Sitting of 9 June 1989

Preamble
The House met at half-past Nine o'clock
PRAYERS
[MR. SPEAKER the Chair]
BILL PRESENTED
  ITINERANTS (CONTROL)
  Miss Ann Widdecombe presented a Bill to make stop notices applicable to caravans: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 23 June and to be printed. [Bill 152.]

Drug Abuse
9.34 am
Mr. Chris Butler: I beg to move,
That this House commends the Government for the high priority it gives to the problem of the misuse of drugs; calls for sustained and properly co-ordinated attempts to reduce supplies of such drugs from abroad, for the maintenance of effective deterrents to drug abuse and of effective controls on availability, and for a developing and monitored programme of prevention and education to minimise potential demand; and calls urgent attention to the problem of intravenous drug abuse aggravating the risk that AIDS presents to the population of the United Kingdom.
The founder of the Royal College of Physicians, Thomas Sydenham, said:
"Bless the Lord for giving opium to the human race."
Three hundred years on, a recent opinion poll shows that the British public believe that narcotic drugs are the greatest threat facing the United Kingdom. It is often said that where the United States leads, we follow some years later. The scale of the problem in the United States is truly immense.
There are reckoned to be 38 million illicit drug users in the United States. There are 12 million regular users of cocaine, to the extent that it is now believed that the cocaine market in North America is saturated. Prices are falling there and there is wide availability, despite the fact that 127 tonnes of cocaine were seized by the United States authorities. There are 18 million regular users of marijuana in the United States and 500,000 heroin addicts. This causes immense cost to United States society in terms in crime, policing, the judicial system and medical treatment amounting, it is estimated, to $54 billion a year.
The drug policy review group in this country believes that the equivalent United Kingdom costs annually are £3·8 billion. If we were even to begin to reach United States levels, that figure could easily be doubled. We have not yet begun even to register the costs of crack, which are already inflicting tremendous wounds on United States society, although it has already arrived here, as the recent riots in Wolverhampton showed. The word on the streets in Warrington, my constituency, is that crack is available in the night clubs there, as are many other drugs. Many people travel quite a long way to get their drugs from the Warrington night club scene.
In the first half of the 1980s, new addicts increased at the rate of 25 per cent. a year, so that by 1988 the total number of known addicts was five times that in 1978. In 1986, notifications of new addicts fell, but they rose again in 1988. It is estimated that notification underestimates the total number of addicts by between 5 and 20 times. In 1988, 270 kg of heroin were seized, but it is estimated that only 10 to 15 per cent. of all drugs reaching the population are stopped by such seizures. In 1988, too, 300 kg of cocaine were seized, but the police say that very large quantities of cocaine are reaching our shores.
There were no increases in notifications of cocaine addicts in 1988, but the police and other agencies report widespread availability. That will reflect itself in future notifications of addicts. The police believe that cocaine is the major threat facing this country in the coming years. In some areas, it is already cheaper than heroin.
The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs estimates that there are between 75,000 and 150,000 opiate users in the United Kingdom. There is a similar number —between 75,000 and 150,000—of non-opiate users. That

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excludes cannabis. If we were to take the worst scenario—a total of 300,000 regular uses—that would fill our gaols six times over.
The problem is clearly out of hand. It is true to say that we are now staring down the barrel of the gun. Some people write off the drug problem as the problem of "Sin City"—London—or they write it off merely as a problem that affects a section of our society: hippie dinosaurs, perhaps, or the champagne set, or ethnic minorities. It is true that London accounts for some two thirds of the problem, but it is truly now a national problem. There is hardly a city, town or hamlet that is not affected in some way.
The problem is certainly not confined to one section of the community; it affects all social classes. Drug abuse has exploded, and with it crime, as many must finance their habit by dealing in drugs and prostitution. The contribution that that makes to the crime wave is commonly underestimated: Home Office research in 1983 suggested that in the Wirral 15 per cent. of burglars were notified addicts, and further research in 1985 suggested that about 50 per cent. of all burglars in the area were drug misusers. If that is multiplied to give a nationwide figure, the result is truly staggering. I wonder whether the crime wave of recent years could be correlated with the increase in drug abuse. Dr. Tim Harding of the university of Geneva reckons that between 25 and 30 per cent. of all prisoners have been opiate users.
It seems at times a hopeless battle, and there are those who wish to void the field. Some extreme libertarians believe in decriminalisation, feeling that people should be allowed to go to hell in their own way. That, however, ignores the extreme social cost that would accompany even decriminalisation. Families are certainly affected by addicts who are hooked into their habit.
Highly intelligent and respected drug experts also believe in decriminalisation, feeling that the costs of the present regime are so high that it is the only answer. In their view prohibition has failed, as it was doomed to fail, and indeed has aggravated the problem by opening the doors to gangsterism. They cite Amsterdam as an example of a good liberal approach. In that city, possession of cannabis is no longer an offence: it can be freely bought in cafes with a cannabis leaf in the window.
Decriminalisation is not the answer; Amsterdam is not paradise. In fact, drugs have made it a rather seedy and sleazy city. At best, decriminalisation would lead to greater availability of drugs, and—as the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs has pointed out—increased availability would tend to lead to increased chances for others to be dragged into the habit. At worst decriminalisation would lead to large conglomerates getting in on the scene—as has happened with tobacco and alcohol—and promoting it, subtly and not so subtly. I believe that decriminalisation is a policy of despair.
Mr. Stuart Randall: I have been listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman and I agree that the dangers to which he referred exist. Does he not recognise, however, that in this country only about 10 per cent. of addicts are known by the helping agencies, whereas in Holland the figure is about 75 per cent? Does he not agree that, although decriminalisation has many
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negative aspects, the other side of the coin would be that massive benefit, which would be a major factor is stamping out drug-taking?
Mr. Butler: If the hon. Gentleman will bear with me as I develop my argument, I think that he will see the same way out of the maze as I do.
Until 1960 the policy of controlled availability left us free of the problems faced by the United States. Since the 1920s alcohol and drugs had been strictly prohibited there, and although the prohibition of alcohol collapsed amidst a sea of gangsterism, drug prohibition continues with the result that gangsterism flourishes and 5,000 new heroin users are accumulated every day.
In 1960, the Brain committee said that in the United Kingdom everything was all right—certainly in comparison with the horrors of the position in the United States. The market was effectively undercut by the official supply, and in the 1950s and 1960s, certainly, there were some 500 addicts among a population of about 50 million. The small number of addicts were maintained on unadulterated drugs, and there were few crimes associated with them.
What went wrong? In the early 1960s a large number of north Americans came to this country and exploited some unscrupulous GPs, who prescribed drugs in considerable amounts. Sizeable profits were made by both the doctors and the north Americans engaging in their transatlantic trade. The result was the Dangerous Drugs Act 1967, and the setting up of a number of licensed clinics around the country to replace the GPs. There were too few, however, and it was difficult to recruit psychiatrists prepared to staff the centres and run the risk of encountering the problems of agression associated with drug addicts.
In effect, the clinics retreated from their target market. They became associated with bureaucracy, and with unreasonable attempts to wean addicts off their habit. We had begun to retrace our steps down the American path. The number of addicts rocketed, and in the United Kingdom it was open season for internationally organised crime.
The question I wish to raise, which is connected with the intervention by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West (Mr. Randall) is whether we can now return to the benefits of registration. We have accumulated some 20 years of damage, and we have a vastly greater problem on our hands. I believe that we can return to registration, and that in any event, the pressure of events is taking us there.
Merseyside has a high prevalence of drug abuse: a conservative estimate is that it contains about 15,000 regular heroin users, 40 per cent. of whom inject. A quarter of all 15 to 20-year-olds have tried illicit drugs, and one tenth of them are regular users. Merseyside strikes me as an excellent illustration of how to find the path back to the benefits of registration. Since the mid-1980s it has followed a policy of harm reduction, endorsed by the advisory council. That policy accepts that abstinence is not the only objective of treatment: to concentrate on abstinence is to exclude the large proportion of drug users who are committed to long-term abuse and who will not listen.
If drug abusers will not abstain, the next best step does not involve banishing them to the black market; it involves minimising the consequences to themselves, the community and society. For such a policy to be effective such services need to be accessible, confidential and—that awful term—"user friendly". AIDS prevention must take

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priority over drug prevention: those who will not abstain must be encouraged not to inject. If they refuse to do that, they must be encouraged not to share needles, and if they will not do that, they must be encouraged at least to use clean equipment.
The methods of the Merseyside policy include long-term maintenance on drugs, the provision of syringe exchanges, information about cleaning syringes, and even free supplies of condoms and associated material. It also involves a large team of outreach workers in the homosexual community, working among rent boys and prostitutes. Generally, the policy has begun to reach the addict population which until now has remained largely submerged.
Does the Merseyside policy work? There is evidence that it does. There has been a reduction in local crime around the centres that provide such services, and there is insignificant leakage of drugs from the clinics into the addict population at large. For six months the local police examined all arrested drug addicts and did not find one with clinic drugs to which he was not authorised. The Merseyside policy attracted an unreached population. At least 1,000 people became involved with the Liverpool exchange scheme and only one third of those people had previously been in contact with any drug service.
If drug equipment is not returned there are grave dangers of re-use and unauthorised disposal, but the Merseyside exchange scheme achieves a fair balance of exchange. There has been a general reduction in needle sharing, but I suppose the ultimate criterion is how far the HIV virus has spread in Merseyside. It is remarkable that the figures are extremely low there. In the Merseyside area only 14 drug addicts are HIV positive and they all acquired their infection from outside the area before 1985. Tests on 105 addicts and prostitutes known to have engaged in risky behaviour showed a 0 per cent. rate of HIV infection. There are no known cases of local infection with HIV from drug abuse.
The policy of outreach, maintenance and user friendliness begins to show us how we can return to the path of making registration work again. Under the threat of AIDS that will increasingly be the pattern. AIDS is a bigger threat to individual health and to the health of our society than drug abuse, but drug abuse involving the sharing of needles can spread the virus at a devastating speed. It spreads it first into the drug population at large and secondly into the heterosexual population.
In Thailand where there are very many herion addicts, three years ago HIV infection rates were 0 per cent. among drug addicts. Two years ago the rate was 1 per cent. and last year it was 50 per cent. That demonstrates the truly explosive spread that can result from needle sharing in a herion-taking community. Tourists contemplating going to Thailand for rest and recreation should think again.
In some parts of the United States up to 70 per cent. of addicts are now HIV positive. Fifty-three per cent. of all AIDS deaths in New York are of drug addicts and 50 per cent., that is 100,000 of New York's 200,000 drug abusers, are already HIV positive. The majority will go on to develop the disease and will die shortly afterwards. Nationally in the United States 30 per cent. of all drug users are estimated to be HIV positive. In the United Kingdom the 1986 equivalent figure was 10 per cent., but it will have increased since then. However, in Scotland the figure reaches up to 60 per cent. especially in the Lothian region. That has caused a heterosexual epidemic in
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Scotland to the extent that in the Edinburgh region 1 per cent. of the heterosexual male population between the ages of 15 and 45 are now HIV positive.
What is worse is that many drug addicts turn to prostitution to finance their habit. In April 1988 of 35 women in Glasgow known to be HIV positive 26 were working as prostitutes. That is a violent focus of infection. Last year during the debate on the Criminal Justice Bill I argued that deliberate or knowing infection of another person with AIDS should be made a criminal offence. I believe that more strongly than ever. I realise that there is a problem in proving the case, but at least the law would be there as a deterrent as well as to be used. It is not only intravenous drug users who are at risk of AIDS. In 1987 a study of prostitutionin New York showed seropositivity rates among crack users as great as the rate among heroin users and seropositivity rates among crack users in the Bahamas are similarly high.
Mr. Tony Baldry: All the problems that my hon. Friend describes come together in a horrendous nightmare in the sort of hospital that I saw in Newark, New Jersey. That hospital contained complete wards of babies who were born with AIDS because their mothers were drug addicts who resorted to prostitution to pay for their drug addiction and became AIDS victims. That meant that children born of prostitute mothers were already suffering from AIDS. That is the spectre which awaits this country if we do not tackle the crack problem effectively and now.
Mr. Butler: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for filling out the generally bleak picture that I am painting. Fifty per cent. of all HIV positive mothers can expect to give birth to HIV positive children, and that is sad. In Africa about 50 per cent. of all people infected with HIV are young children.
Mr. Randall: The picture that the hon. Gentleman has just painted is very bleak, but does he not agree that a major problem in this country is getting people to come forward? Misusers do not come forward and until we get to grips with that we will fail to provide the crucial helping services.
Mr. Butler: I thought that to some extent I had dealt with that in terms of the outreach programmes in Merseyside where people do not just wait for addicts to come in but send workers out into the various risk communities to find the addicts and offer them services in a user friendly way. It is not only a matter of a carrot but of a stick and I shall shortly deal with that.
Mr. Randall: I think that the hon. Gentleman will agree that while the Merseyside approach is quite radical, it is not the approach across the country as a whole. The situation is patchy from area to area, and until we spread the notion that people must come forward and provide a safe environment in which people can do that we shall have problems. The prison population is a good example.
Mr. Butler: Once again the hon. Gentleman makes my point for me. I am not defending the Government, because I think that Britain has been going wrong in this field for more than 20 years. In many ways prisons are the key to the spread of HIV infection. Dr. Tim Harding who Js the prison medical officer in Geneva prison and reader in legal medicine in Geneva has carried out a well-conducted study

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of five European gaols. He estimates that one tenth of all prisoners in those gaols carry HIV. He carried out a study in France among 500 consecutive newcomers to Fresnes prison and found a 12·6 per cent. rate of HIV positivity. He says:
"In prisons considerable numbers of intravenous drug addicts, a high proportion of whom are probably AIDS carriers, can be expected to have occasional homosexual contacts … induced homosexual behavour provides a `bridge' between a known high risk group of (intravenous drug abusers) and individuals who may later become a source of infection through heterosexual contacts"
Graham Medley from Imperial college London says that needle-sharing in British prisons produces between 33 and 344 AIDS infections in prison every year. Staff at Risley remand centre tell me of the extreme difficulty that they have in screening visitors and stopping them from bringing in drugs. They also have to engage in the very unpleasant business of cell searches looking for drugs and syringes. Sweden, which is a paragon of human rights, has solved the problem by daily screening of prisoners' urine. Will my hon. Friend the Minister consider such an experiment here? The current methods of control are certainly inadequate. I do not believe that the provision of condoms to prisoners is the answer. They have a high failure rate for such high-risk activities and may cause more damage than they are worth. Information is the only vaccine that we have, and it is especially important to the prison scene. Part of the vital information that is needed by the authorities and prisoners is prisoners' HIV status, by which they can base their behaviour in prison and outside afterwards.
I am talking about regular testing of the prison population. I know that the medical authorities are devising tests using saliva rather than blood, which might make testing easier. Some people would say that testing offends civil rights, but prisoners have already lost most of their civil rights by being in prison, and survival of society must begin to take precedence over individual rights, as it always has in the past when we have faced pandemics of this kind.
The nettle has been grasped elsewhere. Spain screened its prisoners and found an 18·7 per cent. HIV positivity rate. Parts of the Basque country and Catalonia found a 50 to 55 per cent. positivity rate. Bavaria began testing its prison population in 1985. By 1987, it had tested 97·3 per cent. of its prison population voluntarily, and found a 1·48 per cent. positivity rate. Sweden positively encourages testing of new prisoners. Italy positively encouraged testing of new prisoners and found a 16·8 per cent. positivity rate. Testing can be done without a cataclysm for human rights.
I should like my hon. Friend the Minister to say what progress has been made with anonymous testing in prisons, which was promised by the director of the prison medical services in November 1988. The danger is that if we do not grasp the nettle, prisons in the United Kingdom will become a major crossover point to the heterosexual population outside.
Enforcement is the stick that I mentioned to match the carrot. If we are to renew a drive back to making registration work, we shall have to be even tougher on many of the criminals who populate the drug world. We need the stick and the carrot to identify, isolate and control the problem. Merseyside's prescribing and general policy
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is correct, but I am not so happy about its penal policy. Cheshire police are happy with the support that it receives from the courts, but when it engages in joint operations with Merseyside police both forces hope that the trial will be held in Cheshire because they believe that the Merseyside courts will be soft on pushers. A quarter of marijuana users in the Merseyside area are cautioned, whereas in Greater Manchester the rate is only 5 per cent. The possession of class A drugs can result in a seven-year prison sentence and an unlimited fine, but in May 1988 Merseyside police extended the possibility of a caution to those found in possession of heroin. It is no good taking a harsh public stance on drugs if the actuality is soft beneath. It sends out the wrong message to drug addicts and the population at large. It is not right that there should be differing standards of justice throughout the country. There should be uniform severity for pushers and uniform strictness for those who are found in possession and have not acquired drugs in the proper registered manner.
The Drug Trafficking Offences Act 1986 is a most valuable piece of legislation. It has enabled the police to track the devious spread of assets which drug traffickers insert into complex banking systems, but it takes up much police time. The police have managed to confiscate £8 million worth of assets, but that has cost them much money and I wonder whether there is a case for the police being able to reclaim the costs that they incur in confiscation. I am aware of the problem with hypothecation of revenue, but I suggest that there is a precedent because in the past the secret services have often flourished with the aid of confiscated assets that the Treasury has not nosed in on.
Another problem with that otherwise exellent Act is that the prosecution does not follow its spirit sufficiently. Prosecuting authorities demand that the police prove that assets of drug traffickers were acquired illegally. The Act placed a welcome burden on the defendant to prove that he had acquired his assets legally. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will lean on prosecuting authorities to make them observe the spirit of the Act.
The importation and distribution of drugs are not two separate issues. The relationship between the police and Customs is better, but it could be improved. Customs is a national organisation and the police are not, which in joint operations causes logistical difficulties. It is time that we had a national agency similar to the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Drugs Enforcement Agency. I have always been an admirer of Elliot Ness and the "Untouchables". As we already have a national intelligence unit, it is time that we had a national operational unit, pooling the skills of police, Customs and the Home Office's drug branch. Such a group of "Untouchables" would form a national drugs directorate that would co-operate internationally with, perhaps, a European task force that relies on a European intelligence base. There has been much talk recently about integration with Europe. I do not agree with full integration yet, but such integration and co-operation would be sensible and not a symptom of "Bexleyism." International crime must be combated by an international effort.
I applaud the decision that the Government took in October 1983 to restrict parole for drug traffickers sentenced to more than five years' imprisonment because it gives the right message to pushers. Will my hon. Friend the Minister assure me that that restrictive policy will continue? We should not pursue the objective of a lower

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prison population and be lax with dealers in death and misery. Unfortunately, I disagree with my predecessor, Lord Carlisle. His Committee's report states that we should abandon this restrictive policy. The Committee believes that everyone should be entitled to parole after serving half of a four-year sentence or more. Now is not the time to be soft on drug dealers.
Many drug couriers and dealers imprisoned in Britain are foreign. Local review committees are tempted to deport them before they complete their sentence. The motivation is clear—to get rid of the scum and lessen the burden on the British taxpayer. Many couriers are sad cases who have been manipulated by more malign minds, but sympathy is the wrong attitude because they have often been picked to give that kind of aura. A premature return to their countries of origin would give the message that Britain is a soft touch. Certainly, the possible gains to people coming from Third world countries are immense if we do not make them aware of the potential risks.
I am glad that I concur with my predecessor on this point. He said:
"for the professional drug trafficker who has a large nest-egg hidden way in some foreign bank, a free ticket back home will not amount to much of a punishment compared with a few years in prison here."
I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister can ensure that the parole board will treat potential deportees in the same way as it treats other inmates of British gaols.
There is also the international aspect of enforcement. The United Kingdom co-operates in the United Nations commission on narcotic drugs and in the Pompidou group, and in that way there is international co-operation in reducing the availability of drugs. The Overseas Development Administration, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Home Office spend millions of pounds a year on drug projects abroad, including crop eradication and crop substitution. No doubt, other hon. Members will wish to explore those international aspects more.
I am particularly concerned about the Caribbean basin. The Caribbean has become much afflicted with the problem, with money laundering and high increases in domestic addiction occurring. It has become a trafficking centre for north America and the consuming countries of Europe. We have a relationship with the dependent territories and Commonwealth countries there. We have a particular responsibility and influence there, too. We have given some assistance, through launches to the Turks and Caicos islands and the British Virgin Islands, and in 1988 we sponsored a Commonwealth drug law enforcement conference in Barbados, but we could do more. I know from personal experience that one can walk down the streets in the Bahamas and be regularly accosted and offered coke. That is a blot on the Caribbean basin. In some areas there is strong evidence of official complicity in the drug trade, to the extent that it raises questions about the governance of those islands. I know that some of these islands are our friends, but friendship implies frankness, and if they are unable to put their houses in order there may be temptation for some international action to be taken to do it for them.
Drug prevention through the medium of education is important. In America, drug-crazed schoolchildren in sink schools in inner cities often make shootings and rapes on stairwells almost unremarkable. There is a great problem of a drug-ridden, ruthless, amoral, often unparented
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underclass, and it is making the Americans think hard about their social policy. In the United Kingdom, the number of heroin addicts under 21 is rising, but the school population of 6 million is, as yet, almost untainted by narcotics. I hope that cultural pressures and education will keep it that way.
The most important socialising force and force for good in this respect is the family. Families do get it wrong. Prison officers at Risley have told me of parents who bring in drugs for their children on remand. If the family breaks down, we will certainly lose a potential force for much good, because the family is the unit in which children realise that they have responsibilities to people other than themselves. The Conservative party is often said to be the party of the family, but, sadly, since 1979 the illegitimacy rate and the rate of cohabitation without marriage have doubled, which does not say much for the party of the family. Much can be done to reinforce the family as an economic unit and bring home to fathers the responsibilities of parenthood. That should be a major priority for political parties, and I believe that a prize will await those who realise it at the next general election.
Much good work is done in schools by bodies such as TAGADE. The life education centres of the Rev. Ted Noffs offer a promising line of bringing home to children the wonders of the workings of their bodies and giving them a positive feeling of self-respect for their health. The image of sparkling life is presented to them, compared with the automatic turn-off of grisly death and, perhaps, the turn-on of the forbidden. The media often fall into this trap. They often portray drugs as a symptom of the naughtiness of the champagne set, as adventures into the forbidden, or they portray crack as the coming thing for the "in" set. The reality is that drugs are used to bolster the self-esteem of those who take them. They are a grubby, dirty business and are taken by people who are inadequate. Drug taking should be presented as that. The media have a responsibility to evaluate their presentation just as much as the Government do, but I suppose that asking for self-regulation in the media these days is like crying in the wind.
The Government are feeling their way in their anti-drugs propaganda. They spent about £2 million on it last year. In 1987, they engaged in a campaign to persuade misusers not to inject and never to share. The preliminary results of research show that that campaign was ineffective and may even have been counter-productive. We now know that simplistic slogans for mass consumption, such as, "Just say no" or authoritarian approaches to schoolchildren are not the ways to do it. Many preconceived notions about campaigns of such promotions have had to be jettisoned in the light of research. It is vital that, if the Government engage in these promotional campaigns, they do the research to evaluate the effect. There is no point in spending millions of pounds if the result is fruitless or possibly harmful.
Clearly, prevention of drugs is better than cure, especially because a cure of drug addicts is rarely achieved. As with enforcement against crime in general, enforcement in this respect is late in the day. It is far better that children and young people learn from their families, schools and general culture that it is wise never to begin. The challenge is enormous, with some 300,000 regular users of drugs. I hope that we can rise to take the difficult decisions to meet it.
10.17 am
Mr. Tim Rathbone: I am proud to be the first to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South (Mr. Butler) on initiating this debate on what must be one of the most important problems—if not the most important—facing society, not just in this country but in the Western world. It is sad that the peculiarities of parliamentary procedure mean that these debates are likely to take place only on Friday mornings, when many hon. Members have constituency engagements or, at this time of year, compaigning engagements. Those who have gathered here are interested in this subject. I should like to embrace the views of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department who leads the Government in chairing the inter-ministerial group on this subject.
I fear that I must make one political comment—the only one—and note the paucity of the Opposition's attendance. Apart from the necessary Front-Bench spokesman—the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West (Mr. Randall), whom we are glad to see—there are no other members of the Labour party and no members of the Social Democrats, the Social and Liberal Democrats or the Ulster parties. Perhaps most noteworthy of all, there are no hon. Members from Scotland present. Part of the greatest problem we face in this country is, tragically, north of the border.
Mr. Randall: I want to place on record that apart from Front Bench Members, there are only six Conservative Members in the Chamber.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Douglas Hogg): There are no Labour Members present on the Back Benches.
Mr. Rathbone: Statistics can be used to prove anything.
Mr. Hogg: There are seven Back-Bench Conservative Members present.
Mr. Rathbone: I believe that there is a miscount from my Front Bench.
The truth is that drug misuse is the most horrifying problem. I agree with everything that my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South said, with one proviso. He mentioned that AIDS was an even more pressing problem than drug abuse. I have to take the opposite point of view on that. Whatever the horrors of AIDS and whatever the greater likelihood of those who suffer from AIDS dying before their time compared to the likelihood of those who take drugs dying before their time—and statistics are not available to prove the matter one way or another—until we get to grips with the problem of drug misuse, we shall be incapable of getting to grips with at least the behavioural activities that lead to the spread of AIDS. AIDS is both a behavioural and a medical problem. With the marvellous innovative spirit that exists in the human race and the scientific knowledge which is discovered so swiftly nowadays, I hope sincerely that we shall see further developments in the study of AIDS which will lead to treatment for it. It is welcome news, which came out only in the past week, that at last the virus has been traced back to its source and that is, perhaps, the start for finding a treatment for it. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South will take my criticism in good spirit, because it in no way negates the importance of this debate.
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My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South raised two broad aspects of the problem—trafficking and demand reduction. I was privileged to attend a United Nations-sponsored parliamentary meeting in Vienna just two weeks ago. It was sponsored by the United Nations fund for drug abuse control—UNFDAC—and it was attended by representatives from Italy, including those representing the anti-Mafia commission of the Italian Parliament. It was also attended by representatives from the Federal Republic of Germany and by my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster, North (Mr. Wheeler) in his capacity as Chairman of the Select Committee on Home Affairs. I attended in my capacity as chairman of the all-party drug misuse group. The meeting concentrated on the aspect of trafficking. That is, of course, an aspect of drug misuse that falls very much in the international sphere. One of the points made, particularly by the Italian parliamentarians, was the way in which the crime syndicates have assumed such an immensely worrying international dimension because of their ability to penetrate all the most sensitive sectors of the political, economic and social structures of an ever greater number of countries.
That penetration is especially noticeable in south America. However frustrated we may be when looking at the problem from our side of the Atlantic and north of the equator, we should realise how much the problem still exists in the countries of south America. We should commend the immense job the people there do in trying to come to grips with that horrible domestic problem—horrible in every aspect. One cannot look lightly on the problem faced in Colombia, where 18 judges were killed last year, which at one terrorist stroke undercut society's ability to rule itself, and the inclination of judges, who are human beings like ourselves, to implement proper justice in the future. We should seek ways in which we can buoy up their ability to administer justice, as well as their ability to keep law and order.
I want to remind my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department that I was a little depressed on that score. When I questioned our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence about whether he had any plans for a meeting with his Colombian counterpart, he said that he had no plans to do so. That may be as a result of the exigencies of his diary and I hope it is no more than that. However we must not overlook ways in which we can help the enforcement of law and order by giving military advice and assistance, which is what is so often required, as well as political advice and aid in the work of drug misuse officers on the ground.
Mr. Randall: I would be grateful if the hon. Gentleman would give me some clarification. I was interested to hear what he said about buoying up the criminal justice system after the death of the 18 judges. Can he tell the House a little more about how he feels Britain, as an external country, can help to buoy up the criminal justice system in Colombia?
Mr. Rathbone: The hon. Gentleman anticipates what I was about to say. There are three areas in which we could buoy up the criminal justice system in Colombia. One way falls into the ambit of the United Nations. The completion of the United Nations convention on drug misuse and its adoption and ratification can be encouraged by this

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country. It will provide a yardstick or backdrop against which all other international and domestic activities can be measured and encouraged.
The second area is that of military assistance. The illegal growing, distillation and warehousing of those illegal products is carried out deep in the forests of huge countries in that under-populated continent. It is logistically and militarily an enormous effort to track down wrongdoers and to take action against them. What we would consider to be a police or Customs exercise in this country is a military exercise in Colombia. Military communications are important there. The drug barons who are earning, by the lowest estimates, about £50 billion a year from drugs trafficking—more than the gross national product of some south American countries—have the wherewithal to buy the best communications equipment as well as the best armaments. To get hold of the best communications equipment, they go to the best sources. We must match them with the equipment used by the authorities in those countries.
The traffickers have armaments with which to defend themselves, as they put it, or to push their illegal traffic in a terrorist way, as I would describe it. We must ensure that the powers of law and order in those countries have the necessary armaments. It comes down, in the end, to giving those countries sufficient hard currency, through trade, to buy those armaments, or at least to encouraging them to use loans and grants from international and national sources for the recruitment and training of internal forces of law and order.
Thirdly—and this was perhaps what prompted the question of the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West as it is the most difficult aspect—we have a role to play in encouraging, and making it easier for, those countries to pass laws that can be properly applied. They need both adequate internal laws to help them to grapple with the problem and an international framework of laws in which the drug barons can be trapped. The British Government have taken the initiative and have struck bilateral agreements with several countries under which drug trafficking assets can be traced and confiscated and information exchanged. That is a marvellous illustration of the sort of bilateral action that can be taken.
We have enormous experience of constitutional affairs and we could help the countries to draft laws or amend their present laws so that they can be applied more easily. That was one of the matters that arose in our meetings with the German and Italian parliamentarians. The communiqué that all three participating countries agreed said that
"given the increasingly serious problems of a number of countries and the noted inadequacy of national and international measures adopted so far, is was essential to consider as a matter of urgency new initiatives, giving priority to the delicate areas of criminal investigation, the identifying of international drug traffickers and the bringing of such criminals to justice."
I pay tribute to British drug liaison officers. I know from my limited personal experience and from what I have heard that they do a terrific job. I shall not go into great detail: I shall certainly not identify the individual or countries concerned as many of those gentlemen live in fear of their lives. Both those from the police and from Customs and Excise do the most marvellous job, and they have perhaps done more to increase the entrapment of
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drug traffickers and the capture of drugs being trafficked than any other single well-directed activity could have done.
Mr. Randall: I listened carefully to the hon. Gentleman's three points. Does he agree that because the revenues that can accrue from the production of drugs are so massive, there is a great incentive for certain Governments to do no more than pay lip service to their desire to rid their country of drugs? How can one square the wish to participate in efforts to get rid of drugs with the reduction of revenues which, to some of the poorer countries, are massive?
Mr. Rathbone: That is a tricky question, which was alluded to by my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South. My hon. Friend referred to the Caribbean basin, where evidence emerges all too often of direct links—not only national links, for the benefit of the national treasury but personal links for the benefit of personal treasuries—between drug traffickers and those who stand to gain from their activities.
Let me correct an insinuation that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West made. The moneys that the drug barons earn form at most a very small part of the gross national product of the countries concerned It is true that traffickers may live in those countries and use some of the money that they gain, but in the main, the moneys are part of international funds that swill around the world—from one interest-bearing instrument in one country to another interest-bearing instrument in another. Most of the funds are not used in the homeland, as the traffickers do not have to use much of the money—the huge amounts—that they gain to maintain their factories and armies. A stage further down the line, the growing of drugs is of only marginal benefit to the national economy, although, compared with traditional vegetable crops, it can be of immense benefit to individual incomes. It is tragic that it is not the producers but the barons who benefit.
May I ask my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department whether the Government will continue their efforts to devise ways of improving international liaison by drug liaison officers and providing an international base for their work? A British drug liaison officer in a particular country or city should be in a good position to do work for the German or French police as well as the British police. Conversely, a German, Dutch or French drug liaison officer should be able to work for the benefit of the British police.
My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South referred to the international position and to the United Nations. I would also draw attention to the activities in Europe, which are equally important to us and to the other countries of western Europe. It was in that context that two weeks ago the Pompidou group of Ministers met in London under the chairmanship of the Home Secretary and under the wing of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary. The Pompidou group was set up by the Council of Europe, which has taken a considerable interest in the problems of drug misuse through its Legal Committee and through its Social, Health and Family Affairs Committee, of which I am pleased to be a member. It was in the spirit of Council of Europe Assembly recommendation 10.85,

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calling for genuine political co-ordination and action at European level that the Pompidou Ministers were called together two weeks ago.
My hon. Friend made an important reference to the sense of urgency that we must now feel about the danger to Europe from cocaine and, increasingly, from crack. We must not wait for the effects of that new drug to turn up in the health records before planning preventive action. So often it is not until the medical world feeds back reports of a problem to the social or political worlds that action is taken. I plead with my hon. Friend the Minister—most especially wearing his hat as chairman of the interdepartmental Minister's group—to impress on his colleagues that they should not wait for dramatic and horrifying statistics to be fed in from representatives of the Department of Health before taking action.
The problem is put into more dramatic perspective because of the growth of crack. There is nothing peculiar about that derivative of cocaine. It is easy to make, cheap to buy and therefore cheap to sell. It has two quite horrific properties, the first being its immediate and shortlived effect leading to the propensity to buy again being all that much stronger. Because it is cheap to buy, there is a vicious downward spiral.
Mr. Tristan Garel-Jones: Like alcohol.
Mr. Rathbone: It can be like alcohol, as my hon. Friend has suggested from his special knowledge of these matters, but with alcohol one has to consume a considerable amount and get into an alcoholic curve before becoming a truly licensed alcoholic.
The second horrifying property of crack is that, unlike cocaine or herion, which have to be taken for 12 or 18 months before addiction, if crack is taken only three times it is highly liked to lead to complete addiction. Its availability because it is cheap and the characteristic that makes people want ever more of it are enormously worrying aspects. Unless we get it right, another potentially worrying aspect will be the easing of frontier controls in 1992. We must be sure that as we lower the Customs and immigration barriers in Europe—for the very good reason of making Europe a more coherent and cohesive entity—we do not make it easier for drug traffickers to move drugs around the European Community.
As I have already said, the Government have shown great initiative in dealing with the proceeds from crime. They have, first, introduced legislation into this country; secondly, tracked down the sources of illicitly earned funds; thirdly, struck bilateral agreements with other countries; and, fourthly, encouraged multilateral agreements wherever they can be made. As my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South said, huge amounts of money are involved. I plead with my hon. Friend the Minister, as many of us have pleaded with his colleagues, to use the money seized from tracking down drug traffickers for the encouragement and improvement of the forces of law and order in their good work.
The Treasury is opposed to that suggestion because it wants to avoid hypothecation. One argument is that it would be unfair for the police force that happened to be active—or luckily active, as some would say—and had
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struck gold then to be given the benefit of that money. Some might say that it is impossible actually to plan those activities on a basis of occasional bunce funds. Those are not worthwhile arguments. We are not suggesting that such money should be built in as part of the regular budget of police forces or drugs intelligence units. However, where certain actions should be taken—for example, the establishment of better computer intelligence networks and better training—it would be criminal of the Government not to make those criminally gained funds available to aid the fight against the drug criminals.
Mr. Anthony Nelson: I am aware of my hon. Friend's close interest in this matter, and also in the police manning of our county of Sussex. Does he agree that the problem of drug abuse and addiction, while especially evident in Metropolitan areas, also extends very much to the provinces? Is it not the case that in areas such as ours there is little prospect of improved manning on the ground, so that the policeman on the beat can deter trafficking, unless there is additional financial provision? Our pleas year after year for a more adequate police complement have not been met. The Government should carefully consider my hon. Friend's proposal as a possible means of tackling this specialist problem, which is one not just of the cities, but of country areas.
Mr. Rathbone: I am enormously grateful to my hon. Friend and political neighbour for drawing attention to that point and for reminding the House and the Minister of the needs of East and West Sussex. It is regrettable that requests for a greater police complement from the police authority and the chief constable—to whom I pay tribute for his work for the communities in East and West Sussex—have not been met.
I am not actually talking about funds from drug trafficking going into the budget for officers on the beat. That is another pressing question that I look forward to pursuing with my hon. Friend both in the House and elsewhere. My suggestion is that those funds should be used, not just for a police force, but for a national force to help the national effort. They could be a cornerstone for the intriguing idea put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South for a national drugs misuse fighting body. What better way to use those funds than to get such a scheme off the ground?
As I mentioned earlier, there appeared to be an immensely satisfactory outcome from the recent Pompidou group discussions. I commend the Government on their proposal for an international demand reduction conference next year, which will be especially welcome in the specific context of the threat, from cocaine. It is an admirable idea that is being substantiated by the Government's willingness to fund it. In that area, as in many areas of the fight against drugs misuse, the Government are offering support not only in words but in the necessary funding.
That leads me into the second area. I apologise to the House for taking so much time, but I believe that it is an enormously important subject. I hope that I am not repeating what my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South has said, nor, indeed, unwinding any of the wise words that my hon. Friends will be adding later on.
In his summing up, my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South said that we must make more people

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aware of how wise it is never to begin. I believe that, whatever we do towards reducing production—there is much more that we can do—however we can better inhibit and overcome, reduce and, perhaps, in some areas even eliminate trafficking, and whatever we do to improve treatment, we will not get to the crux of the drugs misuse problem until we reduce demand.
It is a problem that is no longer confined to big cities, to a social elite or to any particular sub-section of deprived or well-off people in the developed world. In those countries, where hitherto the major problem of drug misuse has been the problem of containing production, we have seen—as everybody forecasted would be the case—a quite horrible increase in drug misuse.
It is worth mentioning in that context that not only are people in the production countries becoming drug-addicted, but the consumption countries are becoming production-orientated. I believe that it is still right to say that the largest cash crop in the ninth largest economy in the world happens to be marijuana; and the ninth largest economy in the world happens to be the state of California in the United States of America. I cite that as an instance of how we can no longer talk about production and consumption countries we are all in this horribly together.
To come to grips with the problem of demand, it is crucial to build a better understanding of what prompts it. I would ask my hon. Friend the Minister to touch on what the Government are doing within our marvellous National Health Service to encourage medical and genetic research into what may underlie drug misuse.
I know that in the United States there are studies into the genetics of those who have become misusers of alcohol as well as of drugs. There are indications, to put it no higher, that whatever a person's social or family background, the most likely cause underlying a person becoming entrapped into drug or any other misuse is a genetic propensity to such misuse. If that is the case and we are finding a new channel of approach—a genetic approach—to the problem, we should carry out more research in that area in this country, so that we will be better able to come to grips with the problem. However, it is not only medical research that is necessary, but social studies and research into the number of addicts and where they are.
In Brighton we have an extraordinarily well set-up drug unit, which is tinder the wing of the East Sussex county council. That unit draws together social, medical and police services. It has a well-conceived well-planned and well-costed research project, so that it can understand the problem of drug misusers on a numerate basis in Brighton, which has a great problem. I was disappointed, however, to discover that it was impossible for that unit to get funding from the district or regional health authorities and that it had to tap other sources for funds. Thank goodness it has been successful in doing so, because that research will make an enormous contribution to all of the other efforts that it applies so manfully—I suppose that I should say "womanfully"—in the battle against drug misuse in that town. It is only after we have a better understanding of the problem that we can ensure that all our activities impinge properly and most effectively in the fight against drug misuse.
My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South raised queries about the advertising campaigns that have been run so far, and I would add my own question mark to those. We must be certain that in this complex area of
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human behaviour advertising campaigns, first, communicate and have an immediate effect along the lines for which they were designed, and, secondly, that their effect has some form of longevity which makes them worth while. I feel that, while those advertisements are visible and dramatic because of their visibility, the rather longer-term and more mundane methods of health education and drug advice for the medical profession, for parents, for teachers and for high-risk groups are really the way in which to tackle the problem.
In my area—and my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South drew attention to one in Merseyside—we have a first-class drug advice and information service. It is well publicised, it has become very well used and it is a point of reference for those people who are worried about getting tempted into drugs or, having been tempted, are worried about the effect that it is having. Perhaps most importantly, it is a source of information for parents who are concerned that their children may be in the process of being tempted and want to know what they can do to intervene in that process and cut it off.
I commend the Government on their funding for the next three years of drug advisers in schools. They anticipated the motion of my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South, because they have taken on the additional task of advising on AIDS, and I believe that they might also take on the task of advising on alcohol. It is absolutely essential to have within each school a teacher identified as a source of knowledge about addiction of all sorts and who can recognise those addictions in children.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South did, I draw attention to the life education centre programmes, which were started in Australia by the Rev. Tom Noffs, and which have been started to such good effect in parts of this country. It is a sophisticated but simple device for injecting into young people's minds a greater awareness of the value of a healthy lifestyle and a healthy body. It is a simple caravan with a trained teacher inside using displays as extraordinarily dramatic and innovative methods of communication. It visits a school and in two hours can take an entire age group through one of its classes. There are different classes for each age group from five to 15. Therefore, it can cover a normal school in less than a week. The caravans have proved effective in parts of Essex and they are now part of life in the Isle of Man. They have been visited by Ministers from all the Departments within my hon. Friend the Minister's ministerial group. I am pleased that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister participated in one such session in a caravan brought into No. 10 Downing street a few months ago. She was enormously impressed.
Mr. Alan Williams: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I apologise to the hon. Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone) but I shall interrupt his speech for only a moment. We wonder whether there has been a request for a statement to be made this morning. We had expected one on the new and somewhat novel proposal for a carbon tax which emerged yesterday. You will understand, Madam Deputy Speaker, that we want to know the status of that announcement from the Secretary of State for the Environment and the amount of the tax.
I intervene at this point because the announcement seems to be based on a completely new principle that goes way beyond the principle accepted by both sides of the

