Sitting of 22 November 1989

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

Points of Order
2.34 pm
Mr. Tam Dalyell: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I should like to raise a matter of which I have given you notice, which I believe affects all of us. For the first time in memory, the question Order Book was not available until late morning. I make no complaint about the printers or about the system of shuffling. The problem arose because about 2,000 questions had been tabled, 700 of which were the open question to the Prime Minister. Some of us do not believe in the open question system, believing that, among other things, it destroys Cabinet government, because it means that Downing street has to get involved in every Department. Be that as it may, it is hardly sensible to go through the ritual of shuffling so many questions. Surely there are more efficient ways of proceeding, thus making it possible for the printers to do their job.
Mr. Robert Hayward: Further to the point of order, Mr. Speaker. I believe that I was the only hon. Member who went to watch the shuffle operation yesterday. The Clerks at the Table Office worked enormously hard for hours on end to deal with the sheer quantity of questions. Their difficulty was that yesterday they were dealing with five days' questions to a whole range of Government Departments. Surely, in future, that difficulty will not arise. To my observation, the system appeared to be most fair and quick.
Several Hon. Members: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: Do all the points of order relate to the same matter?
Hon. Members: Yes.
Mr. Speaker: In that case, I shall take them.
Mr. Dennis Skinner: One of the ways in which we could resolve this matter is to apply the same principle that is adopted for private Bills. In some circumstances, it is possible to carry private Bills over from one Session to the next. That suggests a way of getting round the problem of questions, which, while it could not he used before general elections, could be used for all other parliamentary Sessions. We could allow hon. Members to continue to table questions up to the end of a parliamentary Session—usually only a few days before the Queen's Speech. If carry-over motions can be applied to private Bills, surely we can apply them to questions to the various Departments and then we should not have five or six days' worth of questions tabled at once.
Mr. Joseph Ashton: Further to the point of order, Mr. Speaker. Obviously the televising of the House will affect our procedures. Today, for example, we have no fewer than 15 pages of questions to the Chancellor of the Exchequer alone. The difficulty is caused largely by the habit that has grown up over the past two or three years, whereby Parliamentary Private Secretaries, Whips and other pressure groups hand in batches of as many as 10 or 15 questions on behalf of other hon. Members. Could we not adopt a simple system such as that used for ten-minute Bills, under which hon. Members have to hand in questions personally? That would drastically reduce the number of questions on the Order Paper.
Mr. David Winnick: Further to the point of order, Mr. Speaker. As you know, on average, only about six or eight questions to the Prime Minister are dealt with on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Yet, as my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) pointed out, hundreds of questions are tabled. When I checked with the Table Office not long ago, I found that on one day nearly 400 questions to the Prime Minister had been submitted, of which no more than six or eight would have been accepted. As in the past three or four years, the Whips on both sides of the House have made that the practice in organising the way in which oral questions are tabled, should we not ask the Select Committee on Procedure to consider the whole matter again and should we not instruct the Table Office that hon. Members must go to that office in person to table a question? Otherwise, it becomes a farce and it is extremely unfair on those of us who take the trouble of going the few yards to the Table Office to submit questions.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. A great many right hon. and hon. Members want to participate in the debate on the Loyal Address today. I do not think that we should have a debate on this matter.
Mr. James Hill: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: It is wholly relevant to this matter?
Mr. Hill: Yes, Sir.
Mr. William Ross rose—
Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Mr. Hill) wants to speak.
Mr. Hill: Yes, Sir.
Mr. Speaker: Is it a point of order on the same matter?
Mr. Hill: Yes, Sir. I heard this morning that the Clerk of Private Bills in the House of Lords is about to submit to the House a validation motion on the Bills that were lost in the last three days of the—
Mr. Speaker: Order. This is not on the same matter.
Mr. Barry Field: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: Is it a point of order on the same matter?
Mr. Field: Exactly.
Mr. Speaker: Right.
Mr. Field: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
When there is an open question to the Prime Minister, there is the nonsense of the long printed list, and then one receives a reply from Downing street even when one does not want one. That must mean that an enormous number of trees are cut down just to satisfy the ritual of Parliament. That cannot be environmentally friendly.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order: no more. I will deal with one thing at a time. Apropos this point of order, I know that well over 2,000 were questions submitted and the Blue Paper was delayed for that reason. It would perhaps be a wise suggestion, as the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) said, for the Procedure Committee to examine the matter to see whether we can reach a better solution than we have at the moment.
Mr. Hill: This morning I was in the Office of the Clerk of Private Bills in the House of Lords and I was given the information that a validation motion would be put forward in the House of Lords today—
Mr. Speaker: Order. This House has no knowledge of what is being put forward in the House of Lords. The point must be relevant to hon. Members in this House. The hon. Gentleman is a very experienced Member. I cannot deal with what happens in the other place. That is not a matter for me.
Mr. Hill: That was the background of what was happening this morning. I understand that a validation motion is being presented to this House some time in the not too distant future. Would it be—
Mr. Speaker: Order. Let us leave it at that. That is hypothetical at the moment.
Mr. William Ross: On a different point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am sure that, like the rest of us, you take a look at the newspapers every morning. I noticed this morning that one of the principal newspapers in this country had a photograph of the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) relaxing in his place reading a newspaper. That photograph was evidently taken from the Gallery of this House. Is that in order? I seek your guidance.
Mr. Speaker: I do not know whether that relates to yesterday. If it did, I believe that still photographs were taken from the Gallery. However, the House will be aware that we do not read newspapers here; we listen to debates.
Mr. Hill: Can I ask—
Mr. Speaker: No.
Mr. Hill rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. I am on my feet. The hon. Gentleman must resume his place.

BILLS PRESENTED

  PROPERTY SERVICES AGENCY AND CROWN SUPPLIERS
  Mr. Secretary Patten, supported by Mr. Secretary Walker, Mr. Secretary Rifkind, Mr. Secretary Brooke, Mr. Norman Lamont, Mr. Richard Luce and Mr. Christopher Chope, presented a Bill to make provision for the transfer of the Crown services known as the Property Services Agency and the Crown Suppliers; and for
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  connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 2.]

  NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE AND COMMUNITY CARE
  Mr. Secretary Clarke, supported by the Prime Minister, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Secretary Walker, Mr. Secretary Rifkind, Mr. Secretary Newton, Mr. Secretary Patten, Mr. Secretary Brooke and Mrs. Virginia Bottomley, presented a Bill to make further provision about health authorities and Family Practitioner Committees; to provide for the establishment of National Health Service trusts; to make further provision about the financing of the practices of medical practitioners; to amend Part III of the Local Government Finance Act 1982; to amend the National Health Service Act 1977 and the National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1978; to amend Part VIII of the Mental Health (Scotland) Act 1984; to make further provision concerning the provision of accommodation and other welfare services by local authorities and the powers of the Secretary of State as respects the social services functions of such authorities; to repeal the Health Services Act 1976; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 1.]
  EDUCATION (STUDENT LOANS)
  Mr. Secretary MacGregor, supported by Mr. Secretary Walker, Mr. Secretary Rifkind, Mr. Secretary Brooke, Mr. Norman Lamont, Mrs. Angela Rumbold, Mr. Robert Jackson and Mr. Alan Howarth, presented a Bill to provide for the making to students in higher education of loans towards their maintenance: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 3.]

EUROPEAN COMMUNITY DOCUMENTS
Motion made, and Question put,
That European Community Document No. 5032/89 on Public Takeover Bids be referred to a Standing Committee on European Community Documents.—[Mr. Patnick.]
Mr. Speaker: The Question is—
Mr. Simon Hughes: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: Order. I am on my feet.
Question agreed to.
Mr. Hughes: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: Does it refer to this matter?
Mr. Hughes: Yes, the Bills which have just been presented. Could hon. Members be told this time when the Bills will be available to the House? In the past there have been problems. Hon. Members will go to the Vote Office, either today or in the following two days, seeking information. If the Leader of the House is able to tell us, I am sure that it will be generally helpful.
Mr. Speaker: I understand that that is a matter for the Department, but I am sure that what the hon. Member has said will have been noted.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Goodness me. All right, Dame Peggy Fenner.
Dame Peggy Fenner: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It arises out of the business of the House. Is it the intention of the Leader of the House to move a revival motion for the private Bills which were objected to in the last Session?
Mr. Speaker: That is not a point of order for me. The hon. Lady knows that that is a matter for the Chairman of Ways and Means.

Business of the House
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That—
(1) Standing Order No. 13 (Arrangement of public business) shall have effect for this Session with the following modifications, namely:
In paragraph (4) the word 'thirteen' shall be substituted for the word `ten' in line 43; in paragraph (5) the word 'eighth' shall be substituted for the word `seventh' in line 45; and in paragraph (8) the word 'two' shall be substituted for the word four' in line 66;
(2) Private Members' Bills shall have precedence over Government business on 26th January, 2nd, 9th, and 23rd February, 2nd, 9th and 30th March, 20th and 27th April, 4th and 11th May, and 6th July;
(3) Private Members' Notices of Motions shall have precedence over Government business on 15th December, 19th January, 16th and 23rd March, 18th May, 8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th June, and 20th July, and ballots for these Notices shall be held after Questions on Wednesday 29th November, Wednesday 20th December, Wednesday 28th February, Wednesday 7th March, Wednesday 2nd May, Wednesday 23rd May, Wednesday 30th May, Wednesday 6th June, Wednesday 13th June and Wednesday 4th July;
(4) On Monday 12th February and Monday 14th May, Private Members' Notices of Motions shall have precedence over Government business until Seven o'clock and ballots for these Notices shall be held after Questions on Thursday 25th January and Thursday 26th April; and
(5) No Notice of Motion shall be handed in for any of the days on which Private Members' Notices have precedence under this Order in anticipation of the ballot for that day.—[Sir Geoffrey Howe.]
Sir Peter Emery: You will recall, Mr. Speaker, and the House knows that, for many moons, there has been pressure on the Government to consider and deal with Select Committee on Procedure reports. From the dates and figures in the motion, it may not be obvious that this is a favourable reaction to the Procedure Committee's second report on private Members' time, which was produced in April of this year. I hope that hon. Members will frequently see such speed of action with other reports.
It is of particular importance that the Government have gone further in meeting the wishes of the Procedure Committee by further safeguarding the time of private Members than the Select Committee recommended. I am certain that hon. Members realise that, last year, we had 12 days of private Members' motions, when an hon. Member could move any motion he wanted, and 12 days for private
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Members' legislation—six days for Second Readings and six days for remaining stages and Report. With this motion, much to the pleasure of the Select Committee, the Government are giving an extra day for Second Reading. Instead of six Members of Parliament being assured that their Bill will be debated on Second Reading, seven hon. Members' names will be at the top of the ballot.
However, the difficulty, as pointed out by the Procedure Committee, is that there is a backlog and a problem in dealing with Report and remaining stages. The Government may have to look at that again. There would normally be some amendments to this resolution, because the Government have not dealt with the interference with private Members' time by petitions or speeches on writs, on one of which the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) made a particularly delightful speech last Session. I have an assurance that the Government intend to move resolutions to deal with this matter before we consider legislation in January. That assurance is most welcome.
The Government's speed of action may be considered revolutionary, although I do not believe that anybody could consider the Lord President a revolutionary figure, but I hope that this may portend the fact that, when the Procedure Committee's report on European legislation is before the House next week, we will see an equally rapid reaction.
Mr. Ray Powell: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It is a short point.
Mr. Speaker: I should like to put the Question first, please, if it is not to do with this matter.
Question put and agreed to.
Mr. Speaker: Now I will take the point of order.
Mr. Powell: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. My point of order is shorter than the last. It concerns yesterday's Hansard. Now that we are on television, we should get the Official Report correct, because the media might have the pictures wrong. In his speech on the Loyal Address yesterday, my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, East (Mr. Hughes) referred to a hospital in East Glamorgan. In an intervention, I asked him to name the hospital because of the situation now arising there and the fact that doctors are going to resign. However, at column 49 of the Official Report, I am also named as the hon. Member who made an intervention about the fact that the Queen's Speech made no mention of Wales. I point out that the hon. Member who made that second admirable intervention was Geraint Howells, not myself, Ray Powell. I cannot see the hon. Gentleman in his place, but the record should be put right so that, if the media catch my face and not Geraint's, they may identify us correctly.
Mr. Speaker: I thank the hon. Gentleman for putting that right, but perhaps in future he will refer to another hon. Member by his constituency.

Orders of the Day
  Debate on the Address

    SECOND DAY
    Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question [21 November],
    That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, as follows:
    Most Gracious Sovereign,
    We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the Gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament.—[Mr. Gow.]
    Question again proposed.

  Industry and Environment
  Mr. Speaker: Before I call the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, I should tell the House that no fewer than 40 hon. Members have sought to take part in today's debate. I propose to put a limit of 10 minutes on speeches between 6 and 8 o'clock. I hope that those who may be called before 6 and after 8 will also bear that limit broadly in mind. I call Mr. Secretary Ridley.
  2.51 pm
  The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Nicholas Ridley): First, I congratulate the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) on his elevation to the trade and industry portfolio. Those who have read his book tell me that it sheds no light whatsoever on his views, so we look forward to hearing whether he has any views in due course.
  I congratulate also the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) on escaping from trade and industry before I had time properly to get to grips with him. We were grateful to him for his much more illuminating book and the commitments that he left behind in Labour's policy review. I shall return to those later. Conservative Members look forward to the hon. Gentleman dropping lots of green bricks at the environment portfolio. Last year on this day the Opposition debated the environment and industry in that order. Today, it is the other way round. I am grateful to the Opposition for allowing me therefore to open the debates on both occasions and for the fact that the hon. Gentleman has had to reply on both occasions.
  The Gracious Speech contains the usual phrase:
  "Other measures will be laid before you."
  I am pleased to be able to announce that one such other measure is a Bill early in the Session to amend the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954. The Bill will make the changes that are necessary to bring the tenants of licensed premises and public houses within the protection of the Act, following the report by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission on the supply of beer. The role of the publican is important in giving the consumer choice. Licensees who are tenants of brewers should be able to shop around for the best deal without being penalised by the brewers for doing so. The Bill will achieve that result.
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  The Gracious Speech also contains a major environment protection Bill in which I was much involved in the summer and which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment will discuss. However, the Gracious Speech contains no industry Bill—because no such Bill is needed. British industry is stronger, more successful and more productive than ever before. The Opposition have been peddling a myth about the weakness of British industry, but Britain's industrial recovery during the past decade is no myth. The truth is that the quack doctors of the Opposition have conjured up a "malade imaginaire" and they have prescribed pills that might indeed make that patient sick.
  Mr. Tam Dalyell: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way—on the environment?
  Mr. Ridley: I shall come to the environment later.
  Let us examine the state of the patient's health. It has enjoyed eight years of continuing economic growth at an average of about 3 per cent., manufacturing output is now at record levels—12 per cent. higher than in 1979 and 6 per cent. higher than the previous all-time peak in 1974—and a further small increase in manufacturing output is expected for 1990. The Opposition quack doctors achieved a significant fall in manufacturing output in their period of office using the dud pills that they now want to prescribe again.
  There have been large volume increases in manufacturing investment last year and this and it is now at its highest level. We have achieved flexibility of working practices, far better industrial relations and commitment, at all levels, to the success of the enterprise.
  Mr. Roger King: My right hon. Friend should cast his mind back to 1979 when we had had five years of Socialism under a Labour Government. Does he recall the Chrysler car company of the United Kingdom which, in 1978, endured 700 stoppages? Chrysler sold its business to Peugeot, the French company, for the equivalent of 66p. Nine years later, after practically no stoppages, that company is making profits of £100 million a year and is proving extremely successful in the British economy. Surely that says everything about our policies.
  Mr. Ridley: What my hon. Friend so accurately remembers is what the Opposition called Socialist supply side policies.
  Mr. Hugh Dykes: As my right hon. Friend said, we all rejoice in the supply side achievements of the British manufacturing sector. My right hon. Friend referred to the 7·3 per cent. increase in manufacturing industry's total output between 1973 and the latest available figures. So that we have an accurate comparison, can my right hon. Friend say how that compares with the West German figures for the same period and the OECD average for 50-million plus population economies?
  Mr. Ridley: I cannot give the figure—[Interruption.]—but the most striking success is in manufacturing productivity, which increased by no less than 50 per cent. in the 1980s. That rate of growth has not been equalled by any of our competitors, including the West Germans, nor was it ever achieved under the Labour party. Industrial profitability is at its highest level for more than 20 years.
  Mr. Gavin Strang: I should like to direct the right hon. Gentleman's attention to a British manufacturing firm that is most important to the Scottish economy in terms of employment and high technology. The right hon. Gentleman knows that I am referring to Ferranti. Because of the tremendous concern, especially in Scotland, about the future of that great British company can he reassure us that the outcome of the bidding that is about to take place for the equity of Ferranti will reflect not only the interests of the shareholders—we know that the board will take account of that—and those of the workers, which we are confident the unions will seek to try to defend, but the strategic and military interest of the company to the British people?
  Mr. Ridley: We do not have any proposal before us yet, but I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence will give any views that he may have should a proposal come forward. The Director General of Fair Trading will also give a view on the competitive aspects of the matter. I cannot, however, answer a hypothetical question.
  Mr. Keith Vaz rose—
  Mr. Ridley: I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman, but then I must make progress.
  Mr. Vaz: The right hon. Gentleman spoke about the economic miracle in trade and industry. In that context will he consider the plight of the British textile and footwear industry? His Department has supplied figures to me showing that the number of people employed in that industry has declined by 50 per cent. in the past 10 years. What have his Government and Department done to save British textiles and footwear from disaster?
  Mr. Ridley: The hon. Member knows that industries thrive or decline according to their competitiveness and the way in which they meet the competition. As he knows, the textile industry has been protected by the multi-fibre arrangement to a degree that many British industries have not enjoyed. The industry has stabilised and has a good export record.
  Industrial profitability is at its highest for more than 20 years. The real rate of return on assets rose 6 per cent. in 1979 to 10 per cent. in 1988. Following decades of decline, our share of the value of world trade between major industrial nations has stabilised since 1981. In some markets it has actually risen. The volume of exports was 31 per cent. higher in 1988 than it was in 1979. In the two years 1987 and 1988, manufacturing output rose by almost 13 per cent. and exports by 14·6 per cent. Output in 1988 rose more than in any year since 1973. That is a formidable performance which should not be belittled.
  I know that the trade deficit is unacceptably high. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor has taken steps to reduce it. However, the causes of the deficit not in the supply side failure but in the unexpectedly strong surge in consumer demand and record imports of capital equipment for industry. Some of the deficit is to cover investment which will improve supply side performance in the future.
  This is a transformation by British industry which the Labour party should applaud. The hon. Member for Dunfermline, East is fond of talking about supply side Socialism. That reduced manufacturing output between
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  1974 and 1979 by 3 per cent. Since then supply side Toryism has increased it by 12·5 per cent. Let us compare the two.
  We have carried out an historic transfer of publicly owned enterprises into the private sector where they belong. Across industry and commerce we have removed restrictions to allow business men to make the decisions and customers to choose. Personal and corporate tax rates have been cut and public expenditure has been restrained. We have made a concerted attack on regulations which burden business. Apart from regional grants, we have almost obliterated industrial subsidies. They make for bad economic decisions. The extent of these subsidies is best seen in the external finance given to nationalised industries. In 1978–79, this amounted to nearly £3 billion. This year, it is estimated that it will have fallen in real terms by 85 per cent. Today, virtually no industrial subsidies remain. Therefore, the reduction in subsidies has been just about matched by the growth in production.
  On Socialist supply side policies—
  Mr. Alistair Darling rose—
  Mr. Ridley: I shall not give way for the moment.
  The great alternative on offer from the Labour party is, we are told, a new role for the Department of Trade and Industry
  "to develop strategies, to identify priorities"
  for industry. A new role? Does not that sound depressingly familiar? Does the Labour party remember the Department of Economic Affairs? Does it remember the National Enterprise Board? They, too, were set up to
  "develop strategies and identify priorities for industry".
  Where did they leave British industry? Demoralised, shabby and afraid, stifled and battered by Government strategies and priorities and more and more subsidies.
  Has the Labour party not learnt the lessons of the 1960s and 1970s? The only new idea is a new name for the National Enterprise Board—British Technology Enterprise. In other words, more subsidy. It also plans to create a British investment bank—not one but a network of regional investment banks. That will involve more subsidy. It intends to introduce new controls on the movement of capital to try to force investment in projects that would not justify investment on any commercial grounds. The Labour party's policy of a medium-term industrial strategy would simply lead to medium-term decline—the sort of industrial decline that the same policies caused in the 1960s and 1970s and which this Government have spent 10 years putting right.
  Mr. Robert Adley: All Conservative Members recognise that industry's future depends largely on industry itself. One role that the Government have to play is to assist in the provision of proper transport facilities. Can my right hon. Friend explain why, throughout the debate on the Gracious Speech, there has been no mention at all of transport? Is my right hon. Friend aware of the strength of the views of the CBI and many others that the profile of the transport debate should be raised? During his speech will my right hon. Friend deal in any way with transport policy in the absence of the Secretary of State for Transport?
  Mr. Ridley: My hon. Friend knows that the Opposition choose the subjects for debate. Today they have chosen

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  industry and the environment and not, I am afraid transport. I agree with my hon. Friend. Their choice shows the Opposition's undoubted lack of proper priorities.
  I should like to return to subsidies. We have eliminated most of our own and are now pressing for others in Europe to reduce theirs. That is at the heart of a genuine single market after 1992. It is a central objective of the single market, and one that we wholeheartedly share, that the market should be both open and scrupulously fair. Industrial subsidy will just not be an instrument of protection for Governments in the Community.
  The Labour party's policy review states that the single market will "create great opportunities" for Britain. Indeed it will, but one opportunity that it will not create will be for a Labour Government to re-erect all the subsidies and interventionist policies that they promise us. Any attempt to do so would run into deep trouble. The European Commission is working for radical cuts leading to the abolition of subsidies throughout the Community, and we strongly support its efforts. We shall join it in trying to root out open and covert subsidies on the continent which work against the principles of the single market and put British firms at a disadvantage.
  I have to tell Opposition Members that nationalisation is out, too. We are already very concerned about the opportunities of state-owned companies on the continent to distort the single market. We strongly support the Commission in working for greater openness about the financing of state companies. They must not be allowed to undercut the competition with their losses made up by Governments. We are also pressing for the liberalisation of public procurement in the Community and the elimination of hidden barriers of all sorts to open markets to our firms. It is simply not on for our firms to face subsidised EC competition or areas of the European market that are protected in other ways.
  The Labour party is trying to buff up its Euro image. I wonder whether the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East realises that his industrial policies would lead only to the European Court. Supply side Socialism is incompatable with the realities of the single market. Perhaps the hon. Member for Dagenham has been moved on so that the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East will have the chance to obliterate from the Labour party's review the industrial policies of the hon. Member for Dagenham. He could follow the lead of the hon. Member for Dagenham who has, I note, dissociated himself from the view of the hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) and proposes to replace the community charge with a tax on the capital value of property and a local income tax.
  For about four years I have attempted to get the Labour party to spell out the details of its policy on local taxation. The hon. Member for Dagenham has obliged with clarity and in detail. This month he said:
  "Labour would look at a wide range of options some of which will be single taxes and some of which will not".
  Four years later that is the degree of clarity and precision that the Labour party put to the British people on local taxation. I understand the basis for the recent recycling of the Labour Front Bench. Every time they play musical chairs, the new spokesperson drops the old policies. That is quite right, too, because the old policies are no good.
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  The policy review threatens industry with a payroll tax. The hon. Member for Dunfermline, East should listen to this. The policy of the hon. Member for Dagenham would threaten industry with a payroll tax. How high will it be? On what point will it be based? What estimate has been made of the unemployment that it will cause? How much damage is it estimated that it will do to our exports? The hon. Member for Dunfermline, East has a clean sheet—I welcome him to his new duties—so perhaps his first action should be to drop the payroll tax now, as soon as I sit down.
  The second area of policy where the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East must clean up the mess left by his predecessor is share ownership, on which the hon. Member for Dagenham gave a pledge. He said that the notion that provision of capital does not bring with it all the rights of ownership and control should be extended to the whole economy. Millions of people who have been given the opportunity to own shares by the Conservative party want to know the answer. Will he come clean this afternoon?
  Mr. Dennis Turner: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Labour party's policy on the poll tax is that we shall abolish it?
  Mr. Ridley: I think that the hon. Gentleman did not hear what I said. I was speaking about the payroll tax. Is he aware that his party intends to bring in a major payroll tax on all industrial and commercial firms? Has he asked his hon. Friends what it will be like and how much unemployment it will cause in his constituency? Why is he so shy about it? Why does he not advocate the tax?
  I move on to the environment, which is quieter, safer and greener ground. The Government's proper role is, by means of regulations, to ensure that free and fair competition is not undermined, to set and enforce regulatory regimes on monopolies, to prevent abuse and to set standards that protect the consumer and the environment. The Government should secure the necessary levels of environmental protection by setting emissions standards for pollutants and ensuring that they are properly enforced. That is one of the basic principles of a free market economy.
  Mr. John Wilkinson: Will my right hon. Friend spell out with more clarity some of his ideas—[Laughter.]—for the industries of the future such as the space business in Britain? Does he regard the European Space Agency as an expensive club or as a worthwhile sponsor for important industrial enterprises?
  Hon. Members: Answer.
  Mr. Speaker: Order.
  Mr. Ridley: It is a complicated technical issue. My hon. Friend will know that we participate in space projects where we believe that it is to the advantage of British industry and science. He will agree that we should be selective.
  We believe in the effective enforcement of high environmental standards. Conservative Governments always have. It was a Conservative Government who produced the first green Bill—the Clean Air Act 1956. It was a Conservative Government who introduced in 1972 the first measure to control—[Interruption.]—the movement and dumping of hazardous wastes. [Interruption.]
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I ask the House to give the Secretary of State a fair hearing.
  Mr. Ridley: The principle of both Acts was the Government setting standards for freely competing companies. They have worked. The Environmental Protection Bill is not the first of its kind, but it is a major measure designed to tackle specific environmental problems.
  There is an alternative doctrine. It is the doctrine of public ownership with a vague aspiration to behave in the public interest. [HON. MEMBERS: "Rubbish."] It demonstrably does not work. The water industry is an obvious example. Until the creation of the National Rivers Authority, the water authorities were both providers of water and sewage services, and policemen for water quality standards. They struggled manfully to reconcile those incompatible roles but, not surprisingly, found it impossible to do so. In addition, the Labour party cut investment in water by half, in the public interest, and the cleanliness of our rivers and beaches declined accordingly.
  Mr. Dalyell: Why did not the Secretary of State consult the chairman of the Nature Conservancy Council before deciding to break it up? He must have known perfectly well that it had offered territorial decision-making within the general framework of scientific research. There may be an answer. Could the Secretary of State give it to his parliamentary colleagues?
  Mr. Ridley: I had many talks with the chairman of the NCC and we in the Government concluded collectively to make the decision which will be endorsed by the House when the Bill is introduced later this Session.
  We are now putting things right. Our rivers and beaches are cleaner and the NRA will ensure that the improvement is maintained. It will have no conflict of interest. Its focus will be on improving water quality in line with national water quality objectives to be set by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment. That is a proper division of responsibilities. The Government set standards, the regulator enforces them and the operators comply with the standards laid down.
  Mr. Paul Flynn: Is the Secretary of State aware that such has been the success of the NRA in Wales that weeks after it was set up the River Rhymney which flows through my constituency was so badly polluted that all its 10,000 fish were wiped out? Calls made to the NRA could not be answered because it had a minor problem on another river. Is that what the Secretary of State calls success?
  Mr. Ridley: The hon. Gentleman must give the NRA time to get on top of these matters—[Laughter.] He knows perfectly well that if he has such a complaint he can refer it to my right hon. and noble Friend the chairman who will undoubtedly deal with it immediately.
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment will say more about our policy for the environment and the important measures proposed in the Bill to be introduced soon.
  Mr. Tony Favell: Does my right hon. Friend share my surprise that the British people have allowed the Government to control the water supply for so
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  long? Recently I was speaking to an American from Houston who said, "You allow the Government and politicians to control the water supply? What about food?"
  Mr. Ridley: My hon. Friend is quite right. I notice that no one has ever suggested that the food industry should be nationalised, because we would get the same sort of standards in that as they have in Communist countries.
  The Government's objective is to improve both our economic performance and the environment. We have the right policies in place to do that job. The need now is to get on with the job. It is sad to contrast these exciting policies with the supply side Socialism of the Labour party. It wants to return to the centralised industrial policies of the sort that have failed in Eastern Europe just when the people of Eastern Europe are making it crystal clear that they want no more to do with those policies. Only yesterday, the Polish Minister for Privatisation, in a letter to the Financial Times, wrote that the Polish
  "economy is in a disastrous condition, and we want to turn it into a modern market economy as soon as possible".
  That is quite right because Socialist supply side policies have been a disaster not just for industry in Eastern Europe but, as is becoming increasingly clear, for its environment. We will believe the conversion of the Labour party to realism and modern policies when it appoints a shadow Minister for privatisation. Does it have to be behind the Poles?
  3.21 pm
  Mr. Gordon Brown: Having heard the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry speak this afternoon, I am amazed that the Prime Minister did not see fit to invite him to address the Tory party conference in Blackpool last month. He is the sixth Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in as many years, and each of his predecessors has one thing in common. His period at the Department has been a vital career stepping stone on the way out of government and on to the Back Benches. I accept that in this Secretary of State's case, there is a big difference. When he goes, he wants the Department to go with him. I can imagine the conversation that he had with the Prime Minister when he was appointed to his job. He was being asked to take over a Department with a troubled history which will have to deal with unfinished business over 1992 and financial and banking regulations, with all the competitive challenges of the future and with the loose ends left over from his five predecessors. Did he say to the Prime Minister, "Give me the Department and I will finish the job." or did he say, "Give me the job and I will finish the Department"?
  What is the day for the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry now? No longer are there working breakfasts in the inner cities to attend, no longer early morning briefings with Saatchi and Saatchi and the public relations agencies. I accept that the Secretary of State needs no help with his image or presentation. He strides into his Department, with his private office awaiting his every word and his press office ready to broadcast his achievements, and he opens his red box. What does he find? What does he decide—another takeover not to refer, another research initiative not to support, another European industrial collaboration project not to back, another export promotion effort not to support, another golden share to give away? A whole Department devoted to doing nothing. Nothing to do, and 12,500 civil servants to do it with.

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  Let me tell the Secretary of State what he should have said. He should have come to the House and admitted that he is faced with the highest interest rates, the worst inflation, the biggest trade deficit of our major competitors, a growth in output that is slowing faster than the growth in demand, a forecast growth for next year of 4 per cent. in Japan, 3 per cent. in Germany but, once oil is taken out, less than 1 per cent. in Britain, and with the failures of the present, matched by the failure even to address the challenge of the future.
  What should the right hon. Gentleman have said? First, he should have said that he would learn from the mistakes of running a consumer-based and credit-based boom without adequate long-term, sustained investment to back it up, and that he would not seek to repeat them. Secondly, he should have said that he would end the exclusive reliance on interest rates which is so damaging to the industries that he is supposed to represent. Thirdly, he should have told us that he has proposed to the Prime Minister that the Government should open negotiations to join the exchange rate mechanism according to the objectives laid down by the Labour party. Fourthly, he should have said that his job is to ensure a proper balance between consumption and investment in the economy to guarantee the long-term future of British industry.
  That is why the right hon. Gentleman should say that supply side measures are necessary for the future challenges that industry has to meet—investment in research and technology, investment in innovation and in the regions—so that they can play a full part in balanced economic growth in Britain.
  Mr. Adley: The hon. Gentleman has not mentioned transport either. Was it a deliberate decision by the Opposition to avoid a debate on transport? Are they worried that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) would frighten the viewers, or do they not think that transport has as high a priority as some Conservative Members think it has?
  Mr. Brown: I shall mention some of the problems that result from congestion and the problems that have been created by the Government. The Opposition have issued a statement on the developments that we want in transport. We are more in tune with the Confederation of British Industry, which has complained about the Government's failure to deal with Britain's infrastructure problems.
  The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry told us about the silver linings, but he forgot about the dark clouds on the economic horizon. He has forgotten what business men and industrialists throughout the country are saying, and have said in the past few days. At the CBI conference there were complaints about the Government's addiction to high interest rates. Mr. Harry Keeman of Carville said:
  "Small businesses are waiting along the edge of the cliff with a view to the abyss below"
  as a result of high interest rates. Mr. Roland Long, a member of the CBI, and not a Labour supporter, said:
  "Soon we will be told that manufacturing is unassailable; then we should start worrying".
  Mr. Norman Record of C. and J. Clarke, said:
  "What we have had"
  from the Government
  "is an economic fairy tale."
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  Yet the Government still tell us, as the Secretary of State was trying to tell us this afternoon, that we are living through an economic miracle and that the British economy is stronger than ever. They tell us the economic miracle which they have created is for export to other countries—as if other countries would want our high interest rates and the worst trade deficit. They are saying all those things about an economy which is falling into depression as a result of the policies that they have pursued.
  Our complaint against the Government is about their mistakes in their approach to industry over the past two years and the fundamental errors of the past 10 years. They have shown a lack of concern for the problems that industry has faced in the 1980s, and a betrayal of the industrial future for the 1990s.
  Mr. John Marshall: The hon. Gentleman talks about the failures of the past 10 years. Will he remind the House what has happened to the inflation rate and the level of investment over the past 10 years?
  Mr. Brown: In 1978, the last full year of Labour Government, inflation was at the European average. At the moment it is well above the European average.
  The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Chris Patten): And investment?
  Mr. Brown: The Secretary of State for the Environment asks me about investment. During the oil-rich years of the 1980s, the share of national resources devoted to investment has been lower than that of almost all our major industrial competitor countries. It has not only been lower than that in Germany or in Japan but, as a share of national income, it has been lower than that in Greece, Portugal, Spain and Turkey. That is the situation the Government have brought us to.
  Having failed, during the 1980s, to invest in our future, having created an environment in which a smaller proportion of the relevant age group in the United Kingdom goes to college or university than in not just Germany and Japan, but countries such as Taiwan and Korea, and having devoted a smaller proportion of our resources to civil research and development than have our major European competitors, what are the Government creating for our economy? They are compounding their errors.
  Mr. Ridley: Since the hon. Gentleman insists on painting the blackest possible picture of the British economy, can he tell us what would be the effect of imposing a payroll tax on British industry? If the economy is as bad as he makes out, that would surely make it even worse.
  Mr. Brown: I shall tell the Secretary of State what we are proposing—to do what the Germans do. We are proposing to invest in training. We are proposing to gain a partnership of industry to do so. Business men and industrialists throughout the country are worried about the Government's neglect of education and training.
  Mr. Richard Holt: I am interested to hear the hon. Gentleman say that Labour would restructure industry on the German lines. Does that also mean that he would instruct trade unions to reorganise on the German lines so that we had industrialised unions and not the hotch-potch that we have now?
  Mr. Brown: I think that British trade unions would settle for the wages that are paid in Germany. The hon. Gentleman has misquoted me. I did not say that we would restructure industry on German lines, I said that we should have training on a par with that in Germany. Surely it is a noble objective for Britain, as it faces the 1990s and the 21st century, to aim to have the best skilled, best trained and best educated work force in Europe.
  Mr. Ridley: Am I to take it that the hon. Gentleman is proposing payroll taxes on the level at which they are paid in Germany, which can be up to 80 per cent. of labour costs?
  Mr. Brown: The Secretary of State is trying deliberately to misunderstand me. I said that we want training on a par with Germany. We will introduce measures that will enable us to move towards circumstances in which we have the best trained and best skilled work force in Europe. Is the Secretary of State saying that that objective is not worth while?
  Mr. Roger King rose—
  Mr. Brown: No, I shall not give way any more.
  Mr. Anthony Coombs rose—
  Mr. David Tredinnick rose—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. The shadow Minister is not giving way, and two of the three hon. Members who are rising hope to speak later in the debate.
  Mr. Brown: I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker.
  We are being left behind in training, in the application of new technologies, in technological innovation and in collaborative research. Having allowed that to happen during the 1980s, the Government's proposals in the Queen's Speech will do nothing to remedy the gaps in training, research, science and technology which have opened up with our competitors.
  Mr. Donald Thompson: rose—
  Mr. Brown: No, I shall not give way.
  What are the Department of Trade and Industry's responsibilities? What should it be doing to alleviate the problems of British industry and to help it prepare for the challenges of the future? I have here the job descriptions of the Secretary of State and of the Minister for Industry. What do they say? The Minister for Industry has responsibility for regional policy. What policy? He is responsible for financial assistance under the Industrial Development Act 1985. The Government believe neither in financial assistance nor in the Industrial Development Act. There is responsibility here for what the Government call
  "general R & D policy".
  Where is that policy? There is responsibility for
  "national collaborative R & D programmes".
  They have had such programmes but run many of them down. There is responsibility for European research and development. I suppose that that is something that cannot be mentioned in Cabinet. It is something that is knocked down every time Ministers go to Europe. There is responsibility for industrial research establishments, such as the British Technology Group. As Ministers see it, that is a responsibility for running them down. There is responsibility also for the inner cities. Ministers believed
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  that the problems of inner cities were solved after a photo opportunity or two last year. There is responsibility also, I may say, for intellectual property.
  The Minister who is responsible for regional policy sees it as his job to abolish it. The Minister who is in charge of industrial policy sees it as his job to run it down. The Secretary of State, who is in charge of export credits, sees it as his job to eliminate them. It is the Department of abandoned responsibility. It is not the business which likes to say yes to people but the Department that loves to say no. That is the problem we face.
  Nowhere is the problem that British industry faces—and Britain as a whole—greater than in the trade deficit, which is now approaching £20 billion. Imports from Korea have grown since 1979 by 250 per cent. Those from Taiwan have risen by 350 per cent., and from Japan by 250 per cent. We have a trade deficit with the largest trade deficit nation in the world, the United States. We have deficits with Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Peru. We have a deficit with East Germany, Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Albania. We are told that trade deficits can result from freak figures. Can trade deficits concurrently with 76 different countries around the world result from freak figures?
  Fortunately, we are in surplus with a few countries. We are in surplus by £59,000 with the Cook Islands. We are £300,000, surplus with the Vatican City. We are £5 million in surplus with Bulgaria and £10 million in surplus with Andorra. Unfortunately, we have a trading deficit with all the major trading nations with the exception of Canada. New products that were invented and patented in Britain and America have been developed in Germany and Japan and mass produced in Korea, Singapore and Taiwan.
  Mr. Tredinnick: Is it not a fact that many of the imports coming to Britain are in the form of capital goods that will go into industry to generate future exports, for which I understand the hon. Gentleman is arguing?
  Mr. Brown: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that matter, as it allows me to demolish another myth that has been produced by Conservative Members. The share of what are called investment and production goods in the trade deficit is exactly what it has been over the past 20 years. Another problem is that the investment and production goods that the Government describe as goods for investment rather than for consumption include headphones, microphones, burglar alarms, water meters, tailors' dummies, paper trays and hot air balloons. These are hardly goods for investment and production.
  Even more worrying is that the trade deficits that we face are greatest not in our traditional industries but in high-technology industries. Nowhere is that more obvious than the deficit in information technology and electronics, which is now approaching £2·5 billion.
  What is the Government's response to the problems that exporters face? It is to cut the amount of money available to the Export Credits Guarantee Department. They have threatened to privatise part or all of it over the next few weeks. They have cut support for small firms that are attending trade fairs for the first time. They have cut the availability of export services to many firms by charging them for advice and assistance in a way that has not been done before.
  No other oil-exporting country has such a large trade deficit. No other major industrial nation has seen such a

