12,406

  160,350

  Somerset

  9,037

  113,989

  Hereford and Worcester

  15,591

  184,042

  Shropshire

  11,096

  111,383

  Staffordshire

  32,629

  284,609

  Warwickshire

  10,880

  110,325

  West Midlands Metropolitan

  109,789

  874,514

  Cheshire

  33,033

  431,748

  Mersey Metropolitan

  108,541

  677,250

  Lancashire

  58,969

  436,387

  Greater Manchester Metropolitan

  149,255

  956,322

  Source: KA32 Summary.

  Mrs. Gorman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what representations he has received in favour of opening to competitive tender the management and organisation of the routine transport ambulance service.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  We have received no such representations. I refer my hon. Friend to the reply my hon. Friend gave to hon. Member for Warrington, North (Mr. Hoyle) on 30 November 1989, at column 411.

  Public Appointments
  Mrs. Roe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many persons above the age of(a) 60, (b) 65 and (c) 70 years he has appointed to public bodies in each of the last 10 years.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  This information could be provided only at disproportionate cost, since the Department is responsible for 144 public bodies with the present number of appointments totalling almost 10,000.

  NHS Reform
  Mr. Cousins
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how the cash allocation system to regions and family practitioner committees outlined in his letter to hon. Members of 20 October will calculate and weight the number and needs of chronically sick patients.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  Allocations for the hospital and community health services will continue to be based on the size, age and health of regions' populations. This will ensure that regional health authority budgets take account of the presence of chronically sick patients, by the use of a proxy measure of morbidity and higher cost-weightings for elderly people living in the region.

  Allocations to RHAs in respect of the indicative prescribing budget scheme will not be cash-limited. GPs will, as now, be able to prescribe any clinically necessary medication for their patients.

  Mr. Cousins
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how the contracts district health authorities will make with providers of patient services will reflect given levels and quality of service as outlined in his letter to hon. Members of 20 October.

  Mr. Kenneth Clarke
  The level and quality of services to be provided will be agreed between the district health authority and the provider and specified in the contract. The degree of precision used will increase over time as health authorities become more expert at assessing their population's requirements, as information about hospital activity improves and as better-quality measures are developed. My Department will assist this process by providing guidance and disseminating examples of good practice. However, even the simplest contracts will make much clearer than now what services are to be provided in return for a particular level of funding. Patients can only benefit as a result.

  Community Care
  Mr. Wigley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make it his policy to undertake further research into the special needs of seriously mentally ill people before the implementation of the community care proposals.

  Mr. Freeman
  The proposals for services for people with a mental illness set out in "Caring for People" build on established good practice. They envisage that health and social services professional staff will assess the health and social care needs of individual patients and judge whether these can realistically be met in the community. We plan to commission research into the effectiveness of our care programme approach in due course.

  Children Act
  Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what is his estimate of the numbers of people who will require training in(a) the Health Service and (b) the voluntary sector as the Children Act is implemented and what resources he will supply to assist with such training.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  From information held centrally is is not possible to identify the numbers of health services staff whose duties will be affected by the Children Act. Information on staff of voluntary organisations is not held centrally.
  369
  As part of the Department's phased programme of awareness and specialist training for local authority and other agency staff, the Department launched on 1 December 1989 "An Introduction to the Children Act". The guide will be of use to all social services staff and other practitioners who will be concerned with implementation of the Children Act. Copies of the guide have been sent to local authorities, and the National Council for Voluntary Child Care Organisations for them to distribute to their members, regional health authorities, district health authorities, royal colleges and other relevant agencies. A dissemination and training strategy for implementation of the Children Act is being developed in consultation with the statutory and voluntary agencies.

  National Care Homes Association
  Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health when he last met representatives from the National Care Homes Association; and if he will take steps to include unregistered homes in its inspection process.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State last met representatives from the National Care Homes Association at its annual conference on 19 October 1989.

  Under part I of the Registered Homes Act 1984, local social services authorities are required to inspect private and voluntary residential care homes catering for four or more residents. There are no plans at present to extend this requirement to cover homes with fewer than four places. But, as our White Paper "Caring for People" makes clear, our intention is that the quality of all residential care provided and monitored for local authorities by the independent sector should be safeguarded by clearly defined contractual arrangements.

  Crack
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much money has been spent by his Department on research on crack and its effects.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  The Department will continue to keep abreast of research developments both here and abroad. Together with the Home Office, we are hoping to fund, at an estimated cost of £300,000, a three-year research project to study the prevalence and patterns of use of cocaine and crack.

  Blood
  Mr. Terry Fields
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what quantities of voluntarily donated blood have been sold to private medical organisations; what quantities have been sold abroad; what are the amounts of profit accrued from these sales over the last 12 months; and if he will make a statement.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  Since 1 April 1984 charges have been made to the private sector to recover the costs to the NHS of collection, processing, handling and transport of blood. No charge is made for the blood itself, and no profit is made on any blood or blood components supplied. The last 12-month period for which complete records are currently held is the 12 months ending 31 December 1988. During that year 75,961 units of blood were issued to non-NHS hospitals. No NHS blood was 370
  sent abroad during 1988. Blood collected by the NHS would be sent outside the United Kingdom only on humanitarian grounds, in cases of emergency. In such cases, again, no charge would be made for the blood itself.

  Ambulance Staff
  Mr. Shersby
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what is the current pay differential between ambulance staff who are non-emergency workers and those classified as emergency workers.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  Under current pay rates, which have been effective since 1 April 1988, the comparison between the basic rate for non-emergency basic ambulance man/woman grade and the emergency staff grades of qualified and leading ambulance man/woman is as follows:

  £ per annum

  Ambulanceman/woman

  7,340

  Qualified ambulanceman/woman

  10,093

  Leading ambulanceman/woman

  10,888

  Staff in the London ambulance service receive an additional payment of £981 per annum.

  Under the new rates offered by the management side on 5 December and effective from 1 April 1989 the comparison is as follows:

  Outside London £ per annum

  London ambulance service £ per annum

  Ambulanceman/woman

  8,001

  9,232

  Qualified ambulanceman/woman

  11,001

  12,384

  Leading ambulanceman/woman

  11,868

  13,305

  In addition, emergency staff groups required to use paramedical skills gained from extended training to NHS training authority standard will receive an additional £500 per annum. The management side has also undertaken to agree with the trade union side, by 28 February 1990, a national framework for the recognition of staff specially trained, either locally to standards other than of the NHS training authority, or partially to those standards, with payments backdated to 1 April 1989.

  Residential Nursing Care
  Ms. Harman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will list those companies, voluntary and other organisations, other than health authorities and local authorities, which are involved in providing residential nursing care.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  This information is not collected centrally.

  North Tynemouth District Health AN0
  Mr. Trotter
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many additional staff will be provided in the North Tynemouth district health authority to support the new consultant post in trauma and orthopaedics which he recently approved.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  [holding answer 4 December 1989]: The level of staffing in district health authorities is

  371
  a matter for the DHA concerned. I understand that additional staff are being provided to support the new consultant post. The hon. Member may wish to contact the chairman of North Tyneside health authority for details.

FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

  Schengen Agreement
  Mr. Morley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he has considered the implications of the Schengen agreement and supplementary agreements; and if he will make a statement.

  Ms. Quin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he has considered the implications of the Schengen agreement and supplementary agreements; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Maude
  The Schengen agreement is an arrangement between France and the Federal Republic of Germany, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg to abolish land frontier controls between their countries. Their work is separate from the discussions on free movement of people which are taking place among all member states of the European Community.

  We will naturally be interested in the experience of the Schengen Partners in reducing frontier controls.

  Rajiv Ghandi
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he has written to Mr. Rajiv Ghandi since the general election in India.

  Mr. Sainsbury
  No, but my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister sent a personal message to Mr. Ghandhi on his departure from office.

  India
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on Britain's current relations with India.

  Mr. Sainsbury
  We have excellent relations with India. We look forward to continuing our close and friendly links with the new Indian Government.

  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he next plans to visit India.

  Mr. Sainsbury
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs looks forward to visiting India, although he has no current plans to do so.

  NATO (Institutional Links)
  Dr. Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what institutional links exist between(a) the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the United Nations, (b) the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the North Atlantic Assembly and (c) the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the European Commission.
  372
  Mr. Maude
  There are no institutional links between NATO and the United Nations or between NATO and the EC. NATO maintains a close working relationship with the North Atlantic Assembly.

  Korea
  Mr. Michael
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what response he received from President Roh of Korea during his recent visit when he drew attention to the concern felt by many people in this country about the way in which dogs and cats are reared and slaughtered for food in Korea.

  Mr. Sainsbury
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs did not raise this matter with President Roh.

  I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave to him on 30 November, at column 419.

  Mr. Michael
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what response he received from the Korean Foreign Minister when he drew his attention to the revulsion felt by many people in this country at the treatment of animals in Korea.

  Mr. Sainsbury
  The Korean Foreign Minister indicated that he was well aware of the strength of feeling in Britain on this issue. The Korean Government have assured us that they are making strenuous efforts to prevent cruelty to animals.

  Visa Applications
  Mr. Mullin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what progress has been made regarding the visa applications by the Vietnamese film director, Mr. Tran Van Thuy, and his cameraman, Mr. Do Khanh Toan, who wish to visit the United Kingdom between 21 and 27 December.

  Mr. Sainsbury
  These applications are under active consideration and a decision will be made very shortly.

  Strasbourg Summit
  Mr. Wigley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make it his policy to raise at the European summit meeting in Strasbourg with his French counterpart(a) the prospects of France joining the 1968 nuclear non-proliferation treaty, (b) the policy of the French Government regarding a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty and (c) the possibility of a joint Anglo-French officials working party to bilaterally discuss the non-proliferation treaty and test ban treaty.

  Mr. Maude
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs does not intend to raise these matters at the European Council meeting in Strasbourg.

  Mr. Wigley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what plans he has to raise the issue of the fourth review conference of the nonproliferation treaty with his counterparts representing member states during the Strasbourg summit.

  Mr. Maude
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs does not intend to raise this subject at the European Council meeting in Strasbourg.

  Semtex
  Mr. Winnick
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if further inquiries are to be made with the Czechoslovakian authorities arising from the more recent political development over its manufacture and exporting of Semtex.

  Mr. Maude
  We have been discussing this matter with the Czechoslovak Government for over a year. They have stated publicly that all exports of Semtex ceased in 1982.

  Recent political developments in Czechoslavakia have not affected our exchanges which have resulted in a joint initiative for an international convention on the marking for detection of plastic and sheet explosives. This is under consideration in the International Civil Aviation Organisation.

  E1 Salvador
  Mr. Winnick
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if the ambassador of E1 Salvador has been called to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office over the murder of six priests and others in E1 Salvador; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Sainsbury
  I refer the hon. Member to my reply to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Mossley Hill (Mr. Alton) on 16 November, at column 416.

  Cambodia
  Mrs. Clwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many letters and telephone calls he has received on the subject of Cambodia in the last month; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Sainsbury
  The Department has received over 12,000 letters and approximately 50 telephone inquiries on Cambodia in the last month.

  Overseas Aid
  Mrs. Clwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he will set a timetable to honour the commitment to meet the United Nations target of providing overseas aid at the level of 0·7 per cent. of gross national product; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Sainsbury
  I refer the hon. Member to the answer given by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to the hon. Member for Monklands, West (Mr. Clarke) on 6 June, at column 129.

AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

  Veterinary Surgeons
  Mrs. Margaret Ewing
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will list in the Official Report for each of the last 10 years the number of veterinary surgeons permanently employed by his Department; and what is his estimate of the number of veterinary surgeons who will be required over each of the next four years.

  Mr. Maclean
  The number of veterinary surgeons permanently employed in the state veterinary service of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food for each of the last 10 years is as follows:
  374

  Year

  Number

  1980

  580·5

  1981

  563·5

  1982

  557·0

  1983

  549·0

  1984

  539·5

  1985

  527·5

  1986

  506·5

  1987

  464·5

  1988

  444·5

  1989

  422·0

  We foresee a need for an increase in the number of veterinary surgeons in the state veterinary service over the next four years, particularly for food safety work including meat hygiene.

  In April this year, Dr. Ewan Page was appointed to chair a committee to provide advice on this. Its report is awaited.

  Suckler Cow Premia
  Mr. Martyn Jones
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food on what basis areas are selected for payment of suckler cow premia under the special provision of herd reduction due to natural circumstances.

  Mr. Curry
  In deciding which areas should be designated as being affected by drought account was taken of meteorological data on a county basis concerning rainfall levels and soil moisture deficits likely to result in serious depletion of natural fodder supplies.

  Cyromazine
  Mr. Ron Davies
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he has authorised the use of any products containing cyromazine; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Maclean
  Two products have been granted licences under the Medicines Act 1968 for use in preventing blow fly strike on sheep.

  Salmonella
  Mr. Ron Davies
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what provision exists for the testing of flocks of broiler chicken for salmonella.

  Mr. Maclean
  There is no statutory requirement for testing broiler chickens for salmonella. However, the requirements for testing and for the compulsory slaughter of infected flocks apply to broiler breeding flocks in order to minimise the risk of producing infected progeny.

  Bovine Offal
  Mr. Ron Davies
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what advice he has given concerning the disposal of bovine offal currently banned for human consumption.

  Mr. Maclean
  The offal must be dealt with in accordance with the Bovine Offal (Prohibition) Regulations 1989.

  Bovine Somatotropin
  Mr. Matthew Taylor
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, pursuant to the answer of 1 December to the hon. Member for South Shields (Dr.
  375
  Clark), Official Report, column 480, which three bovine somatotropin products have been authorised to undergo field trials; and what is the location of the authorised field trials.

  Mr. Maclean
  The three recombinant BST products authorised for trials are those which have satisfied the safety and other requirements of the Medicines Act 1968. Further details, including the location of the trials, are notified by the companies concerned to my Department in confidence under the terms of section 118 of the Act.

  Poultry (Slaughter)
  Mr. Ralph Howell
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many(a) flocks and (b) birds, have been slaughtered as a result of Zoonoses Orders; and what is the estimated number and value of loss of eggs which will result.

  Mr. Maclean
  Up to 1 December, 1,005,290 birds from 83 flocks infected with salmonella have been compulsorily slaughtered. It is not possible to give the details of the estimated number and value of loss of eggs which will result except at disproportionate cost.

  Milk Quota
  Mr. Colvin
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what are the criteria upon which he is allocating the 1 per cent. increase in Britain's milk quota.

  Mr. Curry
  I am currently considering the available options together with the Secretaries of State for Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

  Anthrax Vaccine
  Mr. Hood
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on the current availability of an anthrax vaccine for cows.

  Mr. Maclean
  There is no commercial source of supply of anthrax vaccine in the United Kingdom at present, so in the event of an outbreak my Department has plans to make a vaccine available on an emergency basis.

  Prosecutions
  Mr. Ron Davies
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many prosecutions his Department initiated in each of the last three years in respect of offences under(a) the Protection of Animals Act 1911, (b) the Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1968, and (c) the Intensive Units Regulations; and what was the date of the last conviction obtained by his Department under each of these provisions.

  Mr. Maclean
  The prosecutions initiated were:

  11987

  21988–89

  31989

  1911 Act

  6

  8

  3

  1968 Act

  3

  3

  0

  1 1 January to 31 December.

  2 1 January 1988 to 31 March 1989.

  3 1 April 1989 to present.

  No prosecutions under the Welfare of Livestock (Intensive Units) Regulations 1978 have been instigated by my Department in any of the last three years.
  376
  The last convictions obtained were on 13 November 1989 under the 1911 Act, and on 26 May 1989 under the 1968 Act.

  Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy
  Mr. Ron Davies
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what advice he gives the veterinary service concerning the use of caesarian sections on cows suspected of bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

  Mr. Maclean
  Caesarian sections are not advised for preparturient cows. However, if a cow is unable to calve normally a caesarian section may be carried out at the discretion of the veterinary surgeon. Such animals must be isolated in approved accommodation whilst calving and for 72 hours afterwards. The placenta, uterine discharges and bedding must be burned or buried.

  Farm Pollution Control
  Dr. Cunningham
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how much his Department has contributed in grant aid to farm pollution control under the Mersey basin campaign for every year since 1984.

  Mr. Curry
  This information is not available in the form requested. In the Crewe and Preston divisional offices, which cover the area including the Mersey basin and which spearheaded my Department's contribution to this important campaign, total expenditure on waste facilities under the agriculture improvement scheme, which ran from 1985 to 1988, was as follows:

  1986–7

  £367,819

  1987–8

  £238,317

  1988–9

  £97,362

  In addition, prior notifications by farmers of intention to claim grant waste facilities under the farm and conservation grant scheme, which replaced the agriculture improvement scheme in February, were until the end of October:

  Crewe
  506 notifications covering grant expenditure of £4,002,139.

  Preston
  182 notifications covering grant expenditure of £209,164.

  My Department has also supported this campaign through intensive publicity and advice to farmers including visits to farms identified by the water authority and, more recently, the National Rivers Authority.

  Multi-annual Guidance Programme
  Mrs. Margaret Ewing
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what date Her Majesty's Government became a signatory to the multi-annual guidance programme; and who were the signatories on behalf of Her Majesty's Government.

  Mr. Curry
  The United Kingdom multi-annual guidance programme was approved by the Commission's Standing Committee for the Fishing Industry in accordance with the procedure laid down in article 47 of Regulation 4028/86 on 11 December 1987.

  Mrs. Margaret Ewing
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food on what dates the multi-annual guidance programme was debated in the House prior to Her Majesty's Government signing the agreement.
  377
  Mr. Curry
  The entire MAGP was not debated but one of its main components concerning vessel grants was discussed in the House on 26 October 1987.

  Mrs. Margaret Ewing
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what consultations his Department held with representatives of the fishing industry prior to agreement to the multi-annual guidance programme as part of the common fisheries policy.

  Mr. Curry
  Full consultations were held with fishing industry representatives before the adoption of Council Regulation 4028/86, of which the multi-annual guidance programme forms a part.

  Fishing (Hague Preference)
  Mrs. Margaret Ewing
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food on what date and in which countries the 1978 Hague preference has been implemented by the European Community on behalf of coastal areas dependent on fishing.

  Mr. Curry
  The 1976 Hague preference has been implemented by the European Community once, in respect of the United Kingdom North sea haddock quota in 1989.

  EC Fisheries Inspectorate
  Mrs. Margaret Ewing
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what proposals his Department intends to make to increase appointments to, and the responsibilities of, the Community fisheries inspectorate.

  Mr. Curry
  Under the common fisheries policy, enforcement is a matter for individual member states. The United Kingdom has, however, always been in the forefront in supporting the need for an effective Community inspectorate to ensure that member states meet their responsibilities. In recent years, the powers of the inspectorate have been strengthened, and it has become a real force throughout the Community. The inspectorate's complement has also been increased and currently stands at 18.

  Captive Birds
  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food why he has delayed publishing the report on computer study of mortality in quarantine of captive birds in 1988.

  Mr. Maclean
  The figures will be made available when the implications of the mortality study have been assessed. I hope to make an announcement shortly.

HOME DEPARTMENT

  Parole
  Dr. Kim Howells
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the staff complement of the parole unit now; and what it was 12 months ago.

  Mr. Mellor
  The staff complement of the parole unit is 88, as against 79 in December 1988.

  Mr. Barron
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the average delay beyond parole eligibility date in each of the four prison department regions.
  378
  Mr. Mellor
  Information is not maintained in the form requested. We estimate that in England and Wales as a whole about 30 per cent. of cases are delayed by an average of two and a half months.

  Prison Population
  Mr. Cash
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what are the latest figures for the total prison population; and what those figures were one year ago.

  Mr. Yeo
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what are the latest figures for the total prison population; and what were those figures one year ago.

  Mr. Waddington
  On Friday 1 December, the total prison population stood at 48,245. This compares with 50,172 held on Friday 2 December last year.

  Mr. Knox
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people were in prison at the most recent count.

  Mr. Canavan
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the total prison population in the United Kingdom.

  Mr. Mellor
  On Friday 1 December the total prison population in England and Wales stood at 48,245. The responsibility for prisons in Scotland and Northern Ireland rests with my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland respectively.

  Mr. Tom Clarke
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many mentally ill and mentally handicapped persons are at present in prisons in England and Wales.

  Mr. Mellor
  On 31 March 1989, the latest date for which information is available, 215 prisoners in England and Wales were considered by medical officers to meet the criteria for detention in hospital, as set out in the Mental Health Act 1983. 185 of those prisoners were considered to be mentally ill, within the meaning of the Act. The term "mentally handicapped" is not one of the 4 specific categories of mental disorder defined in part I of the Act.

  Visas
  Mr. Caborn
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he proposes to extend the number of countries whose nationals will require visas to enter the United Kingdom.

  Mr. Robert Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he proposes to extend the number of countries whose nationals will require visas to enter the United Kingdom.

  Mr. Anderson
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he proposes to extend the number of countries whose nationals will require visas to enter the United Kingdom.

  Mr. Watson
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he proposes to extend the number of countries whose nationals will require visas to enter the United Kingdom.
  379
  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  Visa policy and practice are kept under constant review but it is long established practice not to comment on the possibility of extending visa requirements to any particular country.

  Broadcasting
  Mr. Wigley
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what discussions he has had with the broadcasting authorities in Wales on the future of television and radio services in Wales.

  Mr. Mellor
  I have regular contact with the Welsh Fourth Channel Authority (S4C), the IBA and the BBC. In particular, there have been a number of discussions with S4C about our proposals for Welsh broadcasting after 1992.

  Mr. Butcher
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he next plans to meet the governors of the British Broadcasting Corporation to discuss their effectiveness in achieving political objectivity in news reporting.

  Mr. Mellor
  I meet the chairman and governors of the BBC from time to time to discuss a wide range of broadcasting matters. Responsibility for ensuring impartiality in the reporting of news rests with the BBC.

  Mr. Geraint Howells
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he last met the chairman of the Independent Broadcasting Authority; and what matters were discussed.

  Mr. Illsley
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he next plans to meet the chairman of the Independent Broadcasting Authority to discuss broadcasting.

  Mr. Morgan
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he last met the chairman of the Independent Broadcasting Authority to discuss broadcasting.

  Mr. Mellor
  My right hon. and learned Friend keeps in regular touch with the chairman of the IBA on a wide range of broadcasting matters.

  Mr. Amess
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will meet the chairman of the Independent Broadcasting Authority to discuss the future broadcasting of hospital radio.

  Mr. Mellor
  Following the hon. Member's meeting with my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Mr. Renton) in July and the subsequent meeting of the National Association of Hospital Broadcasting Organisations with the IBA, consideration is being given to their suggestion that a dedicated frequency be provided for hospital radio. The outcome will be made known to the proposed new radio authority, which it is intended will be responsible for licensing all non-BBC radio services, including hospital radio.

  Mr. Wheeler
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will place in the Library a copy of his letter of 4 December to the hon. Member for Westminster, North on the decriminalisation of television licence fee evasion as recommended in paragraph 152 of the Home Affairs Committee's Third Report of Session 1987–88.
  380
  Mr. Waddington
  We have now done so.

  Electronic Tagging
  Mr. Gill
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what progress has been made on electronic monitoring as both a condition of bail and as an alternative to remand in custody.

  Mr. Wood
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what progress has been made on electronic monitoring as both a condition of bail and as an alternative to remand in custody.

  Mr. John Patten
  As at 26 November, 32 defendants have been granted bail subject to the condition that they are electronically monitored. Under the three experimental schemes now in progress the courts are asked to impose electronic monitoring as a condition of bail only in cases where a defendant would otherwise have been remanded in custody.

  Mr. Boateng
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will now consider abandoning plans to introduce the electronic tagging system.

  Mr. John Patten
  No. Decisions on the future of electronic monitoring will be taken when the experimental schemes now in progress have been evaluated.

  Prison Management
  Mr. Lofthouse
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will reconsider plans to reorganise prison management in the light of concerns expressed by the Prison Governors Association.

  Mr. Mellor
  No decisions have been made on the recommendations of the team which reviewed the organisation and location of the prison service at above establishment level. I have met representatives of the Prison Governors Association to discuss the report and have received a written submission from them. Their views and all the other comments received are being carefully considered.

  Violent Crimes
  Mr. Winnick
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps he plans to take to curb the increase in violent crimes.

  Mr. John Patten
  Measures to prevent these offences include tougher maximum penalties for violent offences; increases in police manpower; targeting of high crime areas by police; measures to deal with alcohol-related disorder; education, research and crime prevention. Further measures, including new action to tackle domestic violence, are being taken forward by the ministerial groups on crime prevention and women's issues.

  "Practical Ways to Crack Crime"
  Mr. Jack
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many copies of the Home Office booklet, "Practical Ways to Crack Crime", have now been distributed.

  Mr. John Marshall
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many copies of the Home Office booklet, "Practical Ways to Crack Crime", have now been distributed.
  381
  Mr. John Patten
  Two and a half million copies of the first two editions and nearly 300,000 of the recently published third edition of our handbook "Practical Ways to Crack Crime" have now been distributed in England and Wales. We have also produced a new, shorter version called the Family Guide, over one and a half million copies of which have been distributed.

  Drugs
  Mr. Hannam
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many seizures of illicit drugs have been made by police and Customs in 1989 to date; and what is the estimated value of drugs seized.

  Mr. Mellor
  As I stated in my reply to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) on 5 December, in the period 1 January to 6 November 1989 Customs reported a provisional total of 6,830 seizures of controlled drugs. It is estimated that these would have had an equivalent street value of some £230 million. Comprehensive figures are not yet available for police seizures in 1989; the latest information is for 1988 when police made 32,947 seizures and customs 5,288 seizures of controlled drugs.

  Mr. Cryer
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the control of drug trafficking at frontiers by 1992.

  Mr. Mellor
  As we have said on previous occasions, the Government are determined to maintain the frontier checks necessary to control drug trafficking and to promote close co-operation at the operational level between law enforcement agencies. A European committee to combat drugs has been established and held its inaugural meeting in Brussels on 1 December. My right hon. and learned Friend has nominated me to serve on the committee as United Kingdom national drug coordinator. Among the priorities which the committee has been asked to address are those of strengthening of controls at external frontiers and development of closer international co-operation between law enforcement agencies, as well as the need for early ratification by all member states of the 1988 UN convention against illicit drug trafficking.

  Mr. Tim Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what are the latest totals for assets confiscated from convicted drug traffickers and assets frozen pending trials for drug trafficking offences.

  Sir Michael Shaw
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what are the latest totals for assets confiscated from convicted drug traffickers and assets frozen pending trials for drug trafficking offences.

  Mr. Thorne
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what are the latest totals for assets confiscated from convicted drug traffickers and for assets frozen pending trials for drug trafficking offences.

  Mr. John Patten
  In 1988, £8·1 million was ordered to be confiscated by the courts under the Drug Trafficking Offences Act 1986. About £600,000 is known to have been recovered in confiscation orders during the financial year 1988–89; this mainly relates to orders made in 1987. The national drugs intelligence unit estimates that confiscation and restraint orders exceeding £13 million and £20 million respectively have been made since the Act came into force in January 1987.
  382
  Mr. Donald Thompson
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many police officers are now employed in regional crime squad drugs wings.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  There were 228 officers on the strength of regional crime squads drugs wings on 27 November. In No. 9 region, which covers the Metropolitan police district, drugs investigation is not undertaken by the regional crime squad but by the Metropolitan police central drugs squad. Its strength on 27 November was 110.

  My right hon. and learned Friend announced on 23 November at columns 12–13 that he is prepared to approve a further 51 police posts for regional crime squads specifically for their work in connection with drugs.

  Mr. Murphy
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the estimated revenue cost of the new anti-drugs network he recently announced.

  Mr. Mellor
  Subject to Parliament's approval of the Supply Estimates, up to £2·3 million is being made available in 1990–91 for the drug prevention initiative which was announced on 11 October 1989.

  Sir Fergus Montgomery
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many British drug liaison officers are now stationed overseas.

  Mr. Mellor
  There are at present 17 United Kingdom drug liaison officers based abroad.

  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many times and on what dates the ministerial group on drugs has met since its creation.

  Mr. Mellor
  The ministerial group on the misuse of drugs has met 39 times, on the following dates:1984–23 July, 1 October, 1 November, 12 December
  1985–29 January, 4 March, 27 March, 7 May, 5 June,
  25 June, 30 September, 29 October, 10 December
  1986–29 January, 26 February, 16 April, 20 May, 24 June, 6 October, 18 November, 17 December
  1987–26 January, 4 March, 27 April, 6 July, 29 September, 18 November
  1988–25 January, 16 March, 4 May, 27 June, 29 September, 21 November
  1989–9 February, 11 April, 23 May, 26 July, 16 October, 6 December

  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the street value of the drugs destroyed by the authorities over the past 10 years; and if he will state the figure in pounds sterling for each year.

  Mr. David Mellor
  Records are not kept centrally of drugs destroyed following seizures by police or customs. Information about seizures of controlled drugs over the past 10 years was published in Home Office Statistical Bulletin Issue 30/89 "Statistics of the Misuse of Drugs: Seizures and Offenders Dealt With, United Kingdom, 1988" a copy of which is in the Library.

  Alcohol
  Mr. Pawsey
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the deadline for the experimental ban on drinking in public places in Coventry and other areas; what representations he has received as to the success of the experiment; and what has been the reduction in prosecutions for offences involving drunkenness in those areas as a result of the experimental byelaws.
  383
  Mr. John Patten
  Expiry dates for the experimental byelaw, which is in force in seven areas, range from 31 October 1990 to 16 July 1991. In each case we shall review the results some months before the date when the byelaw would lapse and reach conclusions on the benefits for these and other areas. We shall seek to determine how far a relationship can be established with changes in prosecutions for offences involving drunkeness, but this will not be straightforward because the byelaw is in force only in certain designated zones within the seven local authority areas, for which separate statistics for prosecutions have not been kept in the past.

  We have received requests for the byelaw from 105 local authorities.

  Mr. Sheerman
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what action he will be taking to implement the proposals contained in the Prison Reform Trust's report "Drink, Delinquency and Prison", for alcohol counselling and education for offenders with drink problems in young offender institutions.

  Mr. Mellor
  The recommendations contained in this report are being considered. Regime activities in young offender institutions seek to assist inmates to develop personal responsibility and self-discipline and a more positive lifestyle. Many institutions already tackle problems of alcohol abuse as part of their education and training programmes.

  Passports
  Mr. Turner
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what was the average time taken between receiving a passport application and its issue at each passport office in 1989; and what he expects the position to be in 1990.

  Mr. Wall
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what was the average time taken between receiving a passport application and its issue at each passport office in 1989; and what he expects the position to be in 1990.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  Passport applications are processed according to the applicant's travel requirements, with priority being given to urgent cases. As a result, processing times in a given period vary considerably, and averages are not recorded.

  The maximum processing times in working days for straightforward non-urgent postal applications at the six United Kingdom passport offices during 1989 were as follows:

  Days

  London

  48

  Liverpool

  110

  Peterborough

  76

  Newport

  51

  Glasgow

  64

  Belfast

  10

  Most applications were processed well within these maximum periods.

  Processing times should be reduced next year, as a result of enhancements made to the computer systems at the Glasgow and Liverpool offices, the employment of additional permanent staff at all offices, and other measures.

  Domestic Violence
  Mr. Tracey
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many specialist units now exist within the Metropolitan police force coping with cases of domestic violence; and what were the comparable figures one and two years ago, respectively.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  There are currently 28 such units. One year ago there were 10 and two years ago one.

  Pub Bombings
  Mr. Meale
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he last met Lord Denning to discuss the case of the Birmingham Six.

  Mr. Waddington
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply given to a question from the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Mr. Michie) earlier today.

  Mr. Nellist
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many of the Surrey police officers investigating the Guildford pub bombings visited Queen's road police station in Birmingham during the course of their inquiries.

  Mr. Mullin
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many of the Surrey police officers investigating the Guildford pub bombings visited Queen's road police station in Birmingham during the course of their inquiries.

  Mr. Andrew F. Bennett
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many of the Surrey police officers investigating the Guildford pub bombings visited Queen's road police station in Birmingham during the course of their inquiries.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  I refer the hon. Members to the written answers given on 30 October at column 40, in which I explained in reply to the hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) that no Surrey officer visited Queen's road while those arrested in relation to the Birmingham pub bombings were detained there. No record now exists which will indicate whether any Surrey officer visited Queen's road at any other time.

  Ms. Primarolo
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he has copies of the alleged confessions of the men convicted of the Birmingharn bombings.

  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he has copies of the alleged confessions of the men convicted of the Birmingham pub bombings.

  Dr. Reid
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he has copies of the alleged confessions of the men convicted of the Birmingham pub bombings.

  Mr. John Patten
  I refer the hon. Members to the reply given to a question from the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) earlier today.

  DPP
  Mr. Macdonald
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he next plans to meet the Director of Public Prosecutions.
  385
  Mr. John Patten
  At the moment there are no plans for such a meeting.

  Asylum Seekers
  Mr. Cummings
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what estimate he has made of the number of people likely to seek asylum in(a) the United Kingdom and (b) the European Economic Community over the next five years; and if he intends to review procedures for processing such applications.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  There is no basis for reliably estimating the numbers of asylum applications in future years. Figures for individual countries are liable to considerable fluctuation as a result of changing circumstances, but the overall upward trend seems likely to continue.

  Procedures are kept under constant review and adjusted where necessary.

  Drink Driving
  Mr. Latham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what discussions he has recently held with representatives of the Magistrates Association about guidelines for consistency in sentencing persons convicted of driving after consuming excessive alcohol; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. John Patten
  None. Sentencing is a matter for the courts within their overall powers as laid down by legislation and in accordance with the guidance given by the Court of Appeal. I understand that the Magistrates Association is considering the issue of new guidelines on road traffic sentencing to its members.

  Police
  Mr. Robert G. Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many uniformed police officers have returned to beat duties in the last five years as a result of civilianisation and other initiatives, in the Metropolitan police district and in England and Wales.

  Dr. Michael Clark
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many uniformed police officers have returned to beat duties in the last five years as a result of civilianisation and other value-for-money initiatives in the Metropolitan police district and in England and Wales.

  Mr. Marland
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many uniformed police officers have returned to beat duties in the last five years as a result of civilianisation and other value-for-money initiatives, in the Metropolitan police district and in England and Wales.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  We estimate that since the 1983–84 financial year up until December 1988, the latest period for which information is readily available, the Metropolitan police have returned 608 officers to operational duties, and

  Force

  1980

  1981

  1982

  1983

  1984

  1985

  1986

  1987

  1988

  Avon and Somerset

  1

  —

  —

  2

  —

  2

  3

  1

  2

  Bedfordshire

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  1

  Cambridgeshire

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Cheshire

  2

  —

  —

  1

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  City of London

  —

  1

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Cleveland

  1

  —

  1

  2

  1

  —

  —

  —

  1

  386
  provincial forces 3,343, through civilianisation. Estimates of police time saved through other value for money initiatives are not available.

  Mr. Battle
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he last met the chief constable of the West Midlands police; and what was discussed.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply that I gave to a question from the hon. Member for Bradford, North (Mr. Wall) on 5 December at column 181.

  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he has received any indication from Mr. Don Doreston, the assistant chief constable of Derbyshire, as to when his report into the allegations that members of the Leicestershire police force were involved in the leaking of information to Mr. Joseph Wambaugh will be completed.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  I understand that the investigation into the allegations of improper disclosure of information by officers from the Leicestershire constabulary has now been completed. The report has been submitted to the Director of Public Prosecutions and to the Police Complaints Authority, who supervised the investigation, for their consideration.

  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many police constables left their jobs in each police authority from 1978 to the present date(a) to retire or (b) to take other jobs outside the police force.

  Mr. Lloyd
  The information is not readily available and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  General information on police officers retiring or resigning from provisional forces is available at appendix 9 in reports of Her Majesty's chief inspector of constabulary, copies of which are available in the Library.

  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many police officers of all ranks have been injured requiring hospitalisation by police authority for the latest year for which figures are available.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  The information is not collected centrally and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many police officers of all ranks have been (i) suspended for seven days or more and (ii) dismissed by each police authority for each year from 1980 to the current year.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  Information relating to numbers of officers suspended from duty pending investigation of alleged misconduct is not held centrally.

  The table shows numbers of officers punished in disciplinary proceedings by dismissal from their force. Figures for the current year are not yet available.
  387

  Force

  1980

  1981

  1982

  1983

  1984

  1985

  1986

  1987

  1988

  Cumbria

  —

  —

  —

  1

  —

  —

  1

  —

  —

  Derbyshire

  —

  —

  —

  1

  —

  —

  —

  3

  3

  Devon and Cornwall

  —

  —

  —

  —

  1

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Dorset

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Durham

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Dyffd-Powys

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  2

  —

  —

  —

  Essex

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  2

  2

  —

  Gloucestershire

  —

  —

  —

  1

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Greater Manchester

  1

  3

  3

  5

  5

  1

  5

  2

  2

  Gwent

  1

  —

  —

  —

  —

  1

  —

  —

  —

  Hampshire

  —

  —

  1

  3

  —

  —

  —

  1

  —

  Hertfordshire

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Humberside

  —

  1

  —

  1

  1

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Kent

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Lancashire

  —

  —

  —

  5

  1

  —

  2

  2

  2

  Leicestershire

  1

  —

  1

  1

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Lincolnshire

  —

  —

  —

  1

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Merseyside

  —

  —

  —

  1

  3

  —

  2

  1

  2

  Metropolitan

  16

  27

  8

  10

  14

  9

  12

  15

  19

  Norfolk

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Northamptonshire

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  1

  1

  Northumbria

  3

  4

  2

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  5

  North Wales

  —

  —

  —

  2

  —

  —

  —

  —

  1

  North Yorkshire

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  1

  —

  —

  —

  Nottinghamshire

  —

  2

  1

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  South Wales

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  2

  2

  3

  5

  South Yorkshire

  —

  —

  —

  —

  1

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Staffordshire

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Suffolk

  —

  2

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Surrey

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  2

  1

  1

  —

  Sussex

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  1

  —

  —

  Thames Valley

  —

  —

  2

  1

  1

  —

  2

  —

  —

  Warwickshire

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  1

  —

  West Mercia

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  West Midlands

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  1

  —

  —

  West Yorkshire

  1

  1

  —

  —

  2

  2

  3

  1

  —

  Wiltshire

  —

  1

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will produce a series of tables showing, as a percentage of the population, for each police authority by(a) police constables, (b) sergeants, (c) inspectors, (d) chief inspectors, (e) superintendents, (f) chief superintendents and (g) higher ranking officers in descending order by the ratio of (i) police constables, (ii) sergeants, (iii) inspectors, including chief inspectors, (iv) superintendents, including chief superintendents and (v) ranks above chief superintendent to population.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  I shall write to the hon. Member.

  Chief Constable

  Deputy Chief Constable

  Assistant Chief Constable

  Chief Superintendent

  Superintendent

  Chief Inspector

  Inspector

  Sergeant

  Constable

  Total

  Avon and Somerset

  1

  1

  3

  13

  38

  70

  148

  474

  2,322

  3,070

  Bedfordshire

  1

  1

  1

  5

  15

  19

  51

  143

  810

  1,046

  Cambridgeshire

  1

  1

  1

  5

  13

  26

  56

  192

  903

  1,198

  Cheshire

  1

  1

  2

  8

  22

  29

  105

  290

  1,410

  1,868

  Cleveland

  1

  1

  2

  7

  20

  28

  94

  238

  1,098

  1,489

  Cumbria

  1

  1

  1

  7

  17

  25

  70

  187

  847

  1,156

  Derbyshire

  1

  1

  2

  8

  26

  37

  100

  263

  1,355

  1,793

  Devon and Cornwall

  1

  1

  3

  13

  37

  47

  135

  455

  2,154

  2,846

  Dorset

  1

  1

  1

  6

  17

  22

  68

  195

  946

  1,257

  Durham

  1

  1

  2

  6

  17

  27

  78

  216

  1,027

  1,375

  Dyfed Powys

  1

  1

  1

  7

  13

  23

  36

  155

  698

  935

  Essex

  1

  1

  3

  11

  31

  59

  126

  438

  2,134

  2,804

  Gloucestershire

  1

  1

  1

  6

  15

  22

  54

  174

  890

  1,164

  Greater Manchester

  1

  1

  6

  28

  92

  137

  408

  1,075

  5,240

  6,988

  Gwent

  1

  1

  1

  5

  15

  17

  48

  154

  765

  1,007

  Hampshire

  1

  1

  3

  10

  32

  55

  127

  478

  2,441

  3,148

  Hertfordshire

  1

  1

  2

  9

  24

  31

  89

  262

  1,232

  1,651

  Humberside

  1

  1

  2

  9

  23

  38

  105

  324

  1,489

  1,992

  388
  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will produce a table showing for each police authority the numbers of (i) police constables, (ii) sergeants, (iii) inspectors, including chief, (iv) superintendents, including chief and (v) ranks above chief superintendent for each year from 1978 to the present.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  Information on numbers and ranks of police officers in each force is available for each year up until 31 December 1988 in the annual reports of Her Majesty's chief inspector of constabulary, copies of which are available in the Library.