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House that the polluter pays. It seems to be based on the idea that a tax should deter the use of coal. It is a hidden boost to the preference for nuclear power held by the Secretary of State for the Environment and the Prime Minister. If there has been no request for a statement today—since no Minister is present I assume that that is the case—I should like to take this opportunity, through you, Madam Deputy Speaker, to say that we expect a statement on Monday.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Miss Betty Boothroyd): I can tell the House and the right hon. Gentleman that Mr. Speaker has received no such request this morning.
Mr. Edward Leigh: Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Is it a new point of order?
Mr. Leigh: It is further to the previous point of order.
Madam Deputy Speaker: I will hear it.
Mr. Leigh: This is a major debate on a serious international and national problem. The right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) has brought in his friends from the press to listen to a totally bogus and dubious point of order which has nothing to do with the—
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I have answered the point of order. The hon. Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle (Mr. Leigh) has endorsed my feelings. This is an important debate and we must proceed with it.
Mr. Harry Greenway: Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Madam Deputy Speaker: I doubt whether there can be anything to add to that point of order or to my reply.
Mr. Harry Greenway: I wonder whether it was made clear to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, in the question whether there had been a request for a statement that the Secretary of State had made it clear—
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. There can be no debate on this matter.
Mr. Rathbone: There are various types of misuse and we happen to be debating—
Mr. Butler: In my speech I mentioned the media's responsibility in reporting about drugs. It was fascinating to watch the Press Gallery fill up on that spurious point of order and then to empty as soon as the point of order was finished. Does that not underline my point about the media's responsibility in this matter?
Mr. Rathbone: I endorse my hon. Friend's comments. Giving the gentlemen of the third estate the benefit of the doubt, I hope that they came in to find out how well the debate was going, to hear the points being made and to see the extremely poor turn-out on the Opposition Benches, except during that spurious point of order. Of course, the point of order did not deal with an unimportant subject but it may be straying far from the subject of the motion
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to attempt to include the misuse of the environment in a debate on drug misuse rather than to treat it as a separate subject.
Mr. Randall: The hon. Gentleman has raised yet again the question of attendance. I deplore low attendance. Is the reason why there is such poor attendance on the Conservative Benches the fact that the party is now seven points behind in the poll or is it because Conservative Members are not interested in drugs?
Mr. Rathbone: We do the important subject of drugs no service by trying to inject into the debate the scoring of cheap political points. The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West understands this matter and has expressed concern. It is not in his nature to be prompted into such behaviour by the presence of a Whip on the Opposition Front Bench.
I was describing the operation of the life education centre schemes in this country. That scheme is one, probably the best, of the specific schemes designed to get to the base of the problem of drug misuse by dissuading people from becoming involved in drugs in the first place. If there is a chance that I am right—I believe that I am—the scheme deserves Government support in order to enable it to administer a national expansion of its activities and to help it train teachers as well as to provide the capital cost of equipment so that in the not too distant future we can hope to see such centres operating in every local education authority. Some will require more units than others; that will depend on the size of the education authority. Such schemes should provide for every school in the country an opportunity for the young to participate in the education programme for two hours of each of the 10 formative years of their life. If that is done, in 10 years we will be able to say that my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South, in initiating the debate, turned a corner in coming to grips with the horrible problem of drug misuse, and the House and the nation would be indebted to him for that.
11.7 am
Mr. Charles Irving: I congratulate and thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South (Mr. Butler) for what we must all agree was a compelling and telling speech. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister, who has already done a great deal, will take on board some of the points that he raised.
Awareness is growing rapidly in the community about the horrific dangers of drug misuse. Crack is now easily available on street corners at £5 or £10 a go. It is time we exploded the cornershop cocaine, which is what it is. That cheap and highly addictive cocaine-based drug has brought nightly carnage to the streets of many American states. Profits from the trade in it have drawn youngsters, some scarcely in their teens, into a net of crime, often ending in death, as crazed addicts and dealers settle their grievances with guns.
Crack is smoked, not snorted and goes quickly to the brain. It can be bought for a few pounds and it is cheaper than a gun. It is now starting to show its ugly face in Britain as the drug bosses who set up the deadly trade scent the possibility of big profits. Britain, with a population about a quarter of the size of the United States conveniently concentrated into big cities, has many areas where disaffected and unemployed people become easy

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prey. The Western Daily Press recently produced a compelling article by Simon Pipe with evidence of the drug abuse problems in the Bristol area. That was an humane expose which is well worth reading.
Already, Wolverhampton and the south west have experienced the disorder that crack brings. It is a drug which brings destruction, despair and death to the addicts and those around them. The spread of crack must be stopped before it brings us the hell on earth which it has visited on America.
Crack is one cigarette puff away from the dirty needle syndrome and the AIDS virus which will cost the economy billions of pounds in medical care and loss of earnings in the next 10 years. Drug abuse runs the parallel risk of sending the AIDS epidemic into a freefall. The HIV virus marches on relentlessly with no vaccine in sight to end sufferers' misery. Prisons are a known breeding ground for it and regional secure units are a myth. The next century approaches with the ominous legacy from the 1900s and the fear that drugs and AIDS, especially in prisons, will become hideously out of control.
Crack is terrible. It is deadly and has a street value running into tens of millions of pounds. It is the purest, most lethal form of cocaine and its users become addicted and dependent. Surely it is essential that even greater efforts should be made to harness the skills and the brilliance of health and education officials, both regional and national. They must wake up to the growing threat before it becomes a horrible reality and turns all of us into victims.
The evil purveyors have targeted Britain and the invasion is already here. Parents in virtually every constituency are crying out for help. All we can suggest is working parties and conferences, the involvement of European sources and even the Home Secretary. As far back as 1983, he warned of the tragedies that lay ahead; six years later we have little to show, and working parties are still talking.
It is simply not enough to punish offenders. The probation service, housing associations such as Stonham, of which I have the privilege of being chairman, and NACRO have much to offer in the way of providing a secure haven for addicts and using the techniques available to wean them off drugs. However, when we want to offer the services of these nationally sponsored bodies we are met with a brick wall: there are no resources.
For many potential victims, the threat of greater punishment will only increase the lure and it will certainly increase tension between the police and those involved. The pushers need heavy punishment, and the addicts and their families need the nation's help.
Crack respects no boundaries and no classes. It traps the vulnerable, desolate and hopeless with the chance of a quick, cheap thrill which rapidly becomes a destructive addiction, leaving users physically damaged and mentally dependent. Cardboard box city will not be confined to the Thames but will spread throughout the country bringing the tragedies that we already see in some of our bigger cities. To combat that, a massive programme of education is needed to alert youngsters and parents to the great social and personal dangers of this drug. The police, social services, local authorities and health services must link together to stop this drug plague. There should be no holds barred or money spared in our efforts to relay the message through schools, clubs, television and doctors' surgeries. There is nothing to be said in favour of crack. It has no
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mindbender defenders, as had LSD, and there are no arguments in favour of it such as those put forward by people who want legislaton to liberalise the use of marijuana.
I do not underestimate the difficulties that the Home Office faces in trying to resolve the problem. I do not underestimate the sterling efforts of my hon. Friend the Minister. However, we have a unique opportunity which comes rarely in this House, to urge, plead and beg that something be done quickly.
I have stuck to my usual 10-minute speech, Madam Deputy Speaker.
11.16 am
Mr. Edward Leigh: I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South (Mr. Butler) for giving the House the opportunity to debate what has become a devastating international problem. I hope, like my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Mr. Irving), not to detain the House more than a few minutes. In my few remarks I intend to survey the world situation, which has not so far been done in detail, to consider what the Government are trying to do to meet the problem and, in the last few moments of my speech, to offer a few thoughts of my own.
We have heard much about the problem in the United Kingdom. According to the Home Office statistical bulletin of 11 April 1989:
"The number of new and former drug addicts notified to the Home Office increased by 1,100 between 1987 and 1988, almost reaching the peak number recorded in 1985."
Although there had been an apparent levelling off in heroin addiction, that has now proved not to be the case, and there has been an upturn.
As hon. Members have already made clear this morning, cocaine is a much more worrying problem. In London a kilo of cocaine is worth four to five times the price in Miami. This financial incentive, coupled with the apparent saturation of the American market, makes Europe an attractive proposition. The experience of the Bahamas and the United States is that crack will not become readily available until there is a large stockpile of cocaine. Recent events in Wolverhampton may point to the fact that a stockpile has been built up. I can put it no better than my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, who said in a press release on 18 May:
"Crack is the spectre I see hanging over Europe. Prior to 1985 crack was an almost unheard of term in the United States. It is now a major drug in 49 out of the 50 States."
As my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham made clear in his pertinent remarks, crack is a devastating phenomenon of which this House should be aware, and it is the more worrying in that dependence on it is far more devastating than dependence on heroin. It seems that Latin American groups are setting up distribution chains in Europe. Put at its simplest, cocaine supply is moving from an individual, entrepreneurial business to a multinational one.
It is important that the House should be aware of what is happening overseas. There is a continuing and worrying growth of addiction. It was recently estimated that in Karachi one in nine young men were heroin addicts. Bolivia, with a population of six million, estimates that it has 250,000 addicts. According to the World Health Organisation—a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South—HIV infection among

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heroin injectors in Thailand has risen from 0 per cent. three years ago, to 1 per cent. two years ago, to a staggering 50 per cent. last year.
It is unlikely that there will be any significant reduction of production. The golden triangle is even more lawless, and the golden crescent is unlikely to be contained until the situation in Afghanistan is resolved. There has been some success in dealing with cocaine in Bolivia, but there was an upward trend in Brazil, although cocaine production there is relatively low grade. The United States Drugs Enforcement Agency estimates that there has been a 25 per cent. increase in production in Peru. All this shows the problems that we face.
I am indebted to my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, who recently addressed the parliamentary all-party drug misuse group to which he gave an interesting analysis of what is happening in Peru, which he recently visited. His experiences there make grim reading:
"To get to a first stage laboratory took one hour by helicopter and required the protection of two other, heavily armed helicopters. It took considerable time to find the laboratory, which was under the canopy of the jungle. The site had three to four huts for production, a power house, dormitory and cooking facilities. In the course of that journey, four more factories were spotted, three of which were still in production. In a small area there were estimated to be 100 factories. The scale of production was massive and the whole of the Peruvian army could not seriously impede the scale of cultivation and production. The physical act of manually eradicating the crops was extremely difficult and yet if substitute crops were to be produced, chemical eradication was not possible. Colombia was doing a tremendous job, but the problems were immense. The Head of the Drug Squad had a $2 million price tag on his head. There was considerable corruption. The judiciary was increasingly unlikely to convict for drug offences. Despite these impediments, Colombia was becoming more sophisticated and successful in tracking planes."
It seems from this report that the authorities are only scratching the surface of the problem.
That is the international epidemic that we face and the source of the spectre that my right hon. Friend described as hanging over Europe, and it is why this debate is timely. What are we doing in this country? The new convention against illicit traffic in narcotic drugs and substances which was signed in Vienna in December 1988 provides an international framework for co-operation against trafficking. More training continues to be provided, with the exchange of enforcement officers and an increase in the number of United Kingdom Customs and police officers.
A number of problems remain to be dealt with, not least the under-resourcing of the United Nations drugs bodies. Despite the best efforts of the Government to promote international co-operation, at best we are only holding our own.
Hon. Members have mentioned what the Government are doing domestically in terms of detection and enforcement. In an interesting Adjournment debate on 2 May, my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Home Office said:
"The strength of the police force drug squads in England is more than 40 per cent. greater than it was at the end of 1983" .—[Official Report, 2 May 1989; Vol. 152, c. 156]
It is easy for us armchair analysts to claim that the Government are not doing enough, but that quotation shows that there has been a big increase in police drug squads.
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The interesting Home Office document, "Tackling Drug Misuse: A Summary of the Government's Strategy", makes it clear that the Government take this problem seriously and have increased the penalties. I refer the House to paragraph 5.7. No doubt my hon. Friend the Minister will tell us in detail what the Government have been doing and intend to do.
I end with my personal thoughts on this problem. The Government are doing a great deal, but is it enough? I am reminded of a block of flats. On the ground floor live people who are producing substances with the potential to kill our children. What do we do? First, we politely complain. Secondly, we ask them to set their house in order. Thirdly, we might give them the resources with which to do that. All that is good and it has been happening. Ministers have visited South America and have attempted to increase international co-operation. They have talked of giving more resources. That is all very well, but is it enough?
As I have said, the situation in South America is getting out of control. Can the Western world go on accepting what may be an attack on the very nature of our society? I do not think so. Unless certain countries, such as Bolivia, can get to grips with this problem it may become necessary for the-international community to take action.
Mr. Randall: Such as?
Mr. Leigh: I do not want to speculate at this stage; neither do I want to underestimate the appalling spectre that hangs over us. Those countries do not have the resources to tackle the problem and it may be necessary to adopt other methods.
We have talked about deterrence. The document to which I referred shows that the Government have increased penalties.
Mr. Randall: I should like to press the hon. Gentleman on this. I know that he is sincere about this, as are we all. Earlier, I pressed the hon. Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone) on the same point. The problem is immense. We are talking of independent sovereign countries, and I am at a loss to know exactly what we can do to overcome the massive forces at work in them. An enormous amount of money is being made. What action is the hon. Gentleman specifically recommending?
Mr. Leigh: The hon. Gentleman must draw his own conclusions. I speak as a Back Bencher. Even so, this is a sensitive area and I would prefer to hint rather than to make concrete statements. I drew the analogy with the block of fiats for a good reason, and I stick to it. We ask for the police to be brought in if what is happening on the ground floor endangers our children. These are sensitive matters and our debate may well be heard in other places.
We have spoken of deterrence. The problem is enormous and the potential gains are vast. The international trade is worth £50 billion. Deterrence may not be enough. No hon. Member is asking for the death penalty to be imposed for international drug traffickers or smugglers, but this is not just a moral issue. There have been many debates on the rightness or wrongness of imposing the death penalty. The House has taken a decision. Some hon. Members take the view that to impose the death penalty would always be wrong in any circumstances. Others believe that because most murders are committed within the family, the death penalty should

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not be imposed. What will happen, though, if the international control of drugs breaks down, resulting in a breakdown of law and order on our streets to the extent that has occurred in Washington? I have lived for most of my life in this capital city and have never been afraid to go out at any time of night. I am a big chap, but I would not walk at night on the streets of Philadelphia or New York.
The response of the United States Government to the problem has been grotesquely insufficient. There has been a major breakdown of society in many inner city areas in the United States. The problem is not wholly drug related. Some of it relates to the breakdown of the family unit. Some of it relates to certain welfare concepts, but that is another issue. If, however, there were a breakdown of law and order in inner city areas in this country and the police started to lose control, it would no longer be a moral issue. Society—not individuals—would be under attack. In the past, society has taken the decision that it has the right to defend itself from foreign aggression by the use of force or violence. If society is placed under that kind of pressure, hon. Members might say that we ought to follow the example of other countries and impose the ultimate deterrent to deal with the problem. I know that the problem cannot be solved by deterrence alone and that the Minister will tell us that prevention is very important and that international co-operation is vital.
I have tried to explain the seriousness of the problem. Unless other measures are successful, we may have to consider using more extreme measures. I would not want to use them, but eventually they may prove to be necessary.
11.32 am
Mr. Peter L. Pike: I shall follow the example of the hon. Members for Cheltenham (Mr. Irving) and for Gainsborough and Horncastle (Mr. Leigh) and will make a short contribution to the debate. I welcome the opportunity that the hon. Member for Warrington, South (Mr Butler) has given us to debate this important issue, on which there is a great deal of unanimity on both sides of the House. We all recognise the need to combat the evil of bringing drugs into this country and the consequent evil of pushing drugs, with all its implications. To push drugs is one of the most evil crimes, and we must take the strongest possible action to combat it. The taking of drugs can ultimately lead to death. Drug pushers commit an act that is tantamount to murder by making drugs available to people, some of whom become hooked on them and ultimately die.
The families of those who take drugs are also affected. Drug-taking can destroy family life. A person can become so obsessed with taking drugs that he resorts to crime to get money to pay for them. I have met many constituents who need a great deal of support during extremely difficult periods in their family life. When people get into debt and resort to crime, one often finds that drugs are involved, but that is not so in all cases.
The problem is not confined to big cities or to certain classes of people. It affects small towns throughout the country, including Burnley. There is a tendency to ignore the drugs problem. We shall be unable to tackle it unless we recognise that it is a problem. A press campaign in my constituency is being led by a local reporter, Ian Pilkington, of the Burnley Express and News. The campaign is called "Drug Alert". Every week the Burnley
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Express and News draws attention to the problem and tries to ensure that at local level it is being tackled. A local solicitor, Mr. Dearing, is also trying to make people aware of the fact that there is a drugs problem in Burnley and that it is not confined to Liverpool and Manchester.
We must provide additional resources for hospital units that are trying to get people off drugs. There is a unit in Prestwich that serves a large area, but only a very small number of beds are reserved for drug addicts. Additional facilities are needed in Lancashire and elsewhere in the north-west. The Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale district health authority has authorised an increase in the number of people who are helping drug addicts, but we are only tinkering with the problem. Far more people are needed to tackle it. The National Health Service is under pressure, but provision for dealing with the drugs problem should be treated as a priority. It should not have to compete with other hospital services. If adequate provision is made to tackle the drugs problem, it must not lead to money being taken away from other services. That would be wrong.
Far more must be done to educate young people. Somebody in every school should be responsible for doing that job. Young people should also be educated about the dangers of AIDS. The sharing of needles is one of the major causes of the spread of AIDS. We have underestimated how much money will be needed by the National Health Service, the social services and the education authorities to tackle the AIDS and the drugs problem. The sooner we wake up to that fact, the sooner we shall be able to overcome these issues. The cheapest and most effective way to tackle the drugs and the AIDS problems is to spend money on the education service so that young people are made fully aware of what might happen.
We must make every effort to stop drugs from being brought into the country. Hon. Members on both sides of the House recognise the difficulty of doing that, but we must ensure that the resources are there. Many of the Government's actions over the past few years have received the support of hon. Members—for instance, the confiscation of money made from the sale of drugs. A prison term will not be a sufficient penalty if the offender can later benefit from the profits that he made before his imprisonment.
Resources are needed for education, the Health Service and the social services: full support is needed for the family which might otherwise be destroyed by the drug problem of one of its members. Many such families do not know where to turn.
There is considerable unanimity on this problem We must devote resources to ensuring that it does not increase, in the hope that we may ultimately see a reduction.
11.41 am
Mr. Harry Greenway: I join those who have congratulated my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South (Mr. Butler) on initiating one of the most important debates that I have heard in the House. The drug problem affects the survival of our land and our society, and is a no less important subject for debate than war. This is, indeed, a war of a fundamental nature.
First, let me ask my hon. Friend the Minister to address his mind to the growing number of individuals and small groups now pressing for the legalisation of soft drugs such as marijuana. I should like his assurance that, as long as

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the present Government remain in power, such drugs will not be legalised. Professor Francis Camps, Home Office pathologist for some 20 years and an outstanding man, said that soft drugs always led to hard drugs and hard drugs to death. To legalise marijuana, therefore, is to put people on the road to hard drugs and thence to death. Francis Camps, than whom few people can have had more experience of drugs—he observed their effects when performing autopsies on those who had died of their addiction—observed that the average length of the cycle from the first soft drug to death was seven years, although people often lasted for a shorter time than that.
Mr. Rathbone: I may be anticipating what my hon. Friend is about to say. I hope, however, that he is not implying that the only threat of soft drugs is the fact that they lead to hard drugs. Although some years ago there was a school of thought that held that marijuana, for instance, did not do any great harm, there is now almost incontrovertible evidence that it is physically debilitating for the taker. Soft drugs of themselves are bad for people.
Mr. Greenway: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has made my next point for me. Soft drugs are indeed highly damaging, and can lead to prolonged illness and death. My initial point was merely that if soft drugs lead to hard drugs the progress towards death is accelerated. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will give me the assurance for which I have asked—and also that he will forgive me for leaving the Chamber for some time after my speech to undertake a school engagement.
In his admirable speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South referred to the spread of AIDS through the multiple use of needles by drug addicts and others. We all know of the tragic consequences of that practice, which continues despite the Government's excellent record in making more needles available to those who require them for medical purposes. There is now no need for any needle to be used twice.
A friend of mine, a Church of England clergyman, in addition to his parish work, has dedicated his life to taking into his home AIDS sufferers of all ages, particularly younger people. He told me the other day that there were always about four in his home, and that about two died each year: if I may use a crude term, he has a "throughput". He spoke movingly and disturbingly of a 17-year-old suffering not only from AIDS but from senile dementia induced by his condition. Think of the devastating effect on that young life.
I want to trumpet my friend's achievement. The world needs to know what he is doing, to gain an even greater appreciation of the horrors of AIDS and the suffering of patients and those who care for them. Those who devote their lives to nursing AIDS sufferers are doing a wonderful thing, but what they must watch imposes on them extreme emotional distress.
My hon. Friend did not mention a drug problem of considerable and, I fear, growing proportions: glue-sniffing. It is as much a drug problem as any other, and is increasing particularly in schools, in some of which one in 10 children is said to be sniffing glue. The number of deaths is rising steadily each year, as is the suffering involved,
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despite an Act passed about two years ago under which those selling glue kits to known would-be sniffers can receive severe punishments, including imprisonment.
The problem is most common in deprived areas. It occurs among children of all ages, including tiny tots who find it interesting and fun and who stagger about after sniffing. A few months ago I heard of a teenager who, having sniffed glue, believed himself to have superhuman strength and kicked down a hard wooden fence when wearing pumps, knocking it to the ground and causing great damage. Violence is induced by glue sniffing.
We are not solving the problem, and, although it has not been mentioned much lately, it is still there and growing. While everyone is anxious to see substances that glue sniffers are keen to use removed, it is not always possible to remove such substances, or other things such as boot polish from the shops, glue sniffers like to abuse boot polish. I ask the Minister to step up prevention through education and to combine that with stiffer penalties for pushers of glue kits, wherever they are found. In particular we must concentrate on the education of children and families to prevent glue sniffing.
When it is not curbed, glue sniffing leads to soft and hard drugs and can take away a person's mind. A few weeks ago I heard about a prisoner of 24 whose mind had completely gone as a result of glue sniffing over several years. He was not able to respond even to simple instructions and simply sits and stares into space. His life is effectively ended even though he is only 24. That is not an imported problem because it is within our own society and continues to grow.
Mr. Pike: Glue sniffing can be started when people are very young. Does the hon. Gentleman think that there has been sufficient research about the progress from glue sniffing to soft and hard drugs? Perhaps there should be more research to see how that type of problem emerges.
Mr. Greenway: The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. Much more research into how it starts should be undertaken and we should find out more about how it may be cured. It starts most simply by one child influencing another. As I know from my long experience of teaching, little children get a great kick out of being with older children. If the older children smoke, the younger ones soon want to do the same, even if they are only about the age of three. The same is true of glue sniffing. When older children glamorise it, as they regrettably do, younger children become interested in it, partake of it and become addicted. Much more research would be valuable and is urgently required.
The broad question of drugs coming into Britain was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South and developed by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone) who said that the international trade in drugs is about £50 billion. We need to think again about our Customs procedures. We are now employing fewer Customs officers than ever before in relation to the number of people travelling. Examining the baggage of the millions of people who travel each year is an enormous problem. We now have a system which is common in the European Community and in many parts of the world. The system has been a failure.
When people declare what they have bought, as I did a few months ago, they have to join a queue of 20 or 30 people. The people in that queue will be handled by two or

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three Customs officers, one of whom seems to leave the moment that the queue appears while another goes off for a cup of tea. That leaves one Customs officer to deal with a queue that grows quite quickly. By definition, each person in the queue has much to discuss and almost certainly will have to open bags to show what is in them. That is a lengthy process and people may have to wait for several hours, having gone to the trouble of being honest and declaring what they have bought. They then discover that they are free to go through, as I discovered on the occasion that I mentioned.
Because of that cumbersome system many people go for the "nothing-to-declare" booth even though they have items that should be declared. They do that not because they are dishonest, but for personal convenience and to save time. There is no guantlet to be run in the "nothing-to-declare" section and large numbers of people go through it. Many of them know that they have much to declare and many must have hard and soft drugs because a large quantity of such drugs is still known to be coming into the country. That is serious and unsatisfactory.
I appreciate the worry that the Customs process imposes upon the Home Office, but I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to consider whether the time has come to revert to the former process in which everyone was automatically expected to declare rather than having the choice of opting for the green or red channel. That would lead to a greater chance of people being apprehended, and people who need to be seen could do so through a process that is not as lengthy as the present red channel process.
I commend the Home Office on the policy enacted in legislation of confiscating the profits of those who gain from the sale of drugs. I know that that legislation has been highly effective and is one of the great improvements in the law of the 1980s. As the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike) said, we need more education on the subject in schools. Those who say that there is no drug problem in schools cannot substantiate the assertion. I have shown that glue sniffing is certainly a problem in schools and the same may be true of other drugs. However, the problem is still much smaller than it might be. The system of an efficient education officer per local authority which was initiated by the Government is vital, and will help to keep the problem at bay. I hope that it will eliminate the problem altogether.
11.48 am
Mr. Robert Hayward: I join my hon. Friends in welcoming the opportunity to debate the subject of drugs. I should like to address one specific aspect of drug abuse, and that is the use of drugs in sport. Sportsmen and sportswomen in all sports, especially those who reach high levels, are role models and peer groups who set examples to youngsters. Youngsters feel that if senior sportsmen can take drugs they might as well do the same. I commend sportsmen from around the world, such as Carl Lewis, who have gone out of their way to make it clear that they do not take drugs and to discourage others from doing so.
It is relevant to talk about drug abuse in sport about nine months after the events at the last Olympics, which received enormous worldwide publicity, because it allows us to consider the progress that is—or in some cases, tragically is not—being made. In Reykjavik last week, my hon. Friend the Minister for Sport presented, on behalf of
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European Ministers, a draft anti-doping convention, which is to be commended. Page 5 of the convention mentions the association between general drug abuse in society and drug abuse in sport. It says that the object of the convention is to emphasise
"the dangers to health and the harm to ethical values inherent in doping in sport."
That succinctly shows the influence that sportsmen can have on our values.
Discussion in Reykjavik was useful. Unfortunately, it occurred many months after the events in Seoul, and it may he several months before the convention is ratified by one country. Even countries regarded as being in the lead in tackling drug abuse, such as Norway, Australia and Britain—who we hope will be joined by Canada when the Dublin commission has completed its report—are moving slowly.
I welcome the recommendations of the convention, but, unfortunately, it makes no suggestions about the length of bans for those found to have taken drugs. It makes no recommendations about sponsorship, which one might reasonably have expected. I hope that, the convention having been ratified, anyone who is found guilty of taking any of the major banned drugs—I accept that some drugs are taken in error or in association with medicine—will be banned for at least three years, and possibly four, for a first offence and for life for a second. International sport cannot accept what occurred with Slopaniek and others who, having been banned for two years, were allowed to return to the world athletics championships and Olympics to win a gold medal and set what are classified as world records. It is laughing in the faces of any efforts to ban drugs if such people are allowed to return so soon. We need—and this is suggested in the convention—random and unannounced testing in all sports, with independent collection. Without such policies there will be no major drive against drug abuse in sport.
I am pleased to say that 19 governing bodies of sport in the United Kingdom have either adopted policies that meet the convention's requirements or are in the process of doing so. Beyond the 19 listed, amateur tennis is making substantial efforts to catch up, and I hope that it will be able to join the list soon.
In addition to signing the draft convention, each country should adopt a policy for individual competitions, whereby anyone who is in the list of top 10 competitors according to the previous season's performances is a prime target for random and unannounced testing. I welcome the willingness of the Sports Council and other sports councils in Europe to fund tests, not only in the United Kingdom but other parts of the world, of individuals who are recognised as leading competitors. The Sports Council regularly visits the Canary Islands to test competitors who are training out of season, which is a welcome development.
It is interesting to consider the scale of drug abuse in sport, given that we are talking about role models. Daley Thompson, who should know about world competition, not only because of his phenomenal achievements but because he trains in the Canaries and Los Angeles and therefore mixes with leading world athletes in Europe and the United States, estimated that while
"30 per cent. of Britons had used drugs to improve their performance"

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80 per cent. of American athletes had used drugs to improve their performance. Those are quite staggering statistics.
I said that we are making progress, and last year the Sports Council funded 3,400 tests, of which 14 were found to be positive. The cost of carrying out those tests in the United Kingdom and abroad was £478,000, showing that testing can have an enormous effect for a relatively small outlay. Britain is fortunate in being able to bring pressure on some sports because they receive funds from the Sports Council. If those sports do not adhere to a policy similar to that which the Government are advocating, they will lose their grants.
Major sponsors, as I suggested in relation to the anti-doping convention, should look carefully at the sports that they support. They participate in not only amateur but professional sports. Regrettably, there will be no testing at Henley, Wimbledon or the British Open golf championship this year. While we are making progress, some of which is very slow, some of the major British sporting events, only nine or 10 months after the events in Seoul, do not recognise the importance of dope testing. It costs little to prove to sponsors that sports are clean. if they can show that they are clean, it will give a clear message to our youth.
I referred to the difference that Daley Thompson identified between the number of British atheletes who had used drugs, as he estimated it, and the number of American athletes who had done so, as he estimated it. He is in a good position to know what is going on in sport. I should like to dwell on American sport, because it is generally believed in America that it is making progress in tackling drugs in society and sport. My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle (Mr. Leigh) referred to that belief. Unfortunately, it is not so. I raised the subject with my hon. Friend the Minister for Sport on an Adjournment debate about five and a half years ago. I said that in 1982 there had been no drug tests at 51 major European sporting events or at any of the major sporting events in the United States. What progress has been made? The track athletes club in the United States said that it was willing to accept short notice testing, but it has not done so yet. Weightlifting authorities in the United States announced two years ago that they were prepared to accept testing, but not one test has been carried out in a weightlifting contest in the United States. The United States reached agreement with Russia to have an exchange on testing, but no document has been produced that could be signed, let alone any test being carried out in the United States.
It is a sad comment on American sport that, only this week, the chief medical adviser to the United States Olympic Committee, Dr. Robert Voy, resigned because of the total lack of progress in the United States on dope testing. Yesterday, I took the opportunity to speak to him. I asked him to clarify why he had resigned. He made it clear that one of the prime reasons was the total lack of commitment—to use his phrase, "The USOC has put dope testing on the back burner." There is no evidence that the USOC will act on the report of the Dubin commission. It is clear that Canadian sports of all forms will take urgent, clear and positive action.
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No American sport, with one exception, is willing to take the same steps. The one exception in the United States is cycling which, having been confronted by the embarrassment of having competitors return home from competitions for fear of being dope tested, has decided to throw everything open and is willing to have dope testing in any circumstances. Despite the embarrassment of having had American competitors leave in droves from the Pan-American games a year before the Olympics, not one other American sport has made any progress. In competitions last year in Europe, track athletes from America, including discus throwers and pole vaulters, withdrew because they suddenly discovered that there would be dope testing, carried out with the assiduity pursued in Europe but not in the United States.
It is interesting to note why so many sports in the United States are not willing to take action. Echoing Dr. Robert Voy's words, they are hiding behind the veil of the legal system. Before the last Olympics, the director of sport sciences for the National Collegiate Athletic Association, Mr. Frank Uryasv, said:
"the legal system makes it almost impossible"
to drug test.
It is interesting that cycling in the United States does not face that problem although it has opened up its doors, but other sports are willing to continue along those lines.
Mr. Rathbone: I draw the attention of the House to the extraordinary comparison between those statements and the readiness in the horseracing world to spot-test horses. Is it not peculiar that we can do this for animals but not for human beings?
Mr. Haywood: As my hon. Friend says, there are many anomalies. We are making progress in horse racing, although I admit that it is not a matter about which I know much. There have been disqualifications this season in this country. It is important that all sports adopt policies similar to that outlined in the doping convention.
Mr. Harry Greenway: My hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone) rightly said that there is regular dope testing of all horses at all race meetings. The same is true of all other aspects of equestrian sports. For example, in event riding the horses are severely tested because their performance can be enhanced by drugs. The same is true of greyhound racing in this country.
Mr. Haywood: I thank my hon. Friend for his comment. As my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone) pointed out, not just the human sports need to be tested to ensure that victory is clean and honest.
Five sports in the United States, along with cycling, were willing to open their doors, but they gave up because of the lack of positive action by the USOC. Yesterday, the Sports Council told me that, as far as it was aware, United States professional golf just did not want to know about testing. We are talking not purely about Olympic sports or sports involving humans; a range of professional sports is involved. It cannot be presumed that performance in any sport does not improve with the use of drugs. It should be assumed that every sporting performance improves with the taking of some form of drugs.
I recognise that in the United States sport is in a different form. There is no equivalent to the Sports Council, so one must consider alternative means of making progress. I have referred to golf. More than any other sport, American football and American basketball

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are probably riddled with drug-taking. In 1986 the collegiate football teams had 40 teams Bowl-bound, to use their expression—they were about to play in one college bowl or another—and they announced that there was to be random testing. We are talking about 40 teams and between 2,000 and 2,500 footballers. Random testing was carried out on about 10 per cent., so let us assume that between 200 and 250 people were tested. Despite the fact that the tests were announced in advance and people could take masking agents, there were 21 positive tests. The NCAA announced that, because it had found that only 10 per cent. of all those tested were positive, there was no evidence of drug-taking so it would discontinue such a policy. That is a tragedy and it fills me with disbelief.
Collegiate football argues that it cannot afford testing. I have already said that the total cost for testing in all the sports in Britain that are involved so far was only £487,000. I have suggested that British sports should test individuals who appear in the top 10 rankings of their competitions. In American collegiate football it would be easy to say that the top 10 colleges involved—Notre Dame, the universities of Miami, Florida State, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Michigan, the university of South Carolina and the like—would be the prime targets for random tests. What a message would be sent out to American youth if it were announced that the prime athletic achievers in collegiate football were to be tested.
The criticism of costs beggars belief. Most of those universities that I identified have major medical schools attached to them. They could ask their students, as part of their research, to carry out dope testing of their sportsmen. That would be the best way of making progress in collegiate football and then making progress in professional sport.
I suggest, as I did in relation to European sports, that the major sponsors in American, British, European and worldwide sport give serious consideration to withdrawing sponsorship unless they are certain that the sporting event is clean. I am not suggesting that the sports are not clean. I said that golf in the United States did not want to know. Perhaps drugs are not used, but we do not know because there have not been any tests.
I am not suggesting that any of the sponsors that I have mentioned sponsor drug-ridden events, but they do not know whether they do. They should be able to say, "We know that these events are clean." The major banking institutions, such as Citicorp and Chase Manhattan, companies such as Pepsi-Cola and Coca-Cola, the NBC and ABC, which buy the sporting rights, and Texaco and other big oil companies should ask the sports events that they sponsor, "Can you make a categoric assertion that this event is clean?" Without such a policy on sport, everything that the American Government say that they are attempting to do can be laughed at.
How can William Bennett, the head of the American drug task force, say, "We are taking this issue seriously" when the President of the United States welcomes and congratulates teams that have won major bowls, major sporting events, but which cannot stand up and say that they are clean? It should be an embarrassment not only to Mr. Bennett but to President Bush and other members of the American Administration that the most public aspects of American society are not clean of drugs, and that apparently little effort is made to make them clean. I should like to see in the United States major progress not in words but in action.
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Although I have criticised America for its marked failure to make progress, I hope that, worldwide, we shall not sit back and say that it is only like that in the United States. It is not. We have a long way to go in Britain and in Europe. It was only last year that Birgit Dressel, a German heptathlete, died as a result of drug overdoses in an attempt to lift herself from being between 30th and 40th in the world's heptathletes into the top 10. That is a sad commentary on drug abuse in sport. We must make massive progress in this country because, as I said earlier, only by making progress in sport shall we be able to set an example to the youngsters in society as a whole. By setting that example, we shall have taken one step—and only one step—in making progress towards eradicating the drug problem within society today.
12.20 pm
Mr. Tony Baldry: The whole House owes a debt of gratitude to my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South (Mr. Butler) for having introduced this important debate. It has enabled hon. Members to speak with some insight on a subject that concerns us all. The speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Mr. Hayward) was a classic example of an ideal speech in this House. My hon. Friend has deep knowledge of a particular aspect of this subject. He has carried out research and looked into the matter, and has shared his findings with the rest of the House to the enhanced benefit of us all.
The Guardian on 19 May, in its first editorial, said:
"Drug addiction is already perceived as the single biggest threat facing Britain. A survey of parents published yesterday, puts drug abuse far ahead of all other risks threatening the future of their children: well ahead of Aids, pollution, mugging, drink, tobacco, unhealthy foods and accidents. But serious though the present drug problem has become, an even more serious threat looms on the horizon: crack."
Speaking as the parent of two young children—I know that many other hon. Members are also parents—I suspect that one of the spectres that haunts us all is drugs.
All of us, from time to time, have had a glimpse of hell. For our grandfathers, it was probably the trenches of the first world war and the carnage there. For our fathers, it was the hell of Auschwitz and Belsen and the destruction of that time. By comparison, my glimpses of hell have been less horrific, though none the less frightening. I am thinking of the feeding camps of Ethiopia and the mass starvation there. I also think of a day that will stick in my mind for a long time and to which I alluded earlier. I visited a children's hospital in Newark, New Jersey, which was largely full of young babies who had contracted AIDS in the womb. Their mothers, by and large, were women who had become drug addicts for a variety of reasons. They had taken to a life of prostitution to pay for their drug addiction and a vicious circle of prostitution, drug addiction and prostitution had led them in an ever downward spiral. When they became pregnant, their babies become infected with AIDS.
It is difficult to look at such a large number of children who, through no fault of their own, have been born with the most terrible illness and for whom life will be short and fraught. Fortunately, as yet, there are no hospital wards in this country where one can see similar scenes, but, unless we get to grips with the drug problem in this country, such a spectre awaits us.
Crack is a cocaine-based narcotic and will make the drugs problem worse, as the United States experience

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clearly demonstrates. As the House will probably know, it is produced by cooking cocaine hydrochloride with baking soda and water. When the mixture cools, it crystallises and can be cut into squares, commonly known as rocks. It is consumed by heating the rocks and inhaling the vapour. The rush reaches the brain within seconds and addiction is acquired far more quickly than with other drugs. Worse still, there is no substitute drug which can be offered to addicts in rehabilitation. That has made them more reluctant to seek help than opiate users, such as heroin addicts. I speak as a member of the Bar who, from time to time, has had to defend addicts to heroin and other drugs. Heaven knows, it is hard enough to persuade heroin addicts to seek proper help and support. There are 100,000 heroin addicts in this country.
More alarming still is the increasing level of violence associated with the dealing in and use of crack. Those who smoke it are said to experience a feeling of omnipotence and paranoia which, in the United States, has led to an increasing number of shootings of police officers as well as other crimes of violence.
In the past four years, there has been a six-fold increase in the seizure of cocaine in Europe. In Britain, Customs and Excise seized about 220 kg in the first three months of this year alone, compared with 35 kg in the whole of 1984. It is worth dwelling on those figures. Of course, 35 kg of a drug such as cocaine is, in itself, a pretty substantial problem. My right hon. and hon. Friends at the Home Office by their actions have already acknowledged that the seizures represent only a fraction of the illegal drugs being smuggled into this country.
Three or four years ago, even in the United States, crack would not have been seen as a problem. Yet in three years it has gone from being a minor problem in the United States to one that is reaching epidemic proportion. We, at least, have the advantage of being forewarned. We know the spectre that could face us. Clearly, Europe is increasingly in the sights of the drug barons in south American countries such as Colombia and Bolivia. It seems that production in south America has increased to the point where the north American market is saturated, so the south American traffickers are now targeting the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe as additional outlets. It is horrific to think of drug trafficking as akin to the export trade, but that is certainly how the drug traffickers of south America look at it. One has only to recall the activities of ex-President Noriega of Panama, who made drugs one of that country's major exports to realise the problems that we face in Europe.
Crack is extremely addictive. Smokers seem to become hooked after smoking it as few as three or four times. By contrast, even cocaine can be smoked for 13 to 14 months without addiction. Already, the introduction of crack into this country is having an impact on the behaviour of pushers, who appear to have slashed the price of cocaine so as to widen the market. The street price has fallen from about £100 per gramme 18 months ago to as little as £40 in the east midlands and even £30 in parts of London. It seems almost obscene to allude to drug dealing as akin to business but clearly the drug pushers want to persuade people to switch brands—to go up market and change to crack. The reason is that it doubly benefits the pushers, who boost their income with each gramme of powder that
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is turned into crack and increase their revenue because crack produces such as intense and short-lived high that the user's craving and consumption far outstrips the craving and consumption of the cocaine snorter.
There is a strategy operating in some parts of Britain whereby cannabis is deliberately withheld from the streets and cocaine offered in its place. In some parts in Britain crack is on sale for as little as £20 a hit. That is terrifying because many youngsters can lay their hands on £20 with a bit of petty thieving, whereas in the past drugs such as heroin may have been more expensive.
Mr. Rathbone: My hon. Friend may not be painting a gloomy enough picture. One can get a hit or fix of crack for as little as £2 or £3.
Mr. Baldry: I am sure that my hon. Friend is right. That is even more horrifying because many youngsters can acquire £2 or £3 by way of pocket money these days.
Last September police raided a flat on an estate in south London and discovered large quantities of drugs in a crack factory fortified with steel doors. Armed police had to use oxyacetylene torches and a hydraulic ram to force their way in. That estate, which houses about 3,000 people is, alas, already known by locals as "crack city". Customers come from all over the country to buy crack in the centre of that estate. One local resident said:
"There are times when it's like Waterloo station in the rush hour … Sometimes you can get 15 street dealers outside the pub. We get really big teams, from all over the place. Sometimes a dealer will arrive with four or five blokes minding him."
The police have taken to wearing bullet-proof vests when raiding the estate. That is horrific. We are talking about a housing estate not more than 15 minutes away from the Palace of Westminster, and it is only a matter of months since armed police wearing bullet-proof vests had to raid it. Hon. Members have referred to Elliot Ness and "The Untouchables", but we are already seeing horrific signs of things happening here that hitherto have been associated with the United States.
Mr. Randall: I welcome the hon. Gentleman's vivid description of the possible consequences of the arrival of crack. A number of hon. Members have suggested that we are just about holding our own in the containment of drug misuse, but does the hon. Gentleman not agree that some radical changes in our drugs policy may be needed if we are to contain this new drug which he has described in such strong terms?
Mr. Baldry: Yes, and I have no doubt that my hon. Friend the Minister will outline some of the initiatives that the Government have been taking. All the evidence suggests that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has clearly understood the spectre of crack. After all, it was he who made it clear to the Pompidou group of the Council of Ministers exactly the spectre that Europe faces from the introduction of crack.
Many hon. Members may recall that a few weeks ago there was a debate on the inner cities on an Opposition Supply day. It was, perhaps ominous that on that very night there was a riot in Wolverhampton. It did not involve lager louts. it was not an alcohol-related riot—it was a riot following the discovery of a quantity of crack. The incident began with a drugs raid on a public house suspected of being the focus of drug dealing. It degenerated into a fight between local youths and the