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  small increase in industrial output. No other country has seen such slow growth in its manufacturing investment in basic industries. No Government with such a large deficit have shown such little concern for the problems that industry and exporters face. A nation that has progressed so far over the past few centuries by its industrial efforts now has a Government whose policy is to abandon their responsibilities to industry.
  Mr. Christopher Gill: Does the hon. Gentleman support the claim of the unions for a 35-hour week, which would give British industry the shortest working week in the industrial world?
  Mr. Brown: I believe that there should be negotiations on such issues, just as I believe that there should be negotiations that lead to a conclusion of the ambulance dispute.
  Let us consider some of the detailed problems that industry faces. Even when the market has failed in the business of research and development, even when other countries are spending far more, even when companies, business men and industrialists are begging the Government to introduce schemes that will assist the business of collaborative and national research and development, even when people in the most modern industries, such as microchips, are saying that the Government are forcing them to act with one hand tied behind their backs, what do the Government do? They have ended support for the fibre-optics research and development scheme, they have closed down the opto-electronics support scheme, they have even begun to close projects that they started after 1983, such as the micro-electronics support scheme, and they are now trying to prevent a European collaborative programme in the most advanced technologies.
  Mr. James Hill rose—
  Mr. Brown: I have given way several times, and I wish to continue with my remarks.
  What budget does the Secretary of State propose for his Department? He intends to cut the money available for research and development so that we face the 1990s with fewer Government resources for future technology and new research and development than any other advanced industrial nation in Europe.
  Mr. Hill rose—
  Mr. Brown: I shall not give way. I have given way a number of times and I shall not do so again. I wish to continue with my remarks.
  What hope can the Secretary of State offer to British companies? Will he support them in the way that Germany, Japan, France and other countries support their companies? Britain is already the takeover capital of Europe, with British companies more vulnerable to takeover than companies in many other countries. Takeovers in the first half of this year were worth twice or three times the takeovers in France and Germany. Even the chairman of Britain's most successful company, ICI, expressed doubt about whether the Government would come to his aid if an asset-stripping operation started against his company.
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  The chairman of the latest takeover victim, DRG, said that only in Britain
  "could a company be taken over by an offshore raider from a tax haven"—
  and the Government would do absolutely nothing. The American Government are proposing to take action; the Governor of the Bank of England is worried and says that action should be taken to prevent the takeover of British banks; yet the Secretary of State's answer, in a speech only a few days ago, was to widen the possibilities for takeover by narrowing the grounds on which he would permit referral—even to the extent of permitting junk bonds in this country, and doing nothing about it.
  A few days ago the Secretary of State said:
  "A few said that I should be concerned about the spread of junk bonds … The judgment on the risks associated with junk bonds is for the shareholders of the target company to determine."
  The Secretary of State will do absolutely nothing to prevent a takeover with the use of junk bonds, yet every other country in Europe and the United States of America is sufficiently concerned to propose action to deal with the problem.
  Nowhere is the Government's abandonment of responsibility clearer than in their attitude to golden shares. The Secretary of State accepted a special responsibility by adopting and introducing golden shares in a number of companies. When he was at the Department of the Environment, he introduced many golden shares—he even defended them in the debate on water privatisation and said that they were a help in organising action against the threat of a takeover.
  Tell that to Jaguar. Just at the very point that the Government's golden share in that company could have been used to secure assurances of future investment, location and product development in the national interest, the Secretary of State gives Jaguar two hours' notice, tears up the golden share, and throws it away. The best that he can do for British industry is to give only two hours' notice to a company that it is to be thrown to the wolves.
  Mr. Nicholas Bennett rose—
  Mr. Brown: No, I shall not give way.
  What is the future for the British Airports Authority, even after yesterday's so-called assurances? What is the future for Sealink, which was protected against takeover from abroad in the past by a golden share? Will it be protected in future? What protection will be given in future to our water companies after they are privatised? What is the future for the royal dockyards and for Rolls-Royce?
  Can you, Mr. Speaker, imagine the German Government giving Siemens or Daimler Benz two hours' notice that they are to be taken over? Can you imagine the French Government giving Renault or Thomson a few minutes' warning of such a takeover? Can you imagine the Japanese ever allowing such a situation to develop if Hitachi or Sony were ever faced by the danger of a takeover? If the Government refuse to accept their responsibilities towards the industries of this country even when they have the powers and have given promises to do so, one must conclude that there is not an industry in the country, not a company in this country and not an industrial sector in this country that can rely on the Government for support for as long as they are in power.
  Mr. Nicholas Bennett rose—
  Mr. Brown: Finally, I turn to regional aid.
  Mr. Tredinnick: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) referred to his hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) as "the wolf of Dagenham." Is that parliamentary language, and should it be allowed?
  Mr. Speaker: I have heard much worse.
  Mr. Brown: I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker.
  Another of the Secretary of State's responsibilities is regional policy. Regional aid for Scotland is being cut from £200 million in the mid-1980s to £120 million next year, and to £100 million by 1992. Regional aid for Wales is being cut from £145 million to £110 million, and then to £90 million. Regional aid for the midlands and for the north of England is being cut—[Interruption.] I thought that certain Conservative Members would be interested to hear what is happening in the north, the midlands and in Yorkshire.
  Mr. Nicholas Bennett rose—
  Mr. Bill Walker rose—
  Mr. Holt rose—
  Mr. Tim Devlin rose—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. With any luck, and if we can get on, some of the hon. Members who want to put their point of view may be able to do so at greater length later.
  Mr. Brown: I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker. Conservative Members are not really attempting to question an Opposition Front Bench spokesman; they are making a deliberate attempt to cause disruption.
  Regional aid for the north and the midlands is being cut from £350 million in the mid-1980s to £190 million by 1992—which is really a halving in real terms of the value of that aid. What is the Government's response? What did the Secretary of State have to say in the autumn statement that he made today? He said that regional aid will be cut further; that money for English Estates will be cut further; that the business development initiative will also be cut further. When the businesses of this country face high interest rates, what sense does it make to cut back even further the support that is available to them for further investment—especially when it is known that regional policy is in not only the country's regional interest but its national interests?
  It makes absolutely no sense to have overheating, congestion, pressure on the green belt and skill shortages in one part of the country and forced depopulation, emigration and the underuse of resources in another. Do the French, with their policy of technology centres and growth poles, say that regional policy is a thing of the past, as this Government do? Do the Germans with their regional business innovation centres, say that there is no need for a regional policy? Do the Italians say that they should not bridge the regional gap? All other countries in Europe, all other countries that are building a successful industrial policy for the future, want their regions to play a full part in national economic development.
  Mr. Nicholas Bennett rose—
  Mr. Speaker: Order.
  Mr. Brown: I am not sure that Conservative Members want to ask questions.
  Mr. Devlin rose—
  Mr. Brown: If the television cameras were on them this afternoon—and I would support that now—it would reveal the behaviour of Conservative Members.
  Several Hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Speaker: I think that the television cameras are on the hon. Members.
  Mr. Nicholas Bennett: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it in order for the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) persistently to refuse to give way on any point that any Conservative Member may wish to make and then after never having given way to accuse Conservative Members of being organised groups of hooligans?
  Mr. Speaker: The whole House knows, as the hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. Bennett) knows, that if the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) does not intend to give way, the hon. Gentleman should not persist with his intervention.
  Mr. Devlin: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it in order for the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) to say that organised barracking is taking place on this side of the House, when he has just referred to Wales, Scotland and the north of England and made a number of misrepresentations about Government policy, about which Conservative Members with constituencies in the north, Wales and Scotland wish to ask him?
  Mr. Speaker: I have not detected any organised barracking, and I hope that I shall not. We ought to gel on with the debate because a number of hon. Members who are now raising points of order are anxious to participate in it.
  Mr. Brown: The record will show that I gave way on a large number of occasions and that on every occasion I gave way to a Conservative Member.
  The Government still say that they are the right team for Britain 's future. Let us take all those on the Treasury Bench at face value, as united in their enthusiasm for the poll tax, for privatising electricity and water, for commercialising the National Health Service, for their high interest rate policy and the abandonment of industry, for the destruction of regional policy and for making Britain the takeover capital of Europe. They are united in destroying the trade and industry policy of a once great trading and industrial nation.
  As we look forward to a new decade, Britain faces new and exciting challenges, yet when we have to meet the challenges of new technology, of an evolving Europe, of co-operation and co-ordination of economic policies across national frontiers, we find that the Prime Minister and the Cabinet are so busy trying to recreate the present in the image of the past that they have missed out entirely on the opportunities for the future. The Opposition believe in facing the challenges of the future. We believe that everyone—workers, industry, business and Government—should play their part. If the Government insist on abandoning rather than discharging their responsibilities

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  for the future, they should make way for a Labour Government who will fulfil their responsibilities for the future.
  3.54 pm
  Sir Hugh Rossi: The Front Bench spokesmen will forgive me if I do not continue with the subject that they have introduced. It has been agreed through the usual channels that this debate should be concerned both with industry and with the environment, because of references to legislation in the Queen's Speech. I shall address my remarks principally to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment.
  In the United Kingdom we have a long history of concern about the environment, dating back to the appointment of the first alkali inspector in 1864, continuing through to the smoke control legislation and public health Acts at the turn of the century and the Clean Air Act of the 1950s to the Control of Pollution Act 1974. The Queen's Speech tells us that there is to be a further development in the form of the green Bill that the Government are shortly to present.
  In its day the Control of Pollution Act 1974 was a worthy piece of legislation, which broke new ground, but it is high time that it was re-examined. The new Bill will help close loopholes that have become apparent in that Act. It will provide for the control of new technologies that were not envisaged when the Act was passed. Most important, it will place a series of duties of environmental responsibility on polluters, encapsulating the new concept of "a duty of care" as well as the "polluter pays" principle.
  All that is very much to be welcomed but it is a matter for concern that, in the desire to improve current systems of pollution control, the organisation and administration of environmental protection appear to have been overlooked. We have never had a fundamental review of the organisation of pollution regulation. Responsibility for pollution is divided between central and local government and, within central Government, between different agencies and Departments. The overall result is a hotchpotch because the system has grown up in an ad hoc way.
  The responsible agencies today include local government. Environmental health officers have the chief responsibility but their responsibility is nevertheless reactive rather than protective. If land is contaminated, they have to wait for harm to happen before they can intervene to ensure that measures are taken to cure the contamination. Part of the responsibility lies with planning officers but they, too, can react only when planning applications come before them and they have to decide for which purposes land may safely be used. None of their powers covers cases where historic contamination of land has remained for several decades, with risks to ground water and the risk of migration of methane gas. Those officials hold no pre-emptive powers.
  Mrs. Edwina Currie: My hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Sir H. Rossi) is making a most important speech and it would be as well if Opposition Members who profess to be interested in environmental pollution control, would listen. Does my hon. Friend realise just how strict planning officers and pollution control officers are these days? Shortly a massive
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  factory is to be brought by Toyota to my constituency in the midlands, without any public aid or assistance. I have been most impressed—as have my colleagues in the neighbourhood—at the effort that has been made to ensure that there is no pollution from the factory and that,right from the start, every aspect of construction should be designed to ensure that we shall have no problems.
  Sir Hugh Rossi: My hon. Friend is quite right. There has been an awakening in the public and in the political mind to the dangers that our environment faces unless we deal with our new technologies correctly. However, there remains an enormous problem with historical sites which continue to present a danger to the environment. My remarks relate to the limited powers of environmental health and planning officers to deal with what is already there.
  Other agencies have been created. For example, the National Rivers Authority has been in existence for a matter of weeks. The NRA is now the guardian of the water environment. However, one wonders why it has been given responsibility for leisure, land drainage and flood protection. What a distraction those other functions must be for an authority created primarily to protect the water environment.
  The NRA is not alone in having responsibility for the water environment. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has a responsibility for the water environment in relation to the use of fertilisers and the nitrates that drain into our water courses and estuaries. The Ministry is responsible for the marine environment—for the sea which is the ultimate dust bin for everything that we do on land whether that involves industrial effluent or the produce from our sewerage systems.
  Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution has responsibility for air pollution and for a small group of scheduled processes. Historically, it also has some responsibility for water pollution and that may well in practice overlap with the new responsibilities of the NRA. It also has an audit control, which we welcome, over the activities of the waste disposal authorities. Those authorities are yet another agency for dealing with potential pollution.
  The Health and Safety Executive also has some responsibility for the environment, paticularly with regard to the carriage of hazardous substances and their handling in our factories and workplaces. The procedures to be followed in reclaiming contaminated land are part of the HSE's responsibilities while the waste disposal authorities and many other authorities are also concerned with those problems. The HSE has responsibility for the workers carrying out reclamation work.
  The general approach in establishing those various bodies with their different responsibilities has been to react to a problem as it occurred. The remit of each agency and of the Government are correspondingly narrow and specific. No one seems to have stood back and looked at the system as it has grown and tried to rationalise it.
  The piecemeal approach has coloured the whole nature of environmental regulation in Britain. The consequences have included inequalities in resource allocation. The size and importance of an organisation depend on historical factors rather than on any attempt to assess the environmental threat. Therefore, the NRA, with a staff of 6,500, has taken over various functions from the water authorities. However, HMIP has a staff of only 200. It

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  must monitor the atmosphere and it must even monitor 5,000 waste disposal sites, many of which are highly contaminated. When my Committee was conducting its inquiry into toxic waste, only five inspectors were responsible for all that. Since the inquiry—I like to think it is as a result of the inquiry—the establishment number has doubled and trebled, but only one new one has been appointed. [HON. MEMBERS: Why?] The answer is known to the House. I do not want to take up too much time on obvious points.
  Mr. Chris Patten: I make it absolutely plain to my hon. Friend that I wholly accept the case for strengthening the inspectorate and for ensuring that it is adequately resourced. That is important to the credibility of the new control regime that we are proposing to introduce. With that objective in mind, we are examining and increasing the inspectorate's salary scales.
  Sir Hugh Rossi: I am glad to have my right hon. Friend's assurance. Salary scales have been the greatest impediment to the recruitment of people with the required scientific knowledge and expertise. I am addressing not only the inspectorate but the result of the historical, traditional, hotchpotch, reactive approach to each environmental problem as it has impinged on our political consciousness.
  Mr. Dennis Skinner: One issue which has not been touched upon and which creates a blight on the environment is opencast coal development. Whether they occur in a green belt or in any other belt, the Government tend to allow open cast developments to take place. They not only create a blight but all sorts of things can be dumped in the holes that are left. Lots of people make a lot of money out of that, including some who have tankers waiting outside the estuaries up and down Britain. The hon. Gentleman should tell his right hon. Friend the Minister that, if he wants a co-ordinated approach to the environment to clean up contaminated areas, he should stop opencast operations in the green belt in my constituency and elsewhere.
  Sir Hugh Rossi: The hon. Gentleman should not tempt me to question the environmental impact of the activities of the Coal Board. The hon. Gentleman should look at what the Coal Board has dumped on beaches at Durham for decades. It has had a most disastrous effect upon the environment, and successive Governments have allowed it. The real problem is who pays for clearing it up. Is it the coal industry, which created the waste? The hon. Gentleman will find that the unions which he represents will not thank him if we opt to do that. The on-cost of a tonne of coal will rise considerably to the point of being non-competitive if the coal industry must clean up what it has caused throughout this land.
  Other hon. Members want to speak, so I do not wish to detain the House for too long, but I shall pursue the theme of the consequences of the hotchpotch approach. I have mentioned the lack of resources. Equally important and worrying is the lack of authoritative knowledge of environmental issues. Available expertise is naturally dispersed through all the different agencies, organisations and strata of government, both central and local.
  Local authorities and developers find it impossible to find an alternative source of advice to a particular problem. Indeed, my Committee experienced some hiatus
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  while HMIP was preparing its new waste management paper on landfill gas because local authorities did not know what to do. Even today, when we ask local authorities in Committee, "What are you going to do about contaminated land?" they say, "We do not have the expertise in-house, so we will contract out. All kinds of commercial concerns come to us and say that they have the ideal technology to cure our problems." The solution may be to incinerate the contamination or to pump out the leaches and to treat it with a particular chemical. It may even mean spraying the contamination with bugs that will then eat the organic components causing the contamination.
  Local authorities ask, "How are we to assess whether we are being sold something that is really what we need and best for our problem? There is no central place to which we can go where all the different technologies on offer have been tested and where we can obtain advice as to the ones we should follow." Does that situation not call out for some reassessment of the way in which we have organised ourselves in dealing with environmental problems?
  Mr. Gareth Wardell rose—
  Sir Hugh Rossi: Yes, I shall give way, but this must be the last intervention.
  Mr. Wardell: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman and I know of his tremendous work as Chairman of the Select Committee on the Environment. Following the point that he is making, how far does he agree with the evidence given to his Committee by the managing director of Aspinwalls, which is one of this country's leading environmental consultants on landfill, when he said that the options open to industrialists in Britain had virtually disappeared as far as co-disposal in landfill is concerned because the Government cut research in the early 1980s, making it virtually impossible for industrialists to have such an option?
  Sir Hugh Rossi: The hon. Gentleman has anticipated the last point that I wish to make regarding the effect of our hotch-potch approach. Because of the lack of a clear focus, for which I am arguing, our approach has not been well understood in Europe, where directives are now being made about how waste should be best disposed. In a sense, we have a long clinical record of dealing with wastes by co-disposal, mixing domestic waste with certain types of industrial waste in conditions which mean that they are sealed in so that natural chemical and biological activities will have the effect of neutralising and rendering them harmless.
  However, because that has been done as a result of trial and error and experience, and because we are satisfied that it works, we do not have the scientific base whereby our consultants, such as Aspinwalls, can go to Europe to give evidence and say, "Here is the scientific data that proves this is safe and can be used."
  That is another weakness from which we are all suffering and that weakness exists because we as a nation—not as a political party, one or the other—have neglected this issue. The Labour Government neglected this point just as much as the present Government have only suddenly become awake and alive to these problems. I advise the House that we are all in this together and that we must find a solution together. We should not be

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  constantly bickering and arguing about it. I think that I can say that because, as Chairman of an all-party Committee, I am possibly a little more detached than most hon. Members from the everyday political infighting.
  When we are dealing with environmental matters we are dealing with questions that affect the way in which our children and grandchildren will live. How we deal with those questions will affect the kind of earth that we leave them and unless we address our minds seriously to those questions and recognise them as one of the major problems facing the human race, we will be reviled by future generations. I am delighted that the Queen's Speech contains a positive statement from the Government that they are looking to environmental protection on an international as well as a national basis. Many, if not all, the problems must be solved by international co-operation and agreement.
  If our present structures are wrong, what are the alternatives? Some countries have established environmental protection agencies that regulate and initiate policies. In the United States the consequence of that has been the establishment of an EPA that our Committee considered excessively bureaucratic. We certainly do not want such an agency in the United Kingdom. There are alternatives, however, and we tried to highlight those in our report on toxic waste. We floated the idea of an environmental protection commission for the United Kingdom with overall responsibility for safeguarding environmental quality in the United Kingdom. It would have responsibility for initiating and enforcing policy on the environment. The commission could take a variety of forms.
  Mr. Allen McKay: The hon. Gentleman will be aware that there is a problem about the disposal of toxic waste in the neighbouring constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy). That constituency has encountered difficulty in returning the toxic waste to America from where it came. Would the proposed commission take care of that problem?
  Sir Hugh Rossi: I recommend to the hon. Gentleman the Basle convention that covers the transportation, import and export of toxic waste. I understand that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is keen for us to sign that convention. I hope that he ensures that the Government ratify that convention—perhaps we shall have a statement to that effect. The Basle convention, and all the controls that it would put upon the export and import of toxic waste, represents a major move forward by the international community. It is something that this country should ratify as soon as possible.
  The environmental protection commission could take a number of forms and it need not be a large centralised body. It could closely follow the form of the present Health and Safety Commission, which has the Health and Safety Executive as its arm. The environmental protection commission could possibly incorporate the National Rivers Authority and include other functions for the protection of the environment—involving air, water and land. In that way we would have an integrated policy for environmental protection. One of the things we have learned in Committee is that there is a constant and
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  persistent interaction between air, land and water that affects the totality of our environment. We cannot deal with those elements in separate, watertight compartments and we must take a broad view. We need to create the proper organisation capable of doing that.
  It was with great disappointment that my Committee noted the way in which the Government brushed aside our tentative proposals for an environmental protection commission. I believe that, with the changes that have taken place, the greater awareness of the problems and the natural sympathy of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for such matters, a fresh look will be given to the question of establishing a new organisation. I recommend such a commission to him. He will have to decide this quickly because the Environment Council's president, the noble Earl of Cranbrook, has today in another place presented a proposal for an environmental protection agency, very much along the lines of the Health and Safety Commission.
  I have not yet had an opportunity to study the Bill which has only just reached me. If it follows the general principles which I have been seeking to outline, I hope that it will recommend itself to my right hon. Friend and the Cabinet.
  4.20 pm
  Mr. Seamus Mallon: To someone from Northern Ireland, after the weekend that we have had, there is an air of unreality about today's debate. Industry and the environment, in the Northern Ireland context, which is hung about with so much violence, is almost unreal. When I listened to the eloquent speech of the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Sir H. Rossi) on the importance of the environment I was deeply struck by the gap between the priorities as he sees them in this country and those in the North of Ireland. In Northern Ireland it is difficult not to measure such issues against the background of an ordinary weekend, such as last weekend, when five humans were killed. It is not simply just another weekend.
  There is a close relationship between the violence in Northern Ireland and what is happening to society there, and the lack of industrial and environmental concern. I am glad that the Secretary of State for the Environment is here because he knows from experience the problems, especially in the concrete jungles and urban centres, where lack of employment, industry and jobs—allied to the terrible social environment—create an atmosphere in which the sharks and godfathers of violence thrive. Those problems create such a context and if we are to deal with them we must look at them in totality. We cannot do that without considering the environment and employment. This becomes even more important when we consider some problems that are not related to those issues.
  I hope to identify three such problems today in the hope, however vain, that at some time the Government will take them on board. The Queen's Speech referred to improving the economy through the framework of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Does it make sense in a small country like Ireland to have, because of partition, two agricultural policies, two different sets of industrial programming and planning, two tourist boards, two transport authorities and an absolute economic mess in the development of the island?

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  The time has come when the Government, in conjunction with the Irish Government, should plan in terms of developing the island. I am not making an ideological political point. That can wait for other times, other decades, perhaps even another century. It makes economic sense—especially as we approach 1992—to start to develop the North of Ireland in conjunction with the rest of the island and develop its potential rather than allow it to stagnate as at present. I make a specific request to the Government that such economic planning and economic harmonisation should be carried out so that we approach 1992 with at least a fighting chance of maximising our membership of the EC.
  My second point, which I keep making in the House and to which I receive little response, is that life is difficult in an area of high unemployment. Male unemployment in parts of west Belfast is approaching more than 60 per cent. In parts of my constituency unemployment is near to 40 per cent. Those unemployed people live almost exclusively on social security benefit. They start off being deprived because they pay about 30 per cent. more for coal, energy and heating than do people in England, Scotland and Wales. They pay about 20 per cent. more for food and about 33 per cent. more for electricity. They do not have a mains gas supply. Those things mean that we are not getting parity in social security benefits. It is parity minus. The differentials relate to essential costs, not to luxuries, and I ask again for the special circumstances of Northern Ireland to he taken into account. The further we go down the line with the new social security arrangements the more those differentials become the difference between being able to cope and being caught in the poverty trap.
  Mr Alex Salmond: The hon. Gentleman is right when he says that social security benefits do not take account of the real cost of living in Northern Ireland and Scotland. Is it not a bitter irony that the Government's economic policy has given us a 15 per cent. base rate even though many areas, such as Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the north of England, do not suffer from the overheating problems of the south of England?
  Mr. Mallon: I agree with the hon. Gentleman. As I said before, there is an air of unreality about the debate. In one half of my constituency there is not a single industry; in those terms, the debate becomes even more academic. We must look at Northern Ireland not just in terms of how we can trim the sails peripherally. We must try to set out a five-year, six-year or 10-year programme of rejuvenation of industrial development, the environment, job creation and the quality of life. That would be better than the present ad hoc approach.
  Mr. Roy Beggs: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that part of the cause of the unreality and the unawareness of hon. Members about the severity of unemployment in Northern Ireland is that records are not available in the Library for Northern Ireland constituencies as they are for other constituencies? The hon. Gentleman's party and mine are together committed to improving the position and to creating job opportunities for all our people.
  Mr. Mallon: I agree with the hon. Gentleman, but I should like to add another reason—and here we are all to blame. We do not tell the House often enough. That is
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  because we do not have the opportunity, except in a debate such as this, to make such points. Opportunities are restricted in other debates. We are all at fault and could do more.
  I commend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland for his statement yesterday. He made it clear that it was not enough to try to end the violence through security but that the effort would have to be reinforced by economic development, by giving people a better quality of life and by creating social structures in the North of Ireland. The Secretary of State is a man of courage and vision. He has taken a tremendous hammering in the House and outside over the past couple of weeks because of that courage and vision, but he should be commended for what he said yesterday.
  It is a tragedy that when someone tries to think his way into the future and towards a solution a knee-jerk hammering is immediately doled out to him here and in other places. I welcome what the right hon. Gentleman said yesterday because it is true. An improvement in the economic position and in the environment, and the provision of jobs, will not end violence, but it will substantially weaken those who manipulate young people and who thrive in murky waters. It will also help enormously in psyching the people in the North of Ireland to get on with finding a solution to our problems.
  I make my third point directly to my colleagues from Northern Ireland. We have heard much talk about devolution. We should start debating devolution in the House and clear up many of the misunderstandings. My view is probably different from that of other hon. Members. At present we have a system where others decide whether more or less power should be given to the North of Ireland. Others determine what economic policies will be pursued in the Province and under what type of economic restraints it will operate. Others decide who will close schools and factories and cut social security benefits. That is not an enticing scenario, as many will testify. Others decide what is expedient and just and, in many ways, what is life and what is death. Others decide what we shall or shall not get and what we shall or shall not give, especially in terms of the EEC.
  The political parties from the North of Ireland should enter into proper, substantial negotiations and face with courage the reality that our economic and environmental problems and the violence in the North of Ireland will not be solved in this House. We are and we shall remain optional extras here. We have it within our power to get to grips with that problem. As a first step, we must do one simple thing. It could be done in the Tea Room, if we must go to tea rooms. If not, it could be done in the bar, which is more congenial. We should start to negotiate. I understand the frustration, resentment and anger of people who have made similar speeches here year after year, if not decade after decade. We shall continue to be optional extras here until we take matters into our own hands and decide that we no longer want to be optional extras.
  The elected representatives of the people of the North of Ireland must be asked what powers we should like to operate on behalf of the people of the North of Ireland. We must ask for a fiscal relationship between the North of Ireland and Great Britain which will allow us to implement the type of rejuvenation programmes that are needed by a society which has been through the trauma of, in effect, 20 years of war. We must be allowed to decide what structure

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  is suitable for a unique political situation, rather than ape other unsuitable structures. Above all, we must be allowed to take on board the whole problem of security, policing, violence and justice.
  The people of the North of Ireland will need the courage and will power to take on and examine those four areas closely and talk them through. The people of the North of Ireland must stand on their own feet and show that we can be sturdy, independent Ulstermen, rather than whinge to Ministers for a little more when we are getting a little less. We should start to take action to resolve the problems instead of whingeing that nobody will do it for us. Such an approach would allow us to take on the problems of industrial and social deprivation and unemployment and to create a quality of life to which everyone in the North of Ireland is entitled. After 20 years it is time that the realisation dawned.
  We all have ingrained historical, electoral and other reasons why we should not adopt that approach. We all have our little bit of pride which will not let us move down roads that we have not gone down before. Are our ancient quarrels more important than the welfare of people who never had and never will have jobs, of young people living in concrete jungles who are prey to the men of violence and of elderly people entering their twilight years who are unable to make ends meet?
  We can start looking at the problems from those four areas. I hope that by this time next year we shall at least have started to solve them.
  4.34 pm
  Mr. David Porter: I am glad to have heard the speech by the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon). I take his reprimand that many of us consider these matters with an air of unreality, but each of us must speak for our area. I have the honour and privilege to be the first East Anglian Member to speak with the cameras on, and by that I mean the historic East Anglia of Suffolk and Norfolk. In the spirit of this week with the cameras on I prepared my speech to contain a certain number of sound bites, and that was the first.
  This is the third Queen's Speech that I have heard since becoming a Member. I assumed that it would be the most difficult because all the commentators told us so. The programme outlined yesterday struck a positive balance. Clearly, the Government will not be too bothered by the ritualistic huffing and puffing of the Opposition as they try to blow down the reforms and advances built on a decade of firm foundations. The acid test is how people see the programme and, more important, how tomorrow's voters will see it.
  Yesterday it was frequently said that with this speech we were leaving behind the 1980s. That is true. Now begins what undoubtedly will be the environmental decade. Perhaps that is sound bite two. In the environmental decade we shall take hold of all the hard-fought gains of the 1980s and hit the challenges of the earth ready for the 1990s and beyond to the next century. Today's primary schoolchildren will benefit most from a Health Service which is no longer in the 1940s at worst, or the 1970s at best. They will benefit from further industrial and trade
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  union reforms, the focus on developing training and enterprise, the control of public expenditure and the still further improvement of priority services.
  Last week's Autumn Statement set an agenda which confirms that we are entering a decade of social spending and growth. Environment and growth, social spending and industry are all inextricably bound together. It is the environmental aspect which will benefit today's young people most and capture their imaginations most. We have only to look at what is happening in many schools, certainly in my constituency, to realise that today's pupils are tomorrow's environmentalists.
  Yesterday the Leader of the Opposition said that the Opposition would fight hard to toughen the proposed environment protection Bill—sound bite No. 3. He means that he will play a kind of leapfrog on every issue to claim the green mantle. But every step on the environmental protection and management road must be workable, enforceable and based on fact, not fiction. To take just one example, everybody knows that global warming will melt the ice caps and raise sea levels—but will it? Or will it, as some scientists think, cause a wind flow to the poles which will increase the ice caps and lower sea levels? We need to know. That may be an extreme example, but it illustrates the point. I raise it because my constituency will resemble Atlantis if some of the pundits are right about rising sea levels.
  We can take some steps on environmental matters. Protection of food chains, the seas and the skies should recognise no national boundaries. If we stopped all our nuclear energy production tomorrow, the French would remain 80 per cent. dependent on nuclear power. An accident in France could wipe out many Britons as surely as if it happened in the United Kingdom. Global problems need global action.
  Naturally, some aspects are parochial national matters. Most people will welcome the proposed increase in the litter fine to £1,000. Perhaps that necessitates a review of the relative severity of fines. We do not want more expensive fines in magistrates courts for an inconsiderate litter lout who drops a McDonald's carton than for a drunken yobbo who hits a police officer. I welcome the new responsibility for litter that is to be placed on local authorities. Perhaps my right hon. Friends had the opportunity to read the ten-minute Bill that I moved in May this year—the Public Service Contract Bill—which would, among other provisions, have created a contract between community charge payers and councils so that there was redress when an agreed level of service was not delivered. We could be getting towards that with the Government's proposals.
  I come now to sound bite number four. What East Anglia is looking for in the Queen's Speech is a co-ordinated North sea management policy, which recognises that it is not a European dust bin, but a busy and vital artery—as busy as Liverpool Street station in the rush hour—round the clock, every day of the year. We need a management policy to take account of fishing interests, gas and oil harnessing interests, aggregate dredging interests, tourist and leisure interests and even Ministry of Defence and NATO interests under, on and over the North sea.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Sir H. Rossi), the Chairman of the Select Committee on the Environment, spoke about sea defences as being a distraction to the National Rivers Authority. I

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  hope that he will reconsider that remark, because to those of us who rely on sea defences to keep our land together they are anything but a distraction. I welcome their inclusion in the NRA brief. In East Anglia, that is beginning to work, and a powerful start has been made.
  In Waveney, our drinking water has always been supplied more cheaply and to a better standard by a private company. In the environment programme, we need to move forward, building on what the Government have already set in place. The announcement last week in the Autumn Statement about the extra money for coastal and sea defence is greatly welcomed.
  Mentioning extra money brings me to what Conservative Members want. We want value for money on what is spent on health, care for the elderly and the handicapped, schools and teachers. We want the desirable to be deemed the necessary. In the past decade, we have learnt that desirability must also be affordability.
  East Anglia still needs many road developments, not only for economic but for environmental reasons. To bypass Wrentham on the A12 in Waveney would bring untold environmental relief to the village. A third crossing of Lake Lothing on the A12 at Lowestoft before the end of the century would bring economic, stress-reducing and environmental benefit to thousands of my constituents. An integrated policy of transport, including road and rail, for the United Kingdom is needed now, and needed urgently for East Anglia, with the Channel tunnel and 1992 approaching and, in some senses, threatening to leave East Anglia as an island of poorer economic growth, unable to sustain its attractive environment. I regret the absence from this Queen's Speech of any plan to privatise British Rail, in the light of its consistently below-par service level in East Anglia.
  As the Confederation of British Industry has said, in all this, business and industry are the solution in part and not the problem in total. Industry is not the environmental bogeyman. Cashing in on cleaning up is one thing. Responding to the rigid hand of legislation is another and codes of practice are still another. Working in partnership with today's climate of opinion for the environmental decade, as a wealth creator, is quite a different matter.
  Without industry, where do Labour Members and others vying to beef up the Government's programme for the next year believe that the money is to come from? Consumers will inevitably pay more. Most say that they are happy to do so. Many said that they did not want tax cuts, and instead wanted the money to go to the NHS. I wonder how many people sent the money from their tax cuts to the Treasury in 1988?
  This is my final sound bite. The bulk of the cost can come only from industry and commerce, trade and a growing economy in the United Kingdom, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment told the CBI this week, without letting civil servants and vested-interested Governments use environmental issues to erect new barriers in Europe.
  Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Porter: No. I am nearly finished, so I will not give way. I am taking an example from the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) who did not give way earlier.
  Mr. Campbell-Savours: The hon. Gentleman asked where the money was to come from.
  Mr. Porter: I will not give way. I am on the final sentence of my speech.
  This Government, and only this Government, can deliver what is needed and wanted. It should be noted that our Prime Minister was the first world leader to put these matters on the world agenda.
  4.44 pm
  Mr. Doug Hoyle: So far, the debate on the Loyal Address has shown a bleak prospect for British industry. The smugness of the Prime Minister has been followed by the buffoonery of the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.
  Mr. Austin Mitchell: It was not that high a level.
  Mr. Hoyle: When I think of the Secretary of State, I can never decide whether he is a gravedigger or an undertaker. Neither of those people lives in the real world in which industry must exist. While the Prime Minister was making her speech yesterday, Inverox Chemicals of Warrington, a highly successful company, was announcing 300 redundancies. These were caused by falling demand and falling profits. That is the world in which industry lives. The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry made not one reference to why he gave up the golden share on the last independent quality motor car company—Jaguar.
  Mr. Elliot Morley: Without consultation.
  Mr. Hoyle: Yes, without consultation. The chairman of Jaguar motors, John Egan, when he was giving evidence to the Select Committee on Trade and Industry, said that he was told at only quarter to 12 what was to happen. He told the Secretary of State not to do it, not to give up the golden share. We asked Sir John why that had happened, and he told us that we would have to ask the Secretary of State. Surely the golden share is in place to prevent takeover by foreign predators, and the Secretary of State's job is to look for the best deal for Jaguar, for the employees and for the national interest.
  Dr. Mike Woodcock: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Hoyle: Yes, but only this once, because many hon. Members wish to speak.
  Dr. Woodcock: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that Sir John Egan said in London last night that only a few years ago no foreign investor would have paid a penny for Jaguar, but after five or six years of exposure to free market forces every motor car manufacturer in the world would like to own Jaguar?
  Mr. Hoyle: I am sorry that I gave way, because the truth is that the idea of Jaguar, with its small size, being able to go it alone is a myth. I think that the hon. Gentleman served on the Select Committee on Trade and Industry, of which I was also a member. He will recall that hon. Members on both sides of the Committee said that Jaguar should stay with Rover because it was making a profit and was doing so because of the investment from the public sector, which had helped to develop a new model. The problem with Jaguar was that it was far too dependent

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  on a single market—the American market. It was doubtful whether it would ever, even in the good times, generate enough profit to develop new models.
  The issue is where Jaguar should have gone. I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman did not say that it should have gone to General Motors rather than Ford, or that the company should have been run in co-operation with some European companies. I am not saying whether any of these deals would have been better or whether it would have been possible for Jaguar, with money pumped in, to stay on its own. However, I am saying that the Secretary of State abdicated his responsibility.
  Industry must look not only at what is said in the Queen's Speech but at what was said in the Autumn Statement. That allows for hardly any growth in manufacturing industry. The real problem is that high interest rates will remain. Tory Members boast about record investment levels, but they are a record from a much smaller industrial base, because almost 30 per cent. of industry was destroyed between 1979 and 1982. Those high interest levels will mean a cut in investment.
  Nor did the Secretary of State say anything about takeover bids and what should be done about them. Manufacturing industry and service industries have to face foreign predators. At the moment Pearl Assurance plc is faced with an Australian takeover bid, but it could not make a reverse takeover bid because that is not allowed in Australia. No British insurance company would find it easy to take over a French, Italian or German insurance company, yet all our insurance companies are up for grabs.
  As I said at the weekend, Australian Mutual Provident will have to pay £114 million in interest charges on the loan, but Pearl made only £60 million in profits last year. Where will the money come from? Will there be a sale of assets, or will the policyholders suffer? Something has to give.
  Pearl is not alone. Other insurance companies are facing takeover bids, and nearly all of them could be at the mercy of predators from Australia, America, Japan and elsewhere. Insurance companies are the long-term investors we need for manufacturing industry. That is the state of affairs in the real world.
  I should have thought that the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry would have mentioned the problems of the environment. Perhaps the Secretary of State for the Environment will say something about them. I expected the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to urge manufacturing industry to produce environmentally friendly products. We could take the lead and we could sell those products to other nations. With the present awareness of the environment, there will be a worldwide demand for environmentally friendly products, and we should encourage industry to go down that path.
  I know that student loans will be debated another day, but they will cut the number of scientists and engineers that we produce, particularly those who come from working-class backgrounds. We can ill afford to lose them, because British industry needs good management and it has not been able to attract them. That will remain a problem.
  I welcome the green Bill, but I do not think that it goes far enough. In Warrington, we were threatened with the
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  import of domestic waste from the United States earlier this year. We already have toxic waste sites, where hospital waste has been dumped illegally. We want tighter controls over the environment and real powers in the Bill, which we hope will be a pointer for the future. With the present hapless Secretary of State for Trade and Industry I shudder to think what will happen. He talked a lot about what the Labour party might do about industry when it came to power. My fear is that there will be no industry left when we come to power, if the Secretary of State remains in office much longer. There were some glum faces behind him. He has not made a good start with Jaguar.
  What will the Secretary of State do about the Pearl hid and other takeovers? Will he bring in a Bill to prevent that happening to British industry? I fear not. I do not think that he will do much for industry in the regions either. I think the situation will be bleak and that conditions will get much worse before they get much better. The Government should lower interest rates, because they affect industry and everyone who has a mortgage.
  The Government should give a stimulus to industry. When the hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Wilkinson) asked the Secretary of State about the space programme, he looked like a startled rabbit, caught in the headlights of a car. He had no idea what he was talking about. Of course he did not know, because the space programme does not fit into the market. It cannot be left to the market, because, if it were, there would be no programme.
  I fear that we are sacrificing our future. For example, Vauxhall now buys more components in the United Kingdom—headlight bulbs, bumpers and panels—but they are not the high-technology components with which the car of the future will be equipped. I fear that we are looking at the short term instead of the long term.
  We have to meet the challenge of 1992—the single European market. The hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Adley) asked my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) about transport, and he was right. We need good transport systems to get our goods to market and to meet that challenge.
  I have come to the conclusion that the Government are not interested in training or investment and, unfortunately, given the present Secretary of State, they are not interested in industry.
  4.57 pm
  Mr. Robert Boscawen: By any standards, growth has been impressive in the United Kingdom during the past seven or eight years. In my part of the world it has been extremely impressive. The evidence is there for the eyes of those who wish to see it. It is quite clear that it is not in the eyes of the Opposition Front Bench spokesman, the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown), because he has no desire to see the growth that we have had since the early 1980s.
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment has the task of taming that growth to ensure that we protect the quality of life in Britain in ways in which we have not protected it before. He asks for new powers to control pollution and waste. I believe that the House will give him those powers, subject to the usual scrutiny. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Sir H. Rossi) said, control of pollution of the environment is in too many hands. Too many agencies

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  of Government and local government are involved to put it straight. We need to cut through that and to reorganise. I believe that the House will give my right hon. Friend the measures he wants to do that.
  There are no differences between Members when it comes to trying to create a better environment with the growth that we need in the 1990s and beyond. However, there is much more my right hon. Friend can do by using existing powers to control the ravages of some industrial expansion, of transport and of pollution. When it comes down to it, he has considerable powers over planning controls. He needs to provide more certainty that his inspectors will stand out firm against developments outside the boundaries of local plans and the restrictions put on them by local planning authorities.
  I hope that my right hon. Friend will confirm soon what his predecessor confirmed a few months ago—that, except in peculiar and overriding circumstances, he will stand firm and refuse appeals when proposed developments would go beyond boundaries which the local plan says should not be crossed. If so, he would do much to maintain the confidence of ordinary people who have no alternative but to live in such areas that business parks, industrial estates, supermarkets and large housing developments will not intrude ever further out of existing towns and villages.
  I know that my right hon. Friend is highly sensitive to these matters and highly intelligent. I was his Whip for some nine years and I did not fail to realise that. I do not think that I ever won an argument against him. He knows full well that heavy vehicle traffic in the narrow residential areas that he and I have the honour to represent are a virulent form of pollution that ruins the lives of many people, especially the children who live there. When he is asked to give his consent to new industrial developments, I want him to take such decisions seriously and to ensure that he uses his powers so that one of the major considerations is the amount of heavy traffic that is likely to be generated and the provision of access roads for it.
  I recognise that the Government have done much to give the roads programme a higher priority. The Autumn Statement was welcome. It has done much to encourage investment in industrial access to the rail network. My area has benefited substantially from the section 8 grant system of the Railways Act 1974. In the "Guidelines for Aggregates Provision in England and Wales" for 1989, the Department of the Environment states:
  "For the economic well-being of the country, it is essential that the construction industry is provided with an adequate and regular supply of the minerals it needs. For the foreseeable future, most of the aggregates required are likely to be supplied from traditional sources … Creation of environmental nuisance by aggregates production and distribution cannot totally be avoided, but every reasonable effort must be made to minimise the environmental costs."
  I know that my right hon. Friend agrees with that. No sensible person could quarrel with it.
  The south-west region supplies more than 70 per cent. of the imported stone needed in the south-east region and the London area. That is a vast quantity of stone. More than 10 million tonnes were required in 1985, and more than half of it comes from nine major quarries in my constituency in the east Mendips. That has created an enormous environmental problem. The industry has co-operated well with the assistance of section 8 grants. Some 4 million to 5 million tonnes is exported every year
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  by rail but, for compelling operational flexibility at each end of the journey, heavy lorries are the sole means of moving large quantities of aggregate.
  The Department of Transport and the local highways department have, step by step, brought some relief, at long last, on trunk and major county roads, to the relief of so many who have suffered so much for so long. My hon. Friend the Minister for Roads and Traffic and I have cut ribbons lately. We have been opening bypasses and relief roads. I snipped two tapes on Monday; my hon. Friend snipped one last month and is to cut another in a few weeks' time. It all sounds very good, but I have to say that, for almost 20 years, I have been calling for such schemes. It still takes far too long to make essential environmental improvements near villages and towns because of our extended planning inquiry system.
  I hope that my right hon. Friend will seriously consider doing something to reduce the delay between the announcement of a road or bypass scheme and the ribbon being cut. Access to prime sources of stone on principal routes is still an environmental nightmare in my area. Villages suffer 500 or 600 heavy quarry lorries grinding through their narrow streets day after day, sometimes night after night and recently throughout Sunday. I hope that my right hon. Friend will not rest satisfied and that he will listen to what we have suggested to help to solve this problem in my area.
  Growth is essential to Britain and growth will continue, but it must have the willing support of the people it most affects. I trust that my right hon. Friend will always remember that.
  5.9 pm
  Mr. Robert Litherland: The demise of trade and industry under the Government has affected the environment in which my constituents live. Manchester was once a vibrant manufacturing area providing jobs and skills to many thousands of workers. Workers were proud of their crafts and were industrious, but suddenly the axe fell. Like dominoes, firms collapsed one after the other with stunning regularity. In the wake of the decline in manufacturing industry came the inevitable social consequences and the sinister hand of poverty.
  I looked to the Queen's Speech for some hope. I noted that it stated that the Government
  "will continue to promote enterprise and to facilitate the growth of employment."
  The next paragraph states:
  "They will maintain firm control of public expenditure so that it continues to fall … while allowing further improvements in priority services."
  There appears to be a contradiction, especially when I consider the way in which the promotion of enterprise and cuts in public expenditure will affect inner-city areas such as my constituency.
  In the Prime Minister's mind, the promotion of enterprise is a way of getting into the inner cities, which is her desire. The Government have set up what they describe as regeneration programmes, which mean new office blocks, leisure centres, theme parks and theme pubs. These forms of regeneration may be desirable to developers, or speculators who have an eye for a quick financial kill. It is regrettable that the inhabitants of inner-city areas are not likely to be part of the theme.
  The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Boscawen) spoke of the quality of life. I can tell the House