  Force establishments by rank as at December 1989 are shown in the table:
  389

  Chief Constable

  Deputy Chief Constable

  Assistant Chief Constable

  Chief Superintendent

  Superintendent

  Chief Inspector

  Inspector

  Sergeant

  Constable

  Total

  Kent

  1

  1

  3

  11

  36

  48

  169

  443

  2,256

  2,968

  Lancashire

  1

  1

  3

  13

  42

  69

  159

  522

  2,363

  3,173

  Leicestershire

  1

  1

  2

  7

  25

  35

  93

  292

  1,304

  1,760

  Lincolnshire

  1

  1

  1

  5

  12

  25

  66

  196

  876

  1,183

  Merseyside

  1

  1

  4

  18

  60

  77

  252

  757

  3,531

  4,701

  Norfolk

  1

  1

  1

  6

  17

  22

  67

  200

  1,047

  1,362

  Northamptonshire

  1

  1

  1

  6

  13

  23

  69

  166

  841

  1,121

  Northumbria

  1

  1

  3

  14

  48

  60

  189

  511

  2,686

  3,513

  North Wales

  1

  1

  1

  7

  23

  27

  65

  212

  993

  1,330

  North Yorkshire

  1

  1

  2

  7

  17

  27

  77

  216

  1,035

  1,383

  Nottinghamshire

  1

  1

  2

  9

  35

  41

  131

  338

  1,760

  2,318

  South Wales

  1

  1

  3

  14

  43

  63

  185

  539

  2,288

  3,137

  South Yorkshire

  1

  1

  3

  11

  38

  46

  159

  453

  2,266

  2,978

  Staffordshire

  1

  1

  2

  11

  31

  50

  121

  342

  1,629

  2,188

  Suffolk

  1

  1

  1

  6

  17

  20

  59

  182

  899

  1,186

  Surrey

  1

  1

  2

  7

  23

  22

  93

  259

  1,241

  1,649

  Sussex

  1

  1

  3

  11

  35

  39

  173

  457

  2,220

  2,940

  Thames Valley

  1

  1

  3

  13

  42

  51

  169

  502

  2,838

  3,620

  Warwickshire

  1

  1

  1

  5

  14

  18

  61

  154

  737

  992

  West Mercia

  1

  1

  2

  10

  30

  38

  128

  298

  1,483

  1,991

  West Midlands

  1

  1

  5

  22

  80

  121

  367

  1,067

  5,166

  6,830

  West Yorkshire

  1

  1

  5

  20

  69

  81

  288

  818

  3,976

  5,259

  Wiltshire

  1

  1

  1

  6

  16

  21

  56

  172

  811

  1,085

  City of London

  11

  21

  33

  6

  11

  20

  56

  123

  579

  798

  Metropolitan

  16

  215

  337

  154

  238

  489

  1,440

  4,322

  21,714

  28,415

  Total

  48

  57

  129

  562

  1,482

  2,245

  6,590

  19,254

  94,300

  124,667

  1 Includes ranks of assistant commissioner and above in Metropolitan police, and commissioner in the City of London police.

  2 Includes deputy assistant commissioner in Metropolitan police and assistant commissioner in the City of London police.

  3 Includes commanders in Metropolitan police and City of London police.

  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will produce a table showing the percentage increase/decrease in the number of(a) police constables, (b) sergeants, (c) inspectors, including chief inspectors, (d) superintendents, including chief superintendents, and (e) ranks above chief superintendent, by police authority, in ascending order, by police constables and population for each year from 1978 to the latest available date.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  The information is not readily available and could be produced only at disproportionate cost.

  Information on police numbers and ranks in each police force together with police/population ratios is given in the annual reports of Her Majesty's chief inspector of constabulary, copies of which are available in the Library.

  Ms. Richardson
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he has any plans to issue guidance for professional purposes relating to formation of an anti-abortion guild of police officers.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  If such a guild were to be formed, it would be for chief officers of police to consider the possible relevance of paragraph I of schedule 2 to the Police Regulations 1987. This provides that a member of a police force shall at all times abstain from any activity which is likely to interfere with the impartial discharge of his duties or which is likely to give rise to the impression among members of the public that it may so interfere.

  Mr. Haynes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he proposes to meet the Association of Chief Police Officers to discuss the presence of media personnel on police operations.
  390
  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply given to a question from the hon. Member for Mansfield (Mr. Meale) on 5 December 1989 at column 180.

  Probation Officers
  Mr. Hunter
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the average caseload of a probation officer in England and Wales; and what are the comparable statistics for recent years.

  Mr. John Patten
  The information requested up to 1987 is published in Probation Statistics England and Wales 1987 (table 11.1). In 1988 the average caseload, excluding community service, of full time maingrade probation officers on general duties was 29·3 compared with 31·6 in 1984 and 32·1 in 1985.

  Assaults on Police
  Mr. David Evans
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what estimate he has as to the number of assaults made on police officers during 1988; and what was the figure for 1987.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  Arrangements have been made for information on assaults against police officers to be collected centrally for 1989 and subsequent years. We have no realistic estimate for earlier years, because forces recorded such information in a number of different ways and no central collation was made.

  Crime Prevention Panels
  Mr. Patrick Thompson
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many crime prevention panels now exist in England and Wales.

  Mr. John Patten
  At the end of June 1989 there were 398 crime prevention panels and 209 junior panels in
  391
  England and Wales. More than 40 junior panels were formed in the first six months of this year, in addition to a continuing growth in the number of senior panels.

  Mr. Riddick
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps he has taken to encourage crime prevention panels to be set up in secondary schools; and what level of success he has met.

  Mr. John Patten
  Crime Concern, the national crime prevention organisation established last year, is encouraging the setting up of youth crime prevention panels. In July 1989, Crime Concern organised a successful national youth crime prevention panels conference, opened by Her Royal Highness the Princess Royal and attended by Ministers from the Department of Education and Science and representatives from the Home Office. Crime Concern is now planning a programme of work to stimulate the growth of youth crime prevention panels. At the end of June 1989 there were 209 youth crime prevention panels in England and Wales, mostly based in schools, an increase of almost 40 in six months.

  Industrial Security
  Mr. Bellingham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what recent representations he has received about promoting industrial security schemes.

  Mr. John Patten
  No recent representations of this kind have been received although during a visit to Norfolk in October my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Hurd) received an inquiry from a member of the Kings Lynn borough council about the possibility of reduced insurance premiums for firms in industrial watch schemes.

  Private Security Industry
  Mr. John P. Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what plans the Government have to introduce legislation for the statutory control of the private security industry.

  Mr. John Patten
  While statutory control is an option, we are considering, in the light of the report of a Home Office working group, whether there is scope for further improvements in self-regulation of the private security industry.

  Charities
  Mr. Andrew Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many applications to register new charities have been received in the latest year for which statistics are available by the Charity Commissioners.

  Mr. John Patten
  I understand that during the calendar year 1988 the Charity Commissioners received approximately 4,011 applications to register new charities.

  Mr. Win Griffiths
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he last met the Charity Commissioner; and what matters were discussed.

  Mr. John Patten
  My right hon. and learned Friend has not yet met the Chief Charity Commissioner, but my right hon. and noble Friend the Minister of State with special 392
  responsibility for charities is frequently in touch with him on a wide range of matters concerning charities and the work of the commission.

  Racially Motivated Attacks
  Mr. Simon Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will give the figures for the number of racially motivated attacks for the last year that figures are available; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. John Patten
  The only available information relates to the Metropolitan police district and is published in the Commissioner's annual report, a copy of which is available in the Library. The total number of racial incidents reported during 1988 was 2,214, an increase of less than 2 per cent. over 1987.

  Victim Support Schemes
  Mr. Couchman
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many victim support schemes now operate in England and Wales.

  Mr. John Patten
  Three hundred and fifty-four.

  Neighbourhood Watch
  Mr. Ian Bruce
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many neighbourhood watch schemes now exist in England and Wales.

  Dr. Woodcock
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many neighbourhood watch schemes now exist in England and Wales.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  I refer my hon. Friends to the reply that I gave earlier today to my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Waterside (Mr. Colvin).

  Mr. Burt
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will assess the contribution being made to crime prevention in Greater Manchester by the neighbourhood watch scheme: and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. John Patten
  Although I am not aware of any specific research into the effects of neighbourhood watch in Greater Manchester as a whole, figures for recorded crime for the 12 months ending in June 1989 show a drop of over 5 per cent. in Greater Manchester. This decrease, coupled with a 8 per cent. decline in the number of recorded burglaries, must be encouraging to all those engaged in crime prevention work, especially members of neighbourhood watch schemes.

  The Kirkholt burglary prevention project in Rochdale, which included a variant of neighbourhood watch, has resulted in a substantial drop in the level of residential burglary. A full report of the Kirkholt project is in Home Office crime prevention unit paper No. 13, a copy of which is in the Library.

  Miss Widdecombe
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he is aware of any local authorities whose policy it is to refuse to permit neighbourhood watch signs to be erected in highways within their jurisdiction.

  Mr. John Patten
  We are aware that some local authorities have refused to grant planning permission for
  393
  the erection of neighbourhood watch signs and I deplore this. The Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) (Amendment No. 2) Regulations 1987 gave deemed consent for the erection of signs relating to properly approved neighbourhood watch schemes which were not to be placed on highway land. Where signs are required on highway land I hope that all highway authorities will follow the Department of Transport's lead in approving such signs unless they cause a hazard to traffic or pedestrians.

  Television Licences
  Mr. Devlin
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will review the provision of reduced fee television licences to old age pensioners.

  Mr. Mellor
  We have no plans to do so.

  Remand Prisoners
  Mr. Carrington
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what are the latest figures for numbers of remand prisoners held in police cells; and what were the comparable figures six months and one year ago.

  Mr. Mellor
  On Wednesday 6 December, there were no remand prisoners held in police cells in England and Wales. Comparable figures for 6 December 1988 and 5 May 1989 were 945 and 210 prisoners respectively, most of whom were on remand.

  Phone Tapping
  Mr. Malcolm Bruce
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what representations he has received about phone tapping; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Waddington
  Between 1 January and 30 November this year, 102 letters were received covering a variety of matters relating to the interception of communications.

  Bill of Rights
  Mr. Alex Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what proposals he has for the introduction of a Bill of Rights; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  The Government have no plans to introduce a Bill of Rights.

  Harmondsworth Detention Centre
  Mr. Henderson
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he last visited Harmondsworth detention centre; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Waddington
  When I was Minister of State at the Home Office between 1983 and 1987. I hope to make a further visit in due course.

  Safer Cities Initiative
  Mr. Martyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will consider increasing the amount of money which he provided for local crime prevention work in the safer cities initiative launched in March 1988.
  394
  Mr. John Patten
  Subject to detailed scrutiny of estimates and to parliamentary approval, expenditure in excess of £6 million is planned for local crime prevention work under the safer cities programme in 1990–91. It is too early in the life of this new and innovative programme to seek significant increases above this level.

  Channel Tunnel
  Mr. Teddy Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what consideration he has given to the conduct of immigration procedures and passport controls for persons travelling in the proposed Channel tunnel; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  We intend to put in place procedures which, without unnecessarily impeding the flow of bona fide travellers, will serve to maintain effective immigration control. I hope to make an announcement on the detail of the procedures shortly.

  Manual Records
  Mr. Kirkwood
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will introduce further legislation allowing individuals access to manual records concerning themselves held by Government agencies; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Mellor
  There are no present plans to do so.

  Prindus
  Mr. Butler
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will state(a) the finance and (b) the profit or loss of Prindus in the latest available year.

  Mr. Mellor
  Prindus was a trading name used by the directorate of industries and farms. The directorate has been superseded by Prison Service Industries and Farms and the trading name has not been used for some years. This House voted finance for prison service industries and farms for the year ending 31 March 1990 in the sum of £20,250,016. Provisional trading results for that year have been published in paragraphs 87 and 88 of the report on the work of the prison service April 1988-March 1989 which has been placed in the Library. The net operating cost of PSIF for 1988–89 was £18·1 million.

  Police Complaints Authority
  Mr. Maclennan
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what consideration he is giving to the composition and powers of, and access to, the Police Complaints Authority.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  My right hon. and learned Friend has no plans at present for any changes in the composition of, or access to, the Police Complaints Authority. My right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Hurd) announced on 27 June 1987 at column 396 our intention to make a number of changes in the arrangements for dealing with complaints against the police—including some changes in the powers of the Police Complaints Authority—in response to recommendations set out in the authority's triennial review 1985–88.

  Young Offenders
  Mr. Michael
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what initiatives he proposes to take to overcome the added problems facing those who seek to rehabilitate young offenders arising from recent changes in social security regulations.

  Mr. John Patten
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply given to a question from the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. McKay) on 5 December 1989.

  Animal Experiments
  Mr. Steve Norris
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he has any proposals to amend the licensing arrangements under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  We have no plans to change the legal framework. My right hon. and learned Friend hopes to make an order bringing into effect the designation of breeding and supplying establishments with effect from January 1990. Other detailed changes are made in the administrative arrangements from time to time.

  Animal Welfare
  Mrs. Margaret Ewing
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he has any plans for introducing further legislation on animal welfare.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  We have no plans at present for such legislation for England and Wales.

  Ethnic Minorities
  Mr. John Townend
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what are the main purposes for which grants under section 11 of the Local Government Act 1966 are paid to local authorities.

  Mr. John Patten
  Under section 11 of the Local Government Act 1966 grant may be paid for the employment of staff to local authorities who make special provision for ethnic minorities whose language or customs differ from those of the rest of the community. The grant is an important way in which barriers preventing people from the ethnic minorities from using fully the opportunities for economic, educational and social development can be broken down and to enable them to play a growing and effective part in the mainstream of British life.

  Section 11 grant has been the subject of a scrutiny review. The review is currently being considered with a view to ensuring that the grant meets more effectively the needs of the ethnic minorities and we hope to be in a position to announce the results of that consideration in the not too distant future.

  Immigration
  Mr. Cartwright
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what recent investigations have been undertaken by officers of the immigration service into fraudulent marriages of convenience; and with what results.

  Mr. Cartwright
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will investigate the extent 396
  to which fraudulent marriages are used as a means of evading the immigration rules; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  Inquiries over the last 18 months have revealed evidence of possible wrongdoing in a number of cases involving applications for settlement on the basis of marriage. These inquiries are continuing.

  Mr. Cartwright
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what representations he has had that the personal data of British citizens held at the general registry office are being misused in connection with fraudulent marriages of convenience; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply given to a question from the hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Ward) on 31 October 1989 at column 114.

  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many meetings Ministers in his Department have had on immigration cases with hon. and right hon. Members for each month of the current year.

  Mr. Waddington
  In addition to telephone conversations and other personal exchanges, Ministers have held formal meetings with right hon. and hon. Members as follows:

  Meetings

  January

  2

  February

  4

  March

  4

  April

  2

  May

  2

  June

  6

  July

  12

  August

  0

  September

  0

  October

  0

  November

  3

  December

  1

  Mr. Cartwright
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what assessment he has made of the adequacy of staffing levels of the immigration service at Isis house, SE1 to deal with the volume of immigration offences; and whether he has any plans to increase staffing levels.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  The allocation of staff within the immigration service is kept under regular review to ensure the most effective and efficient use of available resources. As far as staffing for future years is concerned, I invite the hon. Member to await the publication in the new year of the Government's public expenditure White Paper.

  Judicial System (Appointments)
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if any progress has been made concerning the research he has commissioned for an appointments system in(a) the magistrates courts and (b) juvenile courts.

  Mr. John Patten
  Since the publication last year of the results of research on ways of reducing waiting time on the day, the Home Office has held two seminars for justices' clerks and drawn the attention of all clerks to the reductions in waiting time which can be achieved by better
  397
  listing practices. In addition, a new quality of service performance indicator is being developed within the magistrates courts management information system, which will, among other things, measure waiting times on the day. This will be introduced during 1990.

  Gartree Prison
  Mr. Mullin
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what has become of the £20 confiscated at Her Majesty's prison Gartree from Mr. Patrick Hill by the deputy governor, Mr. Bushell, on 15 November.

  Mr. Mellor
  The money, which was in Mr. Hill's unauthorised possession, has been paid into public funds in accordance with standing instructions.

  Crime Statistics
  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will produce a table showing by police authority for the latest 12 months data available the number of reported(a) burglaries, (b) murders, (c) rapes, (d) cases of sexual abuse against individuals under 16 years, (e) suicide attempts and (f) robberies involving cash greater than £100,000.

  Mr. John Patten
  The readily available information by police force area is published in "Criminal Statistics, England and Wales Supplementary Volume 3" table S3.1, a copy of which is available in the Library. No information is available centrally on attempted suicide.

  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list the total number of crimes committed in England and Wales for each year from 1970 to 1989, inclusive, by police authorities.

  Mr. John Patten
  The information for 1974–79 and 1981–88 is published in "Criminal Statistics, England and Wales"; in Table 2.5 of the latest issue, for 1988, Cm 847. Information for 1970–73 and 1980 is contained in the "Supplementary Tables" for those years. Copies of these publications are available in the Library.

  Police National Computer
  Mr. Pike
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what decision he has made regarding the privatisation of the police national computer and the passing of control of the police national computer into the hands of an executive agency.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply given today to the hon. Member for Dumbarton (Mr. McFall).

  Rating Reform
  Mr. Battle
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he has any plans, following the introduction of the community charge, to amend the law to allow overseas residents who are not British citizens but who will have to pay the poll tax, the right to vote in local elections.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  No.

  Downing Street (Access)
  Mr. Austin Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what are the criteria laid down for admissions to Downing street of(a) delegations, (b) beggars anxious to elicit charity, (c) tourists and (d) the general public.

  Mr. Waddington
  The Metropolitan police restrict access to Downing street as necessary in pursuance of their common law duty to prevent crime and disorder.

  European Community
  Mr. Barry Field
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what discussions he has had with his European Community counterparts regarding the decisions by West Germany, France and Benelux countries to abolish border checks on people on their common frontiers.

  Mr. Waddington
  The United Kingdom is not associated with the Schengen agreement, which is an agreement between five neighbouring countries sharing long land frontiers, and we have had no formal discussions about it. The questions of progress under the agreement and its relationship to developments across the Community have, however, arisen from time to time in informal discussions which my predecessor and I have had with Community colleagues, and also in collective meetings of Ministers of member states of the Community. I anticipate further discussions of that kind, and we shall certainly follow developments with close interest.

  Mr. Harry Barnes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he has considered the implications of the Schengen agreement and supplementary agreements; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Maude
  I have been asked to reply.

  The Schengen agreement is an arrangement between France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg to abolish land frontier controls between their countries. Their work is separate from the discussions on free movement of people which are taking place among all member states of the European Community.

  We shall naturally be interested in the experience of the Schengen partners in reducing frontier controls.

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock (Prayers having been read earlier at the Judicial Sitting by the Lord Bishop of St. Albans): The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Lord Inglewood—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.

Housing: HIP Allocations
Lord Dean of Beswick Lord Dean of Beswick asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will announce the financial approvals that will be made to local authorities in response to their applications for next year's Housing Investment Programmes.
Lord Reay: My Lords, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment will announce the Housing Investment Programme allocations to individual local authorities in England for 1990–91 later this month. Copies of the letters to individual authorities and the schedule of allocations will be placed in the Library of the House.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that Answer. The information that I have received from people involved in the negotiations shows that, despite the pleas that have been made in your Lordships' House from all quarters for increased spending on housing because of the social problems, public sector housing in this country will once again suffer a cut in real terms this year of £303 million in the settlement that the Minister has stated will be announced shortly. In real terms that is an 18 per cent. cut. Does the Minister consider that local authorities can continue their functions of caring for people and getting homeless people off the streets with cuts of such magnitude?
Lord Reay: My Lords, the Autumn Statement of my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer about next year's public expenditure plans provides for a total of £4·4 billion to be spent on housing capital by both local authorities and the Housing Corporation in 1990–91. That is 7 per cent. higher in cash terms than in the 1989–90 provision of £4·2 billion. Within the total provision for housing capital expenditure for the year 1990–91, of the £4·4 billion, £1·2 billion will go to the Housing Corporation. We expect £3·2 billion to be spent by local authorities. The provision for investment by the housing associations through the Housing Corporation will rise from £815 million in 1989–90 to £1,221 million in 1990–91. It should enable more than 30,000 new homes to be built.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, I am sorry quickly to rise again. The Minister indicates that my figures are correct. My figure was £3·3 billion; he
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has stated a figure of £3·2 billion. Is it not a fact that that indicates a real cut? Will the Government reconsider what they are doing before they do more appalling damage to the housing situation?
Lord Reay: My Lords, I do not accept the words of the noble Lord. The Government are not cutting their housing programme. They are maintaining a substantial housing programme. They believe in the value of the private sector and the housing associations supported by the Housing Corporation. That is a part of the policy that is being expanded at the present time.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, news agencies report that the Secretary of State for the Environment has announced today that special money is to be found for those who are at present homeless. Will the Minister say something about that? It is certainly very interesting.
Lord Reay: My Lords, yes. The Government share the belief that to tackle homelessness is a matter of the very greatest importance. That is why, following the publication of the homelessness review, we announced that we would provide an extra £250 million over the next two years to help local authorities and housing associations. In the homelessness pressure areas identified by the review—London and the South-East—that should provide 15,000 extra lettings through the repair of empty property and other means to help get the homeless out of the unsatisfactory situation of bed and breakfast accommodation.
Lord Stallard: My Lords, does the Minister accept that his statement on government policy on homelessness is to be welcomed? Recognition that the problem is mainly in the South-East and in London is welcome news to most of us. But if we accept his figures of 30,000 new homes and 15,000 new lettings, making together 45,000 new houses by 1992, the figure is nowhere near the 100,000 per year needed to meet the existing shortage. We also need £3 billion urgently for the repair and refurbishment not only of empty properties but properties that are rapidly deteriorating. Can he inject more urgency into the future statements of the Secretary of State with regard to the statistics?
Lord Reay: My Lords, the homelessness initiative is a very recent one indeed. We certainly hope that it will go some way to alleviating a problem which concerns us all.
On renovation, the public expenditure provision made in the Chancellor's Autumn Statement last month will enable local authorities to spend over £1.8 billion on renovation of their stock in 1990–91. This is a very large sum indeed.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, are the Government aware that the very high level of mortgage interest rates is causing a reduction in private housing investment? Would it not be sensible for there to be a corresponding increase in public sector housing investment to ensure that the overall level of housing investment is maintained in this country?
Lord Reay: My Lords, we believe that housing associations should take the lead in the provision of new subsidised rented housing. We do not see the local authorities' primary role as being that of adding to the stock of subsidised housing. We see it rather as assisting the private sector and the housing associations and of maintaining their own stock in good condition.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, I must rise again. The Minister has not answered the question. Given the reduction in private housing investment, is it not more sensible that there should be an increase in public sector housing investment? I did not say that it should be council housing or housing association investment. I referred to the broad total of public sector housing investment.
Lord Reay: My Lords, no. According to the latest figures that I have, the proportion of the United Kingdom's housing stock within the public rented sector—namely, 25 per cent. —is the highest of all the countries for which I have figures. It compares with 14 per cent. in France, an estimated 3 per cent. in the Federal Republic of Germany and 2 per cent. in Spain.
Lord Hankey: My Lords, do the Government recognise that if they restrict the construction of houses the price tends to increase and this has a bad effect on inflation?
Lord Reay: My Lords, interest rates have had to be high but we hope that they will be reduced as soon as possible.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the recently formed Housing Forum —it is not a political organisation but consists of members of the RIBA and representatives of local authorities, the public accountants' organisations and the Institute of Housing—states clearly that by the turn of the century there will be need for a further 2 million houses? How does the Minister expect local authorities and the public and private sectors to achieve such a target when even the private sector building programme has fallen by 30 per cent. during the past three months? Is it not time that the Government listened to people outside the political spectrum and started allowing local authorities once again to build the houses which are so urgently needed?
Lord Reay: My Lords, as I have stated a sufficient number of times, we do not believe that the primary task of providing subsidised rented accommodation should be for local authorities. We accept that there are shortages but not a general housing shortage as existed in the 1950s, for example. There are shortages—even acute shortages—in certain areas; for instance, in the South-East and inner London. For that reason we have made available increased funds to the Housing Corporation and recently for the homeless.

Tourism: Job Opportunities
3.13 p.m.
Baroness Blatch Baroness Blatch asked Her Majesty's Government:
What steps they are taking to promote job opportunities in the tourism industry, and to what extent tourism is significant to the economy of the United Kingdom.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Employment (Lord Strathclyde): My Lords, the Employment Department works with other government departments and the tourist boards to promote the many and varied job opportunities in the United Kingdom. The tourism industry generates about £19 billion for the economy, which represents over 4 per cent. of the total United Kingdom gross domestic product.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that optimistic answer. However, does he agree that more could be done by the tourism industry to make available positive and current information to young people when they receive careers advice in schools and colleges?
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, yes, my noble friend is correct. The tourism industry is well aware of its responsibilities in this area and is working on a variety of programmes in schools and colleges in order to raise the profile of the industry as providing a good and permanent career.
Lord Hunt: My Lords, does the Minister agree that the demands of the tourism industry and the need to protect the countryside are not always in harmony and may conflict? Can he assure the House that environmental interests will always be carefully borne in mind when planning to develop tourism?
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, the noble Lord is most sensible. I recognise that often there is a problem in the development of tourism in areas of particular attractiveness. Often it is that particular environment which attracts visitors to the area. However, having recognised that concern, it is the Government's policy to develop new markets so that visitors can spread to areas which hitherto have not had tourist potential, to develop action programmes for a variety of areas throughout the country and to help to extend the season so that fewer visitors will bunch in the summer months.
Viscount St. Davids: My Lords, has my noble friend noticed that there is a tendency within the tourist industry to clump together certain areas such as London and Stratford? Does he know of any method to encourage a more even spread of visitors over the rest of the country?
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, the Government recently announced almost a doubling of the amount of taxpayers' money given to regional tourist boards. That will help to a great extent to diversify places that tourists visit.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: My Lords, the Minister has stressed the importance of tourism to the economy. Is he aware that one of the aspects which tourists find most disagreeable about our cities is their dirtiness? What are the Government doing about that other than restricting the ability of local authorities to spend sufficient money to clean up our cities?
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, that is precisely one of the areas where tourists have a beneficial effect on our cities. In the near future the Government will introduce a new anti-litter campaign because we need to present a better image to foreign visitors.
Lord Rugby: My Lords, can the Minister say to what extent we are encouraging the learning of foreign languages among our young people so that they can act as interpreters for foreign visitors?
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, it is most important that all our schoolchildren, particularly those who go to work in industries where they meet foreigners, have the ability to converse to a certain extent with those foreigners.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, will the Minister suggest to his noble friend that the Government should reverse their attitude towards the Lingua programme in order to speed up the learning of foreign languages?
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, we believe in a combined approach. As regards the tourism industry, there are many commercial organisations which understand the need for their employees to learn foreign languages. They have instituted a variety of courses.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that it is not governments which clean up cities but people, and that more self-discipline and education is required of people to make our cities and countryside cleaner and litter free? It is not simply a question of leaving the Government doing something about litter in our cities.
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, I agree with my noble friend. It is the responsibility of us all to make sure that we clean up litter.
Lord Tordoff: My Lords, in view of the Minister's reply to my noble friend's question, does he know what the Lingua programme is?
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, of course.

El Salvador: Assistance
3.18 p.m.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs Baroness Ewart-Biggs asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they plan to increase humanitarian assistance to El Salvador following the escalation of the civil war there.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Brabazon of Tara): My Lords, we have contributed £100,000 to the International Committee of the Red Cross for its emergency programme of assistance to civilians affected by the recent civil strife. In addition to this, our share of the emergency aid so far provided by the European Community amounts to about £200,000. We shall, of course, continue to monitor the situation closely, but we do not plan an increase at the present time.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that Answer. In view of the appalling suffering of the people of El Salvador, will he say, first, whether he believes that the emergency aid from the EC might be increased? Secondly, will he say what action Her Majesty's Government are taking to dissuade the American Government from continuing their military aid which prolongs the civil war? In view of the escalation of human rights violations in El Salvador, as reptorted by Amnesty, will the Minister also say whether the Government have protested to the Government of El Salvador about the murder of six Jesuit priests and the imprisonment and torture of church leaders by members of the armed forces and security services?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, on 23rd November the European Community granted 1.5 million ecus in aid and it may be a little too soon to think about a further tranche. As regards the murder of the Jesuit priests, of course we are concerned about the matter and condemn it. We believe that the perpetrators should be pursued and brought to justice. As regards US aid to El Salvador, we have no grounds on which to urge the United States to stop such aid. The government in El Salvador was elected in free elections and the president has publicly committed his government to proper respect for human rights.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, does the Minister agree that the greatest contribution which could be made to the security of life and limb in El Salvador is to stop Soviet arms reaching the rebels in that country via Cuba and Nicaragua? Does he also not regret that President Bush failed to persuade Mr. Gorbachev that that would be a genuine token of his new outlook?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, my noble friend makes some interesting points with which I cannot disagree. However, we are straying somewhat from the Question on the Order Paper, which is to do with humanitarian aid.

Nottinghamshire LEA: Music and Drama Courses
3.20 p.m.
Lord Monson Lord Monson asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether Nottinghamshire County Council is legally entitled to ban pupils at city technology colleges from attending music schools or drama workshops and from joining bands; and, if so, whether they will consider a change in the law.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, the Government deplore the attitude adopted by Nottinghamshire Local Education Authority on this issue, but the Secretary of State for Education and Science has reluctantly concluded that there are no grounds for him to intervene.
Lord Monson: My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount for his reply, while expressing my disappointment that the Government seem reluctant to put right that injustice. Does he agree that whatever the strength and sincerity of a local authority's political convictions, there can be no excuse whatever for venting its spleen upon 11 and 12 year-old girls?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord but there is no evidence that the authority is failing to perform a duty or acting unreasonably in the narrow sense in which the courts have defined that term. Although the LEA has the power to allow pupils at independent schools and CTCs to take part in workshops under the facilities, it has no duty to do so.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, is the Minister aware that CTCs have been established in a number of areas where there are already spare spaces in secondary schools? In view of the very considerable constraints on public expenditure, can he justify the establishment of those institutions? Does he not agree that, were they not to take up substantial amounts of public money, there would be more available for Nottinghamshire County Council to provide an adequate number of places in music schools, drama workshops and bands?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I am afraid that that question is rather outside the scope of the Question on the Order Paper, which has nothing to do with CTCs. It is to do with Nottinghamshire LEA's refusal to allow two pupils, one from a CTC and one from a private school, to attend a course at the South Nottinghamshire Music Centre.
Baroness David: My Lords, are the Minister and the House aware that only 2 per cent. of the pupils in Nottinghamshire county schools can get into the eleventh session workshop and that there is a very long waiting list of pupils from county schools? Is it therefore fair that they should not get in and pupils from the CTCs, whose parents have decided that they should opt out of the system, should go instead?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, the Government have voiced their views on this ban. I can only say that parents and other electors in Nottingham will no doubt draw their own conclusions about the authority's attitude.
Lord Peston: My Lords, is the noble Viscount aware how absurd have been his answers to this Question? The CTCs were introduced by his Government. The problems which have emerged in this specific case were pointed out by several of us at a time when we begged the Government not to
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waste public money on these matters. The facts are—and the noble Viscount does not disagree with this—that the great scarcity of places in these drama and music workshops in Nottingham is because Nottingham does not have the money to provide more places. If there is a scarcity, any reasonable person would suggest that first priority would be given to the children in Nottingham schools and not to those who have opted out.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I can only repeat that this Question relates to the two cases in which Nottinghamshire LEA has refused to allow pupils respectively from a Nottinghamshire CTC and a private school to attend courses at the South Nottinghamshire Music Centre. I suggest that questions or comments on the wider issues of CTCs are well outwith the scope of this Question.

Christmas Adjournment
3.24 p.m.
Lord Denham: My Lords, it may be for the convenience of the House to know that, subject to the progress of business, the House will adjourn for the Christmas Recess on Thursday 21st December and return on Monday 15th January. The House will sit at 11 a.m. on Thursday 21st December.

Scottish Episcopal Clergy Widows' and Orphans' Fund Order Confirmation Bill
Brought from the Commons, read a first time, and (pursuant to the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act 1936), deemed to have been read a second time and reported from the Committee.

European Communities Committee
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Aberdare): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the Lord Mackenzie-Stuart be appointed a member of the Select Committee and that a Message be sent to the Commons to acquaint them with the Motion agreed to on Thursday last, 30th November. —(The Chairman of Committees.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Human Fertilisation and Embroyology Bill [H.L.]
3.25 p.m.
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Mackay of Clashfern): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
I feel it would not be right to begin this debate without remembering Lord Trafford who, had he been with us, would, I know, have taken a very active part in our consideration of the Bill. It is on occasions

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like this that we shall particularly miss the well informed, calm, careful and good humoured approach which was his hallmark in all that he did in your Lordships' House.
I should also like to say how much I regret that another commitment will prevent me from hearing the whole of what promises to be a long and fascinating debate, and I should like to apologise in advance to those of your Lordships whom I shall not have the privilege of hearing.
Your Lordships will not need me to remind you of the widespread interest, excitement and concern about the implications of the recent changes in reproductive technology and embryology. It is appropriate that a major legislative measure of this kind is introduced in this country because the first birth as a result of in vitro fertilisation was that of Louise Brown in Oldham, Lancashire in 1978. The committee which the Government set up in 1982 and which was chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, was also a first in that its report, published in July 1984, pioneered considered assessment of these wide-ranging and difficult questions. It is a tribute to the work of the noble Baroness's committee of inquiry that its report has been the basis on which other countries have looked at these questions and indeed its recommendations form the basis of the legislation now before us. The Bill is the product of a long period of consultation and reflection.
It breaks new ground in two respects. To begin with, it is the first attempt to deal in legislation with the full range of problems which the new reproductive technology poses. Secondly, it contains a drafting innovation. We have followed through the promise made in the White Paper published in 1987 that Parliament would have the opportunity to debate the embryo research issue on the basis of looking at alternative provisions and on a free vote. So far as I am aware, this is the first time that a Bill before either House has contained provisions like those in Clause 11 of this Bill which in its first two subsections sets out alternative propositions and in the third makes it clear that only one of them can be in force at any one time.
It may, however, be helpful to remind your Lordships of what is the Government's proper role in relation to the embryo research issue. On this issue the Government are neutral but have two important roles which they will carry through to the best of their ability. The first is to seek to ensure that your Lordships' House is acquainted with all the relevant facts on either side of the case. None of us here today can have any doubt that embryo research is a complex issue which involves a whole spectrum of medical, scientific, ethical and moral issues. The second role is to give your Lordships the Government's view on whether or not a particular proposal can be effectively administered.
Subject to these two important duties, in this and later debates those of us who speak for the Government here and in another place may make known our own views on this issue. But in doing so we shall be speaking not as Ministers but in a
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personal capacity. I do not myself intend to determine my own position on this question until we have had a full debate on the issue.
I turn now to the two main purposes of the Bill. The first is to regulate certain infertility treatments which advances in medical science have made possible. Those concern treatments—or treatment services, to use the draftsman's words—which involve keeping or using human sperm and eggs (known collectively as gametes) and embryos to assist a woman to have a child and to regulate the keeping or using of a human embryo outside a woman's body. The Bill deals only with, in effect, four treatments currently in use—artificial insemination by donor, egg donation, embryo donation and in vitro fertilisation. These techniques are, I am advised, only relevant in the treatment of a relatively small proportion of couples who are childless and who wish to overcome that problem. Thus, the House should keep in mind the relatively limited nature of this measure when set in the context of infertility treatment as a whole.
It would be wrong for me not to remind the House that infertility can cause individual couples considerable anguish and distress. I hope that a more sympathetic attitude towards those who suffer these difficulties will be one of the beneficial results that will flow from the detailed examination in public debate which these issues have been given in recent years.
One of the cornerstones of the provisions about treatment services is the detailed scheme for consent provided in Schedule 3. This makes it clear whose consent is necessary before activities regulated by the Bill may be carried out, how much consent is to be given, and how it may be varied or revoked. Schedule 3 prohibits the use of an embryo for any purpose unless each of the persons whose gametes were used has consented to their use for that purpose. For consent to be effective, it must not have been withdrawn. This means that if one of the donors of gametes which have been used to bring about the creation of an embryo withdraws his or her consent, the embryo cannot thereafter be used and will therefore be allowed to perish.
The Bill has a second main objective, which is to deal with the embryo research question. Before I go on to give a brief summary of the arguments for and against embryo research, I feel I should give a more detailed explanation of the conditions under which embryo research might be carried out if Parliament so decides. The two most important aspects of these controls are the time limit proposed for research using embryos and the purposes for which that research could be carried out.
The time limit proposed for research using embryos is 14 days. Up to this point in the development of the embryo it is not clear which cells are destined to become the fetus and which will form the supporting structures such as the placenta. The visible sign of this differentiation is the formation of the primitive streak.
Turning now to the purposes of research, I should like to draw your Lordships' attention to paragraph 3 of Schedule 2 to the Bill which stipulates that

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research using human embryos, if allowed at all, could only be carried out if it appeared to the new authority to be necessary or desirable for certain specified purposes. These are: for promoting advances in the treatment of infertility; for increasing knowledge about the causes of congenital disease; for increasing knowledge about the causes of miscarriages; for developing more effective techniques of contraception; for developing methods for detecting the presence of gene or chromosome abnormalities in embryos before implantation; or, more generally, for increasing knowledge about the creation and development of embryos before implantation.
There are some activities which I am sure we should all find unacceptable. The Bill prohibits the creation of hybrids using human gametes, the cloning of embryos by nucleus substitution to produce genetically identical individuals, and genetic engineering to change the structure of an embryo. Indeed, the prohibitions in Clause 3 of the Bill are designed generally to prevent any activities which would interfere with the genetic structure of an embryo. In particular it would be forbidden under Clause 3(3)(d) to replace the nucleus of a cell of an embryo with that of another cell taken from another person, embryo or fetus.
I should like to turn now to the arguments of those who support embryo research up to 14 days. They argue that, at least up to that point, the embryonic cells are undifferentiated so that there is no human identity as such to be destroyed. Others argue that the human embryo in vitro has no prospect of becoming a person, unless it implants in a woman's uterus, and that since it has no human personality of its own it should not be accorded the same status as an individual human being. Those who support research point to the benefits which arise from it and which could not be obtained in any other way. They argue that much of the research is species specific, pointing out that although preliminary research is being done on animal embryos it is essential to know whether the findings are applicable to the human species before clinical practice can be based upon them. They also add that some disorders have no animal counterpart and mention that chromosomal disorders, which they wish to study, occur more commonly in the human than in other mammals.
Many doctors and scientists argue that it was embryo research that made possible the very existence of the in vitro fertilisation technique which has already alleviated the problem of childlessness for several thousand couples in this country and many more in other parts of the world. In their view research serves five important purposes. Although I outlined these purposes earlier when talking about the controls on embryo research I believe it is worth looking at each in just a little more detail here.
In their view—I am speaking of many doctors and scientists—research is important for promoting advances in the treatment of infertility. As I have said, infertility can be a devastating experience in a couple's life. Although some of these couples can be helped using in vitro fertilisation, the technique has a success rate of only 10 per cent. to 20 per cent.
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at present. To improve on this, it is argued, the interaction of the embryo with its environment needs to be studied. As the Interim Licensing Authority put it in its document IVF Research published last month:
"Significant advances due to United Kingdom research in this area include (i) new procedures to monitor the biochemical changes in the fluid surrounding the pre-embryo as an indication of its health and development; this will allow selection of those pre-embryos most likely to implant and develop into a healthy fetus for transfer to the woman's uterus; (ii) improved methods for isolating sperm cells from the semen of infertile men to enable their wives to undergo IVF: and (iii) improved procedures for freezing and storing pre-embryos, so that IVF couples have the option of freezing their excess pre-embryos for their own future use".
That ends the quotation from the Interim Licensing Authority's report. Twenty per cent. to 30 per cent. of infertility is caused by problems with sperm. The few normal sperm that are produced in infertile men could be identified to make sure that they can come into contact with an egg, and it would then be necessary to check that the fertilised egg is normal. Research on this requires the creation of embryos which it would be unwise to place in the uterus. A further advance that could be made in infertility would be the successful freezing of eggs. The advantage of this would be that several eggs collected on one occasion could be fertilised singly and then replaced in the woman later in natural cycles. This would not only avoid multiple pregnancy but might also lead to higher success rates, as any effects on the womb lining caused by infertility drugs would be avoided. The measure of the success of this technique would be the normal development of the embryo and the test would be to examine such embryos in vitro.
It is argued that embryo research is important, secondly, for increasing knowledge about the causes of congenital disease, and, thirdly, for developing methods for detecting the presence of gene or chromosome abnormalities in embryos before implantation. In the United Kingdom, genetic defects are a common cause of handicap. Research could enable the underlying abnormality to be detected in the first few days after fertilisation, using a technique referred to as preimplantation diagnosis. This would involve removing a cell from an embryo which was developing in vitro and examining it to see if the embryo was free from the abnormality for which it was being tested. The Royal Society recently set out the prospects for research in this area in a pamphlet entitled, The Case for Human Embryological Research. I quote:
"Currently, the only way of preventing the transmission of genetic disease is to test fetuses at 8–16 weeks gestation and to abort those that are affected. Research on human embryos has offered the prospect of testing developing eggs at an early stage to identify those that will be affected by, or those that carry, serious genetic disease, such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy or cystic fibrosis, and of replacing in the womb only those found free from such defective genes".
The advantage of pre-implantation diagnosis over other techniques that may be used for the early detection of abnormalities is that it could avoid the difficult decision for the parents of whether to seek termination of pregnancy if the abnormality is discovered after implantation has occurred.