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police officers, who were quickly backed up by properly equipped riot squads. There was looting, vandalism and arson, but it was clear that much of that was inspired by the drug pushers trying to protect their interests.
I have no hesitation in saying that the police, both in Wolverhampton and in south London, were right to go in hard and pursue the matter to the end. It must be fully understood that those who deal in crack will be dealt with heavily. I am sure that the courts will also make that quite clear. It is a telling point that on this very day The Times reports that a young person aged 22 was yesterday remanded in custody charged with possessing crack. It is the first case of its kind in Britain, so it is appropriate that we should have this debate today.
During recent years police throughout Britain have become professional and sophisticated in their war against drugs and they have responded positively to the new threat of crack. Scotland Yard has set up a 17-man intelligence unit to study links between the crack market and certain sections of the population. There is a difficult problem, which the House and the country must face honestly but with a degree of sensitivity. One of the areas where crack appears to have become prevalent most quickly is the inner city, which houses large numbers of black and West Indian youths. A senior police officer is reported as saying that a great deal of the crack trade is imitative of what is happening in certain sections of Washington and new York and that much of it is Jamaican inspired. The incidence of crack among a minority in the Afro-Caribbean community in inner London creates a difficult problem which, although it must be handled positively, must also be handled with sensitivity if it is not to look as though we are somehow asserting that crack is a black problem. Crack poses a problem that affects us all, but it appears to be easier for crack pushers to penetrate the Afro-Caribbean communities rather faster than other communities.
I have no doubt that many black community leaders will be highly apprehensive that if we as a community do not act together, crack here will become a focus in the same way as it has devastated numbers of black communities in American cities. It is a tragic comment that in some precincts in the United States half the young people are crack addicts and there are daily street battles between drug groups.
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has referred to crack as a plague. It is perhaps worth reminding ourselves of the lines written at the time of the black death:
"We see death coming into our midst like black smoke, a plague which cuts off the young and has no mercy".
That is certainly the effect of crack. It is a plague which cuts off the young and has no mercy. The drug has spread like a plague across the United States, especially the poorer inner cities. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary was
right to say:
"If crack ever becomes deeply rooted in Europe the outlook will indeed be bleak. Our job must be to work together urgently to ensure that the United States experience is not repeated here."
As many of my hon. Friends have said today, crack and similar drugs must be tackled on two fronts—supply and demand. I know that Home Office Ministers have been active in both areas, with initiatives such as more money for the United Nations anti-drugs programmes and, beginning next April, programmes to train Customs officers from the producer and transit countries. It is, of course, an international problem. We might be the
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recipient, but drugs go through a number of other countries. It is therefore important to work together. The British Government have given £2 million to help to improve the equipment of the law enforcement agencies in countries along the supply route. I am sure that Ministers will be working towards persuading our partners in the European Community that there should be an effective European convention which makes it possible to confiscate traffickers' profits and to tackle the problem as a community.
There may be limits to the success of controls over supply, because the rewards are so high and the potential loopholes so large. After all, the product is not difficult to transport. I have been involved in cases, as I am sure have other hon. Members who are also members of the Bar, where drugs have simply been sent through the post. Try as it may, the international sorting office of the post office cannot examine every parcel that comes into the United Kingdom. We must, therefore, not only tackle supply, but also seek ways of controlling demand.
In recent years, we have seen that controlling demand can be effective by means of, for example, media campaigns, school education programmes on such things as drug abuse, and an increase in funds for treatment and drug rehabilitation projects. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State, who is to respond to the debate, is chairing a ministerial group on the misuse of drugs. I believe that such groups are beginning to become effective—not only the one dealing with the misuse of drugs but also the one dealing with alcohol abuse, which my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is chairing.
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has already called for initiatives to tackle crack and to step up education programmes to warn young people of the highly addictive effects of the drug and to stress the concern among doctors that, sadly, there is no way to wean addicts off the drug. I hope that at some time it might be possible to send a straightforward leaflet on crack and its dangers to every parent in the country. After all, we are becoming increasingly used to schools sending out information to parents. This is a challenge to every parent and something about which everybody should be concerned.
There are one or two important ramifications of the crack problem which it is important to take on hoard, particularly with the European elections taking place next Thursday. Many of my right hon. and hon. Friends wish to see a Europe sans frontiers. Metaphorically, we all understand what that means—a Europe with no trade barriers. That has been translated into a belief that we should also have a European Community in which there are no frontier posts or border controls. Therefore, if an illegal substance entered the European Community in southern Greece, it could reach northern Scotland without having to pass another border control or frontier check. That would be lunacy because it would be much easier for drug traffickers to move drugs around the Community. I hope that Home Office Ministers will resist attempts to dismantle border controls. Some checks should be retained and there should continue to be increasing co-operation between the police and drug enforcement authorities throughout Europe in exchanging intelligence with Customs officers, police officers, drug officers and others, so that there is a Community effort, in which border controls form a useful part.
In the next few months the fight against crack will be crucial. The actions within the next few months of

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Parliament, my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Home Office and those in the European Community will determine whether we succeed in that fight. From the actions that Home Office Ministers have already taken, there is every indication that they are determined that we should succeed. The rest of us in the House must play our part in awakening public opinion with sense of alarm about what may take place. We must persuade vulnerable communities that crack represents the most serious threat that they face. By the time they find out for themselves, it may be too late.
The House owes a debt of gratitude to my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South for having introduced the debate. This is one of the most horrific threats to face the country for a long time. No words that we can utter in the Chamber are sufficient to stress to every parent and every community leader in the country that crack has to be defeated quickly.
12.48 pm
Mr. Stuart Randall: I congratulate the hon. Member for Warrington, South (Mr. Butler) on his motion. We have had a valuable debate. It has been comprehensive and it is good to see the House united on matters such as this. Apart from a slight flurry on the Conservative Back Benches, no party points have been made today. The House appreciates the seriousness of the problem and the way in which crack, in particular, could affect our society.
I am glad that the hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Baldry) made such an emphatic speech about crack because I was going to take a similar attitude towards it. I raised the matter with the Home Secretary during the last Home Office questions and asked what initiatives the Government would take to combat the threat to our society. Even if the Parliamentary Under-Secretary does not answer any of my questions I hope that he will today take the opportunity to tell us precisely what initiatives the Government plan to take to combat crack.
We have had a constructive debate today and I intend to continue it. Conservative Members have said that we are just about holding our own in the drugs battle and have referred to the activities of yet another working party. That demonstrates that there is concern that the Government's policy is not getting to grips with the problem. Crack threatens our society and our democracy. If we are only holding our own in the battle with other drugs, what on earth can we do to contain this new drug which is so addictive, has spread throughout the United States over a three year period and is now used in massive proportions. A person can be addicted to crack after using it only three times.
I hope that the parliamentary Under-Secretary will say a little more and be a little more constructive than the Home Secretary was during the last Home Office questions when he merely highlighted the problem. The speech of the hon. Member for Banbury was admirably constructive. Experience in the United States has shown many of us that this is a huge problem and we urgently need some solutions from the Government. That will involve a review of resources including money, manpower, technology, and
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medical research. It is not enough merely to have another meeting of the Pompidou group but there must be action to prevent the spread of this horrifying drug.
As the hon. Member for Banbury said, the use of the drug throughout the United States has devastated communities and has resulted in violence which we have also seen in Wolverhampton. The drug has a great effect on those who take it, become high and behave in an extraordinary fashion. As the hon. Gentleman also said, Ministers have been active. They have put forward money to try to solve the problem. It would be unfair to dispute that. But is the policy working? I can put my hand on my heart and say that I am not confident that the Government's existing drugs policy is working. I say that in the most constructive way because the subject is too serious for one to be flippant.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Warrington, South. He made a progressive speech and injected into the debate a number of new ideas which must be given serious consideration when tackling the problem of drugs.
Three tests should be applied when assessing the Government's success in tackling drug abuse. First, how successful has Government policy been in discouraging people from taking drugs? Secondly, how successful have the Government been in discovering the sources of drugs and reducing their supply? That is an international as well as a national problem. Thirdly, how successful are the help and services provided to encourage drug addicts to give up drugs and to stay off them indefinitely?
We have heard in the debate that many factors are involved in assessing the success of Government policy. The third edition of the Home Office document entitled "Tackling Drug Misuse"—I compliment the Minister on the quality of the document: it is very readable—shows in figure 1 that, after a period of relative stability in the 1970s, the misuse of drugs greatly increased in the first half of the 1980s. The number of drug addicts notified to the Home Office increased in that time from about 2,500 to about 9,000. However, addicts notified to the Home Office constitute only a small proportion of the total number of chronic misusers of drugs.
The upshot is that since 1980 we have experienced a worrying increase in the numbers of chronic misusers. The Government will argue that what has happened here is but part of an international phenomenon which has affected many western countries. There may well be an element of truth in that. Nevertheless, the Government are responsible for limiting the demand for drugs and restricting their supply to this country, and Government policy is at least partly responsible for the alarming increase in drug misuse.
It is clear from today's debate that the House shares my reservations about Government policy and believes that we are only just holding our own. We are creating too many committees, as hon. Members have pointed out in their constructive speeches.
I do not believe that the Government have done all that they could to reduce the supply of drugs to the United Kingdom. There is a vast number of different ways in which drugs can be brought into this country, and it is clear that it is impossible to prevent all drugs from entering. However, if we are really determined to restrict the supply, more manpower, money and technology are needed. Is the Minister satisfied that enough staff have been employed to reduce the supply of drugs to the United

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Kingdom? Do we still have enough Customs and Excise officers to tackle this massive job? In the end, it comes down to Government priorities.
In an intervention during the speech of the hon. Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone), the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Nelson) said that in his county the resources that have been made available for drugs research are limited and that it was sad that requests are not being met for additional police officers to carry out drugs-related work.
The third test of Government policy is how successful they are in encouraging drug addicts to give up using drugs and stay off them. The Hull and East Yorkshire council for drug problems, which has a very successful track record, believes that the Government's attitude, and that of the medical profession, has had a deleterious effect on the treatment of chronic drug misusers. The Government's Advisory Council on Misuse of Drugs recommended in its two-part report on AIDS and drugs misuse that specific action should he taken to stop the spread of the HIV virus in prisons through the use of condoms. That recommendation was rejected by the Government. The matter was raised by the hon. Member for Warrington, South. I hope that the Minister will explain why the Government decided not to accept that recommendation.
The report also proposed that there should be comfortable withdrawal from drugs for prisoners. It would involve the use of methadone as an alternative drug. The Hull and East Yorkshire council for drug problems has advised me that the Government have rejected that approach. Their general view is that prisoners should not be provided with the alternative approach to drug withdrawal that was recommended by the Advisory Council on Misuse of Drugs. In other words, prisoners should experience cold turkey. The Hull and East Yorkshire council for drug problems believes that a safe environment is needed so that prisoners with a drugs problem feel confident enough to go to the prison authorities and admit it. Then they could be properly treated.
It is estimated that the helping agencies in the United Kingdom know about 10 per cent. of the drug users in their communities. That has to be contrasted with about 75 per cent. in Holland. I have already raised the matter with the hon. Member for Warrington, South. It demonstrates the different approach and attitude to drugs between the two countries. I should be grateful if the Minister would comment on that.
I have been advised that drug addicts in the United Kingdom come forward only when they have no money and cannot therefore buy drugs. We must encourage more people who use drugs to make themselves known to the helping agencies so that help can be given to them.
The helping agencies have also advised me that the attitude of the medical profession does not always help drug addicts. The general feeling is that people should stop using drugs. In practice, doctors prescribe methadone only if they believe that people will come off drugs quickly. The Hull and East Yorkshire council for drug problems also believes that regimes are usually set up for doctors rather than for drug users. Consequently, most drug users start to take drugs again. The helping agencies believe that the medical profession needs to listen more than it does to what drug users say so that they can be helped to reduce their dependency on drugs. At the moment, almost all drug addicts fail to do so.
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The inconsistency of the medical profession seems to be a matter of concern to the helping agencies. Some parts of the country have a good range of services designed to help addicts—the hon. Member for Warrington, South described the services in Merseyside—but in other parts such services can be described only as poor or non-existent. 1 should welcome the Minister's comments on that fourth point.
In Holland "methadone buses" are used to encourage drug addicts to break the habit, and I understand that such services also exist in Merseyside. Those at the grass roots in the helping agencies believe that they should be more comprehensively available. Needle exchanges, which are vital to a reduction in the transmission of HIV through the use of dirty and shared needles, are only now being organised in some cities.
The helping agencies have also expressed concern about the Government's attitude to women drug users. I am told that few rehabilitation units take in children along with their mothers. As a result fewer women come forward, fearing that their children may be taken away if they admit to their drug problem. This is my fifth point: it is important to recognise that women addicts can care just as much for their children as those with no addictions.
The helping agencies feel that the Government are concentrating too much on the injection of heroin and other opiates: clearly the risk of contracting AIDS arises from infected needles irrespective of the drugs that are used. They believe that the Government should also emphasise that users of amphetamines—including "recreational" users who may inject themselves on Saturday evenings—are just as vulnerable to AIDS, if they are using contaminated needles. I should like the Minister to comment on that as well.
The hon. Member for Warrington, South began his excellent speech by talking about the lack of a registration scheme for crack. I agree that such a scheme is needed, especially as the availability of crack seems far greater than I had thought. Press statistics suggest that it is not widely available, but hon. Members on both sides of the House have said today that it can be obtained for as little as £2 —or, according to one hon. Member, for between £5 and £10.
The hon. Member for Warrington, South said that the probable number of addicts in this country is between five and 20 times the number of registered addicts. Home Office statistics in the report to which I referred earlier show that drug seizures have generally increased, with a slight turndown in recent years. However, the amount of drugs seized is a small proportion of the total amount brought into the country. That is worrying and if the same thing applies to crack we are in danger. Crack is a manufactured drug and I understand that it is made from cocaine. Movements of such drugs will take place throughout the European continent from various parts of the world.
The statistics produced by the Home Office suggest that our fears about the extension of the use of crack are well-founded. If one assumes that the amount of crack that will not be seized is in the same proportion as the amount of other drugs that are not seized one realises that we have a big problem. We have a drugs crisis on the horizon—I hope that I am not overstating the case—that will affect many parts of the country, especially the inner cities, the

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areas of deprivation and the ethnic communities. I cannot stress enough that we are on the verge of a serious problem.
The police think that cocaine will pose a major problem in future and, as we know, crack is a derivative. In some parts of the country there is an extraordinary correlation between drug taking and crime. Not unreasonably we can expect far more crime if the use of crack increases. The Government parade statistics, as one would expect them to do, that crime is decreasing. However, violent crime is increasing at an alarming rate. The Government's policies could lead to a greater circulation of crack and that could lead to an increase in violent crime. I do not say that in a negative way but simply because I am extremely worried.
The hon. Member for Warrington, South spoke about Amsterdam and the Dutch situation. He did not fully develop that argument nor shall I because I do not know all the details. One of the arguments—which I do not advocate—for legalising drugs is that one can prevent or to some extent control, overdosing. Overdosing usually occurs when somebody who is taking an impure drug comes across a pure drug and does not know the difference and overdoses himself. There are many threats to the argument about legalising drugs but my intuitive reaction is to say, "No way." However, we must take into account the failure of our policy on primary care.
Mr. Butler: I think that the terms that we use in the debate must be more precise. Is there a difference between decriminalisation, which makes it totally legal for anybody to possess drugs in any circumstances, and a system of registration? One needs to distinguish between decriminalisation and the legal availability of drugs within a registered framework surrounded by a tight criminal framework of the type that I developed in my speech.
Mr. Randall: The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. We must have a registration scheme to ensure that we know who is who, which is important in the fight against drugs. We must ensure that the problem of over dosing is controlled as much as possible. Britain's helping agencies are aware of only 10 per cent. of addicts whereas in Holland the figure is 75 per cent.
The hon. Member for Warrington, South described the Merseyside case in some detail. It is important that the argument, which has been described by some people as, "just say no", is considered. It is a specialised subject, but I fear that, as politicians, our first reaction is to say no to any form of drug taking. As policy on primary prevention so far has been fairly ineffectual, alternatives must be considered.
I am glad to hear that the Merseyside policy is working and reaching the addict population. I am especially glad —I cannot emphasise this enough—that the AIDS virus seems to be under some sort of control. We must consider the Merseyside experience carefully and gain knowledge from it. The threat of AIDS is greater among drug users. The sharing of needles can spread the HIV virus, with staggering results. The use of heroin has had a massive effect.
The hon. Member for Warrington, South referred to prostitutes. I share his view that it verges on evil for a
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prostitute who is HIV positive to carry out her trade, thereby placing anyone who goes with her at risk of catching the virus.
I am worried that within the closed community of prisons—Hull prison is experiencing the problem—needle sharing is occurring, resulting in many reported infections. I was interested by the comments of the hon. Member for Warrington, South about prisons in Sweden, where prisoners are screened daily so that the authorities know who is vulnerable. I think that lessons could be learned from that experience.
Mr. Douglas Hogg: The hon. Gentleman referred to increasing evidence of infections within the prison system. There is no evidence of a person becoming HIV positive as a result of any act in a prison.
Mr. Randall: Did the Minister say "as a result of any action in a prison?"
Mr. Douglas Hogg: There is no evidence that anyone has become HIV positive as a result of any action in a prison by way of homosexual activity or drug taking.
Mr. Randall: I am grateful to the Minister for correcting me on that.
Mr. Butler: The reason why evidence is not available is that it has not been looked for.
Mr. Randall: The hon. Gentleman believes that there is a problem, but I accept what the Minister says. Even if no one in prison has contracted the AIDS virus, we should consider carrying out the kind of tests that are undertaken elsewhere. To tackle the AIDS problem, we must be persistent in ensuring that tests are carried out. It is interesting that the Swedish authorities feel that it is necessary to have these tests in prisons. It is interesting also that we feel that there is no need for such tests because we believe that no one has picked up AIDS in our prisons. I accept what the Minister says—he is responsible for prisons.
It is crucial that we do all that we can to prevent pushers from earning profits from drugs. We must persist with the confiscation of assets. I hope that, through the European ministerial groups and working parties, we will pursue this matter as strongly as possible. The Pompidou group of the Council of Europe and the Government have spent money in certain countries where it has been deemed desirable to grow alternative crops to drug-based crops. We seem to be making little headway in the Caribbean islands. I do not know whether other hon. Members share my view, but I cannot grasp whether we are winning, losing or standing still. Perhaps it is an impossible question to answer. I feel from reading reports on what is happening in the Caribbean that there are immense problems.
I hope that the Minister will let us know the Government's policy on harm reduction and primary prevention. I shall quote an article in the May/June edition of Drug link which impinges directly on the Government's policy. Under the heading "Beyond 'Just Say No." it contends:
"drug education should go beyond primary prevention".
The article refers to the attempt to stop people taking drugs and says:
"Most of the kinds who don't use drugs are not influenced by drugs education. It has, at best, a neutral effect. Drug education should encompass the best aspects of primary prevention programmes. It should give information, it should

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get kids to examine their attitudes, to examine social, legal, political, historical, cultural and health issues. Most importantly, it should look at secondary prevention strategies, ie how to prevent kids harming themselves from drug use."
To paraphrase, the article also says that, in general, primary prevention of whatever kind, seems to be ineffective. It seems to lack a social, cultural and political dimension and to focus instead on the individuals, adopting a victim-blaming approach. It deals with stereotypes and isolates and castigates drug users as deviants. It is negative and does not address the problems of young people who reject the message. Any outcome other than not taking drugs must be seen as a failure. Primary prevention is based on flawed assumptions about behaviour change. It focuses on the expertise of the educator, as opposed to the young people's experience and it does not take into account a period in everyone's life called adolescence, during which people like to take risks. That is strong criticism. The article suggests that primary prevention, which is at the core of the Government's policy, does not work. The people who wrote that article are at the grass roots, dealing with the helping services for drug addicts.
Mr. Rathbone: The hon. Gentleman has not identified the author of that article and my memory does not serve me well enough to identify him. I believe that the article is referring to propaganda and advertising, but not to the activities of teachers responsible for drugs problems in schools. Whatever the article is referring to, the problems could be overcome at a stroke if the Government gave support to the life education centres to which I referred in my own speech.
Mr. Randall: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The authors of the article are Ian Clements, Julian Cohen and Pat O'Hare. The article begins by saying:
"Drug education in schools seems to be up a blind alley —approaches aimed at preventing drug use are ineffective and those aimed at reducing harm are unacceptable."
The article reflects an alternative approach to the issue and goes on to say:
"Our underlying assumptions are that drug use is part of normal behaviour and will take place. The moral high ground has in the past been claimed by the 'just say no' lobby who, while accepting that some young people will ignore their advice, see these as inevitable casualties in their attemps to prevent drug use to the exclusion of other aims. Our view is that the moral high ground lies with developing strategies aimed at minimising harm to individuals and communities."
I felt that it was worth putting that alternative on the record, so we can consider it later on.
The hon. Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone) made an interesting speech. I know that he has been active in the all-party drug misuse group, together with my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith).
Mr. Rathbone: And my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South (Mr. Butler).
Mr. Randall: Yes, the hon. Member for Warrington, South is also a member of that group. I welcomed what the hon. Member for Lewes said. However, the way in which he referred to his three measures for restoring some sort of criminal justice system in Colombia made me slightly bemused, although I acknowledge the hon. Gentleman's expert knowledge on these matters. Indeed, I tackled him on those measures in one of my interventions. I am not
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sure that Governments can he bought off. The hon. Gentleman suggested that there should be help in buying communications equipment and in providing intelligence information and, possibly, weapons. I believe that although the exchequers of those countries may not, on paper, be receiving anything from the drugs crops, the opportunities for them to be bought off with very large sums of money must make it possible that they are benefiting from the drugs. The hon. Gentleman advances a high risk strategy, which raises doubts and questions in my mind, although I am not sure that I have an alternative.
The hon. Member for Lewes also talked about drug liaison officers. I agree that drug liaison officers in different countries should co-operate and use common information systems—especially in the EEC countries because of the special relationship that we share.
The hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Nelson) referred to the provision of police for drugs work in rural areas. He was absolutely right that our rural areas encounter problems; it is not just London or the inner cities. The hon. Gentleman said that it was sad that requests to the Government for additional police officers for drugs work had not been met. I cannot understand why the Government are not making resources available.
The hon. Member for Lewes said that California was the ninth largest economy in the world and that the largest part of its economy derived from drugs.
Mr. Rathbone: The largest cash crop.
Mr. Randall: Yes, the largest cash crop. The matter arose in the American presidential elections and President Bush made great play of it. I hope that the American Government will take a much tougher line than they have taken in the past. The problem lies not only outside but within the boundaries of the United States. The Americans say that they are going to tackle the problem in Colombia or in other south American countries yet at the same time drugs are a massive cash crop in their own country.
Medical research in also important, in addition to social research, and we must spend more on it. Hon. Members have referred to advertising campaigns. The people to whom I have spoken at grass roots level—in the helping agencies—believe that a number of campaigns, including those encouraging the use of clean needles and discouraging the sharing of needles, have been ineffective. Our schools display an element of rigidity on the question of drugs. Especially now that crack is firmly on the scene, we need to review our methods of promulgating our message about drugs. If we are not succeeding, the money is not being well spent and the Government should reconsider. Perhaps the Minister will tell us whether the money that is being spent is being spent effectively and whether he feels that the reports that I have received are not as accurate as I have been led to believe.
The hon. Member for Cheltenham (Mr. Irving) made an excellent point about crack. he said that one could buy it for £5 to £10 a go. He told us of parents crying out for help, while we hold conferences on European co-operation. That as a telling point. The working parties are still talking three years later, but the parents still have problems.
Today's debate has been excellent and has shown the great concern of hon. Members on both sides of the House. We have widely discussed the problem of crack and the crisis that we now face. We know that that and other

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drugs debilitate our society. I hope that the Minister will answer the very many questions that have been raised today.
1.35 am
Mr. Hugo Summerson: Drug use and abuse has a long history. It goes back hundreds of years, to the time of the Crusades, when the Assassins of Palestine were one of the great powers in that area. They were all doped up to the eyeballs by the Old Man of the Mountains and they did terrible things to our men in Palestine. That was some time ago, but over the centuries there have been many other incidences of drug abuse. In London, during the time of Sherlock Holmes, there were the famous opium dens on the river. I am sure that the House will recall one famous scene where Holmes was found by Dr. Watson lying on a bunk puffing away at an opium pipe.
Drugs have been used for various reasons, such as to ensnare people's minds, and for pleasure. I suspect that today many drugs are abused simply because people are bored. The reason is clear to those who visit many council estates, with their high-rise blocks and terrible staircases that people always have to use because the lifts are broken down for the umpteenth time. No one ever parks his car in the underground spaces because the cars are vandalised or burnt and the car parks are used by the criminal fraternity for stripping stolen cars. There is evidence of drug abuse in such areas because the young people living there say, "What else can we do? We are fed up with watching television. We do not want to watch Sky, with its promise of 100 new channels because they will be even more boring." Those youngsters feel that in drugs they have something new, something exciting and something dangerous because it is against the law.
My first plea is for a little more life to be injected into such areas. A good start would be pulling down some of the tower blocks and sending those living in them to more civilised and sensible surroundings. They want little houses with gardens. That would strike at the heart of those who use the soullessness of the decay of council estates to push their lethal products on those who have the misfortune to live there.
I went to Washington D.C. last year for a conference and found the rate of killings among drug dealers quite terrifying. More than 300 people died violently last year in Washington, mainly because of shoot-outs between rival drug gangs. One of the worst aspects was that Capitol Hill itself was one of the most dangerous places in the capital of the United States of America. Everyone on our trip was warned not to go anywhere near Capitol Hill after dark because of the serious dangers there. I ask the House to imagine what it would be like if drugs got such a grip on this country that Parliament square itself became dangerous for our people and for the tourists. That is what has happened in the United States, and I only hope and pray that it does not happen here.
Another worrying aspect is the copycat tendency. Many people look up to those in the pop scene or who are media figures; they look on them as gods. They do not realise that those gods are made of base material and have feet of clay.
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All too often, people on the pop scene use drugs. They have an enormous influence on society. The young will look to them and say, "So and so uses drugs. It is obviously the in thing to do, so I shall do the same." There have been instances, too, of well-known media figures using drugs.
We can sit in the House and talk about the matter but all that the young people will think is, "Oh well, they are only blimpsih, old fuddy-duddies". They will not pay any attention to us, but they will pay attention to those to whom they look up—people in the media, on the pop scene and, perhaps, even footballers. Let us see if we can get some of those people on our side to put the message across —those to whom potential drug abusers will look and to whom they will listen.
I listened to the hon. Member for Kingston Upon Hull, West (Mr. Randall) with great interest. He certainly described in immense detail exactly what he thought about the problem. I defer to him, a man of his years and experience, and I have therefore, cut my speech. I would have said more, but the hon. Gentleman's words of wisdom have made up for my shortened speech.
I fully applaud the Government's efforts to date. I am sure that we shall hear from my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary that the Government intend to do even more not only to root out this vile trade and the vile use of drugs in our country, but to prevent it spreading any further.
1.41 pm
Mr. John Marshall: Listening to the hon. Member for Kingston Upon Hull, West (Mr. Randall) who spoke at great length, one could not help thinking that they also serve who only sit and wait. Unlike him I shall show that brevity is the spice of wit.
How often have we heard during the debate the question, "what are the Government doing about drugs?". While the Government have a responsibility to stem and staunch the supply of drugs, the responsibility for effecting the demand for drugs goes much wider than the Government. It is one shared by us all as parents, teachers, religious leaders, doctors and social workers. We must ask ourselves the basic question: why is it that at a time of unprecedented prosperity, so many feel the need for the artificial stimulus provided by drugs?
I believe that we are reaping the whirlwind from the permissiveness of the 1960s. At that time, leaders in our society were willing to sign letters to The Times suggesting that soft drugs should be legalised and people were willing to suggest that soft drugs were chic. Those who created a climate of opinion then are responsible for what is happening today. Those, such as the authors of TW3— "That Was the Week that Was"—who were willing to destroy traditional values and who were able to sneer and to destroy, but were able to produce nothing positive to put to society, are responsible for what is happening today.
We have a society that is better educated and more prosperous, but still more anxious to indulge in drugs. That is because, as a society, too many lack a faith and a vision for the future. I believe that, if we are to cure that problem, the churches should be taking more of a role. We all know the views of the churches on the community charge. We all know the views of the Bishop of Durham on

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the resurrection, but I would like to hear his views on drugs, and some of the major problems facing us as a country.
I cannot conceal the contempt, the anger and, indeed, the hatred that I feel for drug traffickers, because they are willing to sell drugs to others, oblivious of the consequences that those individuals will suffer. They are willing to trade in misery and in degradation. I believe that no penalty can be too great for any drug trafficker. I welcome the fact that the Government have been responsible for substantially increasing the penalties for drug trafficking.
The drug barons of the world know no boundaries. The chains of command spread over many countries and pass through many frontiers. The Government are right to ensure that the corrective action and the campaign against drug barons are also international. However, does my hon. Friend the Minister believe that stationing merely 12 drug liaison officers in the principal producing and transit areas is enough?
Mr. Douglas Hogg: There are 15.
Mr. Marshall: Is that enough? I have my doubts. On that note, I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone (Miss Widdecombe) who has been patient this morning.
1.46 pm
Miss Ann Widdecombe: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South (Mr. Butler) on securing the debate. I do so in that brief sentence because I have been driven to undue truncation of my speech due to the verbosity—or rather, the eloquence —of the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West (Mr. Randall). I congratulate the Government on the considerable initiatives and spending that they have undertaken in connection with drug misuse and on the wholly correct priority that they have given to it.
The establishment in 1984 of the interdepartmental ministerial committee on the misuse of drugs has been extremely productive, as have the mass media publicity campaign undertaken, promoted and funded by the Government, and the Government's participation in international initiatives such as the 1988 United Nations convention. All of that proves that the Government are committed to tackling the problem. We welcome the support of the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West for those initiatives.
The secret of reducing the demand for drugs is the education of the young. It is crucial that we produce a generation of young people who will despise the use of drugs as stupid and ridiculous, even if they are not prepared to regard them as immoral. That is the argument that we have to win. We should be asking why young people experiment with drugs. Well, why do they smoke and drink? Even though smoking is declining within the population as a whole, there is a rise in teenage smoking, particularly among young girls, and the increase in drink-related offences among teenagers is ample testimony to our failure to convince them of the dangers of alcohol. For the young, prohibition is often the equivalent of a dare and death is remote and unreal—unless, tragically, it happens to one of their peers when the shock can be salutary and thought-provoking.
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It is not only the young who suffer from the malaise of "It can't happen to me." Many people of mature years do not moderate their sexual behaviour despite the chilling message of the campaign against AIDS. It is a piece of conventional wisdom that most people will believe in the reality of AIDS only when someone they know dies from it, but I suspect that even then some will hear the splash of the ferryman's oars for only a short time before convincing themselves that everything is all right and that that person was simply unlucky.
Our social climate is a product of the decade of delusion— the 1960s—and people are not expected to bear the consequences of or take responsibility for their actions. If someone commits a premeditated crime, their background was deprived; if they cheat to obtain credit, it is the fault of the finance company for making credit available; if there are difficulties in marriage, people get a divorce, even if the marriage has lasted only a year; if someone is inconveniently pregnant, they have an abortion; if people do not want to work even if work is available, they claim social security; and if they smoke, or drink to danger point, they believe that the NHS will make them better.
A natural conclusion of all that is that people will think that there is no real danger and that they have no responsibility to consider the question of drugs. That is the result of the mentality of those brought up by 1960s parents. We have to eradicate that mentality, which will take as long as it did to inculcate it. We have to look for some short-term measures and ask ourselves what will convince the young.
My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Summerson) suggested that youngsters are convinced by words of wisdom from those whom they respect. Peer group pressure, the hatred of being the odd one out and the views of their own age group also convince the young, and that is important. It is time we made much more use of young people in helping and educating young people with the drugs problem. Where the didactic approach does not work, the shared experience approach may. We could successfully use the young who have had, and overcome, drug problems to teach other young people of the dangers involved. They will listen more carefully to those of their own age.
We must strip the glamour image of drugs, touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow. Earlier, I asked why young people drink and smoke. It is because grown-tips do so and because they see their heroes and favourite characters in glamorous TV series doing so. Every time a well-known personality is convicted of a drug offence, that is seen by the young as an endorsement of drug use, which we call abuse. We must come down with extremely tough penalties on those in positions of influence and in the public eye who use drugs and set a deplorable example.
I shall particularly welcome an answer from my hon. Friend the Minister on the use of young people in the education campaign.
1.51 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Douglas Hogg): It is extraordinary that we should have had so few debates in recent years on an issue which is so important to the nation and involves a substance so destructive to individuals. That is true of drug misuse and individual drugs, which have rarely been

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the subject of debate in this House. Therefore, the House is indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South (Mr. Butler) for giving us the opportunity to discuss and consider such an important issue. I say that not least because it gives me the opportunity to emphasise the high priority that the Government give to problems associated with drug misuse, and to outline in broad terms, the nature of our present policies and those that we are likely to pursue.
Before I set about that, may I say how much I agree with the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone (Miss Widdecombe) when she reminded the House that this is not exclusively a Government matter. Of course, they have an important role to play, but so do individuals. It is jolly good to remind individuals that they, and society as a collection of individuals, have a moral responsibility for their actions, those of their neighbours and the consequences which so often ensue.
I shall begin by giving a snap-shot picture of the drug scene as I see it both in general and in particular. I shall then outline in broad terms the nature of our present policies and answer more extensively the points made by hon. Members during this important debate.
The nature and extent of drug use varies from year to year, drug to drug and area to area. Those variations are caused by a variety of factors including availability, fashion, tradition, price, and quality. It is a mistake to suppose that a particular sort of drug misuse which might be prevalent in central London is also prevalent in Lincolnshire. They may well be different, and, therefore, we should be careful when analysing a drug problem to keep in mind the fact that, though present throughout the country, it is not the same throughout the country.
Trends are worrying, whether measured in terms of seizures or in terms of the rising number of addicts. Both records show that the trend is increasing, which is worrying. In part, one could say that increasing numbers of seizures are signs of greater efficiency on the part of Customs and the police. The increase in the number of registered addicts points at least in part to a closer compliance with the law on registration, but I do not take undue consolation from these facts because the underlying trend, which is reflected at least in part in those increases, is worrying.
In this context, I shall mention cocaine, of which crack is a derivative. For the second year running, seizures of cocaine have exceeded those of heroin in volume terms. I acknowledge that that is partly the result of increased police and customs efficiency, but it also tells us that Europe in general and the United Kingdom in particular are being made the subject of the importation of cocaine by Latin American traffickers.
For this, there are a number of reasons, of which three are worth mentioning, First, hon. Members have mentioned the difference in price in the United States and the United Kingdom where a much higher return is to be secured. Secondly, the United States market is not capable of indefinite expansion. I do not want to use the word "saturation" which has been used by a number of hon. Members, but I accept that there is a limit to the United States market's potential for expansion, so it is inevitable that traffickers will look to Europe.
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Thirdly, the interdiction policies being pursued by the United States Government, although in no sense successfull overall—they interdict only 20 per cent. of the whole—serve as a deterrent. Many traffickers will be looking to Europe as an easier place in which to expand the market. The trends, especially in cocaine, are extremely worrying.
I shall quickly say something about particular classes of drug. There were encouraging signs of decline in the reported misuse of heroin in 1986–87. That was probably more due to supply than to anything else. However, since then there has been a 20 per cent. increase in seizures. That trend is likely to continue.
We do not know the total numbers of misusers—nor can we, because it is an unlawful activity; but it is estimated that there are 100,000 regular heroin misusers, of whom probably half are regular injectors. Certainly, more than half of the notified addicts are.
For the second year running, volumes of cocaine seized have exceeded those of heroin seized. As I said, crack is a derivative of cocaine, and I have no doubt that when substantial quantities of cocaine are present in a community, there is a high risk that it will be transformed into crack. At the moment the figures are not, in themselves, terribly alarming. There were 27 seizures of crack in the first three months of this year, 13 seizures in 1988 and six in 1987. but if I have to state an opinion, it is that those figures are but the tip of an iceberg. I believe that there is a high risk that a serious problem of crack misuse will develop in this country. I cannot express the level of that risk; it is not sensible to try. I merely tell the House that there is a high risk which we are duty bound to tackle.
The illicit production of amphetamines in the United Kingdom is now probably the major source of amphetamines available to misusers. As has been rightly said, in particular by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West (Mr. Randall), amphetamines are injected quite as much as heroin is injected. The risks associated with amphetamine injection are just the same.
Cannabis remains the most widely misused drug. It is important to maintain pressure on cannabis misuse, if only because, to do otherwise, would send wholly the wrong signals to misusers and drug traffickers.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway) asked me about decriminalisation in general, but particularly about the decriminalisation of marijuana. There is no prospect whatsoever of this Government at any time decriminalising the use of any of the drugs with which we are now concerned. In particular, there is no prospect of the use of marijuana being decriminalised. It will remain subject to the existing criminal law.
That concludes the snapshot that I wanted to take. It is a serious problem which, in many respects, is getting worse, so I shall now try to deal with what we need to do about it. As I do so, I shall attempt to answer points that have been made by Opposition Members and by my hon. Friends. I hope that I shall also have sufficient time in which to answer specific questions that have been raised.
We all agree that there can be no single solution to the problem of drug misuse. If any Government are to stand any hope of success, they must have a broadly-based policy that addresses the various elements of the problem. From time to time the emphasis of that strategy will shift in order to meet particular anxieties or developments. I shall summarise briefly the five elements of the policy and

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then develop them—again briefly. First, we must reduce supplies from abroad. Secondly, we must improve the effectiveness of enforcement. Thirdly, we must tighten up on deterrence and domestic control. Fourthly, we must reduce demand through prevention and education. Fifthly, there must be improvements in treatment and rehabilitation.
That process is supervised and co-ordinated by a ministerial group on the misuse of drugs, which I have the privilege to chair. Ministers and officials from a variety of Departments with an interest in the problem have been brought together in the group. The group's function is to act as a catalyst and as a means of co-ordinating policies across Government because, by the nature of things, the policies span Departments. It has proved to be an extremely useful vehicle for changes in policy.
A number of hon. Members have referred to supply, an issue of very great importance. We have been extremely active in our attempts to reduce the supply of imported drugs. We give supply a high priority in our bilateral and multilateral relations with other countries. We play an important part in the United Nations commission on narcotic drugs. We are active in the Council of Europe's Pompidou group. We chaired the group meeting last month that considered in particular cocaine and other drugs. We have also played a prominent part in the United Nations convention on illicit drug trafficking.
We are also important international donors: we are the fourth largest donor to the United Nations fund for drug abuse control. We have contributed to specific projects maintained by the fund; for instance, £3·4 million is committed to an opium eradication and substitution project in Pakistan, and £2·2 million to drug-related development projects in Bolivia. In 1987 my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary secured agreement to an increase from £500,000 a year to some £2 million in the Home Office budget for law enforcement and drug-related assistance in key producing countries from which drugs are reaching the United Kingdom.
My hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone) raised a helpful point. He is right in saying that a number of countries, particularly in Latin America, look to us for specific enforcement aid. We are willing—within the budgets that we have set ourselves—to assist producer countries, especially those in Latin America. The justification for that is that those countries are assisted to carry out enforcement measures for themselves, and also that it demonstrates our commitment to the policy of co-operation. We look much more favourably on enforcement-related bilateral aid than on eradication measures. Unless supported by huge sums, capable of providing enforcement and income replacement, eradication measures are probably not the most effective policy, and we cannot provide such sums. Moreover, by providing specific enforcement-related assistance we can achieve a perceptible result.
Let me give some examples of the assistance provided for Latin American countries, or those involved with cocaine, in the 1988–89 budget. In Bolivia we have provided equipment for radios. In Peru we have provided a radio support car and aircraft spares. In Colombia we have provided radio and computer equipment. In Jamaica we have provided a United Kingdom-based Customs training course, together with training in computers. In Brazil we have provided radio equipment. In the British Virgin Islands we have provided a drugs squad officer and
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drug surveys. In Venezuela we have provided United Kingdom Customs training courses. I feel that such specific aid, directed at particular needs, is of especial value.
We have also been extending the provision of drug liaison officers. I entirely agree with those of my hon. Friends who have spoken warmly of them. We now have some 15 DLOs throughout the world, posted in the areas that we expect to be most relevant to our internal problems, and we intend to increase their number. I entirely agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall) said on that subject.
Let me return to a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes. I certainly think that there is scope for co-operation between DLOs from this country and those from other friendly countries such as Germany, which I think he mentioned. The work is carried out on a more ad hoc, person-by-person basis at present, if only because we probably have the most sophisticated method of distributing intelligence through the National Drugs Intelligence Unit, which is not matched by the majority of other European countries. I agree with my hon. Friend about emphasising the importance of co-operation. Where DLOs get information that is relevant to a friendly country, I hope that they will take steps to inform their counterparts either through the N DIU or directly through their counterpart DLOs in post.
The Council of Europe has been mentioned. We had a meeting in May and focused on several issues, most notably on cocaine and the confiscation of drug traffickers' assets. It was an important conference, not least because it demonstrated to my satisfaction that the United Kingdom policy on combating drug misuse is the most developed of any country in central Europe. I found that rather reassuring.
We have taken several steps but I shall mention just two of them. In reply to a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes I can say that we have set up a working party, the object of which, in part, is to analyse the kind of causes that lead people to drug misuse. It will also try to establish a clearer profile of a typical drug misuser, most notably a user of cocaine. In reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Summerson) I can say that many of the problems are associated with boredom —perhaps that is one way to express it—and certainly with the quality of life and prospects for prosperity that people perceive. There is no doubt that a person living in a deprived area is more at risk than one who does not live in such an area.
The other feature of the conference was our announcement of our intention to host an international conference on demand reduction. I am grateful to my hon. Friends for welcoming that. I regard it as important and we are anxious to see producer nations becoming involved in the process.
Some hon. Members rightly raised the question of 1992 and the single European market. They asked if the single market would result in the dismantling of our controls at ports of entry. The answer is no. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has made it quite plain by treaty and by statute that we have retained the right to maintain at the ports of entry such controls as we deem necessary to prevent the importation of drugs and other criminal articles such as weapons, and to prevent the passage of terrorists. I hope that that will he of some reassurance to hon. Members.