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  that accompanying the so-called affluence in the inner cities is abject poverty on the peripheries of cities. Unemployment and the closing down of manufacturing industry has left its scar on people's lives. I am talking of those who will have no choice whether to purchase or rent the new residential properties that have been built. That choice will be confined to the yuppie element. I am talking of those who will not be able to afford leisure facilities. To these people, the new office blocks are meaningless.
  Government money is being made available to developers, but its availability to those who are in real need is being cut savagely. For these people the regeneration of the inner cities is a mockery and an insult. Among so much private affluence the Government have created so much public squalor.
  We all want new and exciting core cities. Similarly, we all want good quality housing. These developments should not be at the expense of the inner-city poor, and poor they are. Instead of poverty being eradicated, it is on the increase. In Manchester, about 30,000 people live in homes without central heating. There are about 20,000 homes with terrible damp. The Government's public expenditure cuts make essential repairs a luxury. Pre-cast deck-access housing awaits demolition, but the Government will not provide resources to rehouse the tenants and end their misery. Few houses are being built that will provide homes at low-cost rents. We need only relate the appalling state of the building industry to housing needs.
  The Government talk about enterprise and choice, but the people about whom I am talking cannot choose. They cannot choose where they live, the schools to which they can afford to send their children or the private health care that they can purchase. The only course open to some families is to go short so that they can ensure that the kids are fed.
  During a recent visit to a primary school in my constituency I was informed that 80 per cent. of the children required free school meals. Milk was supplied earlier than usual in the morning to ensure that the children obtained some nourishment. I was told that on Monday mornings some children were ravenous. That demonstrated that the conclusion of a report on poverty in Manchester, which suggested that about 80,000 people did not sit down to a roast joint or substantial meal during weekends, was close to the truth.
  Recently, shops in Manchester selling second-hand clothing or second-hand furniture have mushroomed. Jumble sales are well attended. Unemployment has many spin-offs, and along with poverty there is a loss of dignity. Families break up, there is poor health and there is an increase in suicides. All these consequences place an increasing burden on local authority services—the very services that suffer when the Government cut local authority expenditure. The official indicator of poverty is the number of people who rely or exist on income support. Whatever the percentages, figures, graphs and statistics, there is nothing like coming face to face with a person who is distressed because he or she cannot eke out an existence from meagre means-tested benefits. I meet these people regularly at every advice bureau in my constituency, as do my colleagues in their constituencies.
  That is what the Prime Minister lacks in Finchley. The right hon. Lady should come to the inner-city areas of
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  Manchester to feel and taste the poverty. She should spend the night in a cold and damp bedroom. She should queue with my constituents for benefit payments at the local DSS office. She should listen to their pleas when the loan shark calls for his pound of flesh. Perhaps I am wrong. On second thoughts, the Prime Minister would probably congratulate the loan shark on his private enterprise and initiative.
  In 1978, 53,000 people received supplementary benefit. At the latest count, in 1987, the number had increased to over 83,000. The slight fall in unemployment in inner Manchester, according to the Government's manipulated and vetted figures, does nothing to alter the fact that the unemployed and their dependants form the largest group that relies on income support.
  The sentiments expressed in the Queen's Speech sound hollow and do not represent the true picture of life in the inner cities. The term
  "maintain a firm control of public expenditure"
  should be substituted by a statement that the Government intend to impose further cuts and continue the strangulation of local authorities. It is obvious that if public expenditure is shifted from public services to private pockets, someone must suffer. The sufferers are not the vultures of the City or the grey morning-suited, top-hatted Ascot brigade. Instead, they are the very people who we should be helping by providing them with jobs, decent housing, good education, social services and, above all, good health.
  The Queen's Speech states that the Government
  "will continue to support … policies aimed at alleviating poverty and promoting economic and social progress in developing countries."
  I can only assume from the indifference of the Prime Minister and the Government generally that they place Manchester and the north-west of England in the same category.
  Poverty destroys the entire fabric of the community. If that is the Prime Minister's aim, she is surely achieving it. If we are seeing the fruits of an economic boom, God help the people who I represent if we slide into a recession. The claim of economic success has been exposed as a myth. The bubble has burst. The Prime Minister is being found out. The polls, the Euro elections, local elections and by-elections all tell us that the Government are on their way out. I look forward to the day when we have a Labour Government who will be sincere in their intent to eradicate poverty.
  5.20 pm
  Mr. James Hill: I must refute the last part of the speech of the hon. Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Litherland)—indeed, I disagreed with about 50 per cent. of what he said. He attempted to denigrate my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, someone who has done an enormous amount for this country. She has introduced legislation to curb the excesses of the trade union movement and a series of privatisation Bills that, in every case, has meant the enterprise concerned moving on to greater and better investment. I raise my flag and state my firm support for my right hon. Friend, through thick and thin. The Opposition are trying to denigrate her and give her a personality that she does not have.
  The hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) made a disgraceful remark. I do not think that he understood what he was saying, but it was aimed at the

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  University of Southampton. Anyone with any knowledge of the matter—and I have as the university is in my constituency—knows that the whole of the experimentation work on fibre optics was created and developed at that university. It is not staggering along on its knees, as the hon. Gentleman tried to suggest; it has gained another large contract. Fibre optics in the defence sphere is probably the only form of communication in local nuclear warfare. Consequently, it is absolutely essential that the work continues at the university. A vast amount of both private and Government money is being invested in that aspect of high technology.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Boscawen) mentioned snipping tapes on motorways. I have a sad tale to tell because we cannot snip any tapes on the M3. The work has come to a grinding halt, and anyone motoring down to the coast and using the Winchester bypass knows to his cost that at least another hour is added to his journey. The various groups opposed to the M3 have succeeded, for almost 15 years, in preventing a small extension to the motorway. It probably qualifies for the "Guinness Book of Records". They are now saying that the road must go not around St. Margaret's hill, but through the middle of it, which would incur several million pounds of additional expenditure and delay construction even longer.
  The port of Southampton needs the basic transport infrastructure of good feeder motorways. It is a thriving port—especially since the abolition of the national dock labour scheme—and it is looking forward to the completion of the M3 before the turn of the century. I should be only too pleased to ask my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome to snip tapes when it is eventually completed.
  The most potent and important part of the Queen's Speech is the statement
  "My Government will continue to attach very great importance to protecting the national and international environment."
  My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, who has the pleasure of sharing Southampton with me, knows that we have had a great deal of trouble with pollution. It is gracefully called sludge, which means that the sewage does not go into the rivers around Southampton, but is stored in huge containers. That is very unpleasant in hot weather. It then has to await a ship that will dump it in the middle of the Solent. That is diametrically opposed to future EEC regulations, so Southern water authority will have to take action against it.
  When the matter came to a head some six months ago, I received a communication from a firm in Birmingham—not too far away—that suggested what we could do with our sludge. We must take it seriously. There appear to be four ways to deal with sludge. The first is to dump it in the sea, but that should not be an option. The second is to put it on farming land, which must be absolutely devastating for those living in the surrounding area. The third is to incinerate it, but goodness knows what that does to the greenhouse effect. The fourth is the conversion of sludge to a new oil. All of those options are extremely costly. Incineration would be the most expensive as it would involve the greatest capital costs and extremely high running costs.
  We must question how much we are prepared to pay for our water if we are to get rid of such monstrosities as storing sludge through the hot summer months. The
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  Opposition may attack the Government about the high costs of water and put leaflets through letter boxes that refer to terrifyingly high prices and so on, but the truth is that it has been caused by neglect over many years. It is quite wrong that for more than 20 years my constituents have had to put up with an awful stench throughout the summer months because Southern water authority did not have the money or the inclination to deal with the problem. We must take it seriously and I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will deal with it when we discuss the appropriate Bill in Committee.
  One of the most serious political problems that we shall all face is the polluting of the environment, which includes the greenhouse effect and many other forms of pollution.
  Mrs. Ann Taylor: The hon. Gentleman referred to investment in the water industry during the past 10 years. What representations did he make to his Government about increasing investment during that time? Does he accept the basic figures that investment under the last Labour Government averaged £1,254 million per year while under this Government it has averaged only £922 million per year? That is one reason why the hon. Gentleman's constituents have so many problems.
  Mr. Hill: It is one of the great sadnesses of this House that the Opposition trot out little statistics, almost as though they are waiting to jump on some unsuspecting Conservative Member. I referred to the past 20 years, but the hon. Lady changed that to the past 10 years, obviously so that only my Government would be involved. She suggested that the last Labour Government did a great deal more than this Government to deal with sewage—
  Mrs. Ann Taylor: I said water.
  Mr. Hill: Yes, but I was referring to the problem of sewage. It is surely a non-political point to refer to the neglect of the sewage problem during, say, the past 50 years. Indeed, I could go back even further and bring in the Liberal Government and say that for 70 years there has been grave neglect not only of our supplies of pure water but in the dumping and disposal of sewage. It is possible that a proportion of the business investment that is to increase by 9·5 per cent. over the next year will be spent on improving pollution disposal plants. I am not as handy with statistics as some lady Opposition Members, but if investment is to increase by 40 per cent. over the next three years, I question how much of it will be spent on improving our balance of payments and how much will be spent—as was suggested by the hon. Member for Manchester, Central—on leisure industries, on office accommodation that is not required, and on highly priced homes in certain parts of the country.
  The constituency that I represent—and even I am hardly able to believe this—has a Labour-controlled local authority, which has been handing out planning consents for every little frippery that one can imagine, including what is known as a Noddy railway that will waste another £50 million. That local authority has done nothing to create new jobs that will be long-lasting—though there are plenty of short-term jobs available in the construction industry, in the bulding of prefabricated supermarkets and rows and rows of shops.
  Mr. John P. Smith: Does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that one reason why

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  Southampton is experiencing something of an economic recovery is that it has a progressive Labour-controllled city council?
  Mr. Hill: I have heard of ostriches, but it is nonsensical to make such comment. The hon. Gentleman may believe that what he says is true but it is absolute nonsense. I could take the hon. Gentleman around Southampton and show him where beautiful buildings have been destroyed and replaced by supermarkets of glass and aluminium. We are knocking down our heritage. I agree with the Prince of Wales—and I hope that he is listening to this debate—that the majority of modern buildings will not last 20 years.
  Mr. Morley: Although I have some sympathy with the hon. Gentleman's comments on the way in which planning laws are applied, for I have experienced problems with my local council, does he accept that part of the problem is that the planning regulations were changed by the former Secretary of State for the Environment, the right hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley), in such a way that decisions are usually made in favour of the applicant? The planning laws make it difficult for a local authority, regardless of its political colour, to refuse many applications. The blame for that must be placed fairly and squarely on the former Secretary of State, not local councils.
  Mr. Hill: As I noticed you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, glancing at your watch, I shall not get into that larger argument as to whether the blame should be taken by a former Secretary of State, by local councils, or by anyone else. We Members of Parliament must ask ourselves how the cities, towns or villages that we represent will look in 20 years' time. I fully agree that planning applications that impinge on the green belt should be refused.
  I am worried about how much of the investment in Southampton will produce jobs. We are losing, for example, the Pirelli factory, which the Labour local authority wants to turn into a shopping arcade where one can buy anything that one could possibly want when going Christmas shopping. How many real jobs will that produce? I must not allow myself to be swayed by the comments of Opposition Members, who avoid the argument that manufacturing investment in other parts of the country—particularly in areas such as those represented by the hon. Members for Manchester, Central and for Glanford and Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley)—has risen by 16 per cent.
  Southampton university plans to double its size in the next 30 years. Although I want to see that expansion, the university will require 250 acres of woodland to achieve it. That demonstrates the different directions in which a Member of Parliament is pulled. Should I support the university in its plans to produce more graduates and job opportunities for tutors, or should I fight the battle for the environment? At the end of the day, individual right hon. and hon. Members must answer such questions for themselves. The House will in due course know my decision, because right hon. and hon. Members will be the first people that I tell. Meanwhile, I have reached the end of my speech and I thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to speak for the length of time that I have.
  5.35 pm
  Mr. Mike Watson: I am glad of this opportunity to speak on certain aspects of the Queen's Speech as they affect Scotland. There is little of any substance for Scotland in the Queen's Speech, which is a great shame. Certainly there is nothing in it that is positive and that offers hope to the people of Scotland. Perhaps that is because the Government feel that they have already lost the argument in Scotland. They could be forgiven for thinking so, given that support for the Conservatives in Scotland is, according to the opinion polls, at the derisory level of 17 per cent.
  It might reasonably have been thought after the 1987 general election that the fortunes of the Conservative party in Scotland had reached a nadir, but evidently that is not the case. I dare say that, if the Secretary of State for Scotland was given the opportunity today to achieve a popularity rating of 24 per cent. for his party, which was the level it enjoyed in 1987, he would welcome it. However, that will not happen.
  One of the main reasons for the Government's unpopularity in Scotland is the continuing high level of unemployment there. In April, unemployment in the United Kingdom as a whole stood at 7·4 per cent.; in Scotland, 9 per cent.; and in Glasgow, 16·7 per cent. Youth unemployment in Glasgow stood at more than 23 per cent.
  Sadly, the Queen's Speech contains no answers to the social and economic problems that cause, and are caused by, unemployment. It says nothing about reviving the Scottish economy. I admit that there has been a fall in unemployment in Strathclyde over the past year. The latest available statistics show that the number of people employed in Strathclyde has increased by 5,000, but that is well short of the fall in the number of registered unemployed over the same period, which is four times higher at 23,000.
  That considerable gulf is accounted for by the outward migration of people from Strathclyde and from Scotland as a whole who are desperate for work. Scots are forced to leave their homes, families, friends, and in some cases their country to find work. That is in a country whose economy has, according to the Prime Minister as recently as yesterday, an underlying strength. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) eloquently pointed out, that is not the case.
  There is precious little evidence of economic growth in the city that I represent. It has been devastated by the collapse of the manufacturing industry on which Glasgow was built. Much of that collapse is the result of the Government's economic policies. The people of Glasgow have received cold comfort from the dispersal there of a few Civil Service jobs and the establishment of Britoil's headquarters in the city—which has proved to be a mailed fist in a velvet glove, with hundreds of jobs about to be cut by Britoil's new owners, BP. We await with trepidation the announcement of how severe those cuts will be.
  The only crumb of comfort in the Queen's Speech in respect of jobs for Scotland is not in the least appetising. The headquarters for the already much-discredited student loan scheme is to be established in Glasgow. If the creation of 150 jobs in what will be no more than a debt collection agency is thought to be a price worth paying for the establishment of some credibility for the irrelevant and damaging top-up loans proposal, the Government ought to think again. Glaswegians are not that easily deceived.

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  One of the indigenous Scottish industries that has been hit hardest of all during the past decade also merits a mention in the Queen's Speech. Somewhat cryptically it says:
  "A Bill will be introduced to assist the financial restructuring of the British Coal Corporation."
  That sounds to me, and to many of my colleagues in Scotland, England and Wales, like a euphemism for further privatisation—for the sell-off of what remains of the United Kingdom's coal industry. Should that come to pass, it would probably prove to be the death knell of deep-mined coal in Scotland. With only 2,000 miners now employed in the industry, that will perhaps seem to be no great loss to the Government, or to the Secretary of State for Scotland, but it would be a severe blow to the future of Scotland's economy. The inclusion of that statement in the Queen's Speech will cause concern not just in Scotland but also in areas such as Yorkshire and south Wales where many people still rely on the industry for employment.
  It is incumbent on the Government to state explicitly just what their intentions for the coal industry are. Privatisation would be an unmitigated disaster—yet another sell-off of public assets, the only beneficiaries being the Government's friends in the City: people who worship at the altar of international finance to whom money is God and the stock exchange the high church. They transfer millions of pounds around the world at the press of a button. To them, ordinary people are just numbers. They are of little importance in their grand scheme. Unemployment is, to them, a word that is barely capable of comprehension and, I am absolutely certain, is rarely if ever considered.
  I referred earlier to new unemployment in the city of Glasgow. One method of tackling the chronic unemployment that continues to blight Glasgow and other major cities is the provision of training for those without work. It is a sad fact and, I believe, a scandal that the Government's attempts to help people to help themselves have been dismally, indeed woefully, inadequate. Opposition Members have consistently attacked the youth training scheme and employment training. They have exposed them as the confidence trick that they undoubtedly are. Such ventures are to training what hang gliding is to space exploration. That has never been seriously in doubt, not least among those who have been unfortunate enough to participate as so-called trainees.
  If further research were needed, it came last week in the form of a series of well researched, well written and well presented articles in the Glasgow Evening Times, in the best tradition of investigative and campaigning journalism. The articles exposed a shameful abuse of Government funds—all apparently quite legal, which makes it no less shameful. They exposed sham training schemes, cheap labour and the cynical demoralisation of young people who desperately want training to improve their chances of escaping from the dole queue.
  I should like to quote some examples. A man, unemployed for a long period, who wanted to be a driver said:
  "We sat in a room doing exercises, talking, passing the time. There were two guys who had been doing it for 10 months, the same exercises over and over again. I wanted to be a forklift driver, to get a licence, but I've never been near a forklift truck."
  A further example concerns a group of people who were trying to acquire skills in the building trade. When they turned up on the first day,
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  "The place was in a terrible state. It was a derelict building. It was a shell. Part of our training, and of bricklayers and landscapers who went there a year ago, was to build walls, paint, plaster and put in doors and windows. After a year, the main work we've been doing is renovating the premises for the company. It's cheap labour, putting up doors and windows, building their offices."
  There are countless other examples in this well researched series of articles. It is a shameful expose of what ET really is today—quite contrary to what the Government and their supporters would have us believe.
  ET does not stand up to scrutiny on quality of training, supervision or the monitoring of huge sums of public money. ET has done little to tackle the skills shortages that undermine Scotland's economic progress. Meanwhile, again as the articles point out, private companies are being established to cash in on what has become an extremely lucrative business. The Evening Times highlighted one such company with an annual turnover that is already in excess of £1 million. That is just the tip of the iceberg.
  The Queen's Speech says:
  "My Government will continue to develop training and enterprise councils."
  We in Scotland are particularly concerned about that. Scottish Enterprise is about to be established. That will lead to the sale of the Scottish Development Agency's assets, which will be a scandal not just in Scotland but in the United Kingdom as a whole. Even in the short period of office that is left to them, it is urgent that the Government should do more than just develop such bodies. The Government must ensure that they strictly monitor all training schemes so that at least some meaningful training is provided for people who are desperate to have work and who are crying out for the chance to train or retrain.
  On that subject, however, as on so many others, the Queen's Speech is inadequate. I do not have sufficient time to touch on those issues, important though they are. My hon. Friends have already mentioned them. They range from developments in eastern Europe to broadcasting and to the imposition of even further vindictive shackles on trade unions. The Queen's Speech was bereft of vision, which suggests to me that the Government do not have sufficient confidence to plan for the long term. I believe that that judgment is justified and that it will eventually be vindicated. We shall be forced only once more to listen to a Gracious Speech in the name of this Government. Not least in Scotland, that is one saving grace in this year's shabby offering.
  5.46 pm
  Dr. Ian Twinn: My hon. Friends and I warmly welcome the assurance in the Queen's Speech that the Government are to attach great importance to protecting the national and the international environment. The lead given by the Prime Minister in galvanising international opinion and bringing together world opinion to tackle the problems associated with global warming should be welcomed by all right hon. and hon. Members. It will do no good, however, if any of us pretend that easy solutions to those problems will be found, nor if we believe that by ourselves we can implement solutions. Global solutions have to be found. The United Kingdom will have to make sacrifices in order to implement world solutions. We shall have to help to solve the problems of other countries that are less fortunate than we are. As we develop the quality of life theme that is outlined in the

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  Queen's Speech, we must ensure that that theme applies to the whole world. Britain must face up to its responsibilities to other nations by helping them to implement scientific findings that will lead to an improvement in the world's environment. That is just as important as the United Kingdom's environment.
  I hope, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that you will forgive me if I talk about the environment, as I see it in London, rather than about the world environment. I intend to refer to my constituents' experience of their environment in Edmonton and in the borough of Enfield. I urge the Government to use the town planning system more effectively so as to conserve and enhance the environment and the quality of life. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment's recent pronouncements have encouraged us to believe that a sensible balance can be achieved between the need for development and the need to protect the environment. My right hon. Friend's decision to refuse planning permission for the development of Foxley wood was widely applauded. I understand the reasons why my right hon. and hon. Friends applauded his decision to protect the rural environment, which is very important.
  Equally important, however, is the urban environment. To my constituents, and to the constituents of many of my hon. Friends, the suburban environment, although sometimes seen as a slight joke, is equally important. The quality of life of a great many of my constituents depends upon the quality of the planning system as it operates in outer London, and the same applies in the outer suburbs of other towns.
  I am afraid that those of us who represent outer-urban areas know that there is growing dissatisfaction at the pressure for development. People are uncertain about how the pressure for housing and commercial development is to be met. Britain has championed its green-belt policies, which are the envy of other countries, and it is quite right that we should be proud of them, but if we are to protect all green-belt areas designated over the past 10 years, the development will have to go elsewhere. Either it will crowd back into the cities, in which case my constituency will be affected, or it will leapfrog the green belt into virgin countryside well beyond London and our other big cities.
  There is no easy answer to the problem. Recent Government guidance and the planning policy guidance on housing encourage us to believe that a sensible approach will be adopted to providing land for housing. Development pressure in the south-east will not go away. We may wish that development would occur in the north-east, the north-west and Scotland, and of course that will come as well, but the pressure in the south-east will remain. We live in a democracy. We have no intention of directing our work force and telling it where it should live. We do not want a centrally planned and directed economy that tells industry where it should move, taking its work force with it. Industry and commerce will continue to expand in the south-east and will continue to need labour, and people will continue to wish to live in the south-east of their own free will. Housing will have to be provided—in my constituency, in inner-city constituencies and also in the shire counties. I hope that my hon. Friends will accept that none of us has an absolute right to bar development in our areas; we must be positive about that.
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  There is growing disillusionment in the outer suburbs about the way in which the planning system operates. Local residents are unsure about the value of their input into the planning system and their local councillors and professional planning advisers are equally unsure about the status of their own plans. In too many cases—although not the majority, by any means—they have watched their policies being overturned by Government inspectors. In particular, that has affected the phenomenon that is now called town cramming, which affects my constituency among others where increasingly dense development has taken place and where the quality of life has suffered. We have houses and buildings that are not good enough to be listed in their own right but which nevertheless form an important part of the urban environment. Some are in conservation areas that have now been lost to development and some are outside. I would not want the use of conservation areas to be expanded to protect housing in areas that are merely pleasant to live in by giving the local authority control over demolition. That would be wrong. But if we are to prevent local authorities from giving in to pressure for more conservation areas, we must be much firmer about the way in which we operate our planning policy.
  Mr. Vaz: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is also widespread concern among local residents and local authorities about the state of the stop notice procedures that currently exist in our planning laws? Does he share my hope that a measure will be introduced in the near future to tighten up the stop notice procedure to ensure that companies and businesses that trade in residential areas cannot take advantage of a cumbersome procedure to continue to cause a nuisance to local residents?
  Dr. Twinn: Many aspects of planning law and practice need to be simplified. The Government have recently encouraged us to believe that that will happen and that we are interested in improving the quality of life for everyone while allowing businesses to operate successfully, to make a profit and to be successful employers in our areas.
  Let me give an example. The London borough of Enfield is pretty typical of a London borough. It is a fairly typical mixture of green-belt land—although there is none in my constituency—and pleasant suburban areas, mixed with what would typically be thought of as inner-city areas, with tower blocks built by typical Labour councils when they typically demolished very good housing—as Opposition Front Bench spokesmen typically realise.
  Our borough plan was adopted in 1983 and, in accordance with good planning practice, has been annually updated in consultation with all those in the area who rightly have an input into that planning process. That plan could be considered up-to-date by anyone's standards. Since 1983, more than 30 initial amendments have been made to it. The problem has been that some of the Department's inspectors consider that the plan is not up-to-date. If we are to have good planning in London, with local councils making responsible decisions for their own areas, our borough plans need to be recognised as being up-to-date.
  We have the prospect of the unitary development plan system coming into practice but it will not be possible for the plans to be on deposit before 1991. The problem in London is urgent. We have to tackle the problem of development now and that means that the Department

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  must recognise our plans as being up-to-date and take into account local authorities' opinions. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is sympathetic to that view. We cannot afford to wait any longer. We know that the Government will take action to help, but our environments are being destroyed now and it is not reasonable to ask our constituents to wait any longer for us to stop the town cramming that is badly affecting the quality of life in outer-urban areas.
  5.57 pm
  Mr. Robert Hughes: Some concern has been expressed in our debates that the media may present us in terms of our looks and demeanour. My concern is much more basic—it is that they should get the captions right. A couple of weeks ago I was approached by a researcher from a well-known television company who asked me about my views on the European monetary system. I said all the right things: "Good idea. Not a panacea. A useful tool." I was then asked what I thought of the Prime Minister. After the Commonwealth summit at Kuala Lumpur and the Madrid summit, it is my view that the Prime Minister is congenitally incapable of keeping her word. The researcher said, "Oh good. Can you do a piece for us on film tomorrow?" I said that I would be delighted. I contacted the producer the next day and cheerfully introduced myself. There was a slight pause and then the producer said, "You are Bob Hughes, the Labour MP for Aberdeen, North, are you?" I said, "That's right." He uttered an expletive and said, "I asked my researcher for the views of the Tory MP, Bob Hughes of Harrow, West." If not in my interests, in the interests of the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes), I hope that the captions are right so that his future career will not be blighted.
  In many ways, the speech by the Secretary of State disappointed me. He has a reputation as a formidable debater. In the past he has shown sharp wit and a sharp turn of phrase. Unfortunately, what we heard today was a continuation of what Ministers have been saying for the past 10 years. They have made a dubious use of language from the beginning: words have been used to mean their very opposites. We have all been distressed by that from the moment the Prime Minister appeared, quoting St. Francis of Assisi. We have not had peace, we have had conflict. We have not had decentralisation, we have had centralisation. We have not had the public good, we have had the private good. If George Orwell produced the manuscript for "1984" today, he would be summoned to court by the chairman of the Tory party, the right hon. Member for Mole Valley (Mr. Baker), and the Attorney-General and charged with plagiarism. He would be accused of stealing ideas from No. 10 Downing street and from Conservative party central office. They would accuse him of stealing "newspeak" because that is what we have heard from the Tory party.
  Over the past 10 years, we have seen a Mafia-style operation from the Government. They have been skimming and siphoning off the public wealth into private pockets. They have pretended to be legitimate business men, but they have skimmed off everything that they possibly could. The Government are an asset-stripping organisation. They have been laundering the proceeds of the sale of public assets and have given them back in tax cuts to the very rich.
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  The Government have denied everything that they have ever said. In the coming Session there will be another trade union Bill which, it has been said, will give trade union rights back to trade unionists. It has been said that the Bill will tilt the balance away from the all-powerful trade union barons to sensible business. That has not been happening. Month after month, year after year, the Government have steadily made it almost impossible for trade unionists to carry out legitimate trade union disputes.
  There is a legitimate trade union dispute at Aberdeen Journals in my constituency. Earlier this year the journalists went on strike because the management arbitrarily withdrew trade union negotiating rights. That strike was fought and won and the terms to return to work were agreed. When the journalists went back to work, the National Union of Journalists discovered that the agreements were not adhered to, and there was victimisation and threats. The journalists went out on strike again. Anyone with a knowledge of industrial relations will know that when people have been out on strike and then return to work, it is not easy to get them out on strike a second time. The idea that they came out a second time because a small group of tightly knit and motivated men were determined to destroy the company is utter nonsense.
  When the journalists came out on strike a second time, they were sacked within 48 hours. Since then, every effort to try to get negotiations started has been totally frustrated. Many of my colleagues from the north of Scotland have tried to speak to the management about these matters. I pay tribute to the industrial chaplain of the Church of Scotland, the Rev. Donald Rennie, and to the general secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress, Mr. Campbell Christie, for their efforts to get negotiations going.
  A couple of weeks ago my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Doran) and I tried to start yet another initiative. We invited a broad spectrum of opinion. For example, we invited the conveners of Highland region and the convener of Grampian region who are no political allies of mine. We also invited the Moderator of the Church of Scotland's Aberdeen Presbytery and the Roman Catholic Bishop Conti of the diocese of North of Scotland, Orkney and Shetland. We invited Alex Mair, the president of Aberdeen chamber of commerce, and Members of Parliament from every political party within Aberdeen Journals' circulation area to come together and ask both sides in the dispute to meet and discuss the position. We hoped that the management would agree to begin negotiations.
  All the people whom we contacted readily agreed to take part in the exercise. They were only too keen to participate. However, the initiative was completely rebuffed. The managing director said that he would not see the group collectively although he was prepared to meet people individually. Why can he not discuss the matter in a group instead of individually? Why must discussions take place in the bunker at Lang Stracht where he cannot have proper discussions? I do not know.
  The managing director was the only person to rebuff the negotiations. However, more seriously and more sinister, he said that our aim, the commencement of negotiations, was not a path that Aberdeen Journals wished to pursue. That is the state of industrial relations to which the Government have reduced industry. That is extremely bad industrial relations. There is no doubt that

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  the managing director of Aberdeen Journals intends to use the law and sit it out in the hope that he will drive the journalists back to work.
  I spoke to the managing director this morning on the telephone and I said that those of us who are interested in the future of Aberdeen Journals, in its readership and in the wellbeing of the NUJ are ready at any time to begin negotiations. Sadly, the Government's industrial relations laws, which thrust power into management's hands with no checks or balances, have led to dictatorial management and an authoritarian style of industrial relations. That is bad.
  I have made my position clear. I support the NUJ and the right to negotiation. I support the right to solve problems through discussion, not by confrontation. The idea that the people on strike are gung-ho is absolute nonsense. If the managing director would sit down and discuss these matters with his employees—I believe that they are still his employees—we could achieve a proper settlement.
  I said earlier that the Government have preached decentralisation and practised centralisation. I hope that on another day we shall have an opportunity to discuss the Williams report on the agriculture colleges in Scotland. The proposal is that the three colleges should be amalgamated and all the planning of educational courses and buildings should be centralised and run from Edinburgh. I do not know what the Government think they are doing. They have no idea of local initiative or the merits of local colleges. The proposal is based purely and simply on the grounds of efficiency and cost. There are no educational merits in the proposals. No one has said that the Northern College of Agriculture is a bad institution. It has a worldwide, first-class record. Students come from all over the world for training and teaching there. However, its future will be blighted because of the Government's blind disregard for anything that happens locally. There is a blind obsession that Whitehall or St. Andrew's house knows best. The Government will destroy the education system because of their blinkered ideology.
  There is naturally and properly great excitement about the pace of events in eastern Europe. As a convinced democratic Socialist, I welcome the way in which people are standing up for freedom against authoritarianism. Many of us have argued for and have cherished real freedom for many years. I wish that the Prime Minister had mentioned the fact that other great events are taking place.
  There has been an event of great historic significance in Namibia. A fledgling state is going through the process of democracy and we should be proud of that. I did not believe that I would see the day when it happened. That it has happened is a great victory for democracy. I send a message of congratulations to President Sam Nujoma of SWAPO. Having won the victory, his is a call for reconciliation; if hon. Members had experienced what the people in Namibia have experienced, defending themselves and fighting for freedom, perhaps we would not be quite so charitable in calling for reconciliation.
  Great events are taking place in South Africa. We must welcome the fact that eight historically significant political prisoners have been released. That is a ray of hope and a cause for optimism. I have argued against colonialism for
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  many years and I have seen the end of the Portuguese empire, and freedom for Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe and now Namibia. We celebrate those victories. We have learnt the lesson that this is not the time to relax and let matters take their course. Those events have happened because of internal pressure and struggle and because of international pressure and struggle. The Prime Minister had better realise that if she relaxes and carries on in the way that she is now, she will not help to bring about the end of apartheid.
  It might surprise the Prime Minister to learn that she and I share one fundamental truth. We believe that with the ending of apartheid will come the ending of the ways in which the multinational and giant corporations rob the people of their wealth. However, we draw different conclusions. The right hon. Lady believes that sanctions are wrong. I believe that sanctions are right. They are the way to freedom.
  In the next decade, we will see tremendous changes in the world. The tide of democratic Socialism is on our side. The Government's days are numbered, and the days when my party will govern the country in the interests of the people are upon us. We shall succeed where the Government totally failed and destroyed our people.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean): I remind the House that a 10-minute limit on speeches is now in operation. I appeal for the co-operation of all hon. Members. They will find the digital clock winking at them when there is half a minute remaining.
  6.10 pm
  Mr. David Martin: The first part of the Gracious Speech which particularly appealed to me and to many other hon. Members is the commitment to give every possible encouragement and support to the incredibly fast-moving changes taking place in Poland, Hungary and other countries to the east of the iron curtain. I hope that such encouragement and support will include increased economic and trading initiatives, too. Our efforts within the Common Market—I stress within the Common Market—should be directed to that end, in concert with other members. Apart from humanitarian considerations, such economic initiatives will aid our economy, trade, industry and employment and help to build up trading economies which, for many years, have been literally beyond the pale—controlled, subsidised and distorted by a variety of methods common to Socialist systems within the Russian empire and its satellites since the war.
  I have mentioned financial help with our trading partners in the EEC. Crucial to our trading prospects is the passage in the Gracious Speech about working with our European Community partners to complete the single market and to enhance economic and monetary co-operation—not union, thank goodness; there are no starry eyes. This is no time for the European democratic group of the self-styled European Parliament to lecture my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and those who agree with her on how to conduct themselves in Europe. Certainly, for years my right hon. Friend has been managing very successfully and courageously in this country's best interests.
  The letter in The Times of 17 November, which was signed by 30 out of 32 of those members of the European Parliament, has been interpreted as an attack on my right

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  hon. Friend's vision of Europe, as expressed most notably in her Bruges speech, which few of her critics have read and which even some of them delight in misrepresenting as anti-EEC. That letter pours cold water on a Europe of co-operating sovereign states in favour of what is described as a "closely knit community". I suspect that that code means to join the exchange rate mechanism of the European monetary system as fast as possible, at virtually whatever trading cost to ourselves, and swallow far too many of the Delors proposals, hook, line and sinker.
  Such mass letters, which are signed by so many, have an unfortunate pedigree. They are in the same line as the infamous one that was signed by 364 economists in 1981, asserting with the utmost confidence that the Government's economic policies would not reduce unemployment and that the Government would fail. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has outlasted that prediction by nearly 10 years. Critics should note that my right hon. Friend's views are those of the majority in this country, across party political bounds. The Gracious Speech commits the Government to work with our European partners in the most sensitive way for this country, from the point of view of trading strength and maximum opportunities to keep control of those things which we cherish in our own ways of life.
  Crucially connected with trade issues is the state of the economy and what we can afford by way of taxation for health, social services and the host of other claims on public money. I have worries because the bold spirit of 1981 is dead. That was when my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and, to his eternal credit, suddenly stood almost friendless and alone. However, seeing my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in his place, I have no doubt that my right hon. and learned Friend was not entirely alone. My right hon. and learned Friend took the right action at that time to curb inflation and explode the hopes of those who thought that no Government would dare to take the necessary measures significantly to reduce inflation.
  In present days, with interest rates and inflation far too high, we heard in the Autumn Statement of the extra several thousand million pounds of public expenditure—on worthy matters, of course. I am as guilty as anybody else of finding many ways in my constituency and wider by which money can be spent to effect. Only last Friday, I visited the Portsmouth family support service, which provides excellent care for the elderly and the severely disabled to live as independently as possible in their own homes. More money is needed for that, as it will be needed to implement the community care proposals set out in the Gracious Speech and in the Disabled Persons (Services, Consultation and Representation) Act 1986 which I have no doubt will be considered in conjunction with them.
  But, with such pressures, let us not expect inflation to fall rapidly, or allow difficult confrontation over wage rises to be a thing of the past, or exhortations to others trading in the private sector to show the restraint that politicians dare not show. The situation reminds me of an upstairs-downstairs scene. Upstairs, an overweight madam is having her corsets laced up with a tourniquet wielded by her maid. Madam is almost fainting because of the constrictions which the operation imposes. Downstairs, however, cook is carrying out her orders to stoke up the stove and prepare dish after substantial dish
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  of tasty food for madam to consume. That is uncannily like the everyday life of the British economy. Only with few honourable exceptions has it had breaks over many years under all Governments.
  I now refer briefly to the environment and to the Bill which we are promised will enhance protection in the national and international contexts. One of the major considerations attached to the national environment is development and planning in the south-east. My hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Dr. Twinn) has raised some relevant matters. There is no point in hiding the fact that there is a conflict between those who are responsible for representing towns and cities and those who represent mainly country areas. Hon. Members heard also from my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Boscawen) on this matter.
  I do not wish to see vast areas of green fields and cherished landscapes ruined by irresponsible development. However, those who worry about that must keep a sense of proportion. In the south-east region, even if another 1 per cent. of land is developed, the area that is built on would still be under 15 per cent. of the total. In my constituency, and, I suspect, in that of my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton, only about 15 per cent. of the total is not built on. People do not wish to see housing need for the future aimed solely at so-called urban infill sites when, too often, in places such as Portsmouth, it means infilling precious open space.
  Any Bill must address those conflicts as well as more general pollution issues. It should also address the quality of life in urban areas, particularly with regard to noise, dirt, litter, graffiti and bad neighbourliness. Sometimes, local authorities and police have insufficient powers to act in conjuction to improve matters for residents who feel strongly about such things. They write to me and speak to me about them in my surgery.
  Many other measures in the Gracious Speech invite comment, but there is no time to do so. My belief in restraint in Government is accompanied by an equally strong conviction that speeches should be as short as possible. There is nothing like personal example to reinforce that view.
  6.18 pm
  Mr. Austin Mitchell: I will not attempt to follow the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Martin) in his excursion into the economics of 1981. From his point of view, it is deeply out of fashion even with this Government. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will find a happy place in the monetarist museum at Liverpool university which, given the change in the climate, is probably where he should go.
  I shall concentrate on industry, about which the Queen's Speech said little. That is a tragedy, because industry is the basis by which we as political parties can provide what the people of this country want for their way of life. Industry, and especially manufacturing, is the provider of jobs, the generator of growth and the generator of the surplus that we use to fund public spending. Industry pays our way in the world, yet for a nation that depends for its economic health on a powerful competitive industry, British industry is now in the position where our industrial base is too weak and has contracted too much to do the jobs that we as a