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A fourth important purpose of embryo research is said to be increasing knowledge about the cases of miscarriage. More than one in five pregnancies end in miscarriage in the United Kingdom. This is invariably a tragic blow to those concerned. The main causes are problems with implantation which are likely often to be associated with defects in early embryonic development. The conditions leading to such defective embryos can be studied in vitro and such research may pave the way to improved treatment.
Finally, those supporting embryo research argue that it is important for the purpose of developing more effective techniques on contraception. Contraception may be an important factor in controlling the population explosion and it is argued that embryo research beyond the two-cell stage is important for testing of new contraceptive methods based on vaccines to ensure not only that failure rates are minimal but also that they have no adverse effects if pregnancy nevertheless occurs.
I am sure that the Royal Society, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Medical Research Council would suggest that further benefits, perhaps as yet not even thought of, could flow from the inventiveness and innovation of scientists who work in this field subject though they would be to the proposed licensing arrangements. They would argue further that if such research were prohibited in this country the result would be a considerable loss to our knowledge base about these matters and a personal loss in that many experts in this field might choose to emigrate so as to be able to continue with their work.
On the other hand, there are many of those who take a totally opposite position to those in favour of embryo research and they hold this position with equal force and sincerity. For them, as for Enoch Powell when he introduced his Unborn Children (Protection) Bill in another place soon after the publication of the Warnock Report, embryo research, even if confined to the first 14 days is, quite simply, repugnant.
Significant sections of religious opinion in this country take this view. They hold that research which leads to the destruction of the embryo is unacceptable because an embryo has, to use a word that some use, "potential" to become a child. For them research on embryos equates to the destruction of a child in the laboratory. Others, while recognising that embryos should be treated with substantial respect, accord them a lower status than a fetus or a child because most embryos fail to implant so have a relatively low chance of realising that potential. Such an opinion will for some be consistent with accepting embryo research on spare embryos for infertility treatment but not the creation of embryos specifically for research. Furthermore, it would appear that many would be content with research which is intended for the direct benefit of the embryo to be studied.
Although those who are opposed to embryo research often recognise the benefits research can bring, they believe that the moral principle of respect
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for the human embryo outweighs any such benefits. In their view neither the relief of infertility nor the advance of knowledge justifies deliberate destruction of embryos.
Some persons opposing embryo research also say that the alleged benefits of research on human embryos are illusory, that research could be done using animals and that the causes of infertility can be researched in any case without using human embryos. They argue that progress can be made by animal and other experimentation, by prevention and by the constant endeavour to improve the treatment procedure. They would invite comparison with the approach taken to develop kidney transplantation. Although initial attempts were uniformly unsuccessful, continued therapeutic efforts, backed by animal and other research, have produced steadily improving results. At no stage was a transplant undertaken with the intention that the patient should not survive in order to gain knowledge as to how to improve the procedure. Likewise, the suggestion is that embryos should not be created with a view to their destruction in order to improve the results from in vitro fertilisation.
Another argument used by those opposed to embryo research is that the 14-day time limit could be just the beginning and that in subsequent years this limit might be extended. It is argued that it would be better not to have embryo research at all than to enter on to the slippery slope of an expanding time limit for research. Further, the technique of pre-implantation diagnosis might be used not just for preventing defects in offspring but could lead to the possibility of more sinister activities, such as sex selection, becoming the norm. In summary, the overall view of those opposed to research is that the end cannot justify the means, and that any breach in the sacredness with which human life is held cannot be accepted and, if it occurs, can lead to attempts at further breaches.
It may seem that I have given more time to the arguments of those who favour research than to those who oppose it. If that is so—and I think I have done what I can to represent the arguments on either side fairly—I can only reply that length in argument does not necessarily win over succinctness. That has certainly been my experience as a judge.
As I said earlier, it is not part of my function as a spokesman for the Government to make any judgment about the balance of these arguments. I merely draw them to your Lordships' attention and in doing so I am conscious that both sides are likely to tell me that I have represented their position too feebly and incompletely. Indeed, it is a gross oversimplification to suggest that there are only two views on this issue. There are in fact many shades of opinion, as one might expect. I am comforted by the certainty that in our debate today and in those debates which will follow all sides will have an opportunity to make their positions abundantly plain. Parliament will, however, in time reach its decision on this great matter and on which of the two propositions in Clause 11, and any others which may be advanced, should prevail.
That decision will affect the remit of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority which the

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Bill proposes as the machinery with which in any case to implement control over infertility treatment and storage of gametes and embryos. The Bill specifies the functions, licensing powers, arrangements for membership, staffing and the proceedings of this important new body.
The Bill also deals with the other important matters of the status and parentage of children born following the use of these techniques. Clauses 26 to 28 deal with the first of these. Its major effects are: first, the woman who carries the child is to be the mother irrespective of whether she is genetically related to her baby. Secondly, it extends the existing law in Section 27 of the Family Law Reform Act 1987 from cases of artificial insemination by donor to all the techniques under the Bill. The result is that where any of those techniques are used to make a married woman pregnant, her husband, as is now the law in AID cases, will be treated as the father unless it is shown that he did not consent to his wife's treatment. Thirdly, the Bill provides that those who donate sperm or eggs anonymously through the statutory scheme are not in law treated as the child's parent.
Time does not permit me to give the customary recital of the Bill but I should like before concluding to highlight some of these provisions in addition to those I have already mentioned. Clauses 5 to 10 and Schedule 1 deal with the establishment of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. I should like at this point to pay tribute to the work of the Voluntary Licensing Authority which was set up in 1985 by the Medical Research Council and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists under its energetic chairman, Dame Mary Donaldson. It has recently renamed itself the Interim Licensing Authority. It has received applications for licences from IVF clinics and research centres and has shown itself fully competent at regulating and monitoring their activities. Although the new authority will in no sense be a direct descendant of the ILA, and will in its membership and functions be a different organisation in that it will have broader powers and functions, I am sure it will find it useful to draw on that body's experience when it assumes its full powers. Indeed, the ILA will continue its work until that stage has been reached.
Clause 8 details the authority's functions in general terms. Clause 9 deals with the arrangements for licensing. Applications for licences for the infertility treatments specified in the Bill or for research, if Parliament so permits, will need to be heard by a licensing committee of the authority.
Clause 13 makes it a condition that those being provided with treatment will have had a suitable opportunity to receive proper counselling. Clause 14 sets out the conditions relating to storage licences and in particular specifies maximum periods for the storage of gametes of 10 years and of embryos of five years. There is also a regulation-making power which would allow shorter, or in specific cases, longer periods to apply. This latter provision represents one of the few departures from the policy outlined in the White Paper published in 1987. The possibility of periods of storage of gametes longer than 10 years has been added because there are particular
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circumstances where this may be required; for example, where young men undergoing certain types of treatment which may render them sterile—for instance, for Hodgkin's Disease and testicular cancer—may wish to store sperm which would allow them to father children in later life. In cases like these, the 10-year rule might be unduly restrictive.
Clauses 17 to 20 set out the powers which a licence committee will have and the provisions for appeals. These are designed to ensure that applicants get a fair hearing and review of their case. Clauses 24 and 25 are important provisions which require the authority to have a code of practice to guide applicants and licence holders about the procedures which the authority would expect them to follow in the detailed discharge of its functions under the Bill. The code is expected to deal with such matters as counselling arrangements, confidentiality of records, arrangements for consent, the limit to the number of sperm donations, screening procedures for sperm donation, laboratory standards and the involvement of local ethics committees. I cite these as examples rather than as prescriptions for the code which will eventually be produced.
Clause 29 requires the authority to keep a register of information and to make it possible for persons born as a result of donation who are 18 or over to obtain, after they have been given the opportunity to receive proper counselling, non-identifying information about the donor which will be specified in regulations. This is an important arrangement because it can provide them with details of their genetic and medical history which may be useful for their future medical care.
Two final provisions to which I should refer are Clause 32, which amends the Surrogacy Arrangements Act 1985 to make it clear that no surrogacy arrangement is enforceable in law, and Clause 33, which provides that on-one who has a conscientious objection shall be required to take part in any activity governed by the Bill.
It is clear that the measure is in many ways a technical and complex one. This is inevitable given the need to deal fairly with very controversial problems of ethics and morals which are posed by medical and scientific advances in the treatment of infertility. I know that many people in this House and elsewhere would have liked the Government to bring forward proposals for legislation rather sooner but I am sure it is right that five years have elapsed since the Warnock Committee reported. In that time we have gained from the results of two rounds of consultation which led to the White Paper published in November 1987. Also, the issues dealt with by the Warnock Report have been considered on many occasions both in this House and in another place.
But it would be in vain to pretend that the Bill will not be very controversial here and in another place. I would therefore suggest to your Lordships that, amid the controversy, we should strive to keep clearly in view two guiding principles we need to have in this sensitive area of our national life.
In my view it is clear that there should be statutory control over the infertility techniques with which the Bill deals and, if Parliament so permits, embryo

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research. We have at present a form of such control in the licensing system which is operated informally by the Interim Licensing Authority. Successful though that system has shown itself to be, it relies on good will and co-operation from the scientists and doctors involved. While I have no reason to think that co-operation and their responsible approach to these matters are in jeopardy, we ought, for everyone's peace of mind, to ensure that sensitive issues of this kind are dealt with in a clear legal framework. Only a structure of this kind will reduce the possibility of abuse, however remote we believe that possibility to be.
That system of legal controls is provided because of the need to show proper respect to the gametes and human embryos, whether used for treatment, storage or research. Whether or not an embryo is to be treated as a child or a person it clearly has the potential for human life and should be treated with the dignity such status deserves. At present there is a legislative vacuum and it is the duty of Parliament to see that this vacuum is adequately filled.
The second guiding principle is the need to balance as well as we can the sometimes conflicting interests of those most closely concerned: the childless couple desperate for children; the families who stand to gain from the fruits of new scientific research; the human embryo with its potential for development. To achieve the right balance in such an area we each of us need deep thought and an inner quietness. It is in this spirit that on behalf of the Government I commend this Bill to the House for your Lordships' consideration, and renew my Motion that it be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time. —(The Lord Chancellor.)
3.57 p.m.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I think the whole House will want me to express thanks to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for his lucid presentation of the Bill. It was eminently fair and balanced, and the advice that he gave to the House was sound and temperate. I share with him sadness that Lord Trafford is not with us to take the part that he would have taken in the Bill; and I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, whose work years ago is the basis of what we discuss today.
We are embarking on the consideration of a Bill that will profoundly effect the lives and the hopes of thousands of families now and in the future. The procedures by which the Bill reached us today were a model of how legislation should be prepared. From the establishment of the committee of inquiry in 1982, the publication of the report in December 1984, the consultation paper in December 1986, the White Paper in November 1987, and, finally, with the Bill before us today, the questions have become ever clearer and the information available to us has been greatly increased. There has been adequate time for study, for research and for consultation. We have the experience of four years of what was the voluntary licensing authority and is now the Interim Licensing Authority, and we have the considered
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views of the Medical Research Council, of other learned bodies and of the charities involved in some of the diseases concerned. I am not one of those who says that we ought to have had this legislation before. I congratulate the Government on the manner in which they have brought it to us at this stage.
I must stress that today I speak only for myself. Some of my colleagues may take a totally different view. The debate enables us to clarify our views on the main issues before us. We shall then have a free vote on the crucial issue of the continuation or not of pre-embryo research up to 14 days after fertilisation.
Before embarking upon the main issue, I have one deep concern to express. In the Long Title of the Bill the Government have incorporated the words:
"To make provision in connection with human embryos and any subsequent development of such embryos".
That was clearly a decision paving the way for this Bill on embryo research and in vitro fertilisation to be used as a vehicle for a wide ranging discussion of decisions and amendments raising again the whole issue of the 1967 Abortion Act. I cannot say that I am other than saddened by the possible effect on the quality of our debate on the Bill. It is a decision I greatly regret. The issues tackled by the noble Baroness and her team and by the Bill are quite different from the issue of the medical termination of pregnancy.
The Bill affords the chance for a profoundly important, ethical debate on pre-embryo research. My fear is that an orderly debate could be gravely damaged by allowing the abortion issue in a sense to be spatchcocked into the Bill. I know that the Secretary of State is strongly of the view that research should not be halted. But it may be that, by his action, he is creating a danger that this aim could be lost amid a confusion of issues.
I ask the House: how should responsible parliamentarians respond to a Bill which, at the end of the day, when we have had our debate, could give the go-ahead to life giving research but which could also excessively limit women's right to choose an abortion, or, in reverse, a Bill which might take what I would call a responsible view on abortion but puts a stop to research? Why should we be forced to choose on issues both of such fundamental importance, whatever views we may hold on either? The possibility of such options being faced by your Lordships and by those in another place is deeply disturbing and, I believe, quite unnecessary.
Your Lordships will know that my noble and resourceful friend Lord Houghton of Sowerby has taken action to facilitate such a separation of the issues by tabling his Abortion (Amendment) Bill to be discussed at Second Reading next week. My plea to the Government is that they should allow time for the passage of his Bill both in this House and in another place so that the abortion issue can be separately debated. We could then proceed without interference or confusion with the issues contained in the Bill now before us.
It is to be welcomed that for many of the clauses in the Bill there is, as the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said, a wide measure of

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agreement in the House. The only issue I wish to deal with today is whether under the supervision of the statutory licensing authority we should permit or prohibit research on the pre-embryo during the 14 days from fertilisation. I wish to support as strongly as I can the continuation of research which has already begun. I believe that it offers the prospect of great scientific and medical benefit for a wide range of people, including, as the noble and learned Lord said, those affected by infertility. It also helps in the pre-natal diagnosis of genetic diseases and, indeed, in cancer research and in studies on miscarriage and contraception.
I hope that the Bill will not be distorted by hair-raising, horrific stories of genetic manipulation; that is, of the creation of monstrous hybrids, being half-human and half-animal, of cloning, and so on. Let us start by recognising that everyone in your Lordships' House and all the scientists involved are in agreement that this kind of research should be banned and that such a ban should be enforced with stiff penalties. We must be clear about what we are discussing. Of course, as the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said, that aspect is dealt with in Clause 3.
We are talking about research which could be of great potential to humanity. Its prohibition could cause great sadness, pain and suffering and end the hopes of many hard pressed and worried families not only for now but also in the future. It must be said that a decision by this House to stop such research would not in fact stop it. It might stop research in this country. But let us have no doubt about it. Properly controlled research can never be stopped. Britain is at the heart of this research but, of course, it would continue in Germany, in the United States and in other countries.
The case I wish to make is the right to choose. I would not wish to force anyone to be in any way involved in practices they find unacceptable, either physically or morally. Similarly, it seems to me that it cannot be right for people not directly or personally affected by the issues involved to deny the benefits of carefully controlled, inspected and limited research to people troubled by infertility or those concerned about the avoidance of physical and mental handicap.
I am sure that many of us have spoken with families facing the issues which this Bill confronts. I have met dozens of people over the past 15 years for whom these problems are realities and whose lives have been shattered by the consequences. I urge any person who has not done so to meet the research workers at some of our great hospitals. There are some wonderful, dedicated and brilliant people involved. Their work is carried out with much love, with a great deal of service to humanity and, I have to say, at not very high wages. There are also over 50 projects licensed by the Interim Licensing Authority centres many of which offer clinical services and counselling. I have visited some of them and I greatly admire the work being done. I should like to pay tribute, as did the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, to those in the front line of research and to those working at the licensing authority for Dame Mary Donaldson.
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Perhaps I may say a few words about the human problems which are at the root of the decisions which we must take. About one in 20 children admitted to hospital has a condition which is genetic in origin. Of these cases one in 10 of childhood deaths in hospital is the result of genetic disorders. About 3 per cent. of the babies born suffer from a major deformity. About 7,000 babies are born annually with genetic diseases. Some of the babies die within a few days: others can expect to live for two or three years in the case of Tay Sachs disease, 10 to 12 years in the case of Lesch Nyhan disease, or 20 or more years with a rapidly increasing debility such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy. However, other conditions do not appear until one has reached middle age—for example, Huntington's disease—so that the offspring of affected parents live in dread of developing the same crippling disease.
We should not imagine that the dread of the parents is any less than the dread of their offspring. For all of them it means a cloud of uncertainty hanging over the family, with so much pain felt by so many people; a pain which so often is silently borne.
In the foreseeable future it may be possible to detect those pre-embryos that would develop specific disorders such as muscular dystrophy, Down's syndrome, cystic fibrosis, Hunter's syndrome, Hurler's syndrome and Huntingdon's Chorea. There are at least 50 types of severe congenital disease which one day may be detectable by pre-embryo screening, but only if the research continues.
Opponents of research on the embryo must examine the alternatives that parents face. There are three options as I see it: first, to decide to forswear having a family—not an easy thing to do; secondly, to terminate the pregnancy if tests show the fetus to be a carrier of the disease—more abortions; and, thirdly, to go ahead, taking the risk that the child will not be born with or develop that disabling disease. Those are the terrible choices that confront many families.
Women who are carriers of Duchenne muscular dystrophy know that with each pregnancy they will have a one in four chance of bearing a child who will carry that disease. Research over the past few years has now begun to create hope among those people. Are we going to shatter that hope? It is surely inconceivable that any of us would take the decision now to thwart the hopes of so many families by stopping in its tracks, or stopping in its tracks in this country, research that may come up with solutions to some of those fearful prospects. We must give it a chance.
To refuse pre-embryo research would be to slam the door in the face of parents at risk of passing on serious genetic conditions. It may prove possible—we hope so—for doctors to identify and transfer only those pre-embryos which are free of the specific defect, saving families from the agonising decision of whether to give birth to a damaged child or to have an abortion. As is known, work is already under way in other areas that could bring great human benefit. Currently one in five pregnancies, as the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said, ends in miscarriage—a traumatic experience,

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as many of us will know. It is hoped to gain greater understanding of the reasons for miscarriages and to find ways to reduce them.
There is research into safer methods of contraception such as a contraceptive vaccine. Even more important is the problem of infertility, which affects about one in eight of all couples, bringing great sadness to would-be parents. The miracle of the test-tube baby is still only successful in one in 10 cases. We celebrate those that succeed and we mourn those that do not. More research is needed to find out why the figure is so low. For many infertile couples, in vitro fertilisation is the only hope of having a child. I believe that that should all be work on the NHS.
With so much at stake in terms of human happiness, and so many hopes pinned on that vital research effort, what is the argument all about? It is a vital argument about deeply held beliefs. It is about the claims that life begins at fertilisation. I find it difficult to sustain that argument. The pre-embryo consists of a group of cells, and, as the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said, even after 14 days it is no larger than the point of a pin. More than half of those cells abort spontaneously or fail to implant. The majority of the remnants go on to form the placenta and the membranes which will surround the fetus. It is only after 14 days or more that the cells, instead of going through the process of multiplying, begin to differentiate.
As the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York, who I am glad is speaking today, said in his moving and impressive speech on 15th January 1985:
"Here one can fix the beginning of human individuality, a biologically and morally more satisfying starting point than the moment of conception".
There is full agreement about imposing an absolute ban on research after the 14th day. There is also growing support from the general public —opinion polls show that 2:1 want to see the research continued —for permitting research. It is gaining strength among the scientific and medical worlds, well represented in your Lordships' House, with a few exceptions. The 32 charities involved (the Association of Medical Research Charities) in a statement on 23rd November 1989 came out clearly and unanimously in favour of the Warnock proposals. Yes, some of the research work may take time to bring positive results. That is the way of research. To stop the attempt, on the basis of doctrine rather than experience, surely cannot be right.
In conclusion, I shall quote one sentence from the statement produced by the 32 charities:
"It is the right of each individual to exercise freedom to choose in relation to the principle and the application of embryo research".
That is what the debate is about: people's right to know and parent's right to choose. At a time when freedom is expanding in a glorious way in so many fields in so many countries, it would indeed be sad and strange if here in Britain we sought to take a step which would turn back the clock on that vital research.
4.16 p.m.
Lord McGregor of Durris: My Lords, what the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack in his lucid, thorough, even-handed and helpful opening described as the drafting innovation of Clause 11 of this critically important Bill is central. It presents the legislator with a choice of permitting or renouncing research on the human embryo. Like the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, I speak for myself alone.
Although the scientific, medical, theological and moral implications of that choice are intricate, the central issues for lay people such as myself are simple. On the one hand, many scientists and doctors hold, as we have already been told, that the human embryo is basically a fertilised egg which may or may not grow into a fetus if it implants into the womb. The embryo has no organs, no sensations and no capability of independent existence. On that view, life is a continuum which does not begin with the embryo. Like sperms and eggs, the embryo has life and the potential to develop into a human being, but it is not, as is sometimes represented in the present controversy, a baby in miniature.
Those are also the factual components of judgments grounded in a long tradition of theology (Catholic and Protestant alike) which thinks, as I understand it, that there can be no personality without discrete individuality. In Jewish law and thought, full human status in not acquired until birth. Similarly, English common law does not recognise the child as a bearer of rights until it is born alive. In the moral, ecumenical and legal tradition of the West, the duty of protection has always been heightened as the fetus grows towards maturity. Thus the cleaving embryo claims respect and protection because of its origin in human genes and because of its potential for life; nevertheless, in that moral tradition the search for and discovery of medical knowledge beneficial to mankind provides sufficient reasons to permit research on the embryo.
On the other hand, since 1869 the present tradition of the Church of Rome, a minority in this country, and of those others who share similar views, has come to believe that life begins at the moment of fertilisation and insists that the embryo is therefore endowed with all the rights of a child that has been born. Accordingly, on that view research which may damage or endanger the embryo must be prohibited.
These opposing views are irreconcilable. As they are held by people who must be presumed to be equally knowledgeable, equally conscientious for the good of their fellow citizens and equally competent to interpret the will of God, the lay legislator, faced with the conflict between majority and minority opinions, cannot escape the duty of assessing the empirical implications and results of promoting or prohibiting research.
For this purpose he has to hand the succinct, lucid and informative analysis in the report of the Warnock Committee. Of the 16 members of that committee, only three dissented from the recommendation that research may be carried out on any embryo resulting from in vitro fertilisation up to the end of the 14th day after fertilisation. This recommendation was very strongly supported by

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such bodies as the Royal Society, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Medical Research Council and the British Medical Association on the ground of actual and potential benefits to humans.
These benefits have been listed by the Medical Research Council as, first, the improvement of in vitro fertilisation techniques which have already enabled infertile women to have 2,000 healthy babies in Britain. At present successful pregnancies result from only 10 per cent. of all patients. Secondly, this research will help to reduce the number of abortions in those who are at risk of passing on serious genetic disease to their children. Thirdly, it will promote the understanding and prevention of miscarriages which occur in 20 per cent. of all pregnancies. Finally, research will assist in the development of simpler, safer and more effective means of contraception.
No one can doubt that the overwhelming weight of scientific and medical opinion is in favour of such research. It has already relieved some disabilities, as well as the emotional anguish for people and their families which attaches peculiarly to problems of reproduction. Further research holds out similar prospects for the future. At the moment, as has already been explained, this is subject to regulation by a voluntary Interim Licensing Authority for Human In Vitro Fertilisation and Embryology, set up four years ago through the initiative of the biomedical community and modelled on the recommendations of the Warnock Committee, to meet the need for the effective scrutiny and ethical control of research until the Government could establish a statutory scheme. This will be set up under the Bill with a lay chairman and deputy chairman and members of both sexes. Scientists, doctors and laymen alike agree that research in this field should be controlled by a powerful authority responsible to Parliament through the Secretary of State.
The legislator must master, at least in outline, the medical and scientific issues with which he has to deal. However, in a democratic, pluralist society he must also weigh conflicting opinions and be aware that those who oppose research are in a minority. As such they are entitled to a sympathetic and careful hearing for their views. But further, because opponents and supporters of research are handling inflammable materials, they are both under an imperative duty to present the issues fairly to an untutored public and not to misrepresent the views of those with whom they disagree and above all not to impugn other people's motives. On issues like this tolerance is the very basis of democracy. Its practice imposes a severe discipline in circumstances in which each side has to tolerate views which can arouse feelings of indignation and even of revulsion and disgust.
It is a grave sin in a democracy to introduce physical violence into political arguments. Nearly as lamentable is the use of violent language which degrades and distorts the means of communication among citizens. I have not found in my reading of those who wish to permit research under the supervision of a statutory licensing authority any such improper use of language when informing and
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appealing to the public. Unhappily this cannot be said about the presentation of the arguments against research. On this side of the question, language has been used to obfuscate discussion by the calculated misrepresentation and personal abuse of opponents.
For example, I read last year in the Catholic Herald on 5th February:
"British medicine today, with honourable exceptions, is galloping down the road Nazi Germany took, long before the holocaust, when the majority of German doctors and nurses (acquiesced in selecting) for extermination people … who were severely physically handicapped or with a mental handicap … The number exterminated is estimated at one million … We now have to find the answers to developments in medicine which raise … grave moral issues such as … practices, like … embryo experimentation, in vitro fertilisation".
Last month the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children in a letter addressed to its large membership wrote of this Bill as being,
"on the use of human embryos as guinea pigs in scientific experiments".
Ten days ago the honorary administrator of Life, Britain's biggest anti-abortion group, was reported in many newspapers as saying this in The Journal, published daily in Newcastle-upon-Tyne: (I apologise in parenthesis to the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York).
"John Habgood is a disgrace to Christianity. The Archbishop is a scandal, so is the Bishop of Gloucester, now, alas Chairman of the Church of England Board of Social Responsibility, and committed to the pro-death cause … They should be removed before they use their pagan pro-death influence in the big debate which will shortly be opening".
The Interim Licensing Authority for Human In Vitro Fertilisation and Embryology has recently issued a report warning Members of Parliament that a ban on research on human embryos would condemn future generations to suffer from such inherited diseases as cystic fibrosis, haemophilia and many others. Last week the Daily Telegraph reported Jack Scarisbrick, professor of history at the University of Warwick and director of Life, as commenting:
"The test tube baby lobby is not really interested in infertility. It wants a plentiful supply of human embryos for testing drugs and experimenting in genetic manipulation. There is no known genetic disorder which requires human embryos for research into treatment. The lobby is interested only in killing not curing—the antithesis of good medicine".
Those of us who have followed this debate cannot avoid the conclusion that such unscrupulous utterances are not the mindless vituperation of campaigners on the violent fringe of the movements opposing research. Unhappily, they must be treated as the authentic voice of those movements. Regrettably, a good deal of the language which has been used on one side in this controversy is offensive and wildly inaccurate on matters of medical and scientific fact.
One consequence has been that far too much of the argument against research on embryos is taken not on its merits as these are stated by many honourable exponents, some of whom we shall be hearing in this debate, but rather expressed in uncharitable, prejudicial and emotive terms which exclude altogether the possibility of reasoned discourse.
Democratic legislators accept that the beliefs of minorities should, if possible, not be outraged by the

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majority. But they know too that minorities cannot be permitted to coerce the majority, the more especially in this instance because no member of the minority will be compelled by this Bill to use or benefit from the results of the research which the minority finds repugnant. For those reasons I trust that the House will support in due time the continuance of research on pre-embryos in accordance with the guidelines set out by the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack in his conclusion.
4.32 p.m.
The Archbishop of York: My Lords, bearing in mind what the two noble Lords who have preceded me have said, your Lordships will realise that I stand before them with a somewhat ambiguous reputation in these matters. However, I am sure noble Lords will know how to make up their own minds. I too wish to start by paying tribute to the magisterial introductory speech by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor which covered the ground so well that there seems little left to be said. However, I am sure that that will not deter us from debating the matter.
Like others who have spoken, I speak primarily in a personal capacity. The much maligned Board for Social Responsibility of the Church of England produced an excellent report on this subject a few years ago entitled Personal Origins. This has been debated in the General Synod and has received wide acclaim, but I think it is fair to say that the Church of England has not yet taken a definitive position on these matters. I therefore speak personally and I wish to express support for this legislation which I believe is necessary and which is for the most part on the right lines.
Like others I propose to concentrate on the issue of embryo experimentation because this represents the moral heart of the Bill. If we can clear our minds about this, I believe most of the other provisions of the Bill will fall into place. The Warnock Report described questions about when life or personhood begin as not "susceptible of straightforward answers" and such answers as "complex amalgams of factual and moral judgments". I think that is true, but I add the rider that a great many answers to apparently simple questions also have this complex character as amalgams of factual and moral judgments. This, however, does not deter people from giving simple answers. As the Bill progresses we are likely to hear more accusations of the kind just referred to by the noble Lord, Lord McGregor, put forward with greater and greater passion. My concern this afternoon, however, is to try to understand how and why such passionate differences arise and how they might be reconciled.
The noble Lord who preceded me has already reminded your Lordships of the two different perspectives on the way in which life develops. It needs to be stressed that both entail profound respect for human life. Both are motivated by the desire to protect and enhance human life, and both in the case of a great many people spring out of deep religious commitments. It is absurd and dishonest
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to label one attitude pro-life and the other pro-death. I hope that that language will be kept out of the debate.
By and large a biologiocal approach to the beginnings of life is rooted in gradualism. Scientists in general and biologists in particular deal mostly in continuities and in gradual changes from one state to another. This is true of evolution, in which the transition from the prehuman to the human took place over countless generations. There was never a precise moment at which it could have been said, "There is a hominid and here is a man". But this is not to deny that as a result of that process there emerged a profound and indeed crucial set of differences between hominids and men.
The same is true in the development of individual lives. They begin with chemistry and they reach their fulfilment in mystery. There is no doubt about the depth, wonder, moral worth and religious significance of personhood, but the transitions on the way to it are not clean, clear and decisive, despite the tremendous significance attached by some people to the moment of fertilisation. Biologically speaking we are looking at a continuous process.
Perhaps I can make the significance of this a little more clear by giving your Lordships an analogy. Exactly 10 years ago a mathematician called Mandelbrot first discovered what is now called the Mandelbrot set. It is a set of points which can be mapped out as a computer graphic to form the most amazing, beautiful and complex structure that it is possible to imagine. It is a picture of literally infinite depth. If one magnifies the details of any part of the picture, one finds that in them are whole worlds of further detail which are always beautiful, which never repeat themselves and which always reveal more and more detail, on and on ad infinitum.
How is the Mandelbrot set made? It is made by the use of an absurdly simple equation with only three terms. The secret lies in the process. It is a process whereby the answer to one use of the equation becomes the starting point for the next. In other words, it is a cumulative process, just like evolution in which one life form builds on another and just like embryology in which the development of one cell provides the context for the development of its neighbours and its successors.
That is how unimaginable complexity can develop out of extreme simplicity. That is why it seems strange to a biologist that all the weight of moral argument should be placed on one definable moment at the beginning. What matters is the process. One might call it a value-added process. It is out of that process that humans grow. That is a biological viewpoint.
The alternative viewpoint entails looking back from the standpoint of fully developed human persons along the historical line to some point which seems to mark an individual beginning. If we are to give full moral worth to such persons, runs the argument, then we have to give full moral worth to their whole history, from its very first moment.
That is a fine ideal but it seems to me to rest on biological, theological and philosophical mistakes. Despite the claims of some, it does not in my opinion

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represent a view which is necessarily and unquestionably Christian. Christians are no more required to believe that humanness is created in an instant than we are required to believe in the historical existence of Adam and Eve. As a matter of historical fact, Christian beliefs about when the fetus should be treated as having full human value have differed widely through the ages.
The biological mistake in the ascription of full value from the moment of conception is the confusion between development and growth. As the noble Lord who spoke before me reminded the House, the mental image which some people have of an early embryo is of a miniscule baby. The language used about its smallness and defencelessness clearly reflects that view. But early embryos are not miniature babies. What is lacking in that perception is any understanding of how, biologically speaking, the process of development creates the person. That biological view can be backed from a theological perspective by the understanding of creation as continuous —God continuously calling personal being into existence.
The theological mistake in that view is to suppose that because Christians claim that human beings are unique and made in the image of God, that necessarily implies the implantation of a human soul or at least of some entity carrying full human rights at a particular moment in time. One reason that is a mistake is that if that moment is thought of as the moment of conception, and if we face the fact that the majority of fertilised ova never develop beyond a very primitive stage, we seem committed to the curious belief that the majority of souls destined for eternal life will be those whose earthly life has never been anything but embryonic.
To me biological gradualism makes much more sense. This world is a vale of soul-making, and the soul develops with the body's capacity to receive it.
The philosophical mistake in the belief that full and instantaneous human rights are somehow created in the moment of conception lies in the surreptitious assumption that in those very early stages of embryonic life there is some real personal entity to which our moral language can apply. For example, in a memorandum by the Association of Lawyers for the Defence of the Unborn there is a helpful recognition of the imprecision of the word "person" when used in such circumstances. However, at the same time the lawyers seem to feel no difficulty in describing those entities which they cannot call persons as victims. Far be it from me to criticise lawyers, especially when I am about to be followed by one, but I cannot help feeling that there are philosophical inadequacies and unexamined assumptions in that kind of language.
The real strength of that continuous history perspective as I see it lies not in some dubious claim about the full moral rights of fertilised ova but in the question: what are we doing to ourselves and to our own respect for human life if we fail to be sensitive towards something so intimately bound up with our personal origins? That is a serious and a valid moral question. It is a question which can be set alongside the equally serious and valid moral
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question about the importance of research as itself a basis for respecting and enhancing human life.
Both questions rest upon the same kind of moral presuppositions. Both are in the end utilitarian questions. It is not a case, as some have suggested, of mere utilitarianism on one side and a noble adherence to principle on the other. We are all struggling to do the best that we can in using and controlling the new powers and insights which science, medicine and technology are constantly providing. Therefore I hope that we can come through this stage of sharp confrontation towards a consensus which acknowledges the special quality of human embryonic life but which refuses nevertheless to make claims to it which are biologically, theologically and philosophically unsustainable, and which recognises a valid place for research in this delicate area.
The 14-day rule, with all the safeguards surrounding it, seems to me to be a workable basis for such a consensus. It is no more possible to set it up as a totally clear moral dividing line than it is to do the same for the moment of conception. But to make it a cut-off point is morally and biologically defensible. The fact that it is based on an identifiable biological transition will, I believe, protect it against future argument for extending the limits of research. I therefore gladly support the Bill, includi[ng the first option in Clause 11.
4.49 p.m.
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: My Lords, despite the absurdly prominent position that I have been given in this debate by the powers that be, I have only one rather simple point to make, It is a point of a far lesser degree of profundity than any in the speeches to which we have so far been privileged to listen.
I ask myself a question as what I might call a journeyman lawyer and a journeyman legislator over the greater part of my life. The question that I ask myself is what place in matters of this kind the criminal sanctions of the criminal law should play upon the working of the individual conscience doing what it believes to be its duty. I think that that is at the heart of the practical issue with which, at a later stage of the Bill, we shall find ourselves confronted.
We cannot duck the issue in this case. We have gone so far down the road that what is now being proposed in the Bill, whichever of the two options we take, involves criminal sanctions of one kind or another. We can go down the road of licensing and control or we can go down the road of absolute prohibition, but there is, so far as I can see, no third course open to us.
I have to speak as a Christian believer and I owe an absolute allegiance to God, but I would challenge my right if I were to assert it —and I do not —to impose my theological views upon the conscience —the responsible conscience, responsibly exercised —of others.
Equally, I am a non-scientific member of the Royal Society and I owe human loyalty to my fellows in that society. The point that I am trying to make can be expressed almost in a sentence or two. Of course,

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if members of any branch of the Christian Church were themselves being asked to do something which they regarded as affronting to their conscience, I should defend their right to refuse to do it to the last syllable of my powers of persuasion. But the Bill allows complete freedom to the conscience of Christians and the conscience of others. It does not seek to impose sanctions —criminal or civil —against those who think that embryonic research is wrong. That is clearly stated in the Bill and it would be implicit in it even if it were not clearly stated.
However, we are also faced with a body of highly responsible scientists who see great advantages in the continuance of research. They are not irresponsible people. They are not pro-death or denying the dignity which Western civilisation has always accorded to the human being. On the contrary, they believe, for reasons which have already been explained and will no doubt be explained by others far more eloquently than I could hope to do, that they are working for the benefit of humanity in a responsible and limited kind of way, subject to the authority at present of the Interim Licensing Authority and subject, if the first option is taken, to the authority of the statutory licensing authority to be set up under the Bill.
I would seriously ask the question of those who would impose an absolute prohibition: what kind of right in a free and liberal democracy do they think they have to say no to that group of people? I can only say that I can see no right whatever for them to claim that position.
Having said that, there is only one other thing that I want to say, at any rate at this stage. I share the view expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, that the question of the abortion time-limit is quite different from that which we are now discussing. The kind of parliamentary tactics that we saw in the last Session of Parliament were not a credit to parliamentary democracy. I hope that both these issues will be discussed on their merits. But so far as concerns the Bill, and for the reason that I have given, I have no hesitation whatever in supporting the freedom of the human conscience responsibly exercised under the authority of the law.
4.55 p.m.
Baroness Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe: My Lords, after listening to all the previous speeches and in view of the large number of speakers it would be absurd to be anything but very brief.
IVF has seemed almost like a miracle for desperately unhappy, childless couples who are able to undertake the new process. But, as the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said, there is still a failure rate of 90 per cent. I am speaking today mainly because I have been able to visit the IVF clinic at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge. I thought that it might be useful to the House if I described the attitudes of the doctors and the feelings of the patients.
Dr. Martin Johnson allowed me to see his work there and to talk to the patients. I saw one woman who is a senior midwife. She loves her work and is obviously dedicated to her patients, but until now
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she has had the experience of delivering babies day by day while unable to have one of her own. She has had two failed IVF pregnancies but is now in the 25th week of her third pregnancy and is expecting twins, if all goes well. She has to stay in bed in the clinic for a highly critical period just now, and probably for most of the rest of her pregnancy, but she said:
"It is all worth it —without IVF I would never have had the chance of having a child".
She understood the whole process and told me how strictly controlled the procedures are. What particularly delighted her was that almost all the patients sign a form saying that they want to give their spare eggs for research because they want other women to have the chance that they have had, even if they themselves are not successful. She is a highly intelligent, vital woman, doing splendid work. I admired her courage tremendously.
Dr. Johnson told me that he and his colleague, Dr Braude, have had many agonising discussions and that if Parliament's decision is to ban research he will probably not feel able to continue the IVF work because doctors feel that the present low rate of success without a basis of research into this and into genetic disease would be bad medical practice and morally wrong.
I ask the House to remember that 7,000 children are born with genetic diseases every year. I want to stress that pre-embryo research will reduce abortions. As the noble and learned Lord explained to us, a woman who has had a genetically handicapped child has now to wait until late in her pregnancy before deciding whether to have a late abortion or to bear another desperately handicapped child. As my noble friend Lord Ennals said, that is a terrible decision for a woman to have to take. If research continues successfully, it can be decided, as the noble Lord said, within 14 days of pregnancy. So pre-embryo research would reduce abortions and that would be a tremendous step forward.
The Government have given us the choice of allowing research, provided that it is licensed and regulated as recommended by the Warnock Committee. Dr. Johnson told me that the interim licensing authority visits his clinic regularly. He describes the inspections as thorough and very tough. Every member of the team —nurses, research workers and doctors —goes through formidable questioning. He very much welcomes their approach and says that his team learn a lot because the authority visits other units and there is a useful feedback of other methods and techniques. Under the new statutory inspectorate there will be very little to add to their routines. And of course, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, pointed out, it will be a criminal offence to carry out any procedures on a human embryo, except as part of a project specifically licensed by the statutory licensing authority and subject to inspection. That is vitally important.
Like everyone else I have thought a great deal about the ethical aspects of this research and we all understand the difficulties of noble Lords who have religious and moral objections to it. I listened with great attention —we all did —to the powerful and