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I shall now turn to the policies that we are pursuing on the domestic front. The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West and my hon. Friends the Members for Lewes and for Chichester (Mr. Nelson) questioned whether we were dedicating sufficient resources to enforcement. We have dedicated substantial resources to it and I hope that I will be able to satisfy hon. Members about that. In recent years Customs resources have been substantially increased. Since 1979 we have trebled the number of Customs and special investigators. In the four years between 1984 and 1988 we increased preventive posts by 854. In 1988–89, 450 additional staff were assigned to Customs work, mainly in the field of work connected with preventive measures on drugs. I shall not go into the details because of time, but I can say that we are spending substantial amounts on equipment.
As the House will know, we have set up 17 drug wings, consisting of 221 police officers. We have doubled the capacity of the national drugs intelligence unit, which we established in 1985, and 50 additional officers have been engaged on drugs work in the metropolitan area. We have increased the number of drug squads by 40 per cent. since 1983.
I know and recognise the interest in using the proceeds of confiscated assets for police work. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South and my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes are specifically interested in the subject. There are more powerful arguments against that concept than has been appreciated. I recognise that some people hold different views on hypothecation, but it is difficult in principle to have a policy of hypothecation—of dedicating a particular stream of income to a particular head of expenditure. It is undesirable to give a police force or any enforcement agency a pecuniary interest in an inquiry, and I fear that it would distort policing policies. It is jolly difficult to determine, where a number of police authorities and Customs are working on a case, how to apportion moneys between forces. I attach more importance to the windfall argument than does my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes.
The Home Office is considering the possibility of a central pot, to use jargon, to assist with exceptional expenditure. General drug policing needs should be reflected in bids made by police authorities to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, which will be considered by the inspectorate in the normal way. I do not believe that there is a substantial shortfall in our enforcement effort.
There has been wide agreement on deterrence. I am glad to be able to say to my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South that we have substantially increased penalties for trafficking in class A drugs; the maximum sentence is now life imprisonment. Further, the courts have been imposing ever increasing sentences.
We have been refusing parole to those sentenced to imprisonment for five years or more for class A drug offences. To put the policy more exactly, parole has been extremely restricted. It would be wrong for me to foreshadow, in an ad hoc way, what our response to the recommendations made by Lord Carlisle's committee will be. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South should not draw any adverse inference from that, I am
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merely saying that I do not think that it would be right to respond in an ad hoc way to an extremely important report.
Mr. Randall: Does the central pot to which the Minister referred apply only to England and Wales or to Scotland and Northern Ireland as well?
Mr. Hogg: It is a possible Home Office measure, so it will apply to the police forces of England and Wales. As the hon. Gentleman knows, policing in Scotland is a matter for my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland.
The policy of confiscating drug assets has proved extremely important. We have made confiscation orders to the value of £11 million. I regard that as an extremely important sanction, and it prevents the reinvestment of moneys gained from such activity in future crime. I regard this as a penalty of considerable importance in our strategy. I shall not develop at length how we intend to carry it further, save to say that I attach high importance to the making of reciprocal bilateral agreements. We have made six already and we intend to push forward at all possible speed with further bilateral agreements and to proceed as quickly as we can within the Council of Europe on a multilateral agreement.
I apologise for going faster than I would wish, but I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South wishes to speak at the end of the debate and I should like to make time for him. The demand side is an extremely important side of our policy. One of the most interesting and disturbing features of my recent visit to the United States was that, although the Coastguard has an effective operation to intercept cocaine run from Latin America to Florida—it surpasses anything that I have seen before, with ships, men, radar and aircraft; it has an air wing and is like a military operation—it estimates that it interdicts only 20 per cent. at most of the traffic coming into the United States. We must consider questions of demand reduction at the forefront of our policy.
Demand reduction can take various forms. National advertising can be important. I have in mind our heroin and AIDS campaigns. I do not agree with the criticism by my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South, who suggested that national advertising was not effective. There have been various assessments of the efficacy of our national programmes. There has been a much greater willingness among young people to say no to heroin and we have been successful in portraying heroin as a dirty drug. I agree that there are many limitations with a national scheme. One must somehow get the message across in a credible manner. One must not put across a message that is irrelevant to the experience on the streets. There is a hazard in talking about cocaine when cocaine is not universally available. Partly for that reason, during our last campaign we also had three underpinning local regional campaigns that were addressed to more specific needs in particular areas. I suspect that in future we may look as much to those local regional campaigns as we do to a national one.
My hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone made a good point about demand reduction in schools. We need to involve young people in the communication of the message in schools. I recognise that folk such as I are not very credible in a range of schools which one could mention. I am afraid that we must recognise that sad fact.

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We need to tailor the message to the community in which it is delivered. We have been acting through education co-ordinators. We have created in every education area education co-ordinators whom we have funded through central resources. That is extremely important. We have assisted also with in-school training and the preparation of training packages. Against a background of crack, we will have to ask ourselves whether we need to do more to deliver locally messages of demand reduction. That must go wider than the schools. It is one matter that I want to consider closely following my return from the United States.
I should like to answer a number of points that I have not so far covered. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South requires the thanks of the House for having raised this matter. He has introduced a variety of important issues. I am glad that he supported us on the issue of condoms. I have been asked by the hon. Member for Kingston upon West to say why we are opposed to the issue of condoms in prisons. The main reason is that we believe that the issue of condoms would be likely to result in a greater prevalence of homosexual activity. Because of the failure rates associated with condoms, we fear that the result would be to increase and not to diminish the risk of HIV being present in prisons.
My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South was right about training. As he knows, we have created a video training package for prisoners and staff and we are anxious that those video packages and training materials should he available throughout our prisons.
The question of the treatment of prisoners who are suffering from drugs was raised. It is not right to say that periods of cold turkey are a part of prison service department policy. It is right to say that it is a clinical matter for medical officers. To express a non-clinical opinion—my own—it seems right that where a person's treatment requires maintenance, if necessary by methadone, that, subject to the medical officer's clinical view, would be appropriate. If somebody is already on a treatment programme when he comes into the prison system, I would hope that medical staff would identify that fact and continue with the maintenance programme.
My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South also touched on the question of compulsory testing. As he knows, it is not our policy because there is no cure. It also would impose grave social and economic sanctions, and we do not have such testing outside the prison system. It would, in any case, require legislation. Our policy, therefore, on testing in the prison system is to make it voluntary. Broadly speaking, prisoners should be treated in the same way as persons outside prisons.
We were also asked about what we were doing to eliminate drugs in the prison system. As the House knows,
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we have abolished the right of remand prisoners to receive food from outside during the remand period. That was done simply to prevent remand prisoners having drugs brought in. We have also increased searches and the use of sniffer dogs.
Ninety per cent. of the finds of drugs in prisons are cannabis. I cannot remember the exact figure for the finds of syringes and needles, but I know that the figure is less than 100. Although one can become disturbed about it and although it is right to watch the situation, the suggestion that the injecting of drugs is commonplace in prisons is wrong. There is no evidence to support that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South also raised the matter of anonymous screening. The prison service department will hope to take part in the scheme and the policies that are being put in place by the Department of Health and which will rely on the project put forward by the Medical Research Council for a programme of anonymous testing.
The House will want to allow my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South to have a brief word at the conclusion of our debate, so I will summarise my remarks by saying that I have tried to give some idea of Government strategy in this matter. I have tried to respond to particular points and I apologise for not dealing with them all. We have committed substantial resources to this matter to the extent that if we see that there is a further requirement or an additional risk, we shall act as positively as we have done in the past.
2.28 pm
Mr. Butler: I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for allowing me an opportunity to speak again. It is important for me to emphasise that we have had a constructive debate today about a subject that is important to the future of our nation. We have heard contributions from various parties, and the debate has shown the House in a good light as it has shown all of us contributing constructively and with a degree of unity that I find rare. That makes me a little prouder to be a Member of this institution at the moment.
My hon. Friends the Members for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone) and for Gainsborough and Horncastle (Mr. Leigh) referred to the international aspects of drug abuse. It is a global problem which needs to be tackled by global co-operation, but unfortunately we do not even achieve adequate co-ordination between our national agencies to tackle the problem. My hon. Friends the Members for Lewes, for Banbury (Mr. Baldry) and for Cheltenham (Mr. Irving)—
It being half-past Two o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

Orders of the Day
  Private Members' Bills

    LICENSING AMENDMENT (SCOTLAND) BILL
    As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.
    Motion made, and Question, that the Bill be now read the Third time, put and agreed to.
    Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

    WEIGHTS AND MEASURES (AMENDMENT) BILL
    Order for consideration in Committee read.
    Hon. Members: Object.
    Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): Consideration what day?
    No day named.

    COAL MINING SUBSIDENCE (DAMAGE, ARBITRATION, PREVENTION AND PUBLIC AWARENESS) BILL
    Order for Second Reading read.
    Hon. Members: Object.
    Second Reading deferred till Friday 16 June.

    BRITISH RACING COMMISSION BILL
    Order for Second Reading read.
    Hon. Members: Object.
    Second Reading deferred till Friday 16 June.

    FOOTBALL SPECTATORS (No. 2) BILL
    Order for Second Reading read.
    Hon. Members: Object.
    Second Reading deferred till Friday 16 June.

    FIRE SAFETY INFORMATION BILL
    Order for Second Reading read.
    Hon. Members: Object.
    Second Reading deferred till Friday 23 June.

    PUBLIC SAFETY INFORMATION BILL
    Order for Second Reading read.
    Hon. Members: Object.
    Second Reading deferred till Friday 23 June.

    PROTECTION OF RESIDENTS IN RETIREMENT HOMES BILL
    Order for Second Reading read.
    Hon. Members: Object.
    Second Reading deferred till Friday 23 June.

    GAMING MACHINES (PROHIBITION ON USE BY PERSONS UNDER EIGHTEEN) BILL
    Order for Second Reading read.
    Hon. Members: Object.
    Second Reading deferred till Friday 23 June.

    BRITISH NATIONALITY (HONORARY CITIZENSHIP) BILL
    Order for Second Reading read.
    Hon. Members: Object.
    Second Reading deferred till Friday 7 July.

    RIDERS OF EQUINE ANIMALS BILL
    Order for Second Reading read.
    Hon. Members: Object.
    Second Reading deferred till Friday 16 June.

    CONTROL OF LITTER (FINES) BILL
    Order for Second Reading read.
    Hon. Members: Object.
    Second Reading deferred till Friday 7 July.

    AGRICULTURE (CONTROL OF NITRATES) BILL
    Order for Second Reading read.
    Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading, what day? No day named.

    BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
    Ordered,
    That, at the sitting on Monday 12th June, if proceedings on the Motion in the name of Mr. John Wakeham relating to Televising of Proceedings of the House have not been previously disposed of, Mr. Speaker shall at Ten o'clock put any Questions necessary to dispose of them and of any Amendments to that Motion which may have been selected by him and which may then be moved; and proceedings in pursuance of this Order, though opposed, may be decided after the expiration of the time for opposed business.
    Ordered,
    That, at the sitting on Thursday 15th June, the Motion in the name of the Prime Minister for the Adjournment of the House shall lapse at Seven o'clock, if not previously disposed of.—[Mr. Sackville.]

Bank Hall Hospital, Burnley
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.— [Mr. Sackville.]
2.33 pm
Mr. Peter L. Pike: I wish to raise the proposed closure of Bank Hall hospital in Burnley. Let me make it clear at the outset that I shall argue about the reduction in the level of service provided to the people of Burnley rather than about the building itself, which dates back to the 18th century and needs a considerable amount spent on it. It was the former home of General Scarlett, who fought his first parliamentary election in Burnley as a Conservative candidate, fortunately unsuccessfully. He was the victor in the charge of the heavy brigade which took place on the same day as the charge of the light brigade.
The closure highlights yet again the financial restraints that the Government are imposing on the Health Service and the reduction in the provision of services. It will cut still further the facilities available to the people of Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale. This will be the third hospital closure in two years. The Hartley hospital in Pendle and the Victoria hospital in Burnley have both been closed and we have now to consider the closure of Bank Hall hospital.
It is somewhat surprising that at exactly the same time as the announcement of the consultation was made in the local press, a Dr. Gupta of Blackburn and a consortium of eight other people announced the purchase of the former Victoria hospital for £550,000—£350,000 to go to the region and £200,000 to the district health authority—to open a private residential and nursing home for the elderly. Once again, that highlights the way that the Government are shifting their responsibility and the public responsibility to provide care for the elderly. It is time that they put forward clear proposals about the care that should be provided.
I am not opposed to those who have sufficient resources choosing to go into private residential or nursing accommodation, but increasingly to force people to do so is quite wrong. The key element in supporting the private sector, as the Government do, is that a profit element comes into the provision of care. I am not suggesting that some of the nursing and residential homes do not provide a high standard of care, but it is obscene to make profit out of old age. Society and the Government have a responsibility for the care of the elderly.
The consultation exercise has a closing date of 5 July for submissions. That is a reduction of the period laid down from three months to two months, the main objective being to save money—exactly the reason why we are considering the proposed closure. Once again the National Health Service is being tailored to meet financial restraints rather than what should be the priority objective of meeting the needs of those whom it serves. The Lancashire Evening Telegraph of 8 June carried the editorial headline:
"'Shoestring' an unwelcome NHS buzz-word."
The final paragraph of the editorial stated:
"Like the British Medical Association's current telling campaign about the present drive for an even more businesslike approach to the running of the health service, we believe it won't do much for patients if the shoestring outlook to funding still stays in place."
The problems that we face with the proposed closure of Bank Hall and the general problems of the NHS are caused by the Government's shoestring approach and the
530
necessity for health authorities to cut, cut and cut again to meet budget objectives laid down by the Government. The simple truth is that whenever a health authority makes a cut or a closure to meet the criteria laid down by the financial restraints imposed by the Government, in another 12 months it will have to make yet another cut or closure. If the Bank Hall closure goes ahead, some of the elderly will be moved to Marsden hospital but within two or three years that hospital, too, will be considered for closure. Consultation about closing it a few years ago was deferred, but we know that closure will be proposed again in the foreseeable future.
The interim short-term programme of the health authority for 1989–90 and 1990–91 has been on the basis of achieving savings of £934,000 minimum to £2·5 million. That again highlights the fact that the health authority constantly has to spend its time concentrating on meeting the Government's financial restraints. Those savings mean cuts in what is already an insufficient level of service provision to the people of Burnley. The short-term programme assumed the Bank Hall closure and anticipated that the consultation exercise would receive a favourable response.
I have referred to the Lancashire Evening Telegraph editorial of 8 June, and on the same day there was a news item covering the same issue. In that article, councillor McGeorge said:
"I cannot see any advantage to patients in this closure and they are what count."
Councillor McGeorge is the Labour leader of Burnley council. However, in case the Minister thinks that it is just one party that is protesting, I shall quote the words of a Conservative member of the council who spoke at the same meeting. He said:
"On this side of the council we don't want to see Bank Hall close either.
We don't think anyone can say that private nursing homes can replace the service offered at Bank Hall. I only hope that people who have decided to shut Bank Hall are prepared to accept responsibility of what might happen."
At the end of the day, it is the health authority that is making the decision, but it is making it because of the constraints put on it by the Government.
Councillor Kevin Kirkham of the SLD also spoke. He said that he agreed wholeheartedly with what councillor McGeorge, the leader of the Labour group, had said. An article in The Burnley Citizen, which also came out on 8 June stated:
"Councillor Butterworth, who is chairman of the League of Voluntary Workers for Burnley's remaining hospitals added: 'Bank Hall should be kept open and all hospital closures should be opposed'."
The Burnley Express and News, which came out today, described the proposed closure as
"Criminal and horrifying for the elderly and long-stay patients accommodated there."
Councillor McGeorge is quoted as saying that
"the gloves have now come off. We are going to fight this all the way."
He went on to call on the community health council to join the fight and not, as in the past, cop out and agree with the proposals being made by the health authority. I shall be fully involved in that fight, and I shall fight every inch of the way to ensure that we do not see a further reduction in service level provision for the people of my area.
Mr. Wolstenholme, of the Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale health authority, sent a document to the unions saying that, in addition to the problems for the

531
patients involved, there would be reductions in staff. In a letter sent to the National Union of Public Employees, he said:
"Whilst some staff will be needed to transfer to Marsden Hospital with the patients such an arrangement will not be extended to cover all the staff presently at Bank Hall Hospital."
That, too, shows further job reductions.
The health authority's policy and resources committee, in its integrated planning statement for 1989—it has not yet been approved by the full district health authority—indicated other problems as well as that of finance. I have already briefly referred to the growth of private residential and nursing homes. That document says:
"The rapidly expanding number of private residential and nursing homes has also had an effect upon the service demands for this client group. Over the past five years, the number of private nursing home places has increased by approximately 23 per cent. and the number of residential home places by 25 per cent."
It goes on:
"Work had been due to proceed on the new Geriatric Unit at Rossendale General Hospital in 1989–90, but this scheme has now been omitted from the Regional Capital Programme. The District is now seriously concerned over the standard of care that can be provided to the elderly at Rossendale when the service is severely limited by grossly inadequate accommodation which was condemned over 10 years ago."
That shows not only the Bank Hall closure threatening the service level provision, but provision that would have been made at Rossendale general hospital being dropped from the programme. Of course, many of the people who cannot go into Rossendale would have been accommodated in Bank Hall hospital in Burnley.
The consultation document says:
"Major changes in the pattern of care of elderly people have occurred in recent years which to a large extent is due to the development of the private sector nursing home and rest home provision, and in part of technological changes in medicine. In 1983–84 the District Strategic Plan recorded that there were 385 places available in private homes for the elderly and 87 places in private nursing homes. By the beginning of 1989 this figure had risen to 1,500 places and 400 places respectively and is set to rise even further by 1990–91."
There is a public responsibility to care for the elderly, whether through the health authority or the social services. The House still awaits the Government's response and a debate on the Griffiths report, community care and the many other issues linked with problems such as the closure of Bank Hall hospital.
There will be a reduction in beds for the elderly from 43 to 26, and, because of the way the beds will be relocated, the provision of beds for children will be reduced from 65 to 54—yet another cut in services. A considerable amount of money is being spent to move the children's ward from Marsden hospital and to move the elderly from Bank Hall hospital to Marsden hospital. About £90,000 will be spent on adapting accommodation at Marsden hospital and £200,000 will be spent on transferring the children's ward from Marsden to Burnley General hospital.
Our main argument is that there will be a reduction in service provision. Areas such as Burnley, Rossendale and Darwen, and Pendle have particular problems because many people have worked in industries which cause chest problems and so on in old age. Also, many young people are leaving the towns because the Government's policies
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have reduced the amount of work available. We therefore need a higher than normal level of Health Service provision, particularly for the elderly.
I know that the Minister will refer to the developments at the Wilsonhey unit and Pendle community hospital. I welcome the developments and I do not say that we cannot change the use of a building, but I and the people whom I represent believe that there is insufficient provision now. Cuts will not be accepted by the people of Burnley, Rossendale and Darwen or Pendle. If the Government do not recognise that and make the necessary resources available, they will lose two seats at the next general election.
Care of the elderly is a public responsibility. The Government should wake up to that responsibility and make resources available to health authorities and county council social services so as to meet the needs of the community that those bodies serve.
2.47 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Roger Freeman): I congratulate the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike) on his success in the ballot. I should like to give the House the background to the proposed closure of geriatric facilities at the Bank Hall hospital. As the hon. Member for Burnley pointed out fairly, the proposal is only at the consultation stage and has not yet been considered by the North Western regional health authority. If there is an objection by the community health council, it will be considered carefully by the health authority. If there is a sustained objection, it will come to Ministers for further consideration. The hon. Gentleman knows that and pointed it out.
I hope that the House will permit me to comment briefly on the provision of patient services generally in the Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale districts. The Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale district health authority provides a full range of health care services for a local population of about 227,000.
The hon. Member for Burnley referred to cutbacks. For the period from 1982 to 1987–88, the latest full year for which we have figures, in-patient treatments were up by 15 per cent. to 32,000 patients per annum and out-patient treatments were up by 7 per cent. to 165,000 patients per annum. I fail to see how the hon. Gentleman can sustain his argument that there have been health cutbacks. The level of resource funding, to which I shall turn in a minute, is a different issue. The record shows that the hon. Gentleman cannot sustain his argument, because patient care measured in terms of in and out-patient treatment, has risen. The number of people treated by community nurses in the district has also risen by 29 per cent. to 35,000 per annum.
Those figures do not show the increase in the quality of care that has also taken place and which reflects the staffs dedication and commitment. I know that the hon. Gentleman will join me in thanking and congratulating the health authority staff. As politicians, we do not thank Health Service staff enough. We take them for granted, and, as a Health Minister, I join the hon. Gentleman in congratulating the staff who work in his constituency.
The right hon. Gentleman asked me about the Griffiths report and I can only repeat the commitment given to me by my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Health and the Prime Minister that we shall shortly

533
bring to the House our conclusions on the second Griffiths report on care in the community. They were extremely important, and were deliberately omitted from the White Paper "Working for Patients" because our thoughts and deliberations had not been concluded. However, they will shortly be complete and we shall bring them to the House.
A more tangible sign to the local community of the Government's commitment to improve services is the local building programme, in particular, the completion of the Burnley general hospital phase 3 development, the Wilson Hey unit. That has provided 49 paediatric and surgical specialty beds, with a playroom and outside play area for the children, 105 surgical beds, four high-dependancy beds, three operating theatres and one minor operating theatre, at a total cost of about £6·1 million. A further £5·9 million project to expand Pendle community hospital is also well under way to providing an additional 72 geriatric beds by May 1991. Those new buildings and the facilities which they contain will ensure that the improvements in patient care achieved in recent years will continue well into the future.
I take further issue with the hon. Gentleman. I do not think that he would dispute the figures that I have given because they are facts. It is not sensible to equate hospital closures with cuts. They are sometimes necessary because buildings are worn out and beds, wards and hospitals need new buildings.
The hon. Gentleman implied that any closure was wrong, although, to be fair, he qualified that. He referred to Hartley and Victoria hospitals. Closures are merely signs of the re-provision of health care services. As I have already said, the Health Service is spending £12 million on new capital projects in the health authority area. That is an example of our commitment constantly to improve the care and provide it in a more modern and acceptable way, which is in the patients' interests.
Mr. Pike: Will the Minister accept the important point that, within this consultation paper, a reduction of beds, both for the elderly and children is clearly shown?
Mr. Freeman: That is not right. I am informed that the elderly use 80 per cent. of the 43 beds currently available at the hospital, which gives a figure of 34. I am informed that the replacement Deerplay ward at Marsden hospital will provide 26 beds and that a further 10 beds will he available at the district general hospital for family respite. They will not be beds for members of the family to use as patients, but so that they can enjoy some respite. That makes a total of 36 beds. Therefore, I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman that, in the short term, facilities will be reduced.
I also take issue with the hon. Gentleman's argument that private nursing health care and residential homes are wrong in principle. He implied that they were immoral because a profit is made from them. I disagree. Private nursing homes and residential homes, when properly organised and providing a good quality of care, are perfectly acceptable. As the hon. Gentleman well knows, patients are supported, when appropriate, by the Department of Social Security through income support.
Mr. Pike: The Minister will realise that, given the limitations on the money provided, families have to supplement the cost, sometimes with great difficulty.
Mr. Freeman: I am aware of that. For nursing homes, the state provides about £200 per patient per week. I know that fees often run in the range of £230 to £240 a week, implying some contribution from the savings of the elderly persons or their families. That is a significant degree of support. Private health care can march in step with the NHS in terms of the quality of care delivered.
The hon. Member for Burnley asked me about staff protection. I am informed that the Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale health authority, after consulting the district joint negotiating consultative committee, has already adopted a policy for staff protection in the event of any change or use of premises, and that policy will be fully implemented.
Turning to the Bank Hall hospital, the opening of new and better NHS facilities must rightly be accompanied by a rigorous examination of the continuing use of older existing beds. The Burnley health authority has considered how the hospitals in the district are being used, the services they provide and the level of patient activity involved. It has also considered the capacity of the private sector to meet the needs of elderly patients for nursing care.
Major changes in the pattern of care of the elderly have occurred in recent years and are due to a large extent to the development of private sector nursing homes and, in part, to technological changes in medicine. We all welcome the fact that people are living longer. Although there are many more elderly patients and many more are being treated, it is a fact that the pattern of treatment has changed. The average stay in hospital for geriatric patients is much shorter, and because the number of beds has been maintained in the health authority concerned, and the average use of beds is decreasing, even after the demographic pressures, the occupancy of beds is falling.
In Bank Hall, the decrease has been from 90 per cent. to 82 per cent. occupancy, as the average length of stay has fallen from 227 to 108 days. This is partly the result of the greater availability of residential places in the private sector. Elderly patients can readily find a place which provides nursing care, following a period in hospital for active medical treatment. In the past, many such patients would have been kept in hospital for want of suitable alternative accommodation. I am sure the hon. Gentleman joins me in welcoming this move, whether it takes place within the Health Service or without it. Patients who are medically cured should not be in wards in hospital. They prevent others from being treated there and it is not good for their morale or general wellbeing.
Taking account of these developments, the district health authority has concluded that there is a need to rationalise hospital services in the district. That is the reason for the proposal to close Bank Hall hospital. As a result, financial, medical and nursing resources can be used to greater effect within the NHS.
The option favoured by the district health authority and set out in its consultation document is for the closure and disposal of Bank Hall while expanding services for elderly people at Deerplay ward at Marsden hospital in Burnley. The proposals are set out for consultation under arrangements that apply to all proposals for a significant change in patient services. This is covered in departmental guidance issued in October 1975.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the time scale for consultations. The normal provisions will apply in this case—a three-month period for consultation at district health authority level, taking us to the end of July. I hope

535
that all the parties involved will play their full part, as, I am sure, will the hon. Gentleman. I hope that the community health council and all involved will make constructive comments on the proposed closure and on alternative ways in which patients should be cared for.
Finally, I turn to the main theme of the hon. Gentleman's speech, the level of funding. He said, fairly, that he is specifically concerned not about this particular site or about its future but about the level of funding. The White Paper proposes that the basis of funding should be changed—first, through the regions and, secondly, through the regions to the districts. We wish to fund district health authorities on the basis of weighted capitation—on the number of residents in a particular district health authority area, weighted by their relative age and morbidity, which in turn will reflect various social and industrial health factors—and the relative cost of providing health care. A more automatic system of allocating taxpayers' resources will, we believe, be fairer and more certain and will enable Health Service managers to plan with greater confidence for the future.
I do not know about the particular demographic and
536
population pressures in the hon. Gentleman's health authority area. However, when the new system is in place the successor to the old resource allocation working party targets for regions, and, through them, for districts, and the targets that Ministers, of whatever Government, chose to aim for in terms of resource allocation, a system that served us well for many years—it will reflect fairly population movements, population growth and the other factors that I have mentioned. There will then be less criticism of whether one area has been more or less fairly treated than another.
When the new system of allocating funds is in place, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will agree that it will be for the health authority to decide local priorities. I hope that greater attention will be paid to using finite resources effectively in any year. The resources of any Government, of whatever political complexion, are finite. After a health authority has received finite resources in any particular year, it must use them effectively and efficiently. Both the hon. Gentleman and I agree that we want to improve both the quality and the quantity of health care.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at two minutes past Three o'clock.

TRANSPORT

  Leeds-Bradford Airport
  Mr. Sheerman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport when he will give a decision on whether to permit an extension of operating hours at Leeds-Bradford airport.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  A joint decision by my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Transport and for the Environment will he made as soon as possible.

  Motorway Service Areas
  Mr. Gregory
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what facilities motorway service areas offer to heavy goods vehicles and other professional drivers.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  MSAs provide for all motorway users. They provide a minimum stipulated and increasingly widely known level of service. This includes free parking for all classes of vehicle for at least two hours; free toilets; hot and cold drinks; cold food 24 hours a day throughout the year.

  Parking areas for HGVs, coaches, and cars are apportioned in relation to traffic demand.

  At all but one existing MSA, HGV drivers can stay overnight for a small charge which often includes a meal voucher. Many service areas provide separate eating facilities for commercial drivers and showers and shaving points. Provision of showers and shaving points will be the norm at new MSAs.

  Journalists (Coach Trip)
  Mr. Nicholas Bennett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what was the purpose of his Department's coach trip in London for journalists on 2 June; how many journalists accepted the Department's invitation; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  The purpose of the visit was twofold; to show at first hand the environmental benefits to residents along and around Rochester way from the new relief road, which has reduced accidents by 30 per cent. in six months and to contrast this with the road congestion problems currently afflicting the Archway area. The Department's proposals for a new western environmental improvement route (the only major road proposal in inner London made by the Department in the past three years) would relieve the many transport problems in the area around the Earl's Court one-way system and improve conditions for residents and shoppers.

  The visit was organised following a series of press reports in publications as diverse as The Observer (Section 5, 28 May) and City Limits magazine (11–18 May) criticising the four London assessment studies com-missioned by the Department. These unbalanced reports
  236
  seemed to indicate that the Department's explanations of the aims and objectives of the studies were not being understood or published.

  The objectives of the studies are:

  To promote accessiblity

  To support employment, economic growth and regeneration

  To develop an efficient transport system

  To improve the environment

  To enhance safety for travellers, including pedestrians

  The following was the media's response to the coach trip invitation:

  No radio journalists attended

  No television journalists attended

  No national newspaper journalists attended

  Only one journalist attended, from a transport newsletter

  We shall offer the coach trip again. It is most important for the media and those who rely on it for their information to understand that the assessment studies are about improving conditions for Londoners, and to appreciate that the Department will put forward only solutions which offer net benefits.

  Motorway Service Areas (M25)
  Mr. Wood
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will make a statement on the provision of motorway service areas on the M25.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  The strategy for provision of MSAs on the M25 was developed following public consultation in 1983. Decisions in principle were made in 1984 to promote four MSAs, at the compass cardinal points and at very roughly 30 mile intervals, the interval used on the motorway network as a whole.

  The then Minister of State agreed in August 1985 that the MSA for the northern sector at South Mimms would be developed by BP. This was an exceptional arrangement. The other three sites, at Clacket lane, Thurrock and lver, were to be developed following competitive tender, in conformity with Government policy for marketing MSAs announced by the then Secretary of State on 4 August 1980. Current policy has been reaffirmed in this House on 17 March this year at columns 372–73.

  South Mimms opened for cars and coaches in 1987 and is due to provide facilities for HGVs at this end of the year.

  Public inquiries into the Department's proposals for Clacket lane near Westerham, together with two competing private proposals, were held in 1986 and 1987. A further site visit was made in May 1988 by the inspector who conducted the inquiries to examine the impact of the October 1987 storm. The Secretary of State for the Environment announced on 15 December 1988 his decision to allow the Department's proposals to go ahead but refusing the two competing proposals. The Department is ready to go to tender but now has to delay because of a legal challenge into the planning decisions by one of the parties.

  We estimate that over 300,000 vehicles per month would wish to use an MSA in the area had it been open, but will not be able to do so until the challenge is resolved and an MSA built.

  At Thurrock outline planning clearance has been obtained, the compulsory purchase order made and the developer appointed. Preliminary ground treatment work on the site has been underway by agreement since 1988. The local planning authority has objected to the proposed design of the buildings. That objection has been referred to

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  the Secretary of State for the Environment under DoE circular 18/84 procedures. Subject to an early resolution this should allow opening in 1990.

  The position at Iver is more problematic. This is a particularly heavy trafficked part of the motorway where widening proposals are likely to have a significant impact. A further statement will be made as soon as possible.

EDUCATION AND SCIENCE

  Chinese Students
  Mr. Andrew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science how many Chinese students are studying full or part-time in the United Kingdom.

  Mr. Jackson
  In 1987–88 there were 1,200 full-time and part-time students in further and higher education in the United Kingdom from the People's Republic of China.

  Institute of Arable Crops Research
  Mr. Hoyle
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what representations he has received on why the Institute of Arable Crops Research has not introduced chargeable payroll deductions for charities; and what information he has on whether the payroll computer system it is introducing would be able to make such deductions.

  Mr. Jackson
  This Department has received no such representations. The new payroll computer system, which is currently under consideration for use in the agricultural and food research service, would enable all staff, including those at the Institute of Arable Crops Research to participate in the payroll giving scheme, if they wished to do so.

  Private Schools
  Sir Michael McNair-Wilson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science how many inspections of private schools there have been by Her Majesty's Inspectorate in the past five years; and what steps were taken to follow-up recommendations about necessary improvements either in the teaching or the quality of the school buildings subsequent to the publishing of a report on a school.

  Mr. Kenneth Baker
  Her Majesty's inspectorate of schools operates a continuing programme of visits to independent schools which do not necessarily result in full inspection reports. Nevertheless, the inspectorate has issued 34 reports on independent schools other than those which serve children with special educational needs since June 1984. In each case, the recommendations made in the report were drawn to the proprietor's attention in an accompanying official letter. In certain cases, the proprietor may also have been asked to provide a report on progress within a specified timescale. In subsequent visits, the inspectorate takes particular note of failure to implement the recommendations made. Such failure may lead me to serve a notice of complaint against the proprietor. Between January, 1984, and December 1988, 16 notices of complaint were served following full inspections; a further five were served where fire precautions were found to be deficient and three were served where a proprietor or teacher was not considered a proper person.
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  Sir Michael McNair-Wilson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will introduce legislation to provide that all private schools should have a board of governors; and if he has any plans to seek to amend the legal structure covering such establishments so as to give parents adequate opportunities for consultation and representation about the staffing and welfare provision.

  Mr. Kenneth Baker
  I have no plans to do so. However, I would certainly encourage individual schools to establish a broadly based governing structure, where they do not already have one, and to involve parents closely in all aspects of its activity. Parents are well placed to demand a voice.

  Pupils (Welfare Assessment)
  Sir Michael McNair-Wilson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what measures are taken by Her Majesty's inspectorate to assess the social welfare of pupils; whether any of his inspection staff have any training in matters relating to child abuse.

  Mr. Kenneth Baker
  Her Majesty's Inspectorate assesses the quality of pastoral care provision in schools as well as assessing teaching and learning in all subjects. This range of activities includes tutorial arrangements, the social structures devised by the schools and the quality of pupils' responses to these. More generally, Her Majesty's Inspectorate pays attention to children's attendance and behaviour, to relationships both within lessons and about the school, and to teachers' records on pupils' development and progress. Inspectors also have regard during inspection to the qualifications and experience of teachers at the school.

  In schools where residential accommodation is provided, Her Majesty's Inspectorate pays attention to the nature and suitability of the accommodation, and to the daily routines of pupils both during school time and at evenings and weekends in order to assess the contributions that these make to the pupils' overall education.

  Her Majesty's inspectorate has designated inspectors with national responsibility for child abuse and for counselling. A number of Her Majesty's inspectors have dealt with child abuse cases before joining the inspectorate; others have worked as educational psychologists and therefore also have experience of case-work relating to child abuse. In addition, Her Majesty's inspectorate runs internal training courses on child protection, and is currently running a course for "named persons" in LEAs who have responsibility for child protection. In December, Her Majesty's inspectorate will run a course for representatives from each LEA for those involved in training for child protection. The training programme therefore extends beyond the inspectorate itself.

  Castle Hill School, Shropshire
  Mr. Ken Hargreaves
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science whether he has completed his consideration of the registration and approval of Castle Hill school, Shropshire.

  Mrs. Rumbold
  Nearly all its pupils are being withdrawn from the school. My right hon. Friend is accordingly seeking confirmation from the proprietor that he is taking steps to close it.
  239
  I am placing in the Library copies of the letters to the school and to local education authorities informing them of this action.

PRIME MINISTER

  Single Market
  Mr. Speller
  To ask the Prime Minister which sector of European Community negotiations she will control personally in the run-up to 1992.

  The Prime Minister: The Government as a whole are responsible for policy towards the European Community.

  EC Directives
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Prime Minister if she will list those European Community directives currently not fully implemented; which topics they relate to; and when Her Majesty's Government will implement each of them.

  The Prime Minister
  The Official Journal of the European Communities, c310, volume 31 of 5 December 1988, which is available in the Library, shows that at 31 December 1987 the United Kingdom had not fully implemented 148 of 784 applicable directives. Detailed information on the topics to which these relate and the projected date of enactment of United Kingdom legislation could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

  Written Answer (Cost)
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Prime Minister what was the cost to public funds of supplying the answer to the hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. Bennett) of 25 May,Official Report, columns 695–719.

  The Prime Minister
  The reply was assembled from material provided by a wide range of Departments. The total cost of time of those who contributed, including secretarial staff, measured by salary, overheads and other costs, including printing, is estimated at £4,600.

HOME DEPARTMENT

  Overseas Residents (Voting Rights)
  Mr. Ian Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what representations he has received in the past two years supporting an extension of eligibility for voting rights of United Kingdom citizens living abroad; and when he expects to be able to make an announcement concerning possible legislation on the subject.

  Mr. John L. Marshall
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he intends making a statement about the reform of the franchise qualifications for Britons living abroad.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  Between January 1987 and May 1989, we received eight parliamentary questions and 47 letters from hon. and right hon. Members and 70 representations on this subject directly from members of the general public and organisations representing Britons abroad. We hope shortly to be in a position to announce our plans to extend the franchise for British citizens living overseas.

  Remand
  Mr. Pike
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the average time spent on remand in custody awaiting trial at the latest date for which figures are available; and what was the comparable figure 12 months previously.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  In 1987 the average time spent on remand in custody awaiting trial was 56 days for men and 45 days for women, compared with 57 days for men arid 44 days for women in 1986 (Table 2·1 of "Prison statistics England and Wales 1987" (Cm. 547), a copy of which is in the Library). Provisional data for 1988 indicate very little change for males but a further increase for females.

  Mr. Sheerman
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the present male and female prison remand population for England and Wales; and how many of those remand prisoners belong to an ethnic minority group.

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

  Untried and convicted unsentenced population1 of prison service establishments in England and Wales on 31 December 1988' by type of prisoner and ethnic origin

  Untried

  Convicted unsentenced

  White

  6,600

  1,190

  West Indian, Guyanese, African

  1,200

  140

  Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi

  220

  30

  Chinese, Arab, Mixed origin

  180

  30

  Other, not recorded (including refusals)

  610

  100

  Total

  8,800

  1,490

  1 Provisional figures.

  Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many persons were remanded in custody in England and Wales during 1987 for an offence of criminal damage involving less than £2.000.

  Mr. John Patten
  The available information on those proceeded against for an indictable offence of criminal damage who were remanded in custody, which may be incomplete, is published in tables 8·8 and 8·10 of "Criminal statistics, England and Wales, 1987". Such figures will not include proceedings for single offences involving criminal damage of value £400 or less.

  Female Police Officers
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if, pursuant to his answer of 23 May,Official Report, column 499, to the hon. Member for Don Valley in respect of female police officers and firearms, he will publish such information on this subject as is either held centrally or could be obtained without disproportionate cost.

  Mr. Hurd
  No information on this subject is held centrally, and no statistical information could be obtained at this time without disproportionate cost. Female police officers are, however, fully entitled to volunteer to become authorised firearms officers and are subject to the same selection and training procedures as male officers.

  Privacy
  Mr. Waller
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) when he expects to announce the composition of the inquiry into privacy and related matters;

  (2) whether the terms of reference of the inquiry into privacy and related matters will include aspects of the law of defamation.

  Mr. Renton
  Consideration is still being given to the composition and terms of reference of the review of privacy and related matters. My right hon. Friend expects to make an announcement shortly.

  Immigration Detainees
  Mr. Sheerman
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many immigration detainees have escaped from Harmondsworth immigration detention centre in each of the last 10 years.

  Mr. Renton
  Full records are not available for the period before 1986. The number of absconders in each year since 1986 was:

  Number

  1986

  38

  1987

  64

  1988

  76

  19891

  15

  1 to 31 May

  Fine Defaulters
  Mr. Sheerman
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people were received into prison as fine defaulters in the latest year for which figures are available.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  The latest readily available information was published in table 7·2 of "Prison statistics England and Wales 1987" (Cm. 547), a copy of which is in the Library.

  Prison Visitors
  Mr. Sheerman
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what regulations cover the searching of prison visitors.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  Rule 86(1) of the prison rules 1964 and rule 70(1) of the young offender institution rules 1988 provide that any person entering or leaving an establishment may be searched.

  Cash-point Thefts
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many representations he has received, and from whom, regarding cash-point theft.

  Mr. John Patten
  None.

  Missing Persons
  Mr. Janner
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he has now concluded his consultation with the Central Conference of Chief 242
  Constables on its recommendations regarding the proposed register for missing persons; and whether he will make a statement.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  No. My right hon. Friend is now considering the implications of the ACPO report.

  Bail Statistics
  Dr. Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many persons were remanded in custody and subsequently bailed and failed to surrender to court on the date of their trial in England and Wales for the latest year for which statistics are available.

  Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many persons were bailed and subsequently failed to surrender to court on the date of their trial in England and Wales for the latest year for which statistics are available.

  Mr. John Patten
  The available information, which may be incomplete, relates to those who failed to appear having been bailed at magistrates' courts or the Crown court and is published annually in "Criminal statistics, England and Wales, 1987" (table 8·12 and paragraph 8·16 of the issue for 1987, Cm. 498).

  Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many persons were bailed by the court in England and Wales and subsequently committed a further offence before the date of their trial in the latest year for which figures are available.

  Mr. John Patten
  The most recent figures available on offending while on bail relate to 1978 and were published in Home Office Statistical Department Bulletin 22/81, "Estimates of Offending of those on Bail".

  Prison Population
  Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what was the remand and convicted and unsentenced prison population in England and Wales for the latest available date.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  According to records held centrally on 30 April 1989 there were about 8,780 untried and 1,780 convicted unsentenced prisoners in prison service establishments in England and Wales. A further 55 untried prisoners were held in police cells.

  Passports
  Mr. Nicholas Bennett
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will give the following information in respect of each passport office for each of the past five years, the(a) number of staff, (b) number of passport applications, (c) number issued, (d) number of applications per member of staff employed and (e) number of passports issued per member of staff.

  Mr. Renton
  The information as to numbers of staff employed and passports issued is given in the tables. The figures for staff employed include headquarters, management and support staff, who are not directly involved in the examination of passport applications. The daily output of examining staff varies according to the volume of applications being dealt with in a particular period, and
  243
  yearly averages are not calculated. During the present

  1.—Permanent staff numbers (authorised complement) (+ maximum number of casuals)

  1984

  1985

  1986

  1987

  1988

  London1

  300 (+52)

  301 (+35)

  296 (+47)

  301 (+50)

  244 (+62)

  Liverpool

  206 (+27)

  206 (+14)

  206 (+32)

  206 (+49)

  206 (+62)

  Peterborough

  169 (+23)

  169 (+28)

  169 (+34)

  169 (+43)

  169 (+60)

  Newport

  170 (+20)

  170 (+24)

  169 (+31)

  169 (+51)

  168 (+53)

  Glasgow

  83 (+12)

  83 (+13)

  83 (+18)

  83 (+26)

  143 (+39)

  Belfast

  15 (+6)

  15 (+6)

  15 (+6)

  15 (+5)

  15 (+8)

  1 Includes Headquarters staff but excludes staff at the records unit at Hayes.

  2. Annual total of new passports issued and amendments made to existing passports

  1984

  1985

  1986

  1987

  1988

  London

  456,329

  444.925

  465,986

  378,820

  437,218

  Liverpool

  510,492

  479,140

  592,740

  582,588

  698,106

  Peterborough

  444,060

  417,709

  514,378

  509,536

  594,713

  Newport

  421,876

  387,453

  446,629

  453,350

  570,860

  Glasgow

  156,485

  146,748

  171,541

  170,765

  175,113

  Belfast

  35,253

  36,192

  47,503

  53,626

  62,706

  Total

  2,024,495

  1,912,167

  2,238,777

  2,148,685

  2,538,716

  Public Order Act 1986
  Mr. Key
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he has received from Salisbury district council an application under section 13 of the Public Order Act 1986, to make an order prohibiting processions; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Hurd
  Salisbury district council, in response to an application from the chief constable of Wiltshire, sought my consent on 23 May to an order under section 13 of the Public Order Act 1986. This was based on the chief constable's assessment that other powers available to him would not be sufficient to prevent the holding of certain classes of public procession in the vicinity of Stonehenge from resulting in serious public disorder. I have therefore given my consent to an order prohibiting the holding of all public processions within a radius of four miles from the monument at Stonehenge, moving in the direction of Stonehenge, other than normal funeral processions, from Saturday 10 June until Sunday 25 June.

  Waste Transport (Smuggling)
  Mr. Butler
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what measures his Department implements to police large-scale wastes transported internationally, and used as a medium for smuggling.

  Mr. Lilley
  I have been asked to reply.