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  community expect it to do. It is too weak to support the superstructures that we, as an advanced industrial society, want to place on it.
  In this crucial area of our policy towards industry and manufacturing, we see the prime failure of the past 10 or 11 years of Thatcherism. Those 10 years are the years of the greatest opportunities that this country has ever had. They were the oil-rich years that provided us with opportunities that we had never had since the war. We have had the economics of stop-go, but the past 10 years could have provided us with an opportunity to expand, through the constraints of the balance of payments, and to grow and to invest, to get back the ground that we have lost in industry over the years since the war. However, at the end of those 10 years of opportunity, we find that our industry is in a weakened condition. Yes, it is more profitable, but it is investing its profts in a competitive takeover frenzy, often overseas. Our industry now has a lower share of world trade and a much lower share of its own domestic market. It is not enabling us to pay our way in the world.
  The analyses of those 10 years, such as the interesting one produced by Professor Wynne Godley in "The Political Quarterly" of April this year, show that, if we compare the Thatcher 10 years with the two or three previous decades, on all the measures of the things that improve or have some benefit to our quality of life in this country, the Thatcher decade comes out as the worst.
  In terms of growth, we have had an average annual growth of under 2 per cent. in those 10 years, which is the lowest of over three decades. In terms of productivity as measured by output per employed member of the work force, our productivity is now at a lower level than in any of the last four decades. Only our manufacturing productivity has increased faster than in previous decades, but it has done so on the basis by which the Yorkshire county cricket club could improve its cricket performance—by shooting its last three batsmen to improve its batting average. It is on that basis that manufacturing productivity has increased, but in terms of the growth in manufacturing production, the past 10 years have seen the smallest growth of any of those four decades. I have some news for the Government Front Bench: we have been successful in increasing our manufacturing production more than Zambia—that is our one achievement in this area. Finally, the past 10 years have seen our worst performance in imports and our second most successful performance for exports.
  Those oil-rich years have effectively been wasted. The oil has been used to finance the import of manufactured goods to destroy jobs in this country. The tax revenues from oil have been used to support the unemployed and the investment flows from oil have been invested overseas in the productive capacity of our competitors.
  At the end, we are in a balance of payments trap that will stifle everything—the tragedy that will unfold over the next two years. We are in that balance of payments trap because the first three years of this Government saw a massive, unnecessary and stupid deflation. The economy was savaged by the dead sheep on an inconceivable scale. We closed one quarter of our manufacturing capacity in those three to four years and lost 28 per cent. of our manufacturing jobs. If one follows that contraction and
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  destruction with a huge expansion of demand, based on credit expansion and asset inflation, which is what the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer did, it is clear that British industry will not be able to cope. We suck in imports and run into the balance of payments trap, which will now cause massive deflation.
  The Government won the last election in the same way that Ben Johnson won the 100 metres at the Olympics, by false economic expansion, and we shall now have to go through a detoxification process as our price for that expansion. The result has been disaster. The right hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson) was wise to use the pretext of his argument with Professor Sir Alan Walters to get out while the going was good. His successor now has to clear up the mess.
  We now have to face two years hard—and perhaps that is the easiest way out, because we are dithering on the brink of a sterling crisis and at any moment there could be a massive and sustained run on the pound. The Government are desperately trying to shore up the pound by high interest rates; they are effectively paying foreigners high interest rates to bring junk money into this country to close the gap that we cannot close ourselves by what we make in this country and sell from this country. That is what is happening to the economy.
  We are on the brink of disaster. We have a deficit in overseas trade which is between 4 and 5 per cent. of GDP, which is bigger than the deficit America has been facing in the past few years. Indeed, when America was facing deficit on a similar scale four years ago, the dollar came down by about 40 per cent., and has only now begun to rise again. Sterling will have to do much the same if we are to get out of this.
  If the approach to the deficit is to be high interest rates to choke back demand, those high interest rates will support the pound at an unrealistic level, which will penalise exports, subsidise imports and cripple investment in manufacturing. If we are not producing adequately in this country to sustain our demand for imports and if we face that by cutting demand, it will have to be by a massive cut in demand through interest rates. The process of cutting demand will cripple industry. In fact, the only way to fight back and to escape from that trap is to expand industry. However, we are contracting and over the next few months and years, instead of shifting the weight of the economy from domestic demand to export-led demand, we shall see the Government moving into a bunker phase of misery as interest rates remain high.
  Although it could not happen to a nicer crowd, the consequences will fall on manufacturing and on industry. Those consequences will mean more bankruptcies, more liquidations and more closures, together with a rise in unemployment over that period, with exports stultifying because the pound is not competitive. Imports will continue to rise because the pound is overvalued and we shall see more takeovers by foreign firms in our markets and less investment, which is industry's means of facing the future.
  That policy will not work. It will not get us out of this trap. The Government's only answer is to accept the Prime Minister's advice and to let the markets decide. Why should the market not be allowed to operate for exchange rates? Why is the market only appropriate to exchange rates when our exchange rate is going up? Why is it not appropriate when the exchange rate needs to come down, as now? Getting the pound to a competitive level by lower

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  interest rates is the only way in which this country will see a manufacturing turnaround. It is the only way in which we shall be able to close the gap in trade.
  Deflation has never worked, and it will not work now. Deflation as an approach to the problems of industry and the economy is as useful as trying to sell timeshare flats in the Beka'a valley. That policy will cripple and ruin British industry at a time when we also have to face a challenge of being peripheral in a wider EEC, which is draining development from this country, and in a single market where competition will be more intense. We are entering that competition crippled by economic decline, deflation and high interest rates. That is what we are now facing.
  I am emphasising industry because Grimsby lives by industry. We are proud of our industry. We are Europe's food town. We have food production, Courtaulds and textiles, engineering, chemicals and oil. We live by industry. It is that industry which is being asked to face the world and the crisis that the Government have produced, with the ball and chain of high interest rates around its neck. We are crippling industry, yet if we destroy industry in this way we will be destroying not only the prosperity of my town, but our ability as a nation to fight back and to face the world. We are destroying our way of life and the prospects for our future. Ultimately, only industry will provide the jobs. Only industry will generate the growth that we need to provide this country with the ability to hold its head high in the world because it pays its way in the world.
  6.28 pm
  Mr. Robert Hayward: Before I comment on some of the Labour speeches that we have heard, I wish to compliment the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) on his excellent contribution to the debate. He made a series of suggestions as to the way forward in Northern Ireland. It is rare for such suggestions to be made and I hope that all sides will consider them carefully.
  Mr. John D. Taylor: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Hayward: I am afraid that I am on the 10-minute limit, so I shall not give way.
  I was extremely disappointed by the contributions of Labour Members today. The hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) suggested a formula that would produce rampant inflation. The hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) painted such a bleak picture of the economy that one could imagine that no one was employed. It is interesting that he made no reference to Ford at Dundee, although substantial reference was made to Ford and Jaguar in another context. Given the hon. Gentleman's constituency, he must be only too well aware of the implications for Dundee of the trade union decision at Ford. Equally, he failed to answer a number of challenges put to him.
  The hon. Member for Dunfermline, East also commented on the social divide between north and south, but that statement does not bear the comparison that he sought to make. He drew a rosy picture when describing the social fabric and employment rates of Germany, France and Italy. If one looks at the unemployment statistics as they apply in West Germany one discovers that Schleswig Holstein, Hamburg and Bremen have unemployment rates above 10 per cent. In fact,
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  unemployment in Schleswig Holstein and Bremen is well above 13 per cent. In the United Kingdom only one region, Northern Ireland, tragically, has an unemployment rate above 10 per cent. The regions with the next highest unemployment are Scotland and the north with about 9 per cent. Those percentages come from official statistics and one must accept them when published by any Government. The OECD undertakes direct comparisons of unemployment rates and, in that context, unemployment in France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Ireland is higher than that in the United Kingdom. The regional variations in most of those countries are substantially greater than they are in the United Kingdom.
  We have had a series of quotes from the Confederation of British Industry, and from Moger Woolley who lives in the constituency next door to mine at Northavon, concerning current Government policy on takeovers and investment. The hon. Member for Dunfermline, East quoted many people, but if he had asked whether they preferred previous Labour party practices, the latest Labour policies, as much as we can divine them, or Conservative Government policies, I believe that there would be unanimous support for our policies rather than those of Labour, which is putting itself forward as the prospective Government. Although the policy review was completed more than a year ago, we still do not know what is Labour party policy. This afternoon we heard a series of statements that were equivalent to saying, "I am against sin.". There was no statement of value about how policy would be achieved.
  I should have liked a reduction in the amount of legislation contained in the Gracious Speech. We came in with a commitment to reduce legislation and I hope that we can achieve that in the long term. We have, however, allowed trade and industry to decide how to govern themselves. We have removed regulations and stopped interfering. We have not decided, unfortunately, to make a similar reduction in the level of government. I believe that we should give serious consideration to removing some county councils. I must admit that I was disappointed by the statement of the Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities who said recently in Norwich that the Government had
  "no intention of embarking on any major reorganisation of the structure of local government."
  A review of the London boroughs is being undertaken, but it does not appear that the number of boroughs will be reduced. Many of the boroughs that are now unitary authorities have populations substantially smaller than those of many major cities. Sheffield and Manchester were parts of metropolitan counties, but now they are unitary authorities. Cities such as Derby, Nottingham, Bristol, which I partly represent, and Leicester are larger authorities than the unitary authorities of London. Given the steady drift away from inner London, I believe that it would be right to reduce the current number of London boroughs from 32 to a more realistic figure of between 20 and 25. For fear that anyone thinks that I am suggesting that we should reduce every other level of government but the House of Commons, I also believe that the number of Members of Parliament should be reduced to below 500. If India's Lok Sabha, its lower house, has 532 elected members and most European countries have fewer than 600—in some cases fewer than 500—Members of Parliament, there is no reason why we should have 650 hon. Members.

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  I especially welcome the proposals for protecting the environment and the fact that people who drop litter will be penalised as well as those who commit acts of graffiti. Earlier this year, in conjunction with the local authority, I launched a campaign to improve our local environment. I was amazed by the response of the average member of the public who clearly does not like the conditions with which he is confronted. People would prefer a better quality of life in terms of their local surroundings.
  A few weeks ago I was especially interested in a report that appeared in Today. It studied a number of different cities and constituencies and, interestingly, it found that Bath, represented by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State who is now present, was the cleanest constituency surveyed. The dirtiest constituency is Peckham in Southwark. I am afraid that many London authorities pay no attention to the quality of life of their ordinary citizens. The hon. Member for Peckham (Ms. Harman) responded by saying that, following representations, the authority was trying to improve matters. She did not say that those representations came from Conservative Members who live in that constituency. I wrote to the borough of Southwark in August 1988. The vast majority of our citizens would prefer to live in a better and cleaner environment; therefore, I welcome the proposed legislation.
  A number of comments have been made about the Autumn Statement. I welcome its proposals on the National Health Service which showed a continued commitment to increased spending and to increased investment in the NHS. We have more doctors and nurses than ever before. I had hoped that the grading scheme would have been completed more quickly. I hope that it will happen in the near future.
  I have been a Member of Parliament for only six years, but in that time three brand-new hospitals—the Bristol eye hospital and the hospitals at Weston-super-Mare and at Taunton—have been completed in my area. Massive redevelopments are taking place at Frenchay, the Royal Infirmary, the maternity hospital, Southmead, Manor Park, Glenside and Cossham. Those redevelopments demonstrate that there is a continuing investment programme in our hospitals. However, developments go further than that. Since I was elected to this House, the local ambulance station at Soundwell has been completely reconstructed, a new health centre has been developed at Cadbury heath and a new health centre is about to transfer from Soundwell to Cossham.
  The Autumn Statement shows our long-term commitment to the NHS through its redevelopment. That redevelopment is good for all my residents and the commitment in the Autumn Statement will benefit the rest of the country.
  6.38 pm
  Mr. John P. Smith: As a Welshman I am disappointed by the Gracious Speech because my country was not even referred to—some of my hon. Friends have already made that point, but it is worth repeating. I am especially disappointed, however, that the Gracious Speech offers no encouragement for the prospects of our trade and industry. I will take that a step further: not only does the Gracious Speech offer no
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  encouragement, but it includes the basic contradiction contained in Government policy over the past eight years—the reason for our manufacturing industry doing so badly. The opening part of the speech contained a reference to the desire to improve this country's economic prospects. Right after that is a reference to the Government's commitment to reducing public expenditure as a proportion of the gross national income in real terms.
  The Government still fail, after 10 years of failure, to recognise the value and strategic importance of public investment and public expenditure when it is spent wisely and efficiently. As far as the Government are concerned, all that is private is good and all that is public is bad. In my part of the world, in Wales and in my constituency, that formula has been an unmitigated disaster. The industrial town of Barry in my constituency lost no less that 85 per cent. of its manufacturing jobs in the first part of this decade. Despite some recent welcome, marginal improvements in inward investment in manufacturing, that town is nowhere near returning to its previous levels of employment in manufacturing industry.
  I could give a number of examples in which some imaginative public expenditure in manufacturing industry and trade would have enormous benefits. However, the Government lack the vision to see, as have our major competitors—the Americans, Japanese and Germans—over the past 10 years, the advantages which come from strategic public investment. That is why our competitors are doing so much better than us. Just one example is the Government's failure to recognise the strategic economic importance of Cardiff Wales airport, the national airport of Wales.
  Everyone in the country—the industrialists and the vast majority of hon. Members from both sides of the House—recognises that this airport will play a crucial role in the next decade, particularly after 1992, in ensuring the economic fortunes of Wales. However, the Government have shown a total failure and a lack of commitment to providing the sort of updating of surface links to the airport to guarantee its future. A case already exists for providing such links.
  Believe it or not, at the moment there is a single lane carriageway running from the capital city to the airport. The ludicrous position is shown by what happened recently, when a car crash entirely blocked the road to the airport. Passengers were seen parking their cars on the side of the road, carrying their bags and rushing on foot to try to catch their aeroplanes out of the country. That is scandalous, when we are seriously trying to attract investors from overseas to set up business there. They would trade mainly with Europe and want to travel by air, particularly to Brussels.
  The Government seem to fail to recognise the importance of an adequate airport. In fact, they do not fail to recognise its importance because, on 13 June, the Minister of State at the Welsh Office, said:
  "I realise the importance to Wales of a thriving international airport and the advantages which a rail link would bring but British Rail cannot provide and service such a link unless it is commercially viable."—[Official Report, 13 June 1989; Vol. 154, c. 886.]
  The Government, particularly the Secretary of State for Wales, have no intention of providing the necessary public funding to ensure an adequate rail link and guarantee that

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  the airport can meet both the expansion in air traffic over the next decade and the economic challenge which Europe presents for the future.
  Only last week I addressed the Barry business men's club and referred to this problem, which is in my constituency. For the past 10 years, there has been a prima facie case for reopening the rail link to passengers; it already exists for freight traffic. After the discussion at the club, three business men representing three of the largest industries in my area told me that the last time they met was in the lounge of Heathrow airport. One way and another, they had to rush from their homes and companies in south Wales by train, car, bus or whatever to get to Heathrow airport to fly to Brussels when, on their very doorstep, there is an airport which should have regional and national significance. They thought that this was a scandal; I think so too, and, more importantly, the people of Wales think so.
  6.45 pm
  Mr. Charles Wardle: I trust that the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Mr. Smith) will understand if I do not comment on his speech, because the 10-minute rule applies.
  Conservative Members will welcome the Gracious Speech. There are three reasons why it will meet with approval from a wider national audience: first, because the Bills announced in it will introduce measures designed to improve the quality of life, enhance enterprise, extend choice and strengthen necessary regulations; secondly, because the volume of Government legislation appears to be just a little lighter than in the previous Sessions of this Parliament; thirdly, because it contains the important policy statement that the Government remain fully committed to the fight against inflation.
  It is principally to this last point about anti-inflationary policy and its relationship to the trade deficit and Britain's competitiveness that I shall address my remarks. However, before doing so, I shall add my welcome to the Bill which will establish the pace and direction of reform in the National Health Service and community care.
  The public debate about ways in which to deliver an even higher level of patient care than is achieved today has been intense and at times bitter. What is needed now is the statutory authority to bring about the changes which must take place if the NHS is to make maximum use of its considerable resources.
  The volume of new legislation looks marginally less onerous. More government and less reform is by no means unwise when the management work load of every Government Department for overseeing change and supervising investment must already be enormous. We only have to recall the speed at which some recent legislation—for example, the Financial Services Act 1986—has already had to be overhauled to appreciate that my right hon. Friends have sometimes tended to rush their legislative fences. Perfectly sound Conservative policies have too often become blurred and confused in the public vision by the pace at which legislation has been introduced. The extraordinary number of Government amendments introduced after the Committee stage of several Bills earlier in this Parliament is evidence of a tendency which mitigates against otherwise excellent Government initiatives. Hopefully, these problems will not recur in this Session.
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  No matter what reforms make their way towards the statute book over the next few months, the all-important theme for 1990 will be the economy and Britain's competitiveness in world markets. That is why the clear message in the Gracious Speech, reinforcing what the Chancellor asserted in his Autumn Statement, is fundamentally good news. If in the year ahead the Chancellor will signal three messages—that he will continue to fight inflation, do all he can to encourage savings and take a close look at the indicators of broad money as well as exchange rates—economic management will be in good hands during a period in which it is more than likely that the going will be tough, as the Chancellor has already suggested.
  I would go further: I do not share the Treasury's optimistic assumption that the worst scenario will be two quarters of zero growth in output next year. I am not talking anybody into a recession or about recessionary dangers which do not yet exist, but I suggest a look at the facts in the real world of business.
  It is not just the high street retailers who are now feeling the pinch as consumer demand is quite rightly being squeezed by high interest rates. The order books of manufacturers are also tailing off because of destocking at the outlets that they supply. There is nothing alarming about that, because industry is now much more able in terms of productivity to cater for a cyclical downturn, thanks to the economic climate over the past few years. Manufacturers are already preparing contingency plans for the anticipated lower levels of turnover next year. The result may well be a short-term rise in unemployment, but provided their stocks are not too high and they have riot borrowed too much to pay for new plant and machinery, businesses will come through.
  Next year's trading challenges have already been widely predicted, but I should like to add a caution. There is no point in the Treasury or the Department of Trade and Industry assuming, as has been suggested, that the surplus production capacity that will certainly emerge from the fall in domestic demand can instantly be diverted to export markets. That is not an overnight process. Winning extra market share overseas requires lead time in terms of design development and distribution, all of which has to be carried out in the face of fierce competition on price, quality and delivery. That takes time.
  It will not help people in industry if some of my right hon. and hon. Friends who have not all taken part in the money-making process of manufacturing deliver too many homilies about the sanctity of market forces as some kind of superior alternative to an industrial strategy. No Government rely purely on market forces and refrain from intervention. Look at the Bank of England's role in the currency markets and the price fixing for research in proprietary pharmaceutical companies and at the defence procurement market. Those things are facts of life.
  Industrialists will be faced with considerable challenges next year in trading conditions and on their strategy formulation for 1992 and beyond, and they can do without too many lectures on market forces. Instead, they need a clearly articulated Conservative statement of industrial strategy. They do not need a statement of the hackneyed Labour variety, full of empty promises of unworkable arid unsubstantiated infrastructure investment plans arid regional development plans. They need a sound Conservative industrial strategy free of any inhibitions about dirigiste and collectivist habits, which sets out clear

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  goals for free enterprise and in which the central object is for Britain to win. We urgently need a renewed endorsement of the importance of manufacturing. We cannot all be employed opening doors for one another while the Japanese, the Germans and the Californians make off with the new technology.
  I mean no disrespect to our excellent civil servants when I say that the Government must soon include within their official ranks more people who understand markets, money-making and line management, so that they can add to the Government's understanding of the challenges that Britain faces in world markets. In turn, that will enable the Government to negotiate EC standards for 1992 that help and never hinder British competitiveness.
  The 1992 initiative by the Department of Trade and Industry, though well intentioned, has been more like door-to-door salesmanship over the past year than a calculated strategic warning to British industry. It has lulled too many British companies into a sense of complacency because they have the idea that the Government have everything under control. Meanwhile, French companies have been busy building distribution houses in northern France ready to meet British retailers head-on after 1992, and they intend to do so on margins that are far lower than those that the City expects from our leading store chains.
  The Government must also manage their huge investment programme in transportation, which was expanded so encouragingly in the Autumn Statement, with the professionalism, vigour, control and sense of urgency that have not always been evident. Private industry must accept that it must do much more with its own resources—not taxpayers' money—in research and development, marketing in the broadest sense of that discipline and in training in order to build on what the Government have already successfully achieved in those fields.
  If private industry complains about the downturn or shows itself reluctant in the coming year to do more on its own behalf because it feels the squeeze of the necessary anti-inflationary expedient of high interest rates, the Government should make it absolutely clear to private sector management what is expected of it. That is not consensus, it is leadership, and that is what we expect of a Conservative Government.
  Lastly, the Government should not be reluctant to remind the City, where there will be many institutional funds on the sidelines even after the privatisation issues, that it has a role to play, not at the Government's behest but for the sake of its own investors. The City should emulate German, French and Japanese finance houses by giving priority support to companies that demonstrate skill with product development and with tomorrow's marketing strategies. Instead, all too often the City indulges in the short-termism of paper-driven acquisitions which merely succeed in churning the fixed assets and human resources, to nobody's strategic benefit in the long haul.
  If the Government appear informed and confident about British industry and are seen to enthuse about its many strengths, the private sector will no doubt play its part most effectively in a difficult trading year, and will certainly contribute to the upturn that will follow in 1991. In that fashion, the commitment in the Gracious Speech to
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  containing inflation will be borne out and British industry will continue to expand and prosper under sound Conservative policies.
  6.55 pm
  Mr. Keith Vaz: We have had not a Gracious Speech but an un-Gracious Speech from an ungrateful Government who on three occasions have misled the people. I naively believed that the Gracious Speech would redress the mistakes that the Government have made in the past 10 years. They have engaged in a witch hunt against the vulnerable members of society, especially the old, the young and the sick. However, none of the Government's mistakes will be redressed by the legislative proposals.
  There is agreement on some areas of general policy. I welcome the introduction of a food Bill because it is extremely important for consumers to be protected by legislation. Figures show that last year more than 40,000 people suffered some form of food poisoning. However, I and others will vigorously oppose any attempt by the Government to allow the import of processing of irradiated food. It is also extremely important for local authorities to be given effective resources so that they can enforce the legislation.
  I welcome the introduction of legislation to protect the environment. It is long overdue and comes after reports by Select Committee and royal commissions. I hope to see in the legislation specific commitments to the allocation of greater resources to local authority environmental health departments. I especially wish to see, as I think does the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Sir H. Rossi), the introduction of clauses about the practice of landfill. The Barkley Thorpe area of my constituency is affected by the accumulation of methane. The residents there have fought a courageous campaign to prevent the city and the county council from developing houses on the site and to prevent developers from extracting the methane because such extraction would cause misery and inconvenience.
  I welcome the proposed legislation to combat drug trafficking. However, more attention should be paid to the way in which we deal with the importation of drugs and their distribution. I and other members of the Select Committee on Home Affairs visited Washington where we saw the terrible effects of crack on the young people of America. I hope that as well as providing for international co-operation the new Bill will examine ways in which Britain's police forces can co-ordinate the fight against drugs. We should not wait until crack becomes a major problem. We should act now before it affects our young people.
  I support the proposed legislation on legal services. The Lord Chancellor is one of the most radical that this country has ever had. I declare an interest as a former practising solicitor. Current restrictive practices which protect solicitors and barristers from proper competition should be removed, but in challenging them we must consider people's access to legal services. There should be measures on legal aid limits and the abolition of the means test to provide equal access to the law. There should be a measure about the operation of the duty solicitors scheme which, unfortunately, has collapsed in many parts of the country. I should welcome greater commitment to the Crown prosecution service. In the past six months, 38

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  solicitors have resigned from the service. I should like to see measures about court structure and delays and the establishment of family courts, which were promised in the Children Act 1989 but have not materialised.
  There will be many disagreements over the health legislation. To allow hospitals to become self-governing is not the solution to the problems in the National Health Service. Exactly a week ago my hon. Friend the Member for Peckham (Ms. Harman) came to Leicester to see how the Health Service operates there. Consultants, junior doctors and general practitioners all appealed for greater resources for the NHS. They are tired of having to work 120 hours a week and risk the possibility that they will make mistakes in diagnosing illnesses. The solution lies in the hands of the Secretary of State for Health. He should provide the resources that doctors need.
  In Leicester, we are struggling to open three beds in the new renal unit in Leicester general hospital. The health authority states that it cannot open them because it does not have sufficient resources. Many kidney patients are taking up beds in other parts of the hospital.
  The student loans legislation will be vigorously opposed and I hazard a guess that by the middle of next year the Government will have withdrawn it. Loans affect people's right to education. I could not have had the education that I received if the student loans legislation had been in place. If we want to do something about education, we should consider the amount of money needed to repair our schools, especially schools in the outer parts of cities, which are neglected, and the teacher-pupil relationship.
  We shall vigorously oppose the legislation on broadcasting. Although broadcasting could be improved in some respects, we have the best television in the world. That is what American broadcasters told us when the Select Committee went to America to see developments in cable television. They hoped that our system of broadcasting would give sufficient attention to quality and not allow television to be sold to the highest bidder.
  Nothing in the proposed legislation will improve the problems of the homeless. There are 14,500 people on the housing waiting list in Leicester. Homes are being built in places such as the Hamilton estate in the eastern part of the city. Unfortunately, people cannot afford to buy those private homes because they cannot afford the current mortgage interest rates. The estate was to have had 4,000 houses, but only 100 have been built in the past three years and only 12 are occupied. Perhaps the Government will introduce legislation to give local authorities the power of compulsory purchase over those empty private houses so that they can make them available to people on the waiting list.
  The proposed legislation will do nothing to save or protect the textiles and footwear industry. I raised that with the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry when he stated confidently at the Dispatch Box that there was nothing in the Queen's Speech relating to industry. Thirty thousand jobs have been lost in the textiles industry in the past year, and hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost in textiles and footwear in the past 10 years. Textile bosses and unions will come to the House on 5 December, hoping to meet the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and convince him that current interest rates, the value of the pound and a market awash with imports from Korea and Taiwan do not help textiles and footwear. They will demand that the Government take action.
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  There is nothing in the Queen's Speech about children. I hope that the Government will be one of the first to sign the universal declaration on the rights of the child. The way in which society treats its children is a measure of its civilised nature.
  The Queen's Speech shows that the Government are running out of steam. They have run out of ideas and they realise that they have lost the support of the electorate, so they have introduced measures which they hope will redress the balance. They will not. This is the end not of the Thatcher dream, but of the Thatcher nightmare.
  7.5 pm
  Mr. James Paice: I welcome the appointment of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Mr. Patten) as Secretary of State for the Environment and, more particularly, the measures that he has already taken to demonstrate his commitment to the job that he has undertaken. It is not too much to say that the country has high expectations of him. Several of my hon. Friends have already welcomed the Bill on the environment outlined in the Queen's Speech. The British people are rightly more aware about the environment and everything that pertains to it. My right hon. Friend bears a heavy burden of responsibility, not least because many aspects of the environment are not national but international issues.
  This week we have spent much time almost worshipping the changes in the political scene on the other side of what we have known as the iron curtain. We must understand that, in those countries, there is major industrial pollution. There has been much use behind the iron curtain of lignite, which is one of the most polluting fuels. It has destroyed millions of acres of Poland and parts of Russia.
  I shall concentrate my remarks on the role of forestry in the environment of the United Kingdom. Much is made of the destruction of tropical forests, but I shall confine my remarks to the forests of the northern hemisphere, particularly those of the United Kingdom, and the role of managed forests as opposed to natural, wild and regenerative forests. Forests have a major role to play in the provision of habitats, in recreation and in the visual attractiveness of the environment. They have suffered badly from the reputation created by mass planting of conifers on the hills of Scotland. Modern planting and planning techniques have done away with that. By use of more mixed planting, a more visually attractive and beneficial environment has been created.
  The most important aspect of trees is that they are nature's own scrubbers. Their ability to fix carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turn it into solid material makes them unique, along with the rest of plant material. In forests, carbon dioxide is fixed for a long time. I suppose that I should declare an interest—
  Mr. Vaz: You are a tree.
  Mr. Paice: No, I am not a tree, nor even quite as thick as one, although some may think so.
  If the global warming estimates are right, half of my constituency would disappear under the sea, perhaps before I disappear and certainly before my children go to their graves. Developments in science have enabled the carbon-fixing properties of trees to be improved rapidly. We now have Douglas fir, every acre of which can fix four

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  tonnes of carbon dioxide every year. Most important, the maximum fixation rate occurs long before the tree reaches maturity.
  We are rather paranoid about cutting down trees. We worry about it. We have massive marches and protests whenever it is suggested. In reality, we must harvest trees. So long as we replant them and they are rotated, they must be harvested to attain the maximum fixing of carbon dioxide.
  In the past few years, forestry policy has suffered greatly. The changes in the tax regime, right as they were, unfortunately threw the whole industry into a turmoil from which it has not yet recovered. Only a week ago my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory), the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, said that our present target for afforestation was 36,000 hectares a year. That is nowhere near enough. A massive increase in afforestation is needed. Ten per cent. of our total land area is under trees, compared with 78 per cent. in agriculture. Only Ireland and the Netherlands have a lower proportion of their land area under trees. Seven of the 12 Community countries have more than 20 per cent. of their land area under trees. Our ratio of 8:1 of agriculture to trees compares badly with those seven countries, whose ratio is less than 3·5:1.
  My hon. and learned Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning will think that that is all very well but has nothing to do with the Department of the Environment, because forestry policy is dealt with by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and by my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland. However, there is a precedent. In the past few months, the Countryside Commission, which comes under the Department of the Environment, has stepped into agricultural policy by providing an enhancement of set-aside payments for farmers in my county and those adjoining it who have developed recreational and leisure uses of the land that they have set aside. The principle of cross-subsidy of an activity is already entrenched.
  We need to consider our forestry policy carefully, particularly as it affects the environment. There is a need for slightly, not dramatically, enhanced payments under the various schemes and for greater research into genetic improvement to ensure that trees grow faster, and therefore fix carbon dioxide more quickly and effectively. The work of the Forestry Commission on poplar coppicing and on developing new uses for poplar wood for pulp and particle board means that we can now look at fixation rates well in excess of four tonnes of carbon dioxide an acre. We need to adopt sensible targets. To double the acreage under trees is a realistic, achievable target.
  I do not pretend that that would solve all our problems. Even if we afforested the whole of the United Kingdom, the trees would not take out anything like the volume of carbon dioxide that is emitted into the atmosphere from the United Kingdom. It is no use preaching at other countries. We should demonstrate our intent by practising in our own country that which we wish to be practised elsewhere.
  Today's debate is about the environment and trade and industry. We import a vast amount of timber products. We are only 12 per cent. self-sufficient. The industry reckons
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  that at least 50 per cent. of our imports could be replaced by home production. That would be a massive saving in our balance of payments. We import 8·6 million tonnes of pulp. That import bill can be attacked in two ways—first by the afforestation policy that I have outlined and second by recycling.
  Recycling has become popular because of the concept of saving a tree. I hope that I have made it clear that that is the last thing that we want to do if we care about the environment. We need to maintain a constant rotation of trees—planting, growing and harvesting them—to ensure that the environment reaps the maximum benefit from them. Recycling saves energy and imports. Moreover, it saves methane, which would be the result of degradation if paper were used as landfill.
  The waste paper industry has gone through many changes. In the past few years there has been massive investment which means that it will need twice as much paper between now and 1993. Charities can play an important role and we rely on them for recycling paper, but this important matter should not be left to charities. The Government need to attach greater import to recycling and to research into the use of de-inking, soluble inks and soluble glues, as well as better collection methods. The present method is highly wasteful of energy. In those ways we can reduce the massive import bill for paper, board and pulp, which is running at more than £3 billion a year.
  I wish to impress on the Minister the need for an effective forestry policy and an effective paper recycling policy. Both will do a great deal to resolve some of our balance of payments problems. Both will promote the environment and both are inextricably intertwined in their effect on our country and the world. I look forward to their inclusion in the Government's work on the environment.
  7.16 pm
  Mr. Malcolm Bruce: As the only Liberal Democrat Member seeking to speak in this debate, I must put on the record my anger that I should be called so late and squeezed in at this stage. Clearly, it reflects a change in practice brought about by the introduction of the television cameras. As a member of the Select Committee on Trade and Industry and as my party's spokesman on the environment, I expected to have a longer opportunity to deploy our case than the 10 minutes to which my speech must be confined. It runs contrary to the assurances given when the 10 minutes rule was introduced that it would not be used to discriminate against third parties and prevent them from deploying their arguments fully on the Floor of the House.
  Our environmental policy is at the heart of our political programme. It is not an afterthought, as it is for the Government and the Opposition, who have chosen to open the debate on industry and allow the arguments on the environment to be dealt with in the closing speeches, rather than fully explained.
  I welcome the appointment of the new Secretary of State for the Environment. I believe that he is genuinely committed to environmental matters, but the company he keeps will make it difficult for him to implement the necessary policies. He will find that simply being in the company of people who wear green wellies will not make him an effective green Minister.

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  The Secretary of State assumes his new responsibilities at a time when the Government are a complete shambles. The Prime Minister, in a speech at the United Nations, claimed to put forward her plan to save the world. At the same time her Ministers in Europe were blocking any agreement to reach targets on the reduction of carbon dioxide outputs. They joined with Japan and the United States of America to block agreements which would have done something about the greenhouse effect. The Prime Minister claims to be worried about the greenhouse effect, but is incapable of pursuing any policies to help remedy it.
  In the same speech the Prime Minister said that the real answer to the greenhouse effect was to expand nuclear power. That opinion is unjustified and not borne out by the facts, if she would care to recognise them, because the expansion of nuclear power will contribute to the greenhouse effect, while energy conservation is the way to fix it. However, she was making that speech when, at home, Cabinet Ministers were deciding to abandon the nuclear programme to which she was so committed. As a consequence, she returned to a Government in shambles. The Government's green rhetoric has been characterised by a policy of dither and delay. The Government have said that they cannot take environmental action unless it can be taken internationally and be backed up by full, worked-out scientific evidence. That is an excuse for inaction, an opportunity for delay and a cop out, as a result of which the Government will not take the action that they should take.
  I accept that the market will be involved in some environmental action. However, I dispute that the serious situation that we face can be resolved simply by market solutions, as many Ministers seem to believe. There are economic benefits from recycling and energy conservation, such as reduced fuel poverty, increased competitiveness, and the use of recycled material as raw material.
  However, when I asked the then Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, the hon. Member for Surrey, South-West (Mrs. Bottomley), how many local authorities have facilities for the collection of waste oil and how many local authorities have sites where textiles can be taken and recycled, her reply was that this information was not held centrally. Will the Secretary of State tell us how he will achieve a target of 50 per cent. recycling of all raw materials if he does not know what is being recycled now? How will he monitor such an achievement? In recycling Britain lags behind every other country in the European Community except Ireland. We are 11th out of 12 in the recycling of glass and paper. The Government have a long way to go if they are to achieve their stated targets.
  The Bill that the Government will introduce will receive our support in so far as it achieves objectives on recycling and control of pollution. The Government have been telling us for years that we can achieve a 30 per cent. increase in energy efficiency by energy conservation, but in spite of 10 years of rhetoric, that has not been achieved. Why should we have any confidence in Government promises that they can achieve improvements in recycling when, on other aspects such as their energy policy, they have been incapable of coming up with the goods? The Energy Efficiency Office budget has been cut from £24·5 million to £15 million this year, and is to be held, and thereby cut in real terms, for the remainder of this Parliament. That suggests a Government who do not have the slightest idea of how to go about dealing with environmental priorities.
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  That is in sharp contrast to the record of Liberal Democrats in local government. The Minister is on record as saying that local authorities can do nothing. That is true if they are controlled by the Conservative party, but not if they are controlled by Liberal Democrats, who have taken initiatives. I offer an invitation to the Minister. We are more than willing to sit down with his officials and our councillors and campaigners to discuss how we might achieve the targets that he claims that he wants to achieve. We can demonstrate how our councillors are blazing the trail and have taken action that could usefully be followed by the Government. We act where others only talk.
  The Government are in some difficulty because they have pursued a privatisation policy that has been an environmental disaster as well as an organisational shambles. We are being taken to court over water quality. We have a sewage problem that the Government deny exists, in spite of evidence to the contrary. There is no confidence in the management of toxic waste. Ministers claim that we are so good at processing toxic waste that we should process everybody else's as well as our own, but the Select Committee on the Environment made it abundantly clear that we have a disgraceful record on this and the Government have not begun to address the problem.
  As part of the programme of visiting a number of sites where toxic waste processing is either being undertaken or planned, I went to Doncaster. Opposition to the planned expansion there is universal. It comes from all sectors of the community, including businesses, which see that the expansion of the Doncaster waste site will destroy the quality of their markets. For example, it will be impossible to sell quality food products in the shadow of toxic waste processing. In spite of that overwhelming opposition, the Secretary of State will take a year to decide whether to allow this project to go ahead. He should make it clear straight away that this is an unsuitable site for toxic waste processing, and the plant should be scrapped. He will find difficulty squaring the record that he inherits with his credentials. He has a mess to clean up.
  I have already referred to the Prime Minister's speech on nuclear power. We have campaigned consistently against nuclear power and in the last fortnight all our arguments have been vindicated. Nuclear power is hopelessly uneconomic and billions of pounds have been squandered when they could have been invested in energy conservation and the development of alternatives. We could have saved many communities from being blighted by the threat of a nuclear power station. Even now, the Government should cancel all plans for nuclear power stations, release the sites that are tied up and recognise that the vindication of our argument shows the commitment that we have shown. Labour and Conservative Governments alike have refused to accept that, until too much damage has been done. Lord Marshall should be decommissioned himself, and forced to resign.
  The Government will have to put up the money if they are to have an effective environmental policy. There has been a great deal of green mouthing. It would be nice to see the colour of the money and to be told where the greenbacks are to fulfil the Government's declared environmental policy.
  7.26 pm
  Mr. David Tredinnick: I must place on record, for the benefit of hon. Members not here, the fact that we have just seen the first example of what the media call "doughnutting", when eight assorted Liberal Democrat Members of Parliament walked into the Chamber specifically to be recorded on the cameras. It should be put on record that they were not here earlier. What is more, some of us who have been in the House for five hours do not take kindly to seeing the camera fodder come in.
  Mr. Archy Kirkwood: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It is ridiculous and scandalous for the hon. Member for Bosworth (Mr. Tredinnick) to say that we are not interested in the environment or listening to the contributions being made. He is impugning—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): Order. The hon. Gentleman must be aware that the length of speeches is limited under the 10-minutes rule and that he is taking time from the hon. Member for Bosworth (Mr. Tredinnick). Nothing out of order has been said.
  Mr. Tredinnick: I never said—
  Mr. Kirkwood: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The hon. Gentleman is impugning the motives and the intentions of hon. Members by saying that they have come into the Chamber simply so that they can appear on television.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must have heard me the first time, when I said that I have not heard anything that was out of order.
  Mr. Tredinnick: I was not referring to the environment. I was referring to the fact that the Liberal Democrats packed in for the cameras. That is what I meant.
  Mr. A. J. Beith: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was in the Chamber listening to the opening speeches of the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and of the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown), who spoke on behalf of the Labour party. During both those speeches, the House was quite well filled with hon. Members of those two parties, each listening to their spokesman, who left the Chamber at the end of those speeches. Therefore, it is not unreasonable that hon. Members representing this party should come into the debate—it is in order for us to do so—to hear the spokesman for our party.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is not a point of order. The hon. Gentleman should have heard me the first two times. So far, while discourteous remarks may have been made, I have heard nothing that is out of order. All this is time out of the period for which the hon. Member for Bosworth can speak.
  Mr. Tredinnick: The Liberal Democrats have made the point effectively. If I make no other point—
  Mr. James Wallace: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Tredinnick: I must have hit a raw nerve.
  Mr. Wallace: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must resume his seat when I am on my feet. The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Wallace) and his hon. Friends must contain themselves. The hon. Gentleman's remarks may have been greatly provocative and discourteous, but they were not out of order.
  Mr. Tredinnick: I cannot believe that I have hit such a raw nerve in SLD Members. It is certainly a surprise to my right hon. and hon. Friends. If SLD Members want to major on the fact that they have packed in to the Chamber for the cameras and that those Benches were empty earlier this evening, I do not mind if they take time out of my speech, as it is a credit to my hon. Friends that they have have been here this afternoon. It does SLD Members no credit, because they have not been here.
  Mr. Ian Bruce: I think my hon. Friend may have been discourteous to SLD Members, because they clearly did not know what their party's policy was, and they needed to come into the Chamber to listen to their spokesman.
  Mr. David Steel rose—
  Mr. Tredinnick: I have a short space of time and I have been waiting to speak for five hours, but Conservative Members are sufficiently courteous to give way.
  Mr. Steel: To allow his speech to proceed, I hope the hon. Gentleman will accept it from me as a former leader of the Liberal party that it has long been the practice for my right hon. and hon. Friends to attend the speech by the party spokesman, just as it is the practice for hon. Members of other parties to be here in greater numbers to hear their spokesman. That has nothing to do with the introduction of the cameras, which are not allowed to pan the Benches.
  Mr. Tredinnick: The right hon. Gentleman has confirmed the acute embarrassment that his hon. Friends felt because I have drawn the matter to your attention, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
  I listened with amazement to the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) when he talked down British industry and ignored the Government's training schemes—the most ambitious and impressive that we have had in the United Kingdom—and the economic regeneration that has taken place in the past 10 years.
  In Bosworth there has been massive investment. A new trading estate of some 600 acres is under development—300 acres by the excellent Hinckley and Bosworth borough council, and 300 privately. When land is released, it is taken up. That is a sign not of a problem but of continuing success. New businesses open every week and there is an underlying trend of prosperity.
  Despite a fall in unemployment to 3 per cent. in the Hinckley area, traditional industries have had difficulties in reconstructing. The hosiery and knitwear industry is reconstructing successfully, and companies have brought in high technology. However, I appeal to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to maintain temporarily the multi-fibre arrangement, which has been in place for 15 years. The argument that it should be done away with because it has outlived its usefulness is not true. Companies such as James Bennett Knitwear have brought