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moving speech of the most reverend Primate. I cannot use words like the most reverend Primate, but I beg your Lordships to consider the consequences of a complete ban on the research.
5.1 p.m.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, I wish this Bill could be considered as part of the general question of what should be the law on the use which may be made of human beings, or parts of them, in the course of medical practice or medical and scientific research. The trade in human organs is now flourishing in Japan and elsewhere. We have before us the question of the use of fetal material in a therapeutic role —that is to say, abortion brains for Parkinson sufferers; we have the question of gene therapy, and this Bill raises the spectre, and I hope deals with, the possibility of a trade in embryos.
I do not quite go along with the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, in thinking that the preparation of the Bill has been a model of how these things ought to be done. I find it another occasion when I have to regret the passing of the Royal Commission as a means of inquiry, capable of summoning people and commissioning research before very complicated scientific legislation is introduced.
I am sorry also that we have not had any means of finding out about the situation in other countries. The only document in the immense amount of literature which has been before us in recent weeks, which tells us anything about other countries, is a report from the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. It shows that there is the same doubt and confusion in other countries as there is here. An interesting fact which emerges from it is that the German parliament has before it, but has not yet considered, a Bill which would choose to outlaw embryo research altogether. The significance of its being Germany which is going in this direction cannot be lost on anybody.
If embryo research is banned in other countries and allowed here, their researchers will come and work here. If it is banned here and allowed in other countries, ours will go and work there. What are the pros and cons of this? It ought to be considered; I am not sure by whom, or whether it has been considered at all. To conclude on this matter, if ever there was an obvious Community problem this is it. I hope that someone, somewhere in the debate will be able to tell us what the European Commission and the European Parliament are proposing to do about it.
I am surprised to find that I am the first speaker in this debate who is going to come down fairly and squarely for a ban for subsection (2). I am not used to being in a position which looks retrograde and obscurantist —at least, I hope I am not —and I imagine that other speakers later will be saying the same thing. It appears to me obvious that there is no biological discontinuity. The word "pre-embryo", which was used in the Warnock Report but which has not been used today, seems to have fallen somewhat from favour. It was, in any case, not known to medical science. It was, rather, invented to show up the supposed difference of the 14-day embryo from
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what came later. I note that Dr. Edwards himself, one of the pioneers of IVF, rejects the term.
What right have we to say "no" to good scientists? —a point which has been forcefully asked already. We have to set one thing beside another. There is nothing done by human beings which can be above or outside a moral calculus. The statement that knowledge is good for its own sake is itself a moral statement that requires ethical examination. It is not a self-evident proposition. To suppose that it is self-evident, that knowledge is always good, is to be stuck in the reductionist desert which has been the remote cause of so many of the ills of modern society. Sir Alfred Ayer himself perhaps sensed this at the end of his life.
The question is not just what limits to place on the pursuit of knowledge which would be self-evidently useful; the question is: what benefits justify a new sort of research? I ask your Lordships to consider the phrase, "human being". We are told that a 14-day embryo is not a human being and is not entitled to full human rights. The most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York was very strong on this and so was my noble friend Lord McGregor. I do not think anybody thinks that an embryo of any age is entitled to full human rights. It is obviously not entitled to property or to vote. We are talking about the most basic human right of all, simply the right not to be terminated, discontinued.
Those who say that this full-stop sized miniblob is not a human being must answer as to which part of the description it is to which they object —"being" or "human". It is a being. Its nature and habits are known and we are talking about it. It is also alive and is made of human cells, not those of any other animal or plant. If it was not human you would not want it for research, and if it was not human no one would mind you having it for research.
It is true that it is only at 14 days or whatever, that the primitive streak appears, but it is to my mind a typical reductionist truth; in other words, true but not important. What if only 1 per cent. of the cells go towards the baby? Then 99 per cent. of the blob is 100 per cent. nothing. And one per cent. of it is. 100 per cent. something. Consider this reductionist argument. It goes like this. A pre-embryo is not an embryo; it only has the potential of becoming an embryo. A pre-viable fetus is only a potential baby; the baby is only a potential child, the child is only a potential adolescent and so on, until we came to the headmistress of Oxford High School who is only a potential mistress of Girton. The fault of the very new embryo is that, in the words of the Victorian joke, it is "only a little one".
But we have all been through this stage. At this stage, we were all irreversibly ourselves. And I would say Mandelbrot or no Mandelbrot, that is a person —what a wonderful analogy that was —because it will be a person if all goes well, and no other person interferes to stop it being.
IVF was originally adopted only for inoperably blocked tubes, where it really is the only hope. In Denmark it is still limited to that use—Denmark of all the libertarian countries. But now it is used in

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this country and elsewhere for endometriosis, all kinds of ovulation disorders, anti-sperm antibodies and various male conditions. Most of these are socially or environmentally caused.
What is infertility anyhow? Is it one year's failure to conceive despite trying, or is it, what most people would consider more realistic, four years' failure to conceive? There is no agreement about this. Some clinics do not even seem to distinguish between women who conceive because of the IVF they are having from those who happen to conceive naturally during the course of their treatment. There is virtually no follow-up on cases of successfully born babies, nor of couples who withdraw after repeated failures. What possibility is there of the good counselling in advance, which the Bill seeks to achieve if there is no follow-up.
Let us now consider the question of cost. It is an argument that might not be taken too seriously in a matter of life and death, but there is no law against looking at it. Are we talking within the bounds of financial sanity anyhow with IVF? The Interim Licensing Authority says that 275,000 couples in this country could benefit from IVF teatment. The present best estimate of cost per live birth as a result of IVF is about £25,000, making a total of about £7 billion for those couples. Shall we spread that over 20 years? That would give us £350 million a year. That would not include the intensive care that many of the "successful" cases require from the NHS in order to keep multiple birth babies alive.
What are the risks of IVF, and of the research which will make it so much easier and of course cheaper? They have not yet been assessed. What about the risk of perpetuating the very genes that made the parents infertile in the first place, thus carrying the condition on for generation after generation, requiring IVF for each generation? Is that a consideration? I do not know the answer; I have not heard the question asked.
Some clinics report their success by counting pregnancies as success. But if one looks at healthy births one does not have such an encouraging picture. Perinatal single births with IVF are twice the normal incidence, and perinatal multiple births are four times the normal rate. I do not know whether many noble Lords listened to "File on Four" yesterday. There was a description of the horrors —and they really were horrors —of grief and sickness which may await IVF patients who have multiple pregnancies where all the babies die within the first year or two of life.
In the debate so far there has not figured a name which should have been at the head of everything: Verlinsky. Verlinsky is an American researcher who has had the very bright idea of looking for deleterious recessive genes in what is discarded by an ovum or a sperm at the process of meiosis, when it splits in half into the two bands of chromosomes, only one of which goes forward. If the recessive gene is known to be there in the sperm or ova of that patient, and if it is found in what is discarded, then obviously it is not in the cell which is going forward to make the baby. Therefore no further research on that point
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is needed, if this technique can be brought to full efficiency. With dominant recessive genes one knows anyhow whether or not they are present because they are in every cell of the body of the parents. All this has to be considered before we make up our minds on what is the long-run solution to IVF and the research that helps it.
The mind should turn to research into infertility. The Warnock Committee did not cite any in its report. I believe that that is probably because there was none at that time, or very little. There is not much now. Great figures are still thrown around without very much justification or sensible definition. Why are all these people infertile in the first place? The reasons are known in general but no particular attempt is made to address them. Some of the reasons are environmental —toxins in the environment —some social, the use of unsafe contraceptive methods, the transmission of infectious diseases by sex, and even stress. There is a condition called athletic amenorrhea, which sounds fairly curable; I do not know. Perhaps that is a flippant comment. It seems fairly likely that the number of infertile couples could be reduced by attention to these problems far more expeditiously than by spending £25,000 per birth on IVF.
The joy of those who achieve fertility or are able to achieve a baby through IVF has been described from all sides of the House. It is developing a special place in this argument. I would say, call no thing joyful until its full results are known. At present 90 per cent. of treatment cycles bring pain and worry and do not work. Some which do work bring tragedy and despair. These proportions are not yet known. Perhaps they are not accurate. They should be made accurate and they should be widely known. Only then can we balance the good against the evil.
All that relates to IVF. I refer now to research. The question whether human beings may be killed for research is a proper one to be settled by Parliament. Infertility is a grief, not a disease. Those who suffer it are not in pain and are not ill. It may be caused by diseases and it is to the extirpation of those diseases, and of environmental toxins having the same result, that research ought to be devoted. If we allow the alleviation of grief to outweigh the sanctity of human life, what shall we do when —as would certainly happen —the cry goes up that the alleviation of pain must also do so?
For that reason licensing embryo research would be the beginning of a very slippery slope indeed. It is the threshold. After the first licence to experiment on the undeniably human, the door is open. If 14 days are allowed, why not 20 or however long it requires to research the artificial uterus? We can see all the arguments coming. One reads now of the case of human organ sales and trickery. No doubt it is rare but there is big money in all that. Not all those concerned are good scientists and virtuous men. (Hardly any of them incidentally are women.)
When the time comes I shall support the Bill, and shall vote for subsection (2) rather than subsection (1).
5.17 p.m.
Lord Adrian: My Lords, first, I apologise to the House and in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, that I shall not be in my place after six o'clock. I have a longstanding engagement. Indeed I am among the wardens who look forward to welcoming the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor to dinner at the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths.
I shall hope to be able to listen to the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, to whom we all owe very great gratitude for the guidance that she has given us in her report. I hope that it is guidance that noble Lords will be able to follow. Perhaps I may thank the usual channels who have allowed me to speak before my proper time.
I wish to make one point. I do not propose to take us again over the scientific and philosophical ground which has been so very ably covered by the noble and learned Lord and the most reverend Primate.
It seems to me both illogical and disingenuous to permit in vitro fertilisation and at the same time to say that the research on which it is based shall now become illegal. If we make research on the pre-embryo illegal in this country nevertheless, as has already been said, it will be done elsewhere and perhaps in a country which has a scientific tradition less responsible and honourable than our own. Shall we then allow in the UK treatments which derive from work done abroad which would have been criminal if it had been done in this country? Will the new statutory licensing body deny new treatments based on research done abroad?
I believe that the question is a real one because the Bill that is before us will allow treatments involving pre-embryos —treatments which have been devised on the basis of research of a kind that under the Bill in one of its proposed forms will henceforth be a criminal activity.
Your Lordships may not know that most of my working life has been spent in the physiological laboratory at Cambridge. That is the same laboratory in which Dr. Robert Edwards, jointly with Dr. Steptoe, carried out the work to discover how to encourage the development of the pre-embryo in vitro and successfully to plant It into the womb; that is in vitro fertilisation. That was no sudden breakthrough but involved years of patient, caring and deeply considered work. I know that because over 15 years or more I had many discussions with Dr. Edwards on all aspects of his work, including its clinical aspects.
They were discussions of a kind that colleagues always have in labs about their work. But there was also a more personal import because his work kept my own hopes alive. So I saw at close quarters, with involvement and admiration, much of the work which, over 20 years or so, has now given rise to the legislation before us.
If when the time comes we vote to ban research on the pre-embryo and make it a criminal activity, there will be at least a strong implication that the work of Edwards and Steptoe would have been criminal if only Parliament had had a chance to say
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so. By all means let unlicensed work in these fields be criminal, provided that some research is licensable. But I simply shall not believe—not even if Parliament tells me to—that all research on the pre-embryo or 14 days after fertilisation is of itself inherently criminal and not on any grounds to be licensed.
Dr. Edwards and Dr. Steptoe have given the joy of children to very many people. I cannot support a proposal which, while allowing us to benefit from this work, makes Edwards and Steptoe —and others in the field of medical sciences whom I am proud to call colleagues—no more deserving of our respect and gratitude than common criminals, or perhaps more precisely common criminals manqué. I do not propose to comment because everything has already been said so well, but that is to say nothing of what banning research will do to hold back the further benefits that will come from continuing the work that is now going forward in the UK. They include greater success rates for IVF; reducing the number of abortions; understanding and preventing miscarriages; and developing safer and simpler contraception.
5.23 p.m.
The Duke of Norfolk: My Lords, we should all like to thank the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack for the way in which he introduced the debate with his balanced and comprehensive speech. I listened with great interest to the speeches that followed. I did not agree with them all but I absorbed what was said. We all wish to thank —and are doling so almost tediously —the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, for compiling her great report in July, 1984. It was not unanimious and contained three minority expressions of dissent.
The current Voluntary Licensing Authority was set up in 1985 pending a Government Bill which now at last has been published. I welcome many of its provisions and in particular the prohibition in Clauses 3 and 4 forbidding the mixing of human gametes with animal gametes to create a monstrous hybrid or forbidding the cloning of humans and human genetic engineering.
However, I have serious reservations about some of the clauses in the Bill. I shall unhesitatingly support the alternative clause, Clause 11, prohibiting research by experiments on embryos, provided that the definition of an embryo contained in Clause 1(1) as a two-cell zygote is amended.
The Government drafting differs from that used in the White Paper of November 1987 when we were offered a free vote of either outlawing experiments on a fertilised conceptus or experiments up to 14 days. The present Clause 11 gives me much more concern because it offers alternatives of experiments up to 33 hours or up to 14 days. It in no way specifies the reason why an embryo may be created.
My position is that an embryo should be created only for insertion into a specified woman and should receive the maximum protection from the moment of its creation. No non-therapeutic research should be allowed. Furthermore, I am not happy that the human fertilisation and embryo authority, which the

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Bill sets up in order to license the creation of human embryos by IVF, would merely be a new quango, insufficiently supervised by the Minister and thus not under the daily control of Parliament. Surely it is totally unacceptable that it should report to the Minister only every two years. The present voluntary licensing authority reports annually. The responsibility for licensing experiments in animals lies directly with the Secretary of State in the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986. Why should humans be treated less rigorously?
I have been kindly invited by my noble friend Lord Jellicoe to visit the Medical Research Council units at Carshalton and Hammersmith where experiments are carried out under the authority of the VLA. At the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford I had most informative discussions with Dr. Kent and Professor Sir David Weatherall. After much careful reflection on my part I consider that, ethically, a human person is created when the sperm of the male fertilises the ovum of a woman, thus creating an embryo or conceptus either in the fallopian tubes or in vitro. A proper regard for human dignity leads to respect for human life from its origin, which IVF demonstrates is at fertilisation. The only safe course is to protect human life from the beginning.
The current fashion of using the term "pre-embryo" to describe an embryo up to 14 days was never used in the report of the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock. It is ridiculous to claim that one must wait for the development of a primitive streak at about 14 days for the so-called "pre-embryo" to become a member of the human race.
In her speech made on 15th January, 1988, the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, talked of the slippery slope starting to go forward on the 14th day. Does it not start on day one; namely, at fertilisation when the 15 chromosomes of the male meet the 15 chromosomes of the female to make the human cell which is the beginning of life?
With great respect, I cannot follow the argument of the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York that the personhood of an embryo must wait until the original one-cell zygote has multiplied in tens and tens of thousands by the fourteenth day. Why not earlier, at the four to eight-cell stage or later when the brain is appearing and there are millions of cells? When does personhood start? I say that it starts on day one.
The embryo at conception is indeed a marvellous minute cell and those like me who have seen it for the first time have been struck by a sense of awe. As Professor Edwards remarked when he looked at Louise Brown at the four-cell stage, "It looked beautiful".
The Geneva Declaration of the World Medical Association stated:
"I will maintain the utmost respect for human life from the time of conception: even under threat I will not use my medical knowledge contrary to the laws of humanity".
The Helsinki Declaration of the World Medical Association states:
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"In research on man the interests of science and society should never take precedence over consideration relating to the well being of the subject".
I fully support all efforts to relieve childlessness. As a father and a grandfather, I am in favour of motherhood and babies. I am also in favour of scientific progress and medical research to conquer diseases like cystic fibrosis and Down's syndrome. However, all research must be carried out within laws that respect human life and do not transgress the principle of medical ethics to do no ill. That has stood society in good stead for centuries. We are now being asked to cross the Rubicon in legalising experiments using human beings which inevitably result in mutilation and destruction of human life at its earliest stages. Another better way must be found to relieve human suffering.
Again and again very distinguished medical authorities tell us that there is nothing to be found out about curing diseases like cystic fibrosis which could not be found out without using human embryos at all. For example, Professor Williamson at St. Mary's Paddington, who is totally opposed to the views which I hold, was one of the first to discover the gene responsible for cystic fibrosis without experimenting on human embryos. He did not experiment on human embryos to find that out. A cure may be found by infusing a healthy gene into the child's affected lungs. Meanwhile, Dr. Peter Helm is transplanting healthy lungs into these children in Great Ormond Street Hospital. I saw him two days ago with two happy boys who are alive and well and who proudly showed me the scars of their operations by lifting up their shirts.
Spina bifida has been discovered to be a vitamin deficiency disease and can be avoided by ensuring that the mother has a healthy diet. There is no need for irrevelent genetic manipulation. Yet, at the time the Warnock Report was published one of the great arguments to justify the use of human embryos in experiments was that it would help to cure the disease of spina bifida.
We do not need experimentation on human embryos in order to achieve the progress which we all want. Perhaps I may put that in another way. Will those in favour of human embryo research give us one example of what they have discovered in research into genetic diseases which they could not have discovered in another way? I say that very sincerely and that is the burden of my speech.
I am told that another aim of researchers is to find an abortifacient vaccine which will prevent an embryo from attaching itself to the womb, called "nidation" by the scientists. I believe that that is a gruesome and distasteful way of using a human being.
In West Germany the Bundestag is passing an Act adopting a very strict approach to IVF and forbidding all embryo abuse. Of course, the Germans know what they are talking about when it comes to experimenting on human beings. That has received support from all political parties. Comparable legislation has been passed in Scandinavia, South Australia and Victoria and the federal funding of embryo research has been banned in the United States.

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Some of us believe in Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism or Hinduism, or there are some who are agnostic and wholly humanistic in their approach to these matters. However, all of us subscribe to the philosophy of Kant; namely:
"We should always treat others never merely as means but always as ends".
5.37 p.m.
Baroness Lockwood: My Lords, I too must begin with an apology to the House and to the Minister, which I have already conveyed to her. I need to catch a train to Yorkshire; unfortunately, there is no sleeping car facility on my line.
I speak not as a scientist but as someone who has taken an interest in reconciling a woman's biological and family function with her wider role in society. The subject of this Bill is very pertinent to that and I welcome it.
It seems to me that all the evidence, in particular since the publication of the Warnock Report in 1984, points clearly to the need for continuing research into the whole field of human fertilisation and embryology. I want to speak in support of a continuation of that research and of research in the whole area of the conceptus within the framework provided by the Bill. It is of the utmost importance that it should be within a statutory framework.
The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, says that knowledge is not always good for its own sake. I suggest that this is not a question of knowledge for its own sake; it is a question of a very important application of that knowledge. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor and other noble Lords have referred to four areas where this issue is very important: infertility, congenitally abnormal children, repeated miscarriages and contraception. I want to refer to two of these and I begin with infertility. One in every eight couples in this country have problems of infertility, attributed, in 30 per cent. of cases, to the male partner. This is a much more substantial number than many of us had previously realised, although I suppose that in a personal capacity, as the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, suggested, all of us have experienced the difficulty of knowing members of the family or friends who have had the emotional deprivation of not being able to have childlren. We know the problems that that can bring.
Not enough is known about the causes of infertility. That has been brought home clearly to those of us who have had the opportunity to visit MRC research centres. I should like to pay tribute to the dedication of the doctors and scientists involved in this work. It is clear that they are driven by a desire to help couples who seek assistance. They are also very well aware of the moral and ethical issues surrounding their work.
The assisted fertilisation unit at St. James's Hospital, Leeds, is aware of another problem. It is how to prioritise where the treatment should go. Should it go to the older woman who perhaps has delayed starting a family? Should it go the younger woman who still has plenty of time but who perhaps is at the edge of a nervous breakdown because she cannot conceive? Those are the kinds of decisions
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that sometimes have to be made. They bring great agony to the doctors as well as to the patients.
The development of science and technology in this area is still comparatively recent and there are still insufficient resources to meet all demands. I hope that the Bill not only provides a legal framework for the continuance of this important work but that it also leads to an extension of the services available.
The second category to which I want to refer is that of contraception. The research in the whole of this area has international implications. It is particularly important. Rapid population growth in third world countries is leading to untold misery and poverty. It is preventing the development of happy and healthy families to which fewer children within that family could lead. The development of simpler and more reliable methods of contraception, which is all part of the research projects, could have a major impact on the world population and its environment. I believe it absolutely crucial that it should continue.
I am not a scientist like the noble Duke, but I understand from the MRC, the Royal Society, the Interim Licensing Authority and many other eminent authorities involved in the science, that Clause 11(2) would greatly impede progress in the four areas referred to by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. Those bodies make it fairly clear in their reports that it is not possible to continue research in depth by the use of animals alone and that, therefore, the spare conceptuses are an important part of the research. For me this whole area poses a very real, moral question: have we the right to put in jeopardy, and thereby shatter, the hopes and the possibilities of an enhanced quality of life for so many people both at home and abroad?
5.44 p.m.
Baroness Warnock: My Lords, I should first like to join in the expressions of congratulation and gratitude to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for his most masterly introduction to this Bill which I think has saved many of us much trouble. I must then say that I regard it as a privilege to welcome this Bill, even in a rather faint and faltering voice, for which I apologise to your Lordships. In my view it is a most excellent Bill and I do not regard it as too long delayed. I very much hope that the sincere but doubtedless protracted expressions of opinion which noble Lords will hear today and later with regard to Clause 11 will not altogether overshadow other very important clauses in this Bill.
First of all, the setting up of a Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority is a crucial part of the Bill and is greatly to be welcomed. The interim authority, as your Lordships have heard, has worked successfully and extremely hard, but, however hard it worked, it could not carry the weight that a statutory body carries. The decisions of the new authority will be of enormous importance not only in this country but in Europe as a whole. Many countries there are waiting to decide what to do about this whole issue. It will be looked to for guidance in the United States, Australia, Canada and elsewhere in the world. I think that the role of that authority cannot be exaggerated.

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Secondly, the proposed clarification of the concepts of mother and father in Clauses 26 to 28 of the Bill is very timely and in my view sensible and thoroughly workable. Thirdly, I should like to call attention to the insistence upon consent throughout the Bill. Consent must be obtained for the use of gametes and embryos from donors and from those whose gametes are used to fertilise embryos in vitro whether they are to be used for research or for treatment. I believe that that will go some way toward allaying the fears and satisfying the consciences of those who personally dislike the idea of research while wishing perhaps to donate gametes for purposes of treatment or to undergo treatment themselves.
Fourthly, it seems to me that the Bill is so worded that in no respect whatever can it plausibly allow the issues involved to be confused with issues of abortion, even if by amendment consideration of abortion is to be taken in at a later stage. The subject matter of this Bill is confined to gametes and live embryos fertilised in vitro. There is no relevance to live embryos of greater age than 14 days. There is no reference to them in the Bill save only to lay down that to keep an embryo alive longer than that in vitro should constitute a criminal offence. The aborting of later fetuses which have implanted and developed in the womb cannot be any part of this Bill, as its Short Title implies.
On the question of Clause 11, I shall not detain your Lordships very long. Many other noble Lords will wish to speak on this clause, and some have already spoken. However, I should emphasise that in either accepting or rejecting Clause 11(1), the subsection which permits research, it is not a question of fact that is primarily in dispute but a question of value. It is not the case that the embryo immediately after fertilisation has at present any rights which ought to be considered. It is a question therefore of what, in the opinion of the protagonists, ought to be the protection afforded to such an embryo. I think it is important to make that point, obvious though it is. The embryo pre-14 days has at the moment no rights.
There are three further related points that I should like to make. First, in our everyday judgments—I mean by that our everyday moral judgments—we are not accustomed to treating the interests of potential people, not yet born, in a way that is exactly equal to the interests of actual people who have been born. Manifestly such people have interests whether they are children or grown-ups.
The law does not demand that we should so consider potential people. The morality and the conscience of the majority of the world does not demand it either. If it did, no one could conscientiously employ any methods of contraception and especially not the so-called morning after methods; and no one could conscientiously perform or undergo abortion. Yet for many people, and many thoroughly and morally conscientious and indeed religious people, such practices are freely though not necessarily lightly undertaken.
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Therefore it is in my view a confusion, and certainly the proposing of a new morality, to demand that the immediately post-fertilised embryo should be given exactly the same protection as that accorded to a child who has already been born. The differences between this embryo and that child are not only profound physiologically but are recognised by a majority of thinking people to be morally significant as differences.
Secondly, I believe that those who fear to permit research on the ground that it would be a licence for a general use of humans for research purposes are mistaken because the whole purpose of this Bill is to ensure that such fears may be seen to be groundless. In this country we are well accustomed to the great benefits that follow from regulation, whether as regards the use of animals in laboratories, regulation of broadcasting or regulation of abortion itself.
It was with a view to the regulation of research using human embryos that the committee of inquiry made its recommendations in 1984. A breach of the licence conditions proposed in the present Bill would not result merely in the removal or suspension of a licence, but in some instances in a criminal charge. I am absolutely convinced that in this country such regulation, backed up by the sanction of the criminal law, would be effective. I do not believe then that to permit research using human embryos up to 14 days is the thin end of any wedge whatsoever.
Lastly, perhaps I may be permitted to make one more general observation. In my view it would be in the last degree paradoxical if we, a democratic and an increasingly educated people, should, by rejecting Clause 11(1), put ourselves back into the seventeenth century when the question of whether or not Galileo and indeed Descartes might pursue and publish their scientific findings was regulated not by scientific but by religious considerations.
I am not in the least opposed to any Christian teaching putting forward the views that it believes to be true with regard to the value of human life from the two-cell stage onwards. As we have heard, there is profound disagreement among Christians about this teaching. As I have said and as we have already heard, there are numbers of bishops and scientists who must be allowed to be Christian and who hold differing views different from those we have heard expressed.
The point of what I am saying is this: We are now in the twentieth century and irrevocable as it is, part of an age where we must be allowed to take the possible risks of our own knowledge. We are not in the same position as people were in in the seventeenth century. We must be able to take risks and take them into account when we pursue knowledge. We must regulate our lives in accordance with the knowledge that we have and with a full awareness of where regulation is necessary. We cannot undo the enlightenment. In my view it would be morally wrong to place obstacles derived from beliefs that are not very widely shared in the path of science, and especially in the path of science and the practice of medicine.

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If we refuse to allow the continuation of the particular kind of research referred to in the Bill, subject as it will be to regulation, we are deliberately turning away from people who need help and who can be helped. We are closing the door on the possibility of advances which may be of incalculable benefit to humans who will exist in the future.
I end by declaring my own faith. I am neither a doctor nor a scientist, but I believe that to refuse help to those who might be helped is contrary to both religion and humanity.
5.56 p.m.
Earl Jellicoe: My Lords, first I should like to welcome this Bill and to express my real satisfaction that it is being introduced first in your Lordships' House. Secondly, I must confess straight away an interest as chairman of the Medical Research Council. I have had the honour to be the chairman of the council for some seven years now. In those years our council has sponsored much of the promising research which British scientists and doctors are pioneering. I am proud that this is the case. For these reasons your Lordships will not be surprised to learn that our council has stated that it is,
"strongly in favour of allowing research on the pre-embryo; i.e. up to 14 days after fertilisation, subject to certain safeguards, and therefore supports the setting up of a Statutory Licensing Authority which would have the responsibility for licensing doctors and scientists to do research on pre-embryos".
We take this view for a number of reasons. At this stage of the debate I think I need hardly go over them, not least because the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor put them in a masterly way in his introductory speech. He said that perhaps those of us who believe that research which is carefully controlled and regulated should be permitted in accordance with Clause 11(1) might quarrel with the way he expressed our point of view on that.
I assure the noble and learned Lord that I for one cannot quarrel with what he said about the benefits of continuing research, albeit carefully regulated, into the area of infertility. Neither could I begin to quarrel with what he said about the possible advantages of research—again carefully controlled and regulated—into the problems of miscarriages. Equally important, I could not possibly quarrel with what the noble and learned Lord said about the possible benefits of research, again carefully controlled and regulated, into our ability to detect and treat genetic abnormality.
We have heard a great deal about some of these inherited genetic diseases, a number of which are horrible. We all know that. I am convinced that the research in which this country is playing a leading role carries with it a very real possibility of avoiding the creation of deformed children and with it the need for those traumatic late abortions.
Finally, I could not begin to quarrel with what the noble and learned Lord said about the benefits which could flow from the research that is being done at the present time into improved methods of contraception. I would only add that the outlook for the development of an effective contraceptive vaccine is extremely promising; or so I am told. With
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the world's population increasing exponentially as it is, I agree with what other noble Lords have said as to the potential here for human well-being, not least in the third world.
It is now 22 months or so since I spoke in our debate on the White Paper. Since then really significant research advances have been made in all those sectors of which I have spoken. That is shown by two arresting articles which appeared in The Times, one today, one yesterday. For all those reasons I welcome the Bill, at least that version of it—Clause 11(1)—which will permit continuing research, albeit carefully controlled and regulated. I welcome too what I think the noble and learned Lord called the time limit—the 14-day rule—recommended by the committee of the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock. In the words of the most reverend Primate. that affords a workable basis.
As one of the leading research scientists in this field has stated, that choice of period is not arbitrary because it reflects an underlying biological discontinuity. It is also long enough to allow the research that is needed but ends well before even the beginnings of the development of a nervous system. I know there is the argument, adduced by the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, and by other noble Lords, including my noble friend the Duke of Norfolk, that this a slippery slope—once one has 14 days, one may have 21 or 28.I believe that argument to be a red herring. I do not know of responsible scientists who would wish to go further than 14 days. I certainly do not know of any responsible scientist who would wish to go beyond the 14 days if it was prohibited by law under the Bill. In any event, we have the licensing authority. I also welcome on behalf of the Medical Research Council the proposal to create that strong statutory licensing authority, building on the foundations so solidly laid by the work of the Interim Licensing Authority under the dedicated and effective leadership of Dame Mary Donaldson.
Having said that, I would be the first to acknowledge the strength of the convict ion of those in the House and elsewhere who hold another view on these matters. I would only ask them to consider two questions which I think have already been posed in this debate. First, is it right, however strong one's convictions may be, to seek to impose them through restrictive legislation on others who take a different view in our multicultural, pluralist and free society? That question was posed far better by my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham.
Secondly, even if we decide to forbid this research, do we really think that others elsewhere in the world will not pursue it? That question was asked by the noble Lord, Lord Adrian, who speaks with great experience. If that were to occur, would we deny ourselves the fruits of that research? What would our dilemma then be?
One of our foremost researchers in this field is Dr. Anne McLaren, who runs one of the MRC's important units working in this area. She is dedicated, responsible and sensitive to the moral issues involved. But she is not atypical in any way of the scientists and doctors working in this field. I have been tremendously impressed not only by their dedication and personal humanity but also by how

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sensitive they are to the ethical and moral issues. Dr. McLaren gave a fascinating lecture to the Royal College of Medicine some weeks ago. She ended with these words:
"To my mind, the day that a Bill is passed making it a criminal offence to carry out the sort of research that I have been describing, research that is being carried out under the most strict ethical constraints, research in which Britain leads the world, research that has already brought happiness to thousands of couples and that holds out still greater promise for the future, the day that such a Bill becomes law will to my mind be a sad day for doctors and scientists and a sad day for Britain".
May I say just this in conclusion. In my personal view at least, that it not only the voice of good science; it is also the voice of humanity.
6.6 p.m.
Lord Zuckerman: My Lords, at the outset I should like to apologise to the House. I regret that I shall not be able to listen to the whole of the debate. Speaking as a one time experimental biologist whose main theme of work was reproductive physiology, I should like to say here and now that never in the course of a day have I listened to a better exposition of the total framework within which one ought to view the work that one does in this field. From my point of view, it has been more than an eye opener. I have learnt a great deal and I have been deeply impressed by very much of what has been said.
As I see it, the purpose of the Bill is to establish a statutory control to ensure that no abuses occur in attempts to achieve a humanitarian purpose. We have heard about the incidence of infertility. One in eight couples who would like to have children are infertile. We know that artificial insemination and in vitro fertilisation have been introduced over the past 10 years to help alleviate the infertility from which people suffer, the kind of misfortune that according to the noble Lord, Lord Kennet—although did not quite hear the word that he used and I hope that I do not do the noble Lord an injustice—they should accept as being natural.
We know that the methods available are highly inefficient and that the Bill lays out within the framework of paragraphs 3(1) and 3(2) of Schedule 2 what could be done to improve the position. Our knowledge of the processes of human reproduction is infinitesimally small in relation to what could be known. Early in my career as an experimental biologist I helped establish the necessary hormonal conditions which permitted implantation of a fertilised embryo. But the discovery did not explain why a high proportion of fertilised ova fail to implant. I discovered a necessary condition, but not the sufficient conditions. The sufficient conditions have still to be elucidated.
Another fact that emerged from my early work restored to the corpus of accepted wisdom the fact that the female of most mammalian species is born with a finite number of egg cells which become steadily reduced during the course of her reproductive life, unlike the male in whom gametes continue to be produced until old age. At birth the number of egg cells in the human ovary is estimated to be about 2 million, only one of which is as a rule released in each menstrual cycle. But we
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have not the slightest idea what determines which of the 2 million egg cells that were there at the start will be among the 400 or so that become available for fertilisation during the course of a woman's fertile life. The rest of them die.
So far as is known, it is chance that determines which egg cells will be chosen to develop into a woman's offspring. Indeed, all of us might have had different brothers and sisters. I mention these facts merely to indicate how modest are the claims being made for the research that this Bill would allow on the human pre-embryo. Artificial insemination and in vitro fertilisation to help otherwise sterile couples are not in question. Those procedures are not precluded under existing law.
The work which would be allowed by the Bill is in part utilitarian and straight forward: to find ways of improving the conditions in which in vitro fertilised egg cells are maintained so as to help improve the chances—now only, I understand, about 10 per cent —that a pre-embryo would survive and prosper after implantation into the uterus. This work does not constitute earth-shattering science. No new principles are involved. It may well prove difficult, but it is clearly work which is necessary.
Of course, we need to remember that it is not only in vitro fertilised egg cells that fail to implant. Naturally fertilised egg cells also often fail. As I have said, preparing the uterine lining for implantation is a necessary condition, but it is not a sufficient condition. There may be reasons other than the way the in vitro fertilised egg is maintained that are responsible for the low success rate of implantations.
The second objective of the work which the Bill would allow is to ensure that implanted in vitro fertilised pre-embryos are not genetically defective, lest, when implanted, they develop into a malformed infant or one that could develop a genetically untreatable disease. This is a highly complicated subject on which I am not as well informed as I should like to be. But even though I believe that it would be prudent not to claim too much at this stage for the possibilities of being able to eliminate genetically based diseases, I believe that such work is essential and that it should be pursued, given, of course, the competence of those who labour in this field.
I also understand—and this has been referred to more than once—that it is hoped that research on in vitro fertilised eggs could assist in the matter of contraception. The noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, referred to this possibility. I must confess that I am not as optimistic in this respect as some noble Lords have implied they are. There are many methods of contraception. The real reason unihibited population growth has not yet been controlled in third world countries is not that we do not have the methods; it is poverty, ignorance and illiteracy. No matter how many new methods are devised, until those conditions are eliminated, I do not believe that the kind of work which it has been suggested might emerge from research on a pre-embryo vaccine will be of much use—except, perhaps, in advanced countries where there are already other methods in use.