  The importation of special and hazardous waste is regulated by the Control of Pollution (Special Waste) Regulations 1980 and the Transfrontier Shipment of Hazardous Waste Regulations 1988. Consignments of such wastes must be accompanied by consignment notes, copies of which are sent to the waste disposal authority for the area in which the waste enters the United Kingdom and the area of final disposal. Customs retain the power to regulate importations and exportations of goods, and to search all vessels in United Kingdom territorial waters. Waste is subject to normal customs checks which are based on local knowledge, risk assessment and intelligence.
  244
  seasonal peak, staff in the six United Kingdom passport offices are examining, on average, around 90 applications each day.

TRADE AND INDUSTRY

  Funeral Costs (Report)
  Mr. Andrew Bowden
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what response has been received from the National Association of Funeral Directors to the report on funeral costs by the Office of Fair Trading published in January.

  Mr. Forth
  This is a matter for the Director General of Fair Trading. I shall ask him to write to my hon. Friend.

  Departmental Press Briefings
  Mr. Grocott
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what guidelines he follows in determining which journalists are invited to press briefings by his Department.

  Mr. Forth
  This depends upon the matter under discussion.

WALES

  Eye Tests
  Mr. Alan Williams
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what is the fall in the number of people coming forward for eye tests since April 1989 in(a) West Glamorgan and (b) Wales.

  Mr. Grist
  The information is not available centrally.

  Welsh Development Agency
  Mr. Nicholas Bennett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will give the total expenditure of the Welsh Development Agency in each parliamentary constituency in each year since 1983–84.

  Mr. Peter Walker
  The Welsh Development Agency does not maintain details of expenditure in the form requested.

  EC Funding
  Mr. Win Griffiths
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will list on a district council basis the amount of funding received from the European Community's regional fund, social fund and agricultural guidance and guarantee fund since 1 January 1980.

  Mr. Peter Walker
  The information as requested is given in the following tables:

  European Regional Development Fund—Quota

  District Authority Area1

  Commitment since 1 January 1980

  £

  Aberconwy

  4,022,698

  Afan

  138,500

  Alyn and Deeside

  20,350,568

  Arfon

  2,589,660

  Blaenau Gwent

  17,592,050

  Brecknock

  781,631

  Cardiff

  51,870,420

  Carmathen

  9,171,480

  Ceredigion

  3,649,961

  Colwyn

  27,798

  Cynon Valley

  4,798,012

  Delyn

  15,110,049

  Dinefwr

  678,870

  Dwyfor

  3,243,710

  Glyndwr

  740,163

  Islwyn

  3,036,570

  Llanelli

  13,732,034

  Lliw Valley

  1,404,037

  Meirionydd

  1,985,307

  Merthyr Tydfil

  17,340,750

  Monmouth

  9,817,492

  Montgomeryshire

  3,188,992

  Neath

  440,059

  Newport

  27,225,158

  Ogwr

  6,037,610

  Port Talbot

  2,749,717

  Preseli

  3,334,731

  Radnor

  1,103,624

  Rhondda

  5,078,642

  Rhuddlan

  8,040,132

  Rhymney Valley

  2,790,820

  South Pembrokeshire

  3,237,909

  Swansea

  28,644,199

  Taff Ely

  4,678,416

  Torfaen

  21,408,140

  Vale of Glamorgan

  7,575,853

  Wrexham Maelor

  42,826,240

  Ynys Mon

  5,135,213

  Not Disaggregated by District

  26,197,961

  Total

  381,775,176

  1 Includes commitment for all schemes undertaken by eligible authorities and bodies which are located within a district authority area.

  European regional development fund—non quota

  Eligible Zone

  Commitment since 1 January 1980

  £

  Clwyd

  5,146,000

  Dyfed

  723,000

  Gwent

  5,523.000

  South Glamorgan

  3,376,000

  West Glamorgan

  4,741,000

  Total

  19,509,000

  Commitments are allocated to the zones, not on a district authority area basis.
  246

  European social fund

  County

  Allocation since 1 January 1980

  £

  Clwyd

  2,232,000

  Dyfed

  2,706,000

  Gwent

  2,956,000

  Gwynedd

  540,000

  Mid Glamorgan

  4,937,000

  Powys

  829,000

  South Glamorgan

  3,263,000

  West Glamorgan

  3.208,000

  Not Disaggregated

  38,728,000

  Total

  59,399,000

  Information is not kept on a district authority area basis.

  European agricultural guidance and guarantee fund

  Wales (£)

  Identifiable receipts since 1 January 1980

  395,700,000

  Information cannot be disaggregated below the all-Wales level. The grant allocation does not include the 1988 figure as this is not yet available.

NATIONAL FINANCE

  South African Coal (Teesport)
  Mr. Mullin
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how much South African coal was discharged by the SS Ave during its recent visit to Teesport.

  Mr. Lilley
  [holding answer 6 June 1989]: It is not normal practice to disclose information about the nature or quantities in specific importations.

  Mr. Mullin
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what dues and other taxes were paid by the owners of the SS Ave which recently discharged a cargo of South African coal at Teesport.

  Mr. Lilley
  [holding answer 6 June 1989]: Imported coal is free of customs duties and zero-rated for VAT purposes. Port authority dues are usually payable on a ship and its cargo.

  Premium Bonds
  Mr. Teddy Taylor
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer why the National Savings Department has decided to increase the minimum purchase of premium bonds to £100 on 1 July; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Lilley
  [holding answer 8 June 1989]: 1 refer my hon. Friend to the reply that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave to the right hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Steel) on 5 May at column 255.

AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

  Factory-Farmed Animals
  Dr. Glyn
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he will consider making it compulsory for all factory-farmed animals to be labelled as such.
  247
  Mr. Ryder
  No, Sir. While I fully recognise the importance of informative food labelling I see no need for a statutory labelling requirement for factory farmed products. There would, in any case, be serious enforcement difficulties as it is not possible to distinguish analytically between free range and factory farmed products. There is, of course, nothing to prevent voluntary labelling to indicate when meat is not from factory farmed products.

NORTHERN IRELAND

  Female Police Officers (Firearms)
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (1) how many female police officers are currently qualified to carry firearms; what were the figures five and 10 years ago; and if he will make a statement;

  (2) if he will list by year for the last 10 years (a) in how many operations firearms were issued to female police officers and (b) in how many of these operations shots were fired by female police officers; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Ian Stewart
  The information is not available in the form requested. However I understand from the chief constable that female officers in the RUC do not normally carry firearms, nor are firearms normally issued to officers in respect of specific operations.

  Press Briefings
  Mr. Grocott
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what guidelines he follows in determining which journalists are invited to press briefings by his Department.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  This depends on the matter under discussion.

EMPLOYMENT

  Small Businesses
  Mr. David Nicholson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what advice his Department gives to small companies seeking specialist financial assistance with

  Region

  Bridging Allowance

  March

  April

  May

  (9 March 1989)

  (13 April 1989)

  (11 May 1989)

  East Midlands

  1,380

  1,170

  1,075

  West Midlands

  1,507

  1,298

  1,202

  Wales

  774

  671

  569

  London and South East

  1,812

  1,617

  1,427

  South West

  760

  630

  538

  Northern

  1,124

  1,021

  885

  Yorkshire and Humberside

  1,816

  1,487

  1,376

  Scotland

  2,182

  1,912

  1,978

  North West

  2,600

  2,235

  1,934

  TOTAL

  13,955

  12,041

  10,984

  Strikes
  Mr. Greg Knight
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will introduce legislation to permit a legal strike without a ballot amongst the strikers; and if he will make a statement.
  248
  regard to further business development (a) when approached directly, (b) in general promotional literature and (c) at exhibitions attended by his Department.

  Mr. Cope
  The Department's small firms service provides advice on financial management and control, and the presentation of a case to potential lenders or investors. It also gives information on sources and methods of raising finance, including the loan guarantee scheme (LGS), which enables banks to lend to small firms without security or a track record.

  Publications by the small firms service and the Department include free leaflets giving advice on trade credit, accounting, prompt payment and the LGS.

  Radiation
  Sir John Farr
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what further steps he is taking to reduce the exposure to occupational radiation of workers in the nuclear industry; and by how much the present exposure level has been reduced from earlier levels.

  Mr. Nicholls
  [holding answer 6 June 1989]: Under the Ionising Radiations Regulations 1985 which are enforced by the Health and Safety Executive, all employers are required to ensure that, amongst other matters, doses of ionising radiations received by employees are kept as low as reasonably practicable and not merely below the relevant statutory limits. In the light of recent international advice and continuing revision of risk estimates for ionising radiations, HSE inspectors are ensuring that greater attention is paid to this requirement. Dosimetric information published by the principal employers in the industry indicate an overall long term downward trend in exposure levels.

  Bridging Allowance
  Ms. Short
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment, by region, how many 16 and 17-year-olds were in receipt of bridging allowance for each of the latest available three months.

  Mr. Cope
  Figures for the number of young people in receipt of bridging allowance by region are provided in the table:

  Mr. Nicholls
  No. It is not illegal for a union to call a strike without a ballot of its members. However, if a union chose to do so, it would render itself liable to legal action for damages from the employers at whom the action is directed, or from the suppliers of customers of those
  249
  employers, and to an action in restraint from any of those parties or from any of the union's members which it had induced to take action.

  Labour Statistics
  Mr. Battle
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what was the total number of registered vacancies as a percentage of the unemployment figure in the Leeds metropolitan district for each of the years April 1979 to 1989; and what was the average number of vacancies in the Leeds area for the years 1979 to 1989.

  Mr. Lee
  The following is the available information which is also in the Library. The table shows the monthly average numbers of unfilled vacancies at jobcentres covering an area closely corresponding to the Leeds metropolitan district, together with the monthly average number of unemployed claimants in Leeds, for the years 1983 to 1988. Unemployment figures will be slightly affected by changes to the count.

  It is not valid to compare ratios of unfilled vacancies to numbers of unemployed claimants since only about a third of vacancies in the economy are reported to jobcentres and this proportion will tend to vary over time and between regions.

  Monthly average figures of unfilled vacancies and unemployment in the Leeds area for the calendar years 1983 to 19881

  Calendar year

  Vacancies

  Unemployment

  21983

  1,792

  40,602

  1984

  1,664

  41,301

  1985

  1,615

  43,517

  1986

  2,270

  41,826

  1987

  2,824

  38,904

  1988

  2,651

  30,982

  1 Comprising the jobcentres of Crossgates, Harefills, Horsforth, Hunslet, Leeds, Leeds Commercial, Morley, Oitley, Rothwell, Seacroft, Wetherby and Yeadon for vacancy figures and the Leeds local authority area for unemployment figures.

  2 The requested information is only available on a comparable basis for vacancies from April 1983 and unemployment from June 1983. The averages for 1983 are compiled using data for June to December, for the sake of consistency.

  Council for Social Aid, Manchester
  Mr. Leighton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what information he has as to why the Council for Social Aid in Manchester, and training manager for employment training, has gone into liquidation.

  Mr. Nicholls
  I understand that the directors of Manchester Diocesan Church of England Council for Social Aid Ltd. felt that they were unable to meet their financial obligations and for this reason, and in accordance with the provisions of the Companies Act and the Insolvency Act, decided to cease trading and to place the company into voluntary liquidation.

  Mr. Tony Lloyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment (1) what is the number of workers who will be made redundant as a result of the failure of the Council for Social Aid, Manchester; what is the number of workers who will be or are being offered alternative employment; what guarantees were given to staff in terms of redundancy payments and outstanding earnings; and if he will make a statement;
  250
  (2) what was the total number of trainees on the scheme run by the Council for Social Aid, Manchester, at the time of liquidation; what was the number of trainees who will be offered training places on other ET schemes; what guarantees were made to trainees in respect of the training allowance and child care payments; what is the amount of the debt; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Nicholls
  I understand that approximately 200 people have been made redundant following the closure of Manchester Diocesan Church of England Council for Social Aid Ltd.

  Any redundancy payments or outstanding earnings are a matter for the company's liquidators who will deal with these matters in the normal way in such cases.

  The number of employees who are offered alternative employment will depend on the local demand for their services.

  At the time Diocesan Church of England Council for Social Aid Ltd. ceased trading there were 1,011 ET trainees in training. All of these have been, or will shortly be, offered a training place with an alternative training manager. In the meantime all trainees remain on their training allowance.

  In addition, until trainees are found alternative training managers, child care costs will be met where this is necessary.

  The total amount of the company's debt is not known to my Department and is a matter for the liquidators.

  My major concern now is to ensure that everything possible is being done to minimise the disruption for trainees so that they can carry on developing their skills and improving their job prospects.

HEALTH

  Clinical Cytogeneticists
  Mr. Ted Garrett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on the salary negotiations for clinical cytogeneticists.

  Mr. Mellor
  The pay of clinical cytogeneticists is a matter for negotiation between the management side of the Scientific and Professional Staffs Council and the staff side representing scientists employed in the National Health Service. Negotiations are continuing on the staff side pay claim for 1989–90.

  Water Supplies (Fluoridation)
  Mr. Churchill
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health which countries, having undertaken the fluoridation of their water supplies, have since abandoned it and on what grounds.

  Mr. Freeman
  Although no specific legislative power was provided, fluoridation was introduced experimentally in the Netherlands in the 1950s. It was discontinued in 1973 when the Amsterdam Supreme Court decreed that there was no legal basis for fluoridation.

  In the late 1977 the Highland regional council decided that water fluoridation should not be pursued in its region and the operation in Wick, Scotland, which had provided fluoridated water since 1969, was discontinued in 1979 to bring it into line with the rest of the region.

  Water fluoridation was introduced in Chile in 1968 but was discontinued in 1975 partly because of adverse

  251
  publicity at the time, and partly due to costs. It is understood that fluoridation has since been re-introduced in that country.

  Information on the position in other countries is not held.

  Mr. Churchill
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what studies his Department has made of dental fluorosis; what evidence it has received on whether fluoridation of the water supplies has had any harmful effect on those consuming fluoridated water and, in particular, on children; and if he will now reconsider his advice to local and water authorities on the subject.

  Mr. Freeman
  The Department has not carried out any studies on dental fluorosis, but a study by Levine et al; (British Dental Journal 1989; 166/249), confirmed that although significantly more children had higher levels of enamel fluorosis in fluoridated areas the levels were not aesthetically unacceptable.

  The Government remain of the opinion that the fluoridation of water constitutes a safe and effective means of reducing tooth decay. We will of course continue to monitor any relevant evidence on the safety and effectiveness of fluoridation and will bring any significant new developments to the attention of health authorities.

  National Health Service Reform
  Mr. Robert G. Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what plans he has for a new contract for general practitioners if the medical profession do not accept the agreement reached between him and their negotiators on 4 May.

  Mr. Kenneth Clarke
  The agreement was a package deal, and it involved a good deal of compromise by both parties. It is for the profession to decide whether or not to endorse the agreement reached by their negotiators. But if they do not, 1 would feel bound to ensure that the Government's objectives were still achieved. I would therefore have to re-examine the various elements of the agreement before laying regulations before Parliament and determining the contents of the statement of fees and allowances. Between them these documents will secure better services for patients, relate pay to performance

  Amounts and percentages of budget loans and community care grants by client groups

  (00)

  (01)

  (02)

  (03)

  (04)

  (05)

  (06)

  (07)

  (08)

  (09)

  (10)

  (11)

  (12)

  (13

  (14)

  (15)1

  Total awarded

  LEYTONSTONE ILO:

  Community care grants

  Percentage

  0·1

  6·23

  0·61

  10·51

  0·00

  5·26

  5·66

  32·59

  0·66

  0·29

  5·56

  16·21

  6·45

  7·95

  0·00

  0·95

  Amount (£)

  108

  6,438

  631

  10,856

  0·00

  5,433

  5,850

  33,663

  682

  299

  5,741

  16,746

  6,659

  8,215

  0·00

  982

  £102,303

  Budgeting loans

  Percentage

  0·24

  0·48

  0·1

  1·68

  0·28

  6·13

  1·66

  56·65

  0·05

  1·11

  10·6

  16·04

  2·88

  2·09

  0·00

  n/a

  Amount (£)

  494

  974

  206

  3,444

  578

  12,536

  3,398

  115,863

  103

  2,279

  21,686

  32,798

  5,893

  4,280

  0·00

  n/a

  £204,532

  WALTHAMSTOW ILO:

  Community care grants

  Percentage

  0·56

  8·96

  5·77

  9·27

  1·78

  4·07

  7·64

  30·47

  0·00

  0·17

  5·77

  16·48

  1·18

  6·76

  0·00

  1·10

  Amount (£)

  569

  9,067

  5,837

  9,384

  1,805

  4,121

  7,734

  30,835

  0·00

  170

  5,835

  16.675

  1,193

  6,837

  0·00

  1,115

  £101,177

  Budgeting loans

  Percentage

  0·74

  0·52

  0·89

  3·04

  0·26

  3·18

  2·44

  53·5

  0·23

  1·0

  19·04

  11·47

  1·81

  1·89

  0·00

  n/a

  Amount (£)

  1,643

  1,163

  2,004

  6,832

  591

  7,133

  5,484

  120,186

  516

  2,254

  42,769

  25,759

  4,068

  4,243

  0·00

  n/a

  £224,645

  WOODGRANGI: PARK ILO:

  Community care grants

  Percentage

  0·27

  5·7

  2·57

  20·92

  0·81

  5·38

  8·97

  23·4

  1·42

  0·83

  7·5

  10·35

  2·46

  8·5

  0·00

  0·94

  Amount (£)

  500

  10,602

  4,775

  38,919

  1,500

  10,005

  16,686

  43,543

  2,647

  1,540

  13,961

  19,250

  4,569

  15,824

  0·00

  1,751

  £186,072

  252
  (ensuring that capitation-based payments account for 60 per cent. of the total) and achieve a more cost-effective contract.

  Soviet Union (Disaster)
  Mr. Knox
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what medical help the Government are providing for the victims of the oil gas pipeline-train disaster in the Soviet Union.

  Mr. Kenneth Clarke
  The British Government have both offered, and responded to requests for assistance from the Soviet Union. We have already dispatched £64,000 worth of medical equipment.

  In addition, an official request was received yesterday from the Soviet embassy in London and the Soviet Ministry of Health for a team of British specialists to fly out to the Soviet Union to advise and help with the treatment of the patients.

  A British team of three burns and plastic surgery specialists, together with a renal dialysis expert, a nurse and technician with dialysis equipment is on its way today to the Soviet Union.

  We have offered to take a number of burns cases, but no request has so far been received from the Soviet authorities. Voluntary organisations in Britain are also offering their assistance.

SOCIAL SECURITY

  Budgeting Loans and Community Care Grants
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what amounts and what percentages of(a) budgeting loans and (b) community care grants were awarded to each of the 15 client groups defined by his Department for each of the three offices serving the Leyton constituency for the financial year 1988–89.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  Estimates based on the data on client groups for the period June 1988 to March 1989 are shown in the table. The totals of the amounts awarded are provisional estimates for 1988–89.
  253

  (00)

  (01)

  (02)

  (03)

  (04)

  (05)

  (06)

  (07)

  (08)

  (09)

  (10)

  (11)

  (12)

  (13)

  (14)

  (15)1

  Total awarded

  Budgeting loans

  Percentage

  0·39

  0·27

  0·28

  2·92

  0·10

  8·78

  1·69

  41·57

  1·59

  1·41

  17·88

  13·29

  3·47

  6·36

  0·00

  n/a

  Amount (£)

  2,009

  1,407

  1,465

  15,230

  519

  45,778

  8,810

  216,640

  8,300

  7,351

  93,189

  69,263

  18,061

  33.171

  0·00

  n/a

  £521,193

  1 Key to client groups

  Code Meaning

  00 Unallocated or unidentified.

  01 Over 80—with Income Support higher pensioner premium.

  02 Aged 60 to 79—disabled with higher pensioner premium.

  03 Aged 60 to 79—with ordinary pensioner premium, or over 60 without pensioner premium.

  04 Lone parent with Income Support disability premium.

  05 Family with disability premium.

  06 Other with disability premium.

  07 Lone parent without disability premium.

  08 Signs at UBO quarterly with Income Support family premium.

  09 Signs at UBO quarterly without family premium.

  10 Signing unemployed or with training allowance with family premium.

  11 Signing unemployed or with training allowance without family premium.

  12 Others with family premium.

  13 Others without family premium.

  14 Involved in trade dispute.

  15 Applicant not in receipt of Income Support—not applicable for budgeting loans.

  Social Fund
  Ms. Mowlam
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will list the social fund monthly budget profiles in respect of loans and grants as a percentage of the total annual budget in respect of his local offices at Eston, Hartlepool, Middlesborough and Stockton.

  Budgetary Profiles for Loans and Community Care Grants in Eston, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Stockton ILOs.

  Per cent.

  Office

  April

  May

  June

  July

  Aug

  Sept

  Oct

  Nov

  Dec

  Jan

  Feb

  March

  Eston

  Loans

  8·30

  8·30

  8·30

  8·30

  8·30

  8·30

  8·30

  8·30

  7·75

  7·75

  8·80

  9·30

  Grants

  8·30

  8·30

  8·30

  8·30

  8·30

  8·30

  8·30

  8·30

  7·75

  7·75

  8·80

  9·30

  Hartlepool

  Loans

  9·17

  8·33

  8·33

  8·33

  8·33

  8·02

  8·58

  8·60

  7·75

  7·38

  8·62

  8·56

  Grants

  8·67

  8·33

  8·33

  8·33

  8·33

  8·02

  8·88

  8·89

  7·75

  7·38

  8·62

  8·47

  Middlesbrough

  Loans

  8·50

  8·50

  9·00

  8·50

  7·50

  8·00

  8·50

  9·00

  7·00

  7·50

  9·00

  9·00

  Grants

  8·50

  8·50

  9·00

  8·50

  7·50

  8·00

  8·50

  9·00

  7·00

  7·50

  9·00

  9·00

  Redcar

  Loans

  7·60

  7·80

  7·80

  8·30

  6·70

  7·00

  8·90

  12·50

  9·00

  6·60

  8·60

  9·20

  Grants

  7·60

  7·80

  7·80

  8·30

  6·70

  7·00

  8·90

  12·50

  9·00

  6·60

  8·60

  9·20

  Stockton

  Loans

  8·32

  8·32

  8·32

  8·32

  8·32

  8·21

  8·95

  8·96

  7·45

  7·82

  8·69

  8·32

  Grants

  8·32

  8·32

  8·32

  8·32

  8·32

  8·21

  8·95

  8·96

  7·45

  7·82

  8·69

  8·32

  Benefits Claimants
  Ms. Mowlam
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security (1) if he will publish a table showing(a) the numbers of claimants of all supplementary benefits, (b) the numbers of claimants of supplementary pensions, (c) the numbers of claimants of supplementary allowances and (d) the numbers of claimants of supplementary benefits required to be available for work, in respect of his Department's local offices at Eston, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Stockton each April 1979, 1981, 1983, 1985 and 1987;

  Number of claimants receiving Supplementary Benefit/Income Support by statistical category

  Local Office

  1

  May 1979

  May 1981

  May 1983

  May 1985

  May 1987

  2May 1988

  February 1989

  Eston ILO

  E

  1,101

  2,308

  3,909

  4,462

  3,762

  3,106

  3,178

  A

  1,143

  1,167

  1,771

  2,499

  2,752

  2,444

  2,581

  P

  2,266

  2,070

  1,903

  2,161

  2,053

  2,022

  1,985

  Total

  4,510

  5,545

  7,583

  9,122

  8,567

  7,572

  7,744

  Hartlepool ILO

  E

  2,511

  3,674

  5,761

  6,260

  5,188

  4,245

  4,405

  A

  1,616

  1,809

  2,766

  3,627

  3,980

  3,297

  3,514

  P

  3,859

  3,758

  3,380

  3,724

  3,576

  3,541

  3,395

  Total

  7,986

  9,241

  11,907

  13,611

  12,744

  11,083

  11,314

  254
  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  Details showing the monthly anticipated level of expenditure for the period April 1989 to March 1990 as a percentage of the total annual budget for each of the offices are given in the table.

  Details of the national anticipated level of expenditure are available in the Library.

  (2) if he will publish a table showing (a) the total numbers of claimants receiving income support, (b) claimants of income support receiving pensioner premiums and (c) the number of claimants of income support required to be available for work, in respect of his Department's local offices at Eston, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Stockton each April in 1988 and 1989.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  The information is as follows:
  255

  Local Office

  1

  May 1979

  May 1981

  May 1983

  May 1985

  May 1987

  2 May 1988

  February 1989

  Middlesbrough ILO

  E

  3,508

  6,958

  10,417

  12,013

  10,471

  8,578

  8,607

  A

  3,181

  3,365

  4,931

  6,973

  7,818

  6,935

  7,114

  P

  5,126

  4,935

  4,906

  5,408

  5,390

  5,341

  5,095

  Total

  11,815

  15,258

  20,254

  24,394

  23,679

  20,854

  20,816

  Redcar ILO

  E

  970

  2,165

  3,977

  4,724

  3,980

  3,378

  3,437

  A

  1,194

  1,188

  1,717

  2,450

  2,843

  2,531

  2,681

  P

  2,729

  2,561

  2,494

  2,630

  2,547

  2,565

  2,539

  Total

  4,893

  5,914

  8,188

  9,804

  9,370

  8,474

  8,657

  Stockton ILO

  E

  2,828

  5,867

  8,775

  10,059

  8,851

  6,873

  6,803

  A

  2,562

  2,825

  4,154

  5,689

  6,476

  5,596

  5,880

  P

  5,043

  4,973

  4,425

  4,978

  5,048

  5,128

  4,989

  Total

  10,433

  13,665

  17,354

  20,726

  20,375

  17,597

  17,672

  Note:

  1 E = claimants required to be available for work.

  A = claimants not required to register for work.

  P = pensioners.

  2 1988 and 1989 data are provisional and subject to amendment.

  Source: 100 per cent. count of cases in action, which include a number of cases where benefit payment has ceased but other action is continuing.

  Family Income Supplement
  Ms. Mowlam
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will publish information relating to the estimated numbers of claimants of family income supplement in Cleveland in 1979, 1981, 1983, 1985 and 1987, along with any estimates of families entitled to but not claiming family income supplement in Cleveland during those years.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  We do not collect such information on a local basis.

ATTORNEY-GENERAL

  Immigration
  Mr. Winnick
  To ask the Attorney-General what documentation and advice has been recently sent to adjudicators and members of the immigration appeals tribunal by the Lord Chancellor's Department or any other branch of the Laws Officers Departments arising from judgments on cases involving marriage; and if he will make a statement.

  The Attorney-General
  The Treasury Solicitor acts as solicitor to the independent immigration appellate authorities established under the Immigration Act 1971 and represents the immigration appeal tribunal when its decisions are challenged on judicial review.

  In December 1988 the Treasury Solicitor so acted for the immigration appeal tribunal in a case, R. v Immigration Appeal Tribunal ex parte Mohammed Khatah, in which the decision of the tribunal refusing the applicant leave to appeal to the tribunal from a decision of an adjudicator was quashed by Mr. Justice Henry. The transcript of the judgment was received at the end of January 1989 and on 6 February the Treasury Solicitor wrote to the president of the tribunal enclosing a copy of the judgment pointing out its importance, and suggesting that it be drawn to the attention of the adjudicators. The Treasury Solicitor did not suggest that any document other than the transcript be circulated and took no steps to secure any such further circulation. It is the Treasury Solicitor's standard practice after any judicial review proceedings to report back to the
  256
  client, which in this case was the tribunal, with a note of the decision and its implications for the client. In tendering any such advice the Treasury Solicitor acts independently as a solicitor giving advice to a client.

  On 7 March the chief adjudicator wrote to all adjudicators enclosing two documents: a copy of the Treasury Solicitor's letter dated 6 February (already referred to) and a copy of standard briefing material prepared by the Treasury Solicitor in December 1988 to be supplied to counsel for the tribunal on applications for judicial review. This briefing material had been sent to the president of the tribunal at an earlier date for information.

  Consultations about the role of the tribunal in judicial review proceedings have been going on for some time following an initiative by the Treasury Solicitor's department in 1988, and it has now been agreed that the immigration appeal tribunal should no longer be represented in judicial review proceedings; in future, the Secretary of State or the immigration service will be the respondents in all such cases. Consequently it will no longer be necessary for the Treasury Solicitor to advise the tribunal on the outcome of judicial review proceedings.

  Endangered Species
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Attorney-General if the Lord Chancellor will have inquires made into the background to the recent proceedings involving endangered species legislation and consider the implications of the judge's comments.

  The Attorney-General
  This would not be an appropriate course of action for the Lord Chancellor to take.

DEFENCE

  Front Line Forces
  Mr. Tony Lloyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what consideration he has given to the defence implications of the Soviet proposal to thin out front line forces in Europe.
  257
  Mr. Archie Hamilton
  Reductions in the Warsaw pact's massive concentrations of forces in Europe would be very welcome. However, their current zonal proposals would make it very difficult to sustain NATO's strategy of forward defence. Nevertheless, we are studying them with care.

  Main Battle Tank (Equipment)
  Mr. Rogers
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what is the extent in the delay of the contract awarded to AVIMO for the procurement of the TOGS sighting system for main battle tanks; and if any penalty clauses have been put into operation.

  Mr. Sainsbury
  Deliveries are some months behind schedule and we shall be seeking redress under the terms of the contract.

  Schools (Approval)
  Sir Michael McNair-Wilson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence (1) how many schools have been removed from the list of those approved for the education of service personnel on his Department's grant within the last five years; and if he will give reasons for these decisions in each case;

  (2) how often officials from his Department visit independent schools where children of service personnel are educated with the assistance of his Department's grants; what criteria are used before including such a school on the approved list; how often further visits are made to ensure the school is providing a proper academic education and the right moral and social guidance; and what store is placed on the result of any of Her Majesty's inspectors reports on such schools;

  (3) what steps his Department takes to satisfy itself that a private school is a fit place for the children of service men to be sent under grant; how many schools are on the approved list; and if he will list them.

  Mr. Neubert
  Boarding school allowance is payable to service parents who are eligible for all schools which are registered with the Department of Education and which offer a standard of education which is comparable to that obtainable within the state system. In addition, the school authority or local education authority must manage, control and wholly maintain the boarding facilities.

  Although the Ministry of Defence maintains an internal record of those boarding schools which parents are currently using, and which satisfy the above criteria, this is not a comprehensive list of approved schools for BSA purposes. All schools which satisfy the basic criteria may qualify for BSA. Schools fail to qualify for BSA purposes only if they no longer meet the criteria or when they close. There is no centrally kept record of the changes in the pattern of usage over the last five years but indications are that these would have been almost entirely as a result of schools closing or ceasing to offer the necessary general education, or, conversely, as a result of the appearance of newly established or expanded schools. The choice of a particular school is a matter for the parents. However, the Service Children's Education Authority will on request assist parents in making their decisions. The SCEA visits many boarding schools on an ad hoc basis in order to be able to advise parents on matters of school facilities and curriculum. In giving such advice SCEA also takes account of any relevant Her Majesty's inspector's reports.
  258
  Alternatively, service parents like any others are free to consult local education authorities, ISIS or any other appropriate advisory body.

ENVIRONMENT

  Ordnance Survey (Outdoor Leisure Maps)
  Mr. Andrew F. Bennett
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what information he has as to what plans the Ordnance Survey has(a) to extend the outdoor leisure map series, (b) to issue a second series of outdoor leisure map of Snowdonia, Conwy valley and (c) to use water resistant paper for any other sheets in the series beyond the one for Ben Nevis.

  Mr. Ridley
  Ordnance Survey is continually reviewing its range of maps and services to ensure that the needs of the market are met within the resources available and that the required return on investment is achieved. The outdoor leisure map series is no exception to this and any change in specification on coverage will be dictated by these marketing principles.

  At the moment there are no firm plans to extend the range of outdoor leisure maps but a number of new opportunities are under active consideration. These include the option for publication of a combined Snowdon-Conwy valley map and publishing more Mountainmaster maps of popular climbing areas.

  Press Briefings
  Mr. Grocott
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what guidelines he follows in determining which journalists are invited to press briefings by his Department.

  Mr. Ridley
  This depends upon the matter under discussion.

  Endangered Species
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will take steps to strengthen the law and penalties relating to trade in endangered species following the United Kingdom's first case under the convention; and if he will make a statement.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  Trade in endangered species is already strictly controlled within the United Kingdom under EC Regulations 3626/82 and 3418/83, which implement the convention on international trade in endangered species of wild fauna and flora throughout the European Community. Adequate provisions for enforcing the EC regulations already exist under the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979 and The Control of Trade in Endangered Species (Enforcement) Regulations 1985 (SI 1985 No. 1155). There have been many prosecutions for import-export offences under the 1979 Act, most of which have been successful.

  Orchids
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what action his Department is taking to protect rare species of orchids from extinction by smuggling activities based in the United Kingdom.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  The Department complies fully with the requirements of EC Regulations (3626/82
  259
  and 3418/83) implementing the convention on international trade in endangered species of wild fauna and flora within the United Kingdom when considering applications for import/export permits. Enforcement of the import/ export controls at the points of entry is the responsibility of Her Majesty's Customs and Excise.

  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what international co-operation exists between Governments on the protection of endangered species of orchids; and what steps he is taking to improve this.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  International trade in orchids is strictly controlled under the convention on international trade in endangered species of wild fauna and flora, to which the United Kingdom and over 100 other countries are party. The EC Regulations (3626/82 and 3418/83) implementing CITES within the European Community already impose more stringent controls on many species of orchids than the convention requires.

  Green Belt
  Mr. Wolfson
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment whether his Department's advice to local authorities on the provision of low cost housing in rural areas is related to such areas located within the green belt.

  Mr. Howard
  [holding answer 25 May 1989]: My February statement on 3 February at column 433 did not alter the general presumption against inappropriate development in the green belts. Green belt policy remains as stated in planning policy guidance note 2.

  Most green belt areas are by their nature close to the main conurbations, and conditions are not typical of the generality of rural areas to which the statement was addressed. Special considerations may, however, arise in some of the more extensive areas of green belt away from the urban fringe, particularly in areas where there are many small settlements and it may not be practicable or appropriate to define green belt boundaries around each one.

  In some of these areas local planning policies already recognise that very limited development within existing settlements may be acceptable and consistent with the function of the green belt. It is for local planning authorities to judge whether low-cost housing development for local community needs would fall within the scope of such policies.

  The release, exceptionally, for small-scale, low-cost housing schemes of other sites, within existing settlements which would not normally be considered for development under such policies would again be a matter for the judgment of the planning authority, having regard to all material considerations, including the objectives of green belt policy and the evidence of local need. As I made clear in my previous statement, where sites are released for low cost housing as an exception to normal policies of restraint, it will be essential for the planning authority to satisfy itself as to the adequacy of arrangements to reserve the housing in question for local needs, both initially and on subsequent change of occupant.

FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

  Gibraltar (Incident)
  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what information he has on statements made by Spanish Government officials concerning conflicts between British and Spanish police accounts of circumstances surrounding the Gibraltar shootings; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  The Spanish Government have assured us that the only authentic account by a Spanish official of the events in question is that of Inspector Rayo of 8 August 1988, a copy of which was placed in the Library of the House of Commons on 9 May. No other statement by an official has any validity.

  Soviet Union
  Mr. Canavan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he will make a statement about relationships between the Governments of the United Kingdom and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  In the last four years there has been a major improvement in Anglo-Soviet relations. We have developed a worthwhile and substantive high-level political dialogue. Contacts of all sorts have expanded rapidly, helping to break down the barriers of misunderstanding and distrust. But the recent expulsions have shown that there is still a long way to go before our relations with the Soviet Union reach the level of stability and mutual trust to which we aspire.

  Consular Assistance (Spain)
  Mr. Baldry
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many United Kingdom citizens were helped in Spain last year by consular officials.

  Mr. Eggar
  In 1988, Her Majesty's diplomatic and consular posts in Spain received over 119,000 visitors and received and made over 189,000 telephone calls. A large proportion of the visits and telephone calls were in connection with consular work.

  Our records, which do not fully reflect all the assistance given to British citizens, show the following:

  Number

  Registrations

  17,695

  Passports issued

  6,728

  Passports renewed/exended

  1,876

  Emergency passports issued

  5,619

  Thefts reported by Britons

  5,061

  Births/deaths registered

  1,042

  Repatriations

  26

  Official assistance with self-help

  695

  War Pensioners assisted

  232

  British prisoners visited at least once

  849

  Birth/death certificates issued

  476

  East Germany
  Mr. Thurnham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement about relations with East Germany.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  We would like to develop fuller relations with the German Democratic Republic, but this
  261
  would depend greatly upon progress in that country's fulfilment of its CSCE commitments, particularly on human rights. We shall continue to encourage such progress.

  Nelson Mandela
  Mr. John Evans
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on any diplomatic efforts his Department are pursuing to secure the release of Nelson Mandela.

  Mrs. Chalker
  We continue to urge the South African Government to release, immediately and unconditionally, Mr. Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners.

  BBC World Service
  Mr. Sheerman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what level of funding the British Broadcasting Corporation world service has received in real terms in each of the last 15 years.

  Mr. Eggar
  The total grants-in-aid of the BBC world service in the last 15 years, expressed in cash terms and at 1988–89 prices were as follows:

  Cash terms

  1988–89 prices

  £ million

  £ million

  1975–76

  27·1

  84·9

  1976–77

  30·8

  85·1

  1977–78

  34·0

  82·7

  1978–79

  37·2

  81·4

  1979–80

  42·9

  80·7

  1980–81

  54·9

  87·1

  1981–82

  62·8

  90·7

  1982–83

  70·9

  95·5

  1983–84

  77·6

  100·0

  1984–85

  81·0

  99·5

  1985–86

  90·0

  104·8

  1986–87

  98·9

  111·4

  1987–88

  97·9

  105·0

  1988–89

  114·5

  114·5

  1989–90

  1120·1

  1113·9

  1 Estimate.

  Note: Figures for 1988–89 and 1989–90 exclude provision for FCO-BBC relay stations contract previously funded separately from grants-in-aid: £5·6 million in 1988–89, £5·9 million in 1989–90.

  Egypt
  Mr. Tony Lloyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he has received any reports of human rights violations by law enforcement officials in Egypt; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  We are aware of the allegations in Amnesty International's recent report; and are naturally concerned at any alleged abuses of human rights, wherever they occur.

  Nuclear Arms
  Mr. Menzies Campbell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what is his policy towards the proliferation of ballistic missiles in Third world countries; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  We believe that the proliferation of ballistic missiles in Third world countries can have a262
  seriously destabilising effect, particularly in areas of regional tension. As a founder member of the missile technology control region (MTCR), we have adopted guidelines to control the transfer of equipment and technology. When the MTCR was established in April 1987, the partners urged all states to adopt the guidelines of the regime.

  Iran
  Mr. Teddy Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if Her Majesty's Government will express sympathy to the people of Iran on the death of their nation's spiritual leader; and if Her Majesty's Government sought to be represented at the funeral.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  No, in both cases.

  China
  Mr. Teddy Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will protest to the Government of China about the killing of civilians; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Eggar
  I refer my hon. Friend to the statement that my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State made in the House on 6 June about developments in China.

  Katyn Massacre
  Mr. Harry Greenway
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will initiate talks with Polish and Soviet Governments on the Katyn massacre; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  We see no need to initiate talks. We are following developments closely. We urge the Soviet Union to help establish the facts.

  British Travellers Abroad
  Mr. Greg Knight
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what services are made available by his Department to British travellers abroad.

  Mr. Eggar
  Her Majesty's embassies, high commissions and consulates around the world make available a range of statutory and non-statutory consular services to British travellers. Statutory functions include:the registration of births and deaths
  the solemnisation and registration of marriages
  the performance of notarial acts
  the servicing of documents and taking of evidence
  duties under the Merchant Shipping Acts.

  Non-Statutory functions include:
  the protection of British nationals and British institutions, including assistance in cases of death, illness, arrest, proposed deportation, etc.
  the relief and repatriation of distressed British nationals, as a last resort
  the maintenance of close and good relations with the British community
  the issue of passports.

  Lee Chuk Van
  Mr. Soley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations he has made to the Chinese Government about the detention of Lee Chuk Yan.
  263
  Mr. Eggar
  Following Lee Chuk Yan's detention by police at Peking airport on 5 June, our embassy in Peking lodged an immediate inquiry with the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and made considerable efforts to trace his whereabouts. The embassy subsequently established that he was unharmed in a hotel room in Peking and kept in close contact with him. We have now had confirmation that Lee Chuk Yan was evacuated safely from Peking on 8 June.

  Members of Parliament (Blackmail)
  Mr. Winnick
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs on what criteria he selected(a) the means and (b) the timing to let it be known that the possible blackmail of hon. Members had not been in any way associated with the recent expulsion of Soviet citizens.

  Sir Geoffrey Howe
  The story appeared in newspapers on Friday 26 May. The Leader of the Opposition wrote to me on 26 May to seek a statement of the Government's views. I replied on 26 May, making clear that I should have 264
  no objection if the right hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Kinnock) wished to publish our exchange. He did so on 27 May.

  Mr. Winnick
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what recent statements were made by the Minister of State in his Department, the hon. Member for Bristol West (Mr. Waldegrave) to a BBC correspondent regarding possible blackmail of hon. Members by Soviet agents; and if he will make a statement.

  Sir Geoffrey Howe
  I have nothing to add to the statement issued by my hon. Friend on 2 June.

  Eastern Europe and Soviet Union
  Mr. Boswell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he expects to respond lo the report of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs on Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  The Government's response to the Select Committee report was published today in the form of a Command Paper.

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

Intelligence and Security
Viscount Hanworth Viscount Hanworth asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether all embassies, including their own, in foreign countries, try to gather the maximum useful intelligence information they can and whether all governments on occasion may find it necessary to deport some individuals who are too successful in this regard.
The Minister of State for Defence Procurement (Lord Trefgarne): My Lords, it has long been the practice of successive British governments not to comment on intelligence and security matters. I do not propose to depart from that convention today.
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that uninformative reply. Bearing in mind our better relations with Russia and also bearing in mind that all countries bug foreign embassies if they can, when it is necessary to deport someone from an embassy is it not better to keep the fact quiet and not allow it to become a major diplomatic matter? Surely the Minister will agree that it is hypocritical and even childish to do so?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I am sorry if my original Answer was not clear. I do not believe that I can help the noble Lord further.
Lord Wigoder: My Lords, will the noble Lord not consider making some comment when the time is right?