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  in new material, plant and equipment to get over a difficult period, and they need an extension of the arrangement to help them through the next stage.
  The shoe industry has suffered great losses, and I appeal to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to enforce existing treaties that protect the industry at a difficult time.
  In my constituency there is an underlying positive trend. We have had problems with reconstruction, and now we have the problems caused by prosperity—a shortage of skilled workers. I was delighted to be present on Monday at the opening of the Hinckley enterprise agency, which has had tremendous support from the business community. It is not surprising that we need new training facilities, because 3 million new jobs have been created in Britain in the past six months, and that is more than in any other country in the EEC. We need those agencies and the training and enterprise councils. I welcome the fact that they are employer-led schemes as that must be the way forward. We need to target training needs accurately to fill the job vacancies of the 1990s and beyond.
  I welcome the green Bill and the quality of life Bills that the Government are to introduce. Due to the raw nerve I touched on the SLD Benches earlier—Benches that are normally deserted, but are not so deserted now—I shall not be able to cover that ground. Opposition Members' interventions served my party well because they showed how ludicrous it is to bring in hon. Members for the benefit of those new-fangled contraptions—the cameras—which I do not think we are allowed to mention. I hope that my hon. Friends will allow me the luxury of mentioning them, as they have been here for only two days.
  My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has taken the lead on environmental issues worldwide. I hope that she will do what she can to allow British technology to clean up plants and power stations in eastern Europe. My right hon. and hon. Friends have mentioned the tremendous problems there and I hope that that policy will be pursued by my right hon. Friend.
  7.36 pm
  Mr. Eddie Loyden: Yesterday, the House listened to the Prime Minister's description of what can only be described as the fairytale land of Britain in the 1980s. We listened to the usual rhetoric—the hallmark of the Prime Minister—and an ever-changing Treasury Bench team into which no end of substitutes have been brought in the hope that we would not notice that, although the faces change, the direction and style of the Government remain the same.
  The Government are locked into a set of economic and social policies that have brought about the decimation of British manufacturing industry, and a return to mass unemployment which is apparently no longer on their agenda. The prize that the Prime Minister is in search of, and for which sacrifices have been made, is the control of inflation. However, inflation is rising again, at a level above that of our competitors in Europe.
  The Prime Minister has shown that, beyond any shadow of doubt, she is out of touch with reality. Although fairytale land may exist in parts of Britain, my region is a different world. It is a world in which unemployment in certain sections of the work force is as high as 19 per cent. and will remain so for many years. It is a region where pensioners cannot live at a standard
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  which one would expect in a country which the Prime Minister has described as a country of great wealth. The people who have accumulated wealth from the Government are not the people who produce it.
  The maintenance of our towns and cities has further declined. They are suffering from decline and obsolescence as a result of the Government's cuts in expenditure and finance to local government. Like public expenditure, local government has been an enemy of the Government. As a result, local authorities are almost compelled to sell recreation land, parks and buildings to maintain some level of service. Tackling poverty, particularly in the northern region, Scotland and Northern Ireland, requires greater support from local authorities.
  Unlike many other hon. Members, I did not expect the Gracious Speech to contain anything other than more doses of the medicine to which we have become used during the past 10 years. The shift to the radical Right represented by the election of the Government in 1979 has revealed that the intention was to shift the balance of power dramatically away from the people and to the top echelons. The price has been paid in terms of democracy, civil rights and trade union rights.
  Capitalism has taken control of every aspect of life, but there is no accountability. We have experienced the results of inflation and of high interest rates on mortgages. The Prime Minister boasted about the number of people who own their own homes. She omitted to tell us how many people are having their homes taken from them because they cannot continue their mortgage payments.
  The Gracious Speech does not mention the crisis in education. Headmasters and assistant headmasters in my area write to me daily about the crisis in schools in Liverpool. They say that the weight of work handed to them by the Government in the form of the national curriculum means that other work has been almost abandoned. That shows how the Government are treating our children's future. Nothing in the Gracious Speech gives us any hope of change. It seems that the Government have learnt nothing from the past 10 years.
  Under this Government, manufacturing industry will decline further. Shipbuilding, one of our major industries, has declined on Clydeside and Merseyside and in Belfast. We know that an island nation requires a viable merchant fleet and we have put pressure on the Government to single out shipbuilding for the contribution that it can make to the revival of Britain's economy, but there is nothing about it or any other industry in the Gracious Speech.
  Our merchant fleet is dissipated and is vanishing as each day passes. The Government have done nothing to reverse that. Our seamen are unemployed. Our shipworkers are unemployed. The skills and crafts that built the great liners and merchant fleets of the world lie idle. That is a scandal. I have no doubt that the direction in which the Government are going will lead to more decline and obsolescence in the regions, which have already suffered during the past 10 years.
  The Government have failed absolutely in all their social policies. There has been a marked decline in hospital services and in the Health Service in general. There has been a virtual dismantling of the welfare state which was once an example to the rest of the world. This uncaring Government have listened to only one section of British society. They have not listened to those who live in the real world. People now realise that the Government do not

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  care for those who live in the regions. We believe that they are the forgotten people and there is nothing in the Gracious Speech to suggest that that will be remedied.
  People now recognise that they made a great mistake when they put their trust in the Government, who have no regard for progressive social policies and who are indifferent to the creation of a better quality of life. The Government disregard the real poverty suffered by pensioners. People write to me and, I am sure, other hon. Members saying that they cannot maintain a reasonable standard of life. Often, they report that a pension increase is followed by a rent increase and a reduction in housing and other benefits, with the result that the pension increase is wiped out and their standard of living is lowered.
  I hope that, in the not-too-distant future, the people, realising all this, will sweep out the Government and that a Labour Government will begin to rectify the problems that we shall inherit from the Conservatives.
  7.46 pm
  Mr. Keith Mans: Before commenting on the Gracious Speech, which I find encouraging, I thought that I would welcome the many Liberal Members who have come to take part in the debate, but it seems that their presence here was brief as most of them have disappeared again. It seems that they want to listen to their own spokesmen but do not feel it necessary to listen to the rest of us. That is a great shame.
  I should like to consider how environmental policies impinge on British industry. For many years now, a number of companies in Europe have recognised the need to pursue policies that can be called environmentally benign and tried to ensure that emissions and recycling are given a high priority—I think particularly of car and power station emissions.
  On the other side of the Channel, notably in Germany, the motor car industry has made great strides in its attempt to clean up its act and to produce cars with catalytic convertors which cause much less poisonous exhaust fumes. I am pleased to see that, as a result of the European directives that are to come into force in 1992, we, too, will have to fit such devices to our motor cars. I urge my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to bring that date forward as it is important that the British car industry fits such devices as soon as possible to clean up car emissions. Only in that way will it have a chance of competing with car manufacturers in the rest of Europe.
  I believe that we can take a lead, with the rest of Europe, in reducing emissions from diesel vehicles. A great amount of research has been carried out recently and we know that diesel vehicle emissions are poisonous. It has been shown that they can be carcinogenic. They have an effect also on photochemical smog. We must engage in more research and ensure that clean diesel engines are produced in Britain. We should insist that the European Commission produces emission standards for diesel vehicles in precisely the same way as those that are produced for vehicles with petrol engines. I should like to see Britain follow the lead taken by the United States in emission standards, where strict standards will be introduced in 1991 and 1994.
  There are problems in energy generation as well, and this is an area in which we have a long way to go. I disagree
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  with the Liberal party spokesman, the hon. Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce). We can reduce considerably the amount of carbon dioxide that is released by power stations by continuing with our nuclear programme. I use the achievement of France over the past 10 or 15 years to make my point, with 70 per cent. of its energy needs being met through nuclear power. France is well on the road to reducing considerably the amount of CO2 that is dissipated into the atmosphere. If we are to meet some of the targets that have been set for ourselves and other countries in the short term at least, we must not allow the nuclear power programme to founder. We must ensure that there are other nuclear power stations apart from Sizewell B so that we can reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power stations. I agree that alongside that programme we need also to introduce a programme of energy conservation.
  If we are to generate electricity by means of coal or nuclear power, and nuclear power is the cleaner way of doing so, we must not allow our nuclear programme to founder. We shall have a problem in future if we allow the amount of energy that we generate by nuclear means to fall much below 20 per cent.
  The relationship between the environment and industrial policy lies in recycling, which was dealt with so admirably by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East (Mr. Paice). To add to my hon. Friend's statistics, we import what amounts to £9 million-worth of waste paper each year. There must be room for the encouragement of recycling. I hope that the Bill on the protection of the environment that is to be introduced will include clauses that insist on local authorities producing practical programmes to encourage individuals and companies to recycle the material that otherwise would be thrown away. We must seek also to enhance the reputation of recycling companies. The scrap metal industry, for example, does a great deal of good in recycling, but in the past it has not had the image that it deserved. I hope that in future its image will change and that it will be seen as a benefit to the environment rather than something which happens merely to exist.
  We must ensure that our environment and industrial policies go hand in hand. If we do not, countries that have taken a more benign attitude towards the environment and insisted upon higher standards of environmental protection within their industries will have a distinct competitive advantage over our industries. We must ensure, therefore, that we reduce emissions from motor cars and power stations, for example, and make certain that we recycle the maximum amount of raw material.
  I believe sincerely that the coming industrial revolution will be driven not so much by the microchip as by the challenge of the environment. We must continue to ensure that we provide the goods and services that our people need while protecting the environment in which we live.
  7.55 pm
  Mr. Roy Beggs: Having had a lifelong interest in rural science and rural studies, I welcome the commitment to introduce measures to improve our environment. I regret, however, the reference yet again in the Queen's Speech to the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Surely both Governments should acknowledge the complete failure of that accord. It should be allowed to die a natural death. Apart from that, there are many features of the

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  Queen's Speech that I can endorse wholeheartedly. I regret only that there may not be time for me to deal with them all.
  I fully support the Government's policy
  "to attach the highest priority to national and Western security and to the preservation of peace, with freedom and justice",
  provided that it is clearly understood that future security policy in Northern Ireland honours the Government's pledge to maintain support for the enforcement of law and the defeat of terrorism. The insecurity and uncertainty caused by the error of judgment of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in his statement that the IRA could not be defeated will not be removed completely until there is evidence that the Government fully support the clearer statement of the Foreign Secretary that the IRA must be eradicated.
  The considered and more recently reported statement of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland that the Government have not ruled out, and will not rule out, any security measures consistent with the rule of law that would bring nearer the end of violence, and that terrorists cannot win and will not be permitted to win, is welcome. Such a statement is reassuring. Any remaining doubt or apprehension about the content of any ill-judged future statement will be allayed when tougher measures are employed against all terrorists in Northern Ireland. There must be no more unguarded statements that give encouragement to the IRA.
  The military defeat of terrorism and of the IRA's 20-year murder campaign will open up new opportunities for co-operation among law-abiding communities in Northern Ireland. Calls from any quarter for further tampering with the Ulster Defence Regiment must be robustly resisted. The business community and industrialists in Northern Ireland must have confidence to invest for the future. I believe that inward investment will increase if there is confidence that Northern Ireland will remain firmly within the United Kingdom and that terrorism will be eradicated.
  I take the opportunity to pay tribute to the Government for the support that they have given in securing the continuance of major industries in Belfast. I regret that other regions in the United Kingdom have fared less well. Employment opportunities and continuing opportunities for training in Northern Ireland's aircraft and shipbuilding industries are part of the key to future prosperity and to securing a sound industrial base in Northern Ireland.
  There is a real need, however, in areas of high unemployment for additional facilities to be provided for the training of the unemployed. We have had too many action for community schemes that have provided no real skill and learning opportunities. I am concerned especially that Rathcoole in my constituency, like many other areas of deprivation and high unemployment, does not have adequate provision for the training of the young and long-term unemployed.
  The Industrial Development Board and the Local Enterprise Development Unit continue to enjoy success in job creation, but much more must be done if we are to reduce the misery and poverty of the unemployed. I urge caution on any proposals for the amalgamation of those two organisations, but sharing their existing expertise could be developed further.
  However much assistance the Government may provide, I hope that the Secretary of State agrees that
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  self-help within the communities of Northern Ireland and throughout the United Kingdom can assist significantly in reducing unemployment. I hope that he will encourage district councils in Northern Ireland, under the Local Government Act (Northern Ireland) 1972, to make more use of the existing powers. Under them a council may
  "contribute towards the expenses of any voluntary body which carries on activities within the district of the council, being activities for the purpose of—(i) furthering the development of trade, industry or commerce in the district or (ii) encouraging the pursuit by persons residing in the district of interests of a cultural or artistic nature."
  The council may also
  "contribute towards the expenses of any association which carries on activities calculated to assist the development of tourist traffic in Northern Ireland."
  Greater use by district councils of funds to support local enterprise development and training will open the doors to further assistance from Government agencies and EEC funding and will stimulate local confidence and job creation which will be positive, even though on a small scale.
  We want improvements to the roads in the west of the Province. We want the completion of the Belfast cross harbour link and the dual carriageway from Corrs Corner to Larne, as that would assist the flow of goods and products to and from Northern Ireland. I hope that the Secretary of State will encourage the Secretary of State for Transport to hold discussions with the Secretaries of State for Scotland and for Northern Ireland about future developments at Stranraer and Cairnryan in Scotland to match the excellent facilities at Lame harbour in my constituency. They should consult on the need for further upgrading of the A74 and A75 in Scotland and on the reinstatement of a direct rail link from Stranraer to Dumfries. Those improvements would contribute to improving industrial development and tourism in Northern Ireland, the west of Scotland and the north-west and north-east of England.
  Northern Ireland thinks of Lame, Stranraer and Cairnryan—the shortest sea crossings—as the most logical link between the Province and the Euro-route to the Channel tunnel. Recognitition by the two sovereign Governments that the Anglo-Irish Agreement of November 1985 is incapable of achieving its objectives and that it will never be accepted by Unionists, together with the recognition of the legitimacy of Northern Ireland, would afford opportunity to the representatives of the majority, while taking account of the rights of and the responsibilities to the minority to endeavour to achieve meaningful relations within these islands, which would bring about beneficial changes for British and Irish citizens within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.
  Contrary to the belief in certain quarters, it has always been the aim of my party both when in power at Stormont and since 1972 as an Opposition party in this House—to develop and maintain a good neighbour relationship with the people of the Irish Republic. At a time in Europe when new relationships are developing between East and West and between the sovereign nations therein, we trust that the Government of the Irish Republic, as they assume the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, will give priority to matching our efforts to develop a lasting relationship between north and south based on mutual respect.

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  My plea to this House and to the Government of the Irish Republic is that the obstacles that prevent Unionists talking and making progress be removed.
  8.5 pm
  Mr. Roger King: I welcome the Gracious Speech, which shows that the Government intend to continue with their policy of change for the benefit of this country. The legislation proposed for the next 12 months is certain to improve the history and development of our nation.
  I was fortunate to be allowed to intervene in the speech of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, when I said that we had come a long way since 1979, especially in industrial relations. I said that the state of British industry had reached such a low level that it was possible to buy a complete car manufacturing company for just $1 or 66p. That was the result of no fewer than 800 stoppages in 1978. Chrysler sold its company, and from 1979 the new owners, Peugeot Talbot, benefited from a growing process of legislation to enhance and improve industrial relations.
  The history of industrial improvements, especially the dramatic improvements in productivity, must be viewed in the context of where we began in 1979. Industry was at an incredibly low level with poor productivity, outdated factories, outdated working practices and poor quality products. Each and every one of those problems represented a great challenge to overcome, but with the backing of a Conservative Government British industry has overcome most of them. I was delighted to note in the Gracious Speech that the Government intend further to improve industrial relations, with particular attention being paid to the wildcat strike that still causes problems for industry. The strength of the working man's position on the shop floor has been improved by giving him the right to ballot before industrial action. No longer does he face the prospect of the car park, rabble-rousing events that were the hallmark of the 1970s—and, indeed, our industrial history since the second world war.
  The fact that manufacturing industry has got its act together to a far greater degree than many Opposition Members suggest is evident in the rising tide of quality products. I am proud to have in my constituency the Rover plant at Longbridge. The recent 200 series of cars has been designed and developed in concert with the Honda company of Japan. It has earned widespread acclaim throughout Europe, and especially in this country, as a very fine product. It is now the preferred choice of most motoring correspondents for its type—a medium-sized saloon car. It is a major step forward for the company, which previously had the hallmark of rather indifferent products.
  Not only has there been progress in the car division. The first new Land Rover for 40 years was revealed during the past week. Called Discovery, it has been well received as a quantum leap forward in four-wheel, all-terrain techno-logy—a vehicle that set a trend just after the second world war, but lost the initiative to the Japanese. People who have seen and driven that car recognise that it takes a further leap ahead of the German and Japanese competition. That has been achieved because all involved in our factories know that, to maintain jobs and to secure
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  prosperity, the product must be good. Our engineers and designers have achieved many dramatic improvements in the past few years.
  We look forward with hope and interest to a decision by General Motors that this country is their preferred choice of location for a new engine plant, which would enhance Vauxhall's performance in the European theatre as well as in this country. That too would be a major step forward for the British motor industry.
  While it is true that Britain's balance of payments has deteriorated over the past few years, our exports have climbed. We are now exporting more per head of population than ever before. Paradoxically, our balance of payments gap will be closed in the 1990s partly because we have operated an open economy that has encouraged foreign manufacturers to market their products here. Our purchase of those products has created a balance of payments problem, and the car industry is a good example of that. However, the rising tide of car imports from Japan and elsewhere forced those countries to acknowledge the strength of the United Kingdom economy and market. Those manufacturers have transferred their service depots and some of their manufacturing plants to the United Kingdom. We are witnessing a major transference of manufacturing capacity from overseas, so that by the 1990s we shall return to our former position and will be exporting many more motor vehicles than we do at present.
  The prospects for the future have been enhanced by the proposed takeover by Ford of Jaguar. The hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) criticised that development, considering Ford to be a wolf and a low kind of creature. His hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould), sitting next to him, looked particularly embarrassed at those remarks, because that major company in his constituency and its work force were being described as something worse than anything one might conceive. The hon. Member for Dunfermline, East suggested that they were unmentionables and should have nothing to do with Jaguar. In truth, Jaguar can, in concert with a major multinational, greatly increase job and manufacturing opportunities in this country. We look forward to a dramatic increase in Jaguar's output in the early and late 1990s, together with a widening of its market base as it works together with one of the world's largest motor manufacturers.
  I was interested to hear the Opposition's views on the ways in which our industrial performance could be improved and how they want us to emulate Germany in almost every respect except the number of hours worked by car factory workers. Workers in the German industry work a 39-hour week, yet in Britain trade unions are actively attempting to establish a 35-hour working week. The hon. Member for Dunfermline, East could say only that such changes should be negotiated. He did not say whether he supports the current industrial action, which is hitting British factories, in an attempt to force a 35-hour week on manufacturing companies—which would put them at a great disadvantage by comparison with their international competitors. The hon. Member for Dunfermline, East would not or could not comment on that matter, yet he has the audacity to lecture the House on how the Labour party will introduce improved efficiency and determination in British industry. He did not answer the fundamental question of how many hours per week he expects British workers to work. We know why.

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  The problems facing British industry are, as always, very challenging—particularly for small businesses. High interest rates cannot be sustained indefinitely, and I look forward to seeing their reduction over the next 12 months. More than that, I look forward to a Budget for the business man. Without successful businesses, there can be little future for our country. Although a tremendous amount has been done to help the business man, more still must be achieved. I look forward to a Budget that concentrates on prospects for improving British companies, to help create the wealth that we certainly need. As 1992 rapidly approaches, we need a strong, sound manufacturing base of the kind that we have helped to create over the past 10 years to be developed further to serve as a springboard for our entry into the single European market in greater style in 1992.
  Changes are occurring throughout Europe. The prospect of eastern Europe, including Poland, Czechoslovakia and East Germany, developing their own sophisticated manufacturing industries with the help of western Europe is something to which we must pay more than lip service. We acknowledge the political changes that are occurring but industrial changes will surely follow—and will probably be fully implemented first. Our manufacturing industry must be right on the ball in terms of its productivity and efficiency—because we shall have to fight off competition not only from the far east and from our competitors in the rest of western Europe but from a growing tide of manufacturing expertise in eastern Europe.
  We have set the seeds for the development of British industry and have seen it grow, and the action on which the Government will embark over the next 12 months will enhance Britain's prospects even further.
  8.15 pm
  Mrs. Maria Fyfe: The hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. King) seems to believe that British car workers are a mindless rabble who have no real grievances and can be spurred into action by a few fiery speeches. Given that a fair number of those workers must have voted Conservative in recent elections, presumably not a few of their number will change their minds when they read the hon. Gentleman's speech.
  During the time that I spent in the Chamber yesterday and today, I have heard not one constructive word about Scotland's future from the Government Benches. It was only from right hon. and hon. Members representing various Opposition parties that I heard anything worthwhile on the subject of Scotland's needs. The Queen's Speech states:
  "For Scotland, legislation will be introduced to establish Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise".
  We shall see whether Scottish Enterprise is enterprising enough to kick out those organisations that have taken public money to spend on worthless training schemes and instead to kick-start the provision of training schemes that will do a worthwhile job.
  Scottish Enterprise will need to be extremely vigorous to overcome the problems that confront it. In the past year, £100 million of taxpayers' money was spent on employment training in Scotland, but no one knows how many trainees succeeded in securing full-time employment. No one knows either how many went back on the dole. We can be sure that, if the figures were good, we would have been given them and that the Scottish Office would be
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  broadcasting them with no expense spared—although perhaps it would not spend quite as much as the £00.000 that the Tories are spending on trying to win the hearts and minds of the Scottish people.
  Will Scottish Enterprise at least make sure that training instructors are appropriately qualified? Although it may he hard to believe, there is no such requirement at present. Nothing could more clearly demonstrate the worthlessness of a training scheme than that the instructors in charge are without the necessary skills and do not have a clue about safety precautions.
  A young lady named Ann-Marie Campbell of Clydebank went on an employment training course to learn typing. Given that women have little access to training opportunities, one would think it all the more important to ensure a sound training in the limited number of skills for which courses are available to them. From April to August 1989, of those who entered employment training in Scotland, 73 per cent. were men and only 27 per cent. were women.
  I could not argue that Ann-Marie's training lacked variety. She was taught to solve a murder mystery, with as many clues as would keep a week of television detective stories in action. She had been taught how to survive on the moon. Perhaps her instructors thought that she would be more likely to find work on the moon than in Glasgow. However, she did no typing for 11 weeks.
  One of my constituents was keen on a career in gardening. He was delighted when he began his employment training course, but did he learn anything about sowing seeds and planting trees? No. He was expected to travel from Maryhill to Airdrie just to spend his time clearing rubbish from a derelict site. What on earth are trainees supposed to do? They cannot walk out. If they do, they lose their money. To whom do they complain? They cannot complain, because it is all perfectly legal. Trainees on hopeless schemes such as that have been writing to hon. Members, but until there is a Labour Government who have a decent notion of training schemes, there is little that anyone can do about it.
  Is it not time that the Government stopped this farce and faced up to the fact that industry in general does not have a good record of training the work force? Training has never been a strategic boardroom issue. Industrial training boards were set up many years ago precisely because individual firms could not all be relied upon to provide effective training and education. Now, instead of, as in the past, apprentices achieving qualifications that would be recognised all over the world, we have Mickey Mouse schemes because the Government are as much in touch with the real world as Disneyland.
  The slogan goes:
  "Training the workers without jobs, to do the jobs without workers."
  In Glasgow there are many thousands of unemployed workers and far too few jobs. Of the 20 worst unemployment black spots in Britain, eight are in Glasgow. Unemployment in my constituency, Maryhill, is 18·5 per cent., but it is even worse in other Glasgow constituencies. That percentage is the official Government figure, after they have counted out those on employment training and other schemes.
  Much of the decline in employment has taken place in manufacturing industries. Since 1979, manufacturing employment in Strathclyde is estimated to have fallen by 47 per cent., with the loss of 153,000 jobs. That includes

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  such places as Peugeot at Renfrew, which has shut down completely. They cannot all become property speculators, share dealers, estate agents and barrow boys.
  It seems pretty obvious that we need investment in industry. If the private sector will not do it voluntarily, the Opposition argue that the Government must intervene. If investors see that a faster buck is to be made out of foreign investments, the Government must take action to provide work in Britain, not only for the sake of those who languish on the dole but also for the sake of this country's future. In our competitor countries, the school-leaving age is higher than it is in the United Kingdom. They do not begrudge spending money on education and training and on the very latest methods in every subject that one cares to name. They can hardly believe their luck that the nation that led the world in industrial technology now buys in the plant and machinery that it could perfectly well make itself. Thank goodness that we shall soon have a Labour Government who will start up the engines and get us moving again.
  It is a great disappointment once again, but no surprise, to note that the Queen's Speech says nothing about equal pay for women, or about part-time workers getting full-time rights, or about abolishing tax on workplace nurseries, or anything at all about improving nursery provision. As many hon. Members have said, the Queen's Speech says nothing about war widows, or about improving safety in the streets for women by means of better public transport and improved street lighting. It says nothing about ensuring that divorced or separated women and their children are able to rely, for at least their keep, on the Department of Social Security while the former husband is chased up for the money that is owed because payments are irregular or never made. The Queen's Speech says nothing about restoring maternity leave and maternity benefits.
  The Prime Minister is fond of saying that we cannot buck the market. Women in Britain are in the market for equal treatment in all spheres of their lives. They know that only the Labour party will provide it.
  8.23 pm
  Dr. Michael Woodcock: I agree with some of the sentiments of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mrs. Fyfe). British industry needs to harness the untapped resources of women, particularly at management level. Opportunities for women are opening up, but there is still a great deal to be done over equal pay and the provision of workplace nurseries. I agree with the hon. Lady that the Government need to do more. The elimination of taxable benefit status from workplace nurseries would be fairly easy.
  It is wonderful that, once in a while, debates can be linked—in this case, on industry and the environment. Too often industry expands without proper concern for the environment. Too often those concerned with the environment fail to take into account industry's legitimate needs. We all want a healthy industrial base and a healthy environment. Despite what Opposition Members may think, British industry enters the 1990s in a much better state than it entered the 1980s. Ten years ago, much of our industry was overstaffed, riddled with restrictive practices and uncompetitive.
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  I have first-hand experience of how painful the restructuring process can be. There have been no fewer than 7,000 redundancies in my constituency, but they were not the result of Government policies. They were the result of years and years of failure to come to terms with world competition and economic reality. Much of what was the smokestack economy has now become the microchip economy.
  Now, I am pleased to say, investment is at its highest level ever. More people are in jobs than ever before, our industries are more competitive, profits are at their highest level for 20 years and more people own their own businesses. A new business is being created every seven minutes in the United Kingdom. The verdict of international investors is quite clear. That is why the United Kingdom is getting a much bigger share of foreign investment than any other European country.
  Industry—particularly wealth-creating industry—has faced up to that challenge. It is important that other sectors of the economy face up to the same challenge and that those who spend our wealth—I include in particular the National Health Service—become more efficient. That is why I welcome the proposed National Health Service and Community Care Bill. It is also important that those who provide services, including the legal profession, should cleanse themselves of restrictive practices and offer better value for money. That is why I welcome the decision to introduce a Bill relating to the legal profession.
  The remaining nationalised industries must also face up to the reality of the market place. Therefore, I welcome the proposals for further privatisation, including the proposal to privatise some of the services provided by the Property Services Agency and the decision to restructure the finances of British Coal—but this time not, I hope, as a further subsidy by the taxpayer of waste and inefficiency but as a proper prelude to the privatisation of the industry.
  When I talk to managers—every year I speak to many thousands of them—I find that what they fear more than anything else is a disastrous return to the policies of a Labour Government. After 10 years of sound policies, management has at last regained the right to manage. It is recognised that strikes are second only to inflation in destroying jobs. There is a new sense of realism in most of British industry. Teamwork and industrial partnership are coming to the fore. Again we are matching the competition; again we are putting the customer first.
  I wish that I had the same rosy view of the environment as I have of industry, but I have not. That is why I am pleased that green issues are coming to the centre stage of British politics. I am concerned, as are many others, that throughout the past decades our green countryside has been so eroded. There have been huge and unnecessary losses of our traditional countryside features, such as hedgerows, ponds and broadleaved woodlands. Since 1950, our hedgerows have decreased by over 25 per cent. and our broadleaved woodlands by 40 per cent. That trend has often been encouraged by Government legislation—or by the lack of it. I trust that, since the over-production of food is with us, with the result that we are removing some land from agricultural production, we shall have the opportunity at long last to redress the balance.
  I hope that the Government will do more to discourage the intensive use of nitrates and the insensitive siting of ugly farm buildings that do not require planning consent. I hope that they will tighten the law governing the ploughing and reinstatement of footpaths, because the

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  countryside is important for uses apart from farming. Our countryside is perhaps the most important part of our national legacy, and it is true that in the past we have not taken sufficient care of it.
  At the top of the list of priorities for the environment is pollution, and in that term I include badly planned industrial development, buildings of little architectural merit, ugly fencing, the pollution of streams and rivers—sometimes by the water authorities themselves—air pollution, waste tips, litter and the dumping of sewage and colliery waste. I welcome the so-called green Bill and trust that it will address those issues.
  Mine is an industrial constituency with a large petrochemical complex, an oil refinery and many large industrial sites. We generate our share of pollution—probably more than our share—but it is pollution that results from wealth creation. We also have a toxic waste incinerator which is shortly to be replaced by a larger and more modern version. No subject has inflamed local opinion more in the past year than the building of the new toxic waste incinerator. The present incinerator burns highly toxic waste, including PCBs, or polychorinated biphenyls. It burns waste not only from Ellesmere Port but from around the country and even some imported waste.
  Believe it or not, the incinerator is sited within half a mile of the town centre of Ellesmere Port. It emits a dangerous-looking plume 24-hours a day. I say "dangerous-looking" because I have no reason to suppose the incinerator poses any danger or that it is not operated to the highest possible standards. All my inquiries support that view. It is clear to me that there are far too many regulatory authorities and that emissions standards are not sufficiently clearly defined in the United Kingdom. I hope that the so-called green Bill will address those issues.
  Also in my constituency is a uranium enrichment facility. I have a high regard for the way in which British Nuclear Fuels operates that plant, but many of my constituents believe that discharges from the plant into a nearby brook are potentially dangerous. Whatever the truth may be, if people believe something to be real, it is real in its consequences. I hope that the Environment Protection Bill will help to reassure my constituents that there is no danger. I shall examine the Bill closely, but I find the concept of integrated pollution control appealing; it is certainly overdue and should be welcomed by hon. Members on both sides of the House.
  Like the hon. Member for Maryhill, I welcome the reference in the Gracious Speech to training—probably for different reasons. It is estimated that today £18 billion a year is spent by employers on skill training—rightly so, because responsibility for skill training should rest with employers; that is where it belongs. In Britain today, investment in people is probably even more important than investment in products and plant. As the Secretary of State told the CBI the other day, we must either give employees more skill or face decline. I therefore welcome the training and enterprise councils to be led by employers.
  I feel strongly that we still have a long way to go, especially in management training. The average British manager probably still receives less training than the average British plumber. Compared with some of our world competitors, we are still lamentably bad at training managers. For instance, only 24 per cent. of our top managers have degrees. In Japan and the United States, the figure is almost 85 per cent. We have only 12,000
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  MBAs—masters of business administration—in this country, yet we have 120,000 accountants, as against only 4,000 in West Germany and 6,000 in Japan.
  In the United Kingdom, quite wrongly, there is a belief in pragmatism rather than in professionalism—a belief that experience is the only worthwhile teaching. We still have no generally accepted signposted route into business management. By contrast, in many other countries, including the United States, West Germany, France and Japan, there is a widespread belief that managers need to be properly educated and trained before entering management and then helped throughout their working life. Regrettably, that belief is not widespread in the United Kingdom. It is true that we have some excellent managers, but we simply do not have enough.
  Let me follow the example of so many hon. Members who have spoken in the debate by referring to the developments in eastern Europe—especially in Hungary, Poland and East Germany. I am sure that all of us welcome those developments, but we should not forget that British industry has a major role to play in fostering them. Trade, as well as aid, will be important in achieving the objectives that we all hope to see achieved in those countries. Not only in eastern Europe but throughout the world countries are throwing off the shackles of state socialism, and it is to the principles of competition and free enterprise to which they turn.
  Recently I was pleasantly surprised to learn that a book that I had written with David Francis had been translated and published in Hungary. The book deals with the development of management skills in a competitive environment. A few years ago it would have been unthinkable for managers in a Communist country to buy and read a book about developments of capitalist ideology—especially a book written by a Conservative Member of Parliament, and a fairly dry one at that.
  That is just one more sign of what is happening worldwide. Governments are increasingly following the path towards a free market. Worldwide, Socialism is being rejected. Our industry will continue to prosper as long as we continue to pursue the Government's sound policies. Our industry is strong and, with the legislation outlined in the Queen's Speech, it will become stronger. I wish and hope that our environment will become cleaner.
  8.37 pm
  Mr. Tam Dalyell: In my 27 years in the House I have discovered that when Government and Opposition Front-Bench spokesmen tend to be united on a particular subject, Government and Opposition Front-Bench spokesmen can both be wrong. I have the good fortune on this occasion to be addressing two extremely clever men who are open to reason—my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) and the Secretary of State for the Environment.
  As a Scot, I am dismayed at the proposal to break up, in effect, the Nature Conservancy Council. I interrupted the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry this afternoon to ask why he did not consult my old friend William Wilkinson and his colleagues at the NCC. He said that he had talked to them many times. That is not what they said again this morning at their meeting at the Royal Society of Arts, which I attended.
  For the sake of greater accuracy, I quote: "I do not propose"—said William Wilkinson—

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  "to conjecture what the Government's real reasons for doing this may have been. Certainly it was thoroughly ill-prepared. Perhaps they should have remembered the Duke of Wellington's dictum 'time spent on reconnaissance is never wasted'. He was after all a Tory Prime Minister as well as a superb general! On this occasion there was no reconnaissance"—
  this refers to consultation on the bust-up of the NCC—
  "and the Government's plan of action resembled the Bellman's map in the Hunting of the Snark—namely 'a perfect and absolute blank'."
  To continue the Lewis Carroll theme, we should adapt the Queen's pronouncement in "Alices Adventures in Wonderland,"—"Sentence first, verdict afterwards."
  Will the Secretary of State for the Environment check with the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether his reply was accurate—I will not use words that would embarrass the Chair and result in me being thrown out and suspended yet again. His answer is contradictory to all that I have learnt from the Nature Conservancy Council.
  Mr. Chris Patten: I wholly endorse the hon. Gentleman's commendation of the work of William Wilkinson who is a friend of mine as well as of the hon. Gentleman.
  I can speak for myself. I have met William Wilkinson twice since I became Secretary of State for the Environment to discuss how, in the proposals put forward for the future of nature conservancy, we can best safeguard the science base for British work and an identity for United Kingdom activities on the international level with regard to nature conservancy.
  The Nature Conservancy Council has today put forward very helpful proposals towards securing those objectives. We will respond to them as soon as possible. We will have an opportunity to discuss them in the House during the passage of our legislation. I hope that we will have found an accommodation with the NCC so that the best of its work can go ahead as well as possible. I can add only that the hon. Gentleman should consider some of the things that his Scottish colleagues have said about the future of the NCC because the Labour party's position on that does not appear to be at one north and south of the border.
  Mr. Dalyell: I am aware of that and I began with a remark about both the Opposition and Government Front Benches being in agreement because I know what my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) has to say about this.
  Let me say why, as a Scot, I am concerned about these issues. We are not concerned about the traditional landowners. Bluntly, as a Labour Member, I say that the Duke of Atholl sitting in Blair and the Duke of Buccleuch sitting in Drumlanrig will probably do the right thing for the environment. I am concerned about the agroforestry interests and the people at the top of tall buildings in the City of London who make decisions purely on an accountancy basis. That is why the impartial scientific decision-making at Peterborough is very important. Peterborough also gives some authority to the often young area officers who must enforce the actual decisions on conservation areas and sites of special scientific interest which may be unpopular in some areas.
  What the Secretary of State for the Environment has just said about science was music to my ears. It is
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  important that science should be brought into decisions at the design stage. The scientists should not have to face a rescue operation. Science should be introduced at the very beginning, as Derek Ratcliffe, to whom I am greatly indebted and who after great service has just retired from the NCC, wanted.
  What will happen to the funding? I hope that the funding question will be answered during the negotiations. It will be more expensive to break the NCC into three.
  I want to see in print what the Secretary of State said earlier about the European aspect. I do not know whether he fully explained how the Government square their attitude to supporting the habitat directive, which is specifically designed to provide a uniform approach for habitat selection and protection throughout the EEC, with the Government's proposed splitting of the NCC which it would appear, from statements already made—but not necessarily, I concede, by the Secretary of State for the Environment—will create a different approach in England, Scotland and Wales for selection and protection of sites. There is considerable concern whether we are credible internationally.
  Mr. Chris Patten: I hope that I can be helpful at least in part to the hon. Gentleman. I represent the United Kingdom on the European Environment Council. I believe that I am pretty well the first Secretary of State for the Environment from this country to do that, although I believe that one of my Labour predecessors attended that Council once. I represent United Kingdom interests on issues such as habitat and nature conservancy. That is the position, and I do not believe that it is affected by any reorganisation of nature conservancy work in the United Kingdom.
  Mr. Dalyell: May I then offer the Secretary of State some friendly advice. So far, the Minister for the Environment and Countryside—I mean no disrespect to him—has been dealing with people like Ian Presst of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. I am not alone in my views. I attended a conference at Baden-Powell house with Wildlife Link. The Council for the Protection of Rural England, the Worldwide Fund for Nature and 20 other organisations were represented and presented a unanimous view. My hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) has been in the Chamber now for a long time, so I will leave my point there. However, I was pleased by the Secretary of State's response.
  In 1981 some of us spent many hours in the Committee considering what became the Wildlife and Countryside Act. We were trying to establish the principle of marine nature reserves. By wearing down the Government, who did not wish to guillotine the Bill, we were able to get the MNR principle established. It has taken a terribly long time. Something has happened at last in the Scillies and progress is being made with Skoma. There have been endless negotiations with many fishing interests. However, I want to be frank with the House. Part of the trouble is that some of the fishing interests are worried about the environmentalists being too curious, not because of the environment, but because of the involvement of the Inland Revenue and the possibility of having to pay tax where they had paid none previously. I do not say that all the fishermen are up to it, but I am sure that the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnor (Mr. Livsey), like the people at the

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  NCC conference, is aware that that is true. Will the Secretary of State take a personal interest in MNRs besides meeting representatives of Wildlife Link?
  I have a few kind words for the Secretary of State. We had various debates together on the rain forests in his previous incarnation. I welcome publicly and privately what he did in Brazil. Would it be possible to do the same for Colombia? That must be a Government decision. The Minister for Overseas Development said that we should do one thing at a time.
  Last night at the Museum of Mankind I attended an extremely impressive lecture given to the Gaia foundation by Martin Von Hudebrand, the assistant to the President of Colombia. The biological and botanical diversity of the Colombian Amazonian rain forest is as great as that in Brazil. I asked Martin Von Hudebrand whether he wants the kind of agreement that the Secretary of State for the Environment negotiated in Brasilia and his answer was emphatically yes. In this environment debate I want to put down a marker that the matter is urgent in Colombia, although it involves a rather different problem from that in Brazil.
  I hope that the new green Bill will not be guillotined. But if the Secretary of State believes that that is necessary, I say to him, after what he has said, "Bethink you: you might be wrong."
  8.48 pm
  Mrs. Teresa Gorman: I welcome many of the liberating measures that were outlined in the Gracious Speech. It is almost a feast of solutions to over-regulation, and I congratulate the Government on putting together such an extremely tasty package. Broadcasting services are to be liberated, and we are to have more competition. There will be liberating measures for the Health Service, through the introduction of competition, which will be wholly good for the quality of service that patients are entitled to receive. We will liberate the coal industry by bringing in new measures to prepare that industry for the happy day when miners are able to buy shares in coal mines. We will also liberate the legal profession. For too long, it has been controlled by vested interests, which has made it difficult and expensive for ordinary people to obtain justice. We will liberate pensions procedures so that people will be more able to move their pensions with them as they change jobs and generally be more in control of that aspect of their lives.
  Even the trade unions will get a little more liberation, with more power to control wildcat activities, and power to deem illegal actions which are designed to put out of business or jobs people who are unconnected with strikes. I am happy to note that we are also to liberate our fellow citizens in Northern Ireland by reassessing the amount of local control that they have over their affairs. That is a wonderful step in the right direction, and it will be accompanied by the formation of branches of the official Conservative party in Northern Ireland which, in the near future, I hope will elect Conservative candidates directly to the House. I invite the Labour party to join us in that most liberating mood. It will have a profound effect on the future stability of Northern Ireland.
  I am delighted also to note that the Government are continuing their proud record by selling off parts of our cumbersome state machinery. I refer to the Property Services Agency, which has not been short of scandals in
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  its recent past, such as wasting public money by getting involved in dubious and unsuccessful enterprises. I refer also to the Crown Suppliers, which has acted as a kind of mummy figure for overseas Governments which, once upon a time, were considered to be too immature and too slow to cope with buying their own products from us. They have all grown up now that we are into the Commonwealth, and we are making it easier to buy direct from our firms.
  All those ideas are wonderful, and I welcome them. They warm the cockles of my private enterprise heart. However, two measures trouble me a little, and we must pay close attention to them as we discuss the Bills in the House. I refer to the Bills on the environment and on our food industries. If we are not careful, those Bills could usher in a new wave of unnecessary or inappropriate bureaucratic regulations and intervention. Mark Twain said that politics is the invention of bugaboos. It has been part of the tradition of the political Left that it invents demons which only the politician and the bureaucracy can exorcise. The myths or scares that are drummed up are the means by which legislation is introduced to coerce people into doing things which they would not otherwise do.
  In the 1940s, we saw the development of huge state corporations in the steel and rail inustries, and the nationalisation of the coal industry. Those measures brought Governments into issues from which the present Government have subsequently withdrawn with the greatest success. In the 1950s we saw the development of social services and the Health Service, which took from people control over those aspects of their lives, and again ushered in a massive bureaucracy which consumed a great deal of the resources available for those services and which we are only now beginning to unwind and, I hope, let in the fresh air of competition.
  The 1960s was the era when housing became the subject of massive Government intervention. It was the era of planning and of the hideous tower block. We practically exterminated the remnants of the private housing market. Again, the Conservative Government have taken the initiative by allowing council tenants to buy their own houses. Again we see the need to liberate what we thought necessary to regulate.
  The 1970s was the era of prices and incomes controls, greater Government intervention in the money supply, the development of massive inflation, intervention by the World bank, and the virtual bankrupting of this country by the Labour Government, which led to the election of the Conservative Government in 1979. Again, the Government have brought intervention under control.
  The 1980s was the era of the liberation of privatisation, by bringing back markets and introducing competition. It troubles me that the 1990s might be the era when we start to move back from that noble position to more Government control in the food industry and the environment.
  That does not mean that I am not concerned to ensure that our water is pure, that our air is fit to breathe arid that our food is clean, hygienic and healthy. Of course, like everybody else, I believe that, just as we all believe in God—to be against it would be a mortal sin. It is not necessary for the House to load industry with a great mass of new regulations. The private enterprise structure has its own solutions to these problems. To begin with, we have the common law, which has been much neglected in our legislative discussions. Under common law, one can