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As I see it, the problem we are discussing boils down to the following. Given assent, the law does not in general preclude experiments on human beings. For example, some Members of your Lordships' House have declared themselves ready to submit to experiments to determine what levels of radiation will be really harmful. However, for some reason which I do not understand, we have so far been denied that privilege.
New drugs are tested on human beings—given assent, of course. The law as it stands does not prohibit the implantation of eggs which have been fertilised in vitro. As has been said by more than one speaker, it is not possible to seek the assent of a pre-embryo before it becomes the subject of an experiment. In any event, the pre-embryo has only one chance in about 10 of surviving.
Therefore, if the law allows the implantation of in vitro fertilised eggs, it seems to me that the work to which the Bill refers is not only justified but also essential, providing that it is carried out under the necessary controls which will be set up under the authority which has been discussed.
Finally, I should say that I recognise that a moral judgment underlies this debate. From that point of view my opinion as a scientist probably has no greater value than that of any layman who has bent his thoughts to the matters we are discussing. I fully recognise that there are limits to the rational exercise of scientific method, not only as regards intellectual inquiry but also very much more so in the determination of moral issues. Science will never provide the answers to the ultimate questions: the question of what brought about what we call life and what it is that gives man his unique quality in the world of living organisms.
At one stage in our lives all of us present in this Chamber were indistinguishable little globules made up of a few cells. No super-Einsteins could ever have predicted why those globules developed into the different individuals that we are, or which globule would develop into which individual.
In conclusion I should like to say something stimulated by a thought that emerged from remarks made by the most reverend Primate. The spermatozoon is a living thing, but there is only a remote chance that any one of the billions a man produces during his life will contribute to the formation of a living being. The ovum is a living thing but there is about a one in a million chance only that any particular one of the ova present in the human ovary at birth will contribute to the formation of a living being. There is a one in 10 chance only that a pre-embryo will develop into a living being. I believe therefore that it is morally right that the limited amount of research that the Bill will permit should be allowed to increase the chances that that one pre-embryo could develop as a normal human being out of the hundreds of thousands that would otherwise die.
6.20 p.m.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, one reason for my wishing to take part in the debate is that I was the Minister in the Department of Health and Social Security in 1984 and for part of 1985 most closely
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associated with the subject of the Warnock Report. I initiated for the Government the debate on that report in your Lordships' House on 3rd October that year; and a very stimulating debate it was. To prepare myself as fully as possible for handling the subject of that debate, I visited a number of different facilities. I studied closely the procedures both on patients and for research which were being used. I talked to patients and I discussed with many acknowledged experts the report and the importance of many aspects of it to the work that was being done. I have recently been updated on much of that work.
The most obvious point to make, and which has been made before, is that those who are involved in the complex and frustrating work of trying to improve the chances of couples to have children and of trying to eliminate the awful risk to children and their parents of distressing and life-threatening congenital handicaps have the highest and most sympathetic motives. Not only are they ethically highly responsible, as my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham said, but they are alive to the perceptions of a public not so well versed in what it is that they are trying to do and in the complexities of the science. That is why many people have become understandably nervous.
Those doctors and scientists try to do all that they can to dispel the myths and explain in simple terms a little of the science and techniques which might be used to help those very people who harbour doubts. I too pay tribute to all those involved in that difficult work. I fear that it is because of a general lack of understanding that much inaccurate comment has arisen and false and alarming impressions have been created.
I fervently reject the extreme notions, which I am afraid are held by some, that those scientists are somehow tampering with nature; that because nature has decreed that if some couples should be childless and some children handicapped it is wrong to push back the frontiers of human knowledge Ito try to help them. Surely to hold that view is tantamount to saying that the search for a cure for arty disease or physical disability is interfering with nature.
Noble Lords: Hear, Hear!
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, let us look at the progress made along that path: everything from the world-wided eradication of that one-time scourge smallpox to the availability now of the heart and lung transplants which were referred to by my noble friend the Duke of Norfolk. Those are advances from which we have all benefited or stand to benefit.
As a Christian, I believe that God gave us the ability to put our brains to good use so that progress can be made; but he also gave us the wisdom to build in the necessary safeguards to prevent our misuse of that ability. However much I respect the right of others to hold the view that some forms of medical advance mean undue interference with nature, I most profoundly disagree with it. Of course a balance must be struck. That is what the report of the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, strove, I believe most effectively, to achieve. That is what the White Paper

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set out to do. Now it is what the Bill in nearly every respect does.
Others are much better qualified to describe medical matters than a mere layman like me. I should like to touch upon my other reason for wishing to take part in the debate. When my daughter was born in 1975, she suffered from a condition which it was thought could have been brought about by her having the disease cystic fibrosis, a devastating, genetically inherited disease in which the pancreas does not produce the necessary enzymes to digest food and mucus accumulates in the lungs causing subsequent infections which are often fatal.
That possibility is not one which any parent can contemplate without considerable agony. The short-term prognosis for those with such an affliction is poor. Many die as young children. The longer-term outlook is not much better. Most do not survive much beyond their twenties, although techniques of treatment are continually being improved. Now, some thankfully live well into adulthood and lead full, near normal lives, but subject always to a lifetime of rigorous special treatment.
One in 20 people are carriers of the defective gene which causes cystic fibrosis. If two people with the defective gene wish to have children there is a one in four chance in each pregnancy that the child will have cystic fibrosis. Those are not good odds.
Mercifully, my daughter was eventually diagnosed as not having cystic fibrosis; but our experience over several painful months caused my wife and myself to develop a special interest in and commitment to those suffering from that disease, their families and the work being done to find out more about it. It is at this point that I too must apologise to the House and to my noble friend Lady Hooper for being unable to stay beyond 7 o'clock. Many weeks ago I accepted an invitation to attend a major fund-raising event for the Cystic Fibrosis Research Trust, an organisation whose research programme has benefited considerably, and has much to gain in the future, from many of the techniques that we are discussing. For it, the restrictions on research which Clause 11(2) envisages would have highly damaging consequences.
After endless painstaking work over 25 years, the breakthrough came in September this year when the faulty gene which causes cystic fibrosis was identified. It was a magnificent achievement, and therein lies the further relevance of the Bill. It will shortly be possible as a matter of choice to do away with the awful prospect of gambling with the odds that I quoted earlier. Through carrier screening, a couple can now be identified as being at risk of having a child with cystic fibrosis. A baby having been conceived, the fetus can be tested for cystic fibrosis and if necessary the parents can be given the agonising choice of termination. What I say, with great respect to my noble friend the Duke of Norfolk, is that that much has been achieved through past research, and not necessarily research on embryos.
Current research, including that on embryos, is bringing us close to the point at which, following fertilisation in vitro, an advancing but as yet
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imperfect procedure as we have heard which requires further research in itself, a cell of the conceptus, as my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor so admirably described, will be able to be examined or tested to see whether the faulty gene is present. If not, the healthy eggs can be replanted in the mother's womb. That will remove a dreadful dilemma for the parents, go a long way towards ensuring a healthy child and reduce the need for abortions.
The arguments may be even stronger when one thinks of a couple considering another child knowing that an earlier one has cystic fibrosis. What is more—it is important not to forget this—the understanding of the mechanism of course can help guide us to at least relief of the condition and a better quality of life for sufferers from cystic fibrosis and possibly even a cure.
I have concentrated on just one tragic disease. I am sure that God no more intended us to suffer from it than from smallpox. But if Clause 11(2) were to be passed, the ability to carry out that work—and as the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, and others have said, this country has been in the vanguard of the work —that type of research would no longer be possible.
The work would continue abroad where our safeguards would not and could not necessarily apply. People here could not benefit, or at least not so readily. I do not attempt to argue what to me is the philosophical concept about the point at which life begins. My own firm belief is that since nature itself discards many embryos that are wrong in congenital make-up, physical structure or whatever, and since it is possible to have a fertilised egg which could never develop into a baby, if people make claims—however well intentioned and however sincerely they are made—the underlying belief in them is that even they are a unique creation of life. For it to be said that they should not be used in any way for research is dangerously misleading.
The fact is that the scientific miracles of gene mapping, of ways of improving the chances of infertile couples, of improvements in contraceptive techniques and minimising miscarriages have been given to us because of our ingenuity in advancing science. Of course we must be utterly responsible in using this knowledge wisely. That is what ethical committees and the licensing authority will help us to achieve in safety.
However, we would be irresponsible to deny our children and grandchildren similar advances to those from which we have benefited so enormously in our own lifetimes. If we were to forbid the research which this, requires, even under the strongest safeguards that this Bill demands, then it is my unswerving belief that we should be doing mankind a damaging and unsustainable service.
The Earl of Cork and Orrery: My Lords, before my noble friend sits down, would he be kind enough to tell the House whether he knows where and how these defective genes in cystic fibrosis were discovered?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, work on the genes was done in this country, to the best of my knowledge. I

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think that the actual discovery was made in America. Whether or not that was by dint of joint expertise exchanged between our scientists and theirs I cannot say.
6.32 p.m.
Baroness White: My Lords, as number 15 on a list of speakers which extends to 49 names, it falls to me to try to set a modest example to some, though not all of those who follow me, by severely curtailing my remarks. Much of what I wished to say was put to your Lordships with eloquence and authority by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, and sustained by my noble friend Lady Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe. There has also been the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, and that just now, which I greatly appreciated of the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur. I have no wish to repeat arguments which have been put with greater knowledge and authority than I could possibly command.
I disagreed with a great deal of what the noble Duke, the Duke of Norfolk, said, but I recognise and respect his position. The only speech, I am afraid, with which I felt totally out of sympathy was that of the noble Lord, Lord Kennet. In contrast to him, I am a firm supporter of the first option of Clause 11.
My simplistic attitude is that if I were still a woman of childbearing age, I should feel passionately indignant, particularly if I had any reason even to suspect that I or my partner might be a carrier of grave congenital disease, if I were not allowed to take advantage of the most authoritative and best scientific evidence or advice which was currently available. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, made abundantly clear, in his view also it is a right which we should all enjoy.
No one, whatever his or her views, is constrained to follow the results of any particular scientific research of which they disapprove. People are under absolutely no constraint; they have a right to reject or ignore it if they so wish. But they have no right to deprive others of the opportunity to take advantage of that work.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, perhaps I may interrupt the noble Baroness since there does not seem to be much interruption. I could even set a precedent. Suppose it were brought home to her that the research after 14 days was valuable, would she be ready for it?
Baroness White: My Lords, I think that that is a perfectly irrelevant interjection. I was saying that whatever the opinions of my noble friend, he can follow them without constraint. I should be allowed to follow mine. I do not believe that anyone has the right to deter or deflect anyone who wishes to take advantage of properly controlled research. We are discussing properly controlled research based on the general principles of the Warnock Report, as explained so clearly by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. I shall say no more. I have made my personal position clear; I leave the field open to others with perhaps more specific experiences to described than I can contribute.
6.37 p.m.
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, I welcome this Bill and would like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, for the hard work of her committee which forms the core and kernel of the Bill. During the past ten years there have been fantastic advances in cellular and molecular biology. Most of these have been concentrated into the last five years and I think that it is a great tribute to the work of the noble Baroness that her recommendations have survived almost unchanged during this period of revolutionary advance in our biochemical and cellular biological knowledge.
I come to the drafting of the Bill, particularly Clause 1(1). What we are talking about there is defined as the two-cell zygote. That is absolutely right. It is not necessary to refer to the period of syngamy between the commencement and the termination of fertilisation because if it ends in a two-cell zygote it ultimately comes under the authority of this Bill. We cannot make the two-cell zygote vanish into the shadows the moment it has been formed, so we need that.
There is a continuing misapprehension about one feature of the subject of embryology. Fertilisation is not a moment in time; it is a process in time during which a lot of rather complicated events happen over a period of 24 hours. We can mark the beginning of this process by contact between the sperm acrosome, as it is called, and the membrane around the ovum. We can mark the end of it by the two-cell zygote stage. In between there is a rapidly evolving process and many things are going on.
I am glad that the term "pre-embryo" has been dropped from the Bill. It is a term that cuts across the standard embryological terms that appear in the text books. It has gone into circulation in the past four or five years, partly in this context, and I should be very happy to say goodbye to it.
On the options that are open to us, I go for the first which includes the possibility of research and experiment. In biological contexts, "research" and "experiment" are weasel words. That is due to the 100 years of anti-vivisectionist propaganda in biological contexts. But we must not be afraid of those words. What is an experiment? Let us suppose that I have an ovum and I have a sperm or a suspension of sperm. I wish to introduce one to the other. What temperature do I do it at? Can any noble Lord give the answer? Do we do it at room temperature? Do we do it at blood heat? What would give us the greatest prospect of a successful pregnancy thereafter? The process of finding that out cannot be solved by talking about ilt or thinking about it. The motto of the Royal Society is Nullius Inverba, which I think King Charles II translated as "Do not chatter, make trial". This is a simple enough example for anyone to understand.
The one thing that gives me pause for thought, although not perhaps for the same reasons as my noble friend Lord Zuckerman, is in paragraph 3(2)(d) of Schedule 2 on contraception. When I first read that I feared that it might be the thin end of the wedge and that to extend the contents of the Warnock Report into the field of contraception

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might be the beginning of the slippery slope. So I returned to the Warnock Report and reread it and searched through it. If the noble Baroness wishes to intervene at this point I shall give way to her, but as far as I could see there was no mention in that report of research directed towards better methods of contraception. I was much in favour of proposing an amendment to delete that. However, I started to look at what was proposed. Here I come to a point that was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Zuckerman, which is the idea that one might be able to immunise a woman against being fertilised.
The argument put forward to some extent overrode the considerations that my noble friend proposed; namely, that however illiterate or primitive one may be one is now sold on something that happens as a result of a prick with a needle. Any number of diseases are abolished in the third world simply by innoculating people against them. No discipline is required in the case of immunisation. One does not have to take something every night or on every occasion or anything like that. One is immunised with a needle once and for all.
If that could be done, it could be very beneficial. But could this be done? If one had the magic substance, one would want to discover what effect it had upon an ovum and a sperm. Therefore, one would have to introduce the ovum and the sperm to one another in the presence of the substance, and if it works they will turn their back on one another. They will not be attracted to one another and enter the condition of syngamy. If the experiment is successful, nothing will happen and an embryo will not result.
But suppose it is unsuccessful. One might obtain an embryo when that was not the object of the exercise. I appeal to the noble Baroness to allow me to come and talk to some of her colleagues at the Ministry to see whether a government amendment might be considered for Report in order to clarify this matter a little and make it clear that we are not embarking on a slippery slope. In the case of someone who unexpectedly produced an embryo, perhaps that would not be considered a criminal offence if that was reported to the licensing authority which could grant a retrospective licence within such and such a period. Those are the kinds of considerations that I have in mind and that I should like to see mentioned in the legislation.
I commend to the attention of your Lordships a book which I asked the Library to obtain because I thought it would be helpful to us. It is entitled When Did I Begin? and it is written by a remarkable man who is the master of a Catholic theological college in Melbourne, Australia. He appears to be a complete master of embryology on the one hand and the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle on the other. Although the book is rather hard going I commend it to anybody who is interested in the philosophical side of this matter. The author comes down on the side of the 14-day period as he considers one cannot divine an individual being before then.
There is one side of these arguments where I must confess I have not sorted out my own thinking very
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well. My noble friend Lord Zuckerman touched on this area. We all know the proverb that nature sheds 1,000 acorns for every tree that grows. My noble friend discussed how many oversights occur in the female ovary and how few of the ova ever come to anything. Is that nature's way? I simply to not know, and I do not know whether the analogy is a valid one. But even if my analogy is invalid, I should not want to put an end to experiments.
6.45 p.m.
Lord Ashbourne: My Lords, I must begin by letting the House into a secret. I must admit that when I saw the order in which we were to speak today I felt a little unnerved at discovering that I was to speak after the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, who is a very distinguished scientist and a Fellow of the Royal Society. I had already a feeling that I was two or three chapters behind many of your Lordships in the matter of teach oneself obstetrics. I knew that I was light years behind the noble Earl. Having listened to his speech, I am quite convinced that I was right in that assessment.
Having listened with interest to the various arguments so far, nothing has caused me to alter my view that the pivotal question that the House has to decide is whether research should be allowed at all on human embryos. By this I am referring to non-therapeutic research on live embryos. I should indeed be surprised if anyone were against therapeutic research, or research on dead embryos.
The term "pre-embryo" seems to have been developed to describe the embryo up to 14 days after fertilisation. This expression was invented after the Warnock Committee had already decided to allow research up to 14 days. The term has no scientific validity and is merely an invention of those in favour of experimentation. It is designed to try to lend credence to the 14-day recommendation of the Warnock Report. I was delighted to hear the noble Earl expound that view to your Lordships. The term "pre-embryo" is sensibly not mentioned in the Bill.
I wish to turn now to the universal declaration of human rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948. Article 3 states:
"Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person".
Clearly, destructive human embryo experimentation contravenes that article.
The general declaration of medical ethics, the modern version of the Hippocratic Oath, adopted by the World Medical Association in 1949 states:
"I will maintain the utmost respect for human life from the time of conception".
As someone who believes in the sanctity of human life, I can only say how much I endorse that statement. Furthermore, there was an informative article in the New Scientist of 25th November 1989 which showed how it is now possible to test eggs for genetic abnormality. This of course avoids sampling the genetic material of embryos and makes the process acceptable to those who believe in the sanctity of human life.
I personally suffer from an incurable disease of the central nervous system and I am in favour of banning non-therapeutic research on human

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embryos. Furthermore, I have a handicapped son. He is aged 19 and cannot speak, read or write. The reason that I do not favour research on embryos is, perhaps surprisingly, clearly stated in Appendix 1 of the booklet issued by a pro-research group, Progress, entitled Freedom to Choose. That booklet was kindly sent to me by my noble friend Lady Faithfull.
If I have so far created a slightly somnolent atmosphere and noble Lords are beginning to doze off, I ask them to listen carefully for the next 15 seconds or so. After that I shall leave noble Lords free to doze off again. I wish to quote from the booklet Freedom to Choose which the noble Baroness was kind enough to send me. As I make this quotation I ask noble Lords to remember that it comes from a pro-experimental organisation. I shall read out the quotation very carefully to make sure that I do not misinform the House. Appendix 1 on page 9 begins:
"Research using human pre-embryos is not, and never has been, concerned with treatment of genetic disorders or chromosomal abnormalities. Rather, it is concerned with their prevention".
Is that not the nub of the matter? Surely, if the pro-research lobby openly acknowledges that research on human embryos is not and never has been concerned with treatment of genetic disorders or chromosomal abnormalities but only with prevention, that begins to put the issue into perspective. What is meant by prevention? It is another word for destruction. In short, embryo research is merely a screening process to detect abnormalities and thus offer parents the option of an abortion rather than risk the possibility—and it is only a possibility—of having a handicapped child.
My second major criticism of the Bill arises from the fact that Clauses 4 and 27 introduce the concept of fatherless children. That, I believe, will further accelerate the pressures on the family. Many noble Lords took part in the debate on the family last week which was introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs. The central theme of that debate was represented by a groundswell of opinion against quick divorce and the failure of both the Government and the Church to provide meaningful support to combat the modern-day pressures on family life. Should not the family be buttressed and supported and not further eroded by the introduction of fatherless children?
In a recent magazine article accompanying the Sunday Telegraph of 3rd January 1988 the story of one American woman's search for identity was described:
"Suzanne Rubin is a Los Angeles school teacher who found out when she was 32 that the man she had called father all her life was not and that, on one side, she was descended from a frozen phial in a nitrogen tank. It produced in her a rage which sent her on a campaign to find the anonymous medical student who had given her life".
Suzanne's search was not successful. The discovery left her bitter towards her father, who had sold his sperm for 25 dollars.
Nor has the question of secrecy been resolved. The noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, recently stated her belief that it would be wrong not to tell a child the truth about his or her parentage. I entirely agree with the noble Baroness. She expressed her dismay at the
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medical profession's tendency to secrecy in such cases.
For the parents—surrogate mothers, non-biological parents, gamete donors —there may be feelings of regret and confusion in the years ahead which are not anticipated at the beginning. Many of those artificial techniques manipulate human life in a way that may be to the detriment of personal identity and family relationships. I ask noble Lords to bear those complex long-term dangers in mind as the House considers the detail of the Bill in due course.
6.53 p.m.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Ashbourne, have all the more force because of what he told us about the grave handicap of his own son. It will come as no surprise to the House if I support his point of view and the point of view put before the House with great authority by the noble Duke.
I hope that no one will think that I am speaking under instructions from the Pope, or even from the noble Duke. The noble Duke requested that I speak but he insisted that I should speak for only a few minutes. That instruction at least I shall observe.
The noble Baroness, to whom we owe so much—she does not owe much to me except that I was one of her sponsors when she took her seat, a point of which she probably prefers to be oblivious these days—made a notable contribution to the subject. She informed us that this was a question not of fact but of values. She dragged in Galileo, which I thought rather distorted her argument. However, we are speaking of values and the question before us is what moral status we give to the embryo from the earliest moments.
I apologise to my noble friend Lady White for asking a question which I expect will be answered at some time during the debate. If all sorts of wonderful discoveries could be effected after 14 days, would research be justified then, or is there a rigid line, for some reason unknown, at 14 days? Perhaps someone will answer that later. I suppose everyone draws the line somewhere.
I am sure that no Member of this House would favour experiments, however valuable, on imbecile babies, or for that matter on imbecile old gentlemen although I could identify more easily with such projects. There could be all kinds of projects. There are many types of research which, hypothetically at least, could produce valuable work and benefit humanity in a crude sense. But most of us would draw the line. We would certainly draw the line at experiments on living people. The question is: where does one draw the line? That is what I understood the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, to mean when she said that we are concerned with values. No doubt there are differences between scientists as to what can or cannot be accomplished. Whatever the right conclusion—and we shall never know the right answer—there still remains the awkward question of values.
I have read a very convincing article by a gentleman whom the scientists present will know,

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although I am afraid that I do not have the benefit of his acquaintance—Professor Tony Glenister, emeritus professor of anatomy at the University of London. His article appears in the current number of The Tablet—I hope that that is not regarded as a point against it. Professor Glenister recognises, with extreme academic integrity, that:
"The majority medical view in Britain supports the concept of properly controlled and licensed research on early embryos".
It appears, therefore, that the majority of doctors would welcome such research. However, people do not always accept the opinion of the majority of doctors. The Government are not very keen to accept the opinion of the majority of doctors now, and the Labour Party were not very keen to accept it in 1945.
I only have time to quote two further sentences from the professor's article. The first is:
"All living is becoming, and consists of gradual development and transition from fertilisation to eventual death".
The second is that:
"One must hope that those who wish to permit experimentation on the early stages of human development come to appreciate the quality of the nascent human life with which they are dealing".
So we can take it that anyone who is convinced by that eminent professor of anatomy would not accept the idea of a rigid line at 14 days. Perhaps somebody will deal with that point later on.
As pointed out on an earlier occasion, I accept the view generally held by Christians—I hope that I shall not be contradicted by the eminent theologian opposite me—that we do not know when the soul enters the body. It may be argued that from the moment of conception there is a person, but even that need not be argued. Surely we can all agree with Professor Glenister that from the very beginning there is this nascent human life. At that point we have to make our decision.
We do not have to make our decision today since I gather that there will not be a Division; but we have to make up our own minds. We can consult medical advisers and our spiritual advisers, but in the end we have to make up our own minds. I have made up my own mind: any research conducted on that nascent human life is immoral and utterly wrong.
6.59 p.m.
Lord Walton of Detchant: My Lords, as I intimated in my maiden speech two weeks ago, the issues addressed in the Bill are of very great concern to many doctors, scientists and informed laymen. The decisions reached in this House and in another place will have untold implications for women with various forms of infertility and for individuals afflicted by a variety of devastating inherited diseases, and their families.
Perhaps I may also say how much I agree with the views expressed today by the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, and in the debate on the gracious Speech by the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, to the effect that attempts to amend the 1967 Abortion Act are irrelevant in relation to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill and should be addressed quite separately and on another occasion. Otherwise, there
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is a serious danger that attention might well be diverted from the vital matters which we are considering today.
Perhaps I may now welcome the fact that the Bill sets out in clear and precise terms in Clause 11(1) the circumstances in which experiments involving human embryos of not more than 14 days' gestation outside the body may be allowed to continue. It specifies the methods to be used in regulating and restricting the scope of such experiments. I also welcome warmly the proposal to establish a statutory human fertilisation and embryology authority with functions as clearly defined, and the proposal that all such work in the United Kingdom may be conducted only in centres approved for the purpose and open to regular inspection with the individual scientists concerned being licensed to conduct that work, subject always to the provision that such licences may be revoked or varied, given due cause. Anyone carrying out such work without a licence would be committing a criminal offence.
I am also glad to note that experiments which would give rise to very proper public concern and in which I am confident that no responsible scientist would wish to engage, including trans-species fertilisation, germ cell manipulation and cloning, are specifically proscribed by the proposed legislation. There can be no question that, if the type of research permitted under the terms of the Bill were not to be allowed, the march of science in this field would be halted and irreparable harm would be done to the hopes and prospects of that 10 per cent. of couples in our population who experience infertility problems and whose only hope of having children lies in the improvement of in vitro fertilisation techniques which could only be made possible by the type of research envisaged in the first part of Clause 11 of the Bill.
I wish to address the remainder of my remarks to what I believe to be an equally, if not more important, field of research relating to the diagnosis and prevention of many serious, crippling and as yet incurable inherited disorders referred to by several noble Lords today. I propose to concentrate most of my remarks upon the condition to which, in 1954, I gave the name of Duchenne muscular dystrophy in order to acknowledge the outstanding contributions to our understanding of that disease made in the last century by Duchenne de Boulogne who was the first to define in detail the clinical characteristics of this tragic disorder.
Here I must declare an interest as current chairman of the Muscular Dystrophy Group of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It is almost 40 years since the late Professor Nattrass of Newcastle-upon-Tyne invited me, as a young doctor beginning my training in neurology, to assist him in a programme of research into muscular dystrophy and the other neuromuscular diseases. As I became immersed in that work, I became increasingly concerned and deeply affected by the plight of patients with that disease and by the immense burden of care which it imposed upon their families. As one mother said poignantly:
"I see my son die a little every day".

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Briefly, since the condition is a sex-linked or X-linked recessive disorder, it afflicts only boys, being transmitted, like colour blindness and haemophilia, by clinically unaffected and apparently normal female carriers, half of whose sons will be affected by the disease and half of whose daughters will themselves be carriers. At birth, those boys are apparently normal, although some walk a little later than do most infants. At about the age of three, they begin to have difficulty in walking with frequent falling and subsequent difficulty in climbing stairs. Their disability steadily increases until eventually, at about the age of 10, they become confined to a wheelchair. In the past, very few survived beyond the age of 20, although now, with greatly improved care, many, though very severely disabled, live several years longer.
When one sees, as I have done, not just one but two and even occasionally three successive boys afflicted by that disease within a single family, recognising that each day they must be dressed, lifted from bed to bath, from bath to toilet to wheelchair and at night each must be turned in bed perhaps two or three times, one can perhaps begin to appreciate the tragedy and burden of care imposed by that progressive paralysing disorder.
If one ignores the fact that some such cases arise as a result of genetic mutation or spontaneous change in a gene in a family where the disease has not previously been known, each sister of a dystrophic boy has a 50–50 chance of being a carrier. Gradually over the years, research refined a blood test through which it was possible to calculate statistically the odds for or against such a woman being a carrier. Those with a demonstrably high risk wishing to have a family generally volunteered to undergo amniocentesis at about the 14th week of pregnancy in order to sex the unborn fetus with the agreement that, if the fetus was male, they would seek an abortion while, if it was female, the pregnancy should be allowed to continue, nevertheless accepting that half the girls born to such a mother would themselves be carriers of the gene.
Several carrier mothers of my personal acquaintance have sadly undergone two or even three abortions before being able to have a daughter. The technique more recently developed of chorionic cell biopsy has meant that sexing of the fetus is now possible at some 8–10 weeks, but regrettably until very recently methods employed in an attempt to determine whether or not the male fetus carried the gene responsible for Duchenne dystrophy were inaccurate and unreliable.
However, the situation has now been transformed through the dedicated international collaborative work of scientists in Great Britain, Europe, Canada and the United States, culminating in the remarkable achievement by Dr. Lou Kunkel of Boston Children's Hospital and his colleagues in December 1987. The Duchenne muscular dystrophy gene lying on the X chromosome has been located, identified and fully characterised and it has been discovered that, either as a result of what are called deletions or point mutations within that gene, a previously unidentified protein, now entitled dystrophin, which is vital to the continuing integrity and development
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of the muscle cell, is absent in boys with Duchenne dystrophy. Work is now proceeding apace in an attempt to discover methods of replacing that missing protein, although it is clear that that prospect, bringing with it the hope of an effective treatment or even cure of a disease is something that lies many years ahead in the future.
But one must now ask: why is it that that discovery makes it so vital in my view, and in that of many others, that research under licence and under the authority of the proposed human fertilisation and embryology authority should be allowed to proceed? First, the identification and characterisation of the gene has now given us a much more accurate and precise technique of identifying the female carriers in families in which there are boys with Duchenne dystrophy. Secondly, in the female carrier who becomes pregnant, through chorionic biopsy at 8–10 weeks it is becoming possible not just to sex the unborn fetus, but to determine whether the fetus is male, the defective Duchenne dystrophy gene is present, and if so to recommend selective abortion of only affected male fetuses.
But in vitro fertilisation offers even greater hopes of prevention, as I shall explain if noble Lords will first allow me to say just a little about the science of human embryology and to give my reason for saying that the term "embryo research" may in some respects by very slightly misleading. In doing so, I am mindful of the exhortation of the great Oliver Wendell Holmes who said that science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper storey if he has common sense on the ground floor. I therefore propose to present some common sense facts, even if they are a little simplistic scientifically.
When the female egg or ovum released into the uterus at the time of ovulation is fertilised by a sperm, the process of cell division soon begins and within the first two or three days floating free in the uterus are groups of undifferentiated but pluripotential cells, each forming what I prefer to call a conceptus, rather than an embryo or a pre-embryo. By pluripotential, I mean that at this stage it is impossible to identify which of these cells of a conceptus will subsequently form the membrances within which a fetus would subsequently lie, and the placenta, and which would later form an identifiable embryo which would eventually develop into a fetus.
By about the fourth or fifth day, the conceptus forms what is called a blastocyst, at which stage it is possible to begin to recognise that one cluster of cells, forming a kind of nodule at its base and called the inner cell mass, is that from which an embryo and fetus could eventually develop, while an outer ring of cells would be capable later of forming the membranes and the placenta.
Even at this stage, however, no blastocyst is attached to or embedded in the wall of the uterus and of all the blastocysts formed approximately some 80 per cent. are spontaneously aborted in the process of normal conception. So that only one in five, at most, may begin to attach itself at about the seventh day to the wall of the uterus from which it subsequently receives blood supply and nourishment to allow development to continue. And as this

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proceeds, it is at about the fourteenth or fifteenth day that the cluster or nodule of cells called the inner cell mass, to which I have referred, forms the so-called primitive streak, the first clearly recognisable beginnings of the embryo which ultimately becomes the fetus.
Why is it then that this knowledge is of such vital importance to the future of carriers of the Duchenne dystrophy gene? The reason is that it has now been demonstrated that it is becoming feasible, with virtually total confidence, to remove a single cell from the outer ring, that layer of cells of the blastocyst from which the membranes and placenta will develop, without damage or detriment to subsequent development and to determine at four or five days the sex of this conceptus. I must stress that in my view this does not involve, and should not involve, any manipulation of the inner cell mass of the blastocyst from which the fetus will ultimately arise; such manipulation would indeed be likely to make it non-viable.
In the female carrier of the Duchenne dystrophy gene therefore, it is now becoming possible to harvest eggs or ova by the simple technique of laparoscopy, to fertilise these in vitro with her husband's sperm, to allow the fertilised ova to develop outside the body to the blastocyst stage, to remove a single cell from the outer layer to determine its sex, and then to implant in the carrier female's uterus only a female conceptus.
But I venture to predict—and this is of even greater importance—that within the next year or two at the most it will be possible, using a gene-specific marker, to extract DNA from that single cell which has been removed to determine whether or not the defective Duchenne gene is present, and if it is to allow the conceptus to perish as indeed many do in normal human conception, subsequently implanting in the carrier's uterus only the normal conceptus, and thus allowing the carrier female to have normal non-dystrophic sons and non-carrier daughters. Surely that hope and long awaited prospect for these women cannot be dashed, as it would be if the proposals in Clause 11(2) of this Bill were to be preferred.
At regional conferences of the Muscular Dystrophy Group throughout the United Kingdom within the last year, many attended by public spirited individuals not personally affected by the disease, members of all religious persuasions have expressed their support for such research by a majority of more than nine to one.
Perhaps I may finally comment very briefly upon the moral, philosophical and religious considerations which have been so thoroughly discussed already by several noble Lords and which have I know persuaded some individuals whose sincerity is not in doubt to oppose these proposals. I am neither a theologian nor a philosopher, but I am a member of the Methodist Church and am able to say that a working party established by that church is likely very soon, after the fullest possible consideration of all the implications, to give the provisions of this Bill, and the proposals to allow research to continue under strict control, unqualified support.
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That view has been endorsed, as we have heard, by many prominent members of the Anglican community, not least by the most reverend Primate whom we have heard today and by that eminent moral theologian, the reverend Gordon Dunstan, who has indeed reminded us that until 1859 the authoritative view of the Roman Catholic Church and of its greatest scholars was that life of the individual did not begin until the fetus was capable of independent existence outside the mother's womb; and philosophers through the ages have argued that only an individual can have a moral or legal personality.
And no less a figure than Norman Ford, who was referred to earlier this evening by the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, that eminent Australian Roman Catholic theologian, supported, as I understand it, by a number of other prominent figures in the Roman Catholic Church, has stated clearly in his book When Did I Begin?that individuation in the human embryo cannot be thought to arise until the appearance of the primitive streak at about the fourteenth day. And so, my Lords, not just on behalf of infertile couples, but in the vital interest of patients with muscular dystrophy and their families, and of those with many other inherited diseases in which similar considerations now apply or will do so in the future, I urge you to support this Bill and most crucially Clause 11(1).
7.17 p.m.
Viscount Caldecote: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Walton, has given a wonderful explanation of the medical facts behind the issues in this debate and I am sure we are extremely grateful to him. It emphasises once again the great benefits we enjoy in your Lordships' House through having Members with such wide experience of all the matters we discuss.
As my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham made clear, there is a simple main issue in this debate: whether we allow any research, whether we have no research or whether we have strictly regulated research. My first reaction, believing as I do as a Christian in the sanctity of life was that there should be no research; it should be prohibited. It is too close to using human beings for research, however valuable. For good objectives do not justify evil means, if evil they be. So I fully understand and deeply respect those who oppose any research.
However, after visiting one of the units engaged in this work, and seeing what is done, the marvellous pictures, the superb instruments and the equipment—to which I am proud that my profession of engineering has made some contribution—and talking to the dedicated team and to other knowledgeable people in this field, whose views I greatly respect, and after much thought of my own, I am now convinced that research on embryos up to 14 days should be allowed, provided of course that it is strictly controlled and that the law is effectively enforced.
The principal reason for my view that embryo research should be allowed up to 14 days is that such research can make an important contribution to preventing the creation of grossly deformed and

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mentally handicapped babies. Such births are often very tragic for the child itself and for the parents concerned, most of whom bear the burden with immense devotion and courage. Thinking about it, I always wonder how I would have dealt with such a situation.
Today the outcome of the creation of such deformed babies is very often abortion, because it is now possible to detect the abnormalities before the birth. In my view, abortion is a dreadful act because it involves the destruction, the killing of a human life, with all the terrible moral and physical implications. But Parliament has decided that it is better to have regulated abortion than unregulated, so-called back street, abortion. Regretfully, I accept that the existing law provides the lesser of two evils. No doubt that law could be improved. No doubt we shall debate it. However, I agree with other noble Lords on this point. That debate is for another day, as the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, made so clear.
I listened carefully, as I am sure did all noble Lords, and with great admiration, to the moving speech of my noble friend Lord Ashbourne. He is a friend in the ordinary sense too and I hate to disagree with him. I believe, however, that research on embryos of 14 days will reduce the number of abortions by preventing creation of so many deformed babies. Therefore the balance of the moral/ethical advantage lies in allowing embryo research to 14 days provided that it is strictly regulated.
We have to set a timescale over which that research can be allowed. Why should it be 14 days? I do not pretend to be an expert on these matters. However, from those to whom I have talked, from visiting the unit and from listening to noble Lords who have spoken today and who are experts in this field, I believe that there is a break point at 14 days. That it is not the start of running down a slippery slope. There is a real step in that slope which will prevent us going further down it if we have any sense. I am therefore not worried about that aspect. If we make sure that the law is enforced, as set out in the Bill, the moral/ethical balance of advantage supports embryo research. Perhaps I may make my thinking on that point completely clear. In my view one cannot regard an embryo up to 14 days as being a specific person. As others have made clear, it is only a potential human life.
I hestitate to say this, but I was somewhat disturbed at the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Adrian. As I understood it he felt that the limit of 14 days should not be sacrosanct and that in certain circumstances it should be possible to allow licensed research beyond 14 days. From the limited knowledge that I have, I profoundly disagree. I hope that we would not amend the Bill to make that possible. That would indeed be starting down a steep and slippery slope with no further step in it. The noble Lord, Lord Adrian, is an extremely distinguished scientist and I have hesitated very much before disagreeing with him. However, I felt that in all honesty I had to say what I have said.
If one says "yes" to research, as I believe one should, it must be strictly regulated and licensed as the Bill provides. It is equally important that the law
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must be strictly enforced. One serious criticism of the Bill is that it contains no specific arrangement for appointing properly qualified inspectors. They are absolutely vital to proper enforcement of the Bill's provisions. The Bill needs amendment to give a clear obligation to the authority to appoint adequate numbers of well-qualified inspectors to carry out the regulatory process.
A second important omission relates to the supply of embryos for research, if research is permitted. There does not seem to be any major problem about using spare embryos from IVF activity. But what if the supply seems inadequate for valuable constructive research? Is there not a danger of a market developing in embryos for research? How do we deal with that? It does not seem to be dealt with in the Bill. Clause 13(7) deals only with payment for gametes for treatment purposes, not for research purposes. That seems a serious omission that I hope we can correct at Committee stage. The Bill must surely be amended in that way.
I believe that the Bill needs to be amended in another way. I draw the attention of noble Lords, as did my noble friend the Duke of Norfolk, to Clause 4(1)(c) and Schedule 2 paragraph 3(4) which permit licensing to mix live human gametes with those of an animal. I know that the schedule requires that the resulting embryo has to be immediately destroyed. But surely that could easily lead to serious abuse. We ought to look very carefully at that provision of the Bill if it is to go forward in a way acceptable to everybody. We need to ensure that no loopholes are left for research that is totally unacceptable and repugnant to us all.
I hope that the noble Baroness who is to reply to the debate can comment on the few points that I have raised in criticism of the Bill. However, I generally welcome the measure. For the reasons that I have given I support research provided that it is strictly regulated and provided that we make sure that the arrangements in the Bill for enforcing the law are adequate and effective.
7.26 p.m.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: My Lords, with the brevity of speeches lately, I shall have to try to conform with the new pattern. I would not have missed the tour de force of the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant, for anything. It was a marvellous performance; and so informative. I should imagine that it was one likely to persuade anyone short of a fundamentalist.
I wish to refer to the gremlin in the Long Title. The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, referred to it in his eloquent and temperate plea for reconsideration of circumstances in which a re-opening of the abortion legislation might be regarded as possible within the Bill. The words of mischief appear after the word "embryos" in the first line of the Long Title:
"and any subsequent development of such embryos".
How long is "subsequent"? Does it extend to the fetus period, childhood, or school leaving age? How far does it extend?
What is "development"? Is it treatment development referred to in paragraph 14 of the

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White Paper of 1987 or some other development? If so, what are the developments? Does the use of the words "such embryos" imply that the embryos to be covered by the Long Title in this context are limited? Are they the embryos which for one reason or another have been within the treatment provided for in the Bill; or any old embryos? These words need some elucidation.
We also wish to know how these words came there. Who put them there? For what purpose? Who is likely to exploit them? The abortion front has been remarkably quiet today. Having read the Catholic press recently, I thought that we were going to see the noble Duke, the Duke of Norfolk, riding in like a knight in shining armour with a banner with "18 weeks" scrawled on it. I thought that we should hear a great deal about what would be done about abortion at the Committee stage of the Bill; but not a word. The White Paper did not refer to abortion; the Bill does not refer to abortion. The noble Duke, the Duke of Norfolk, did not refer to abortion. Indeed the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, the Lord Chancellor, in his speech explaining the Bill and its purposes in great detail never referred to this gremlin in the Long Title.
I am grateful for the support of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham. He also said what my noble friend said so eloquently: that we must keep abortion out of the Bill. Abortion has been the subject of primary legislation since 1861 and no change has been made to the abortion law except by primary legislation. Why, then, is there a suggestion that by inserting those words into the long title of the Bill—and nowhere else—the way is being made clear for the subject of abortion to be reopened in the Bill? Is that true? Is that the advice that the Government have received and did they connive in that contrivance? The deep suspicion is that they did.
But the problem is for the House of Commons. Why does anyone want to bring the subject of abortion here? Because they have failed to have it dealt with to their satisfaction in the House of Commons—that is why. More than a dozen futile attempts have been made to have the abortion law changes under the Private Member's Bill procedure in the House of Commons. All have failed. However, the remedy lies where the trouble exists. There is no need to unload the House of Commons procedural difficulties on to us. We have not stopped anything. We have not stood in the way. We have not fillibustered. We have done nothing; we are as innocent as a new-born embryo.
Why, then, do we have this? Did the noble Lord the Leader of the House do anything to stop it? Could he not see that this was a trespass upon the dignity of the House? We are to be used—used, my Lords—as a remedy for the futilities of the House of Commons procedure. Why are the Government so congenitally unable—was it discovered in the fetus of this Government?—to concede anything on time in respect of a private Member's Bill and now want the House of Lords to solve an insoluble problem on abortion that they have on their hands? I think that we should have none of it! Let those find
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the remedy where the trouble exists. That is not here; it is down the corridor. If the words remain in the Long Title it will be for Members there to do their best with them.
In the meantime, we are entitled to more information than we have yet received. Will the Ministers on the Front Bench tell us what this is all about? Is it true that the Bill was drafted without these words and then the pro-life lobby got to work on them and the weak Government gave way to a great deal of pressure? What is the explanation? Is it true that the Government consent to the idea that the words pave the way to the reopening of the abortion question at the Committee stage? I beg Ministers to help us out and give us a lead about procedure.
At least I have provided an alternative course for the House to take. All that Bill requires is an assurance of time when it eventually reaches another place. That is the solution to the problem and I see no reason why it should not be followed. I sincerely hope that common sense and understanding will prevail. However, let us have a little more candour about the issue. We are not kids; we want to be told about the plot so that we may take simple steps to frustrate it.
7.34 p.m.
Lord Flowers: My Lords, I speak with considerable diffidence, wishing to pretend to be expert neither in medical science nor ethics, nor in House of Commons procedure, I am a simple physicist and there is little left for an ignoramus to say. However, I should like to state my position. I consider it extremely dangerous, even sinister, to attempt to prohibit research in any subject whatever, provided that it is carried out in an acceptable manner, if necessary under licence. Nowadays there are many cases of prior approval being required from an independent body in order to protect the researcher, third persons, the environment or later generations.
I am persuaded of the desire of the medical research community to accept control; of the integrity of that community; of the immense benefits which are likely to accrue to the family lives of some of the large number of couples who carry or suffer from genetic disorders or abnormal fertility; and of the impossibility of obtaining some of the required results in any other way, such as in IVF.
I therefore agree with the Medical research Council, for example, that research should be permitted on embryos up to 14 days after fertilisation if it is under strict statutory control. The controls are already tested and working in voluntary guise.
I also accept the advice of those such as the Royal Society who say that if selected fertilised eggs are to be replaced in the uterus there must first be research on the procedures to be used. Indeed, if it is to become a criminal offence, as it would under the second version of Clause 11, to perform research on the early embryo, how much more should it become a criminal offence to provide treatment without that research. It seems to me that in any case that version of the clause cannot be allowed to stand.