Congo: Investment Promotion
11.7 a.m.
Lord Merrivale Lord Merrivale asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will make a statement on the visit from 22nd to 27th May last, of the Prime Minister of the People's Republic of Congo, HE Mr. Ange-Edouard Poungui, particularly in relation to bilateral aid and the investment promotion and protection agreement.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, the Prime Minister's programme included discussions with Ministers covering the full range of bilateral topics, including UK aid. An agreement with Congo on investment promotion and protection was signed during the visit. We welcome the valuable contribution to our relations with Congo which this visit has made.
Lord Merrivale: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his reply. Can he confirm that the Government will ensure that the contents of this agreement are
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widely known—I am particularly thinking of members of the CBI and selected chambers of commerce—as Britain is the first country with which the Congo has signed such an agreement and at present only three British firms have significant investments in that country?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I certainly agree that the main thrust of the agreement should be as widely known as is appropriate and I shall see what additional arrangements can be made to achieve that end.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, is the Minister aware that President Mitterrand announced some time ago that France would be writing off as much as £1·5 billion of debt owed from 35 African countries including the Congo? Will the Minister say whether Her Majesty's Government have any plans to relieve African countries such as the Congo of debt following the example set by President Mitterrand?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I am not sure that the formula which the French have decided to adopt, which no doubt meets their own requirements, is necessarily the best in every circumstance. We like to target our aid to those countries in greatest need in a way which we think will do the greatest good. That is why we have a slightly different approach to these matters than our French friends. We have a small aid programme as regards the Congo, as the noble Baroness will be aware. But the Congo is not among the poorest countries of Africa. Its annual income per head is something in the region of 1,000 dollars which may not sound very much but is substantially more than in many countries in that part of the world.
Lord Merrivale: My Lords, as my noble friend mentioned aid, were there any discussions regarding increased aid involving the British Council? And were there any talks regarding the resumption of work on the major Brazzaville to Kindamba road as the management contract was initially awarded to a British firm?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, on the last project to which my noble friend referred, I believe that that is a matter between the authorities in the Congo and the companies concerned. I do not believe that Her Majesty's Government are specifically involved. The discussions which took place in the course of this visit were wide ranging and a number of issues to which my noble friend has referred were touched upon. However, the important outcome was the signature of the agreement to which I referred earlier.

Ivory Trade: Taiwan
11.11 a.m.
Lord Northfield Lord Northfield asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will make representations to the Government of Taiwan, a country which imports substantial quantities of ivory, to join the

1059
international ban on ivory imports now being proposed by the French and United Kingdom governments.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, we are deeply concerned about the illegal poaching of African elephants for ivory. Her Majesty's Government have no formal dealings with the authorities in Taiwan but your Lordships will have heard the good news yesterday from the EC Environmental Council, which has agreed to important new restrictions on the import of ivory into the Community. My noble friend Lord Caithness has announced an immediate national ban on the import of all forms of ivory into the United Kingdom.
Lord Northfield: My Lords, will the noble Lord convey to the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, the congratulations of the whole House on the part he played in Luxembourg yesterday evening in securing this European Community-wide ban on the importation of ivory?
As regards Taiwan, since we have no diplomatic relations with that country I understand that the matter is difficult. However, could not the Government ask the United States to use its good offices with Taiwan—it has a stronger influence there than we have—to encourage the Government of Taiwan to join the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species and to join in this present ban on ivory?
Secondly, can we not encourage the Taiwanese Government ourselves, through our trade relations with them—they wish to have greater relations with the West and perhaps recognition by the West—and say to them that this civilised action would do a great deal to help strengthen relations with the West?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, we shall certainly lose no opportunity to convey informally the necessary messages to the Taiwanese; but I think that perhaps the most important message will be the EC agreement to which I have referred. That will leave everyone outside the ambit of that agreement in no doubt as to our views.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, I join my noble friend in congratulating the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, on the success of his initiative yesterday. Is it not a fact that a conference on international trade in endangered species is to be held in October and that Her Majestys' Government will be represented? Would not that be an appropriate forum in which to raise the problem of Taiwan and other similar countries?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I have no doubt that all these matters will be discussed at the conference later this year to which the noble Lord referred. The important objective to be achieved now is to put African elephants into what I believe is called Appendix I of the conference agreement so that they have the total protection that Indian elephants have currently.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, is not the Minister aware that the endeavours of the Government are the only hope for saving elephants? For example, this morning on Radio 4, after the nine o'clock news, there was a programme which indicated that the elephant population will decrease by hundreds of thousands every year. Therefore, the endeavours of the Government must command the support of everyone who does not want to see the extinction of elephants. Everyone should support the British Government.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for those observations. It is the case that the African elephant is undoubtedly an endangered species. If something is not done it will in due course disappear altogether.
Lord Northfield: My Lords, the Minister did not reply—I am not complaining—to my point suggesting that the Foreign Office might try to obtain the good offices of the United States in putting pressure on Taiwan. Will the noble Lord convey that suggestion to the Foreign Office?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I believe I replied to that question in my reference to the informal contacts.
Lord Plunket: My Lords, perhaps I may put this point to my noble friend the Minister. A total ban on the sale of ivory could be highly counter-productive and have considerable adverse effects on countries such as Zimbabwe where the highest animal conservation practices are carried out. It would result in the illegal sale of ivory and would cut off an extremely important source of revenue to that government.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, my noble friend raises an important point. When I was in Zimbabwe recently I was offered some ivory statuettes, which I did not buy because of my rejection of that proposition. I was told that the ivory came from a respectable source. Indeed, there are respectable sources of ivory because elephants have to be culled from time to time, not least in Zimbabwe, as my noble friend indicated. However, the essence of the problem is that the African elephant is undoubtedly a threatened and endangered species and something must be done.
Lord Auckland: My Lords, although there are no diplomatic relations between Taiwan and this country, is my noble friend the Minister aware that there is a Taiwan trade centre in the West End? Is it possible for Her Majesty's Government to make representations through that source?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I think the Taiwanese authorities will be in no doubt as to the view of the United Kingdom Government and indeed the people of the United Kingdom on this matter. They now have the view of the people of the European Community as well and it is up to them to take the right action.

Dock Work Bill
11.18 a.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Transport (Lord Brabazon of Tara): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. This is a short Bill of eight clauses and two schedules which seeks to bring the dock labour scheme to an end promptly, but in a measured fashion; which will extend to former registered dock workers and their employers the same employment rights and obligations as apply throughout the rest of British industry; and which makes special statutory provision for redundancy payments for dock workers in the three years following the abolition of the scheme.
These proposals to end the dock labour scheme are timely. There can be no doubt that the scheme and its controls were drawn up in response to employment conditions in a ports industry which was vastly different from the one we see today. There is mounting evidence that British industry and consumers, the ports themselves and their surrounding areas are bearing a costly burden to sustain a unique statutory regime which applies now to about 9,000 registered dock workers; that is, fewer than one in four of all workers in our ports industry. The evidence also indicates that the scheme is no longer necessary to provide dock workers with terms and conditions of employment comparable to those enjoyed by workers in industry generally.
Dock work today is a far cry from the labour-intensive industry, inherently prone to widespread casual work and poor employment conditions, which gave rise to the Dock Workers Regulation Act 1946 and the first dock labour scheme in 1947. In those days 80,000 dock workers handled a smaller volume of cargo than is handled by around 13,000 dock workers in scheme and non-scheme ports today. In scheme ports there were nearly 2,000 poorly organised employers compared with 140 today.
In 1947 the case could be made for a scheme: first, to control and then to reduce reliance on casual labour; secondly, to secure sufficient labour for a labour intensive ports industry following conscription during the war and competition for labour in the period of immediate post war reconstruction; and thirdly, to promote the efficient performance of dock work. Indeed the 1946 Act gives equal weight to all three of these factors as grounds for a scheme. But in the intervening 40 years, a series of developments has invalidated the scheme's claim to serve the objectives originally set for it.
First and foremost, dock work now relies on a skilled, permanent workforce to operate the expensive, complex machinery now required by efficient ports to sustain a competitive service. Containers, roll-on-roll-off ferries and specialised machinery to handle bulk cargoes have replaced manpower with machines and have smoothed the fluctuations in business which were once a feature of the industry. This has been entirely to the benefit of employment conditions for dock workers and
1062
provides the best guarantee that there can be no return to the casualism of old. Employers in scheme ports have acknowledged that times have changed. That is why those who employ 93 per cent. of registered dock workers have given individual written assurances that there will be no return to a system of casual labour.
Ports free from the scheme's restrictions, which barely existed 25 years ago, now employ nearly one in three dock workers. They demonstrate that a combination of high output per worker, good training and broad-based skills, so that dock workers can perform a variety of tasks, provide the basis for secure and well-paid jobs. No-one has challenged that non-scheme ports pay competitive rates, train well, provide decent employment conditions, and employ consistently very little casual labour. Indeed, it would be difficult for the unions concerned to do so, since by and large they negotiate terms and conditions in both scheme and non-scheme ports.
There is no reason why terms and conditions in non-scheme ports should be affected by the ending of the scheme and no reason why dock workers in efficient scheme ports should not negotiate equally good deals locally as their colleagues in non-scheme ports do. Today's good terms and conditions are the product of the technology and economics of a modern ports industry just as much as casualism and poor pay was inherent in yesterday's industry. That is not to say that some tasks in ports, as in any other industry, are not performed most efficiently by part-time or contract labour. But the weight of evidence indicates that today's port business and modern dock work have similar requirements to those of industry in general and no longer merit the special restrictions imposed by the scheme.
The second relevant development is that under successive governments, the rights and obligations of employers and employees generally have become far more extensive than those which existed when the first and subsequent schemes were implemented: these range from the right to written particulars of terms and conditions of employment to procedures for notifying redundancy and redundancy payments, to minimum periods of notice and to the right not to be unfairly dismissed. Under the scheme, registered dock workers and their employers have been excluded from these developing provisions because it was assumed that the monopoly of dock work which it conferred and the joint control over hiring, deployment, and redundancy exercised by unions on dock labour boards achieved the same ends by a different means.
I do not believe that a case can be made in principle for maintaining a significantly different employment regime, based on collective control rather than individual rights, for this small section of industry now that our general employment laws are as extensive as they are. There is evidence that the power that the scheme has given unions, directly or indirectly, to block decisions on recruitment and dismissal has not always been used justly in practice.
The discriminatory recruitment practices sustained under the scheme are well known. In the case of dismissals, there must be grounds for

1063
doubting the basis of a system which has seen local boards reinstate 100 out of 122 dock workers—five in six—whose dismissal was sought by employers between 1980 and 1986 in eight major ports. That is not to say many of those decisions were not justified; but in many cases the outcomes might well have been different had they been subject to independent review. By comparison, of claims against unfair dismissal brought by workers to independent industrial tribunals which apply to the rest of the industry, about one in three is upheld. This degree of difference cannot be explained by a greater tendency for port employers to seek the unwarranted dismissal of their workers. On the contrary, faced with these odds, only a desperate port employer would contemplate seeking the necessary permission from a board to dismiss an employee.
These are among the reasons why the Government consider that at best the scheme is irrelevant to the provision of reasonable employment terms for dock workers and, at worst, sustains practices which are positively unfair. These reasons alone would provide grounds for the scheme's abolition were it not for the weight of evidence of its substantial penalties in terms of lost business, lost jobs, lower efficiency and disruption to trade through strikes.
The seeds of these failings lie in the nature of the scheme itself. Its provisions illustrate perfectly how it gives precedence to control of employment rather than the encouragement of business capable of sustaining efficient jobs in an increasingly competitive industrial climate.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for giving way. In the light of what he has just said about the terrifying impact of this appalling scheme, can the Minister explain why it was that only two months ago, he, the Minister himself, said on the Floor of this House that it is not the intention of the Government to do anything about it? Why is the scheme so terrible now when it was not then?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I am not sure that it was I who said it, but I shall come to that point later. I know that a number of questions have been asked about the scheme and we said at the time that we had no plans then to deal with it. I can assure noble Lords that I never attempted to justify the scheme. Perhaps I may continue.
The scheme gives the National Dock Labour Board and its local boards, with equal numbers of union and employer members, wide powers to dictate the numbers of people employed in dock work and influence the way they are employed. The scheme and arrangements linked to it provide for a legal monopoly over dock work. Only employers registered by the boards can do business in dock work defined by the scheme and they face criminal sanctions if, without the board's permission, they use anyone other than a docker registered by the boards to do that work.
A legal definition of what is dock work and where it takes place, the nature of dock work and the areas subject to the scheme's constraints are largely those defined in the original 1947 scheme subject to court
1064
rulings in disputed cases. As regards the control of numbers by local boards, an employer who wishes to recruit a dock worker or reduce the number he employs can do so only with the approval of the local board. In respect of the control of discipline by local boards, as I have said, the scheme's provisions override normal legal requirements and dock workers can be dismissed from employment or disciplined under the scheme only with the approval of a board.
I turn to the subject of a "job for life". In practice, employers, individually or collectively, are responsible for paying a registered dock worker, whatever the state of their finances, until he volunteers for redundancy. That is as close to a guarantee of lifetime employment as any industry could conceivably provide. No other industry is burdened by such a formidable set of statutory constraints and bureaucratic procedures enforced by a system of statutory joint control. The consequences are there for all to see.
First, the legal monopoly has sustained restrictive practices in scheme ports unparalleled in the rest of industry. Because employers have to employ registered dock workers for any task and in any area defined by the scheme, that places the unions in a formidable position to dictate excessive manning levels, and to insist on payment for dock workers whether or not they do a given job. No one has denied that the practices to which this gives rise—"bobbing off" home when there is no work to be done or "ghosting" while someone else does the work—are current and widespread. Some have defended them by calling them protective practices or by claiming that, with the right training from employers, "ghosting" dock workers could have done the job themselves. But the fact that it can pay employers in scheme ports to bring in contractors and pay "ghosts" rather than train their own workers is itself a condemnation of the scheme. This illustrates perfectly how the inefficiencies in the deployment of workers built into the scheme, reduce the incentive to train by reducing the return on investment in skills. Worse still, coupled with the scheme's employment guarantees, the monopoly underpins the belief among dock workers that their jobs do not depend on offering a competitive and reliable service to customers, but rather on the scheme's restrictions.
Secondly, the control of numbers has prevented employment levels from responding to business needs. The performance of scheme ports has been hard hit by the requirement to bear the additional cost of surplus labour, which has amounted to nearly one in five of their labour force at times during this decade and still stands at 10 per cent. Surpluses of this order are unnecessary to deal with fluctuation in port traffic. Scheme ports themselves have operated with surpluses of far less than 10 per cent. in some years, while ports outside the scheme do without them by deploying workers on a wide range of tasks which vary with the volume and nature of business. Employers in scheme ports have no incentive to extend the range of tasks undertaken by registered dock workers because that would risk bringing new activities within the scope of the scheme.

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The extent of surplus labour has far more to do with the job guarantees which the industry was obliged to concede under threat of a national strike in 1972. These mean that in practice, even if an employer goes out of business, other employers in that port are required to take on any workers who would otherwise lose their jobs, even if they already have too many workers themselves. The White Paper describes just such an instance in Liverpool. This has happened and continues to happen elsewhere; for example, in London.
The net effects have been that remaining scheme port employers have been unable to reap the full benefit of lower manning levels made possible by technological change over the past 20 years. And the taxpayer has had to step in with support for ever-increasing levels of voluntary redundancy inducements needed to encourage registered workers to leave the industry. At £25,000, the present level is more than twice as high in real terms as that of 1977, and to date the taxpayer has contributed £420 million to voluntary severance alone along with £350 million of support for the docks of London and Liverpool.
At the end of the day, the number of registered dock workers has fallen dramatically from 45,000 in 1970 to about 9,000 today, because no scheme could halt indefinitely the application of new techniques to port work. But there is no doubt that the scheme delayed that process: by enabling unions, through their monopoly of dock work in scheme ports, to block the introduction of containerisation in the late 1960s; by giving them the bargaining power to set a high price for the acceptance of containerisation through a 35 per cent. pay deal in 1967; and by preventing the lower manning levels which containerisation permitted until voluntary severance subsidised by the taxpayer was introduced in 1972.
The tonnage handled by each worker has improved, therefore, because of the revolution in cargo handling techniques. But it has not improved at the pace set by those new techniques or by competitors outside the scheme. It has also required hefty support from the taxpayer. That is why scheme ports have lost most ground to their non-scheme competitors in precisely those markets, notably the container and roll-on-roll-off trade, which has developed most in recent years.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, in order to back up his own argument and convince some of his own supporters, will the Minister give some figures? Can he say which ports governed by the scheme have lost money? How much did they lose, and how do they compare with the other ports? Will he give us some detail of losses and profits for the registered ports?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I shall come on to many of those points if I may be allowed to. The noble Lord is down to speak in due course. He can make his points at that stage. I shall be delighted to answer those points at the end of the debate.
Thirdly, joint union-employer control has failed to deliver an improvement in industrial relations. In fact, the prerogatives of joint control and expectations they have generated have themselves
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become the grounds for disputes. Writing in 1983, the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, along with his colleagues Mr. Duncan and Mr. Redman, said:
"In the period 1949–1973 the docks was the most strike prone industry in the United Kingdom".
I am glad that we can agree on that. Since then the position has improved, but not markedly. The average number of days lost through disputes per dock worker in scheme ports remains, persistently, many times the national average, and many times the average for transport industries. Scheme ports have averaged three disputes per week over the past 20 years, and have lost more than 4 million days of output through strikes. That is a poor record. To say that the number of days lost through disputes in scheme ports is low now by the standards of the past is no mitigation. Our standards have improved, and the fact is that scheme ports remain far worse than the norm.
The progressive tightening of the scheme's restrictions and job guarantees over time—more often than not under threat of national strikes as in 1967 and 1972—have not brought industrial peace. They have brought new grounds for disputes and requirements which have become increasingly difficult to reconcile with the needs of an industry which has become more open to competition both at home and abroad. By comparison, ports outside the scheme have progressed, and where disputes have arisen they have been resolved locally. They have never given rise to national disputes of the kind fostered by the scheme.
Lastly, there is the impact of the scheme not on the ports themselves but on the areas surrounding them. As employment in dock work has fallen it has become increasingly important for areas nearby to attract job creating investment in port-related work, notably in transport and warehousing. But the scheme's archaic definitions of dock work and the areas to which it applies remain even after the docks have long gone. The scheme's restrictions can still be applied, for example, to all river front activities relating to dock work along the Thames from Teddington to its estuary. Many scheme ports are located in inner city areas—notably Liverpool, Glasgow and Hull—where the Government are committed to lifting all unnecessary barriers to jobs. The scheme's controls are just such a barrier.
There is no doubt that the prospect of those restrictions has deprived those areas of investment and our White Paper provides some examples. There are others. But there is no means of establishing how many investors have simply gone elsewhere. The study by Wharton Associates mentioned briefly in the White Paper estimates that 50,000 jobs might be created in the absence of the scheme's restrictions based on the experience of a sample of non-scheme ports' performance. But such estimates by their very nature must be tentative. What is clear, however, is that any sensible investor, faced with a choice, would be reluctant to accept the scheme's controls, including the prospect of criminal prosecution if the monopoly is broken. That is why our proposals to abolish the scheme have been warmly welcomed by members of the Association of British Chambers of Commerce from scheme port areas, the CBI, and by

1067
associations representing road haulage and warehouse owners. Lifting the scheme's restrictions can only improve the employment prospects of the areas concerned.
To say that ports subject to the scheme's regime, and a prey to its consequences, do not incur a substantial penalty is to ignore reality. Employers have estimated that the scheme adds 20 per cent. to their labour costs and that is entirely plausible given the average scale of surpluses, the constraints and practices sustained by the scheme. The transshipment survey recently published by the Department of Transport shows just how much the scheme places its ports at a competitive disadvantage. It found that Tilbury and Southampton were charging nearly 30 per cent. and 40 per cent. more respectively for container handling than non-scheme Felixstowe. Only Felixstowe comes close to matching competition from the Continent and it has done so without the £770 million of subsidies from the taxpayer which scheme ports have received. Subsidies merely divert resources to underpin inefficiency.
Cost differentials, poor quality of service and proneness to disruption are at the heart of why scheme ports have lost substantial business to non-scheme ports which now account for nearly a third of our trade by volume and more than a half by value. And where the business goes the jobs go too. Employment in scheme ports continues to decline while jobs in non-scheme ports have been created.
The scheme ports of Tilbury and Southampton have lost trade to Felixstowe, Portsmouth and other non-scheme ports on the south and east coast; the scheme port of Aberdeen to non-scheme Montrose and Peterhead; Hull and Goole to non-scheme wharves on the Humber and Trent. Non-scheme ports on the west coast—Heysham and Holyhead—have grown while Liverpool has continued to decline.
Time and again, neighbouring scheme ports have lost out to non-scheme counterparts. That cannot be explained, as the Opposition have sought, by the shifting pattern of trade which has brought more business for south and east coast ports. Existing scheme ports in that area were well placed to benefit from this but have failed to do so: in just 20 years non-scheme ports in the same area have captured about 35 per cent. of such trade, starting without the advantages of existing deep water harbours and investment. Since 1970 those non-scheme ports have achieved a 325 per cent. increase in their business while scheme ports have managed only a 26 per cent. increase in an area where trade has grown hugely. Such striking differences in performance can only be explained by a fundamental inability to respond to change and compete on the part of the scheme ports concerned.
The Government have considered the mounting evidence of the scheme's deficiencies and costs, and the options available in the light of the established positions of the unions and employers. Having done so, the Government decided their plan and published
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their proposals on 6th April. The provisions of the Bill which puts those proposals into effect are as follows.
Clause 1 abolishes the current 1967 scheme, repeals the legislation which underpins it and abolishes the 20 local dock labour boards, which administer it locally. However, the National Dock Labour Board will continue to have powers to make provision for the training and welfare of dock workers until its dissolution.
Clause 2 gives the National Dock Labour Board a duty to wind up its affairs promptly, and requires it to comply with directions from the Secretary of State in connection with that duty and its remaining powers. Provision is made for the board to dispose of its assets at less than market value with the permission of the Secretary of State and the Treasury. The purpose of this is to enable the board (composed as now of unions and employers) to influence the industry's future provision—for example, in the fields of training and welfare—by giving it a degree of flexibility over the disposal of relevant assets. Those in the industry who have already paid for the board's assets through levies on their business will have every incentive to take over facilities which meet the industry's needs and those of its work force. The clause also provides the Secretary of State with the necessary powers to dissolve the board.
Clause 3 allows the board to be replaced if it fails to comply with directions from the Secretary of State in connection with the exercise of its duties and powers. Clause 4 writes off all outstanding liabilities of the board for loans they have received from Government and provides for the board's running costs during the transitional period.
The intention to write off any outstanding loans of £44·5 million to meet the cost of dockers' voluntary severance payments was announced by the Government in 1985, in another place following an earlier write-off in 1982. The net liabilities and running costs of the board during the transitional period are expected to be in the region of £6 million. We believe that it is right for scheme ports to be relieved of the levy, which this statutory scheme imposed, from Royal Assent. That means that the Government should meet any outstanding costs incurred by the board, in the course of its wind-up, that are not covered by the sale of its assets—for which employers have already paid through the levy.
Clause 5 provides for any former registered dock worker who becomes redundant within three years of the ending of the scheme to receive redundancy payments on a far more generous scale than those available to most other employees. Initially the maximum payments will be some 40 per cent. higher than those which are available under the existing normal registered dock workers severance arrangements. After only 15 years' service former registered dock workers will be eligible for redundancy payments of £35,000 if they lose their jobs in the 18 months after the scheme is abolished—and £20,000 if they lose their jobs in the subsequent 18 months. The cost of these payments will be shared equally between the Government and

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the individual employer concerned. These payments are in addition to any entitlements under the registered dock workers' own occupational pension scheme which makes available substantial early retirement pensions from the age of 50 onwards. Those pensions entitlements are unaffected by the abolition of the scheme. The detailed arrangements for redundancy payments have been set out in draft regulations which will come into effect on Royal Assent.
Clause 6 extends certain provisions of the Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act 1978 to people who were registered dock workers immediately before Royal Assent. Registered dockers will acquire the individual right to receive written particulars of their terms of employment, which the scheme previously denied to them, and will have the whole of their period of registration—whether or not they were working—taken into account for the purposes of establishing their rights under the Act.
Clause 7 and Schedule 1 repeal all legislation connected with the scheme, and in doing so extend to dock workers and their employers individual employment rights and obligations from which they were previously excluded. These include the right not to be dismissed unfairly. The transitional provisions of Schedule 2 pay special attention to the position of workers on the temporarily unattached register, established under the scheme, to ensure that on Royal Assent they acquire the rights and obligations, including access to redundancy payments, that workers in the employment of a permanent employer would have.
Clause 8 provides for the Bill to come into effect on Royal Assent, with the exception of provisions which come into effect on the dissolution of the National Dock Labour Board.
I should also mention that the abolition of the scheme has no bearing on the obligations of employees in scheme ports under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. The Docks Regulations 1988, under that Act, introduced by the Government on a proposal from the tripartite Health and Safety Commission, place comprehensive and detailed requirements directly on employers in all ports—in or outside the scheme—for ensuring adequate health, safety and welfare provision. The National Dock Labour Board and local boards are not involved in meeting those requirements and their abolition will have no bearing on health and safety arrangements for which employers will continue to be responsible. As I have indicated, the Bill makes provision for the board to dispose of its own medical and welfare facilities in such a way as to give those involved in the industry every opportunity to make continued provision in accordance with the industry's needs and legal requirements.
I have taken a little time to explain the provisions and consequences of what in another place has been called, unjustly, a one clause Bill, with a provocative intent. Far from bringing the dock labour scheme to a peremptory end, the Bill's provisions illustrate the extent to which the Government have sought an orderly and fair end to a statutory scheme which has
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long outlived its usefulness and now serves only to damage the majority of our major ports through the practices it perpetuates.
When this House discussed a Question relating to the dock labour scheme tabled by the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, on 24th April, he expressed doubts about the substance of the case against the scheme. If I have still failed to convince him, I am glad to say that the case has been widely accepted within British industry and by a range of informed commentators.
The Bill has secured substantial majorities at both Second and Third Readings in another place, including support from Social and Liberal Democrat Members. It has emerged from Committee in another place unamended, after lengthy scrutiny of the first clause which Opposition Members regarded as central to the Bill. All the amendments tabled were debated well within the timetable allowed.
During those Committee proceedings it emerged finally that the Opposition's policy was to seek an extension of a statutory scheme to successful ports like Felixstowe which have flourished outside its grip. I can think of no more transparent admission of the costs imposed by the scheme than to propose that other thriving ports should suffer the same fate. But I can conceive of no more irresponsible a conclusion for our ports' industry, British consumers and the taxpayer who bear the scheme's costs.
The Government's proposals for the abolition of the dock labour scheme, and the extension of normal employment rights and obligations to the ports to which it applies, are no more than a recognition that the ports industry has transformed itself through technical progress. It now has the right to be treated as any other industry of the 1990s, so that all ports can face the sharper competitive challenges of the single European market and other forms of transport, on equal terms. That can only be to the benefit of our economy, scheme ports themselves and the communities they serve.
The Government have been challenged less for the substance of their proposals than for the manner in which they were made. But only Parliament is equipped to revoke a statutory scheme to which it gave rise. In the circumstances of this scheme, where over the years unions and employers have taken up irreconcilable positions and where established union policy, reiterated unequivocally—publicly and privately—has been to oppose its abolition or amendment with a national strike, prior consultation could not have been in the national interest. Faced with the need for overdue change in scheme ports, the Government's duty has been to act decisively through Parliament to abolish the scheme and its statutes promptly in order to minimise disruption.
The Government regret the decision of dock workers in scheme ports to plan strike action. I hope that they will come to realise soon that they are depriving no one but themselves of a decent future. Parliament will not be swayed by their action: only ports outside the scheme will gain at the expense of their pay and jobs, and the nation will cope with any disruption they cause and will emerge with the prize of a more competitive ports industry, released from

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the scheme and better able efficiently to serve its needs and those of port workers.
I hope that registered dock workers will look to the experience of ports outside the scheme and ask themselves why they cannot benefit from locally agreed terms and conditions in the same way as those ports. That indeed is already the case for the two-thirds of scheme port employees who are not registered dock workers.
In the publication that I quoted earlier the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, observed, wisely, in respect of registered dock workers' response to the end of casualism with strikes, that:
"This may be taken to indicate that in a industry which is as traditionally conflict ridden as the docks virtually all change is likely to be met with hostility because of fear of its consequences".
The Government believe that registered dock workers have more to fear from the continuation of the scheme than from its abolition in the prompt but orderly manner proposed by the Bill. Your wholehearted support for the Bill can help to convince them to overcome that irrational fear of change and embrace the new opportunities which a future without the scheme can bring. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time—(Lord Brabazon of Tara.)
11.51 a.m.
Lord McCarthy: My Lords, the Minister has referred to the fact that I sought to debate this subject with him before. That is true. On that occasion he is quoted in Hansard as saying that he had no intention of making a Second Reading speech. Indeed he did not make a Second Reading speech on that occasion. I congratulate him on the succinct, or relatively succinct, Second Reading speech that he has made today. He made that speech in 33 minutes, whereas the Secretary of State in another place made an almost identical speech—I was following it as the Minister was speaking—using almost the same words and same phrases, only he took 37 minutes, and so we have an improvement. Although the Minister used identical arguments, there were of course the identical gaps in those arguments. Although he said the same thing, he did not attempt to meet any of the objections which were made on Second Reading and subsequently in another place.
The Minister may well say in his defence that he made the same speech because it is the same Bill. He is right. I have looked in great detail at the two Bills, one going into another place and one coming into the House, and they are, as he says, identical in every way. It is not just that the Opposition did not succeed in any amendments, I cannot see that the Government did so, or attempted to do so. It is unprecedented in my experience to have a Bill that is not amended in any way. Of course the Minister may say, and I have no answer to him, that the Bill is unprecedented. It is absolutely unprecedented!
I should like to ask the Minister this question. When before have we ever had—it has not been during my time in the House—a Bill of this importance which is not in a manifesto; not in the
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Queen's Speech; not in a Green Paper on the future of labour legislation which was published in March of this year; and denied to be planned or intended by the Prime Minister in January? On 25th February the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, said that he had no idea of introducing it. It was unknown to the Secretary of State on 20th March—16 days before the Government announced it in a White Paper published on 6th April—but it had a Second Reading on 17th April and it is intended to be carried into effect by the end of July. It is totally unprecedented.
I challenge the Government to tell us of another occasion in peacetime when a Bill of this importance was introduced in that way, in this rush, with this urgency, totally unamended and in this form. We are therefore perfectly reasonably asking, as the noble Lord, Lord Mellish, asked, what is so urgent? What is so secret? What is so unprecedented? Why do we have to have the Bill produced at this moment in this way?
I have listened, as I said, to the Minister's arguments, and I have made some preparation because he used the arguments of the Secretary of State. I made it six arguments. I shall not take 37 minutes, or even 34 minutes, to deal with those six arguments, because five of them can be easily disposed of.
The first argument that the Minister put forward is that the cost of the dock work regulation scheme to the taxpayer has been far too excessive. The problem there is that we do not know what the cost has been. New figures have been introduced today. The Secretary of State said (Hansard col. 43 of 6th April) that since 1947 the scheme had cost the taxpayer about £1 billion, or £23 million a year. In the White Paper, the Government say £700 million or £ 16 million a year at today's prices. We do not know whether that is more or less than the £1 billion that the Secretary of State had put forward because we do not know whether he was talking about yesterday's or today's prices. Today the Minister mentioned a figure of £430 million. We are puzzled about what the scheme has cost, who is paying for it and who is receiving the benefits.
The second thing we can say about the scheme is that it is much better and cheaper than the subsidies and severance payments paid in comparable countries on the mainland of Europe to update their own dock work industry. Far greater sums of money have been spent to transform and bring up to date dock work in countries closely associated with this country.
The third point that we can make is that that vast sum of money, whether it be £1 billion, £700 million, £400 million, or something else, has not gone to the dock workers in the form of a golden handshake. The Minister mentioned certain figures. His White Paper tells us that since 1972 the average severance payment for dockers has been £12,400 a year. That is less than a year's pay at the present rate of average earnings. That is worth about 40 weeks' pay to a docker. That is not a golden handshake; it is not a copper handshake; it is a low-cost deal. If we are talking about £1 billion or £700 million, we must

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assume that a significant part of those sums went on subsidies to employers, and I do not complain about that. Far larger sums went in investment to modernise the docks in other countries. That is why they are more efficient than the docks in this country. It is not to be said that that sum of money has all gone to the workers.
The second argument—I must say that it is remarkably cheeky of the Government to use it—is, as the Minister said, that the scheme has not created job security. That is right: 90 per cent. of the labour force has gone since 1971; 65 per cent. of the labour force has gone since 1979; and 31 per cent. of the labour force has gone since 1985. The Minister has the sauce to come to us today and talk about a job for life. On present trends, I calculate that 50 per cent. of registered dockers will be out of a job within four years. Some job for life! It has also not resulted in high earnings. The available figures suggest that for dockers the average earnings return is 22·5 per cent. above male manual earnings. That for the degree of skill which, as the Minister said, is now required in dock work, is not an example of golden wages. We are not talking about Fleet Street. We are not talking about the Inns of Court. We are not talking about a labour monopoly which pays off large sums of money. We are talking of reasonable wages for, as the Minister says, highly skilled work.
The third argument is the one about industrial unrest. I am always pleased—from my point of view it does not happen often enough—when Ministers quote me. He said that in a book which I published covering strike statistics from 1945 to 1973 we said that it was a strike-prone industry. Of course we did. It was, until 1973. Kenneth Knowles, in his pathmaking study from 1907 to 1945 (of which ours was merely a carbon copy) said that it was even more of a strike-prone industry from 1907 to 1945. International strike statistics suggest that docks are a strike-prone industry throughout the world. The remarkable thing is the improvement in strike statistics since 1975, and the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, accepted and referred to that in this House a few weeks ago.
What has happened since 1975 is that we have had complete decasualisation, as a result of the decisions of that time. When I attempted a second edition of the book, I discovered not only that I could not put dock workers in as one of the most strike-prone groups, but that there are so few strikes now that the Department of Employment has stopped collecting separate statistics. So there are no detailed figures to tell us whether the industry is strike-prone or not; they are all mixed up in transport.
The fourth argument is that the mere existence of the scheme blights the dock areas. The Minister mentioned that. Of course that is based upon the highly dubious conclusions which the noble Lord mentioned of the notorious Wharton Group study which was part of the decasualisation campaign of the National Association of Port Employers. As has been argued, it is based on unrepresentative samples of small firms in the docks. It assumes an unrealistic growth rate of 4 or 5 per cent. and is based on the subjective assessment of the employers themselves.
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Even then, the survey produces the figure of 50,000 new jobs in the dock areas if the national dock scheme were abolished by 1992. That makes 312 jobs a year in each of the registered areas. That is the assessment by the Government and the employers of the employment consequences of abolishing the national dock labour scheme.
The penultimate argument of which the Minister made a great deal was that the scheme as it stands has no defenders, that the Labour Party does not defend it as it stands and that the Labour Opposition want to amend it. However, I do not agree with the noble Lord's interpretation of what they want to do. He said that the only people who defend the scheme and are prepared to go on strike in defence of the scheme are the Transport and General Workers' Union.
Two things could be said about that. In the first place, if the scheme, unamended, has no defenders, why not amend it? There can be very little resistance—apart from that of the Transport and General Workers' Union which I shall come to in a moment—to the reasonable amendment of the scheme. In another place, the Opposition presented a number of reasonable amendments which we shall try to put again in this House. The Government were not prepared to listen to any of them. So it is not very helpful for the Government to say that the scheme, unamended, has no defenders because they are the people who will not amend it.
Secondly, Mr. Todd and Mr. Connolly have stated over and over again—indeed they have stated on oath in the course of the disputes and the injunction hearings—that they have never had formal amendment proposals from the National Association of Port Employers. They have had talks; they have had waffle—although they have not had that for three or four years because during those years the policy of the National Association of Port Employers has been abolition. But not at any time, say Mr. Todd and Mr. Connolly, has the Transport and General Workers' Union received official proposals for amendments to the scheme. But they could be brought forward today. They could be brought forward now, they could be suggested by the National Association of Port Employers, and the employers could be assisted by the Government and do something about the dispute in the docks industry.
So we come to the sole argument of substance which the Minister used to me when he refused to provide me with a Second Reading speech when we debated this subject earlier. As I understand it—and if I get it wrong I am sure that the Minister will tell me—it is that the mere existence of a statutory scheme reduces the efficiency of labour in the docks, and inevitably automatically results in low productivity and high unit labour costs. Therefore the only thing to be done is to remove the statutory restrictions. It automatically follows; it is a matter of principle.
There are many things we could say about this. First, we could point to the curious fact that the figures for productivity, on my calculation—and these are not my figures but those of the Department

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of Transport published in the House of Commons reference sheet 89/7—suggest that productivity per worker is actually higher in the registered schemes than in the non-registered schemes. They suggest that, for example, in 1987 in the scheme ports 152,501 tonnes were shifted by 27,950 workers. Only one-third of them, by the way, were actually part of the scheme, but the ports were in the scheme. They produced 5·6 thousand tonnes each. However, in the non-scheme ports 51,737 tonnes were shifted by 12,105 workers, producing 4·2 thousand tonnes each. In other words, in 1987 productivity in terms of output per man seems to have been 33 per cent. higher in the registered ports than in the unregistered ports.
How is this to be explained? It is not to be explained by squeezing profits. We know that last year the largest employers in the ports put their profits up by 46 per cent. The salary of their chairman went up by 26 per cent. to £98,000, not 25 per cent. above average earnings. So it has not been done at the expense of profits. How has it been done, if efficiency is so low in the registered ports?
Further, if productivity is so high, has it been done by putting up earnings? As I said, earnings have only been 22·5 per cent. above average for male manuals. How does it come about that the monopoly power of the union is based on 90 per cent. of the labour being got out of the industry? It is a strange union with this enormous statutory power that puts up with earnings 22·5 per cent. above average and gets rid of 90 per cent. of the labour force. A strange kind of power. Perhaps we should have that kind of monopoly power in some other industries.
How is it that on the Continent (which we are always told about) where they are so much more efficient than we are in this country, they have very similar and in some ways much more extensive systems than the statutorily based decasualisation that we have in this country?
I give another example. The restrictive practices White Paper is quite frankly a disgrace for a great department, the Department of Employment. It is the worst thing they have ever produced. How is it that the restrictive practices White Paper produces examples, almost all of which pre-date 1983? I take it they are virtually all copied from the recent pamphlet produced by the Member for Boothferry, Mr. David Davis, who is an executive director of Tate & Lyle, which are members of the National Association of Port Employers. The pamphlet is called Clear the Docks. This is another precedent for the Minister. I have never known a Government White Paper pinched in this way from a Back-Bencher's pamphlet for the Conservative Political Centre. That is the level to which the Government have reduced our once great Civil Service.
So we come to the fact that the Government base the argument on a priori bigotry. There must be inefficiency; there must be mal-utilisation of labour. Even if productivity is high and prices are reasonable, there must automatically be low productivity. I wish to make four points about that.
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The first is that, as any first year student of economics will say, nothing whatever follows in economic terms from the fact that an employer or a group of employers does not have unrestricted access to the external labour market. That is exactly what happens in registered docks. The employers do not have unrestricted access to the external labour market. After all, that occurs in many places. Only doctors can operate on patients; only people with a public service vehicle licence can drive buses; one has to be a member of the majority party before one can become Prime Minister. There are restrictions on access to the external labour market which are bound into the labour market. Whether that is bad or good, and whether it holds up quality or efficiency is not something that can be decided by dogma; it has to be investigated. The Government will not investigate it because they already know the answer.
Further, restrictions on access to the external labour market which are at the heart of the national dock labour scheme have not prevented raging product competition in the docks. To be fair to the Government, I do not think they have suggested that. The registered firms compete fiercely with the non-registered firms. Each registered dock firm competes with dozens of other registered dock firms in individual docks. There is, in fact, more effective competition in the product market in the docks than in large parts of private industry. There is considerably more competition in the docks than exists in the national dailies for example, and very much more than the Government left, or created, or thought was necessary when they denationalised British Gas, British Telecom, the British Airports Authority, or than is the case with the proposed privatisation of water.
So if it is competition that the Government are worried about, I must say that there is now, given the national dock labour scheme, more effective competition in the docks than in large parts of British industry. As I have said, in the docks it is not a case of a monopoly but of certain regulations which affect the terms under which competition is conducted. Those regulations are very similar, although somewhat stronger in some aspects, to the kind of restrictions that operate wherever there is collective bargaining. Perhaps that is the problem. The employers in the registered docks must operate certain common conditions. They must pay into a common pension scheme. They must operate common training provisions. They must pay not identical rates of pay as there is local negotiation, but similar rates of pay. Perhaps it is that to which the Government object.
It is amazing that the point I am about to make has not been made before. If the Transport and General Workers' Union has too much power in the docks, and if it is argued that that power necessarily derives from the statutory provisions of the National Dock Labour Board, I suggest that the Minister goes away and reads the legislation. Listening to the debate, one would never have thought that the Transport and General Workers' Union had direct nominating rights over a relatively small minority of members of the National Dock Labour Board and the local labour boards. However, that is the case.