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  prosecute people who poison their customers, pollute the system or destroy public property. We should look to common law remedies to deal with faults.
  People conserve privately-owned property. One way to conserve and improve the quality of our rivers is to make them privately owned so that people cannot dump their rubbish in them. The Government's proposals to set up new agencies to control rivers is one option. If animals are privately owned, people look after them. The way to save elephants is to create the private ownership of herds. They will then be properly husbanded, conserved and managed. If one owns property, one does not set about destroying it by over-using it, by drawing minerals out of the soil and so on. Again, there are private enterprise market solutions to the problems. Therefore, I welcome organisations such as the National Trust which, in the name of the public and its supporters, takes property into private ownership and, as we all know, does that job extremely well.
  Many myths are abroad at the moment about the environment and the greenhouse effect. In passing and while I have the undivided attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, I should like to remind the House that, although we should all be concerned about carbon dioxide emissions, it is a fact that about 99 per cent. of the effects on the climate of our planet are due to our proximity to the sun, which we cannot alter, and to the presence or absence of sunspots, the eruption of which make a vast difference to our climate. The tiny amount of carbon dioxide emitted into our atmosphere—I stress that it is absolutely minute, being about 300 parts per million—is the equivalent of a needle in a haystack when seen in proportion to the effects of the natural elements over which we have no control. Therefore, before we begin lambasting industry and developing expensive devices which will make products difficult for people to buy or use—I refer, for example, to the motor car and the refrigerator—we should examine all these problems thoroughly and scientifically.
  The same goes for food. We have heard so many stories about the dangers of food, but if one examines the number of poisoning cases—all of which are to be deplored—one realises that they represent only a tiny percentage of the portions of food that we eat. While we should urge people to adopt good hygiene practices, we must be careful that we do not end up taking the proverbial sledgehammer to crack a nut, by overlegislating and making it difficult and expensive for the private sector to undertake to continue to provide us with an excellent supply of good, cheap food.
  Therefore, I urge the Secretaries of State concerned, when bringing their Bills before the House, to ensure that we have a thorough examination of the scientific cases behind many of these alleged problems, and that we thoroughly examine the free market alternatives to how we may deal with these public concerns. We must ensure that we do not legislate in such a way that the 1990s, or even the year 2000, become known as the era when we introduced a regime of regulation into two new areas—just as housing, health and planning in their times all became subject to a regime of new regulations—which a future generation of parliamentarians may have to dismantle.
  9.1 pm
  Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: I have spent nearly twelve and a half hours in the Chamber over the past two days to speak for but a few minutes. I hope that those outside who consider our proceedings on television will understand why our Benches are often empty. It is because to sit here is not the most cost-effective use of one's time when one is paid the salary of a Member of Parliament.
  When we assess the Government's commitment to "sustained economic growth", the phrase used in the Gracious Speech, we must take three matters principally into account. The first is the effectiveness of economic policy. The second is the effectiveness of the industrial strategy—that is, if the Government still retain one; I suppose they do. The third is the effect of the combination of both on the reduction of unemployment.
  We can consider economic policy only in the light of the substantial increase in interest rates during the past two or three years. We must also consider the Government's commitment to what is, in effect, an increase of less than 1 per cent. in growth. Another issue is the Government's commitment to what is clearly now a long-term policy of balance of payments deficits—[Interruption.] Perhaps the right hon. Member for Strangford (Mr. Taylor) would bear in mind that I should like to hear myself speak while I am on my feet. We must finally consider the Government's general attitude towards industrial policy.
  When the Gracious Speech was announced, and following the Autumn Statement which was made last week, I went to the Vote Office to look up the figures on industrial development, aid to industry and the Trade and Industry budget. I found to my astonishment that last year we spent £1·7 billion on the Trade and Industry budget; this year we are on target to spend £1·4 billion; next year we are projected to spend £1·2 billion; and the year after we shall reduce that expenditure to £1 billion. So, at the very time when we have a major balance of payments deficit in this country, we have a Government who, for reasons that I cannot comprehend, are determined to reduce their commitment to industry, and especially to industry in the regions.
  In defence of their position the Government tell us that if we are to comply with European directives and if we are to see a reduction in regional assistance throughout the Community—I understand that that is one criterion set down by the Prime Minister—it is for Britain to take the lead and to pursue a line that will lead to those major reductions.
  I have found an interesting document, the "18th Report on Competition Policy" produced by the Commission of the European Communities and on the issue of assistance it says:
  "For aid to industry, the development of expenditure in real terms over the period has differed between Member States: a downward trend in the United Kingdom, stable in France, a slow upward trend in Germany and a marked increase in Italy. In fact for industry in 1986 Italy gave over three times as much as Germany, four times as much as France and eight times more aid than the United Kingdom."
  That sentence in that extremely important report underlines the problem in industry in the United Kingdom. The figures are set out clearly in the document as well as in another book that I got from the Library on the relative contribution of Governments within the European Community to their various industries. Those

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  figures show that, over the years, there has been a progressive reduction in aid which has undermined our industrial effort.
  In the book on relative Government contributions I also found a number of tables that set out the comparative position of each EC country in terms of regional aid. Every table demonstrated repeatedly that the United Kingdom is at the forefront of making cuts while being a member of the EC and despite the requirements on us to comply with directives. It is clear that far higher levels of regional assistance are paid in other EC countries.
  Assistance to industry includes 100 per cent. exemption of local business tax liability in France. In Italy there is 100 per cent. relief from certain forms of corporation tax. Luxembourg offers substantial concessions on corporation tax and southern Ireland offers major concessions on corporation tax that do not expire until the end of the century. Those other European countries have been able to retain that level of assistance while the United Kingdom insists on reducing its levels of regional assistance.
  When one compares the level of aid with our competitive performance abroad and our balance of payments, one understands why Britain has got itself into a sorry state. The figures on import penetration are revealing—for office machinery and data equipment it is 93 per cent., for man-made fibres it is 38 per cent., for instrument engineering it is 58 per cent., for electrical electronic engineering it is 49 per cent. and for the boot, shoe and leather trade in general it is 49 per cent. Those figures demonstrate a high level of import penetration into a country where much of our industrial base has been lost because the British Government refuse to accept that they have some responsibility for sectorally supporting and providing adequate assistance to regional companies to set up plant in competition with the major importers into the United Kingdom.
  I have a few minutes left and I want to put a proposition to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. Suppose he were an American industrialist who wanted to establish a plant somewhere in western Europe. He would have the choice of major corporation tax concessions in Italy, major rate relief and other tax concessions in France, lander support through the industrial committee structure of Germany as well as substantial regional assistance. Backed by western capital he might also have the opportunity to put industrial plant in East Germany or in other parts of eastern Europe. On the same agenda there is the possibility of placing a plant in the United Kingdom, but, given the level of regional assistance available here, where would he put his plant?
  Mr. Ridley: Here.
  Mr. Campbell-Savours: The Secretary of State may say, "Here" but from what I hear and the consultations which I have had with industrialists abroad, in the main they want to go to Europe where there are substantial levels of—
  Mr. Ridley: The hon. Gentleman must stop making such silly points and realise that the real complaint in the Community is that the vast majority of overseas investment comes to this country rather than to any other.
  Mr. Campbell-Savours: The Secretary of State may say that, but we went to the Commission last summer and we were told that a major effort was being made to attract
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  American capital and that regional assistance considerations within western Europe were very much on the minds of American industrialists.
  Mr. Ridley: Rubbish.
  Mr. Campbell-Savours: The Secretary of State may say that the officials to whom I talked were speaking rubbish, but that is what I was told.
  When one follows debates in other European Parliaments, it seems that they think that the policy works and it is only here in the United Kingdom that the British Government feel that these matters are of no concern to foreign industrialists.
  9.10 pm
  Mr. Bryan Gould: In the Queen's Speech we are assured that the Government will continue to attach great importance to protecting the national and international environment. Those are fine words and we have no objection to the sentiments. Indeed, we welcome that assurance, but we question the delivery of that promise and the commitment to do so.
  We have heard these same pious aspirations in a number of speeches, not least those made by the Prime Minister over recent weeks and months. We heard them in her speech to the United Nations a week or so ago. The Prime Minister appears to be happy to make speeches on the subject, and I suspect that her pollsters tell her to do so. However, she fails to grasp—she is someone of notoriously narrow and limited vision—the magnitude and urgency of the issues with which we are confronted.
  I assume that the Prime Minister will not have seen the report on the greenhouse effect published today by a study group commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of the Environment. The report bears a sobering message for us all. It shows that, even on the most optimistic assumptions about all the other factors which might be involved—deforestation, CFC levels and so on—the CO2 emissions which we can expect will alone threaten a degree and pace of global warming which is simply unacceptable. The report clearly shows that, unless we take action now, that global warming will produce a greenhouse effect which will do enormous and unpredictable damage.
  The report shows that we do not have much time left, that industrial countries must stabilise their carbon dioxide emissions within five years and that, having done so, they must engage in a major programme of carbon dioxide reductions if we are to avoid the worst outcome of the greenhouse effect.
  However, there is no sense of this urgency in the Prime Minister's approach. She does not seem to understand that environmental damage operates on a ratchet which clicks forward at an ever-increasing pace and does not turn back. She does not seem to understand that there is no going back, the damage is irreversible, we cannot afford to sit and wait to see whether the damage materialises: the benefit of doubt must be given to our environment. The watchword can no longer be "Let's wait and see". We cannot say that our proper response is a leisurely programme of research such as the Prime Minister recommends. Action and safety must come first. We must avert the risk first, and then carry out the research to see to what degree suspect activity is to be permitted. If we do not do so, by the time we learn the facts, the damage will he irreversible.

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  Even in the face of this overwhelming imperative, this simple and central fact that matters so much to our planet's future, the Prime Minister's advice, in the speech she delivered to the United Nations, was that we can safely rely on the market. She goes further. Staggeringly, she tells us, without any apparent sense of paradox, that we can repose our trust in the multinationals, that we can look to them to protect our environment. That shows an amazing degree of naivety. The Prime Minister seems to be so impressed by the size and power of the multinationals that she is persuaded that those qualities somehow endow them with the character of public bodies acting in the public interest. She has not understood that the size and power of the multinationals make them that much more potent and much more potentially dangerous to our environment.
  Mrs. Gorman: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Socialist economies in eastern Europe are responsible for the massive emissions of pollutants and exercise no control, whereas the multinationals are under state control?
  Mr. Gould: I am sorry that the hon. Lady felt obliged to make that point, because if we take her view that it is always somebody else's fault and responsibility, we are taking the most irresponsible of all attitudes and condemning our planet to an environmental disaster.
  The Prime Minister is compelled to take her Micawberish view of markets and multinationals because she is trapped by her own ideology. For her, the market is infallible, and it follows that any intervention in the market is not only pointless but damaging. That is why there is always such a gulf between the windy generalities of the Prime Minister's speeches and the action on the ground. Despite the attempts by the new Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to arouse his Back Benchers to some response, there is some interest in what I have to say. At the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' conference in Kuala Lumpur, the Prime Minister felt obliged to oppose the concept of an environmental fund. Her Minister at the Noordwijk conference, who is not in the Chamber, was also obliged, no doubt by her diktat, to join a disreputable minority which refused to set any targets or any time scale for the control of carbon dioxide emissions.
  Mr. Chris Patten: I assume that the hon. Gentleman is arguing for an immediate commitment to a target for emission reductions. Will he tell the House what baseline he will use? Secondly, what would he do about countries that import or export electricity?
  Mr. Gould: I am glad to say that the Secretary of State illuminates the difference between the Government and the Opposition. He is right to suggest that we are arguing for the setting of a target and a time scale. The failure to do that marked the performance of the Minister who represented Britain at Noordwijk.
  In terms of the baseline, we are talking about stabilisation within five years of carbon dioxide emissions. Beyond that, we have to engage in a major programme to reduce that level.
  I assume that the Secretary of State has not yet seen the report to which I have referred. I recommend it to him. I was privileged today to speak to its authors. It shows that we have much less time than he or the Prime Minister have
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  so far assumed. In her speech to the United Nations in New York, the Prime Minister followed up what she said in Kuala Lumpur and what her Minister said in Noordwijk. She again eulogised about nuclear power, at the very time when she should have known that her Ministers were preparing to face facts and acknowledge that the market had decided that the game was up, that we had been sold a pup and that nuclear power was no longer to be regarded as economically viable.
  Why was that? It was not just due to the pounds and pence of accountancy but because nuclear power is so environmentally dangerous that no one can foretell how much it will cost to clean up afterwards and to decommission nuclear power stations. That is why the Prime Minister presides over a Government who, day in and day out, neglect, ignore, and consequently damage the environment.
  I now come to the Secretary of State for the Environment. It has to be said that he has been appointed by the Prime Minister to wave the green banner. It also has to be said that he starts with one great advantage: at least he is not his predecessor. At least he is able to utter the word "environment" without a curl of the lip. But we need and the environment needs more than a pleasant manner and a thoughtful expression. We need a Secretary of State prepared to remedy the deficiencies of the Prime Minister's deficiencies in matters of vision, analysis and commitment.
  I am sorry to say that the evidence so far does not give grounds for optimism. Throughout the past decade or more of Thatcherism, the Secretary of State has managed to preserve a reputation for liberalism while nevertheless sustaining the Prime Minister as her researcher and speech writer. I fear that in the Secretary of State we have someone who is unlikely to tell the Prime Minister that she is wrong on this issue or on any other.
  Mrs. Gorman: She is right.
  Mr. Gould: If the hon. Lady continues to say that long enough and loudly enough, she too may make it to the Cabinet. That is the one criterion that seems to guarantee promotion to that office. All that can be said in mitigation of the charges against the current Secretary of State for the Environment is that he is hardly alone in the Cabinet in being unwilling to tell the Prime Minister that she is wrong.
  There is the odd glimmer of hope. I read in yesterday's newspapers that the Secretary of State told the Confederation of British Industry, or at least an assembled group of journalists, in Harrogate that changes in transport policy may be required if we are to get on top of the problem of carbon dioxide emissions. I assume that by that he means that some shift in the balance between private motor cars and public transport will be required. Opposition Members naturally applaud that, but it will not make him popular with the Secretary of State for Transport. For that reason, I believe that it may have been a somewhat unguarded comment and that we may not hear much more of the idea once his right hon. Friend takes him to task. If he is serious about it he will have to take on not only the Secretary of State for Transport and the Prime Minister but half the Cabinet.
  The Secretary of State will have to do more than make the odd comment. He will have to demand action and tell the Treasury and his former Department, the Overseas Development Administration, that there is no point in

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  lecturing developing countries about destroying rain forests while tying them into a straitjacket of debt which they have no hope of repaying unless they can exploit their natural resources as they wish.
  The right hon. Gentleman will have to take a serious step in talks with the Secretary of State for Energy. He will have to tell him that, with the chimera of nuclear power disappearing, we face a level of carbon dioxide emissions which makes a mockery of the Prime Minister's lip service to the need to combat the greenhouse effect.
  The Department of Energy has revealed in figures released to the United Nations that on a business-as-usual, let-the-market-decide, no-intervention basis, carbon dioxide emissions will not stabilise or even decline but will power ahead. Those are the Department of Energy's own predictions. By the year 2020 those emissions will have risen to I billion tonnes—a 73 per cent. increase. What sort of example is that for developing countries which need a degree of growth and energy consumption to alleviate the problems of poverty and despair? Is it not wholly irresponsible for a rich country such as the United Kingdom to show so little concern for the need to limit carbon dioxide emissions? Is it not to add insult to injury for the Prime Minister to lecture others on what is required?
  When will the Secretary of State tell his right hon. Friends that this is a rake's progress which makes neither economic nor environmental sense? More than that, when will he tell them that it cannot be allowed to happen and that what is urgently needed now is a massive commitment to energy efficiency and conservation? We need a complete reversal of the Government's policy, which is epitomised in the cut in the budget of the Energy Efficiency Office.
  The Secretary of State's responsibility lies most directly in his Department. He is responsible for a water industry which is of major significance to our environment. As is universally acknowledged, the industry is in deep trouble. It fails to meet approved standards. It poses a threat to public health because of the dangerous levels of nitrates in the water. It gives rise to a great deal of public anxiety. It has already been sued by its consumers and is subject to prosecution within the United Kingdom and at the suit of the European Commission. It has a massive backlog of unmade investment and a massive infrastructure which is crumbling away.
  What is the Secretary of State's response to that desperate state of affairs? Does he acknowledge the failure to meet the agreed standards? Not a bit of it. His first response is to go to Brussels and try to twist a few arms to avoid prosecution. It need hardly be said that he failed. Does he demand that standards should be met and investment made? No, he assures the industry that he will protect it from its failures by delaying as far as he can the application of legally imposed obligations. Does he guarantee as his first priority higher standards and fair prices to the consumer? No, his priority is to make room for private profit, to do nothing about the real environmental problems and simply to concentrate on transferring the industry at whatever cost into private hands. I say "at whatever cost", because today we know, by virtue of what is supposedly called impact day—the day on which the share price is decided—that the share price means that the loss and cost is enormous.
  To sell the water industry to their friends in private industry, the Government have been prepared to accept on behalf of taxpayers a loss of at least £1·3 billion. Having
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  given away £5 billion in debt write-off and £1·6 billion through the so-called green dowry, and having settled for receipts under £5·3 billion, even if the sale succeeds and every last share is sold, the Government are forced to accept that loss. We all know that investing in water remains a dicey proposition. There are so many uncertainties—unmet obligations, unquantifiable legal commitments, litigation poised over the heads of water companies and political uncertainties. All that means that only by offering it at a give-away price can the Government begin to hope to float the industry, even at a £1·3 billion loss to the taxpayer.
  Far from making good the deficiencies of the market, the Secretary of State's response is to invite it in so that it is the drive for profit and the values of the short-sighted and greedy which will prevail in the water industry rather than the public good. So much for environmental concern. For this Government and for this Secretary of State, it is clear that environmental concern means, "Let's sell it off to the highest bidder."
  No wonder the Government's green credentials look so shabby. But not everything is yet lost. We are told that the true colour of the Government's concern will be shown when they publish and promote their environmental protection Bill. We have yet to see whether that Bill deserves the accolade of being described as a green Bill. It seems unlikely to measure up to the scale and urgency of the issues with which we are confronted. That is not to say that there will not be in the Bill much that we can support. I am glad to read that some aspects of the Pearce report will be reflected in the Bill's provisions. We welcome that as a partial repudiation of the Prime Minister's view that everything must be left to the market. We welcome the notion that some intervention is essential if we are to protect our environment.
  Let me put the Secretary of State on notice that the "polluter pays" principle, while welcome to a limited degree, is not, and cannot be, a comprehensive policy.
  Mrs. Gorman: Why not?
  Mr. Gould: I will tell the hon. Lady. She need not intervene, because I have heard her question and I will give her the answer straight away. The right to pollute cannot be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Some forms of pollution cannot be tolerated, whatever the price the polluter is prepared to pay.
  We also support the measures designed to deal with the problem of litter. It may be thought that this is a small-scale problem by comparison with the greenhouse effect and the hole in the ozone layer. That is true, but I have always believed that the litter-strewn streets, the crumbling pavements, the stinking public places arid the graffiti-covered walls are the visible signs of what has gone wrong in Thatcherite Britain. Raising the fines for litter louts may be a partial response, but it is hardly adequate, and somehow raising fines epitomises all that is wrong in the pettifogging response that the Government make to real and widespread practical problems.
  I am sorry that he is not present now, but I agree with the excellent speech made by the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Sir H. Rossi). We do not need piecemeal and superficial measures. We need a more sustained and comprehensive approach. He argued, and I agree, for an environmental protection agency. I also agreed with my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow

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  (Mr. Dalyell) that the last thing that we should be doing is dismembering the Nature Conservancy Council. I was interested in the Secretary of State's intervention, which revealed a certain embarrassment on his own account on that score.
  Above all, we want real resources and real support for the environmental protection agencies that already exist, and I refer to the local authorities. If they are required to take on responsibility for littering, for recycling and for controlling waste, they must have the resources to do so. They cannot be constantly undermined by attacks on their resources, competence and independence. We cannot expect to tackle these problems—the hard, detailed, practical day-to-day local problems of litter, waste and recycling—if we constantly attack the agencies that are best placed to do the job.
  I hope that I have said enough to show that we shall submit the Government's plans to a very harsh test, and we make no apology for that. That test will be one of practical efficiency. We have gone beyond the point where posturing and rhetoric are a sufficient response. Hard decisions and choices must be made. There is no evidence in prime ministerial speeches or in the information trailed about the environmental protection Bill that the Government have yet steeled themselves to take those hard decisions. If they will not take them, we will. That readiness to act in the future, for the future of our planet, is one of the most telling differences between the Government and the Opposition. That difference provides one of the most potent arguments for the election of the next Labour Government.
  9.34 pm
  The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Chris Patten): Browsing through last year's Queen's Speech debate—not something that I did entirely for pleasure—as my right hon. Friend remarked earlier, I noted that last year the House debated environment and industry, but in that order. On that occasion the hon. Member for Copeland (Mr. Cunningham) opened the debate—how we shall miss his geniality on nights like this—and the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) wound up. This year the order of subject matter has been reversed, and the hon. Gentleman still finds himself bringing up the rear. Order of appearance is a more serious matter these days. While the ubiquitous television eye never sleeps, viewers are elsewhere. If they have any sense they will be watching Michael Palin at the moment. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] I am glad that the duty doughnuts are on such good form tonight.
  It may be over the top to see the hand of the would-be parliamentary Labour candidate for Hartlepool in the arrangements made today, but into the limelight steps the Labour party's coming man—the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown). The hon. Member for Dagenham was once the coming man. He seems to have come and gone, but I am sure that his day will come again as he is clever, keen as mustard and is even a member of the Wine Society, so all should be well. [HON. MEMBERS: "What about policy?"] I will come to policy in a moment.
  The hon. Member for Dunfermline, East is the rising star for the moment. He has risen—I think that this was once said of David Frost—almost without trace. Having
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  listened to the hon. Gentleman for the first time today, I think that I can understand why. His speech was full of admirable sound bites—it was the longest sound bite that I have ever heard.
  The hon. Member for Dunfermline, East denounced us up hill and down dale. He was tall on rhetoric, but rather more elfin on prescription. He was good on politics, but less overwhelmingly convincing on economics. The hon. Gentleman would find that, were he to inherit the purple, there are a lot of economics involved in being Trade and Industry Secretary.
  There was one point of potential disagreement between the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East and the hon. Member for Dagenham. The hon. Member for Dunfermline, East allowed cliché to run away with him. He referred to the Jaguar motor company being thrown to the wolves. That was an extraordinary way to describe a firm which employs 48,000 people in Britain, and an extraordinary way to describe a firm which employs 14,000 people in Dagenham. I cannot believe that the hon. Gentleman meant what he said, unless he was one of those who threw his hat in the air when trade union instransigence last year lost £35 million of Ford investment in Dundee and 450 jobs.
  When I listened to Opposition Members' speeches yesterday I wanted to take my right hon. and hon. Friends to task. Sometimes we are inclined to say that the Opposition have no policies. That is extremely unfair as the Opposition have several policies. They are, for example, in favour of low inflation and high employment. They want higher public spending and lower interest rates. They naturally want tighter credit and cheaper mortgages, although I recall that the hon. Member for Dagenham has his own policy on mortgages which may be subject to a smidgen of clarification from the Leader of the Opposition. They want higher productivity, higher wages, industrial peace and an easier life for secondary pickets. They are in favour of abolishing rates and of several different methods of paying for local services, all of which would naturally be entirely painless. Indeed, I suspect that most would be entirely costless.
  There is no shortage of policy there. It is all perfectly clear, but the precise ways in which those objectives would be accomplished remains somewhat opaque. I assure the Opposition that we shall help them to hunt for the golden key to understanding of those policies in the months ahead in this Session. I am sure that they will join us in that voyage of discovery.
  In several speeches, the growing awareness of the link between the two subjects of the debate—industry and the environment—was mentioned. First, I believe that it is common ground—I may surprise some people by saying this—between the main Opposition and us that we believe that industrial success can be an important ingredient in the enhancement of environmental quality. While we disagree about how to achieve it, we both believe in growth although, as the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) said, we both argue that growth needs to be sustainable. We believe that that is most likely to be achieved by a combination of Government regulation and market forces. We look forward to Labour's explanation that the answer is Government regulation and Socialism or even, perhaps, what is euphemistically called social ownership—if that is still on the agenda this week.
  Secondly, there is general agreement that we need an effective system to control, regulate and reduce industrial

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  pollution. Thirdly, I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Mr. Porter) that industry should be seen not as the problem, but as a major part of the solution to environmental improvement. We want to encourage cleaner technologies. We are helping to do that through our environmental protection technology scheme. There is a world market worth more than £100 billion a year in clean technology and I want British industry to win a much larger share of it.
  To accomplish our environmental goals, we must act on three levels—national, European and global. At national level, the Bill that we shall introduce early in the Session will set in place what will probably be the most sophisticated and comprehensive pollution control regulations anywhere. It is trivial to dismiss that as being of little account, as the hon. Member for Dagenham seemed to do in an interview yesterday in The Independent. It is an important step forward in environmental policy, finally bringing to a satisfactory conclusion a story which began with the fifth report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution about 13 years ago.
  I should like to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Sir H. Rossi) who made an extremely important speech—
  Mrs. Ann Taylor: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree with him?
  Mr. Patten: I shall come to what I agreed with. These are the type of proposals for which my hon. Friend has been pressing for some time. He brings all the knowledge of his skilful chairmanship of the Environment Select Committee to bear on these matters. Until now, we have dealt with pollution of air, water and land in different ways, some of them more stringent than others. Regulation has been based on wholly different philosophies. For example, with water, the basis of control has been the impact of discharge on the quality of the receiving water. With air, it has been the technologies' ability to reduce emissions. On land, there have been no controls over the generation of waste, only controls over disposal.
  Integrated pollution controls means that we shall bring all major industrial pollution under single control and a single piece of legislation. There will be one over-arching philosophy. This should combine the best features of the present system. In other words, it will incorporate environment quality standards and control through technology, and at the same time it will achieve the minimisation of waste at source and the best practicable environmental option. The system will be the means of delivering our international obligations including, for example, substantial reductions in emissions of sulphur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides following on from the large plants directive.
  Mr. Dalyell: If the over-arching philosophy and the emphasis on "single" applies to pollution, why does not this emphasis apply also to nature conservancy? Let us suppose that the other place decided to send the proposed Bill back to this place with reservations on, or outright opposition to, the concept of nature conservancy being split between Scotland, Wales and England. Would there be any circumstances in which the Leader of the House—I ask my question in the presence of the right hon. and learned Gentleman—could ensure that the measure would not be subject to a guillotine motion, as it could well be, in this place? That could well be planned.
  Mrs. Ann Taylor: Surely not.
  Mr. Dalyell: Despite my hon. Friend's expression of doubt, there is every chance of that. As there are different opinions on both sides of the House, is there not a case for a free vote?
  Mr. Patten: When many members of the duty doughnut squad were not able to be present, the hon. Gentleman and I had a useful exchange about the future of the Nature Conservancy Council. I made it clear to the hon. Gentleman during my response to him that we were looking for ways to secure a Great Britain science base for nature conservancy work while establishing the existing councils on a territorial basis. I am obviously interested in what the hon. Gentleman says and I take note of his views. I am not sure, however, whether his views on the rights and wrongs of decisions that relate to the Nature Conservancy Council are shared by his Scottish colleagues. I have a welcoming statement from one of his hon. Friends. The hon. Gentleman might find it interesting to read what the Leader of the Opposition, as a Welsh Member, has said about the future of the NCC. It may not he that the Leader of the Opposition has a role in determining Labour policy, but the opposite may be the case.
  Sir Hector Monro: Will my right hon. Friend accept that the majority view of the NCC is entirely in accord with the Government's policy of splitting the council for England, Scotland and Wales? It sees a positive way forward that includes a science base. The Government's view is entirely in accord with that of the majority on the NCC.
  Mr. Patten: As I said earlier in response to the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), I recognise that the NCC has put forward its own proposals for how we can accomplish shared objectives on a science base and on establishing a United Kingdom identity for nature conservancy work. We shall be responding to the NCC's propositions in the next day or two. I hope that we shall be able to satisfy William Wilkinson that we have a shared view on how to move forward.
  Mr. Flynn: We have all been listening with great fascination to the new ideas that have been enunciated by the Minister. Is it a fair summary to say that the first commandment of the new over-arching philosophy will be that the market can be bucked?
  Mr. Patten: If the hon. Gentleman had been brought up in London during the 1950s, as I was, and had witnessed the consequences of the Clean Air Act 1956 introduced by a Conservative Government, he would know that there is no paradox in proper environmental regulations and in using market forces as the most cost-effective way to achieve environmental goals.
  The environment protection Bill will demonstrate that the Government are playing their full part in establishing a strong regulatory framework for protecting the environment. As I said, I have no doubt that market forces have a crucial part to play in meeting those standards. Before Opposition Members snigger, they should think about the incredible surge in demand for unleaded petrol, from 2 per cent. to 26 per cent. in a year. There is also the voluntary phasing out of CFCs from almost all aerosols.
  Mr. Malcolm Bruce: Will the Minister explain how, after 10 years of free market forces, Britain is 11th out of

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  12 in the European Community for its recycling efforts? How will he achieve an upgrading of Britain's position without some intervention that goes against the philosophy that the Government have been practising for the past 10 years?
  Mr. Patten: It does not go against our philosophy to promote recycling. However, I agree that it is one area in which we have lagged behind, and we must do a great deal better. One of our problems has been our system of waste disposal, where there has been no separation between those who do the regulating and those who are regulated. One way in which we shall, I hope, promote recycling and waste minimisation through our legislation is by establishing the true cost of landfill disposal, which is absolutely crucial if we want to encourage greater recycling and greater waste minimisation. I note a deathly hush among Labour Members—[Interruption.] I take it back—I am sure that the Labour party is about to provide us with lots of bright ideas on how to promote recycling. Chance would be a fine thing.
  I want to say something else about the green consumer and the extent to which market forces can help to promote environmental quality. I have absolutely no doubt that there is a growing number of green consumers, and nor do I doubt that the best way to increase the strength of the green consumer movement is to ensure that there is adequate information in the market place. That is a powerful argument for a green labelling scheme, and we have been pressing for that within the European Community for some time. We are confident that a scheme can be in place before the completion of the internal market in 1992. A European-wide agreement is necessary, not least because it would be unacceptable to allow member states to freeze out imports of goods by claiming falsely that they are insufficiently environmentally friendly.
  I attended my first meeting of the European Environment Council in September, and I shall be attending the next council meeting—
  Mr. Allan Roberts: Does the Minister believe that the privatisation of waste disposal, which will put the dealing of toxic and chemical waste in the market place—where the profit motive will determine how it is dealt with—will be popular or unpopular with the British public? It will be as unpopular as the proposals to privatise water.
  Mr. Patten: I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman still does not accept the strong argument for making a distinction between those who regulate and those who are regulated. We are insisting that those authorities responsible for disposal should separate their disposal activities from their regulatory activities. I should be extremely surprised if local authorities took the same view as the hon. Gentleman.
  We intend both at the next European Environmental Council meeting and at its future meetings to play a constructive role in the development of European policy. I believe extremely strongly that we should have as much information available to us as possible, so that we can compare environmental records in different member states of the Community. That is why we pressed for the establishment of the European Environment Agency in
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  this country. We believe that it should be sited here, and we have nothing to hide in respect of our environmental record. There is not a scintilla of evidence for the proposition often pressed by the Opposition that we have a worse record than other European member states. No member state has a better record of compliance with Community environmental directives. That is a fact, not a boast. It is a fact also that no country has a larger or more detailed programme of compliance with Community water directives than we have.
  Action will of course increasingly be necessary not just at a European but at a global level. The problems of climate change or ozone depletion require that. Here too we shall play our full part in seeking essential agreements at international level to improve the quality of the environment. We were instrumental in securing the Community's agreements to a ban on all CFC use by the end of the century. My hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Mr. Trippier) played a key part in securing unanimous agreements at Noordwijk to stabilise carbon dioxide emissions by end of the century.
  The issues that we are addressing are likely to dominate the international agenda for years to come. They raise matters of fundamental importance. They affect the economies of individual countries. They affect trade. They affect international growth. They affect the adequacy of international institutions. They affect sovereignty. They affect the relationship between rich countries and poor. Above all, they affect the way that we live today and the world that we shall pass on to our children. Those issues are not to be traded in a political auction, either at home or internationally. They are self-evidently the kind of issues where it does not make sense to make policy off the cuff or off the wall. That is not an argument for delay but an argument for building a secure foundation for international agreement and for global policy.
  There are two requirements for effective international action. First, we must seek to include as many countries as possible in any agreement. It would have been a major setback for world action on the greenhouse effect if the Noordwijk conference had ended with the major economies divided. As they are the major CO1 emitters, it is essential that all industrialised countries remain actively involved in that process. As I said, my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen was instrumental in acting as an honest broker in achieving a positive consensus. That was the right thing to do and helped to secure future progress.
  Secondly, it is right to wait for the evidence from the International Panel on Climate Change, which will be presented to the second world climate conference at Geneva next November, before deciding at what targets to aim. The panel's recommendations will be available then. It does not make much sense, to put it kindly, to pluck figures out of the political air, but I can pledge that when we sign our name we will deliver.
  The hon. Member for Linlithgow referred, understandably, to the problems of tropical deforestation. I wholly agree with his remarks. We need to do more as an international community to deal with that problem. We can make a particular contribution because of our experience, our present science base, and the contacts we have made already, through our own aid programme.
  I was delighted that in her speech to the United Nations General Assembly the Prime Minister announced that we should be spending another £100 million through our aid

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  programme on helping developing countries to sustain their own forests. As the hon. Member for Linlithgow knows, this year we have reached agreements with both India and Brazil with that objective in mind. We shall be legislating on environmental protection in the coming Session by playing a full part in environmental diplomacy in the European Community and on the world stage. We shall also be seeking to set out our whole strategy for the environment in a White Paper that will be published next autumn. We want to put down guidelines for the development of an environmental policy for the decade ahead. I hope that we shall be able to discuss that approach when we hold our debate on the Loyal Address next year.
  It being Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.
  Debate to be resumed tomorrow.

PETITION

  Television (Deaf People)
  10 pm
  Mr. Jeff Rooker: I beg leave to present a petition on behalf of 800 people in Perry Barr, Birmingham and Greater Birmingham, who make the material allegation that broadcasters in this country are not providing complete access to television—for example, by means of subtitles and a sign language. They pray that this honourable House will ensure that any legislation placing an obligation on television channel operators will be such that they have to make their programmes more accessible to deaf people by using Teletext subtitles, sign language and other means and reach complete coverage by a specific given date. They pray that this House will carry that wish into legislation.
  To lie upon the Table.

Blackpool, Wyre and Fylde DHA
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Fallon]
10.1 pm
Mr. Michael Jack: I am grateful for the opportunity to initiate this Adjournment debate on the subject of the funding of the Blackpool, Wyre and Fylde district health authority. I am grateful for the support of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Blackpool, North (Mr. Miscampbell), my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South (Sir P. Blaker) and my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre (Mr. Mans).
At a time when my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announces a £2·5 billion increase in funding for the National Health Service, my right hon. and hon. Friends and I find it unacceptable that we have to face a £2 million shortfall in the funding of our own district health authority. It is that same sense of concern, shared by my right hon. and hon. Friends, that has brought to the House of Commons representatives of our local health authority and other local people who are equally concerned about the matter.
It is important at this early stage in the debate to set out the reasons why there is a £2 million shortfall between the budget that is required to keep our services at the current level and what would represent a major cut in the provision of health services. Some £910,000 has had to be put to one side because the district health authority has to anticipate a possible under-funding of pay settlements. A further £210,000 has had to be put on one side because of cuts in the receipt of funds from the regional health authority. That is the result of new methods of allocating moneys to the region on a capitation basis. Without any consideration of the individual needs of the district health authority, they have instituted a straight across-the-board cut in the district's funding. Finally, the district is committed to £450,000 of vital work, which will have to go if the £2 million cut comes to pass.
I intend to outline what those inescapable items are. In obstetrics, £92,000 is required to meet the English national board standards for midwifery in the obstetrics unit. Without spending that money, the largest district health authority in the north-west would lose its right to train midwives.
There is a large number of elderly people in Fylde, and the sum of £45,000 is required for clinitron beds to give them the care that they so desperately need. The intensive care unit requires a further £73,000 because the Royal College of Surgeons has identified the fact that its staff ratios are below national standards. Matters such as losses and medical compensation require a further £20,000 to be put aside. If one adds those figures together and bears in mind the continuing threat to important services such as our cardiothoracic unit and our ward 31, which deals with mentally ill people, it is obvious that if we do not restore the £2 million deficit vital local services will disappear.
It is important to explain the reasons for all this. First, we must identify the role played by the regional health authority and the effect that the new method of funding its services will have on us. In simple terms, the size of the cake that the regional health authority gets determines the size of the slice given to Blackpool, Wyre and Fylde district health authority.

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Some important questions need to be asked about the funding of the north-west region. Our region apparently has one of the highest standardised mortality ratios in the country. That is an indicator of the health load that the north-west has to bear. The regional health authority has established from its investigations that there is a large acute sector work load. If my hon. Friend's funding arrangements are not reconsidered, the authority will be unable to cope with that work load.
That problem is amplified by a strange statistical quirk in the operation of the mortality index. Can my hon. Friend the Minister explain why he has chosen to use the square root of the mortality index to determine the funding for the north-west region? It is most surprising to discover that the use of that statistical technique has depressed funding in the north-west, whereas the Thames regions have become gainers under the new scheme. Under the old resource allocation working party system of funding the regions, the Thames regions were well above their RAWP targets, whereas the north-west region never reached its target. Yet it seems that, under the new system, which is supposedly more responsive to local need, Thames regions and others are again to be treated favourably at the expense of the north-west.
Sir Peter Blaker: Does my hon. Friend agree with my interpretation of the problem? In recent years, the district has received substantial allocations of capital—about £28 million—which have improved our capital resources for the first time in my 25 years in Parliament, and we are grateful for that. What we need now are the resources to use those capital resources properly.
Mr. Jack: My right hon. Friend makes a pertinent observation as usual. We are certainly not among the whingers. We support the way in which the Government are looking after the National Health Service, and we support their changes. Equally, we argue that we want to make the best of the capital and resources that we have in our district health authority.
I commend to my hon. Friend the Minister a booklet produced by the north-west region, which lays down clearly the arguments that I have advanced to him. We seem to be losing, while the Thames regions gain at our expense. Will my hon. Friend re-examine this question and consider other ways of increasing funding for the north-west region?
Why do I say that we can justify increased funding in our district health authority? For the past 10 years, we have suffered from a historic deficit of under-funding. Whatever the RHA says, under the RAWP method, under the regional health authority's own so-called annualisation grids and even under the new capitation arrangements, we have been under-funded. It is interesting to note that the district health authority has already calculated the funding that it would expect if it switched tomorrow to full capitation. Remarkably, it would gain £12 million. Nine million pounds of that is lost as a result of cross-boundary flow, leaving a net gain to our district of £3 million—precisely the sum which all the other measures of funding show that our local services are short of.
We also need more funding because the use of population statistics based on the 1981 census does not
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clearly identify the growth in the number of elderly people who are being imported into the area. The Fylde coast is a delightful part of the country for people to retire to. However, the large number of people aged over 80 corning to rest homes and nursing homes places an enormous burden on our district health services which my hon. Friends and I contend is not properly recognised in any funding arrangement.
My hon. Friends and I also have a suspicion, which we want the Minister to ask the Health Service management to investigate, that Manchester is over-favoured. Everyone in my district health authority, including clinicians, administrators and managers, has said the same thing. They cannot all be wrong.
Mr. Keith Mans: May I suggest another area of under-funding from which our district suffers? A considerable number of holidaymakers come to Blackpool and the surrounding area every year and they make use of our health facilities. In August, no less than 20 per cent. of the total number of people who use the casualty department at the district hospital in Blackpool come from outside the district. Some of them remain as in-patients, others stay only overnight. Very little account is taken of those extra costs. Even under the new funding arrangements, I understand that no allowance has been made for the people using the casualty facilities. Allowance will be made only for people who spend some time in the Victoria hospital.
Mr. Jack: I thank my hon. Friend for his perceptive observation, and I know that the Minister will take note of it.
All those elements of under-funding affect a vital measure of activity in our district health authority—the hospitalisation rate. The reason that we have a low hospitalisation rate, exceeded by 13 other district health authorities of the 19 in the north-west, is purely and simply that we do not have the resources to provide the level of health care that our people deserve. I emphasise that that is not a reflection of inefficiency by the district health authority. That was verified by independent research by Lancaster university.
Of equal importance was the region's own acute sector survey, which identified an enormous potential growth in acute sector medicine. It identified the fact that, up to 1993, an extra 105 beds will be required to cope with the extra 4,600 patients who will have to go through the acute sector. To date there is no sign of revenue or capital to provide those beds.
The orthopaedic specialty provides further anecdotal evidence to identify why the funding needs urgent review. I can state without exaggeration that it is possible for someone to have to wait three and a half years from his first in-patient examination to having his operation. That is unacceptable.
I received a letter from the district health authority describing the problems in general surgery and anaesthesia. The letter states:
"The number of Consultants per catchment population is one of the lowest in the country. This situation is not changed by including senior or principal doctors. The Discharges per Consultant on the other hand are one of the highest in the country. In Out-Patients, the number of new Out-Patients seen by each Consultant is one of the highest in the country, as is the actual clinic size. In terms of the Beds-per-Consultant each has responsibility for a larger number of beds than anywhere else apart from eight Districts."