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In saying that I support such research I am of course as conscious as anyone that it is a moral or religious question rather that a scientific question. However, it is one on which a great deal of scientific light can be shed and has been shed by the Warnock Report, my admiration for which grows as the years go by. For me, a society which permits research of the kind proposed, for the reasons given and under the controls described, is one that I can praise and admire, in the words of that report.
In coming to our conclusions we shall no doubt be guided by our individual perceptions of what is generally deemed to be acceptable, even of what constitutes eternal truth. If so, we must bear in mind that those perceptions are subject to change. As the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, has reminded us, there was a time when scientific speculation about the nature of mankind was severely constrained by orthodox opinion. I am sorry if I disturb the noble Earl, Lord Longford, still further, but Galileo was in serious trouble for proposing that man did not occupy the centre of the universe; as was Darwin two centuries later for suggesting that man might have evolved from lesser creatures by a process of natural selection. And in recent times we remember what dire consequences were predicted when it seemed that we could soon use computers to speed up the processes of human thought. A computer became the bad guy of every piece of science fiction.
Today most of us accept such concepts without difficulty, especially our children. That is just as well because they lie at the heart of most scientific advances which have since taken place and of the technologies which variously enrich our lives, from pharmaceutical products to satellite television. It is a little late to be saying that man should not interfere with nature or try to help it on a little. That might have been possible in the middle ages, but barely so even then, and I do not know anyone who wishes to return to those days. In any case, the problem is different now; nature needs our help if it is to survive what has already been done to it. Natural selection is the way nature itself strives after excellence. Embryo research is one way of helping nature to practise its own law on natural selection a little more selectively and a little less haphazardly. In the course of doing so, it significantly diminishes—or so we hope—the sum of human misery.
We all believe that there is something special and unique about the human race. That is why we devote so much effort trying to resolve these difficult questions about the early human embryos. How we characterise that uniqueness is a matter for each one of us. For me, it is the wonderous fact that alone among all creatures we are capable of systematising our knowledge of ourselves and of the universe for future generations to build upon. For me it would therefore seem paradoxical if mankind, on the grounds of being unique, should wish to deny itself that which makes it unique; the systematic knowledge that comes only from research. I support the Bill and the first version of Clause 11.
7.41 p.m.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, we have had a fascinating series of speeches already and it is a
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great privilege to have been here when they were made. The points which I wanted to cover have nearly all been spelt out ably and excellently. I believe that only one remains, and I shall not detain your Lordships for more than a few moments.
The point that I want to make is made as a fellow Christian of my noble friend the Duke of Norfolk, but one who deeply disagrees with him because of her Christianity. I make my point as someone who, like so many other noble Lords, has pondered these matters deeply both before and since the Warnock Report and has also visited an in vitro fertilisation clinic. In my case, that was the unit at Hammersmith where I was able to talk with Professor Winston and his team of doctors and realise for myself their total commitment to their patients and the integrity of their approach to their work. I was also able to talk with the couples who were being helped through the treatment, and I was to hear with enormous interest the enthusiasm which those couples have for themselves assisting with the progress of research which might help others in the future.
The point I want to make is to say to my noble friend the Duke and those others in your Lordships' House who want all research to stop, that I respect their view and their freedom to express it and put it into action themselves. However, I beg them to accept that many millions disagree. Many believe that it is God's will that research should go on and that there are many young couples who want to seek help, and many researchers who want to assist them.
I simply hope this. When we come to the Committee stage and this House considers the choice between the two alternatives in Clause 11, we shall not decide to seek to limit the freedom of all those who, whether or not their views are based on religious belief, from the depth of their consciences believe that research should go on. No one has to take part in the research. No one has to avail her or himself of the help which may be offered. I hope that the House will ensure that there is very careful licensing and careful control of in vitro fertilisation and research but will allow continuing freedom to choose.
7.45 p.m.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, speaking as the 24th speaker in this debate I count myself very lucky that there is one point left of all the arguments with which I set out this morning which has not been touched on. I shall come to that in a moment. Perhaps I can just emphasise one or two points which have already been covered.
First, I have visited the MRC unit in Cambridge and I too was very impressed by the dedication of the workers there—the scientists and the doctors involved. There was no doubt about their motivation. I have also had the pleasure of being a colleague—not a medical colleague but a colleague on a local authority—of Dr. Edwards in the years before Louise Brown was born. He was a crusader for those who were infertile. The father of a healthy and (at that time) growing family, he felt deeply for the anguish of the people who were infertile. His motivation in the work which he did then—and, as

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far as I know, subsequently—has always been to try to end that human pain.
In a society which is built upon the family, people who are unable to have children feel shut out from life's most valuable experience, and their loneliness and frustration simply grows with the years as they pass. I shall not go into the question of genetic diseases because that has been covered by so many noble Lords. However, I should like to say that for that reason, and primarily for that reason, I also support the first alternative of Clause 11.
I now turn to the one point which has been left untouched, and it may seem rather mundane but nevertheless I feel it is important. This concerns the question of the funding of the licensing authority. In its response to the Government's White Paper the Voluntary Licensing Authority said:
"The VLA considers that it may be impracticable to attempt to meet a large proportion of the expenditure of the SLA from licence fees. From experience, to cover the costs of the SLA, such fees will have to be high, in the order of £5,000 p.a. Implications are grave for clinics operating in academic or NHS departments, which might be unable to pass the costs on to patients. It is also unclear who would be expected to pay for project licences. Much research is carried out in University Departments with grant support. The (VL) Authority recommends that 'the running costs of the SLA should come primarily from public funds'."
It will be apparent from that that unless we are very careful the potential difficulty which will be caused by that might have the effect of hindering the availability of NHS centres. Treatment should be available if the need is there and should not be rationed by price. It is very important that at a later stage of the Bill we should clear up this matter of financing and from where it is to come. With that said, I welcome the Bill and I shall support the first alternative of Clause 11 when the time comes.
7.48 p.m.
Lord Butterfield: My Lords, I am your watershed. Perhaps I may pick up the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, and say that I wish to support Clause 11(1). It is not very easy, as she knows well, to know how to proceed to help the case for Clause 11(1). One way I thought I might try to help is by pursuing the line of reporting about the kinds of people who are involved if your Lordships would need any convincing that they are splendid, dedicated people. One must congratulate those who have been involved with research in embryos over the past five years. People like Anne McLaren and Professor Geoffrey Dawes are great scientists who have given much dedicated time to this problem.
I admire the fact that noble Peers—and I think here of the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, and the noble Duke, the Duke of Norfok—are staying to hear the present state of scientists' thinking. I wonder whether I might try to help a little with their difficulties. Perhaps we could even start conversations going outside this Chamber which may help toward a resolution of them. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, is not in his seat, but perhaps I can say that in vitro fertilisation babies are followed up carefully and closely under the Medical Research Council.
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Verlinsky's research that he mentioned, far from being the end of a research development, is something which needs more in vitro research and not less. The noble Lord complained a little about the death rate in utero of the in vitro fertilisation conceptuses. I want to make clear that the probable expanation for that is that it is often a matter of multiple births, and mortality is high among multiple births.
I do not quite know what to say to the noble Duke. Perhaps I ought to break the ice by saying that I returned from Johns Hopkins and failed my obstetrics examination at Oxford in 1945. So perhaps I am not the right person to make the following point. However, I must tell him that there are 46 chromosomes in the normal complete human cell. I believe that he referred to 15 chromosomes. I must say that I am sure that he would not have been failed for that in 1945 because that fact was not known then. I also wonder whether the noble Duke would engage with me in some discussions about the whole question of the start of life.
I think all noble Lords were very moved by the words of the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York, himself a physiologist, when he spoke about the slow extended timescale. I think that such a thought lay behind some of the remarks made by a professor of anatomy which were referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Longford. Is it not possible that the Almighty realised that we would get into this kind of predicament? Is it not at least a matter that we can argue and discuss? Can we not discuss the fact that we have this period when we can take a cell from the conceptus and examine it to find out whether it has a genetic abnormality without having any difficulties that would cause damage to the fetus? In animal work it is clear that one can do that. We desperately need to be sure about the circumstances in regard to man.
I do not know whether it is fair for me to put this idea forward because I am not a theologian, but I wonder whether we have not been given the opportunity by the developments in nature to make such bioptic diagnostic determination so as to alleviate the kind of suffering that has been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant, my friend and colleague and former Master of Green College, and other noble Lords. But perhaps that is a conversation that can be developed elsewhere.
It is perhaps dangerous for me to make my next point because the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman taught me anatomy. I am sure that it is not through any failure on his part that I missed my obstetrics in the gynaeocology examination. But he and the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, seemed to be against the idea of the development of a contraceptive vaccine. I have been to China and was made aware that one of Mao's great concerns was the population explosion and how he was to feed all those people. I have been inside the barefoot-doctor clinics and seen how wonderfully equipped they were with ultra-sound equipment. They would find out when the ladies, women—call them what you will—peasants in the villages were ovulating so that they could do their best to ensure that the women did not conceive after having had two children. We

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know that in the country places they did not succeed because the population of the People's Republic reached 1 billion long before Mao hoped that it would. So I am not completely convinced that there is not something to be said for a vaccine which can be given after people have had their two children. I shall have to fight about that with the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, elsewhere.
There is one other point for me to make. In passing, perhaps I should say to the noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, how marvellous it is when one has something to say that no one else has referred to. Among the things about which one is discovering more and more in early embryo research, are the substances that are responsible for differentiating the cells so that they know presently how to become a hand, a hair, or whatever. That process of differentiation is the reverse of the process of de-differentiation which goes on in cancer cells. In Cambridge we certainly have folk who are very interested in cancer and the substances which are involved in differentiation that will emerge and be studied closely by the kind of people about whom we are speaking and whose work I hope that we can protect.
I do not need to add how important it is that we face the world population problem. It is at the centre of so many of our innate concerns about pollution, global warming and food shortages. I shall resist any amendment to remove from this Bill the possibility of developing a contraceptive vaccine.
I shall end very quickly with a very short point. When oral contraceptives first became available, Professor Bywaters, a rheumatologist, who was concluding a session from the chair, said:
"I shall just make it clear to you that there is only one safe oral contraceptive and that, ladies and gentlemen, is a firm no".
7.57 p.m.
Lord Tranmire: My Lords, we are now well on our way towards the end of the list of speakers. I shall confine my remarks to one point. I am a little unhappy about the system of committees and the authority under this Bill. We have heard very little about it today. I feel that for this Bill to work properly—and I am anxious that it should—there should be a blend of the authority of the ethical experts as well as the scientific and medical experts. That was not mentioned by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. I hope that the point will be covered by my noble friend when she winds up the debate later tonight.
The only other point I would touch on has already been mentioned by my noble friend the Duke of Norfolk. It is a pity that when we change over from a voluntary authority to a statutory authority we lose every other annual report. There will be a biennial report in future whereas now it is an annual report. I know the danger involved.
Going back to my first point—and this point has been remarked on to me by someone who is not a Member of this House—in the third annual report of the Interim Licensing Authority it appears that two of the members were getting grants and licences approved by the authority. That is the difficulty one
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faces and that is why I want to see as wide an area of support for this Bill. It is a Bill which I believe will be of value.
8 p.m.
Baroness Ryder of Warsaw: My Lords, the first question that we have to ask ourselves in this debate is whether or not we are dealing with a human person. We have heard the term "pre-embryo" used constantly today, and we are asked to believe that it is a scientific term for the embryo before 14 days. This is a disputed term. Though some scientists doing research are now using it, many scientitsts are not. We should all be aware that this term simply did not exist five years ago. It is an invented term. It was invented following a public outcry over the Warnock Committee recommendation that experiments be allowed up to 14 days.
The world's leading science journal Nature has said that the term "should be banned" and it continued,
"Put simply, this usage is a way of pretending that the public conflict about IVF and other innovations in human embryology can be made to go away by means of an appropriate term".
I believe that is a fair summary. In the correspondence that followed many scientists supported this view. We are looking at an example of sanitised language. The Oxford English Dictionary defines "embryo" as,
"human offspring in the first eight weeks after conception".
"Pre" is defined as,
"before in time order and degree".
The term "pre-embryo" has the effect of making the public think that we are not dealing with an embryo. But once fertilisation has occurred we are dealing with a human being.
Many scientists engaged in research will tell you that a newly-fertilised egg is not a human being. But my attention has been drawn to a standard embryology text called The Developing Human by Professor Keith Moore of the Faculty of Medicine, Toronto University. On page one it states:
"Human development is a continuous process that begins when an ovum from a female is fertilised by sperm from a male … A zygote is the beginning of a new human being".
Furthermore, the first question in this textbook is:
"When does a human being begin to develop?"
The answer given at the back of the book is:
"The development of a new human being begins with fertilisation".
As we have already heard, all this is disputed by some scientists. But it is interesting that the dispute occurs only when they are trying to justify their destructive research upon human embryos, not when they are writing textbooks or setting questions for undergraduates.
As the noble Duke, the Duke of Norfolk, reminded us, the whole basis of medical ethics is that stated in the declaration of Helsinki which is,
"the interests of science and society must never take precedence over considerations related to the well-being of the subject".
The noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, has called the case against destructive embryo experimentation "absolutist". If so, then surely the whole of

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traditional medical ethics is absolutist. I think that perhaps the noble Baroness misses the point of the so-called slippery slope argument. It is not just that if we allow one evil it may lead to greater evils, though this is a very great fear.
The point is one of logic. If we accept the reasoning of those who propose this course of action, then we would have no reason in logic to reject the actions of the Nazi doctors and scientists, a great number of whom I have met and I saw the horror of their work. Among the many children with whom I worked in Poland I mention Malgosia. Her father had been killed by the Soviets, her younger brother died of typhus in Majdanek extermination camp and her mother was gassed in Auschwitz.
Malgosia was taken by force at the age of five and used as a human guinea pig. If I should describe that to noble Lords I am sure you would be horrified. We are sitting in this splendid Chamber while my memories continue to haunt me and those of so many others. I still nurse and count it a privilege that the foundation that bears my name helps to comfort and look after the surviving victims.
The Nazis justified their actions in the same terms; that the results of their research would be useful. Are we to reject this reasoning or accept it? We must make up our minds. You do not justify research in terms of the benefits it might bring. If we adopt this reasoning then any atrocity could be allowed if the prize seemed great enough.
I have already mentioned to your noble Lords the absolutely unspeakable medical experiments which were performed by the Nazis in the last war on thousands upon thousands of helpless men, women and children; on Poles, Slays, Jews, gypsies and indeed on victims from over 40 different countries. Each died a martyr's death.
The experiments were not carried out in pure sadism. This is a dangerous delusion for even today some scientists wish to make use of the results of Nazi research. These experiments were the consequence of rejecting the principle that medical procedures must never be detrimental to the subject. I am greatly worried that we are dangerously near going down the same road that the Nazis followed.
It may be that some people think that the comparison with the Nazis is not justified. Let me assure noble Lords that I would not make this comparison unless I was sure, from personal conviction and from being there, that it was absolutely justified and of the utmost importance.
Again, we have heard from the noble Duke, the Duke of Norfolk. The reason for the strong feeling in Germany on this subject is understandable. The present Germans are quite clear about this, particularly after their experience of the horrors of the Third Reich. They will not tolerate any form of human experimentation. They will also not tolerate any re-emergence of the philosophy that genetically-afflicted human beings should be disposed of instead of treated and cared for, which is the philosophy behind the screening programmes which are being presented here today as being the greatest benefit of embryo research.
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We must remember that it was this philosophy—that there are some lives not worthy to be lived—that led first to the extermination of the chronically sick and then to all the other groups that were victims. So it is not only the pro-life movement in this country which sees a sinister re-emergence of the Nazi principle of quality-control of human life in experimentation on the human embryo. We must not be taken in by the idea that such horrendous experiments could not occur in this day and age. Some of the procedures now being performed by scientists in this country and abroad, are quite terrible; and I think that many noble Lords may not be aware of them. Moreover, experiments on embryos are banned in Denmark, Ireland, Norway and probably in other countries.
In Australia a Senate select committee heard evidence that Professor Carl Wood had introduced human eggs and sperm into the fallopian tube of a sheep. If fertilisation occurred, the embryo did not survive. Carl Wood and Anne Westmoore said in their book,
"In some ways we were relieved at the failure of this experiment as it may have been difficult to convince the community that the sheep was an appropriate place for human fertilisation and early human development".
I have here two papers published in Britain in 1967 and 1969. The first paper begins by describing the work of scientists in which pregnant women were injected with radioactive hormone immediately before an abortion. The unborn babies were then dissected. The authors of this paper decided to go one better. I quote:
"It was decided to pursue the problem further, and to keep the fetus alive for a period of time to allow maximal metabolic changes to occur. In the first experiment the fetus was dissected after a single injection of radioactive hormone … the results are compared with the second experiment in which, after a single injection, the fetus was kept alive for 45 minutes by blood transfusion. After dissection, the fetal tissues were extracted, the radioactivity in each organ measured and the compounds present isolated and identified".
These two fetuses were aged 16 weeks and 18 weeks respectively. Others used in the research referred to in these two papers ranged from 13 weeks to 22 weeks. There is no doubt that unborn babies at this age are able to feel pain, and we can only shudder to imagine the physical distress these young human beings underwent as they were experimented upon.
One of the authors of the papers was Professor Malcolm McNaughton, a former president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and a leading member of the Voluntary Licensing Authority, which we are supposed to believe is an effective watchdog on research. What faith could we have that a 14-day limit on research would be adhered to if the watchdogs were drawn from a community of scientists who apparently regard this kind of horrendous experiment—on babies up to 22 weeks' gestation—as quite acceptable?
It is not for scientists to come to Parliament, as these scientists are doing, and say that they can do wonderful things if only we will make an exception for them and allow them to kill human beings—whom they should rightly regard their patients—in order to develop new techniques. It is

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time we called a halt; not a halt to scientific research, but a halt to the kind of research which goes against all the accepted principles of medical ethics, which require that research upon human beings must in no circumstances be harmful to the subject.
This is the principle that applies in all other areas of medical research. It should not be an impossible restriction to place upon those developing IVF techniques. These principles must be enacted in law. Human embryos must not be regarded as mere material, but as human beings, as patients in their own right. The Government Bill on in vitro fertilisation and test tube technology is even more pagan and permissive that we had feared. Who could have imagined, certainly not myself, having been a witness to Nazi experiments, that our so-called civilised country would consider such a Bill, let alone approve of it?
In the Book of Hebrews is written:
"To be alive is no man's gift: it is God's gift, and to end life is no man's right but God's right".
Whenever society deviates from those words, society lives to regret it.
8.13 p.m.
Lord Harvington: My Lords, this Bill is a welcome, if belated, attempt to face up to the need for public law to control the procedures used to assist human fertilisation. It contains provisions to prohibit, or alternatively to restrict, research on human embryos. In both cases this is a recognition that there are limits which must not be transgressed, no matter how great are the successes claimed in relieving infertility, and no matter how promising are the advances hoped for in diagnosing and eliminating genetic defects and diseases.
There are also other matters of great importance for the public good in the regulation of artificial human fertilisation. These include the treatment of maternity and paternity; arrangements for surrogacy; donation of gametes; and requirements of confidentiality and access to information. Some of these are controversial and affect the well-being and status of the family. The links between the family and procreation and between human sexual relationships and human fertilisation are radically altered, or at least made more fragile, by the availability of these new techniques. This engenders new and baffling social dilemmas, and conflicts of interest arise. I refer to these problems only in passing but their importance should not be overlooked in our concentration on the central and controversial issue of establishing a "moral marker" to indicate the limits of experimentation upon the human embryo.
One alternative offered by the Bill is to prohibit experimentation on the embryo after 14 days of life. I take it that this is proposed as a moral marker. This is the stage at which the primitive streak is presumed to appear; and so it is taken by some as the beginning of human individuality with the commencement of cellular differentiation. In such a view, experimentation would be ruled out on the moral grounds of respecting human individuality. It would not be merely a matter of accommodating
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conflicting opinions or conceding that there are areas beyond practical scientific interest, I agree. But I do not agree that 14 days is a safe or a satisfactory marker.
We are warned about the so-called slippery slope argument. It has been mentioned several times this afternoon. The unsatisfactory status of the 14-day limit as a moral marker is apparent from the Warnock Committee's admission, echoed by others in the House, that there is a certain arbitrariness in selecting any point after fertilisation as effecting a decisive and radical break with what went before. Where there is arbitrariness, there is little adequate safeguard against pressure for change. However, a radical new starting point is provided by the fusion of egg and sperm which introduces an intrinsic organising power, independent of further outside stimulus, equipped for the development of full human capacities.
Of course, there is a sense in which life is a continuum, and egg and sperm bring their own contributions of paternal and maternal chromosomes to the new embryo. But separated, egg and sperm cannot develop, nor even remain alive for more than a very limited period. Of course, the human fertilised ovum itself does not develop without suitable nourishment and environment and may at some point suffer decisive interruption of its development resulting in spontaneous loss. But this is comparable to newborn children's requirement for nourishment and a suitable environment. And from the fact that they may die prematurely, we do not conclude that they have had no stable existence or individual status.
Of course, fertilisation is a process, but from the moment when the ovum and sperm lose their identities in the mixing and interaction of their contents there is a unified organising power. From that point onwards there is a precisely predictable future of developmental stages. This contrasts with the previous random process in which this or that or no sperm penetrates the ovum. Already the unique genetic constitution is there, determining, even then, not only humanity and sex but also such details as future eye and hair colour.
These assertions correspond to and are based on the discoveries of molecular biology. They do not rely on the theological concept of "infusion of the soul". Again, the reality of initial human individuality is not undermined by the physical factor of the undifferentiated status of early cells, since there is a single continuous organising process already in progress. Nor does the phenomenon of twinning raise a philosophical objection to original individuality; and the so-called difficulty of recombination has been shown to rely on a particular interpretation of the data.
I turn to a final matter of some concern. It is claimed that without destructive research on embryos IVF itself cannot continue to be improved and that the detection and elimination of genetic disease cannot be achieved. The facts themselves confute that argument. In the states of Victoria and of South Australia where there are prohibitions on destructive research, those in charge of in vitro fertilisation programmes claim that they continue to succeed and even improve their rate of success.

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Moreover, only recently it was reported from the United States of America that testing unfertilised eggs rather than IVF embryos could allow diagnosis of many recessive disorders. That achievement illustrates an approach which has been more recently suggested; namely, that the new techniques of molecular biology would be better applied to gametes than to early embryos.
This has a double implication with regard to the use of IVF to assist fertility. The negative side is that research on IVF has been carried on over two decades, and that even over the most recent period of four years when experimentation has not been greatly restricted the success rates have not been greatly improved, whether in terms of embryos successfully implanted (only 5 per cent.) or of couples successfully taking home babies (only 10 per cent.).
As has been observed, there is a remarkable lack of scientifically based assessment of rates of success worldwide which has led to a considerable controversy over what are the real success rates. Even more basically, it has been questioned whether IVF has been tested and proved enough to be regarded as a cost effective treatment sufficiently beyond the experimental stage to form part of a nationwide mainstream health care provision.
This doubt was raised in a report of the World Health Organisation's regional office for Europe entitled Are In Vitro Fertilisation and Embryo Transfer of Benefit to All? Within the in vitro fertilisation programme there is certainly a need for research into the deleterious effects of super-ovulation and for making comparisons with eggs harvested from naturally ovulating volunteers.
I do not deny the successes of in vitro fertilisation programmes but point to the relatively low rate of success, even after unsuitable candidates have been screened out. I also question whether further embryo research in this field is the best way forward when there is need for other forms of research in the field of IVF.
On the positive side, it is important to recognise that assisting infertility does not depend on IVF alone and, consequently, it should not be assumed that lack of destructive experimentation would ipso facto impede improvements in the treatment of fertility. Intitially a majority of applicants for assistance were women with blocked fallopian tubes for whom IVF was particularly designed.
The growth of services for male infertility—a term covering a very wide spectrum of defects—has made other techniques such as GIFT (gamete intra-fallopian transfer) more effective and appropriate therapies. There is also increasing study. of the properties of seminal fluid and the functions of the femal immune system in the process of fertilisation. In general it seems that the closer techniques of assisting fertility can come to conforming to natural conditions the better the chances of success. Thus in vivo fertilization—for example, in a woman's body—is to be preferred to in vitro fertilisation if it is appropriate under the circumstances.
A last remark would not be out of place. There is the understandable weight of established institutions
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and programmes which favours in vitro fertilisation when it comes to the distribution of scarce resources. There is also a regrettable demand for spare embryos for research purposes other than that of assisting fertility. In vivo fertilistion does not make embryos available but it does help infertility. That is the ideal.
This is not the time to make perorations; so in closing and before I sit down, I shall merely thank noble Lords for listening to me.
8.25 p.m.
Lord Jakobovits: My Lords, listed as I am as speaker number 29 in what I find a most rare experience of a uniquely enriching debate and, at the same time, a most fateful debate on which the generation or destruction of countless potential lives may depend, it may be expected at this stage that there is little more to say on either side of the argument and that therefore my words will be correspondingly short. Alas, however, I find myself oppressively leaning in the opposite direction. Indeed, the more I hear the more challenges there are to answer. Moreover, the more complex the subject becomes the more constituents one has to address in relating to a theme of such enormity as is the subject of our discussion.
Let me say at once that I find the debate somewhat polarised. There seems to be an either-or attitude in the matter. However, what is most gratifying is that all speakers, from whatever side of the (shall we say?) primitive streak which divides us they may have spoken, are absolutely concerned only with the sanctity of human life; that is, the preservation and the promotion of human life, whether this is by protecting the absolute inviolability of the fertilised egg from the moment of conception as already representing a human being with all the rights of a human being.
Therefore, we should all hold a profound respect for those who hold that view and who are supported not merely by theological but also by medical opinion. We should also respect those who advocate that certain experiments should be sanctioned in order to promote life; to promote the generation of life for those who would otherwise be infertile; and to promote, it is to be hoped, the complete obliteration of deathly illnesses which are transferred by hereditary factors and which it is claimed can only be conquered by means of some forms of research. Therefore both sides are clearly equally sincere in wishing to promote the protection and the sanctity of human life.
For my part, I wish to adopt a half-way house position in the matter, rejecting neither the one nor the other and underwriting too some of the most sacred convictions of both sides. Perhaps I may echo some of the most stimulating thoughts given in the marvellous address by my noble and dear friend the most reverend Primate.
First, I should say that in principle we certainly endorse as a biblical imperative the fact that you cannot have the continuity of human life without the exploration and exploitation of nature; so much so that the Bible itself refers to that in the first reference to human life. When man was first brought

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into existence he was told, "Be fruitful, and multiply"; in other words, generate life and perpetuate it. The verse then continues immediately:
"and subdue the world that is around you: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and the birds of the sky".
One cannot perpetuate life unless one exploits, controls and utilises nature by virtue of our human ingenuity to advance health, life and indeed the permanent presence of man on earth.
At the same time, however, there are one or two broader considerations that should be given careful weight. Moral considerations apart, the smallest error that is now made in the treatment of the most elemental substance of life could lead to disastrous and irreversible physical and mental defects that could afflict millions yet unborn by cumulative damage in but a few generations. Albert Einstein, by providing the theoretical basis for the release of atomic energy and then by urging President Roosevelt to proceed with the Manhattan project to produce an atomic bomb, in effect fathered the atomic age. He later stated that had he known what destructive forces would be released and unleashed to threaten the entire planet he would never have encouraged such research.
Genetic research is potentially no less explosive, and the utmost caution is urgent for the fraternities of doctors, scientists, moralists, politicians and legislators alike. I assert categorically that if prying into the ultimate mysteries of nature were to pose the slightest threat to the supreme and incomparable sanctity of life, then we should wait another 10 or 50 years until we can conquer certain disabilities and afflictions. After all, we have waited now for thousands of years. In other words, our eyes have to be wide open to the potential consequences of interfering with the very building blocks of life in their formation.
Yet, with certain adequate safeguards, I see no reason for an absolute ban, as is proposed by some of us. On the following conditions, a wide measure of agreement might well be reached. First, embryo experimentation should be replaced by embryo testing, limited to observation wherever possible; secondly, and surprisingly altogether omitted in the Bill as well as in the Warnock recommendations, no embryo should ever be generated for the purpose of experimentation; that is, brought into existence to carry out experiments or testing on it. Testing should be restricted to such embryos as had to be produced to bring about a live birth. That should have been the purpose of producing that embryo.
There will usually be excess fertilised eggs in every in vitro fertilisation cycle because there always have to be some what are crudely called spares to provide for the needs of reimplantation. It is not safe to reinsert more than three embryos into the mother lest the multiple pregnancy put the mother at risk. There are embryos that have been generated for the purpose of leading to a successful pregnancy and which are, alas, not able to be reimplanted into the mother's womb and therefore have to die. Only those could be used for a limited number of tests rather than experiments.
Thirdly, the life of the embryos should not be artificially prolonged for testing purposes. The
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14-day time limit seems to be as arbitrary as the primitive streak to determine human status. Fourthly, testing should be limited strictly to vital therapeutic ends. For instance, it should never be lawful to carry out tests or operations on embryos merely for sex determination, unrelated to the treatment of sex-related illnesses.
Within those parameters, it should be possible to meet the essential requirements of medical research as well as religious susceptibilities. No embryo would be used unless it could no longer be implanted and is therefore bound to die within a short time. The destruction of potential life would therefore not arise.
Let me turn briefly to another part of the Bill which causes me even greater anxiety. I am utterly surprised that it has received so little public attention in the debate or in the press. Clause 26 would formally sanction artificial insemination and egg or embryo transfers from donors. More disturbingly, the Bill also proposes that a child born within marriage by such donation can be officially registered as the child of the putative father or mother—that is, the infertile spouse—although in fact the child so conceived is the natural child of the donor, whose identity would be concealed from the recipient of the donation and the child. There would be no way of establishing for certain the paternity or maternity respectively of that child.
Can your Lordships visualise how that would undermine the whole structure of our laws of incest? One donor can produce any number of successful impregnations. He is the father. All born to that donor have one common father and they are therefore all half-brothers and half-sisters. I picked up an item in a Los Angeles newspaper originally. I then saw it in the British press. There was a report a couple of years ago of a middle-aged man who was about to marry his rather younger bride. The bride's father thought that it was only right to inform the groom that that daughter of his was born by artificial insemination by donor. On making some inquiries as to where and when that happened, the intended groom soon discovered that the woman he was about to marry was his own daughter whom he had sired by a semen donation 20 years earlier.
Even if that is a freak occurrence, it is clearly not impossible. Children have the right to know who their natural parents are. Moreover, the law can be expected to prevent the numerous abuses which could follow from the concealment of parental identity, sanctioned by the Bill. One result would be that if, let us say, 5 per cent. of all children were to have fraudulent birth certificates, as described, one would not be certain about the other 95 per cent. One would never be sure whether a particular child and a particular certificate came within the 5 per cent. or the 95 per cent. and therefore some doubt as to the exact paternity or maternity of all children would arise.
I wish to make one final and more general remark. Human life, which can now be generated from test tubes and petri dishes, sustained by artificial foods and drugs and terminated by unplugging some life support machine, may be reduced to a form of mechanisation in which the incomparable grandeur

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of the human spirit, the genius of the human mind and the noblest virtues of the human heart are asphyxiated by the exhaust fumes of our technological wonders. Without constant reminders that man is more than a bundle of cells, manipulated at will, the awe for man's incomparable greatness may be lost and the focus on human dignity may be distorted. I believe that we are charged to prevent this.
8.40 p.m.
Baroness Elles: My Lords, it is only in your Lordships' House that one could ever have the privilege of hearing a debate such as we have heard tonight. Many distinguished theologians, our noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor and many distinguished scientists have taken part. It is therefore perhaps appropriate, as one of the few here tonight, that I should speak as a simple mother and grandmother. After all we are talking about children and births.
The words of the noble Lord, Lord Jakobovits, caused me to look more carefully at Clauses 26 and 27. For the first time, at a rather ripe age, I discover what the new legal definition of a mother and father will be under the Bill. That sends messages of anxiety and trouble not only to me but, I believe, to many thousands of parents in the country and to those to whom the definitions would apply.
In the case particularly of the father—and we shall be going through this at Committee stage —he has to give his consent. It is only with that consent that the birth certificate will be forged. It is only then that we shall know how many law cases will be opened by this definition. One will wonder: did the father really give his consent or not? I believe this to be a minefield for lawyers, to say nothing of the enormous danger for the family and its structure and for the children wishing to know who their mothers and fathers are, without their being defined artificially in a Bill of this kind.
It is with a somewhat critical eye that I have looked at the Bill as a whole. I think we have all come to two definite conclusions which have been repeated by noble Lords on all sides of the House and representing all sides of the question. The first conclusion is that the Bill is necessary because there has to be a legal framework —whatever framework is voted on in this House and in another place —within which scientists can work for the benefit of mankind along the chosen path decided by law. Secondly, we all believe in research, so far as I can make out. It is essential that research should continue for the good of human beings, children, parents and for all others who will benefit from genetic research of one kind or another.
However, I come now to my own position which is very much in the minority. Whatever one's personal view as to when a human embryo takes on human value, it is, I believe, generally accepted—and, of course I stand to be corrected by many distinguished scientists—that a human embryo has a potential for life. It is inevitably the beginning of a human personality. I accept that this is a continuing process.
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The most reverend Prelate gave a brilliant description of the process. It was clear, and we understood it. We know that this is a continuing process. Nevertheless, it must be true that there is no one here who did not start off as a human embryo. Of course there may be many human embryos that did not end up as human beings at all, let alone distinguished Members of your Lordships' House. Therefore we owe a legal duty to protect the existence of that embryo.
I am thankful, like the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, that the word "pre-embryo" has been deleted. As a great scientist, he will have appreciated that the term "pre-embryo" had no scientific significance. This is a general improvement.
The second point concerns research and human embryos. That implies at least the destruction of some embryos in the course of the research. I, like others, have heard no evidence that research on human embryos has produced a cure for any known genetic diseases. What evidence is there that such research has contributed to identifying causes of genetic diseases? Again, I speak as a parent, I myself was fortunate to have healthy children. However we all know many parents who have not. The other night I was talking to a friend and said how fortunate I was and that I would speak with great humility in this debate. I was asked what I was going to say and I replied roughly that I had had the good fortune to have healthy children. He said, "Don't worry, I have a child who has Down's syndrome and I cannot tell you how happy I am to have had that child." I think we must sometimes remember that love of one's child, with all its human defects—whether physical or mental—plays a far greater role than has so far been touched upon.
On the other hand, more and more evidence is coming from molecular biologists and other scientists in the field of identification of genetic disease before fertilisation. It would be wrong also, I believe, to arouse hopes of a cure for some of these diseases. But it is known that progress is on the way from research by leading geneticists in different parts of the world. I take up the point of many noble Lords who say, "If we are not allowed the research in this country it will go somewhere else". The fact is that some of the leading genetic discoveries have already been researched outside this country and the research has not been done on human embryos. We think of Professor Lejeune in France or the new discoveries in Boston and other parts of the world. It is not necessary to carry out research on human embryos to attain some of the fine results that are gradually coming forward in this important field.
The third aspect I hesitate to touch upon because so many people have mentioned it. Perhaps, however, they have not taken the point of view that I take. It concerns the various lobbies which emphasise the need for human embryo research in order to improve IVF. But that is only one and, without belittling in any way the achievements of the scientists who pioneered it, only one method of curing infertility. That itself is not a disease or illness. Other noble Lords have mentioned GIFT and POST. I believe that many areas have not been properly researched in the field of infertility such as previous

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abortions and stress. How many of us know families who have not had a child for perhaps 10 years. They think that they will not have any more; they relax; then suddenly one, two or three children appear.
I believe that scientists have not properly researched methods to encourage people to have children without going through what undoubtedly, in the case of IVF, as I well know, is a painful process for the mother. This was admitted by Dr. Winston in his interesting interview in The Times earlier this week. He also accepted that bad surgery can cause infertility.
There are many aspects of the problem which cannot be dismissed by saying, "If we do not have human embryo research and IVF, progress cannot be made." I do not think that that is the only solution to the problem of infertility.
Many noble Lords have touched on the position in European countries. Earlier this year the European Parliament, following a report by a German socialist, Mr. Rothley, decided on an all-party basis by a big majority in favour of a ban on research involving human embryos. It was accepted, of course, as noble Lords would agree, that there could be therapeutic treatment in favour of the child itself, creating an exception to the general rule. Perhaps I may quote briefly from the report:
"These human embryos clearly provide welcome scientific material, but this is a fact which poses extremely difficult ethical and legal problems … Even the smallest concession made towards such a line of research will be a qualitative step which will have its own impetus and will be impossible to control".
There is much more to the report, but I shall not take up the time of your Lordships at this time of night. A Bill has been drafted and is coming before the Bundestag in Germany. However, even the draft is causing considerable problems. It has not been accepted by all parties at the present stage. Obviously all Members of your Lordships' House will be watching the progress of that Bill. However, it will certainly take some time as it is a highly controversial issue.
As far as I understand it, all parties agree that the creation of human embryos for research should be banned. It should also be remarked that in Denmark and Eire research on human embryos is banned. But that has not stopped the existence of active IVF clinics in both countries. One measure does not necessarily preclude the other.
The constitutional court of the Federal Republic of Germany laid down that everyone has the right to life —we all agree with that —but it was also held that the term "living human being" encompasses conceived and unborn human beings. That is the law as it stands in the Federal Republic of Germany.
We do not necessarily have to follow European precedents. Nevertheless, they are based on a clear assessment that human life at whatever stage must be legally protected. Further, legal protection of the human embryo does not in any way preclude other methods of research into the problems related to genetic illnesses. This is the route that is so far proving successful, and it is the one that I support.
8.51 p.m.
Lord Shackleton: My Lords, I orginally put my name down to speak in this debate to declare my support for the Warnock proposals and to speak on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Dainton, who unfortunately, like many of my scientific friends, was unable to be present. On his behalf I should say that he strongly supports the proposals for further research on pre-embryos. He does so partly because he is involved in the research and has seen its results at the postgraduate school at Hammersmith, but also because he has a close relative who is infertile. That subject is a very personal one.
In the early part of this debate it seemed to me that those who were in favour of the continuation of the research were more effective than those who were against it. But suddenly the debate has taken a new course, and therefore such other notes as I have prepared seem to me to be relevant. When a giant such as the noble Lord, Lord Jakobovits, joins in the debate, I wonder who I am to argue with such a fundamental mind. But the fact still remains that I do not myself believe that a conceptus is an individual. The noble Baroness, Lady Ryder, was quite correct to say that that was the issue which we had to decide.
Like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, I am a non-scientific Fellow of the Royal Society. I see many of my colleagues there passionately in support of this measure and I find it very difficult to think of them in the terms used by the noble Baroness, Lady Ryder, when she talked about the horrors committed by Nazis. I do not have a remote understanding of those atrocities, although I have been to Dachau. I know those atrocities were appalling, but I do not believe that these arguments are relevant; nor do I accept the argument used by the noble Baroness with regard to certain experiments on fetuses. Such experiments will not be possible. One of the purposes of the Bill is to restrict those kinds of experiments.
Furthermore, a number of errors have been made. The noble Duke, the Duke of Norfolk, is such a popular figure in your Lordships' House that one hesitates to disagree with him, but he is wrong in saying that the vaccine is likely to be an abortion instrument. That is factually incorrect, but I shall not take up time by giving the arguments. I feel therefore that we shall have an important and useful Committee stage. The noble Lord, Lord Jakobovits, made a number of suggestions which I am not competent to answer, although perhaps others may be able to answer them. However, they were interesting suggestions. I take the views of the noble Lord seriously, but I am bound to stick to the simple view that many good men who are scientists and moral figures of great significance support the course that I myself support.
8.55 p.m.
Viscount Sidmouth: My Lords, at this stage of the evening I shall concentrate briefly on one point; namely, that concerning research on embryos. The noble and learned Lord who introduced the Bill carefully put the case for and against, and then