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We are not talking about 2X plus Y. This is not a case of majority Bullock. The Transport and General Workers' Union has four nominees on the National Dock Labour Board.
The majority of members of the National Dock Labour Board are either the nominees of employers, or they are the nominees of the Government. If the Government do not like what the National Dock Labour Board does, they do not have to abolish it. The Government must do what is done everywhere else, and what is done in the BBC and in the health service. All the Government have to do is to ensure that all the Government nominees are "one of us". That option is available to the Government. They do not need to abolish the National Dock Labour Board. All they have to adopt are the normal processes of filtering of nominees through No. 10 Downing Street. It is all perfectly simple. However, the Government will not do that because we are in the grip of a dogma.
No figures are published. The noble Lord, Lord Mellish, has asked for figures. I have never seen any figures. We do not publish figures which show the actual costs of handling the same type of cargo in registered and unregistered docks. We do not publish figures to show the make-up of those costs, and figures to show what percentage of those costs relate to labour costs or any other costs, or historical costs. We are in the grip of a dogma. We know, because the Prime Minister tells us, that all regulations, especially regulations established by previous governments, whether Conservative or Labour, and whether they deal with the environment, public utilities, the education system or the labour market, are bad. However, regulation established by this Government is good. All regulation established by previous governments is bad. What is especially bad—this is the sin of this scheme—is regulation which does anything to help trade unions. That is what the national dock labour scheme does. It gives the TGWU a minority position as regards deciding certain parts of the conditions of employment of its members. Therefore, the TGWU representatives are little more than negotiators. They are, even in a minority position, on both sides of the bargaining table as it were. That is the problem.
Once that comes to the notice of the Prime Minister—presumably she never noticed it before—even if it is immediate, sudden, unprecedented and there are no White Papers, Green Papers or blue papers, the touch papers are lit immediately and we have to go forward with the Bill. That is what this provision is about, and that is what the joint regulation argument is against. If it means that we have to move into a situation where this country could be in the grip of a national dock strike, no one will be more sorry than those of us on this side of the House. If it turns out to be the case that, as a direct result of this Government's legislation, it is absolutely impossible for dockers to have an official lawful strike, what will the Secretary of State propose? I do not say that the Government intend that result. The very worst things they do are not intentional, and they intend some pretty bad things.
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What did the Secretary of State propose a week or two ago? He proposed legislation to stop dockers having an unofficial strike. Whether he goes for the unions or whether he goes for the workers, that is what he proposes. He is determined that, one way or another, this Bill will go through. However, there is one sense in which the Prime Minister is a chameleon. She agrees with Shaw when he said that on issues of principle, if a man listens to reason, then he is lost. No man is to be allowed to listen to reason on this issue. We do not agree with that, and we oppose this Bill.
12.17 p.m.
Lord Rochester: My Lords, when the Statement announcing the Government's intention to abolish the dock labour scheme was repeated in this House on 6th April last, I made it plain that my noble friends and I considered that in today's conditions the scheme had outlived its usefulness. Again, when on 24th April the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, asked the Government in his Unstarred Question whether, before proceeding with the Dock Work Bill, they would refer to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission the allegedly restrictive labour practices in the scheme ports, I dissented from that proposal and said that in our view the present arrangements should now be brought to an end. That remains our position.
As the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, has reminded us, the dock labour scheme was designed to remedy the ill effects of old style casual working and the chaotic conditions of employment that existed in the ports 40 years ago. However, its effect has been to prolong practices that are both monopolistic and restrictive. Those who enjoy its privileges in regard to discipline and employment protection do so at the expense of others and to the detriment of the country's trade. The chief beneficiaries of the scheme seem to me to be our international competitors.
The scheme's main provision, that only registered dockers can carry out dock work, is enforced, as we have been told, by criminal penalties involving potential imprisonment. That is utterly alien to today's industrial relations climate. Particularly damaging are the customs of "bobbing" or "welting" and "ghosting", to which the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, has referred. There is no need therefore for me to dwell on them further now.
Perhaps the most harmful of all the restrictive practices is where an employer goes out of business and his employees are transferred automatically to another company, even though that firm will almost certainly lack any work for them to perform. The difficulty of achieving reductions in the number of employees is a disincentive to recruitment and expansion and has produced an unbalanced and ageing labour force.
It seems plain from figures published by the Department of Transport last month that scheme ports such as Tilbury and Southampton are at a competitive disadvantage with, for example, Felixstowe, which handles similar cargo. Admittedly there has recently been some improvement in

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productivity in ports covered by the dock labour scheme. However, there is surely no denying that because of the cost differential involved on both the east and west coasts a great deal of trade has been diverted to non-scheme ports.
Frankly, perhaps I may say to the Labour Opposition that I should have been more impressed with the stance they adopted in this matter if, instead of continuing to defend the present arrangements, they had had the courage to acknowledge that those arrangements are now out of date and that in principle the time has come to see that all British ports compete on an equal footing.
Having said that, I must repeat what I said when the Government's initial statement was made. Rather than introducing the Bill the very next day the Government should, in keeping with normal practice, have given other interested parties an opportunity to express their views before arrangements were finalised. It was surely at least possible that, faced with the Government's firm intention to make radical alterations to working arrangements in ports covered by the scheme, the Transport and General Workers' Union might itself have come up with suggestions that could have influenced the Government to make certain modifications in their detailed plans and thus enable the transition to take place on a more generally acceptable basis and without undue disruption. As things now stand it is plain from the events of yesterday that many registered dock workers in a number of the larger ports have proved unwilling to await the outcome of a prolonged legal process before taking unofficial industrial action.
I am aware that the current dispute is sub judice pending the appeal to this House in its judicial capacity. I shall therefore say only that on these Benches we very much hope that there will be no national strike and that in their own long-term interest dockers who are now taking unofficial action will return to work.
More generally, however, I feel bound as a liberal and as a democrat to express my disquiet concerning the extent to which under current legislation employers are now able to obtain injunctions, frequently ex parte, restraining strike action not covered by trade union immunity. People are thus increasingly being denied the collective right to withdraw their labour within the law.
To return to the Bill, I have said enough to indicate that on these Benches we support its underlying principle. However, as I made plain when the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, introduced his Unstarred Question six weeks ago, it should not be thought that we shall be altogether unsympathetic to the Bill being amended in certain respects in Committee. We shall wish to examine carefully the precise terms of the redundancy compensation arrangements which are to be made available to registered dock workers for a time after the dock labour scheme has been abolished. We are also concerned about the absence of any provision in the Bill for the training and welfare of dockers after expiry of the transitional period between the date of the passing of the Act
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and the date on which the National Dock Labour Board is to be dissolved in accordance with Clause 2.
In paragraph 3 of Clause 1 it is stated that although the functions of the National Dock Labour Board relating to training and welfare under the 1967 scheme will no longer apply,
"the Board shall continue during the transitional period to have power to make provision for the training and welfare of dock workers (within the meaning of the Scheme), including provision for port medical services".
However, no statutory provision is made for these matters following that period. The noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, will know that on these Benches we are particularly concerned to improve both the quantity and quality of training generally in the national interest. In this case there seems to be a strong reason for amending the Bill to ensure that adequate arrangements are made for the training of people who continue to be employed as dock workers and for the retraining of those who are made redundant. There are also other matters which we shall wish to consider on their merits in Committee.
In conclusion, it is one thing to do away with the dock labour scheme in its present outdated form. On that point, as I have made plain, we support the Government. But it is quite another thing to put nothing at all in place of the existing scheme. My noble friends and I believe that we need a national strategy for our ports taking account of the impact upon them of the Channel Tunnel. That strategy will not, in some mysterious way, emerge spontaneously from the operation of market forces. In our view it needs to be initiated by the Government. We would give this Bill a much more enthusiastic reception if we could receive some encouragement on that point. However, I fear that we shall look for it in vain.
12.27 p.m.
Viscount St. Davids: My Lords, I wish that I could agree with the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, on this issue but I find it almost impossible to do so. I do not agree that the legislation will cause damage to the dockers. I believe the contrary. I also believe most strongly that the Dock Labour Acts as they exist are doing a great deal of damage.
Ports do not exist in a vacuum. On the contrary, they are the very sensitive interface between sea-going shipping on the one hand, and inland transport—road, rail and inland waterways—on the other. Any trouble in the docks sends sea-going shipping scurrying to other ports and causes chaos inland. In this House we have always believed that it would be a great advantage if more of our transport could be taken off the roads and transferred to rail or inland waterways. The dock labour Acts have been one of the great kill-pigs that have stopped us.
Perhaps I may explain. There is a map at the beginning of the White Paper which shows where the ports are located. It is totally useless because it does not show their inland connections. If those are added the position becomes clear at once. The scheme ports have excellent rail and inland waterway communications and very short and very good road communications. The non-scheme ports have almost

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no inland waterway communications at all. Their rail communications are much longer; their road communications longer and more exiguous still. However, it is on roads that most of their cargo goes. In other words, the Acts have had the effect of swinging the cargo on to the roads.
I want to quote one case. I have the permission of the firm concerned to do so. I want to quote it because I think that it shows so many of the evils that have developed in the latter years of the existence of the Acts which, I continue to say, at one time did good. There is a firm called T&D Murrell of Southall in Middlesex. They are barge owners. They own major seagoing barges trading between our east coast ports and the Continent and smaller inland barges trading westwards from London.
A number of years ago, the barge owners found themselves with a paying trade bringing to London from the Continent half-finished goods that were transferred into their barges and taken out to the factories to the west to be finished. The trade grew quite considerably. Suddenly, after some period of operation, the London Dock Labour Board said that it deemed the work to be port work. Once so deemed, it was illegal for the barge owners to operate unless their work was done by dock labour. All the bargemen were trade unionists. They complained that, although the dock labour board deemed that barge work was port work, if the cargoes were put on to road transport that was not, for some reason or another, port work and could therefore be done legally. The barge workers rushed to their union for protection. The Transport and General Workers' Union refused to protect them and the infuriated bargemen left the union.
The trouble was that the firm had become subject to a fishing expedition. I should explain that. When the dock labour boards found that they had so debilitated their docks that they did not have sufficient work for everyone, they went fishing to see what jobs there were around the periphery of the docks that they could deem to be dock labour. Any firm that found itself so deemed had to cease work or become illegal. It had three alternatives. It could smile sweetly, say, "Yes", and pay up the extra costs if it could afford them; it could close down and move elsewhere; or it could stand up and fight. To stand up and fight was an enormously long and expensive process. The unfortunate firm would have to pay all its own costs and the unfortunate taxpayer the costs of the dock labour board.
On top of that, the dock labour board had a very powerful tool. Knowing that it was unlikely to succeed before the relevant tribunal, it could simply hold up the proceedings until the firm which was not trading but which was incurring mounting costs, simply surrendered. To their honour, the Murrells decided to fight. It took two years for their action to reach the tribunal during which period one wharf owner, with no trade going into his wharf and naturally wanting some revenue, turned the wharf into the bijou restaurant that it now is.
Finally, the Murrells reached the tribunal. The case took four days. I sat through every minute of
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it. At intervals I talked to all the principals concerned, their lawyers, witnesses and everyone there, in order to inform myself better so that I should be authoritative when it came to addressing the House. Naturally, the Murrells won. The London Dock Labour Board and the union said that they were wrong. The Murrells sent a barge down to the Port of London to be loaded. It was not loaded. It was blacked, totally illegally. The Murrells complained to the employers, the Port of London Authority. The authority said that it could do nothing because the dock labour board would prevent it from disciplining the dockers.
In the upshot, the only thing that the Murrells could do was to divert their seagoing barges to Colchester. This they did. The barges traded to Colchester where their cargoes were cheaply loaded into road vehicles. That cargo still reaches its destinations out to the west of London but does so in heavy road vehicles travelling along the much over-used roads to the north-east, north, north-west and west of London. That is where all the cargo goes.
I wish that this was a single case. It is not. There are hundreds like it. What has happened is simple. Excellent Acts which once served a purpose have degenerated and are now perverted by bloody-mindedness and sheer illegality. It is time that they went.
12.37 p.m.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, I welcome the introduction of the Bill, but I gently come to issue with my noble friend when he said that it was timely. My own view—as I think he knows because I have urged it upon him—is that it should have been introduced years ago. If the Government are to be subject to any criticism, it is for the considerable delay that they have allowed to elapse during which the condition of the industry has, with the continuation of the scheme, become worse and worse. However, I am told that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repenteth than over 99 just Back-Benchers who need no repentance. One therefore welcomes the Minister when he comes forward today to propose the Second Reading of this important and interesting Bill.
The reaction of noble Lords opposite was completely predictable. I have always thought that the Labour movement was wholly misnamed because there is nothing more conservative, in the sense of resistance to change, than the Labour Party and the trade union movement that dominates it. There is a great feeling of annoyance on the Benches opposite at the abolition of what is a rather splendid old relic of the extreme and damaging trade unionism of 40 years ago which did so much damage to the competitive economy of this country. I have always thought that the dock labour scheme was a relic of the thought and approach of those days. It is an extreme relic, continuing into extreme old age and preserved for no apparent reason. It is only natural and human that members of the Labour Party and the unions which dominate them should resent it. I am sure that your Lordships will fully understand that.

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However, when it comes to talking about a national dock strike, as did the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, I think it is necessary to introduce a note of realism. There is absolutely no need for a national dock strike. The port employers have offered to conduct local talks with union representatives all over the country but for some reason—and perhaps one can guess what it is—the Transport and General Workers' Union has forbidden local talks and says that it will only have national negotiations. I believe that noble Lords are entitled to hear why that is so from the Front Bench opposite. The obvious suspicion must be that the union wants a national scheme which would recreate on a semi-voluntary basis the scheme which the present Bill proposes to abolish.
Surely from the practical point of view of the very different circumstances pertaining in the different ports, which vary enormously from the great major ports down to the small ones in various parts of these islands, there is everything to be said for trying to reach agreement locally and everything to be said against disrupting the working of those ports and damaging their economies by a wholly pointless strike, whether that strike be, as one might suspect, in reality—
Lord McCarthy: My Lords, if I may—
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, perhaps I may finish the sentence. The noble Lord will understand that sometimes one becomes involved in long sentences. If the country is to be disrupted in that way, why should this be necessary? I shall now give way to the noble Lord.
Lord McCarthy: My Lords, the noble Lord asked why the Transport and General Workers' Union wants industry-wide regulation. The answer is that the T&G knows that the only way it can negotiate with employers for minimum standards—minimum standards which will prevent casualisation, minimum standards on piece work, hours and wages—is by negotiating with all the employers through the National Joint Industrial Council. That council has been in existence for 150 years and long before the T&G.
This dispute is because the employers will not give an undertaking to the T&G to discuss all those problems through the established, existing machinery. If they would, there would not be a strike.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, the noble Lord has confirmed my suspicions exactly. It is perfectly clear from what he has said—no doubt he speaks for the union—that the union is taking this line and is prepared to subject its members and the places where they work—
Lord McCarthy: My Lords, I must—
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: Wait a minute! The noble Lord must restrain himself. The union is prepared to subject the country and its members, who of
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course will be the losers, to such a damaging strike simply because it wants to recreate something like the present Dock Labour Board and is not prepared to do as has been done in so many other industries; namely, negotiate with local employers in line with local needs so as to secure that there is a good system working.
The noble Lord has mentioned casualisation. I understand that there is not the slightest risk of that. In fact, I understand that the local bodies of employers concerned have given undertakings in, I believe, at least 90 per cent. of the cases that there will be no casualisation. If the noble Lord now wants to intervene again, no doubt he will.
Lord McCarthy: My Lords, the noble Lord cannot really get away with that. It is not that the T&G has decided this matter unilaterally. There has been a ballot—it was regulated by law—on whether the workers should accept the proposals of the national employers' association, and 90 per cent. of the voters said no. So it is not the T&G which has decided; it is the T&G's members.
The problem about casualisation is that what the union wants is an industry-wide agreement that there will not be casualisation, and one cannot get that at local port level.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, let us take it calmly and by stages. As I understand it, in the first place, apart from the union's veto there is nothing to prevent its local branches from discussing matters with local bodies of employers. The responsibility for a ban on that and the consequences of that ban lie straight and directly on the union. That should be clearly understood.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, will the noble Lord give way?
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: No, my Lords, not until I have finished with the noble Lord's noble friend. I shall then be delighted to give way.
Secondly, no doubt the union wants a nation-wide agreement. It is a perfectly normal demand but if its members—given freedom, which they are not given at the moment—are prepared to negotiate on a local basis with employers who are prepared to negotiate locally, why on earth should it forbid that unless its motives are, as I have suggested, in fact an attempt to reconstruct the dock labour scheme on a so-called voluntary basis? The noble Lord, Lord Mellish, wants, I believe, to come in.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, I simply want to say that the noble Lord is making extraordinarily heavy weather of all this. As he seems to know all about it, can he explain to the House why the employers refuse to talk nationally?
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: First of all, my Lords, I do not speak for the employers.
Lord Mellish: Does he not, my Lords?
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: No, my Lords; I do not have that privilege. The noble Lord is proceeding on a false hypothesis. Secondly, because this matter has become public property I simply ask the question: why should the willingness of the employers to negotiate locally be rejected by the central authority of the union which forbids its local branches from entering into local discussions with employers? That is the point.
The noble Lord said that I was making heavy weather of this matter, but this is an enormously important issue. I am perfectly clear that if local negotiations were allowed to take place solutions would be reached, at any rate in a great many places, and a national dock strike would be avoided. On the other hand, if these discussions are not permitted and are vetoed by the authority of the union, we are heading straight for a national strike with the many dreary and damaging consequences to the national economy, the union's members, the ports and everyone concerned. If the noble Lord does not think that that is a matter which it is worth making heavy weather of, then I am afraid I disagree with him.
To continue my comments on the Bill, I should like to cite a very good example of how the present system works. My noble friend the Minister will recall this case because I raised it with him and he dealt with it in his usual charming way. The port of Grimsby is a scheme port. It is also a fishing port of some importance. A few months ago when the fishing boats came in with fish there were no scheme workers available to unload the cargo. The fishermen were quite prepared to unload their own fish but were warned that to do so would not only be illegal but would be committing a criminal offence. That is indeed the present state of the law. It is the law that when registered dock workers are not available the fish either have to be allowed to decay or are taken away to some other port that will deal with them, because those on board the trawlers would be subject to criminal penalties if they unloaded the fish. Surely, that is not a state of affairs which your Lordships are prepared to justify being allowed to continue.
It is indeed a state of affairs which for some considerable time has caused some of us to feel that the need for a Bill of this kind is very real indeed. It is for that reason—and I have given just one small example—that I support very strongly the proposal to do away with the scheme.
I return to the point about casualisation. I fully understand the natural anxiety of people who for a very long time have been in a specially protected position—unusually protected compared with most of their fellow citizens—when they see that system of protection being removed. It is understandable and human to feel alarmed about it. I am quite sure that they and those concerned are right to seek guarantees against a return to the old casual system which was indeed the genesis of this scheme. All the evidence we have at the moment is that there is very little, if any, risk of that, but the matter certainly requires to be handled with tact and humanity. I am quite sure that the Minister will do just that.
12.50 p.m.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, I believe that I am entitled to speak on this Bill as it concerns dock workers. I left school at the ripe old age of 14; I left on the Thursday and on the Friday I started work with the dock industry. At the ripe old age of 16 I became a branch secretary—believe it or not, my Lords—again in the dock industry. At the age of 21 I became the youngest trade union official ever appointed by Ernest Bevin, again in the dock industry. Then the war came—over which I had no personal control—and I was called up. Noble Lords will not be surprised to hear that I was drafted into a dock operating company. For six years I was associated with the dock industry even during the war. I started as a sapper and ended up as a major, which shows that I must have known something about the docks, if not a lot. On demob. leave I was selected as the local candidate for a constituency which I then represented for 37 years which primarily concerns dockers.
I therefore start my opening remarks by hoping that the House will at least allow me to say that I have a viewpoint about the dock industry. Perhaps I may also put on record that my father was an 1889 dock worker. I have a medal at home to prove it. He also took part in the events in 1912. I should like to say to the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, that even in those days—1889 and 1912—men had the right to go on strike. I am not so sure that they have a right to withdraw their labour today under the existing legislation. It is a very odd situation. My father withdrew his labour.
I am very glad that the Liberal representative is here. If the noble Lord has not already done so, he ought to read the Second Reading debate of the Dock Workers (Regulation of Employment) Act 1946. There he will read a speech by a very famous Liberal in those days—a man called Clement Davies—a very good speech it was too. Of course the best speech was made by my right honourable friend George Isaacs. It was a speech that was for me, speaking now, full of emotion because it described the dockers of yesteryear and their fight for survival. That was what it was all about. The yesteryear of the dock worker was simply appalling. The noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, brushes it aside and speaks about decasualisation and that men can never return to casual work again. I shall come back to that.
That Act came into being in 1946. It had universal party support. The Tories supported it. The noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, was in the House of Commons in those days and said nothing against it then. That Act went through all its stages with unanimous support because everyone recognised that the dockers had been treated like cattle. Men were picked out by gangers who decided whether or not their face fitted. That was the background, with thousands of dock workers trying to obtain jobs where only a handful existed. They suffered great hardship.
I shall make no more mention about the past except to say that it was why the original Act came into being. Noble Lords will understand why I—who

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have lived a whole life in the dock industry—am absolutely bewildered and horrified that this Government intend to repeal that legislation that was introduced then for the reasons that I have given and will put nothing in its place. I have heard it said that the employers have assured us—it was stated by the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, and the Minister—that there will be no return to casual work. Who are these employers? Why has it not been put in writing? Why is it not in an Act of Parliament? Why does the Minister tear up what his predecessors thought was vital and important? These are very elementary questions, but it is right that they are asked. Why do we ignore the past?
What about training and safety? Why is that not written into an Act of Parliament? The National Dock Labour Board for all its faults—no one suggests that it was perfect—provided schemes that looked after men and ensured that they were capable of doing their job. The trouble with this debate—and I do not mean this personally; I wish to make that abundantly clear—is that it is an economic debate and argument. What are the economics of dockland? What will make profits better? It is almost a Civil Service argument; an economic argument.
This is where I part company with the Conservative Party and the Government because they confine their argument to the economics of it and they are not a bit concerned with people or individuals. They matter nothing to them. I say this to the Liberals. If the Liberals have any tradition at all—and I think that they have on reading the Clement Davies speech—I do not honestly see how the noble Lord and his friends can go into the Lobby and support the abolition of this legislation because nothing will be put in its place.
This is an economic argument. I put this on record. The employers have made no proposals about any amending scheme. I believe that we shall hear from the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, who has a long association with the dock industry and is one of the port employers. It is said publicly by the unions that at no time have they ever been approached by employers to amend the scheme. When the noble Lord makes his speech he can give us chapter and verse on the situation. The story has got about that the unions have been very backward and would have nothing whatever to do with any amendment. Let us hear from the employers and the employers' chairman. Let us hear when they made the proposals and what they were. I say specifically that at no time was amendment of the scheme as we now know it suggested by the employers.
The noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, made heavy weather (if he will forgive my saying so) about local negotiations, and why the unions are not prepared to do that. I am not here to defend the unions. I am no longer a member of the Transport and General Workers' Union although I was during my time as a Member of the Labour Party. My history on this matter is fairly well known. I shall not go over that except to say that I recognise straightaway the union's argument that there should be national negotiations. The Bill replaces a scheme
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that is national. What are we talking about? We are not going to say, "Let any little area decide for itself." Let us do this nationally. That is what a union is for. There is nothing immoral about that. It is simply said to the people at local level, "Do not come to any firm agreements at local level. Let us discuss this nationally." The unions were prepared, anxious and willing to consider an amendment to the scheme.
I have stated that this is an economic argument. I intervened with great respect to ask the Minister whether or not the registered ports had made a financial profit—money. He did not answer. Let us hope that he is obtaining some figures now and will be able to answer. My understanding is that those ports have made a profit. We had this argument that if we did not have the scheme they would make a bigger profit. What kind of argument is that? Once again they do not give a tuppenny damn about the people who work there, live there and have given their lives to the work. They mean nothing. I ask again: will we have some figures to show whether or not these so-called registered ports made a profit?
My noble friend Lord McCarthy made a brilliant speech, especially for somebody who is not a docker. It was brilliant, and he asked relevant questions too. We want figures to argue the case, as it is now poised on the edge of an economic argument. Let us have those figures.
Is it not a fact, for example, that the registered ports employers gave themselves vast increases in personal wages? Did they? Is that true? Is it a fact that the profits in the registered ports were 30 to 40 per cent.? If they were, what more do the employers want; 50, 60, 70, 80 per cent.? One can understand why dock workers are suspicious. If one considers the whole history of the dockworker and then suddenly finds that all that was done in the past is to be abolished for reasons that even the Tories would not oppose and right through Tory governments not one single attempt has been made by the Tory Party to amend that because they recognise the justice of it.
Indeed up to a few months ago—I have the details here. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham—we all know him—was asked by the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, when the Government intend to abolish the dock labour scheme. For a layman and a man who is not associated with the employers, he is very bright. He is always asking the kind of questions that they love. The Secretary of State said:
"My Lords, the Government are well aware of the views of many Members of your Lordships' House… However, as has been made clear in another place, there are no plans at present to change the operation of the scheme".
I asked the Minister:
"can the Minister give more detail about the alleged irregularity of the unions with regard to the implementation of the scheme? Is it not a fact that unions have not made trouble for employers and developers? If that is so, why do we not leave well alone?"
The noble Lord, Lord Young replied:
"it is true that there has been comparatively little action in the ports, but I believe that that has much more to do with the economics of running the ports… However, that is a matter on which those who run the ports are far better qualified to speak than I".
The noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, intervened in that argument. That is how I got to know, apart from

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when I knew him in the House of Commons, that he is a very important port employer, and he will be able to refute some of the things, if they need refuting, that I have been saying. One of the most important remarks during that exchange of questions was a question from the noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden. She asked a very bright question. She said:
"I am glad to learn that there are no plans at the present time to change the scheme. May I seek an assurance that if at some time in the future there are plans to make changes these will only be embarked upon after full consultation".—[Official Report, 25/2/1988; cols. 1287–1288].
That was a very sensible question, was it not? It was very sensible decent and ordinary; but the Minister's reply was no, sir. That was not very bright, was it? What about that, my Lords? "We shall not even consult". This is about an industry that has been so badly treated down the years. Its whole history stinks.
I end by saying that the Minister's speech today was prepared for him by the civil servants. I do not know whether his heart was in it. I do not think that his department or those responsible wanted this scheme to be abolished to begin with. It is concerned with the whole idea that it is jobs for life. When it was first introduced 60,000 men were affected: today there are 9,000. It is a funny old job for life, is it not? The Government have to show their friends, and mostly their friends who are employers particularly in dockland, and say to them "We are on your side". To the Government the scheme has no relevance and it is being destroyed. The Government have not given the House any figures for profits or losses in any of those ports. I demand that today, because they have to justify what they have done in view of the history of yesteryear.
1.5 p.m.
Baroness Phillips: My Lords, perhaps it is not necessary to intervene even briefly after the masterly speeches we have heard from this side of the House. I should, however, like to pick up the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, on one matter. I should hate it if he was not present at any debate. He made a rather curious point that as Socialists we are conservatives and do not like change. I remember the fantastic changes that the Labour Party brought to this country. I remember when the railway workers saw for the first time that the community and the workers owned the industry for which they had slogged so long. That was only one of many. It was the Labour Party which changed the whole system of our national health and education services. We have changed for the better.
This is a negative Bill. All the Government can do is to abolish. They abolished ILEA. They abolished the GLC. They want to change the water industry so that people can make profit from it. They want to change the electricity arrangements so that people will make profit. There is no service. The changes that Socialists bring about are changes to make life better for people. The changes that the Conservatives bring about invariably make life much more untenable.
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I intervene because I have the greatest respect for this group of dock workers. Like the noble Lord, Lord Mellish, I must invoke history. I worked in that borough in the 1930s. I have seen men weeping, having stood on the docks from 5 o'clock in the morning, after somebody had appeared and said, "I will have you, and you and you and the rest of you can go home". That is obscene and wrong and cannot be justified by anybody, not even the Members of this Government.
Now we are told that this is irrelevant because what happened then will not happen again. It will happen again because the work will be flung back into the same haphazard situation. When we talk about jobs for life and that certain people have closed shops, I would cite the group mentioned by my noble friend Lord McCarthy, the judges. They certainly have jobs for life, much better paid jobs. Do they have a closed shop? They definitely have a closed shop. One would think, often in this House, that it was only people within certain groups in industry that had closed shops. The professions have had closed shops for centuries and still continue to operate them. Let us forget that as an argument.
This kind of employment is essential. If we were in a difficult situation we could do without judges, funnily enough. We could do without public relations agents and even bankers. But we could not do without the people who unload the necessities of life. I wonder how many of your Lordships have seen what kind of a job this is. When I had the privilege of being a Minister in a Labour Government I remember seeing some of the dreadful jobs that other people have to do. It should be compulsory for everybody to see other jobs that they certainly would not want to undertake themselves. This is one of them. This is an essential group of workers, we must make no mistake about it.
There will always be fluctuation in traffic requiring varying numbers of men and varying kinds of skills. So it will always involve a haphazard and casual form of employment. The employers have made it absolutely clear by their statements and actions that their objective is to reduce the core labour force and just employ the remainder on a casual basis. They have made that clear. I noticed that the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, mentioned that an intake of younger men was necessary. So we are back to my favourite bugbear—what is wrong with older workers? Is there evidence that these workers have not been doing the job? Young workers may not want to come into an industry of this kind where there is an indefinite future, never more indefinite than it is now.
I notice that there has been some reference to competition and the open market in 1992. When I did some research I was interested to discover that most European countries have dock labour schemes. Therefore, far from us being part of the general 1992 pattern, we shall be a one-off.
To what end? I beg the Government to consider, as my noble friend Lord Mellish said, that if they are going to abolish this—and they will because their numbers enable them to do anything however unrational and unfair—they must put something in its place. They must create efficient control of

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manpower in the industry. There are the other factors which no one has mentioned; namely, training, medical services and other matters which went with the dock labour scheme. I plead with the Government. This is something about which many people on this side of the House feel very strongly. I think that it is some indication of the indifference of the other side of the House that very few have bothered to attend this debate.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: There are not many of you either.
Baroness Phillips: My Lords, I feel that this is the time for the Government to show that throughout this Bill they can accept some very practical amendments.
1.11 p.m.
Lord Crickhowell: My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Mellish, pointed out, I speak to the House today as an employer, although I must say that I am a recent and inexperienced employer. I speak as a director of Associated British Ports, the country's largest port employer and the company with the largest number of ports covered by the scheme. Therefore, I speak with a very obvious interest which I declare. However, I speak with a great deal more direct knowledge than I had when I was in government, and that is a point to which I shall return in a moment.
This has been a very interesting debate so far. Perhaps I may say to the noble Lord, Lord Mellish—and it is probably true to say that there are very few Members of this House who are so widely respected as the noble Lord, not least by those of us who sat with him in another place—that I listened with understanding to the considerable emotion with which he spoke about the world in which he was brought up and the often terrible conditions which undoubtedly existed at the time. I am not in the least surprised that the House voted unanimously for a dock labour scheme when it was introduced. I hope that I should have voted for it at the time. However, the nub of the argument advanced from this side of the House is that the conditions have altered and I intend to say a few words about the changes which have taken place.
The noble Lord, Lord Mellish, asked specifically about the course of negotiations which have gone on. I am not sure that I am qualified to speak because I have not been involved long enough to speak with authority. However, I can say quite openly that we as a company do not believe that the scheme should be replaced and again I say that for reasons which I shall spell out. Therefore I do not wish to disguise that.
The noble Lord spoke about profits. I must say that I am glad that the company of which I am a director, which of course was privatised a few years ago, has now moved into a state of profitability from the parlous condition in which it operated and which I observed in Wales as Secretary of State in the old days. However, I believe that it is perhaps an
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indication of the kind of situation which we are addressing in this House that half of the profits of the company today are derived from very substantial property development and investment in the old ports. The need for a good deal of that property investment in the vast empty areas once occupied by the ports, I believe, is at least part explained—and I shall put it no higher than that—by the damaging consequences of the dock labour scheme.
The noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, who spoke from the Opposition Benches, in many ways made an effective speech which was a joy to listen to. He spoke of the damaging potential of a strike. However, the course of action which he advocated that the Government should have pursued would have ensured that any strike which may take place would have had the most damaging potential imaginable for the country. I cannot think of a situation more likely to have led to a prolonged strike and damaging consequences than a prolonged period of discussion and negotiation leading up to the Government's decision. It is not as though there have not been discussions about this issue for many years between the employers and the employees, between government and government organisations and everyone involved. The views of all parties are quite clearly understood and known.
The noble Lord spoke about effective competition. If you have one hand tied behind your back by regulations, you may feel that competition may be effective but not very fair. One of the problems is that the scheme ports have had to compete with one hand tied behind their back not just with non-scheme ports of this country but—and of course this is very damaging to the nation as a whole—with the ports overseas.
I suppose that the core of the noble Lord's argument was that the scheme could be amended. I notice that he did not propose one single amendment and did not have one single positive proposal to put to us. However, perhaps that will come later in Committee.
I listened with a certain amount of embarrassment to the criticism made by my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter, who said that the Government should have done something about this matter before. I could not help feeling that as someone who for nearly eight years was a Minister in the Government, I should accept some measure of responsibility. I must say that as a Minister occupied with other matters, I certainly had not realised the extent to which the dock labour scheme had ceased to serve its original purpose or how damaging it had become.
When I joined ABP, I was appalled to discover just how damaging the scheme had become and not just for my company. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Mellish, that it is also damaging for those who work in the industry, for the nation as a whole and for the towns and communities around the scheme ports which have suffered higher levels of unemployment and urban derelection than they would have incurred if the scheme had been abolished earlier, and, perhaps I may add, for the environment. How many acres of green land have been taken for warehousing

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and manufacture while dock buildings and dock land lies empty and derelict, shunned by potential new users like the plague houses of an earlier age?
Coming as I did directly from the task of seeking to encourage new investment and new industry, much of which entailed recruiting young people, it certainly came as a shock to me to discover that the average age of those employed in scheme ports was around 47 or 48 years and that in a good many ports the average age is well over 50 years.
The scheme has created rigid demarcation lines between different categories of work people working in the same ports very often doing similar jobs with consequent inefficiencies, inflexibility and tension between different working groups. Whether or not people fall into a category which is between a scheme is arbitrary and uncertain. The definitions were drawn up port by port on a basis originally established during the war. As a result, the description of what is and what is not dock work differs from port to port. Indeed, it is possible to find categories of work which are included in the definition at one port and specifically excluded at another.
It is nearly half a century since the definitions were agreed and in that period cargo handling technology, ship and equipment design, port layout and architecture have all changed considerably. However, the definitions have not been amended to keep pace with those changes or to reflect the work carried out in a modern port with modern equipment. One need only look, for example, at some of the cases of bulk handling, often with electronically controlled equipment, on the ships themselves—very large ships—to see that. It is in exactly such cases that we find the practice of having ghost workers simply sitting, watching the job being done by others at the control systems. It is in those cases that such practices are most prevalent.
These absurdities create unjustified differences in the pay and conditions of different groups of people, working alongside each other in the same ports. What can be the justification for my company, which employs about 1,700 registered dock workers but which in the very same ports employs far more people who are non-registered dock workers, having to maintain these differences? On examination, there is simply no case for arguing that the 806 non-registered people employed in the South Wales ports—to take the area with which I am most familiar—are treated poorly in comparison with the 406 registered dock workers. I just do not believe it. The end result is that the scheme ports have seen a steady decline in their share of the nation's trade and a serious loss of market share to non-scheme competitors, and most worrying of all, to the continental ports such as Rotterdam.
It is not just a question of ship owners, shippers and receivers of cargo deciding not to use the scheme ports because they are too costly or because they fear the inflexibility of the dock labour scheme. Over the years we have also seen the progressive dereliction of huge areas of traditional docklands because companies which might have been expected to locate their business in such places—such as those involved
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in warehousing, transportation, cold storage and the like—have fled the dockland areas in order to avoid what they perceive to be the dangers and high costs of having to employ registered dock workers or to avoid getting into the kind of situation that the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, referred to in his speech.
It is a supreme irony to reflect that the Dock Labour Scheme which was set up to preserve and secure employment rights for registered dock workers has, in fact, had the reverse effect. The noble Lord, Lord Mellish, drew attention to the fact that it had not meant jobs for life. No, it has not. The numbers have declined from 80,000 in 1947 to just over 9,000 today. That is the result of a number of changes—the changes in technology to which I have referred—but more significantly because the scheme itself has turned away trade from the scheme ports. Shippers, receivers, and ship owners alike avoid scheme ports if at all possible. Indeed, I observed in the privacy of a private conversation in this House yesterday that if I had still been a Member of Parliament for Pembroke, with Pembroke dock in my constituency, I might have been defending the continuation of the scheme on the ground that it was one way in which non-scheme ports like Pembroke actually get their business!
The reality is that abolition will lead to more job opportunities, not fewer. Perhaps I may take two illustrations. Earlier in my time with Associated British Ports I visited the sheds at the free port at Southampton. I was specifically shown some equipment which had been used in the free port and which was about to be moved out. It was being moved out because people had discovered that whatever they wanted to do in the free port would involve using dock labour and they did not wish to do that. All the evidence we have is that the free port at Southampton has been less of a success than it would otherwise have been because of that inhibition, the perception of the world outside and of the people who want to use that facility.
I refer also to South Wales. With the possible exception of Port Talbot, which is a special port taking coal and iron ore for the South Wales steel works, the ports of South Wales have problems enough in competing for business because of the restrictions imposed by nature—high tidal ranges and the ports' geographical relationship to where trade now is. These problems, which I suppose are unavoidable, are compounded by the fact that the South Wales ports also suffer from the high costs and rigidity imposed by the dock labour scheme. It is a fact that all the deep sea ports in South Wales, from Swansea eastwards, are scheme ports. In my judgment, the South Wales' economy as a whole has therefore been disadvantaged by the Welsh scheme ports having to compete with non-scheme ports in better geographical locations in South and East England.
My noble friend the Minister gave the figures of the relative changes that have occurred in the South-East where non-scheme ports and scheme ports are competing in identical conditions for trade. Of course, if it had not been for the scheme ports one would have expected them to start with a distinct advantage, with all the tradition of trade and the

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infrastructure already there; but it has not been so, and one need only go to Hull and Goole to see the trade lost to the wharves on the rivers. Therefore, I have no doubt at all that the existence of the scheme, far from protecting jobs, far from protecting labour and far from protecting local communities is having precisely the reverse effect.
In this debate we have heard a great deal about the return to casual labour. I suppose all that has been said will convince those who are determined to be doubters. I take this opportunity to repeat yet again the pledge repeatedly made by my company—as I said, the largest operator in the scheme—that we have no intention of returning to a system of casual labour. Indeed, we have no possible interest in doing so because casual labour is not an efficient way to handle cargo in bulk, to handle modern trade or to handle the modern systems of containers and roll-on and roll-off. What employers in each port are seeking today is to have a relationship with their dock workers which is broadly the same as their relationship with all the other people employed in the industry.
The truth is—and my noble friend Lord Brabazon of Tara was right to say this—that modern ports cannot work without a permanent, well-trained workforce. That is the greatest single guarantee and defence, over and above anything that we can say specifically by way of promises, that there will not be a return to the conditions so vividly described by the noble Lord, Lord Mellish.
The employers are opposed to any suggestion that the dock labour scheme that will be abolished under this Bill should somehow be reproduced in the form of an industrial agreement at national level covering all the ports currently within the scheme. We believe that this would be a nonsense. It would mean that we ended up where we began with all the rigidities and high costs associated with a totally unnecessary demarcation between dock workers and other employees within the industry. Our position is that there is no case whatever for any form of national umbrella agreement other than that which is necessary to maintain the dock workers' pension scheme. After all, the ports of Felixstowe and Dover—to name the two largest non-scheme ports—operate perfectly well on the basis of local agreements with no recourse to any artificially constructed national agreement.
The National Association of Port Employers has pointed out that the reality is that the dock labour scheme is an anomaly within the industry as a whole. No national bargaining structure exists for the non-scheme ports nor for the thousands of non-registered workers in the scheme ports. Taken together these groups represent 75 per cent. of the total workforce in the industry. We cannot see that it makes any sense to treat these two groups quite differently and to have artificial barriers between them. I agree so strongly with what my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter said. We agree that there really is a prime need now to get on with local discussions about local agreements. The men concerned in the docks are being misled if they really believe that
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there is a national agreement to be negotiated. That cannot be the right way forward.
Each port must be entitled to be in total control of its own destiny. I see no other way in which those ports can possibly realise their full potential. It seems to be the greatest possible pity, to put it at its mildest, that the trade union has banned local discussions even though there is a great deal of evidence that many of their members would be happy to enter into discussions to sort matters out with the employers in each port. I hope that common sense will prevail very soon in that regard.
Let us speed up the process of the Bill so that the absurdities, the damage and the uncertainties may be swiftly ended. Let us get on with the task of working out sensible arrangements to make the very best of the opportunities available to all our ports and to those who work in them, bearing in mind the much larger numbers who shall be entitled and enabled to work in them in the future.
Lord McCarthy: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, perhaps I may point out to him that the Transport and General Workers' Union is not asking for the reproduction of the dock labour scheme by negotiation. All that is required is a framework agreement that sets certain minima. There are 40 ports which vary from London with 27,000 workers to Falmouth with 118 workers. Surely some kind of framework agreement is required. It is the refusal of the employers to consider such a framework agreement that may produce a national dock strike.
Lord Crickhowell: My Lords, the noble Lord really said it himself because he described the nature of the industry with the vast variety between the ports. It is precisely for that reason that the proper way to proceed is to discuss at local level. I repeat what I said; namely, that there can be discussions this afternoon. There can certainly be discussions tomorrow in every single port up and down the country if the Transport and General Workers' Union say, "Yes you can go and talk to the employers". Surely the sensible thing would be to discuss and say, "Let us get on with the talks and see how we can work out sensible arrangements for the good of the ports and the people who work in them".
1.35 p.m.
Lord Cocks of Hartcliffe: My Lords, when the Minister made reference to "jobs for life", I began rapidly to identify with him because I believe that this Chamber above all others is well versed in that field. When he mentioned "bobbing off home" when there was no work to be done, the sense of identity became even closer. I was somewhat at a loss to find our equivalent of "ghosting" until the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, mentioned people sitting about watching other people doing the work. Then I thought that perhaps we had a hat trick after all, or what might be called a full house.
I cannot match the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Mellish, with his record in the dock industry. But for some time I represented in the other place a constituency in Bristol. Among my electorate I had

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a very large number of dock workers who obviously dwindled in numbers. Many of them told me of the humiliating conditions at Avonmouth where they congregated in what was known as "the pen", trying to obtain work at the expense of their fellows. They told me how the introduction of this scheme after the war brought them at last a dignified and civilised way of obtaining employment.
The remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, concerning the need for this legislation after the war and the way in which he would have supported it, contrasted rather strongly with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, when he referred to extreme and damaging trade unionism of 40 years ago. He said that he understood the reaction of people whose jobs are threatened. We have had an example of that in this House fairly recently when we had the Friday debate concerning the proposals of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for the reform of the Bar. Of about three dozen speakers, over two dozen were barristers. The following week we debated the order uprating the Lord Chancellor's salary. I made a few remarks saying how well deserved the uprating was and that he had earned every penny of it because he had the courage to take on one of the strongest vested interests in the country. Possibly the Government's attitude towards this Bill would have been a little different if there had been two dozen ex-dockers in your Lordships' Chamber.
I know about the changes that have taken place in the dock industry because I served on the committee that considered the Felixstowe Dock and Harbour Bill. I believe that your Lordships will understand when I say that sitting on that committee was the nearest that one could get to a custodial sentence in this House without actually committing an offence. I have also followed the noble Lord, Lord Mellish, by accepting a post with the Docklands Development Corporation in the East End of London. As he will confirm, one of the great problems there is regenerating with a new form of life the areas not only of the former docklands, but also of the great water spaces of the docks themselves. I am fully aware of the changes that have taken place.
I do not believe that this Bill provides the way in which it should be handled. I was rather puzzled by one remark that the Minister made. He said that in the other place this Bill had been called a one-clause Bill with provocative intent. I have looked through the debate on 8th May for this quotation and I found it at col. 563. Your Lordships will know that quotations from the other place are allowed only if they are made by a government Minister. I noticed that the Leader of the House, in moving the guillotine Motion on the Dock Work Bill in the other place, used the phrase:
"This is a one-clause Bill".
Perhaps in his closing remarks the Minister might like to explain just who was trying to provoke whom. I find that slightly baffling.
My noble friend Lord McCarthy referred to the lack of consultation. For a Bill to have its Second Reading in another place on 17th April and for the timetable Motion to be moved on 8th May was pretty fast going.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, it was an all-time record.
Lord Cocks of Hartcliffe: My Lords, my noble friend says that it was an all-time record. I would have to look closely at my own period in government before I acceded to that completely, although I think he may well be right.
The Minister used another phrase which I found most puzzling and with which he may have delivered a hostage to fortune. He said that prior consultation could not have been in the national interest. I should like a fuller explanation of that remark. When he comes to reply perhaps he will enlighten us a little more.
The Minister also said that the Bill is timely. I agree that from the Government's point of view it is timely. However, I take issue in this respect with my noble friend Lord McCarthy. He said that he did not suspect the Government of any ill intent in this timing. My noble friend comes from Oxford and works there. In Oxford everything is done, or is suspected of being done, for the purest of motives. I understand that and I know that he is protected from the seamier side of life. I have not had that fortune. For the bulk of my time in another place I worked in what is known as the usual channels. Some would say that rather than being channels they were underground. Anyway it was a kind of troglodytic existence where one did not often break surface. However, one developed a nose for things. To me, with its lack of trailing, with the fact that it was not included in the manifesto and with the denials from the Government which lasted almost to the production of the Bill, it looks like stage management. I believe that the Government had this idea in a pigeonhole in the department. They said to themselves, "We will keep that there in case the water becomes a little choppy". Every now and then it would be dusted off, put back and kept for a rainy day.
I am afraid that I can think of no other explanation but that the Government kept this on one side for a time when they felt that electoral support might be sagging and when they would need a booster. Going back to the immediate post-war period, one of the pejorative things which the Conservatives knew would arouse public opinion was an attack on the dockers. It was very much in the same band of things as the "ground nuts". When I began in politics it was not unusual at a political meeting for a band of Young Conservatives at the back to jump up and down and shout "ground nuts". A myth was put about at the time that this was a disaster by the Labour Government. It is true that it was not an economic success but that was because the consultants had given bad advice, something that is not unknown today. In fact it was an attempt on a large scale and in an imaginative way to help the world during an acute shortage of vegetable oils. It became one of these Pavlovian trigger mechanisms.
I fear that the real motive behind the Bill is to generate support for the Government in the run up to the direct elections to Europe. That is why this idea has been kept in a pigeonhole. It has now been dusted off and brought out because the Government are going through a difficult period. Something is