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If that is not a tribute to the dedication and skill of the doctors, nurses and clinicians in our district health authority, I do not know what is. When I consider the costs of what they and others in different parts of the country do, I find that expenditure per consultant episode is £341, compared with £462 nationally. The all-acute medical specialties measure shows a local figure of £484 compared with £555, whatever moneys are spent in Blackpool, Wyre and Fylde to the best effect and to give excellent value.
The White Paper on patient care states that one objective is to enable hospitals which best meet the needs and wishes of patients to get money. That simple message is well understood in our local health services. All hon. Members would praise the work of our clinicians, nurses and doctors, but, without resources, they will not be able to deliver an adequate standard of health care, let alone increase services in Blackpool, Wyre and Fylde. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to re-examine our funding and see what he can do to help us.
10.15 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Roger Freeman): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) on a forceful speech in defence of the best interests of his constituents. As my hon. Friend has noted, our hon. Friend the Member for Wyre (Mr. Mans), our right hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South (Sir P. Blaker) and our hon. and learned Friend the Member for Blackpool, North (Mr. Miscampbell) are present. Their support for our proposals is much appreciated. They have the best interests of their constituents at heart. I hope that I can give a measure of reassurance and confidence for the future of the Blackpool, Wyre and Fylde health authority.
In October, at the invitation of my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South, I met the community health council for Blackpool, Wyre and Fylde in Blackpool and learnt of its initial concerns for next year. I promised my right hon. Friend a written response, but I hope that he will accept my reply to this debate as a full response to the points that he raised with me.
My hon. Friend the Member for Fylde raised three issues. First, he asked why the provisional planning allocation issued in July showed that the north-west was receiving a reduction in real resources compared with other regions. I will explain that differential distribution. From 1 April next year, we intend to move to a weighted capitation system of funding for the regions. That will mean a fairer basis of allocating funds between the 14 English regions. We will allocate revenue funds on the basis of the resident population in a region, weighted by a number of factors. I refer to morbidity, which is the relative health of the population; demography, which is the relative age—obviously, the older or the younger the age profile the greater the health requirements—and the relative cost of providing services. An additional factor which should benefit the north-west is that if regions have an above-average number of long-stay patients, mentally ill and mentally handicapped patients, we will make an adjustment in the allocation.
My hon. Friend asked why we are using the square root applying to the factor of morbidity. We have not yet made any allocations.
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My hon. Friend referred to planning assumptions. When we make the firm allocations, which, I hope, will be next month in December, I shall put to my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State the need to explain the basis of the weighting clearly. We have not yet made the allocations, but when we do we will take into account the various factors that have been raised. I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde will agree that this is a fairer and more automatic system and will mean that the particular requirements of Blackpool health authority will be as much taken into account as the needs of, say, Woking or Newcastle. I believe that the funds will be allocated on a fairer basis.
As far as the allocations—
Mr. Norman Miscampbell rose—
Mr. Freeman: If I might first finish this point, I shall be glad to give way.
As far as allocations to districts are concerned, it is bound to take longer to move to a weighted capitation system. It will take a number of years simply because if we moved in year one, which is 1991, to that basis of allocation, there would be significant changes for individual districts which might cause them difficulty in adapting their health care services to meet the new basis of allocation. Although it is a matter for the regions, I can confirm that regions will certainly take other factors into account, additional to those that we take into account when making allocations to the regions such as, for example, social deprivation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre pointed out, the impact of tourism is not fully compensated to the district through the contract system. That seems a relevant factor for the regions to take into account.
We expect to issue advice and guidance shortly to regions about how they should make allocations to the districts. As I have said, I believe that it will be a fairer system for Blackpool and I note the comment of my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde that for Fylde it could mean a £3 million increase in resources. I do not comment on that figure; I simply note it.
Mr. Miscampbell: Of course, I welcome the fact that my hon. Friend is encouraging a recognition of the problems which were raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) However, will he also encourage the regional area to come to an early decision and to put Blackpool out of its suspense because it is important that we know where we are going?
Mr. Freeman: I am happy to give my hon. and learned Friend that assurance We are expecting to make our own allocations to the regions shortly and we then expect the regions in turn to make their allocations to their districts as quickly as possible. That will inevitably take several weeks because they will have to take several factors into account, but I note what my hon. and learned Friend has said and endorse his request or wish that the regions should act as quickly as possible.
I turn now to the second of the three factors raised by my hon. Friend—his concern at the reduction of 0·3 per cent. in the planning assumptions for resources for the north-west. I am happy to tell him that that planning guideline is no longer relevant and that it will shortly be replaced with firm allocations as a result of the Autumn Statement on 15 November which stated that, for the

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hospital and community health service, the increase in cash terms next year will be 8·5 per cent. and in real terms, after an assumed 5 per cent. rate of inflation, it will be approximately 3·4 per cent. That 3·4 per cent. increase in real terms must be compared with the planning assumption that we were using for July for the national average of 1·25 per cent., which was the lower end of the range of assumptions. Using the national figure of 1·25 per cent., the north-west region had a figure of minus 0·3 per cent. The figure for the growth in hospital services next year is not 1·25 per cent.; it is 3·4 per cent.—that is 2 per cent. more than was used in the planning assumptions.
Although I cannot give an indication tonight of what the allocation to the north-west region will be, I can assure the House that it will be a positive number. There will be real growth in the resources that are allocated to the north-west.
Each year, in July, we issue planning guidelines. In recent years, when firm allocations have been made in the late autumn, the actual outturn is significantly higher than that used in the planning. For example, this year, 1989–90, we issued planning guidelines in the summer of 1988 of 0·8 per cent. When it came to allocating money for 1989–90, the actual growth for the north-west was 2·5 per cent., significantly higher than the guidelines. Some hon. Gentlemen may question why we issue planning guidelines which turn out to be cautious and which cause concern in certain quarters. In my judgment and in the judgment of my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State, it is better to start the planning process with cautious and prudent figures. If it turns out in negotiations with the Treasury that more money is available than originally planned, so much the better. It is better to start in a cautious mode.
My hon. Friend the Member for Fylde also referred to in-year pressures, which is the cost of funding pay and prices above the 5 per cent. rate of inflation, and mentioned cost improvement programmes. I shall deal with both of those issues as they are related. I agree that it is prudent for districts to set aside part of their resources each year for in-year pressures. Although the Government fund review body awards—we will not know what those review body awards are until January—non-review body awards, for example, the Whitley council awards for administrative and clerical workers in the Health Service or awards to the support workers, may have to be found out of the growth moneys available to the Health Service. In 1990–91 if the pay and price inflation for those sectors is above 5 per cent. the additional cost must be found out of those growth moneys. I understand that the region has advised reserving about 1·3 per cent, which is a prudent estimate, but set against that are cost improvement programmes, which we expect each district health authority to enter into. My hon. Friend did not mention that for the Blackpool, Wyre and Fylde health authority.
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I am sure that it would expect to achieve certain cash improvements and improvements in the efficiency of its operations. As I understand it, the region is expecting to achieve cost improvement programme benefits of 1 per cent., which is a prudent figure.
If one sets against the in-year pressures, assumed to be about 1·3 per cent., cost improvement programme benefits of about I per cent.—even setting aside income generation—there will be a net cost of 0·3 per cent. I agree that that must be found from the increase in resources.
Mr. Jack: I accept my hon. Friend's point about the cost improvement programme, but even if £500,000 can be saved within the Blackpool, Wyre and Fylde health authority that still leaves it with a potential deficit of about £1·5 million. I ask my hon. Friend to convey to the chairman of the North Western regional health authority the strength of our arguments tonight.
Mr. Freeman: My final point relates to the £2 million shortfall. I followed the analysis of my hon. Friend which was also presented to me by the community health council of Blackpool. That analysis presents an unduly pessimistic interpretation of the situation. I have already said that the region will receive growth moneys in real terms next year and not a reduction in resources. That will be reflected in the allocation to Blackpool. I confirm that, next year, we expect the North Western regional health authority to start the process of moving to a weighted capitation system of funding for Blackpool. Instead of minus 0·3 per cent., a positive figure will be produced, although I cannot give it to my hon. Friend at this stage. If one adds to that figure the cost improvement programme benefits in Blackpool, which are not in the £2 million, I would expect to see a valiant effort by Blackpool. I do not expect service reduction packages to be presented to the authority. I am expecting genuine cost improvement programmes that will generate real cash and real efficiency.
Growth moneys, plus the cost improvement programmes, should be able to finance not only the pay and price in-year pressures, but service development. My hon. Friend referred to a number of important areas and doubtless one of those is the inheritance of commitments entered into in previous years. I feel certain that the legitimate service developments, necessary for the people of authority, will be met.
Let me summarise precisely where the Blackpool, Wyre and Fylde health authority should find itself in 1990–91. I believe that the end result of the district allocation exercise that will be undertaken by the region early next year will mean that the authority will, at the least, be able to maintain this year's patient activity levels. There should be no reduction in patient activity levels in that authority. I hope that the authority will, through additional resources and as a result of good management, improve upon the maintenance of the past year's patient activity level.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at half-past Ten o'clock.

FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

  Compensation (USSR)
  Mr. Arbuthnot
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what progress is being made in implementing the Foreign Compensation (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) (Distribution) Order 1987.

  Mr. Sainsbury
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs has approved interim payments to successful property and bond claimants against the Russian fund of 30 per cent. of the value assigned by the Foreign Compensation Commission to a successful property claim and 20 per cent. of the value assigned by the commission to a bond. The interim payments will be made on or after 15 December 1989.

  Successful bond claimants received a first interim payment of 10 per cent. of the value assigned to a bond in November 1987.

  As of 17 November 1989, all bond claims but one and 2,123 out of 2,635 property claims made against the Russian fund had been determined by the Foreign Compensation Commission.

  It is expected that the final distribution from the fund will be announced during the first half of 1990 and that it may exceed 15 per cent. of the value assigned by the commission to a property claim or bond. This would result in a total pay-out from the fund of 45 per cent. of the value assigned to a claim.

NATIONAL FINANCE

  PAYE (Relocation)
  Mr. John Marshall
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether a decision has been made to relocate the remaining PAYE tax work currently carried out in London.

  Mr. Lilley
  Yes. As my hon. Friend will be aware, the majority of the Inland Revenue's PAYE work in the London area was removed to offices in other parts of the country in the 1960s and 1970s. This arrangement has provided a good service to taxpayers and has worked well over the years. On 24 July 1989 my predecessor announced at column 542 the removal of a further 400 PAYE clerical and executive posts from the London area to other parts of the country in late 1989 pending a review of the future for the remaining posts. That review has now been completed and it has been decided to remove these remaining PAYE posts over the period from May 1990 to June 1992 to Bootle, East Kilbride, Llanishen (Cardiff), Middlesbrough. Salford and Sunderland. In total the relocation announced on 24 July and today involves some 1,600 posts.
  2
  The Department intends to move the work and to redeploy existing staff in the London area, and will do everything possible to avoid any compulsory redundancy.

  During the period in which the work is moved, the Department will ensure that any inconvenience to taxpayers and employers is minimised. Following the relocation, the Department expects to provide taxpayers and employers with a more efficient and effective service.

  In order to maintain a service for those who need to make a personal visit to discuss their tax affairs, the existing network of local inquiry offices in the London area will be strengthened and enlarged where necessary.

  EC Budget Council
  Mr. John Marshall
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on the outcome of the recent meeting of the European Community's Budget Council.

  Mr. Ryder
  The Council considered the European Parliament's amendments and modifications to the 1990 Draft Budget established on 28 July (Official Report 18 October, columns 122–23); and the second amending letter to the 1990 preliminary draft budget (PDB). The council agreed to a revised draft budget totalling 48,416 mecu i:n commitments and 44,668 mecu in payments.

  The main issue was Community aid to assist the economic restructuring of Poland and Hungary. The Council endorsed the aid package of 200 mecu which the Commission proposed in the first letter of amendment to the 1990 PDB and which the Economic and Finance Council established on 9 October; and agreed to provide a further 100 mecu by means of a supplementary budget early next year following the necessary revision of the relevant ceiling in the financial perspective under the terms of article 12 of the inter-institutional agreement (IIA).

  As regards other non-compulsory expenditure, the Council accepted amendments totalling 219 mecu in commitments and 96 mecu in payments (around one third and one quarter respectively of the increases proposed by the Parliament at its first reading on 26 October). Only a small part of the agreed amendments was for privileged! expenditure (the structural funds, the R and D framework programme and the integrated mediterranean programmes). The bulk was for non-privileged expenditure. The growth of this expenditure in the revised draft budget, by comparison with 1988, is 5·2 per cent. in commitments and 5·1 per cent. in payments, some way below the calculated maximum rate of 6·1 per cent. communicated by the Commission at the beginning of the budget procedure.

  In the second amending letter to the 1990 PDB the Commission proposed a reduction in required revenue of 837 mecu. This was to take account of agricultural underspending in 1989 resulting from movements in the dollar/ecu exchange rate and occasioning a transfer of appropriations into the monetary reserve. The Council unanimously took the view that the letter should also include a reasonable estimate of agricultural underspending stemming from factors other than exchange rate movements. The Commission was unwilling to adjust the letter in line with the Council's wishes and the Council therefore made an adjustment on its own authority, increasing the figure in the letter by 1,000 mecu. Overall, the revised draft budget is around 4,500 mecu below the global ceiling in the financial perspective.
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  The Council also agreed the basis on which it would enter into a process of co-decision with the European Parliament under article 203(9) of the treaty to agree the overall growth of non-compulsory expenditure at the time of the Parliament's second reading in the week beginning II December.

ENVIRONMENT

  Water Privatisation
  Mr. Andrew Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what further progress he has made with the water share offers.

  Mr. Chris Patten
  Schroder's is today offering for sale 2,183 million shares in the 10 water companies, at an offer price of 240p per share. This represents 100 per cent. of the aggregate of the share capitals of the 10 companies.

  At the offer price, the market capitalisation of the 10 companies will be as follows:

  £ million

  Anglian

  707

  Northumbrian

  157

  North West

  854

  Severn Trent

  849

  Southern

  393

  South West

  293

  Thames

  922

  Welsh

  346

  Wessex

  246

  Yorkshire

  472

  Aggregate market capitalisation

  5,239

  Prospectuses will be available in banks and post offices from Wednesday 29 November. People who have registered with the water share information office will be sent a mini-prospectus and personalised application form. Application forms will also be published in newspapers from Wednesday 29 November. Applications have to be received by 10 am on Wednesday 6 December. Copies of the prospectus are being placed in the Library of the House today.

  Water and Sewerage plcs
  Mr. Robert B. Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what effect the legal action by local authorities against the water and sewerage plcs will have on the flotation of the companies.

  Mr. Howard
  None.

  My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales and I put before Parliament on 1 November departmental minutes describing indemnities which the Government proposed to grant to the water and sewerage companies. Under these, the companies would be indemnified against any material additional expenditure incurred as a result of legal claims, of the kind understood to be planned by a consortium of local authorities against the proceeds of sales of assets which cease to be used for water and sewerage functions.

  Having considered the writs, it is clear that the indemnity proposed earlier does not cover a second component of the local authority claims, for compensation of an unspecified amount for the assets transferred under
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  statute in 1974 from the pre-1974 local authorities to the water authorities. It is the view of leading counsel that there is no foundation for these claims either.

  We believe, therefore, that such indemnities are extremely unlikely to be called upon. But we nevertheless feel duty bound to protect the interests of taxpayers by securing flotation on the basis that Parliament intended. We have therefore put further minutes before Parliament describing indemnities which will ensure beyond doubt that the flotation is unaffected by these local authority actions. The writs were issued shortly after Parliament prorogued on 16 November, and today is the earliest day on which I could announce this to Parliament. The offer period for water shares opens today and closes on 6 December; in order to minimise any uncertainty for potential investors, the minute is designed to allow the indemnity to be signed early next week.

  The Government will defend the claims on behalf of the water services companies.

  Local Government Finance
  Mr. Michael Brown
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when he expects to announce final details of the community charge transitional relief scheme.

  Mr. Chris Patten
  Final details of the community charge transitional relief scheme will be sent to local authorities today and copies have been placed in the Library. The scheme is broadly as proposed in October except that, in the light of suggestions by local government, I have decided that in properties occupied by three or more chargepayers relief based on two assumed community charges will be allocated equally between all chargepayers living in the property and not granted to two nominated individuals as originally proposed. This will simplify the task of making preparations for the scheme and help authorities to issue community charge bills next April which reflect both transitional relief and entitlement to rebates.

TRANSPORT

  Road Haulage Permits
  Mr. Wood
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he has determined the fees to be charged to United Kingdom hauliers for international road haulage permits in 1990.

  Mr. Atkins
  Yes. The fees for 1990 permits are to be reduced once again following the successful negotiation by Department of Transport officials of significant increases in the United Kingdom's quotas. These have meant greater income from permits without significant increases in costs.

  The Department's success benefits British hauliers twice —first from the more plentiful supply of permits, and secondly from the reduction in fees.

  The fees will be as follows, with the 1989 charges in brackets:

  Fee

  Single journey permit

  £2 (no change)

  Multi-journey permit

  £1 (no change)

  Per journey

  Annual period permit

  £40 (£50)

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  Fee

  3 month period permit

  £10 (£14)

  Multilateral EC/ECMT annual permit

  £80 (£100)

  Multilateral EC/ECMT 3 months permit

  £20 (£26)

  Community removals authorisation

  £25 (£50)

  Vehicle Registration Marks
  Mr. Amos
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what progress has been made with the Government's plans to sell unused attractive vehicle registration marks.

  Mr. Parkinson
  Regulations made under the Finance Act 1989 establishing the sale of marks scheme came into effect on 20 November. The first sale will be by auction, and will take place on 14 December at Christie's London showrooms. Further auctions will follow in the new year. Less valuable numbers will be sold at fixed prices later in the year for new vehicles registered on or after 1 August 1990. Details of the scheme are given in leaflets available in the Library of the House, from DVLC, or from Teledata Ltd., the Department's fixed price agents.

EDUCATION AND SCIENCE

  Geography
  Mr. Hanley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will make a statement on the publication of the interim report of the national curriculum geography working group.

  Mr. MacGregor
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales and I published the interim report of the national curriculum geography working group on 20 November, together with our letter to the group's chairman, Sir Leslie Fielding. Copies of the interim report including the letter have been deposited in the Library.

  Student Loans Company
  Mr. Hanley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what progress has been made in acquiring premises for the Student Loans Company; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. MacGregor
  Negotiations are proceeding for the acquisition of premises in Glasgow. My Department is likely to be asked by a landlord to guarantee the Student Loans Company's obligations under an agreement to lease and the lease. My Department has, therefore, presented a minute to Parliament today describing the nature of the contingent liability which would arise.

  Science and Engineering Research Council
  Mr. Hanley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science whether he has received the annual report of the Science and Engineering Research Council for 1988–89; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. MacGregor
  The annual report of the Science and Engineering Research Council for 1988–89 has been submitted to me under the requirements of the Science and Technology Act 1965, and a copy is being laid before the House today.

  I was most interested to read the report on what has clearly been another exciting and interesting year for the Council. I was particularly impressed to learn of:
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  a. the completion during the year of two satellite instruments to observe the composition of the atmosphere and its global variation—both key elements in the United Kingdom's study of the global environment;

  b. the revelation, by means of radio-astronomical techniques, of 80 species of chemical molecules in inter-stellar space, thereby stimulating ideas about mat ter in the universe and contributing to the enhancement of man's understanding of chemical reactions at very high temperatures;

  c. the success of the Council's synchrotron radiation source at its Daresbury laboratory in determining the molecular structure of the foot-and-mouth disease virus;

  d. the observation, by British, Dutch and Spanish astronomers at the William Herschel telescope in the Canary islands, of a high-energy radio pulsar that is slowly extinguishing its celestial companion, the White Dwarf star;

  and

  e. the use of highly sophisticated techniques, developed in nuclear physics, for studying lake sediments and thus the historical evolution of sulphur dioxide emissions.

  I was also pleased to note that the SERC is currently reviewing its policy for wider public education about the science it conducts, focusing particularly on the interests of young people. I congratulate the Council and the academic community on these and other achievements, and look forward to reading about further progress in next year's report.

  British Geological Survey
  Mr. Hanley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will make a statement on the future funding of the British Geological Survey.

  Mr. MacGregor
  Last year, pending further work on defining the British Geological Survey's (BGS) core programme and its future financial and funding arrangements, an additional £3 million was made available in 1989–90 with planning additions of £4 million in 1990–91 and £5 million in 1991–92. I have now considered the outcome of this work conducted by the BGS programme board and by a group of officials, from relevant Government Departments and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), and have concluded that the survey has the potential to generate more of its income from the users of geological information, and that this should be the source of any funds needed to accelerate the rate at which it conducts its core surveying.

  In order to facilitate this process, I am providing additional investment for the national geosciences information service, to allow better access to, and marketing of, the survey's geological information and its interpretation. I am therefore making available to the survey, through the NERC, a further £1 million in 1990–91, £2 million in 1991–92 and £3 million in 1992–93. With these once and for all additions, the science budget income to the BGS should provide a secure base for the development of the survey's activities in the years ahead.

  Research Councils Advisory Board
  Mr. Hanley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what guidance he has given the advisory board for the research councils in seeking its advice on the allocation of the science budget in 1990–91 to 1992–93, following his announcement on 15 November,Official Report, columns 272–76; and if he will make a statement.
  7
  Mr. MacGregor
  I have written to Sir David Phillips inviting the board's advice. Following is the text of my letter:

  Dear David,

  "THE SCIENCE BUDGET 1990–91 to 1992–93
  In offering the Board's advice for this year's public expenditure survey, you emphasised the importance which the Board attached to the need to build on the foundations laid by the 1988 settlement. You noted that the momentum of that settlement would be lost unless the value of the Science Budget was preserved in real terms. I am glad to say that, despite the difficult economic circumstances surrounding this year's discussions, I have been able to achieve this, and more.
  The Government is providing increases for each year of the Survey of £61m, £53m, and £59m. These increases include about £ I m in each year in respect of transfers into the Science Budget from the DTI for the British Geological Survey and from another DES Vote for MRC intercalated awards. At £897m the Science Budget in 1990–91 will be about 10 per cent. above the level in 1989–90 in cash terms. Total provision for science in 1990–91 includes receipts from the European Community and non-voted public expenditure by the IPSR from privatisation receipts, and will amount to £904m.
  You expressed concern about the profile of last year's settlement. This year's profile of expenditure over the period is heavily influenced by the provision which I have made—£17·2m in 1990–91 and £1·4m in 1991–92—to sustain scientific research programmes while meeting the construction costs of the RRS James Clark Ross. If provision for this ship is excluded from the figures the real terms index of spend (1989–90 = 100) is 102·5 in 1990–91, 103·6 in 1991·92 and 103·3 in 1992–93. I have therefore ensured that, in this year's settlement, the underlying Budget is not only higher in real terms but remains at the higher 1990–91 level over the planning period.
  Apart from the ship, I have sought to keep earmarking to the minimum in order to leave the Board with maximum discretion in framing its allocations advice. I intend however to make an allocation of £2 million in each of the Survey years for the Remote Sensing Instrument associated with ERS-2 in line with the Government's declaration at the meeting of the Council of the European Space Agency last October. I should greatly value the Board's advice on what further allocation may be appropriate for earth observation instruments, particularly on Polar Platforms.
  Finally, I am also earmarking sums of £1 million, £2 million and £3 million in the PES years, respectively, for the British Geological Survey. This is being made available to enable the national Geosciences Information Service (NGIS) to provide better access to and marketing of the Survey's geological information and its interpretation. This once and for all investment in NGIS concludes the Government's treatment of the BGS as a national scientific commitment; I do not intend to earmark sums for BGS in future years.
  The Government is making this increased provision for science in the context of its overall policies for reducing the rate of inflation. I am sure the Board will appreciate the overriding importance of this. At £897 million, the Science Budget in 1990–91 is £189 million higher than expenditure in 1988–89—an increase of 27 per cent. over 2 years. Over the last two public expenditure exercises the Government has increased provision by £490 million; and expenditure in real terms in 1990–91 will be more than 27 per cent higher than in 1979–80. I hope that the scientific community at large will see this as further evidence of the importance which the Government attaches to civil science in the Research Councils and the universities. I look forward to receiving the Board's advice on how the additonal resources for next year can best be distributed.
  The Science Budget is a matter of considerable Parliamentary and public interest and I propose therefore to follow precedent by publishing the text of this letter in the form of a Parliamentary Answer."

ENERGY

  Community Insulation Projects
  Mr. Hannam
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what proposals he has to assist the least well off to improve their energy efficiency by introducing new arrangements for supporting the work of community insulation projects.

  Mr. Wakeham
  Community insulation projects play a valuable role in providing basic insulation measures in low income households. My predecessor and I have therefore monitored carefully the impact on the projects of the transition from the community programme to employment training. Despite the success of the special support measures introduced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment during the past year there is now widespread agreement that particularly in today's changed climate of substantially reduced unemployment we cannot continue to rely soley on training programmes for the unemployed to support a national network of insulation projects. There is an increasing need for projects to develop into community insulation businesses, capable of financing themselves directly through the insulation services they provide.

  I hope therefore to include powers in the forthcoming social security Bill to enable my Department to introduce a new scheme of grants towards the cost of basic insulation measures in low income households in England, Scotland and Wales. Grants towards the cost of draughtproofing, loft, tank and pipe insulation will be available under the legislation. Details of the proposed scheme, which will cover both owners and tenants in both the public and private sectors, will be announced in due course.

  This announcement is good news not only for community insulation projects and for those on low incomes but for all concerned with improving energy efficiency, and I am sure it will be widely welcomed.

AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

  Agriculture Council
  Mr. Gill
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what was the outcome of the Brussels Agriculture Council held on 20 and 21 November.

  Mr. Gummer
  I represented the United Kingdom at this meeting together with my hon. Friend, the Member for Skipton and Rippon (Mr. Curry), the Parliamentary Secretary in my Department.

  The Council had before it important proposals for reforming the Community's regime for agricultural structures. Good progress was made and a number of substantial improvements were made to the text. One component of the Commission's proposal was that in future normal Community reimbursement of member states' payments of hill livestock compensatory allowances should be limited to 45 livestock units per farm with half the normal reimbursement rate between 45 and 90 livestock units. (One livestock unit is defined as 1 cow or 63 ewes). Although the extent of Community reimbursement has no necessary direct effect on the levels of payments to producers, the proposal was unsatisfactory in that it would discriminate against United Kingdom farms in the less favoured areas most of which are necessarily extensive and limited to the raising of livestock.
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  As a result of our representations the figures quoted were effectively more than doubled and implementation was delayed for a year until 1 January 1991. However, I was unable to accept the limitations even at this higher level and accordingly I voted against the package which was, however, agreed by a qualified majority.

  The Council agreed two measures on the additional cereals co-responsibility levy which forms a part of the stabiliser for that sector. First, it agreed in principle to set the levy at zero for 1989–90 under a new de minimis provision which was, however, altered in negotiation so that it applies to the current marketing year only. Arrangements have already been made to cease collecting levy when the relevant legal text is adopted and to repay levy already collected. Second, the Community agreed in principle to new and better arrangements for determining the level of the additional co-responsibility levy from 1990–91, which should avoid any possibility of repaying levy in future years. This latter decision will ensure that levy is paid at the full rate implied by the size of the Community harvest, will save administrative costs for Government and the industry and will, I am sure, therefore be welcomed by farmers and the cereals trade.

  The Council agreed to the issue of 1 per cent. extra milk quota from 1989–90 to all member states and the cancellation of 1 per cent. of existing quota currently suspended. To offset the costs involved reductions will be made in the intervention price of butter by 21/2 per cent. and skimmed milk powder by 3/4 a per cent. from 1 March 1990, and an increase of 15 per cent. made in the supplementary levy from 1 April 1990. In a full year this package could be expected to he neutral in budgetary terms. The outcome is much more satisfactory in this respect than the original Commission proposal. However, because the cost in 1989–90 will not be fully offset by savings I abstained in the
  10
  vote. Agriculture Ministers will announce details of how the extra quota will be allocated in the United Kingdom as soon as possible.

  The Council considered again a proposal concerning veterinary checks in intra-Community trade of meat and meat products. I emphasised the vital need to ensure that the arrangements for the single European market do not prejudice the favourable animal health status of countries like the United Kingdom. Agreement was reached on a useful regulation on mutual assistance in the veterinary area between member states and the Commission.

HOME DEPARTMENT

  Security Service Act 1989
  Mr. John Marshall
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he expects to implement the Security Service Act 1989; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Waddington
  The Security Service Act will come into force on 18 December 1989. I have made an order, published today, to bring the Act into full effect on that date. The Act provides for the appointment of a commissioner and a tribunal. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has decided to appoint Lord Justice Stuart-Smith to be commissioner. The members of the tribunal will be Mr. Justice Simon Brown (president); Sheriff John McInnes (vice-president) and Sir Richard Gaskell. My right hon. Friend and I are grateful that the Commissioner and members of the tribunal have agreed to undertake these important new tasks. I welcome the implementation of this legislation which for the first time puts the security service on a statutory basis and which provides an avenue for the independent consideration of complaints against the service.

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Ripon.

Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [H.L.]
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Mackay of Clashfern): My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to make provision in connection with human embryos and any subsequent development of such embryos; to prohibit certain practices in connection with embryos and gametes; to establish a human fertilisation and embryology authority; to make provision about the persons who in certain circumstances are to be treated in law as the parents of a child; and to amend the Surrogacy Arrangements Act 1985. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time. —(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Food Safety Bill [H.L.]
The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Baroness Trumpington): My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to make new provision in place of the Food Act 1984, except Parts III and V; the Food and Drugs (Scotland) Act 1956 and certain other enactments relating to food; to amend Parts III and V of the said Act of 1984 and Part I of the Food and Environment Protection Act 1985, and for connected purposes. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved That the Bill be now read a first time. —(Baroness Trumpington.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Pakistan Bill [H.L.]
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Brabazon of Tara): My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to make provision in connection with the readmission of Pakistan as a member of the Commonwealth. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time. —(Lord Brabazon of Tara.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Greenwich Hospital Bill [H.L.]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (The Earl of Arran): My Lords,
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I beg to introduce a Bill to enable the Royal Hospital School to admit both girls and boys and in either case regardless of any seafaring family connection, and for purposes connected therewith. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time. —(The Earl of Arran.)
On question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Abortion (Amendment) Bill [H.L.]
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to amend Sections 1 and 5 of the Abortion Act 1967. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time. —(Lord Houghton of Sowerby.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Environment Protection Bill [H.L.]
The Earl of Cranbrook: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to make further provision for the integrated protection of the environment of Great Britain; for the definition of duties to this end; for controlling the import, production, use, keeping and disposal of articles and substances including wastes hazardous to the environment; for the establishment of an environment protection commission and an environment protection executive, and for connected purposes. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time. —(The Earl of Cranbrook.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Straw and Stubble Burning (Control) Bill [H.L.]
Lord Alport: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to make provision for the control and licensing of straw and stubble burning after 1st January 1991. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time. —(Lord Alport.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Weights and Measures (Sale of Wine) Bill [H.L.]
Lord Mason of Barnsley: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to remove the exemption from selling wine in prescribed quantities when sold in the glass or other vessel from which it is intended to

23
be drunk. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time. —(Lord Mason of Barnsley.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Trade Union Act 1984 (Amendment) Bill [H.L.]
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to amend Section 10(3) of the Trade Union Act 1984. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time. —(Lord Campbell of Alloway.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Committee of Selection
2.41 p.m.
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Aberdare): My Lords, I beg to move the first Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That in accordance with Standing Order 61 a Committee of Selection be appointed to select and propose to the House the names of the Lords to form each Select Committee of the House (except the Committee of Selection itself and any committee otherwise provided for the statute or by order of the House) and the panel of Deputy Chairmen of Committees and that the Lords following together with the Chairman of Committees be named of the Committee:

Ardwick, L.

Attlee, E.

Belstead, L. (L. Privy Seal)

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Denham, L.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Jenkins of Hillhead, L.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L.

Seebohm, L.

Stedman, B.

Tordoff, L. —(The Chairman of Committees.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Great Yarmouth Port Authority Bill [H.L.]
Greater Manchester (Light Rapid Transit System) Bill [H.L.]
Happisburgh Lighthouse Bill [H.L.]
Heathrow Express Railway Bill [H.L.]
London Local Authorities (No. 2) Bill [H.L.]
River Tees Barrage and Crossing Bill [H.L.]
Southampton Rapid Transit Bill [H.L.]
The Chairman of Committees: My Lords, I beg to move the second Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
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This Motion relates to seven Private Bills which were introduced in this House last Session and which had not completed their passage through this House. The House agreed to my Motion last Session to carry over consideration of these Bills to the present Session and the appropriate Message was sent to another place to seek its concurrence. Unfortunately, another place failed to concur with this Message before the end of the Session.
The purpose therefore of this Motion is to revive these seven Bills and allow them to continue at the stage which they had reached last Session. If your Lordships agree to this Motion, a Message will be sent to another place seeking its concurrence. I beg to move.
Moved, That the promoters of the Bills which originated in this House in the last Session of Parliament but had not received the Royal Assent shall notwithstanding anything in the Standing Orders or practice of this House have leave to introduce the said Bills in the present Session and the petitions for the Bills shall be deemed to have been deposited and all Standing Orders applicable thereto shall be deemed to have been complied with.
That every such Bill shall be deposited in the office of the Clerk of the Parliaments not later than five o'clock on the 28th November next with a declaration annexed thereto signed by the agent concerned stating that the Bill is the same in every respect as the Bill at the last stage of the proceedings thereon in this House in the last Session of Parliament.
That the proceedings on such Bills shall in the present Session be pro forma only, in regard to every stage through which the same shall have passed in the last Session of Parliament, and that no new fees be charged to such stages.
That all petitions relating to the Heathrow Express Railway Bill and the Southampton Rapid Transit Bill which were presented in the last Session of Parliament and which stood referred to the Select Committees on those Bills and have not been withdrawn, together with any minutes of evidence, shall stand referred to the Select Committees on those Bills in the present Session of Parliament.
That no petitioners shall be heard before the Select Committees on the Heathrow Express Railway Bill and the Southampton Rapid Transit Bill unless their petition was presented within the time limited within the last Session of Parliament or is deposited pursuant to paragraph (b) of Standing Order 109 relating to Private Business.
That, in relation to the Heathrow Express Railway Bill and the Southampton Rapid Transit Bill, Standing Order 110 relating to Private Business shall have effect as if the words "under Standing Order 109" were omitted. —(The Chairman of Committees.)
On Question, Motion agreed to, and it was ordered that a Message be sent to the Commons to acquaint them therewith.

Address in Reply to Her Majesty's Most Gracious Speech
Debate resumed on the Motion moved yesterday by Lord Holderness—namely, That a humble Address be presented to Her Majesty as follows:
"Most Gracious Sovereign —We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to thank Your Majesty for the most gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament".
2.43 p.m.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, in opening this part of the debate on the Motion for a humble Address, I should perhaps begin by saying that I shall concentrate on foreign rather than defence policy questions, leaving the latter for my noble friend Lord Arran to deal with when he winds up. This debate is most timely. It coincides with dramatic, indeed historic events in Eastern Europe. In his reply to the gracious Speech yesterday my noble friend Lord Holderness eloquently expressed the excitement and optimism of us all at these events. Issues such as these supply the context within which the Government's foreign and defence policy is conducted. The broad object of that policy, for this as for any government, is to assure the security of this country, its citizens and dependent territories. In that term, I include national security in both its direct and indirect senses; security in both physical and economic terms.
The Government are fully conscious of our responsibilities in these areas. We are working, and working effectively, to maintain and strengthen Britain's security on two main fronts. First, and closest to home, are this country's most immediate physical and economic security interests, centred in our Continent of Europe.
Secondly, and more indirectly, there is our interest in the consolidation of a stable framework of international relations that preserves order and promotes co-operation; a framework that allows us to work with others to address potentially destabilising regional conflicts and other challenges. We face some difficult challenges, as the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos, noted yesterday. I agree with him that we should meet them with our partners in NATO, the European Community and the Commonwealth and I look forward to hearing his contribution to our debate this afternoon.
Lord Stanhope records of Pitt the Younger that, on hearing the news of Austerlitz, he remarked of a map of Europe:
"Roll up that map, it will not be wanted these 10 years".
We enter a new decade in similar need of new guides to the political geography, if not to the borders of Europe. The pace of change in the eastern half of our continent has been astonishing. Two weeks ago, and literally overnight, the Iron Curtain to most intents and purposes disappeared from the centre of Europe. The Berlin Wall survives as little more than a quarry for souvenir-hunters. Today, as we watch events unfold in the GDR and elsewhere in Eastern
26
Europe, we find ourselves like the Red Queen in Carroll's looking glass world, believing six impossible things before breakfast.
What was once inconceivable is becoming commonplace as Poland, Hungary, the GDR and even Bulgaria embark on the path of renewal and reform. The Czechoslovak people too are stirring. Change in these countries is occurring at different speeds, and is being led by different forces. But a common factor in every case is the stimulus of economic crisis and the patent bankruptcy of Communist ideology. The political, economic and military implications of this retreat from the Communist past are profound.
These events are occurring against the background of great improvement in East-West, including Anglo-Soviet, relations. This is most welcome and something for which the Government have long worked. We freely acknowledge the indispensable contribution which the new policies of Mr. Gorbachev have made to the process. The Government were consistent in the defence of western values and western security in the years when we faced a very different Soviet Union. While we continue to stand steadfastly by those values, we are also now consistent in our warm encouragement of Mr. Gorbachev's policies of perestroika at home and new thinking abroad. We hope that the forthcoming US-Soviet summit will further strengthen the new mood in East-West relations. It is timely and opportune. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister will be discussing the prospects with President Bush in two days' time.
We in the West see no threat from greater democracy in Eastern Europe. Quite the reverse, and it seems that Mr. Gorbachev, in declaring that he supports freedom of choice for those countries, also acknowledges that the Soviet Union need not fear political and economic reforms in its neighbours. Change is not always consistent with stability, at least in the sense of immobility. But the peaceful evolution towards democracy and more market-based economies in Eastern Europe is a constructive kind of instability —so long as it remains peaceful and evolutionary.
What must be avoided at all costs is the sort of destructive instability which could interrupt the immensely encouraging trend towards democracy. We must rely heavily on the sound judgment and restraint of those at the centre of events —the peoples of Eastern Europe and their leaders —and, at this exciting but uncertain time, we must look for the protection of our fundamental security interests to the Alliance to which we are committed. We must also avoid offering any challenge to legitimate Soviet security interests.
A strong, united NATO must remain a central element in Western strategy if we are to meet these challenges effectively. There is no doubt in the Government's mind as to the strategy the West should pursue at what may be a turning-point in Europe's history. We believe the West should actively encourage the peaceful process now under way. A freer Europe will be a more secure Europe for all Europeans.