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declined to take a judicial position. Being less impartial, I feel that he did not give enough weight to the fact that destructive experiments on human embryos have been expressly forbidden in medical ethics for over two thousand years. The onus therefore for ruling otherwise must surely rest on those who would change that.
I do not believe that a case has been truly made, particularly as to why experiments cannot be carried out using animal embryos or other non-destructive tests based on material taken from born sufferers of the disorders. As for the genetic disorders themselves, as we have heard from the noble Duke, the Duke of Norfolk, a great deal of successful work has already been carried out without the use of human embryos. Indeed, it is difficult to see how any treatment could be possible at the embryo stage without involving genetic manipulation which is in any case forbidden.
In truth, what is on offer is rather different. The ability to identify these disorders in embryos within 14 days would no doubt make it possible to destroy them at an early stage. Such a policy of extermination might eventually reduce the number of born sufferers, but who could claim this as a treatment let alone as a cure? If such a claim is seriously made, I believe we are in sight of the slippery slope. Other supposedly undesirable genetic characteristics might be put forward and the same logic would apply. This is no doubt why the Bundestag is contemplating a fairly restrictive law on the subject.
I wish to return briefly to the question of morality which is clearly at the heart of the matter. However utilitarian a view one takes, it is impossible to ignore certain basic convictions that are common to most of mankind. I wish to consider the matter of cannibalism. I am not talking about the killing of people in order to eat them. Even those who accept with equanimity the deliberate disintegration of human fetus at 28 weeks would, I imagine, agree that the killing of people in order to eat them is absolutely wrong.
But what I have in mind is the case when an Argentinian plane crashed in the High Andes, killing some of the passengers. Before they were finally rescued some of the survivors ate the flesh of the dead, which was conveniently preserved by the great cold. However, others refused to do so, even though their own survival was at stake. It seems to me that those people thought that that course was abhorrent. I believe that is what is felt by those who oppose research on embryos. There is no desire to deny the results of research into genetic disorders to anyone, but there is a conviction that it can and should be done without destructive research on human embryos.
Lord Shackleton: My Lords, before the noble Viscount sits down, I should say that those of us who occasionally have had to consider whether there is a duty to eat human flesh have been faced with this kind of moral issue, particularly on expeditions to Polar regions where people have been eaten. On the expedition I took part in we were never in danger of having to do that, but we debated that possibility.
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In the end, three were prepared to eat human flesh and three were not; but the question arose: who gets eaten?
There is an obligation on scientists on an expedition to come back alive if possible to bring back the scientific results. They have that duty. Although it may be a matter of choice there may be an obligation. However, I do not regard that as a good analogy with the issue we are debating now.
9 p.m.
The Earl of Bessborough: My Lords, if the noble Viscount does not wish to reply to the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, perhaps I may say that I shall not detain your Lordships very long. However, I felt for two reasons that I should say a word in the debate. The first is that when I was Parliamentary Secretary to my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham some years ago I got to know a number of Medical Research Council units quite well. I listened to my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham with very great interest, I have always thought his writings on science and religion—and science and politics—remarkably profound.
The second reason is that, like the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, and perhaps other noble Lords, I was very glad to hear the words of my right honourable friend the Prime Minister yesterday in her address on the 50th anniversary of the Parliamentary Scientific Commitee. She said that we should study the best scientific advice on the subject of embryo research. I have tried to do that, like the noble Baroness, Lady Llewellyn-Davies, and my noble friend Lord Caldecote. I have recently visited and discussed the question with the In Vitro Fertilisation Unit at King's College Hospital, to whose dedication I should also like to pay tribute, as tributes have been paid to other units elsewhere in the country. I have also been very well briefed by the Royal Society, the MRC and its chairman, my noble friend Lord Jellicoe, to whose powerful speech I also listened with interest and fully support, as well as, among others, the Association of Medical Research Charities.
Although I respect the views of those who stress the ethical and moral aspects of the problem—to which my right honourable friend the Prime Minister also referred yesterday, saying that they could not be ignored—all I would say this evening is that I am totally opposed to a ban which would frustrate research leading to an improvement in IVF techniques. I should do so even though, as other noble Lords have said, the success rate is only 8 or 10 per cent. In fact, that makes me feel all the more strongly that continuation and intensification of research is essential.
I should add only that, whatever my noble friend the Duke of Norfolk has said, I am convinced that the proposed authority could be relied upon to prevent any undesirable research in this field.
Above all I agree very much with the President of the Royal Society that embryo research should not in any way be confused with questions concerning abortion, on which the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, has tabled a separate Bill. I agree very

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much with the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, on that point.
I fully support what my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor said in his masterly speech in moving this Second Reading. I also agree with what my noble friend Lord Jellico said as chairman of the MRC. I might add here that I also support the option of allowing controlled research up to 14 days.
I therefore strongly support the Bill, even though I may, like my noble friend Lord Caldecote, support some amendments at the Committee stage.
9.5 p.m.
Viscount Buckmaster: My Lords, I have had no medical or scientific training, but I wish to stand up and be counted among those—a very small minority it seems—who oppose the Bill in its present form. I am speaking largely on the lines enumerated by the noble Lord, Lord Ashbourne.
I recognise the safeguards included in the Bill, and in particular the value of the voluntary licensing authority. However, I should like to associate myself with those mentioned by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor who regret the destruction of the potential child, the unsatisfactory nature of the 14 day time limit—a point which was also made by the noble Duke, the Duke of Norfolk, and others—and, most importantly, that the end cannot justify the means.
I also have the greatest respect for the views expressed by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York. However, I submit with all humility that he has omitted one crucial point—the divine nature of the creative process. In other words, the embryo, even below 14 days, however minute and apparently insignificant, is in my view, and that of many Christians, created by Almighty God. If one accepts that view one is tempted to ask, who are we to interfere with the divine process?
I am not opposed to all forms of research designed to eliminate or lessen the effects of disease and disorders of all kinds. However, I feel strongly that further attempts should be made to find alternatives to experimentation on human embryos.
Here I should like to quote from a paper prepared by Dr. Peggy Norris of the Medical Education Trust. She points out that the report of the Royal College of Physicians entitled Prenatal diagnosis and Genetic Screening, dated September 1989 is at variance with claims that IVF research could eliminate congenital and hereditary disorders. She asks:
"Is there a better way to treat such disorders? Yes;… The Institute of Molecular Medicine in Oxford consists of 10 units each tackling one aspect of major congenital diseases. Human embryos are not used".
I understand that similar research is being carried out by molecular biologists in other countries.
Dr. Peggy Norris also asks:
"Could IVF research eliminate congenital and hereditary disorders?"
Her answer is:
"The truth is that even if successful in producing perfect embryos … IVF fails to give parents a live healthy baby in 9 out of 10 cases".
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I must admit that I am no biologist and those figures may not be entirely reliable, but the author is very well informed on the subject and has done a great deal of research.
Thirdly and finally, I turn to the subject of mice which I do not think any noble Lord has mentioned so far. Peggy Norris points out:
"At an international meeting in Boston in October 1989, scientists stated that mice carrying foreign genes introduced into fertilised eggs …, or into embryonic stem cells, are proving to be a rich source of animal models of human diseases. Three generations of laboratory mice can be studied within a short period of time. A report states that new forms of therapy for sickle-cell anaemia are being studied in transgenic mice carrying the gene causing this disease".
That comes from an article in Nature of 16th November 1989.
I shall not weary your Lordships with further examples, although I could quote some, but I should be most grateful if the Minister who is to reply could give us some indication of the alternatives to embryonic research which are being studied and may well be studied in the future.
9.10 p.m.
Lord Carter: My Lords, the Bill which we are discussing involves, at one level, substantial questions of ethics, morality and religious belief and, at a different but no lesser level, agonising human choices and decisions. Those of us without a theological, medical or legal training will have to reach our decisions on the Bill in the privacy of our own consciences and those decisions will be none the worse or the less considered for that. Since each of us will be exercising a free vote, it is important, when joining in the debate, to make one's own personal position clear so that it can be taken into account when the House is considering the arguments that we each put forward.
My wife and I are practising Roman Catholics. We are both carriers of a congenital disease which resulted in very severe handicaps of vision and hearing in both our children. In addition, our son had a heart defect, which may have had a genetic base, from which he died when he was 19. Not surprisingly, I propose to concentrate therefore on that part of the Bill which is concerned with research into congenital diseases.
My judgment on both in vitro fertilisation and embryonic research into congenital diseases is based on two basic considerations. The first is the intention of the parents and the second is the supremacy of individual conscience. Those who support embryonic research into congenital diseases must accept that that research will lead to the rejection of pre-embryos which carry an abnormality in favour of implanting non-defective pre-embryos. Strictly speaking, it is not research that we are considering, but prevention by the destruction of the defective pre-embryo.
The argument against such research turns, as many speakers have said, on the exact time at which life begins. The point has also been made a number of times that Christian theological thought regarding ensoulment or animation has changed over the years. Until the last century the critical point in time was

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certainly taken to be much later than 14 days after fertilisation. There is still a range of opinion among theologians and we have heard some of those opinions in the debate.
A contemporary theologian, Father John Mahoney, a Jesuit who is professor of moral and social theology at King's College, London, has expressed his view very clearly in his brilliant book entitled Bioethics and Belief. He says:
"if one is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the human conceptus is not yet so developed as to be an ensouled human person, and if one's purpose in bringing about its destruction is sufficiently capable of moral scrutiny, then to do so is not, even objectively, morally blameworthy".
Noble Lords have heard the arguments about twinning, the wastage of fertilised eggs and the individuation of cells. I do not propose to repeat them. I find them sufficiently persuasive to enable me at least to contemplate the possibility that the destruction of defective embryos, under strict statutory control and up to 14 days after fertilisation, may not be intrinsically wrong.
The argument regarding embryonic research is often put to the parents of a handicapped child as follows—and I have heard it often enough; indeed it has been hinted at in this debate—"If the destruction of defective embryos had been permitted, your child or children would not have been born". But that is surely a classic example of post hoc argument. It is, in effect, saying that, knowing the handicapped child now as a person, the parents would choose now that that child should not have been born.
Embryonic research says nothing about the right to life of people who now exist and who are disabled. Parents are not faced with the decision, looking down a miscroscope, of choosing that a person known to them should not live. They are faced with the possibility, looking down a microscope, that one speck of matter carrying a defect should not be implanted, while another speck of matter not carrying a defect should be implanted.
The parents' intention is wholly good and incorrupt, to create another human being and, thanks to research, to choose that that human being should not be handicapped. How many of those who oppose embryonic research, and who have non-disabled children, would choose to have a handicapped child or children? But that, in effect, is the possibility that they wish to impose without choice on parents who are carriers of congenital diseases.
I turn now very briefly, and in conclusion, to an aspect of the Bill which has not been discussed in any great depth so far as I am aware, although it was touched on by the noble Lord, the Chief Rabbi. This concerns the immense responsibility we shall place on those who will constitute the proposed licensing authority, when they decide which programmes of research to license. Schedule 2 to the Bill gives as one of the reasons for granting a licence,
"increasing knowledge about the causes of congenital disease".
Is that meant to cover all congenital diseases, including those which are not life-threatening but which are disabling, to a greater or lesser extent?
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Colour blindness is a congenital defect, as is haemophilia and, as we have heard, muscular dystrophy. Does it include diseases whose full effects may develop only in old age; for example, certain types of eye disease which may be identifiable in the pre-embryo through a DNA probe, but which are not likely to cause major defects of vision until fairly late in life?
So far as I can see, the Warnock Report, the consultation paper and the White Paper are silent on the criteria to be considered by the licensing authority when granting licences for research. Indeed the White Paper makes the Government's view very clear in paragraph 22 when it states:
"The Government does not intend to specify in legislation the detailed criteria which should be applied in granting licences."
This is an immensely difficult and sensitive area, but I feel that Parliament must attempt to lay down some broad guidelines or principles to guide the proposed authority. In my view we cannot just pass the responsiblity to members of the new authority to make these desperately difficult decisions without giving them some guidance. I am certain that we shall return to this problem at later stages of the Bill.
This has not been an easy speech for me to make, but I hope that it has illustrated and helped to define the very difficult decisions which your Lordships will have to take. I am confident that in the traditions of this House those decisions will be informed, constructive and, above all, humane.
9.17 p.m.
The Earl of Perth: My Lords, I had not meant to speak on Second Reading, but there is one item in this Bill which has compelled me to do so. But, first, I should like to say one word on what I would call the Bill in general. I am a Catholic. Our views have been well explained by the noble Duke the Duke of Norfolk. In brief, I believe that life begins at conception, at the beginning of the embryo, and after that there should be no experimentation on it, for life is then human and sacred. To me, as to many others, there is no such thing as the term pre-embryo on which experimentation should be allowed. From the very start, an embryo is an embryo and that is that. The noble Baroness, Lady Ryder, expanded on this most successfully and properly. All the same, I deeply respect those who hold different views in your Lordships' House.
I now turn to that part of the Bill which has so shocked me. I believe that it may have been touched on by one other noble Lord when I was out of the House. If so, I make no apology because I cannot stress too often the horror of what is in the Bill. It could be said that I should not talk about this matter at this stage, that it is a Committee point. But it is so wrong that I must draw attention to it now, so that your Lordships can ponder it and decide the horror which faces us if we allow it. I fear that medical experts have lost their way and, sadly, the Government have followed them.
What am I talking about? I am talking about Schedule 2 of the Bill, Licences for research. Schedule 2, paragraph 3(4) states:
"A licence under this paragraph may authorise fertilisation by mixing human sperm with the egg of another species of animal

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for the purpose of developing more effective techniques for determining the fertility of human sperm if the resulting embryo is immediately destroyed".
That is nothing more nor less than a licence for man to create a living thing, an embryo which is half man and half beast. The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, said, "Do not talk about monsters." I understand what he is saying, but this is a start on such a terrible path. It is wholly wrong and wholly evil—a crime against God and humanity. I believe that no medical purpose can justify such a happening. No end can justify such a means. It is my hope, my prayer, that in Committee stage that subsection will be struck out. It would be good if the Government would take the lead.
Sadly for me, the subsection casts serious doubt on the whole approach of the medical researchers as outlined in the Bill. I am deeply saddened that the medical profession or the Government could ever contemplate a licence to create a living embryo that is half man and half beast. It must not be allowed now or ever in the future.
9.22 p.m.
Lord Teviot: My Lords, I shall be brief. I shall deal with a different aspect of the Bill from that addressed by most noble Lords. I welcome what was said by the noble Lord the Chief Rabbi when he spoke of the spiritual element. I shall address a practical element.
I welcome the Government's intention to set up a licensing authority as set out in the Bill. My concern is about the information that is to be recorded by the licensed clinics with regard to the child conceived, his mother and his natural father. I have been a practising genealogist for many years. I do not see that I have any great financial interest; nevertheless I declare an interest. I have been talking to Sir Colin Cole, Garter Principal King at Arms. He has been in touch with his counterpart in Scotland, Lord Lyon. I have also spoken to representatives of the Society of Genealogists and of the Scottish Genealogy Society.
Those representatives appreciate that under Clause 13 of the Bill the authority will by direction set out what information is to be recorded about the donors, the recipients and their subsequent children. They also appreciate that under Clause 29 of the Bill the Secretary of State will issue regulations specifying the basic information that will be required.
However, it is thought very desirable that a statement of the minimum requirements of information should be included in the Bill. It is hoped therefore that the donor will be fully described in the records so that his name, address, occupation, place and date of birth, and national health number at least are recorded.
Under Clause 29 of the Bill, when the child reaches the age of 18 he will have the right to apply to the authority for some information about his parentage. The information which can be given will be set out in the Secretary of State's regulations.
There is here an exact parallel with adopted children. When adopted children reach the age of 18 they have the right, after counselling, to be given full
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details of their own natural parents. They know that they are adopted children because the birth certificate says so. Most people now agree that it is a terrible mistake to bring up adopted children without those children having knowledge of their adoption. If, for some reason, they wish to disguise the fact, they can use a "short form" birth certificate in the same way that illegitimate children do, because the "short form" certificate gives no information at all about parentage.
Of course the natural parents of an adopted child have no right to know what happens to the child after adoption. It is only the child who can find its real parents and not the other way round.
As there is such an exact parallel with adoption, the genealogical community believes that children conceived by artificial insemination by donor should have a similar right at the age of 18 and after counselling to know the true facts of their parentage and to be given identifying information about their real fathers. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, in the debate on the White Paper last year, said that,
"it is a fundamental principle of our law that the birth certificate should be honest and true so that everyone should know the origins of their parenthood". [Official Report 15/1/88; col. 1480.]
I hope that the right to have the full details when one is 18 of the identity of one's father will be written into the Bill. I am not suggesting that the name of the donor should be recorded on the birth certificate. I do suggest that the "long form" of the birth certificate should be marked to show that the birth was "by donation" or other means. The vice-president of the Scottish Genealogical Society has a system which I think could well be looked into and perhaps accepted. If the "long form" certificate is not so marked, no one will ever know the true facts of his or her birth and one is storing up a great deal of trouble for the future.
A practical example which will be of particular interest to your Lordships appears in Clause 30 which states:
"This section [of the Bill] does not affect the succession to any dignity".
Lady Saltoun of Abernethy: My Lords, if the noble Lord will give way, perhaps I might tell him that the clause to which he refers is Clause 28(3).
Lord Teviot: My Lords, the noble Lady speaks with certainty. I do not have the Bill in my hand to look it up. However, I am assured that the noble Lady is absolutely correct; it is Clause 28(3). I am very grateful to her for having pointed that out. I should have spotted my mistake before. One aspect of this House is that the people are terribly kind and point out these very trite but very important points. I am very grateful. It is Clause 28(3) which says that the Bill,
"does not affect the succession to any dignity".
However, unless the birth certificates of all children conceived following artificial insemination by donor are marked "By donation", no one will know which children of a peer are conceived in that way. Under the present Bill only the child itself will have the right to discover the truth. No other person, such as

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the next heir, will have that right. If the child succeeds to a title before the age of 18 it will have no right to know whether it has a right to that title. If it dies before the age of 18 or subsequently without making application for the true facts of its birth, no one will have any right of discovery of those facts. The proper succession of any title will only be safeguarded if birth certificates are marked in the way that I suggest.
I hope that these important points will have the support of the House. I very much look forward to the Committee stage of the Bill and a discussion of these points. I hope that the future rights of children born as a result of these modern techniques will be taken fully into account.
9.30 p.m.
The Earl of Carnavon: My Lords, I shall be very brief. In your Lordships' House last week there was an excellent debate moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, on caring in the community and the importance of family life. As I see it, this Bill, with the research involved, is caring about an important section of the community; namely, those who find difficulty in creating a family.
I am a previous chairman of the Agriculture and Food Research Council, and I am very proud of the work that was done in several of our institutes, particularly at Babraham, on embryology. I believe that there was a spin-off for the Medical Research Council by the work that was done there. Without the research envisaged in this Bill, there will be even less opportunity for the reduction of congenital diseases, and, as I see it, fewer advances in the treatment of infertility.
I believe very sincerely that we are a caring society. Only last week I was in Basingstoke and I saw the introduction to the hospital of a new body scanner. It cost £650,000 and the money was found by 6,500 people of Basingstoke. That is what I call caring. I believe that those of us who have children and grandchildren are extremely lucky. It is up to us to support those less fortunate than ourselves. Therefore I support most sincerely the research on an embryo up to 14 days and with the strict licensing envisaged in this Bill.
9.32 p.m.
Lord Prior: My Lords, I shall be brief as well. In the other place it is usual to make your speech regardless of how many others have made it before because you want to get it into the local newspaper and your constituents need to know exactly what your views are. Luckily, in your Lordships' House there is no such need. Therefore it is quite unnecessary to repeat a great deal of what has already been said in a far more eminent, intellectual and intelligent way than I could possibly manage.
I support the Bill and Clause 11(1) which would allow, under very strict control, some research into the embryo. Such research is and would be of two kinds. It is research to deal with the problems of infertility and congenital disease. In our lives all of us will have seen the miseries that are caused to
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families by infertility. No doubt all of us have experienced the problems which the noble Lord, Lord Carter, and others have put so strongly today, of those children who suffer from some terrible handicap.
We are all aware also of the enormous love and care that a mother and father will have for a handicapped child. In my life I believe that nothing has proved more moving than to see that particular love and attention which is given to such children by their parents. It is also perhaps one of the more refreshing aspects of modern society that we pay so much more attention to the mentally and physically handicapped than we used to do some 25 or 30 years' ago. That is perhaps another sign of a more civilised, caring and mature society. But recognising that, and recognising that much more research on a range of subjects far greater than embryology is still required, does not detract from the fact that, in the case of infertility and congenital disease, controlled research into the embryo could have a marked effect on the happiness which we could bring to a great many more families throughout the world.
If we are to bring this happiness we must consider the ethics and theology of the matter. We have heard about this from a number of noble Lords. I speak entirely as a layman. I believe that the pursuit of knowledge to alleviate suffering and bring happiness is a noble aim which I find to be consistent with the teachings of God. I have no difficulty in supporting the work that has been carried out so far under control. I believe as well that there is a moral imperative to engage in research. I am impressed by the words contained in the booklet issued by the Interim Licensing Authority. It says on page 11:
"Research and advances in medicine are inseparable. Properly disciplined, scientific human curiosity is a noble part of our culture. It is a sterile and dogmatic society that stifles responsible research, and it is arrogant to suppose that we know enough".
That sums up my views on the research that is necessary and the responsible attitude that can be taken. Above all we have to consider carefully not just the freedom of those who, for reasons one can fully appreciate, do not wish to avail themselves of the benefits of this research, but also the freedom, as my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham said, of those who wish to take advantage of the benefits of it. Therefore I hope that noble Lords will set an example to the rest of the country in the way that they have today and that this Bill will receive not only a Second Reading but will come onto the statute book quickly.
9.37 p.m.
Lady Saltoun of Abernethy: My Lords, I think that everything that can possibly be said about embryo research has already been said over and over again this afternoon and this evening. If one had not seen the Bill and had heard a handful of speeches, one could have been forgiven for being under the impression that it consists of one clause only—Clause 11. Indeed I have spoken to some noble Lords who were under exactly that impression. There is, in fact, quite a lot else in it. There is the whole question of the status of AID children.

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Perhaps at this moment I should declare an interest as a Scottish chief and a member of the Committee of the Standing Council of Scottish chiefs. The safeguards in Clause 28(3) regarding succession to peerages may or may not be adequate as regards England and Wales, but they are probably inadequate as regards Scotland. The clause will possibly have the effect of separating clan chiefships from any associated peerages or other titles or dignities, because it is by no means clear that "dignity or title of honour" would include a right to a coat of arms, which is the "title or honour" which demonstrates chiefship.
The wording used in the Bill is taken from that used in the Legitimacy Act 1976, Section 31. It is an English Act and its predecessors are the Legitimacy Acts of 1926 and 1959. The Bill may also have the effect of separating any property settled along with a peerage or other dignity from the peerage or dignity. Schedule 1.4(3) of the Legitimacy Act 1976 provides that,
"Nothing in this Act shall affect the devolution of any property limited (expressly or not) to devolve (as nearly as the law permits) along with any dignity or title of honour.
This sub-paragraph applies only if and so far as a contrary intention is not expressed in the instrument, and shall have effect subject to the instrument".
A similar clause could be added to this Bill.
There is no such thing as a "title" of chief of a clan. But there is a right to the plain and undifferenced arms, which then demonstrates that person's entitlement to be chief of the clan. Succession to a clan chiefship is governed by the succession to the coat of arms connected with the chiefship.
The Succession (Scotland) Act 1964 provided in Section 37(1) that,
"Nothing in this Act shall—
(a) apply to any title, coat of arms, honour or dignity".
The drafters clearly thought that the words "title, honour or dignity" would not include a coat of arms.
In Scotland we also have to deal with succession to the various inheritable offices: such as, the Lord High Constable (the Earl of Erroll); Hereditary Banner Bearer (the Earl of Dundee); Hereditary Bearer of St. Andrew's Flag (the Earl of Lauderdale); Hereditary Master of the Household (the Duke of Argyll) and Hereditary Keeper of the Palace of Holyrood House (the Duke of Hamilton). These are properly described as "heritable offices" and are viewed as heritable property like land, rather than as a title or dignity, particularly as some are closely linked to the landed estate granted with them and with which they descend. The right to these offices can be and are recorded in the Register of Sasines or Land Register of Scotland.
It is doubtful that they would be included under,
"dignity or title of honour",
in Scots law, whatever the legal position of similar offices is in England. If they are not covered, then one may have the anomalous situation that the Earldom of Erroll will go to one person, while the office of Lord High Constable will go to another, when the earldom and the office of Lord High Constable are presumed to go together.
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It could be argued that,
"any dignity or title of honour",
would cover both "coat of arms" and "heritable office"; but until there had been a judicial decision there would have to be uncertainty.
Therefore it would be preferable if the coat of arms and heritable office could be included nominatum in the Act. It may be best to have a separate Scottish subsection because Scots law on peerages, dignities, offices and so on is very different from that in England.
I have been advised on this matter by Rothesay Herald, Sir Crispin Agnew of Lochnaw, and by the Lord Lyon King of Arms, and I shall be tabling amendments in Committee.
Out of this matter also springs the question of the registration of AID children and the information available to them to which the noble Lord, Lord Teviot, has already spoken. I do not expect to receive an answer to this question, or indeed any comment on the matter, from the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, because this is really a matter for the departments of the noble and learned Lords the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Advocate.
My other cause for concern this evening is over the provision of AID to single women, unmarried couples and lesbian couples which seems to me to be highly undesirable from the point of view of the resulting children. I shall therefore also be tabling amendments to Clause 27.
9.45 p.m.
Baroness Platt of Writtle: My Lords, at the time of the Warnock Report I was certainly not an expert in the subject and so I left the matter to others more knowledgeable than me. Now, however, we have the opportunity to vote and that quite clearly gives a great sense of responsibility to your Lordships' House tonight. I feel this particularly because I have an engineering and scientific background. I had the great privilege, thanks to my noble friend Lord Jellicoe, of listening to experts and then of visiting King's College Hospital Assisted Conception Unit. I was most impressed by the work being done there and I am grateful for the opportunity it gave me to learn more about that difficult subject.
There was a couple at the unit. The woman was undergoing treatment and her husband was also there. They were helpful and courageous in allowing us on ultrasound to watch eggs being taken from the woman's follicles. It made one appreciate the ordeal that she and her husband were going through and how much the possibility of having a child meant to them. It would be dreadful if they did not have that opportunity—the greatest miracle of modern times—to create new life and have a healthy baby. Future research will clearly be needed to improve the success of that process, which at present has only a one in 10 chance of success, and to help people avoid having children with severe genetic disease.
I am much heartened that that view is strongly supported by the Royal Society. However, I believe deeply in the sanctity of human life and that the research must be carried out in carefully controlled circumstances. I read the Warnock Report and I

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much admire the responsible work done by the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, and the committee which covered so many aspects of the problems involved. I also feel that the Bill has taken the Warnock recommendations carefully into account.
The new licensing authority will have a difficult and responsible task as research progresses and more is known. I am glad that it will consist of men and women, experts and lay people. That mix is important. I am concerned that only one lay member appears to be envisaged for the licensing committee; I feel that there should be two or three. I ask my noble friend to reconsider the strength of the lay membership of that important committee. One lay member among experts is too isolated.
I am glad that in Clauses 3 and 4 activities that cannot be licensed are firmly laid down right from the start. People need to know that unacceptable processes are outlawed by the Bill and that criminal sanctions are envisaged. Those processes include cross-fertilisation between human and other species, and genetic engineering. If tests for male fertility are to be made on hamster eggs, the resultant embryo must be destroyed immediately. No research will be allowed on a human embryo after it has existed for 14 days, discounting storage. That is well before it has feelings or looks anything like a fetus and when it is about the size of a full stop.
I am also glad that the licensing regulations are strict and insist on consent by, and counselling of, all parties so that they appreciate the seriousness of their decisions and clearly specify the purposes for which the embryo can and cannot be used, to which the person consenting can attach conditions.
I welcome the strength of the penalties imposed if embryos are created without a licence. I hope that that will mean that only properly regulated and licensed activities will take place. I also welcome paragraph 3(5) of Schedule 2, which states:
"No licence … shall be granted unless the Authority is satisfied that any proposed use of embryos is necessary for the purposes of the research.
If we do not allow properly regulated and licensed research there is always the fear that it will go underground, as it were, which would be much worse. I welcome the publication of a code of practice which I hope will set a responsible attitude among all those involved.
In this respect, I think careful regulation will have to be attached to Clause 13(7) so that there can never be any question of this kind of work being done for substantial profit. It may be in the code of practice that the stability of the home into which the child will be born will come into question, as the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, has just mentioned. I have not found it elsewhere. I believe that it is of the greatest importance that any child should have a father as well as a mother and that both parents should be seen to be responsible for the welfare of that child.
I also realise that there are great problems about the information to be given to those children. I hope that these considerations will be seriously taken into account in setting up the code of practice which may need amendment under Clauses 27 and 28.
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This is important but delicate work. It is vital that those involved should continually reassess the balance of advantage of the research and treatment and the arrangements to be made for carrying it out. I believe that the licensing authority should report annually. As a former chairman of the Equal Opportunities Commission I know that we certainly had to report annually. I believe that that is an important discipline in this sensitive subject.
The work proceeding at King's College assisted conception unit filled me with admiration. It was carried out with delicacy and kindness and I am sure it was dedicated to the enhancement of the dignity of life. I have sympathy with the four members of the Warnock Committee who put in a minority report suggesting that research should not be permitted on embryos brought into existence specifically for that purpose or coming into existence as a result of other research. The insistence on consent and counselling will, I hope, limit that practice in a sensible and responsible way. I ask my noble friend to consider the matter and whether it requires some tightening of the Bill or perhaps a need for further amendments to the Bill.
I believe that the aim of all units should be life-enhancing. I should not like to see researchers becoming so absorbed in their subject that they forget at any time that that scrap of humanity has the potential to become a human being. I should not like them to become uncaring nor to lose sight of the overriding importance of the sanctity of human life.
At present researchers are only using spare embryos for life-enhancing work. I should not like large numbers of embryos to be produced only for research, as my noble friend Lord Caldecote also said. I believe that that would change the vision of the present work.
I welcome this well thought out and responsible Bill. I do not feel qualified or knowledgeable enough to suggest amendments or further controls, but I believe that the Bill will need further tightening if it is not to create considerable future problems. However, I hope that as a result of its provisions for research and treatment, in future many more couples will have the opportunity of producing healthy and much wanted children.
9.53 p.m.
Lord Robertson of Oakridge: My Lords, first, I wish to thank the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for introducing this Bill with such clarity and fairness. To realise with how much care and awe we need to approach this subject, let us remember that we are dealing with part of God's creation. The Bible says:
"Worthy art thou, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for thou didst create all things and by thy will they existed and were created".
Although I may differ from others on the ethics of embryo research, I fully appreciate the motives and sincerity of those who wish to carry out such research. I welcome the Bill which brings parliamentary control to an area where scientific advances have outstripped the law. But there are a number of features about it which disturb me.

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The aim of my remarks this evening is to highlight the dangers of abandoning the time-honoured principle that research on a human subject must always give priority to the welfare of that subject. In other words, in research, human beings must never be used as guinea pigs for the possible benefit to other people, as I believe would be the result of the wider version of this Bill.
There are clearly some among your Lordships who are convinced that for the first 14 days the embryo cannot be classified as a human being. If that is one's position, all I would say is that from fertilisation onwards the embryo contains its own DNA or blueprint to enable it to become a unique fully-grown person in the image of God and loved by him. Unlike an arm or a leg. or indeed unlike sperm or an unfertilised egg, provided the embryo is in a favourable environment and receives appropriate nourishment, it can in due course become a fully grown man or woman. I would add that the embryo does not cease to be a human being, even if it contains a potential medical handicap. Such an embryo is still the object of God's love.
One of the real worries about allowing research on embryos within the first 14 days is that it could lead to wider forms of research than are intended by Parliament. As an example of how the abandoning in law of a basic medical ethic can lead to unforeseen consequences, we need look no further than the Abortion Act 1967. This for the first time legalised abortion on grounds other than to save the mother's life. Despite all the reassurances of those promoting the 1967 Act, abortion has been used by some women, with the co-operation of their doctors, as a longstop form of contraception.
As regards the present Bill, we are already seeing a desire to set the boundaries of research more widely. Last Friday, Nature magazine, with the approval of the Royal Society, carried a report stating that it had produced a fact sheet in which are listed the possible benefits from research on embryos, including research to be carried out beyond the 14-day limit. Only today The Times carried an article on Professor Bob Williamson of St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington, in which he is quoted as objecting to the arbitrary time limit of 14 days.
For further evidence we only have to study the Bill before the House. I shall consider three points. First, Section 4(1)(c) would allow, albeit under licence, the mixing of live human gametes with the gametes of animals. That is bad enough in itself, but Parliament must assess whether the matter would stop there.
Secondly—this proposal sounds too Gilbertian to be true—for the first time it will be against the law not to kill an innocent human being—that is, in the destruction of embryos once they have exhausted their usefulness to the researchers, or when they reach the 15th day.
Thirdly, under the Bill doctors and researchers would have the power to decide which embryos should be implanted and which should be thrown away. This would mean that there would be some kind of fitness test to decide which embryo is suitable to join the human race and which is not. It is of
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course no light matter at all for a child to be born with a genetic defect resulting in handicap or hereditary disease. However, as Professor Lejeune and other distinguished researchers in the same field have shown, the research that would be permitted under the wider version of the Bill is unlikely to prove the only or even the best way to find a cure for those conditions.
Therefore what we are really talking about is the identification of embryos affected by these conditions so that the embryos concerned can be destroyed. An important point is that we take on a great and, in my view, dangerous responsibility if we destroy one of God's creations because he or she does not meet our manmade standards.
For the reasons I have given, I believe that we should not be justified in abandoning the traditional medical ethic that prevent human beings being used as guinea pigs because to do so would impinge on the sanctity of life. When we reach the detailed considerations of the Bill, I shall vote against the version of Clause 11 which would give permission for research up to 14 days.
However, I am extremely disappointed with the alternative version of Clause 11 which is drafted so loosely that it does not provide the no-research alternative that I understood we had been promised by the Government. It speaks about treatment services to women, whereas I should have preferred the provision to have been on the Enoch Powell basis of treatment services to a specific woman to enable her to have a child. However, we must look closely at that matter in Committee. I therefore welcome the Bill but trust that it can be amended in subsequent stages.
10 p.m.
The Earl of Cork and Orrery: My Lords, I confess that when I first read the Bill I had the transient impression that one of the medieval schoolmen had returned. Not Sir Thomas Aquinas, or Abelard, or any of the great ones but one of the fourteenth century peasants who delighted in arguing about such philosophical absurdities as how many angels coulu dance upon the point of a pin.
I gained that impression from a reading of Clause 3 about which there has been more talk today than any other clause. Clause 3(3) states:
"A licence cannot authorise keeping or using an embryo after the appearance of the primitive streak".
That statement seems unexceptionable and complete. However, subsection (4) states:
"For the purposes of subsection 3(a) above, the primitive streak is to be taken to have appeared in an embryo not later than the end of the period of 14 days".
I imagined myself as a strange character sitting at a table in his laboratory or surgery with an embryo in front of him on a microscope. Presumably he is in a position to tell whether the primitive streak has appeared because he has only to look at it.
The Bill states—and this is where the dancing on the pin begins:
"the primitive streak is taken to have appeared"—

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I am surprised that the word "deemed" has not been used because it is a good old parliamentary word—
"in an embryo not later than the end of the period of 14 days".
What kind of drafting is that? Having scratched my head a good deal I concluded that the second part must have been drafted first. Indeed, I am pretty certain that it was. The period of 14 days has been spinning about in the air for many years. Here is a draftsman plucking it out of the air and saying, "How are we to justify this period of 14 days? What can we latch it on to? We had better latch it on to the thing which is pretty much there a fortnight after conception; the appearance of the primitive streak". So he bunged that into the Bill. And what does it mean? It means absolutely nothing.
The Bill is semenal. I apologise for using a word of such ambiguity but it is correct. The Bill is semenal because it is the seed from which all legislation upon the subject will grow. We are at the beginning; at day one, hour one. It behoves us to make sure we have got it right. We do not get anything right if we argue with one another in a good natured and friendly way about details such as when an embryo or a gamete becomes human. We are still in the realms of dancing on the point of a pin. However, we want a fixed point upon which we can all agree if possible. That is what I mean by "trying to get it right".
There are perhaps four or five points in the life cycle of a human being, or of any animal, which can be identified. Beginning at the wrong end and going backwards the first is death. That is no good to us and we do not want that. The point immediately before, which is the nearest we can get to defining the moment of birth, is the cutting of the umbilical cord. That will not suit us either in connection with the Bill. If we continue to go backwards we come to implantation which is mentioned in the Bill. That also is a fairly vague episode. It is a process of no particularly precise deposition. Finally, we get back to the moment of conception. That is what the argument is all about.
re is one thing that can be said about the event of conception: before it there is no human being; after it, although not immediately afterwards, there is. It is therefore a milestone between the non-existence of a human being and the existence of a human being. There is a gap between the two, but how big that gap is in my submission does not matter. The moment of conception is the only possible dividing line that one can establish. That is the moment that we should choose.
As a matter of reason and logic, eschewing all arguments from philisophy, ethics, morals or religion, it follows that if one uses that as the moment beyond which one cannot and must not conduct experiments on the human embryo then one cannot conduct them at all. That therefore is my conclusion; it is the conclusion which flows from the only non-metaphysical argument.
There is a price to be paid for that. We have heard frequently during this debate examples of that price. Incidentally, the price is nearly always said to be
paid by the parents, particularly the mother. The price is very high indeed. If there is a price to pay for experimenting, or not experimenting, that price is paid ultimately by the child. Nobody seems to have thought about that unfortunate child and what will happen to him. He is protected in that the embryo which has been implanted in the mother cannot be experimented on at all. Therefore we can leave that issue on one side.
My noble friend the Duke of Norfolk had a great deal to say about that price which was very much to the point. What do we lose if we forbid experimentation on the embryo? My noble friend was not certain and I am not certain that we lose very much. He asked a question which I hope my noble friend the Minister will answer when she winds up the debate: is there any record of any congenital disease being cured as a result of embryo research? That is a fundamental question in this debate.
When my noble friend Lord Glenarthur spoke I ventured to ask him a question concerning the discovery to which he referred of the faulty gene which causes cystic fibrosis. He was not quite certain of the answer and I was not certain that I asked the right question. I have gone into the matter since. The answer is that the faulty gene was not found through research on embryos. It was found in Toronto, as a result of research on DNA, which can be taken out of a perfectly ordinary cell in any human body and involves no human embryo at all. That frequently quoted example of embryo research finding a cure for cystic fibrosis turns out to be no more than so much hot air.
Lord Shackelton: My Lords, I do not know any serious scientist operating in that field who has claimed that the research has effected a cure.
The Earl of Cork and Orrery: My Lords, I am not quite sure that I follow what the noble Lord said. Perhaps he will repeat himself.
Lord Shackleton: My Lords, I do not know of any serious scientist, certainly in this country, who has claimed that research on embryos has effected a cure.
The Earl of Cork and Orrery: My Lords, I do not know what the answer to the question is. I am suggesting what may be the price that must be paid. Others who know a great deal more about the matter than I do can answer that question, but I know that with the Bill we are skating on thin ice. That metaphor cannot be extended to cover all the dangers that we might be laying up on store for posterity. It behoves us to skate very carefully indeed.
10.10 p.m.
Lord Henderson of Brompton: My Lords, I should like to take us right back to the beginning of the debate and, like the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, pay a compliment to the Government on the prelegislative processes which have preceded the publication of the Bill. To my mind, starting with the report of the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, and going through

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the successive stages of consultation in both Houses and with the general public and experts, it has been a model of its kind and might well be followed in other legislation. We might then be able to get through our legislative programme rather more expeditiously than we do at present.
Unlike the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, who preceded me, I find that the Bill is beautifully drafted, except in one respect. We can no doubt argue the toss over the subsection to which the noble Earl objected when we reach the Committee stage, but, like the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, I take exception to the part of the Long Title to which he referred. I believe that it was forced upon the draftsman for political reasons and by force majeure. It is horrible to think of the torture of the poor draftsman when he had constructed this lucid piece of prose to have that defect forced upon his otherwise whole, healthy and beautiful child.
Nevertheless, I was glad to see that when the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, who is just below me, made his spirited speech, the noble Lord the Leader of the House was in his place and heard it. The noble Lord, Lord Houghton, was undoubtedly reflecting the feelings of the House. There is no doubt that, from all quarters of the House, the plea has been made, as it was made most seriously and effectively by Sir George Porter, the president of the Royal Society, that the two subjects of the Warnock legislation, as one might loosely call it, and abortion should be kept severely apart.
I should like to point out that that procedure is for the convenience of the House. It produces orderly debates, but where the House has expressed a clear view, as it has this evening, procedural ways must be found —amicably, I hope, and by agreement —to fulfil the wishes of the House, I am confident that the noble Lord the Leader of the House, who on these occasions always puts the wishes of the House first and would only put any pressure to which he might be subjected from outside second, will respond to the widespread and repeated request that the two subjects should be set apart.
It happens that the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, has provided a very convenient vehicle for this to happen, and I am confident that the Leader of the House will either devise himself or accede to a request for a proposition that will have this effect. I say no more, being confident that he will agree and we shall then proceed to discuss these subjects separately and logically. We realise that this can only be for this House and not for another place, which has to decide its own procedures. But in the light of our good example it might even follow us. You never know.
I long to make a number of comments on the speeches which have been made. My noble and distinguished medical friends behind me have fielded a number of medical and technical points, and I merely wish to comment on one non-medical point which was made by the noble Duke, the Duke of Norfolk. He said that the United States Government had banned the use of federal funds for IVF research. That is quite true, but only this week a key congressional committee in Washington sharply criticised this ban and recommended that it be lifted.
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The report of the human resources sub-committee states that the lack of funding for such research is a significant factor in the low success rate of IVF, and the congressional chairman, Mr. Weiss, protested that,
"our own national health agency has ignored the repeated pleas of its own scientists, the medical and scientific communities, and millions of infertile Americans who have repeatedly asked them to fund this reserch".
So I feel that the argument in the United States is at least open and not closed, as seemed to follow from what the noble Duke said to this House.
Late as it is this evening, one would have thought that there was nothing fresh to say, but I found one small significant aspect which has not been covered so far. No one to my recollection has dwelt on the potential benefits to the third world of such research as we are considering, except in terms of population. I agree that with our population so huge and rising, as it now is, that is extremely important for the welfare of the third world. But there are most distressing genetic diseases in the third world which could somehow or other be prevented if this kind of research was allowed to continue.
Professor Winston has said that there are something over 4,000 genetic diseases which might benefit from this research, and that is a huge number. A number of them affect only a small number of people, but a great many are in the third world and a disease that affects only a small number of people is no less important for that. However, there is one, thalassaemia, which affects a very large number of people and I am told that that is responsible for killing 250,000 people a year. If that disease kills so many, and if it might respond to research of this nature, who could really wish to see research of this nature banned? I do not believe anyone would consider that that could possibly weigh in the balance with counter considerations.
Those who have been affected, as I am sure most of us have been, by the personal courage of the noble Lord, Lord Carter, and indeed the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, who have children who have genetic diseases, may like to remember the words of the late Lady Lane-Fox, who spoke in the human fertilisation and embryology debate in 1988, a year and a half ago. She was a most courageous lady who had been for 50 years crippled by polio. She stated on 15th January 1988, at col. 1475 in the Official Report, that her choice was,
"the compelling and urgent need for everything possible to be done to advance research aimed at preventing congenital handicap".
She continued:
"Those who have been concerned personally with severely mentally and/or physically handicapped children are prompted to strive to do all in their power to remove that dreadful threat in life. Of course prevention of the transmission of genetic and chromosomal defects is a most important step towards this end".
She referred to the load on those who have to care for people who are severely genetically handicapped. In a pregnant phrase she said:
"It is a load which can disable the whole family".
I think it is right that we should remember that contribution of the noble Baroness in 1988 when we come now to consider the Bill.