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needed as a diversion and to draw attention from the other things that they are doing to our people. I cannot share the rather innocent interpretation which my noble friend Lord McCarthy has put on the Bill.
1.46 p.m.
Lord Greenway: My Lords, there has been a lot of recent talk on the radio and in the press about the fate of the dinosaurs. Some say that their extinction was caused by a meteor; others say that it was caused by an excess of their own internal gases. The noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, whom I am sorry to say has just left his place, said that an awful amount of hot air has been expended over this dinosaur during the course of its existence. I hope that its extinction will be just as swift as that of the dinosaurs. I congratulate the Government, having finally made up their minds, on the dispatch with which they are going about tackling the problem.
The noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, asked why there should be such haste. This may be a rather naive assumption, but to me it seems obvious: 1992 and the internal market loom large on the horizon. It is only right that all our ports should be enabled to compete as effectively as possible with those of our neighbours on the Continent. Several noble Lords referred to the scheme being responsible for the diversion of trade from scheme to non-scheme ports. That is of course true. The Minister and one or two other noble Lords referred to the position on the Humber. Perhaps I may embellish that slightly. Some years ago there was an imaginative scheme involving a new ship carrying barges. Those were sailed out of the ship in the Humber Estuary, and they could then carry on up the rivers Ouse and Trent. That scheme was completely killed by the registered dockers in Hull. As it happened, the trade still managed to get through. It came through in new small coasters, many of them being built especially low so that they could go up the River Rhine and other rivers on the Continent. They have gone to the small wharves that have proliferated all around that part of the world.
The trade did not necessarily go to non-scheme ports. A good deal of it—not many noble Lords have mentioned this point—went abroad. We all know of the threats of the competition from ports such as Rotterdam, Antwerp, Le Havre and Hamburg. They get on with things over there. I was in Rotterdam comparatively recently. I was shown round the port. One of the most impressive things I saw was a new large distribution centre which will be completed in plenty of time for the opening of the Channel Tunnel in 1993.
The noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, tried to make out that the scheme ports are efficient. They are in certain instances especially in regard to container handling. If they are so efficient, why are they so empty? One has only to go to London, Southampton, Liverpool and Hull to see that these ports are empty compared with how they used to be, and certainly compared with Felixstowe which is absolutely booming and which has had to provide port extensions, and so on, to cope with the business. It is worth mentioning that, thanks to this House,
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Felixstowe remains outside the scheme. All I can say is thank goodness we have one port that can compete effectively with the continental ports.
What I should really like to talk about are the new opportunities that will exist once the scheme is out of the way. The old ports are natural hubs—if I may borrow a word from the air industry—and are traditionally placed near large population centres. It seems only right that they should be the places where value should be added to imported goods. They should be centres for port-related industry and new trades, and above all for distribution centres which will become increasingly important after 1992. I do not think that there will be any lack of job opportunities. That is one avenue which we can dismiss because I am sure that as these ports are opened up, those parts of industry which the scheme has driven away will return to the ports and we shall see many opportunities arising for new jobs.
My noble friend Lord St. Davids mentioned how much of the traffic has been pushed on to the roads. He put a case, as he has done so many times in the past, for more traffic to be put on our inland waterways. I would certainly go along with him on that aspect. However, I should like to take this opportunity to air an idea which was put forward some years ago by some northern ports. They looked into a possible alternative to anti-social road traffic by proposing a roll-on, roll-off coastal service from the North to the South. I shall not go into details as to why that proposal was not successful or even attempted. But one of the reasons given was that port charges were too expensive, especially those of the scheme ports.
If the scheme is to be done away with—and I hope it will be soon—then perhaps that is another avenue at which we can look again. I say that because I do not think that any of us wish to see the countryside covered in concrete just to cope with the ever increasing amount of road traffic.
I regret the fact that there are some unofficial strikes at the moment; I certainly hope that there will not be a national strike. I have felt for some time that some sort of strike will be inevitable, but I hope that it will not go on for too long. It is, if I may put it this way, and as one port industry spokesman recently said, "a war to end a war". I feel that there is little, if any, public support for a dock strike and I personally hope that it will be over as quickly as possible.
I think that it is time for the official Opposition—although I quite understand their stance—to stop trying to defend the indefensible, to stop looking back and to look forward, as I think the Government are trying to do, to the new opportunities for growth and creation of new jobs in and around our ports in order to face the future and the challenge of 1992.
1.52 p.m.
Baroness Turner of Camden: My Lords, this has been a most interesting Second Reading debate on an extremely rushed Bill. I emphasise that the Bill has been rushed; indeed, many of my noble friends have said so. I say that because until very recently—indeed, as recently as 14th March last—the

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Government were stating that they had no intention of changing or interfering with the scheme. Yet, as we have heard, a Statement was made in this House on 6th April indicating that the Government intended to introduce a Bill abolishing the scheme. A White Paper was produced on the same day and a Bill was introduced into the other place on the next day. Now we have that Bill before us for Second Reading and I understand that the intention is to push the whole matter through by the end of next month.
We have received no explanation from the Government for the speedy introduction of this measure—we really have not—although they have had plenty of opportunity to explain why this rush is necessary. Indeed, my noble friend Lord McCarthy gave the Government an opportunity for more mature consideration when he put down his Unstarred Question on 24th April asking why the Government would not refer the alleged restricted labour practices associated with the dock labour scheme to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, since they had made use of those procedures in connection with similar concerns in the television and film making industries.
On that occasion the Minister replying said that the restrictive practices on the docks were there as a result of statute; and because it could not examine restrictive practices which could only be discontinued by changing the law, the MMC was precluded from considering a reference. I think that that is too rigid an interpretation of Section 79 of the Fair Trading Act 1973. But, even so, it would have been possible—as the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, pointed out—to have followed the normal practices. That is, to have issued a White Paper as a basis for consultation with the parties concerned, to have allowed time for the consultation to take place and then to publish a Bill following that consultative period. There has been no adequate explanation of why there has been no consultation. There has only been the statement that the Government already know what the position is of the parties: that the employers want to abolish the scheme and the union does not.
But, unless there has been a genuine opportunity for consultation—and there has not—how do the Government know whether positions have changed during the consultative process? If the Government genuinely believe that the existence of the dock labour scheme is a drag upon the industry and responsible for the continuation of non-profit making ports, then they could have put their views to the test in a genuine consultative process. However, they have not been prepared to do so.
We recently heard in this House that lawyers have complained about the lack of consultation regarding the proposed legal reforms; but they at least had a little more opportunity and a little more time than have the dockers.
We on this side of the House have endeavoured on many occasions in the past to mount a defence of the scheme. I make no apology for that fact. However, that has not met with much favour from the Government; but I still believe that it is necessary
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to do so again. The House will be aware of the history of the scheme, because it has been stated on many occasions, and the reasons for which it was found to be necessary.
Many noble Lords on all sides of the House have agreed that years ago the scheme was a necessity. It was needed to bring to an end the degrading system known as casualisation which then existed. Men fought each other at dock gates for poorly paid employment. There was no security, no room for self-respect, little in the way of health and safety regulations and no protection against poor working conditions. The noble Lord, Lord Mellish, gave us a graphic account of those conditions during this debate.
Union organisation in the ports and the dock labour scheme changed the situation. The dock labour scheme does not provide registered dock workers with jobs for life, as has frequently been contended, and I should like to spend some time on this issue. However, it does mean that in this instance manual workers have a similar degree of protection to that in existence for many managerial, non-manual and professional jobs.
When I was a negotiating official for a union consisting mainly of non-manual workers, I can remember negotiating terms of a similar nature. Registered dock workers have the right not to be dismissed without just cause and not to be made redundant without severance payments. They also receive minimum guaranteed daily pay; but so do most non-manual workers. For example, if you turn up to your job in a City office you expect to be paid. It is the job of management to see that there is work to be done. Moreover, if there is a slack period, you still expect to be paid. I do not call that a restrictive practice. However, if it is, then it is widespread in many professions and occupations.
Further, it is not true that the work is particularly highly paid. The average working week is 45 hours, for which the docker will collect about £13,000 per annum. That is not all that much by current standards; indeed, in the City it would be regarded as virtually small change. Dockers can be sacked for justifiable reasons, such as misconduct. Thousands of dockers have left the industry voluntarily under severance terms. In reply to the debate on 24th April the Minister (at col. 1140 of Hansard) stated:
"However, severances of surplus RDWs from the industry can only be achieved with their voluntary agreement, induced by large cash payments of up to £25,000".
One should note the words "up to". That is the maximum payment after years and years in the industry. It is not so very much if one is in one's fifties, 12 years away from state retirement age and likely to have difficulty in obtaining other employment. Moreover, as we have heard, the average payment is around £12,500. Again, is it really a restriction if one cannot get rid of long-serving employees without paying them compensation? I do not believe so.
Reference has been made to other so-called restrictive practices, especially that known as "ghosting". I understand from the union that the correct title for such practices is "standby

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agreements". The union agrees that the incidence of standby agreements has increased in recent years. It believes that this is due to the reluctance of port employers to have employees properly trained. In some cases, it is claimed, it is because port operators cannot or will not purchase the mechanical equipment required to undertake certain services required by port users. The union says that it is opposed to those arrangements being used as a substitute for the employment of registered dock workers, and it has continually pressed managements to eliminate the practice. It is clear that the practices are capable of negotiation if the employers have a will to do so.
There is the further argument that scheme ports are somehow less profitable. We have heard that from a number of noble Lords today. It is said that they are less effective than ports not in the scheme. The example of Felixstowe is constantly quoted. But, as I have said before in the House, the geographical position of a port may well have more to do with its profitability than the existence or otherwise of the dock labour scheme. Perhaps I may quote from an interview with one docker employed at Felixstowe who was asked whether the scheme had played a part in the decline of some ports not associated with it. He said:
"Not particularly. Look at Ipswich, 12 miles up the Orwell. Despite the need for dredging and being a scheme port it's still the fourth largest container port in the UK. That's got everything to do with being close to the Continent, not much to do with the scheme".
The truth may well be that the decline of scheme ports, where it has occurred, is an indication of Britain's reduced role in world trade. Continental ports such as Hamburg, Rotterdam and Amsterdam serve the Continent directly, with excellent back-up transport services. Moreover, those ports have had substantial investment and heavy public subsidies over the years. Major ports in Europe also have systems to avoid casualisation. Those include registers and structures similar to our own dock labour scheme. I am told that in Rotterdam, about 15 per cent. of the registered dock workers are not working at any one time. They are still paid of course. That is due to the sporadic nature of the work.
The argument often advanced that the scheme is responsible for our lack of competitiveness does not hold up; nor does the claim that we must do away with it in order to be in line with European practice. Indeed, the United Kingdom is one of the few EC countries not to have ratified ILO Convention 137 which calls for registers of dock workers and opposes casual labour in the docks. If the Government are opposed to casualisation, why do they not ratify the convention?
It is claimed by the employers—we have heard it from the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, this morning—that they are against casualisation and that there is no point in it in the present industrial scheme of things because a highly trained workforce is necessary. It must be said however that the union does not believe the employers. Perhaps what is even more important, nor do the rank and file dockers.
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It is in any event an industry that lends itself to casualisation unless there is statutory intervention to stop it. We may well see emerging a core of highly skilled workers surrounded by a pool of casual workers.
Dockers fear that the disappearance of the scheme will herald the return to the bad old days. They also fear that the Government are out to prevent them from exercising any influence over the industry. Through their union, they have been able to have a participative role. That the Government do not like. Working people should not have any say in how the industries in which they work are run. That is the Government's dogma. It lies at the heart of the Government's opposition to the social dimension in EC philosophy; the blocking, for example, of the Vredeling Directive and their attitude to ILO conventions are all part of the Government's attitude to employees and employment rights generally.
As many other noble Lords have said, it is surely unacceptable that the scheme should be abolished and that nothing—absolutely nothing—is intended to be put in its place. There is to be no national forum, apparently, for the discussion of terms and conditions and for the consideration of important issues such as health and safety and training; no national bargaining machinery; and no national joint council, and that of course, as the Opposition have said is what concerns the union. Why should it not concern the union? The noble Lord, Lord Mellish, made that point clear in answer to points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter.
Incidentally, the noble Lord referred to a number of issues, which, like Grimsby, were referred to in the Government's White Paper. I draw attention to the fact that when we had the debate on 24th April, I mentioned the fact that the union did not agree with what was said in the White Paper about Grimsby and other alleged cases. I said:
"At Grimsby there is a history of very flexible working arrangements. Nor is it true, says the union, that trade is shifting from Grimsby to Hull. The whole picture is of a backwards and forwards shift of business between the two ports. In any event, I am informed that trade in fishing ports is determined by a quota system and not by competition between ports".—[Official Report, 24/4/89; col. 1138.]
As the Opposition said in that debate, the union had answers to every one of the instances quoted in that White Paper.
When the Minister introduced the debate he said that everyone except the Opposition was in favour of the abolition of the dock labour scheme. That is not the situation. Indeed, I have a quote from Mr. Robert Gill, the Felixstowe Dock and Harbour Company chairman, who recently commented in a moment of lucidity:
"Abolition of the dock labour scheme is not the panacea it is often put forward to be".
Even on the management side of the industry there it not wholehearted support for the abolition of the scheme.
I return to my comments about there being no alternative offered; nothing to take the place of the dock labour scheme. It is merely to be abolished. No framework is to be constructed in its place. There will be no room in future for employee involvement

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via their unions; no participation. That will not do. It is neither reasonable nor humane. We shall do our best on this side of the House, by way of amendments when the Bill is in Committee, at least to provide some protection for the workers in the industry.
2.8 p.m.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, anyone who has followed the passage of this Bill over the past nine weeks and heard today's debate cannot doubt that the issues relevant to the future of the dock labour scheme have been thoroughly examined. But it seems to me that the two central questions are whether special controls are necessary any longer to provide a basis for reasonable terms and conditions of employment for dock workers and whether those controls themselves give rise to unacceptable costs which prevent our ports from performing as they should. We must not forget that at the end of the day pay and jobs depend on the ability of business to compete successfully and to create wealth.
The Government believe that the evidence indicates overwhelmingly that the dock labour scheme fails both these tests because it is unnecessary to provide a sensible basis for determining reasonable terms and conditions for registered dock workers. It costs scheme ports business and jobs by undermining competitiveness. I have heard nothing today which provides grounds to question either of those two judgments.
I shall try to answer as many of the points as possible which noble Lords have raised today. First, I was accused by the noble Lord, Lord Mellish, of having misled the House; my noble friend and other colleagues were also accused of the same thing in having said that we had no plans to abolish the scheme. I believe that Ministers have consistently given a proper account of the Government's position. The Government have long voiced their reservations about the effects of the scheme on business and jobs in the ports to which it applies. In 1982 they rejected an approach from the Transport and General Workers' Union to have the scheme extended to other ports. In 1986 the unions rebuffed an invitation from the then Secretary of State for Transport to the employers and unions to consider voluntary arrangements to replace the scheme.
In debates in another place on the scheme prior to its announcement, the Government continued to voice their doubts. The scheme has been kept under review; once the Government had decided their plans on 6th April those plans were announced immediately and Parliament was the first to be informed. I believe that that was the proper way to proceed. There were no leaks and the Government encouraged no speculation prior to finalising their plans and taking their decisions.
The noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, asked me whether there were any other examples of legislation having been introduced, in his words, "in such haste". I can give one quite good example from the period of the last Labour Government, when they introduced legislation on incomes policy. The White Paper was introduced on Friday 11th July 1975; the Bill concerned with it had a First Reading on
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Wednesday 16th July and it received Royal Assent on 1st August.
Lord McCarthy: My Lords, will the noble Lord give way? Does he not agree that the Labour Government at that time said—rightly or wrongly—that there was a major economic crisis which required that Bill as a central instrument of their policy? Is that what this Government are saying?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, we are certainly not saying that there is a major economic crisis at the moment. I was asked to give an example of a Bill which was introduced in such haste and I have just done so.
The noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, also suggested that there was some confusion about the amount of government spending as a result of the scheme. The statement by the Secretary of State mentioning about £1 billion referred to the extra cost to the Government and employers of that £1 billion. The cost to the taxpayer in severance schemes has been £420 million and in extra support to London and Liverpool, £350 million, making a total of £770 million, as set out in the White Paper.
A number of noble Lords, notably the noble Lords Lord McCarthy and Lord Cocks, and the noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden, referred to "jobs for life" and mentioned how that phrase had perhaps been misinterpreted. However, a registered dock worker has guaranteed minimum pay and employment until he chooses to leave the industry. Once a docker is on the register, his pay and employment are assured, even if his employer goes out of business. He can only be made redundant if he so chooses, under generous severance terms, supported by the taxpayer with £420 million since 1972.
Baroness Turner of Camden: My Lords, will the noble Lord give way? Is he not aware that in non-manual employment there is a whole range of what we might call voluntary redundancy arrangements? In other words, there are arrangements where the employees are not made redundant unless they volunteer to be made redundant.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I am sure that there are all sorts of different things but I was referring to the docks business and the so-called "jobs for life". I have just given a reason why the phrase seems to have come up. It is not a phrase which has necessarily been used all that often by the Government. It has been used by everybody, so far as I can see. It is often quoted in the national press. Incidentally, the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, said that dock workers' earnings were only 22 per cent. above the national average. My figure is that their earnings are 60 per cent. above average earnings at £350 per week. Average earnings are £220 per week for manual workers.
A number of noble Lords made comparisons with the arrangements abroad. They suggested that other countries had similar kinds of schemes. There are

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indeed a variety of arrangements; some are statutory and some are not. Some allow casual work while others permit compulsory redundancy. However, what is clear is that a number of countries are looking to reduce the restrictions. The government in Italy, the socialist government in New Zealand, and now France are looking for change.
As we move towards a single European market, unwarranted restrictions cannot be justified if they lead to the need for subsidies to pay for the inefficiencies that they create. In any case, I submit that we do not need to look abroad in this particular instance because we have an example on our own shores of the non-scheme ports which handle 30 per cent. of our trade. I believe the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, implied that the scheme ports did not have a bad industrial relations record. He will correct me if I am wrong. However, my information is that since 1967 scheme ports have lost over 4 million working days through disputes on an average of three disputes a week. That cannot be described as a good strike record.
I agree that the number of days lost through strikes generally has fallen substantially in recent years, but scheme ports still managed to lose more than four times the average number of days in 1987, and five times more than were lost in other transport industries. The noble Lord suggested that output or productivity was better in scheme ports than in non-scheme ports. I agree that output per worker has grown in the scheme ports, not because of the scheme but despite it. Output has improved dramatically in dock work because cargo handling technology has revolutionised the industry. We would not credit accountants with improved productivity because they now use computers. Equally, the vastly increased tonnage handled by each worker in our ports is a measure of bigger and better machines.
The labour intensive industry which employed 80,000 workers 40 years ago has given way to the capital intensive industry of today where a total of 13,000 dock workers in both scheme and non-scheme ports handle more cargo. That is precisely why the scheme can no longer be justified. However, scheme ports have failed to keep pace with improvements in performance elsewhere. That is why they have lost 30 per cent. of Britain's sea-borne trade to ports outside the scheme, and half of all container traffic. That is why higher productivity in scheme ports has been paid for with fewer jobs, and has not brought more business leading to more jobs. That is why the jobs in scheme ports have been lost at a rate of 8 per cent. a year over the past 20 years. That is almost the same rate as the improvement in output per dock worker produced by the fall in the number of workers in the industry.
The scheme's practices of "bobbing" and "ghosting", disincentives and overmanning can only detract from productivity. The abolition of the scheme can only improve productivity and competitiveness on which jobs depend. To compare the tonnage handled by dock workers in scheme and non-scheme ports ignores entirely the differences in the cargo they handle. Scheme ports handle much
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more bulk cargo like iron ore than non-scheme ports, which have captured more than half of all Britain's container traffic from scheme ports. The real measure of performance is price for a given cargo. The transhipment survey shows how much cheaper non-scheme ports can be, and their market share. There is no doubt that non-scheme ports have captured over half of Britain's trade by value from scheme ports in little more than 20 years. Those are real measures of the burden represented by the scheme, not fictitious comparisons of tonnage. I mentioned in my opening remarks the results of the transhipment study which was published by the British Ports Federation and the Department of Transport. That study showed that Tilbury and Southampton were 30 per cent. and 40 per cent. more expensive respectively than non-scheme Felixstowe as regards handling container cargoes.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, the Minister is denying what was said by his noble friend Lord Crickhowell. Why is it that, in view of this disaster story that the Minister is giving us as regards output and other matters in the scheme ports, the scheme ports have made a profit?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I am coming to the matter of the profitability of the scheme ports and I shall be able to answer the noble Lord, Lord Mellish, in a few moments. I shall move straight to that matter now. I agree that most, but not all, scheme ports are making profits now. However, that is only after huge amounts of public funds have been put into some of them, particularly London, which is the former port of the noble Lord, and Liverpool. As my noble friend Lord Crickhowell pointed out, much of the profit comes from land sales and property development.
There are other examples of where scheme ports have made significant losses recently. There is the example of the Clyde Port Authority in the early 1980s. The noble Lord, Lord Cocks of Hartcliffe, may well be aware of the situation in Bristol, which I am aware is not only due to the scheme but to the construction of the Royal Portbury Dock. It is no secret that both Hull and Southampton have lost money.
Noble Lords have asked why there was no consultation or discussion before our proposals were announced. I repeat that this was because the positions of those involved in the industry are clear and irreconcilable, and the issues have been widely debated both inside and outside the House. The Transport and General Workers' Union has repeatedly stated its attachment to the fundamentals of the scheme and has regularly threatened national strikes in the event of any suggestion that the scheme's damaging restrictions should be reduced. It made it clear that the scheme was not negotiable in any context and that an approach to the Government on the future of the industry was a quite separate matter. The union has refused five approaches from the employers to consider voluntary arrangements to replace the scheme. Only the prospect of the scheme's abolition has caused the TGWU to begin to consider a future without the scheme.
Baroness Turner of Camden: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the union has denied categorically, and on oath, that five approaches have been made to it?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I was not aware that the union had denied it on oath. Perhaps the best that I could do is to quote one of the most recent remarks of Mr. Connolly. On 24th February 1987 he said:
"There will be opposition to the amendment or the revision of the Scheme and that opposition will take the form of a national dock strike".
I shall not continue to give way, my Lords. I have a number of points to attempt to answer. I have given way far more than is usual. It is not misrepresentation; I quoted directly.
In those circumstances, as my noble friend Lord Crickhowell pointed out, it was the Government's duty to take the necessary action through Parliament to abolish the scheme and its statutes promptly. The past actions of the union demonstrate conclusively that consultation would not have altered its determination to call for strikes in defence of the scheme in accordance with its long-standing policy.
The noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, suggested that the balance of the National Dock Labour Board could have been altered. I understand that the last time it was suggested that the number of local dock labour boards should be reduced this led to a dock strike. The point that I was trying to make related to the effect of the local dock boards: they have to consist of equal numbers of employer and worker representatives.
The noble Lord, Lord Rochester, and a number of other noble Lords, referred to training, which is an essential part of the ports industry. I think that my noble friend Lord Crickhowell made that quite clear in his speech. The National Dock Labour Board is responsible for administering training in the scheme ports. It currently spends about half a million pounds a year on a mobile force of 17 training instructors. Thus the scheme ports spent, through the board, an average of just over £50 per registered dock worker.
By comparison the non-scheme port of Felixstowe alone spent £750,000 last year, an average of £675 per employee. Many other non-scheme ports have full-time training officers. It is therefore clear that the competitiveness of non-scheme ports is not achieved by cutting costs on training. On the contrary, competitiveness in today's capital intensive ports industry benefits from a highly skilled and adaptable labour force. The scheme is not needed to ensure that.
The noble Lord also asked whether we would consider more training for redundant registered dock workers. There is every reason to believe that the abolition of the scheme will attract new jobs to port areas. There is no evidence that the redundancies of dock workers will be higher than under the scheme in recent years when the annual fall in the register of dock workers has been approximately 800 nationally. We believe existing training provision to be adequate, but the Government are always conscious of the need to adapt provisions to local
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needs and will consider how best that can be achieved.
My noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter and a number of other noble Lords asked why there were no national negotiations with the port employers. The question of whether or not there should be national negotiations is a matter for the employers. They have made their position clear. They have said that they see the future of the industry lying in negotiations at local level. They have made it clear that they wish to settle outstanding issues arising from the repeal of the scheme. They have said that they want to treat all employees equally and fairly, yet the union has placed a ban on local negotiations. What purpose can that possibly serve other than preventing local officials from negotiating new terms for their members? In any event, why should a national agreement for RDWs be felt to be so important when no national bargaining machinery exists for non-scheme ports or for the non-registered workers in scheme ports? Why should the RDWs always be treated as men apart? Why should they be treated differently from the rest—indeed, the majority—of the workforce in the industry?
Furthermore, I should point out that, in 1980, the national minimum pay rate was disbanded. Pay is now negotiated locally. Since that is probably the single most important issue to dockers, the importance of the existing national machinery has declined. The question that should be put is not, "Why do the employers refuse to negotiate on a new national agreement?'", but rather, "Why does the TGWU refuse to start local negotiations? Why does it refuse to negotiate for the registered dock workers in the same way as it does for all its other members in the docks industry?"
Another principal subject of today's debate has been the possible return to casualism. The noble Lord, Lord Mellish, gave us the benefit of his experiences in the docks industry, albeit a good many years ago. There have been claims that abolition of the scheme will inevitably lead to a return to casualism. I understand those fears, but they are totally misfounded. No one wants to see a return to the casualism of the 1930s and 1940s, but no one has yet explained why abolition will mean a return to those days. As my noble friend Lord Crickhowell made clear, the fact is that modern cargo-handling techniques have made casualism a thing of the past. Ports are capital-intensive and depend upon expensive and advanced equipment quite unsuited to casual labour. Employers need a properly trained, well motivated, permanent workforce. One need only look at the experience of non-scheme ports, which currently employ only 6 per cent. of their workforce on a casual basis, to see that the fears of a return to casualism are misplaced.
Individual employers have given specific assurances that there will be no return to a casual system. The managing director of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company said on 11th April:
"Whatever challenges and tests may face the Port of Liverpool after abolition, there will be no return to the casual employment from which the Scheme originally sprang".
On 6th April, Sir Keith Stuart, Chairman of Associated British Ports, said:

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"ABP does not intend to introduce a casual labour system".
On 13th April, the National Association of Port Employers issued a statement saying:
"we will not be returning to a system of casual employment nor any variety of it".
It indicated that employers in 93 per cent. of the industry had given such assurances. It went on to say:
"Such systems are totally inappropriate and out of place in the modern ports industry. We need committed, highly trained, well motivated and energetic staff to take advantage of all the benefits flowing from the abolition of the Scheme".
Those assurances were reiterated by the National Association of Port Employers during its meeting with Mr. Todd on 18th April. Indeed, it went further and promised to arrange for individual employers, covering over 90 per cent. of RDWs, to give him that guarantee in writing. Those written guarantees have now been given. I hope that that demonstrates beyond doubt that the fears expressed are without foundation.
The noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden, asked why we have not ratified the ILO convention regarding the registration of dock workers and casual dock labour. We are one of 137 members out of 158 of the ILO who have not ratified that convention. It has never been ratified either by successive British Governments, whether Labour or Conservative, or by several other countries in the EC. The fact is that many countries are unwilling to accept the restrictions of the convention, which was drawn up over 15 years ago before the transformation of dock work. The end of Community trade barriers in 1992 means more business and more competition also. Many other countries are trying to make their ports more efficient, whether it is by reducing their labour force or by removing statutory regulations.
The noble Lord, Lord Cocks, asked why the Leader of the House in another place had described this as a one clause Bill. I understand the reason is that he was quoting some words of the Official Opposition spokesman who had used that phrase in the first session of the Committee stage. I do not know whether the noble Lord has read through the whole of the Committee stage of this Bill, but I would not recommend it—in another place, that is.
The noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden, asked about the possible reference to the MMC. I think that I covered that point fairly fully when I answered the Unstarred Question. She queried one or two of the examples given in the White Paper and notably the one about fishing ports. Whatever the restrictions of fishing quotas and so on, it cannot possibly explain why Aberdeen has lost trade to Peterhead, which is only 35 miles away, when one is a scheme port and one is not.
The dock labour scheme has been a feature of employment in most of our major ports for the past 40 years. It was introduced by Parliament to deal with poor employment conditions, casualism and inefficiency in a different era, in an industry which was very different from the one we see today. Nobody so far has suggested that it was not a bad thing at the time.
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It is understandable that registered dock workers in scheme ports—now in a minority in the ports industry—should have become attached to a scheme which has offered them unique privileges in British industry. But that, and the fact that the scheme has existed for 40 years, provides no reason for the scheme's continuation. We can no longer afford the damage that the scheme is doing. Worse still, the scheme is demonstrably irrelevant to the provision of reasonable working conditions for dock workers in today's ports industry.
After careful consideration, therefore, the Government have decided to act to bring the dock labour scheme to an end by bringing forward a Bill to revoke its statutory provisions. Given the positions of the parties involved, that can be the only way to proceed in the national interest.
The Bill does not simply abolish the scheme. It brings it to an end in a way which enables employees and employers on the National Dock Labour Board to help shape future provision in the industry for training and welfare. It provides generous compensation for any dock workers who are made redundant in the period following the scheme's abolition. But above all it brings dock workers and their employers within the same framework of rights and obligations under employment law, developed by successive governments, which applies to the rest of industry.
Today's ports deserve nothing less if they are to face the future with confidence. Without the burdens of the scheme, those ports to which it applied will be in a far better position to attract the business and investment needed to provide a secure basis for jobs and decent terms and conditions of employment for their workers.
That is the context in which employees and employers in our ports must now evolve sensible employment frameworks for dock work. Attempting to recreate the past through agreements which ignore the competitive needs of individual ports cannot be the way to go. There can be no reason for strikes which would simply cost scheme ports more business and more jobs.
The early passage of this Bill would signal the determination of this House to bring the dock labour scheme to an end quickly, so that the industry will cease to fight the battles of the past and will instead concentrate on the real issues which will determine business and jobs in our docks in the future.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Financial Provisions (Northern Ireland) Order 1989
2.35 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office (Lord Lyell)rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 17th May be approved.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move that the draft Financial Provisions (Northern Ireland) Order 1989 which we have before us this afternoon be approved.

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The order is the latest in a series of such orders that have been presented to your Lordships at intervals of approximately two to three years to deal with various financial matters appertaining to Northern Ireland. The most recent previous order in this series was the Financial Provisions (Northern Ireland) Order 1986.
The main purpose of this series of orders is to increase as necessary the statutory limits imposed by Northern Ireland legislation on certain financial transactions as well as to deal with other matters with a financial content. I would stress to your Lordships that the orders do not provide for any additional public expenditure; I shall have to disappoint your Lordships this afternoon. However, perhaps I may briefly take noble Lords through what I see as the main articles of the order before us.
Article 3 will enable capital surplus in the Northern Ireland Consolidated Fund to be used in a way which will write off some of the loans made over the years to the Northern Ireland Housing Executive. This surplus came about because the 1986 Financial Provisions order abolished a number of obsolete funds. The largest of these was the Northern Ireland Reserve Fund. The 1986 order transferred their assets to the Northern Ireland Consolidated Fund. This process created a surplus of assets over liabilities in that fund of some £365 million. The legislation governing the operation of the Northern Ireland Consolidated Fund prevents us from using this surplus. Article 3 provides for a once and for all writing off of the entire surplus. The savings on interest charges on the loans that are written of will release public expenditure resources of some £50 million per year for alternative uses.
Article 4 provides for an increase in the statutory limit on the aggregate of loans and grants which may be made by the Department of Agriculture and the Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland to harbour authorities and other persons for the execution of various harbour works. We anticipate that the present ceiling will be reached some time within the next year and since we do not foresee another opportunity to revise the limit before the next financial provisions order—and this may well not be before another two or perhaps three years—we feel it prudent to introduce this measure now.
Article 5 is apparently fairly simple but will go further. It will increase from £4 million to £6 million the aggregate of the amount of principal which may be guaranteed by the Department of Finance and Personnel in respect of borrowing by the area health boards. This will enable loans to be made to general practitioners for the purpose of improving their practice premises. Over £3 million has been advanced to date and applications for more than £2 million have been received. Your Lordships will see from simple arithmetic that we would expect the present limit to be reached within the next few months.
Article 6 provides that a government loan to Northern Ireland Electricity will automatically be a statutory charge on the assets and revenues of that service. Under the present arrangements a mortgage
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deed is drawn up to secure each loan, which clearly is an expensive and time-consuming business requiring the involvement of administrative staff and lawyers on both sides. Article 6 removes the need for such mortgages and streamlines the whole procedure to the mutual benefit of the parties concerned. I believe that noble Lords will be happy to note that the electricity service itself supports the change. The new provision is similar to that which is already in place for securing government loans to Northern Ireland district councils, namely Section 63 of the Local Government Act (Northern Ireland) 1972.
Article 7 is quite long even for this order. It provides that where a government loan with a variable interest rate is in arrears, the Department of Finance and Personnel may charge additional interest at a variable rate on the overdue amount from the date that it becomes due until the date that it is paid. The legislation governing the issue of loans from the Northern Ireland Consolidated Fund already provides for additional interest on overdue amounts to be charged at a fixed rate, but while this may be appropriate in the case of fixed rate loans, it is less so whenever the underlying interest rate on the loan in question varies each month. The new provision will bring arrangements in Northern Ireland for making loans to public bodies fully into line with those operated by the Public Works Loans Board in Great Britain in relation to loans to local authorities.
Article 8 removes the obligation placed on Northern Ireland departments by Section 22 of the Exchequer and Audit Act (Northern Ireland) 1921 to prepare trading accounts for all the manufacturing, trading or commercial services they provide. Instead, the Department of Finance and Personnel will be empowered to direct departments whether or whenever to prepare formal trading accounts. The intention is for certain trading accounts to be replaced by the more informal memorandum trading accounts which need not, for example, contain a balance sheet. This process will introduce a measure of welcome flexibility to the procedures and once again bring Northern Ireland into line with Great Britain where departments prepare full trading accounts only on the direction of the Treasury. The Northern Ireland Comptroller and Auditor General has given his full support to this change and while the draft article gives full discretion to the department in deciding which accounts should continue to be audited in the traditional manner, in practice, the department will agree with the Northern Ireland Audit Office the specific accounts to which the article will apply. I hope your Lordships can see that this is no flighty measure but will carry on with the strict procedures which are already in operation.
Article 9 will enable new issues of Ulster savings certificates and amendments to existing issues to be brought to public attention simply by means of an announcement in the local press. As I mentioned in connection with previous articles, this is similar to the existing arrangements in Great Britain with respect to National Savings certificates and represents a considerable streamlining of the Northern Ireland procedure, which currently requires subordinate legislation to promote each new

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issue. In addition, and more welcome, it will be easier for the Department of Finance and Personnel to match the Department of National Savings on the timing of new issues but the draft article also preserves the regulation-making power of the department under Sections 15 and 16 of the Exchequer and Financial Provision Act (Northern Ireland) 1950 as it affects other aspects of Ulster Savings.
I hope that I have not wearied your Lordships unduly, but this is a somewhat complicated but nevertheless interesting order. With that, I commend it to the House.
Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 17th May be approved.—(Lord Lyell.)
Lord Prys-Davies: My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Lyell, has explained, this is a technical order. There are no party differences over the order. We support it. Nevertheless although we have reached the order at the end of the week's business, I believe that it provides us with an opportunity to rub in just one or two messages which can be read if not heard.
We welcome the powers given by Article 8 to the Department of Finance and Personnel to require every Northern Ireland department to prepare statements of trading accounts in respect of any manufacturing, trading or commercial service operated by it. Such accounts shall be in a form to be prescribed by the DFP.
Having listened to the very full explanation which the noble Lord, Lord Lyell, gave of this order, I just wonder whether it goes far enough. We believe that Article 8 has great potential, at least if I correctly understand it. It has potential because it should eliminate inconsistencies in definitions and standards of performance and measurement. I believe that it should enable more valid comparisons to be made between the performance of units within a department and possibly between departments. Above all, it should also enable the DFP to play a more active and effective role in encouraging further development within all departments.
I mention those three objectives because those objectives are outlined in the report from the Comptroller and Auditor General for Northern Ireland which we have just received and which, in my view, deserves a debate all of its own. His report reviews the standard of internal audit in Northern Ireland departments. It starts on the bright side by acknowledging the improvements which have been made in recent years but it skilfully reminds us that there is another side. The comptroller also draws attention to the need for value-for-money audit. Of course, by now there is a much greater public awareness of value-for-money audit. I suppose that that is one achievement of this Government.
However, on the evidence of the report one is not entirely satisfied that all the Northern Ireland departments have yet to grasp the significance of such audit. If that is the correct finding, it suggests that there may be an underlying problem which needs to be resolved. It was against that picture which the Comptroller and Auditor General has painted that I approached Article 8. However, in the
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light of the very detailed and helpful explanation given by the noble Lord, Lord Lyell, I wonder whether one day the draughtsman will have to take this particular article back to the drawing board.
I should like to turn to Article 3 which was touched upon by the Minister. We have been told that its effect is to write off capital debt from the Housing Executive to the Northern Ireland Consolidated Fund. We welcome that article. Housing is one of the basic needs of any community and it is readily acknowledged that the Housing Executive is making a fine contribution to the wellbeing of the people of the Province.
However, many Members of your Lordships' House would be delighted if the Housing Executive could pay even more attention to the problems of single persons in the Province who are homeless. That is a matter to which we can come in a debate on an appropriation order and on which I should not expect the noble Lord to comment. However, we recall that just over a fortnight ago about 20 Members of your Lordships' House had tea on the Terrace with representatives of the Northern Ireland Simon Community. I believe that it is fair to say that we were all impressed by the case which they made out on behalf of single homeless persons in Northern Ireland. Therefore, I very much hope that the Simon Community will be successful in achieving its objective and that the necessary support from the Housing Executive and the department will be forthcoming.
Article 9 is about Ulster savings certificates. I should briefly like to canvass some support for the customers of Ulster Savings. In the light of what I have been told—and if that be correct—I suggest that it would be appropriate for Ulster Savings to consider with some degree of urgency how it can provide a more prompt service to its customers. Why should a customer in 1989 have to wait for up to a week for a reply to a straightforward request for simple information about the state of his account? Again, I do nt expect the noble Lord, Lord Lyell, to comment on that.
Before I conclude I should like to say that I am gratified and delighted that Northern Ireland will still have its Northern Ireland Consolidated Fund and its Comptroller and Auditor General. Those are the features of a devolved administration. Although the Province does not at present have the benefit of devolved government, the retention of these two important institutions holds out the hope of better days to come. With those few comments, I support the order.
2.50 p.m.
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran: My Lords, it would be quite inappropriate for me this afternoon to take the opportunity of rubbing in a few points—to use the happy phrase of the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies—but I congratulate the Minister on the clarity and the comprehensive way in which he introduced these provisions and I apologise to him for missing the first two minutes of his speech. It is clear that many of the provisions he has enunciated will apparently lead to the streamlining of many of

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the technical and necessary financial provisions of Northern Ireland.
2.51 p.m.
Lord Lyell: My Lords, I thank the two noble Lords who have attended so patiently until I could move the order now before us. The noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, has carefully scrutinised this order and has clearly carried out some research. As far as I can understand, he has received one or two comments about which I may have something to say in a moment.
The noble Lord first drew attention to Article 8 and the accounts aspect of the order. I wrote down the word "inconsistency". I hope there is nothing inconsistent in the order today that I am setting forth; and if it is put in legislation that practice shall be carried out in Great Britain. I, too, was curious about memorandum trading accounts and I have a fairly long and detailed explanation with which I certainly do not want to burden the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, this afternoon. These trading accounts are simple statements for internal consumption. They are extremely useful.
However, I hasten to assure the House that the regulations as set out in Article 8 have been proposed by the Comptroller and Auditor General and the audit department in Northern Ireland. As I pointed out in my opening remarks, the Comptroller and Auditor General and his department will have the final say at all times on which accounts may be treated under the more informal memorandum trading accounts procedure or which accounts should be presented. I am sure your Lordships agree that that is a matter which we can leave to the Comptroller and Auditor General in Northern Ireland because for many of these memorandum
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trading accounts there is little if any appreciable movement which would excite anyone other than the most esoteric financial student. I assure your Lordships that the audit department keeps a vigilant eye on all the departments in Northern Ireland.
The noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, also referred to homeless single people. I listened with close attention to what he said. I hope that we will soon have an opportunity for the noble Lord to raise the point in more detail and that I will then be able to give him a good reply. As regards Article 9 and savings certificates, I have noted the noble Lord's comments and I suggest that possibly Ulster savings certificates themselves and their administration will also respond. I do not know whether they will get in touch with the noble Lord and I shall leave that matter to them. I shall ensure that they receive the comments of the noble Lord.
As regards the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, I am very grateful that he stayed this afternoon. I am sorry if he missed the first minute or so of my speech. I hope it was not as occurred in another memorable case which was described as "What a loss!". I hasten to assure the noble Lord that if he missed any of my remarks he will find them in the Official Report. I am very grateful to the noble Lord for attending because this order before us is somewhat detailed. It is particularly necessary that in Northern Ireland and in the Department of Finance and Personnel we keep our audit and guidance procedures in line with what is necessary and also that we keep in step with Great Britain. I commend the order to the House.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House adjourned at four minutes before three o'clock.

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