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If the Bill is enacted —perhaps with some refinements, as has been suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Jakobovits, and others —substantially as it has been introduced, with all its safeguards and with subsection (1) of Clause 11 in place, no one need have any fears.
I conclude with the words of Sir Peter Medawar. I have quoted them on a previous occasion. They are still relevant:
"We already have a moral commitment to … bio-medical research … and I see no reason to think that the highway of medical melioration that has brought us so far already will now lead us into evil".
I hope that those words are of some comfort to those who hitherto have been doubting. I hope that they will bring their consciences and their votes into the Division Lobby in favour of continued research.
10.23 p.m.
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, as the 45th speaker I rise to support Clause 11 of the Bill; namely, that research on embryos should be permitted within the present timespan of 14 days, and if it is licensed by the statutory licensing authority. I wish to make three points, one of which has not been made previously.
Some years ago I went to Padua and visited the medical school in Padua University. I found a theatre where medical students since the early centuries had been taught medicine. A corpse would be put on a slab in the middle of the floor. It would be dissected for the students who were training. However, the Church and the state disapproved of cutting up a body even for the sake of research. It was devised therefore that a button would be pressed when the clanking sounds of the officers of Church and state were heard coming down the corridor, the body would disappear into the basement, and the lecture would continue. When the clanking went away the body was raised and the dissection continued.
Down the years research has been undertaken. I think that we should thank the Almighty for the research that has been done by our scientists and doctors. It has (a) cured diseases, and found diseases to be cured; and (b) contributed greatly to preventive medicine. I support the thinking on research as it has come down through the ages and hope that it will go on in the same way as before.
Secondly, I wish simply to mention those families in which there is a defective gene leading to a handicap. I speak now as a social worker who has had the privilege of being able to counsel, help and make plans for the handicapped children whom those women have borne and look after. The devotion and love given to those handicapped children is amazing. However, I am compelled in honesty to say how often I have wished that they did not have the strain.
Furthermore, some, though not all, of the children one grieved for over the suffering that they had to sustain. Counselling of the parents is done most ably by many of the doctors. However, one has to remember that the help has to go on. Children continue to grow and they must be cared for and
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looked after. In this country sadly there are thousands of children who are brought up in residential care. If that could be prevented in the years to come, surely we should support it.
My other point has to do with the licensing authority. I am rather worried that we do not realise how important that authority will be. First, I suggest that it must be properly resourced by the Government, perhaps directly by the Treasury, and that it should be recognised that it will not be inexpensive or cheap. If we are to have good research and build up a body of knowledge and a philosophy in that area, we must have a licensing authority which has two roles: to license and to build up a body of knowledge philosophically, psychologically and medically. I believe that in that way we shall build, as we have built English law, on precedents.
Research will change the situation. Each year there will be something different. If we are to do our very best for the people of this country and if we are to ensure that a body of knowledge is built up, I suggest that we must have a good licensing authority that is well resourced in both lay and technical people and that it should build up precedents of philosophy, practice and medical knowledge.
10.27 p.m.
Lord Sherfield: My Lords, I must start with an apology. Owing to the demands of a Select Committee I was not able to hear the introductory speech of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. However, I came into the Chamber as soon as possible and I have heard a great proportion of the speeches that have been made.
At this stage of the debate all the points relevant to the Bill in general have surely been made and the arguments for and against the exercise of the option in Clause 11(1)(c) have finally been exhausted. I shall not repeat any of them. In any case, in matters of faith and belief, reasoned argument is often at a discount.
I am glad to find myself in the same position as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, and the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, as a non-scientific Fellow of the Royal Society. Like them, I have paid particular attention to the society's considered views on this subject and I align myself with what my two noble predecessors said in this debate. Incidentally, I have with me the case put out by the Royal Society and I cannot find in it the implication which my noble friend Lord Robertson of Oakridge seems to have read into it.
I rise simply to declare my support for the Bill and in particular for Clause 11(1)(c) which permits the continuation of research under stringent safeguards. My principal reason, given by many noble Lords, is that it is essential to permit research in the interests of the infertile and of those who carry serious genetic diseases. To do so holds out the promise of relief to thousands of childless couples and the begetters of children doomed to die of agonising genetic disorders.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Prior, that this is a moral imperative. A ban would be the contemporary equivalent of burning the books. I add

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two brief comments. Scientists, and those who speak for them, suffer under a disability. They have to eschew dogma and stick to verified facts and probabilities whereas their opponents are seldom restrained by any such inhibition. Moreover, the public understanding of science is very poor in spite of the efforts of many learned societies to improve it. Now the Government too are beginning to tackle the problem through various measures in the education system.
At present in many circles—and I exclude noble Lords in this Chamber—there is a prejudice against, or a suspicion of, the scientist as such. There is a reluctance to take his word for anything. For these reasons I sometimes regret that successive governments have failed to give a really strong lead in these controversial issues. But of course I appreciate the difficulties in political terms.
I conclude by saying that it is my hope that the Bill will succeed with the inclusion of the option permitting continued research under controlled conditions.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down I wonder whether he can clarify what he was saying. He spoke of noble Lords who opposed research in the interests of the infertile and whose attitude to research he equated to burning the books in the old days. Does the noble Lord agree that no noble Lord has spoken today against research to aid the infertile? Some noble Lords, of whom I am one, have spoken against research for any purpose—infertility or any other—which involves the killing of embryos. I am not against any other kind of research.
Lord Sherfield: My Lords, I accept the noble Lord's statement.
Lord Robertson of Oakridge: My Lords, the noble Lord queried my interpretation of the Royal Society fact sheet. I quote from Nature, vol. 342, which refers to another fact-sheet put out by the Royal Society. It states:
"Another is a succinct 'fact-sheet' whose chief influence will be that of an excellent diagram showing the early stages in the development of the human conceptus, but which also significntly lists the benefits of research with human embryos even beyond the 14-day limit specified by Warnock".
The Nature magazine says:
"This journal's opinion is that the 14-day Warnock limit is neither necessary nor wise".
Lord Sherfield: My Lords, I am referring simply to the document put out by the Royal Society which states the case for human embryological research. I believe that that is the definitive document.
10.34 p.m.
Lord Meston: My Lords, five years ago we had our first debate on this topic. We have had three more since then. It is quite clear that there are some who oppose research on the basis of their beliefs and they will never be convinced by the arguments based on the value of research, however great that value is perceived to be. I suggest that those who oppose
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research on the basis of their beliefs do not have a monopoly of respect for human life. It is the rest of us who do not have the advantage of that absolute moral certainty, who have only wanted to emerge from, in my case, a fog of ignorance and to be informed.
At that earlier stage the onus was on the scientist to enable us to evaluate the benefits of research. I believe that the scientists have discharged that onus and that the burden has now shifted to the opponents of research to explain why we should be deprived of the benefits of research and to explain why, now, responsible scientists who wish and are willing to work within the restraints of this legislation should be criminalised. It is not a matter of legalising something which would otherwise be illegal. There are no legal restraints at present. What we are considering, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, said several hours ago, is where we draw the line of the criminal law.
One has only to consider that, had we enacted this Bill in its restricted form some 15 years ago, we would never have had any of the benefits of IVF; and thinking back on the debate we had five years ago, one can only reflect how right the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, was when, from the Front Bench, he resisted the various calls which were then made for a moratorium on research. The position now is that Parliament and the public can be reasssured by the controls which are seen in this Bill.
We can be reassured by reminding ourselves of the creation and of the success of the Voluntary Licensing Authority, or, as it is now, the Interim Licensing Authority, and of the firm guidelines of the professional bodies of which we were told in the 1984 debate. We can be reassured by the fact that, as now, in the future researchers will have to justify their research to the licensing authority and will have to justify the need to use human rather than animal models.
It is with reference to something which the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said earlier this afternoon that I wish to raise one question. To what extent will the Voluntary Licensing Authority form the basis of the Statutory Licensing Authority? He sought to emphasise that the Statutory Licensing Authority will be a more broadly based organisation, but I suggest that to some extent in this respect there is considerable value in continuity.
We can also be reassured by looking at the detail of the licensing provisions, as the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, pointed out. This licensing covers persons, premises and activities. The only question I have in relation to that falls under paragraph 4(2) of Schedule 2, which provides that a licence cannot authorise both treatment and research. assume that does not mean that the one person cannot have two licences.
I support the idea of research because I am convinced of the value of research and also because I am convinced that it is not possible to speak of a collection of cells at 14 days as an unborn child. It is not possible to prove the humanity of that collection of cells. It is a collection which as I understand it is pluripotential. It is without a

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nervous system and without a brain. Indeed, if it has a potential, it is a potential which may never be fulfilled. Without going into the arguments in any further detail—that is, so far as I understand them—I must say, with respect, that it is unfortunate the noble Duke, the Duke of Norfolk, categorised them as ridiculous.
I should also support research because I am not prepared to involve myself in the inconsistencies of opposition to it. These were summarised by the noble Lord, Lord Adrian. I say that because if one votes for the restrictive part of Clause 11 one would be saying that IVF may continue but that the research into the techniques which would allow it to improve may not. In other words, you may not have techniques which would make IVF less wasteful of unimplanted embryos.
One of the choices with which we shall be faced when we are asked to vote is whether unimplanted embryos should perish or be made use of; that is, made of use in a way which I believe is not abuse and which I do not believe involves any suffering. Indeed, the noble Lord the Chief Rabbi touched upon a point in relation to what we mean by research. If it is to be restricted, it may well be that even the observation of an unimplanted embryo through a microscope will amount to research and involve a criminal sanction.
Of course one of the other inconsistencies is that IVF will continue; it will remain expensive and scarce and, indeed, will become more so because the IVF institutions will lose their connection with the state-funded research institutions and in vitro fertilisation will become a service for the better off.
Moreover, as the noble Viscount, Lord Caldecote, said in his most powerful speech, to prevent research into genetic disorders will prevent the reduction of late abortion when handicap is diagnosed. There is the further point that to deprive this country of research will mean that doctors will still feel obliged to use the results of research from abroad. That must surely be an inconsistency in the thinking of those who oppose research in this country.
One final point in this respect which I do not think has really been dealt with is something which was explained to me yesterday to my satisfaction. It concerns the cutting out of what I would call "the safety gap" of embryonic research. This would mean that doctors, having used animal models, will be tempted to try out experimental techniques as part of human clinical treatment. Therefore, patients will be subjected to treatment using techniques which have not been fully tested. That is another inconsistency which I do not find acceptable.
Several noble Lords have anticipated arguments that abortion may be covered and may be curtailed by the Bill. In the event, as the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, observed, no one has, as yet, threatened to table an amendment in this respect during the later stages of the Bill. Nevertheless, it remains a threat and not just in the mind of the noble Lord. I suggest that one needs to think for a moment about the differences between matters for consideration in relation to abortion and those for consideration under the Bill.
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I do not believe that procuring a miscarriage is to be equated with failure to implant an embryo; there are different considerations and different circumstances. Abortion involves consideration of harm to the mother and also wider considerations as to whether, and to what extent, women should be obliged to bear children and to curtail their own freedom. The Bill simply requires a calm consideration of the value of research.
I should like to mention briefly one other point in relation to Clauses 26 and 27 which was raised in the debate by, among others, the noble Lord, Lord Ashbourne, and the noble Lord, the Chief Rabbi. It is a delicate area and may well be a topic more appropriately covered in Committee. I urge your Lordships not to accept the reasoning of the noble Lord, Lord Ashbourne, that it somehow creates fatherless children. I urge your Lordships to look at the arguments which were thrashed out at enormous length in the House when we debated what is now Section 27 of the Family Law Reform Act 1987. Anyone who is thinking of putting down an amendment in Committee should look at what was said at every stage of that Bill, because that is now the basis of our present law.
By Clause 27 of this Bill it is not the intention to create fatherless children. On the contrary, it is the intention to create a statutory father, for want of a better expression. The analogy with adoption can fairly be made. These are people who have made a considered decision to accept the responsibility for, and commitment to, the child who is to be produced.
A related point, where the analogy with adoption must also be considered, is that mentioned by the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, who raised the important issue of the criteria for the selection of people who are to be given the treatment which the Bill provides. It is already, I understand, a serious question that has exercised the minds of those who operate under the present voluntary arrangements. An important matter, especially where IVF resources are scarce, is this. Who should be allowed to undergo treatment, for how long and whether and to what extent the analogy with adoption should be carried through? I know from my practice as a family lawyer the strict requirements of the adoption law, and one wonders whether it is right, and to what extent it is right to carry them into this area of the law.
It is in relation to my experience as a family lawyer that I am concerned about one other aspect of the Bill which has not been touched upon. I am concerned with the way that the Bill deals with the storage and disposal of embryos. It does not seem to me that it does enough to make it clear that the parents of an embryo should forfeit the right to determine what should happen to it if they cease to agree with each other. We must avoid the grotesque problem that has arisen in America of disputes between separated couples as to whether an embryo should be implanted. I speak as a lawyer who earns much of his living through the ability of estranged couples to disagree about almost everything from the matrimonial home to the second-best toast rack.
Schedule 3, paragraph 6(3), is drafted to deal, at least in part, with that problem. It is not a drafting

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which I find easy to understand. I wonder whether the Government might have another look at it.
We have heard a great deal about the slippery slope. I do not subscribe to the view of the slippery slope. Those who believe in it must accept that we are already on the slippery slope, like it or not. The Bill gives us a firm foothold. It gives the public and the scientist the certainty that they want. We must remember that if we had no Bill we would have no limits.
At the end of the day, and I think that is probably an appropriate phrase, I ask your Lordships to adopt the common sense view of the noble Earl, Lord Carnarvon. Those of us who are healthy people, blessed with healthy children, should think long and hard before deciding that others who are less fortunate should be denied the chances which responsible research offers.
10.49 p.m.
Lord Prys-Davies: My Lords, I should make it clear that although I speak from this Bench I do so in a personal capacity. It will be of some comfort to the House to know that I do not propose to detain it for long.
The length of the debate, extending well over seven hours, the number of speakers and the quality of the speeches testify to the importance of this complex Bill which is before the House. Those of us who are lay people have been privileged to listen to speeches by experts in their field. In the course of the debate, many awkward questions have been asked and many remain unanswered with any certainty. They remain unanswered by the very nature of the questions. There are no simple answers, and often what we perceive to be the right answer depends on our individual personal belief and faith.
However, there are some facts which I believe to be helpful and relevant. In my submission, those facts cannot be disregarded. They have been spelt out in letters from the Royal Society, from the MRC, the genetic group, and they are set out in the useful booklet issued last month by the Interim Licensing Authority. For the time being, that is the guardian of the public interest in this field. These documents have been referred to by many people and they are found in page 11 of the booklet. We are reminded there of the losses which will flow in the six main areas if a blanket prohibition is imposed upon embryo research. They have been referred to by so many people in the course of the debate that I need hardly spell them out again at the end of the debate. If I may say so, I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant, in a conspicuously well reasoned speech demonstrated for many of us that these are losses which cannot be brushed aside without showing some indifference to the needs, hopes and fears of many ordinary folk.
Given the very great benefits that will flow from continued but carefully controlled research, on what grounds can one possibly justify the total banning of research? Some will say —indeed, some have said —"Do the research on animals. Do it on a mouse". But those who are qualified to assess and judge that assertion have told the House very clearly
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that while research on a mouse or another animal can be helpful to a point, nevertheless animal embryo is not human embryo. There are major differences that render extrapolation void.
It has also been claimed that research on the pre-embryo or embryo is a licence to kill a human being unless the research is for the benefit of the embryo itself. I can only say with as much sincerity as I command that many of us are not persuaded that human life exists during the first 14 days after fertilisation. We have been told in the course of the debate this afternoon that it is not possible at that stage to say whether an embryo will develop at all, or whether one or more embryos will develop.
I understand that fertility clinics are on the increase in this country, even though the overall success rate in terms of a baby being taken home remains low. I submit that the growth of the fertility clinics over the past decade is evidence of a real need. If infertile couples are prepared to go through with the ordeal of the treatment, as the noble Baroness, Lady Platt, described it, which involves sperm, eggs, tubes, injections, scans and operations, surely they should have the right of access to such facilities, and research should be encouraged to improve the outcome. That point has been powerfully made in the course of the debate by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, my noble friend Lady White, the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, and, very courageously, by my noble friend Lord Carter.
Under the Bill, research will be controlled by a strong statutory licensing authority. That is reassuring. That authority will have teeth. On my count, the Bill contains just over 30 stringent conditions or safeguards which will apply in different circumstances. About 18 of the conditions are underpinned by severe criminal sanctions. Those safeguards, which I welcome, are embedded in the Bill.
I sincerely believe that Parliament should support the research which would be allowed by Clause 11(1). That is the heart of the Bill. But that does not mean that we are satisfied with all the other clauses as they are drawn. The noble Viscount, Lord Caldecote, the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, the noble Baroness, Lady Platt, and others mentioned a number of matters which I am sure we shall need to examine in Committee. We need to be satisfied that no clause is amiss and that no clause is missing.
I for my part require clarification of paragraph 3(4) of Schedule 2, to which the noble Earl, Lord Perth, drew our attention. I am sure that paragraph will be clarified either today or in Committee. Then again there is the code of practice. That is to be found in Clause 24. I have a feeling that a number of noble Lords may want to open up this clause to analysis. We are told that the licensing authority will draft the code and submit it to the Secretary of State for approval. But if the Secretary of State withholds his approval, will he have to give reasons? Again, if the Secretary of State fails to approve the draft, does the code fall? I and many other noble Lords would be grateful for clarification on these matters.

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I wish to touch on another issue which I do not think has surfaced during the course of the debate, unless it did so when I was absent. Worrying references have been made in earlier debates in your Lordships' House to the possibility of inadvertent incest occurring between offspring. The Bill goes some way to allay those fears by making it possible for offspring who have attained the age of 18 to obtain information from the licensing authority. Clause 29 (3)(a) states that the information will be such information,
"As the Authority is required by regulations to give (but no other information)".
I believe it was the noble Lord, Lord Teviot, who said that the identifying information which will be given is unclear at this stage. That matter also concerned the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun. Can the Minister tell the House tonight whether it is intended that an offspring should know who are his biological parents? If it is intended that the donors should lose their anonimity, is there not a risk that that would lead to fewer doners, as suggested in an article published on 2nd December in the BMJ and written by two Cambridge doctors?
My noble friend Lady Nicol and the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, were concerned about the funding of the licensing authority. I note that Clause 15 provides for the payment of licence fees but then goes on to state that in determining the fee the licensing authority:
"may have regard to the costs of performing all its functions".
I believe that to be rather worrying. Can the Minister tell the House what percentage of the licensing authority's expenditure is intended to be raised by licence fees? Moreover, whatever part of the funding is to be raised by licence fees, must that be borne by the couples obtaining treatment and be a further burden to be borne by such couples?
Finally, I wholeheartedly agree with my noble friend Lord Houghton of Sowerby, and with other noble Lords, that it would be an immense disservice to this important Bill to seek to introduce an amendment to deal with the question of abortion. The Interim Licensing Authority and the Royal Society have already spoken clearly against confusing these issues.
I welcome the Bill. The noble Duke, the Duke of Norfolk, argued his case most strongly and with great dignity, as one would expect. However, I sincerely hope that Parliament will allow research on the pre-embryo to continue upon the conditions embedded in the Bill.
11.2 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Baroness Hooper): My Lords, I cannot hope to do justice to the quality, range and depth of knowledge that this debate has evidenced. But I think all noble Lords who have participated for sharing their knowledge, expertise and sincerely-held convictions. It has been a fascinating debate, as my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor predicted.
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Perhaps because of the late hour, the fact that many matters raised will be most suitably discussed in detail during later stages of the Bill, and the fact that the Government are taking a neutral stance on what is probably the most controversial area covered by Clause 11, I hope that I may be forgiven if I do not touch upon every issue that has been raised during the course of the debate.
The Bill covers an area of considerable legal uncertainty and there is no doubt in the mind of the Government that that legal vacuum must be filled. That is why, after much consultation, we brought forward this measure. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, and to other noble Lords, for their approval of the timing and the way in which the Bill was prepared. We intend to continue to listen most carefully to the point made as the Bill proceeds. But noble Lords may be assured that we also intend that it will reach the statute book.
My noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor dealt extensively with the subject of embryo research. It is an extremely controversial issue about which people tend to hold strong personal beliefs, as has been made clear today. I doubt whether it would be possible to find a way of dealing with the topic which would totally satisfy everyone. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, in particular for his acknowledgment of our efforts in that respect.
As my noble and learned friend said, the White Paper published two years ago promised that the matter of research would be decided by a free vote on alternative provisions, one permitting research under strict controls, the other prohibiting it. In the Government's view the approach in Clause 11 is the best way of providing Parliament with that opportunity.
The Bill is drafted in such a way that only an activity specifically mentioned in it can be licensed. Activities not specifically covered will be unlawful. Clause 11(1) gives the human fertilisation and embryology authority the power to licence treatment services, the storage of gametes and embryos and, if Parliament so decides, research projects involving human embryos. Clause 11(2) provides that the authority can only license treatment services and storage. Clause 11(3) makes it clear that only one of those provisions can be in force at any time. We believe that we have been as evenhanded as it is possible to be in dealing with this matter. I believe that our approach will allow the full and free debate which this important topic deserves.
In considering the question of research I should like to draw attention to a point which has been made more than once during the course of this debate. It is that some people would make a distinction between therapeutic research involving an embryo for the purpose of helping that particular embryo and embryo research which is for the so-called greater good of mankind. I believe that even my noble friend the Duke of Norfolk takes that view. Those who feel that there is a difference would generally support the former even though they would wish the latter to be prohibited.

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Another point was raised by the noble Lord the Chief Rabbi, who argued eloquently for prohibiting research except on spare embryos which become available as a result of the in vitro fertilisation technique. It is not our objective to reach a conclusion on this difficult issue tonight. I welcome the different positions that have been taken in this debate. I can assure your Lordhips that the Government will listen carefully to all views expressed on embryo research. It is only after the fullest possible debate that Parliament should take its decision.
I believe that it was the noble Lord, Lord Adrian, who asked whether, if research were to be prohibited under the Bill, treatments developed abroad through research would be permitted in this country. There seems no reason why the authority should not license such treatments if it thought it right to do so.
We have also heard that some people are worried that the Government's proposals for the control of research involving human embryos, if Parliament decides that it is to be permitted, are less stringent than the controls imposed on animal research. It has even been said that we do more for animals than we are proposing for embryos. That is to ignore the fundamental difference between the two methods of control.
The purpose of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 was to prevent live animals from undergoing unnecessary pain and suffering for the purposes of research. The method of control adopted by the Home Office was one built on a long-standing structure of inspection which had been in existence since the 1870s. However, the controls which would be exercised under this Bill are entirely different in character. The embryos in question do not have a nervous system; they cannot therefore suffer pain. The controls in this Bill need to be able to take account of the ethics involved in the very fast-developing field of science and medicine. They surely merit the scrutiny of the experts and the wise lay people who will make up the authority.
I was questioned about Clause 4(1)(c), which permits mixing of gametes of humans with other species. That provision is intended to cover a test such as a hamster test. That test is carried out to investigate the quality of human sperm. If a man's sperm is able to fertilise a hamster egg that may mean that the man is able to father a child in certain circumstances. As a result of the provision in this Bill the authority will be able to control such tests through the licensing procedure. I wish to reaffirm, in particular to the noble Earl, Lord Perth, that the Bill will not permit the creation of hybrids using human eggs or sperm. Any attempt to do so would be a criminal offence under Clause 36, carrying a penalty of a maximum of 10 years' imprisonment. The position on that issue is very clear.
Some noble Lords have suggested that there are alternatives to embryo research and that that has been proved in other countries. I would say to them that no one favours the unnecessary use of embryos for research to gain benefits which could be obtained in other ways. It is my understanding that other forms of research take place in any case. In the event
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that Parliament decides that research should be permitted, the safeguard is that the human fertilisation and embryology authority will want to satisfy itself before it grants a licence that proper consideration has been given to whether the aims of the project could be achieved by other means.
I was asked about the risk of a trade in embryos developing. There are two provisions in the Bill which will prevent such a consequence. The first is that the Bill permits the use of gametes and embryos only with the consent of the donor or donors and only for a purpose specified by them in giving that consent. The other is contained in Clause 13(7), which provides for the authority to have direct control of any payment to donors of gametes. The Government will ensure that a trade in gametes and embryos is not allowed to develop. The noble Lord, Lord Meston, asked whether one person could have one licence for treatment and another for research. The answer is yes, if the authority so decides. However, the Bill states that one cannot have a joint licence for both purposes.
Turning now to the question of the authority, it is important to establish that it is the most suitable vehicle for exercising the controls envisaged. During our consultations before the White Paper was published, three options were considered for the control of infertility treatment, storage and, if Parliament so desired, research. The first was voluntary professional self-regulation, the second direct control by the Secretary of State and the third an independent statutory authority.
Voluntary control received virtually no support. Only 3 per cent. of respondents favoured that approach. Direct control would mean Department of Health approval being sought in each individual case. That method was favoured by 6 per cent. of those who replied, but it would be a cumbersome way of dealing with licence applications and involve Ministers in unduly detailed and bureaucratic control over the treatment of patients, storage and research.
An independent authority had the support of 70 per cent. of respondents and it is the model that the Government chose to adopt. Although it will be an independent body, Ministers will retain important powers. We believe it right that the Secretary of State should decide the size and membership of the authority. He will determine the remit of the authority and will approve and lay before Parliament its code of practice. After all, he is ultimately responsible to Parliament. I can assure noble Lords that my right honourable friend will take all necessary steps to ensure that the authority contains a wide and balanced set of views and expertise which, I have no doubt, will include ethics, and that it is worthy of full public confidence. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Meston, that we appreciate the work done by the voluntary licensing authority and will certainly build on its experience.
My noble friend Lord Caldecote was concerned about an adequate number of qualified inspectors to enforce the law effectively. Paragraph 8 of Schedule 2 enables the authority to employ the people whom it needs so that it can properly fulfil its role. Its

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employees will include inspectors, if that is what the authority decides to call them, who will inspect premises when a licence application has been received or granted and who will have the power to enter and inspect premises. That is set out in Clause 12(b). The power to collect and preserve evidence is governed by Clause 34(1).
The noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, and others asked about funding. A significant proportion of the authority's funding will be met from public funds. However, we do not think it unreasonable for a proportion of its administrative costs to be met by fees from those applying for licences. The levels of those fees have yet to be decided, so I cannot respond to the question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, at this moment. It will also need to be approved by the Secretary of State in consultation with the Treasury and I am sure that any representations on this matter will be carefully considered before any decisions are taken. The principle of fees for licensing is, after all, established practice in other areas; for example, planning applications and licences under the Medicines Act.
A number of your Lordships—perhaps it was most recently my noble friend Lady Platt of Writtle—have asked that the authority's reports should be made on an annual basis. Clause 7, as it stands, provides that after its first report, which would cover its first year of operation, the authority would report thereafter for each two years of operation. We will of course consider carefully the arguments which have been put to us on this point; but we need to balance the need for full public information about the work of the authority with not unduly burdening them with reporting more often than is actually needed to keep the public properly informed.
Earl Jellicoe: My Lords, may I interrupt my noble friend? I have heard what she said on reports. It has seemed to me at least that the annual reports from what was the voluntary licensing authority, and now is the ILA, have been very useful indeed. That authority has worked on a shoestring and I should have thought it would not be beyond the powers of the bigger authority being set up—the statutory one—to be able to report to Parliament, or to the Secretaty of State, once a year.
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, as I have said, we shall consider the very reasonable arguments which have just been made in this respect. This Bill is about providing the framework for treatment to help parents have the children that they so desperately want. In deciding whether the treatment is right in individual cases, the future of any children will need to be considered very carefully indeed. We shall be asking the authority to make sure that it is satisfied that those providing treatment give this aspect proper consideration. So the stability of the home into which a child is to be born will undoubtedly be a consideration.
We have heard much today about the importance of family life. This is the cornerstone of our society on which this Government have striven to build. Whatever views we hold on the issues dealt with in
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the Bill, I am sure that almost everyone of us here this evening will agree that our strength as individuals has much to do with the love and support we received, and continue to receive, from our families, and I should like to assure your Lordships that nothing proposed in this Bill will undermine that.
A number of your Lordships have urged that government should allow children to have access to the identity of their genetic father, and to provide for that person to be named on the child's birth certificate. The Government acknowledge the concern felt by some people about the genetic inaccuracy of the birth certificates of these children. The Registrar General will have access to any information recorded about births following donation, once the human fertilisation and embryology authority is set up. This will mean that they will have access to full genetic information about a child.
In addition, all adults over 18 will have a legal right to find out whether they were born following gamete or embryo donations, and to find out certain non-identifying information about the donor. Anyone under 18 who is planning to marry may also apply to the authority to find out whether their intended spouse is likely to be a blood relation.
We have thought long and hard about whether the identity of the donor should be available to those with an interest and have concluded that at present the anonymity of the donor should be preserved. We acknowledge, however, that the climate of opinion may change, as it did in the case of adoption. We will therefore keep the position under review. But perhaps we should remember in this context that the clinical geneticists tell us that about one on 20 of the population today have a father other than the one named in the birth certificate. To the noble Lord the Chief Rabbi and to my noble friend Lady Elles I would say that the questions of who in law— law—
Lord Teviot: My Lords, I hate to interrupt my noble friend but is not what is on the birth certificate extremely important? It is important to have correct records. What she has said sounds like myth. Perhaps she could repeat what she said about the wrong information on the birth certificate.
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, we are informed that about one in 20 of the population today has a father other than the one named on the birth certificate.
To the noble Lord the Chief Rabbi and to my noble friend Lady Elles I would say that questions as to who in law is to be treated as the child's parent, and whether the child should be able to know who his genetic parent is, are quite separate issues. But the Government will listen to what is said at Committee stage if amendments about these matters are tabled. Although the definition of a mother and father in Clauses 26 and 27 may not be the traditional one, it has the merit of being a clear definition. I am glad that it has been welcomed as such by a number of noble Lords.
My noble friend Lord Teviot and the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, referred to Clause 28(3). That is

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clearly a matter to which we shall return at Committee stage. I confirm that there is no intention to separate property that devolves with a title from the title in England and Wales. With regard to Scotland, it is a matter again to be considered in Committee.
On counselling, the aim of the Bill is to provide a legal framework for certain infertility treatments involving gamete or embryo donation. In that context, no one can doubt the importance of counselling for couples considering treatment, for donors of gametes and embryos, and, not least, as my noble friend Lady Faithfull has said, for children who wish to find out about their genetic parents. The Bill requires that licensed treatment centres will need to make counselling available to childless couples seeking treatment. This is to help them make the best possible informed decision about whether or not to proceed with a particular form of treatment. Long-term counselling is a different matter. It may be necessary in some cases, but that is an issue that goes well beyond the matters with which the Bill deals.
The Government appreciate that it is a new field where relatively little experience exists. The department has had some preliminary discussions with interested organisations. I am pleased to announce that the King's Fund Centre has agreed to set up a small working party of experts to look at this issue of counseling and to make recommendations to health departments on the best way to proceed. I should also point out that, as has been mentioned, MRC has been keeping a register of IVF children for the purposes of follow-up. Certainly counselling has a valuable role to play in infertility services in general, and it is something that we expect the service providers to take very seriously.
Some noble Lords have drawn attention to experience in other countries. I know that the issues with which the Bill deals pose equally difficult and sensitive questions for many other countries. Indeed, in some places, such as the state of Victoria in Australia, and in West Germany, legislation has already been enacted or is under active consideration. I am sure that it is right that the House should be fully informed of what is happening on these matters in other countries. But I am equally certain that it is right that each country should adopt legislation to suit its particular circumstances and conditions.
The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, asked whether I know of any plans on the part of the European Community to develop common policies on the matters with which the Bill deals. A recent study commissioned by the European Commission from the Oxford philosopher Dr. Jonathan Glover about European attitudes to infertility treatment and embryo research which was published earlier this year showed conclusively that there was a wide range of attitudes in the countries of the Community. I think therefore that there is little prospect of a common policy developing. Indeed my noble friend Lady Elles has reminded us that the European Parliament has voted in favour of a ban on such research.
Some of your Lordships have raised questions about procedure and in particular whether the Long
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Title of the Bill will encompass amendments about abortion. I have of course noted the comments made in this respect, in particular those made by the noble Lords, Lord Houghton of Sowerby and Lord Henderson of Brompton. If amendments about abortion are put down, in the last analysis it will be for your Lordships to decide whether it is right to deal with them in the context of the Bill. On abortion issues, governments of both main parties have taken a neutral stance. I see no signs of that changing should our debates cover that difficult and sensitive subject.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness. Would she at least consider with her right honourable friend whether it could possibly be done by an amendment to the Long Title?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, it will always be open to any Member of your Lordships' House to table such an amendment.
At the conclusion of this Second Reading debate there is one general point which I wish to put to the House. There is much controversy about particular provisions in the Bill. But I suggest to your Lordships that the question for tonight is whether it is right that there should be legislation in the field of human embryology and research, and if so whether the Bill introduced by the Government provides the right framework for such legislation.
The Government believe that the new medical and scientific developments in human fertilisation and embryology—those which have already happened and those which will certainly come—need to be brought within a system of legislation. That is why, having set up the committee under the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, we have consulted fully and carefully on how legislation should be drawn up. The fruits of that work are before us in the Bill.
While there is much that is contentious in the Bill—and I can hardly fail to acknowledge that after listening to the extensive debate—I suggest to your Lordships that legislation in this field is needed and that the Bill is the right way to proceed. I believe that the debate today has shown general agreement with that proposition and on that basis I invite the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down, can she offer me any hope that we may discuss the ambiguities about the introduction of contraceptive developments? The noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, did not think that it was very likely and I should like to see the amendments to the Bill produced by the Government.
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, I can give the noble Earl no firm assurance on that point, but I shall certainly draw it to the attention of my right honourable friend and others concerned.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.
House adjourned at twenty-eight minutes past eleven o'clock.

  SCOTTISH COURTS: IDENTIFICATION OF CHILDREN
  SCOTTISH COURTS: IDENTIFICATION OF CHILDREN
  IN VITRO/EMBRYO TRANSPLANTS
  IN VITRO/EMBRYO TRANSPLANTS
  INFERTILITY RESEARCH: COSTS
  INFERTILITY RESEARCH: COSTS
  OPTICIANS: CONDUCT
  OPTICIANS: CONDUCT
  BLOOD PRODUCTS: SCREENING
  BLOOD PRODUCTS: SCREENING
  MR. ROGER COOPER
  MR. ROGER COOPER
  FAMINE RELIEF
  FAMINE RELIEF
  THREE GRACES STATUE
  THREE GRACES STATUE