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We should make clear our view that political reform should lead to genuinely free elections. Where it is clear that governments are irrevocably committed to hold free elections, as in Hungary, or that as a result of elections they enjoy the confidence of their people, as in Poland, we should be ready to extend economic assistance. The West can offer no alternative route to reform. But we must, as a matter of instinct and of interest, do all we can to help those reforms to succeed. Britain has already joined with other Western countries in offering packages of assistance to Poland and Hungary. Once the Polish Government have agreed an adjustment programme with the IMF, we will be ready to extend further support in priority areas, including debt rescheduling in the Paris Club.
We see a vital role for the European Community here. The Community has long been a focus for the aspirations of our Eastern neighbours. We have substantial resources, material and human, on which to draw. The Community is currently co-ordinating food aid to Poland, and has extended project assistance to Poland and Hungary worth over £210 million. Wide-ranging trade and co-operation agreements with those countries offer a basis for further action. And at their meeting on 18th November, Community leaders agreed to step up existing aid, and to look at further ways in which we might help.
With our Community partners, we are ready to consider similar assistance for the GDR. But as Chancellor Kohl has made clear, an essential precondition must be thoroughgoing reform, including free elections. Much ink has been expended on the implications for Germany, and for Europe as a whole, of the recent changes in the GDR. We remain of the view, in the words of my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, that real and permanent stability in Europe will be difficult to achieve so long as the German nation is divided against its will.
For now, however, the priority is the achievement of full democracy in the GDR. Until that is achieved, the people of the GDR cannot choose whether or not freely to exercise their right to self-determination. We are conscious of our legal, political and moral responsibilities towards the German people as a whole. But we must look to present priorities, and allow the future to take shape on that basis.
We apply that same rule to the development of the European Community, which is central to our conception of Britain's economic security. It is a sound and realistic rule. In the Community we have a clear and agreed priority in the shape of the single market programme. Completion of the single market in 1992 will do more to strengthen Europe's economic security and political credibility than any step undertaken since the signature of the Rome Treaty.
Britain is fully committed to the single market programme, and we welcome the excellent progress achieved so far. Our record on implementing agreed single market measures is exemplary. Of 68 measures
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now supposed to be in force in Community countries, we have put into effect 65. By contrast, France, the next best performer, still has nine to go, while Italy brings up the rear with 33. Britain was the only major member state last year not referred to the European Court of Justice to answer any alleged treaty infraction. Our commitment to the competitive principle of the single market is reflected, too, in the level of our industrial subsidies —lower than any of our major partners. For example, state aids to manufacturing industry in the UK are now one-eighth of comparable Italian aid.
A lively debate is now taking place about the future evolution of the Community. We welcome that debate. But we see its purpose in terms of exploring possibilities, and not of fixing upon ambitious and unrealistic blueprints and timescales for the Community's development. We do not believe that it is sensible to plan future stages in that development without seeing how those immediately before us work out in practice. Attempts to force the pace can only be divisive and damaging for the Community as a whole. That assessment lies at the core of our objection to Stages 2 and 3 of the Delors plan for economic and monetary union in the Community.
We are committed to Stage 1, and have stated that we shall join the exchange rate mechanism. We have set out the factors which will determine the moment when we do so. But we believe that thorough discussion of what might follow Stage 1 is required. The Delors plan offers one way forward. We have suggested an alternative, evolutionary approach which makes full allowance for market forces and the principle of subsidiarity. This is now for detailed consideration.
We believe that the same liberalising principles and respect for national practices should govern Community attitudes in the social sphere. The agreed Community priority here is job creation, an area in which the UK's record has been outstanding in recent years. But the plain fact, underscored by our own experience, is that you do not create jobs, or strengthen economic security, by imposing on business compulsory requirements which damage its flexibility, efficiency and competitiveness. There will be a full discussion of these matters, along with events in Eastern Europe, at the Strasbourg Council next month.
I have stressed that the Community must remain open to the East. But we hope that the single market will work as a generator for propserity across Europe. Particular attention must be paid to strengthening links with EFTA, the Community's largest trading partner. We look forward to further progress in this area following the EC/EFTA ministerial meeting on 19th December.
More widely, it is important for Europe to find economic security as an integral part of the global trading community. We still have work to do to reassure our main trading partners on this score, and in particular to achieve a successful conclusion to the GATT Uruguay Round. Events in both halves of our Continent are making Europe's future, and with it Britain's future, more secure. We shall

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continue to pursue policies designed to strengthen this encouraging trend.
The Government's responsibility to assure a secure and stable future for the people of this country is matched by a similar responsibility towards the peoples of Britain's dependent territories. We have made great progress in exercising this responsibility on behalf of the people of the Falkland Islands. Without compromising our commitment to respect their desire to remain under British sovereignty, we have agreed important steps towards a more normal relationship with Argentina.
We are also continuing to do all we can to reassure the people of Hong Kong about their future. The tragic events in China last June, so out of step with trends elsewhere in the Communist world, delivered a major blow to Hong Kong's confidence and sense of security. That is a matter of direct concern to the Government. So far as China is concerned, we have with our Western partners made clear that a full return to normal relations will only be possible when the Chinese authorities have shown that they are ready to return to the path of genuine reform. But we accept that it would be in no one's interest, least of all that of the people of Hong Kong, to drive China into isolation. The work of the Joint Liaison Group is continuing. Both sides have reaffirmed their commitment to the Joint Declaration which remains, in the words of the Foreign Affairs Committee report,
"the best and surest Treaty base for the future of Hong Kong".
It is important that China should demonstrate that commitment in practice. The Chinese authorities have a massive stake in Hong Kong's continuing success, both economically and politically. We shall continue to emphasise to them how closely their self-interest depends upon the way they approach these issues. As part of our efforts to restore confidence, we are first working on a scheme of assurances to give key people, in both the public and private sectors, the confidence to remain in Hong Kong. We hope to announce details of that scheme within the next few months.
Secondly, we are reviewing the pace of democratisation in Hong Kong. Our paramount concern here is to ensure that decisions taken are the right ones, reflecting the wishes of the community as a whole. We shall do nothing that prejudges the outcome of discussions in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, we expect a Bill of Rights to be published by the Hong Kong Government before the end of the year.
Thirdly, we are promoting, and shall continue to promote, support for Hong Kong's future stability and prosperity among our friends and partners. This support is vital if Hong Kong is to maintain its status as an international and regional economic powerhouse. The economic interests of third countries in Hong Kong mean that they have a natural interest in Hong Kong's future. We are content to be judged by our actions. They reflect a substantial and undiminished commitment to Hong Kong, maintained in good faith, and implemented in every possible way, along every possible channel.
This is a difficult time for Hong Kong. It is made no easier by the presence in the territory of almost
30
57,000 Vietnamese boat people, who are taxing its resources to the limit. Over half have arrived this year. Nearly 90 per cent. of those now arriving are unlikely to qualify as refugees.
Are we to suppose, if nothing is done, that the dimensions of this human tragedy will subside? They will not. They will continue to grow. Thousands of people, who cannot be classed as genuine refugees, are living in crowded and temporary accommodation because no homes can be found for them outside their own country, in Hong Kong or anywhere else. Unless action is taken, more will continue to arrive, to be disappointed and wretched in their turn. The only humane solution, as the international community has recognised, is for those who are not genuine refugees to return to Vietnam. The Government are seeking assurances from the Vietnamese authorities that those who are returned will be properly and fairly treated, and that their conditions will be adequately monitored. We are ready to consider assistance with reintegration.
As my right honourable friend the former Foreign Secretary said in another place, it is soon going to be necessary to tackle the very thorny question of involuntary repatriation. Noble Lords will appreciate that a decision on this would not be easy for any government to take. It will not be taken lightly; but it must be taken in the light of what has already been agreed in principle by the international community, and in the absence of any realistic alternative.
The problems of Hong Kong and the Vietnamese boat people place a special responsibility upon Britain, although they are also of concern to the international community as a whole; but there are other problems, international in their scope, where this country's involvement is more indirect. Nevertheless, the Government believe that our contribution to solving those problems should be active and constructive, in the interests of more stable international relations as a whole.
As the decade draws to its close, many long-standing conflicts remain on the international agenda. Our consistent, patient approach is to combine with our friends and partners in seeking movement, and to build on movement when it is achieved. Diplomacy by ratchet is a sound philosophy where the issues are often intractable. Nowhere is that more true than in the Middle East. We believe that only a freely negotiated settlement, ideally within the framework of an international conference, is compatible both with Israel's legitimate security interests and the Palestinians' legitimate aspirations to self-determination.
There has been some movement. We have welcomed the PLO's renunciation of terrorism and recognition of Israel's right to exist. Egyptian efforts, which we support, have brought closer the prospect of talks between Israeli and Palestinian representatives. We call on Israel now not to place obstacles in the way of those talks, and to contribute to a climate conducive to progress by exercising restraint in the occupied territories.
For years Lebanon appeared, in the words of Walid Jumblatt, to be a country where even the law

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of the jungle had broken down. Now there are some grounds for hope. Lebanon has a legitimate leader once more. We welcome the Lebanese Parliament's ratification of the Taif agreement, and its election of President Moawab. We shall continue to support the efforts of the Arab league, and all Lebanese of goodwill, to achieve a settlement that restores Lebanon's independence, sovereignty and unity in conditions of national reconciliation. We shall also continue to explore every possible avenue, and exert every possible pressure, to secure the release of our hostages in Lebanon; but we remain firm in our refusal to make concessions to terrorist kidnappers.
In the Middle East, peaceful change may remain a matter of progress by degrees; but in Namibia, we see it as a fully-fledged reality. Supporters of democracy everywhere will have been heartened by the great success of the recent elections, in which 97 per cent. of Namibians voted. The Government consistently, and often in the face of much ill-judged criticism, supported the US-led negotiations which permitted implementation of the UN plan for Namibia to commence, and this moment to be reached. We gave moral and material support to the UN role in the run-up to the elections. We shall maintain that support as the process of negotiation between the Namibian parties to agree a new constitution begins. The establishment of stable democracy in Namibia will be good for the security and stability of the region as a whole; but lasting stability will require change and genuine democracy in South Africa.
President de Klerk has indicated that he accepts the need for change. We welcome the steps that he has taken since his election to release prominent detainees, permit greater freedom of expression, establish a dialogue with Church leaders and, most recently, towards the abolition of the Separate Amenities Act. Those moves are a beginning; but they must lead on to peaceful negotiations with genuine representatives of the black majority that will allow South African society to be transformed. We shall continue to urge the South African Government to advance in that direction. In the meantime, we shall maintain our opposition to additional, punitive sanctions which would serve only to delay the change we desire, and to inflict poverty and hardship on those whom we most wish to help.
The year 1989 may justly be called the year in which the troops went home, in many parts of the world. Cubans are withdrawing from Angola as the South Africans leave Namibia. Soviet troops have left Afghanistan, and Vietnamese combat troops, Camboida; but in both those countries, unrepresentative governments remain in place as the residue of external intervention and occupation. Lasting security for both countries lies in genuine self-determination for their peoples.
The Khmer Rouge's history of atrocities and mass murder in Cambodia adds a special dimension of horror to that problem. Our recent statements in Parliament and in the UN, together with the statement of the French presidency in the recent UN debate, underlined our total rejection of the Khmer
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Rouge. With our friends and partners we have reflected that view through changes to the language of the relevant resolution of the General Assembly. We remain committed to a comprehensive political settlement that reflects the wishes of the Cambodian people. A military solution is not acceptable. Meanwhile we continue to do all we can to alleviate the suffering of those caught up in that tragic conflict. We are therefore increasing our humanitarian aid, channelled through the UN and non-governmental organisations. In that connection, two officials, one from our embassy in Bangkok and the other from the ODA, will shortly be visiting Phnom Penh to report on the situation at first hand.
There has been some criticism that the Government's policy has not adjusted sufficiently to take account of the present situation in Cambodia. I would reply that we have adjusted it as far as we believe to be right. We shall keep our policy under review and seek to restore the momentum of diplomatic negotiation to achieve a settlement. We shall continue to play a full part in the international effort to achieve peace and reconciliation in Cambodia, including any reconvened session of the Paris conference.
Peace and reconciliation are also urgently needed in Central America. Recent events are jeopardising the Esquipulas peace process. We deplore the Nicaraguan decision to end the ceasefire with the Contras, and the decision of the FMLN in El Salvador to break off dialogue and launch an armed offensive. Hundreds of civilians in San Salvador, including tragically the British journalist David Blundy, have died as a result. The brutal murders of six Jesuit priests during the renewed violence have shocked the world. We join with the US in calling on the Government of El Salvador to establish the circumstances of those murders, and to bring the killers to justice.
Violence begets violence, and the innocent, and ultimately democracy itself, are the victims. We urge the governments concerned to abide by their commitments under the Esquipulas agreements, and the insurgent forces to accept dialogue and negotiations. There is no other way in which the security of the region and its peoples may be assured.
I have argued that the Government are actively engaged in working to enhance regional security. We are also facing up to the challenge posed to the security of our planet itself by the threats to our global environment. That is a challenge no country can side-step. Britain has led in pressing for such co-operation, and in initiating action in specific areas. There will be time to address these matters at greater length in your Lordships' debate next week.
I will simply recall that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister described what we are doing in her address to the United Nations General Assembly on 8th November. For example, she announced the establishment in Britain of a new climate change prediction centre, and further funding for the management and conservation of tropical forests —a valuable carbon storehouse and a priceless genetic library. Britain is making a major contribution to global efforts in this important area, and will continue to do so.

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I have ranged widely in my speech —I hope not too widely for your Lordships' legendary forbearance. My purpose has been to demonstrate the Government's consistent and determined pursuit of this country's security interests, in the broad sense I described at the outset. We have missed no opportunities. We have shirked no challenges, however difficult or far-reaching their implications. We have stood by policies we believe to be right —sound and realistic policies; policies we have sought to base on the values for which we stand: freedom, economic liberalism, and the rule of law.
My Lords, at the end of an historic year and an eventful decade, Britain's stock is high. We are active and engaged across the range of issues facing our foreign policy. We stand by a record of commitment and success. That is our achievement, and I commend it to your Lordships.
3.11 p.m.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, on behalf of the whole House, perhaps I may congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, on his first speech as Foreign Office Minister in this House and wish him well in this important office. He has given us a comprehensive view of government policy and I shall try to deal with some of the main points he raised as I proceed.
As the noble Lord has said, our debate takes place during the most remarkable events in post-war history. In a short space of three weeks, a revolution has occurred in East Germany which has fractured the fabric of a political system which most people believed would survive for many years to come. The Berlin Wall, the grim symbol of a divided Europe, has crumbled and free elections have been promised in East Germany. After decades of oppression, people have breathed the air of freedom and all of those of us who enjoy freedom have rejoiced.
The word "historic" is sometimes overused, but I think that we would all agree that we have indeed witnessed historic events. Television has brought them into our homes; we have seen the tears of reunited families and the wonder in the eyes of those who have walked through gates which have been closed to them for over 40 years.
So far, and inevitably, we have been almost incredulous spectators. But we must react to these great events, with urgency, common sense and good will. Our reactions must take into account the implications of the events in Germany and also those in Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria, for NATO and our defence commitments. We must listen carefully about the problems implicit in the debate about the possible unification of Germany.
It is against this background that we and our partners must do all we can to encourage the development of free institutions in East Germany and to ensure that, above all else, West Germany remains firmly and happily within the European Community. There is no comfort for anyone in the destabilisation of Warsaw Pact countries, or of areas of the Soviet Union itself. The consequences of that would be unpredictable.
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For we do not want to see history repeating itself in the Balkanisation of Eastern Europe, in growing ethnic and territorial disputes or the re-emergence of the so-called "German threat". My immediate reaction is to refuse to regard this as a threat because I see the German leaders and people as committed to democracy at present. However, the existence of a reunited Germany of 80 million people, with massive economic power, would be a deeply significant development. But that is not likely to be an immediate prospect, and I know that all these matters are very much in the minds of noble Lords on all sides of the House.
The great question is how the West and the Soviet Union should respond to this tremendous challenge. We must certainly learn from the lessons of the history of the first decades of this century. The West should first formulate an aid package for Eastern Europe, commensurate with the challenge. The people of this country would prefer to support an aid programme which would make for a stable and therefore peaceful Europe than to put up the shutters and to hope for the best.
The noble Lord has referred to the weekend Summit. We on this side welcome President Mitterrand's initiative in calling it. We are glad that the meeting agreed, without dissent, to give its full support to reform in Eastern Europe and said that the Community should now prepare to forge new links with the emerging democracies in the Soviet bloc. We welcome the fact that the Prime Minister subscribed to this unanimity, so essential at this time, and that she supported urgent aid for Poland. For several reasons, Poland is a crucial cornerstone in a democratic structure for Eastern Europe and I welcome the assurances about Poland which the noble Lord gave in his speech.
Like the noble Lord, we also welcome the forthcoming Summit meeting of President Bush and Mr. Gorbachev and wish them great success. There could not be a more opportune moment to exchange views about the future of Eastern Europe and they will, I feel sure, show a willingness to co-operate with the Community in seeking firm and sensible solutions.
I noted that one observer has asked whether events will outstrip the capabilities of governments, East and West, to deal with them. It is a key question. Her Majesty's Government must play their full part in ensuring that the challenge is met. Winning freedom is one thing, preserving freedom is another.
We note that the Prime Minister is to meet President Bush in two days' time and I hope that we as a country will not take a meek stance that the future of Europe is a matter for the superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, alone. With our partners, we should play a full and equal part in finding and implementing solutions. The Paris Summit recognised this last weekend. That is not to underestimate the superpowers in any way, but I believe that we must get the balance right. Nor is this the time to begin to talk about dismantling NATO, although there is much talk about the reduction of United States forces in Europe. We have noted, for example, what Mr. Dick Cheney, the United States Defence Secretary, has said about this.

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However, what can and what should emerge from all these developments is a readiness to pursue disarmament negotiations with greater urgency and greater hope of success. There is, for example, a case now for adding short-range nuclear weapons to the agenda of the Vienna talks. These and other practical matters relating to defence will be dealt with by my noble friend Lord Irving when he speaks at the end of the debate.
Although change was then afoot, when we last debated foreign affairs in this House we did not anticipate that events would have marched as rapidly as they have by today. Taking the long view, we have to admit, and indeed the world has to admit, that it is the steadfast firmness of the Western democracies, with NATO as their bulwark, which has slowly turned the tide of history. But it must also be acknowledged that the man more immediately responsible for the change —the catalyst which triggered the change —is President Gorbachev himself. It is the radical and far-reaching changes which he has engineered in Russia that we now see reflected in events in East Germany, Poland and elsewhere. All of us have noted carefully the comments which he has made about these changes over the past few days. He has shown great courage, skill and imagination in guiding the Soviet Union thus far. But he has immense obstacles to overcome, not least the economic regeneration of his own country. If he survives and succeeds, he must emerge as one of the great figures of history.
Mr. Gorbachev said recently:
"It is time to recognise that the world today does not consist of two mutually exclusive civilisations. It is one common civilisation in which human values and freedom of choice have primacy".
That takes us a world away from Stalin and Brezhnev. He said he welcomed events in East Germany, but he then went on to make some reservations, notably about the unification of Germany and the continuance of the Warsaw Pact and NATO. That we can understand. Although we and our allies are committed to the aim of a united Germany, we also believe that it is not negotiable until a democratic government is established there. Incidentally, we must also remember that Mr. Gorbachev remains a communist. He is a different kind of communist, more liberal, less doctrinaire and less embedded in the past, but he is not about to apply for membership of the London Stock Exchange or the Carlton Club.
It is clear that the most complex problems lie ahead. However, this country has the overriding duty to play an active and constructive role with our partners in the European Community and in NATO to help to resolve them. At no time in the history of Europe have the opportunities been greater than they are today. President Bush and Mr. Gorbachev must grasp these opportunities and we, with the Community, must urge and encourage them to do so. The penalty for not taking the opportunity could be disastrous for Europe and the world.
Although Europe is predominantly in our minds, we are concerned with other world problems which are mentioned in the gracious Speech and which
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were also covered by the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, in his speech. The Prime Minister's statement following the Commonwealth Conference in Kuala Lumpur gave us the opportunity to express our views on the Government's performance there. We may disagree with the Government's reluctance to pursue a decisive policy towards South Africa, but I agree with the remarks of the noble Lord; namely, that change is taking place there since Mr. de Klerk took office. Eight prominent ANC leaders including Mr. Sisulu have been released and the policing of rallies has been less brutal. Further, the beaches formerly reserved for whites have been opened to the black population. However, we must wait to see whether these are the first steps in a real move towards freedom and the dismantling of apartheid.
For we cannot forget that the ANC is still banned in South Africa, that Nelson Mandela is still in prison, that thousands are detained without trial and that the press is severely restricted. At this moment I regret to say that apartheid is still a harsh reality in South Africa. I must therefore urge the Government to rethink their attitude towards sanctions once again, not only because it is inconsistent with their attitude towards sanctions against other countries and not only because it leaves us isolated in the Commonwealth on a basis of 48 to one, but also because it is totally inconsistent in my estimation to give a joyous welcome to the eruption of freedom in Eastern Europe while refusing to join more positively in the effort to bring freedom to the native population of South Africa.
We do not always appreciate the widespread destabilisation which has occurred in South Africa, but the report of the Catholic Institute of International Relations brought that home forcefully to me when I read it a few days ago. The report estimates that since 1980 over a million people have been killed in southern Africa and damage totalling 35 billion US dollars has been suffered by the six neighbouring states. The fact is that political reform in South Africa is the essential solution to the acute problems of the region of southern Africa as a whole. I know the whole House will wish Namibia well, as did the Minister, under her newly elected government. Perhaps the Minister who is to reply will give some indication of the assistance we are proposing to give Namibia at this crucial time in her history.
As the Minister mentioned, in the Far East Hong Kong and Cambodia are very much in our minds. The Minister spoke of our commitment to the Joint Declaration. However, we must also be aware of the concern in Hong Kong about the draft Basic Law, and about democratisation and the government's proposals about elections next year. There is concern also about the right of abode and other matters. I hope it will be possible for the House to have a full debate on Hong Kong and the problems of the boat people —the Minister referred to them —in the near future.
On Cambodia, we have expressed our concern that Khmer Rouge dominates the Cambodian Mission to the United Nations. It is difficult to contemplate a more bizarre arrangement. I note what the Minister

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said, but the allegation that the SAS has been training troops which are part of the so-called national army dominated by Khmer Rouge is also disquieting. The Minister who is to reply will help the House if he makes a comment on that. Is there any truth in the allegation that the SAS has given this assistance on the authority of the Government?
The Minister will have noted that the gracious Speech refers to a,
"search for a settlement in Cambodia".
What precisely does that mean? Helping to train the so-called national army will certainly not lead to a peaceful settlement. The ordinary people of Cambodia are deeply worried at this time about what may happen if a reasonable democratic government is not established and sustained there.
The noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, also referred to the problems of Latin and Central America. I hope I may suggest to the Minister that, if our speeches are not to be too long, that issue also deserves a separate debate. Like the Minister, however, we also deeply regret the news of the deaths of David Blundy, who was a most able and popular foreign correspondent, and of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador where a wicked and unnecessary civil war is going on. The only ray of light seemed to me to come from the Central American conference held in Honduras in August. Perhaps the Minister who is to reply will give the Government's reaction to the conclusions of the conference, especially in view of our close interests in that area.
It has often been said by noble Lords in our debates over the past few years that a third world war will not break out in Europe but at some flashpoint elsewhere. The experts always point to the Middle East as the most likely flashpoint. As the Minister himself indicated, that is not surprising. All I propose to say in this debate is that it is disappointing to know that the efforts to reach a settlement on three fronts in the area have so far failed. President Mubarak's 10-point peace plan based on UN Resolutions 242 and 338 has made no progress. The effort of the US and Egypt to set up a Palestinian delegation acceptable to all parties has also come to a halt.
There is, however, a strong belief that the US administration is determined to pursue its initiative. Again, I shall be grateful if the Minister who is to reply will tell us how the Government react to this and whether they support the United States. What, if any, are the results of the recent talks between Mr. Shamir and President Bush? Again, the so-called national dialogue in the Lebanon and the charter for national reconciliation drafted by Lebanese MPs have made no progress. It is a sad and depressing scene. One is more and more driven to the conclusion that a strong and stable Europe could best provide a foundation for world peace.
Britain must work through the United Nations and through the Commonwealth, but it is here in Europe and through the Community that we can make our greatest contribution. As one views the world scene, one is driven more and more inescapably to that conclusion. I note what the Minister said about the European single market and
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its importance. My noble friend Lord Williams of Elvel will speak on that subject when he opens the debate from this side of the House next Tuesday.
Our duty to the next generation is to ensure that we do not lose the opportunity to turn the revolution of 1989 in the direction of a stable democracy and towards a stable Europe from the Urals to the Atlantic. That is clearly the dream of the people of the West and the East. We shall strongly support the Government in every effort they make, in every sacrifice if necessary, and in every enterprise on which they embark to realise that dream.
3.30 p.m.
Lord Bonham-Carter: My Lords, I must first apologise and explain that owing to a long-standing commitment I shall have to leave before the end of the debate, but I hope very much to return before it is completed.
I too should like to join the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos, in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, on his speech today in introducing the debate. In their speeches both he and the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, ranged widely over the world. However, as there are 33 speakers to succeed me today I am sure that the House will be grateful to me if I do not imitate the noble Lords, no matter how much I admire the way in which they performed their duties. I therefore propose to concentrate on a much more limited field than my two predecessors. However, I join the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, in hoping that we shall have an opportunity soon for a full debate on Hong Kong and to pursue the matter of Cambodia, which is a cause of great anxiety among many people at this time.
The defence implications of the debate will be dealt with from these Benches by my noble friend Lord Mayhew.
Listening to the words of the Queen's Speech and relecting on the events of the last few months and the policy of Her Majesty's Government over the past few years, it seems to me that if one is to limit the field over which one will range it is impossible to avoid as the central issue of the debate this country's relations with Europe. That means among other things this country's relations with the European Community. It also means the European Community's relations with the wider Europe of which we are all members and, in particular, as has already been mentioned, with Eastern and Central Europe where our gaze must be and has been fixed these past few months with a mixture of excitement and celebration and an element of apprehension.
We can share with the Prime Minister her appreciation of the immense importance of the events taking place in that part of the world. We can support wholeheartedly her view that, whatever our response to those events, it must not be and it must not be perceived to be an attempt to dissolve the Warsaw Pact. It must not appear to be in any sense a threat to the security of the USSR.
As the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos, indicated, the revolution which we are witnessing was initiated by President Gorbachev. The links

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between the events in Eastern and Central Europe and the USSR are very close. The success of President Gorbachev is closely linked with the success of those revolutions. But those revolutions which we are witnessing, the collapse of an ideology, the collapse of an empire and a political system, mean among other things that a huge geographical area is in the midst of a condition of confusion, flux and instablility which inevitably brings with it dangers. Secondly, it means that the geographical and political expression which was buried at Yalta —Central Europe —has been exhumed. Thirdly, as has been said already, it means that "the German problem", as it used to be called, is with us once more.
I do not say that reunification is inevitable. All I say is that it is on the cards. It is no good saying, as some people have said, that it is not on the agenda. Reports from Washington this morning in the Independent state that Mr. Genscher made it clear to President Bush that he considered East and West Germany one nation awaiting unity. He also said:
"There is not one capitalist nation or one socialist nation. There is one German nation".
So the prospect of German reunification is on the agenda and is a possibility that we have to consider most seriously.
That is where the European Community came in. After all, the motive which inspired the European Community was to bind Germany indissolubly within Western Europe by political and economic links, and to balance German size, population, economic and potential military power with the populations, economic strength and military power of France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Benelux.
Hence the possibility of a reunified Germany, which alarms the French and scares the wits out of the Poles (and who should blame them!), makes the consolidation of Germany within the European Community —a European Community in which the United Kingdom must play a full and not a semi-detached part (in the phrase of Sir Leon Brittan)—a matter of the utmost importance. It means that the European Community's political and economic institutions need further development and reinforcement to meet that new, prospective challenge. The idea that such developments should be postponed while Eastern and Central European issues are sorted out is, to my mind, the very reverse of the truth.
As we saw last weekend, the best instrument for helping Poland, Hungary, possibly Czechoslovakia in the future, and the GDR, and the best instrument for avoiding the dangers of instability, is the European Community acting as a community. I draw the attention of the House to the statement in the Financial Times yesterday that:
"With the summit meeting of the Twelve on Saturday evening the European Community has taken on a new political stature as an actor on the world stage. The support which the heads of government have agreed to give to political reform … can only reinforce the Community's role in any future political dialogue with the east".
Not only have we seen the Community acting in unity and producing a united policy towards the
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East, but it seems to me that it is the first occasion on which it has asserted its leading responsibility towards Eastern Europe. That is something that Presidents Bush and Gorbachev will have to take into account in Malta. That has been possible because the Community is not simply another association of nations, another inter-governmental organisation, but a community in which the members have pooled certain elements of their sovereignty and which, by acting as a community, can influence events in the multipolar world in which we now live.
Hence, one can only deplore the semi-detached role which this country has played and the isolation to which it has led. One can only disagree with the Prime Minister's astonishing statement yesterday that:
"isolation is … leadership, and winning the argument". [Official Report, Commons, 21/11/89: col. 23.]
The isolated leader without any troops is in an extremely vulnerable position. When in 1940 this country was fully isolated it was in desperate straits until it had some more friends.
Nor is politics simply about winning arguments; it is more about getting one's own way.
Isolation is not the best way of getting one's own way. The Prime Minister's confrontational approach of "No, never" rather than "Yes, but" has not only isolated this country, but appears to be isolating her from many of her former colleagues. In recent weeks not only Mr. Heseltine, Sir Leon Brittan and Mr. Lawson, but also the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, have each demanded from the Government a more forward stance in relation to the European Community, and in particular in respect of the ERM.
We cannot for a fourth time see Europe develop in our absence. We must not use the revolution in Eastern Europe to excuse delaying further development of the European Community. On the contrary, the revolution in Eastern Europe underlines the need for building a strong and stable Community in the West in a world of flux and change. This country has a part to play in that important task. It has a responsibility to fulfil and we dare not miss that opportunity once more. We must seize it with both hands.
3.41 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Ripon: My Lords, the commitment of Her Majesty's Government to the preservation of peace with freedom and justice, articulated in the gracious Speech, must surely be welcome by all in your Lordships' House. Uppermost in our minds as we reflect upon that peace must be the astonishing events in Eastern Europe, events which continue to surprise and move us daily. But there are other areas of the world where the course of events continues to trouble us. It is about two such areas that I should like to speak this afternoon.
The first area is El Salvador. We were shocked at the recent news of the murder of six Jesuit priests who were leading teachers in the Roman Catholic Church in El Salvador. There are now reports that the Anglican Episcopal Church is also under threat.

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Nineteen members of that Church have been detained and their whereabouts are not known. A press release today from the Archbishop of Canterbury's office expresses the concern that we feel for them. I press the Government to make urgent inquiries about what has happened to them. We are concerned to know their whereabouts and to be assured of their safety, and concerned that pressure should be brought to bear to ensure their release.
The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States has written to the President of El Salvador, and the Primate of the Anglican Church in Canada, one of whose citizens has been detained, has requested his government to call for accountability from the Government of El Salvador for those acts. Officially it is denied that the El Salvador National Guard is involved, but that does not absolve the El Salvador Government from responsibility for ensuring the safety and release of those people.
However, it is about another part of the world that I wish chiefly to speak this afternoon —the strife-torn and devastated country of Cambodia. The Government have committed themselves to play their part in the search for a settlement in Cambodia. I welcome the commitment given in the gracious Speech and repeated by the Minister in opening the debate this afternoon. I should like to add my congratulations to those already expressed to the Minister by the noble Lords, Lord Cledwyn and Lord Bonham-Carter, on the fine opening that he gave to our debate.
The search for a settlement in Cambodia is undertaken in the context of a country ruined first by the United States bombing during the Vietnam war and then, more completely, by the repressive, violent and barbaric regime of the Khmer Rouge under its inhumane and notorious leader, Pol Pot. Noble Lords need no reminding of the horrors of that regime, and if I recall them it is only in order to express the sense of revulsion and outrage which we felt when first the news of Cambodia's suffering under Pol Pot reached Europe.
I well remember the disbelief with which we heard this story. It was a story not merely of mass execution and murder but of the systematic destruction of dams and canals, of roads and markets; the systematic closing of hospitals and schools; the desecration of temples and holy places; the destruction of all that made possible an ordered and settled existence. Those who were not killed —and between 1 million and 2 million were said to be killed —were left desperately clinging to life, starved and overworked, without the means to sustain even the vestiges of a normal life. When we heard that story, many of us recalled another devastation —that perpetrated by Nazi Germany during the holocaust. It seemed to us that here was another grim addition to the list of crimes against humanity, for we were all diminished in our humanity by those catastrophic and traumatic events brought about by a savage and inhumane regime.
When the Khmer Rouge were ousted by the Vietnamese invasion in 1979, whatever our feelings about the politics of the situation we surely felt that a scourge had been removed from the Cambodian
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people and that never again would they suffer under Pol Pot. Yet today it seems that the unthinkable might be about to happen. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge are involved in a civil war against the existing government of Hun Sen. Moreover, they are involved with the apparent legitimacy of a share in the coalition which holds the Cambodian seat at the United Nations and of being named as participants in a possible interim government which the United Nations would like to see established in Cambodia. That is despite the frequent condemnations by the Government and many others of the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge and the repeated intention that the Khmer Rouge must never again be allowed to rule in Cambodia —an intention repeated by the Minister in opening the debate.
But the people of Cambodia today are frightened —indeed terrified —that Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge may once again come to power. It seems that events are drifting and that that is happening because there is a gap between the words and the deeds, between the intentions expressed and the actions to bring those intentions to reality. The reason for that gap is clear. It is the hostility towards the Vietnamese invasion of and rule within Cambodia —a hostility which continues to be projected on to the present government of Hun Sen despite the Vietnamese withdrawal from the country.
The result of that hostility is the continuing support for the coalition's seat at the United Nations, which means that it is the killers who are representing their victims. From that follows the denial of development aid from the United Nations to a desperately needy country —the only third world country not to receive such United Nations aid. It results in the support given in aid to the border camps —support which will inevitably reach the Khmer Rouge forces. It results in the continuing supply of arms from China to the coalition forces under Prince Sihanouk—forces which include the Khmer Rouge.
I welcome the recent announcement by the Foreign Secretary which indicates a change in the Government's policy towards Cambodia. That includes the sending of a diplomatic mission to Cambodia, the provision of aid through United Nations and development agencies to Cambodia and the acknowledgment of the Vietnamese withdrawal from that country.
But the major objectives have still not been met. Those must surely be, first, the isolation of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge from the other parties in the coalition so that the parties led by Prince Sihanouk and the former Prime Minister, Son Sann, may again become involved in Cambodia without any fear of a Khmer Rouge return. Surely the major thrust of policy must be to ensure that the Khmer Rouge never again take part in the government of that country.
The second major objective must be the provision of that substantial aid which is needed through the United Nations. It is surely a nonsense that £13 million worth of aid is channelled to some 300,000 people in the border camps while £1 million is channelled to the 7 million population of the

43
country. As a consequence of that policy, 145 in every 1,000 children in Cambodia die before reaching their first birthday.
The chief concern of the Church in relation to Cambodia is not so much the political situation but the need and desire of the ordinary people of the country to rebuild their lives and their society. The Church's agencies wish to work in co-operation with them to enable that to happen but it cannot happen without a proper political framework. It is for that reason that I, a layman in the world of politics, dare to suggest some political moves which, in the Church's view, might enable an ordered society with space for personal fulfilment to be sustained.
Such a policy would need to stop any supply of arms through Thailand to the coalition and at the same time any supply of arms to the present Hun Sen Government. It should bring about a United Nations supervised cease-fire. It should recognise the Hun Sen Government as the de facto government of the country and one which is beginning to be recognised as having accomplished some impressive achievements with slender resources. It should exclude the Khmer Rouge from any recognition as a participant in an interim government. It should enable the United Nations to prepare for supervised elections and it should press for the visit of a United Nations development programme mission to the country.
I accept that of those proposals the most contentious is the recognition of the Hun Sen Government. However, I quote some words the New York Times noted in yesterday's International Herald Tribune, which seemed to me to express the sentiments of many of us:
"The Hun Sen government still lacks legitimacy, but is clearly preferable to another round of Khmer Rouge killing."
The article goes on to say that a Khmer Rouge involvement:
"before the vote guarantees that there will be no elections".
This policy is hindered by the continuing presence of the Khmer Rouge at the United Nations within the coalition. The British Government are well placed, as the only Western power on the Security Council without a previous involvement in Cambodia's history, to press for such a policy and for the removal of the Khmer Rouge from any United Nations' recognition. It is clear not only that the people of Cambodia fear Pol Pot's return but that they have grounds for such fear. Recently a Christian Aid representative spent time in the country and returned with the report that many of the people whom she met were convinced that the Khmer Rouge were returning. It is to the voices and apprehensions of the people of Cambodia that we should listen at this grave and critical moment in their history.
3.52 p.m.
Lord Home of the Hirsel: My Lords, the right reverend Prelate, whose speech I am glad to follow, said at the start that the main theme of this debate must inevitably be the events in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. With his understanding, I shall return to that theme. It is not that I do not have a
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great deal of sympathy with what he said about Cambodia. I spent a number of years in the 1960s trying to induce the Soviet Union to join with other countries to secure the neutralisation or non-alignment of the South-East Asian countries. The Americans were drawn into the problem and they lived to regret it bitterly, and I think that they will never want to intervene again in the land mass of Asia. So we have to realise the limitations of power in that area. Nevertheless, should the Khmer Rouge inherit the power, I am bound to say that I should feel very anxious for the Cambodian people. No doubt my noble friend who is to wind up the debate will have taken note of what the right reverend Prelate had to say.
Lately I heard a very experienced and distinguished American diplomat describe his country's view of Mr. Gorbachev's Russia and Eastern Europe as "seeing through a glass darkly". In his opening speech my noble friend Lord Brabazon used the analogy of the looking glass. We in Europe are closer geographically to the sea but the effect of Mr. Gorbachev's reforms —glasnost and perestroika—have been so convulsive economically, politically and socially, that it is extremely difficult if not impossible to point a clear way ahead. That is doubtless the reason why the two men who perhaps matter most in this context of East-West relations —President Bush and President Gorbachev —have decided to meet without an agenda and to feel their way ahead in the hope of discovering scope for joint action in relation to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The decision may be undramatic but I think that it is infinitely wise at this stage.
Chancellor Kohl and the Prime Minister of East Germany, the two principals on the continent of Europe, have decided to follow that pattern. Following the dramatic exodus from East Germany there was speculation about the prospects of a rapidly united Germany. I believe that second thoughts were wiser in insisting that the priority, as the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition said, must be to achieve democratic elections in East Germany and to design a constitution and institutional machinery which will carry the democratic responsibilities which they hope to achieve.
There has been an explosive revolution and revulsion expressed by millions against the demoralising philosophy and practice of communism. Understandably that has been accompanied by waves of euphoria in anticipation of the freedoms of which those people of Eastern Europe have been deprived for so long. But now for those countries in Eastern Europe hard and calculating decisions lie ahead. The first and most daunting of them all is whether any kind of power-sharing with the Communists is possible or indeed desirable. The Communists are clearly reluctant to concede power and it may well be that a coalition between people desiring freedom and the Communists who have so far held the power is a contradiction in terms.
I think that it is quite impossible for anybody outside Eastern Europe to help very much in that respect. There will need to be the highest quality of

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leadership and statesmanship shown in each of those countries because there is no common blueprint which can be applied to all. We hope that that leadership and statesmanship will be forthcoming if they are to carry through successfully the months and possibly years of economic and political reconstruction. We must pray that that will be so because the future stability of the whole of that vast area depends upon it.
With hindsight it has become clear that the main motive for Mr. Gorbachev's reforms was economic. The centrally directed economy of the Soviet Union and the satellite countries has reduced the area to bankruptcy. There is no prospect of recovery unless the Soviet Union is helped and assisted from outside by the capitalist world. An enormous programme of reconstruction will be needed and some are talking of a plan as ambitious as the Marshall Plan. I believe that a plan of such scope will probably be necessary.
If Mr. Gorbachev's reforms are to show results —which surely is strongly in the interests of the Western democracies —I think that something on the scale of a Marshall Plan of economic aid will be required. But that concept would undoubtedly be much more acceptable to the Western capitalist world if Mr. Gorbachev could lift the menacing cloud which has hung over Europe for decades by reducing the conventional forces of weaponry in the Warsaw Pact to a point where the threat of aggression would be seen to be removed. I believe that that would make the whole difference to the situation.
The concept of hard cash for security, put in the way in which I have put it, is perhaps rather crude, but I have a feeling that reality will demand it and it is the price that we have to pay if we are to gain a peace which is real and lasting.
I make the point because Mr. Gorbachev has now been in office as Prime Minister and President of his country for four and half years. Yet when I look at the statistics for Russian tanks in the Warsaw Pact compared with those in the NATO alliance, there is still an overwhelming strength on the Russian side. If he wished, Mr. Gorbachev could reduce that threat tomorrow.
I hope that the negotiations between the President of the United States and Mr. Gorbachev will be fruitful. However, there is one way in which success may perhaps be assured. It is the link between economic assistance for the Soviet Union, in which Mr. Gorbachev must be intensely interested, and disarmament, of which he has very great control.
I have no more to say today. I was brought up in the political school which held that if you had nothing to say, do not say it. With that I shall close. I hope that the debates in this House and in another place will clarify the situation and introduce us into a more hopeful age in which there really will be accommodation, and when confrontation between East and West will cease in favour of co-operation over a wide field.
4.3 p.m.
Lord Callaghan of Cardiff: My Lords, I follow the noble Lord, Lord Home, immediately in saying, as he did, that one of the greatest sources of trust
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and confidence in Europe would be if there were a reduction in arms in the most heavily militarised part of the world —that is, in central Europe. Like the noble lord, I trust that the conventional forces negotiations that are now taking place in Vienna will be brought to a rapid conclusion. As he said, if the Soviet Union were to destroy the 30,000 tanks which it has put on the table now, and if the 320,000 Soviet troops were to be withdrawn —and these are both practical propositions —I believe that there would be a very strong case, quite apart from other motives, for a huge attempt to restore the economies of the Eastern European countries. They would not be restored by money alone. Indeed, the burdens that would be required are so great that I wonder whether it would be possible to devise a Marshall Plan, given some of the difficulties of the West; but the effort should be made. I strongly support what the noble Lord said.
I have no more to say about defence this afternoon except to put a related question to the noble Earl, Lord Arran, who will reply. He will remember our exchanges last week when the noble Baroness,Lady Jeger, asked a Question about war widows' pensions. I wrote to him afterwards on this matter. I believe that there is a great deal of interest in this House on the subject. I should be much obliged if when he winds up tonight he could say something further about the consideration that he promised. If he has something favourable to say, we shall all be delighted to wait to hear him, however late it is.
I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Holderness, on being selected as the mover of the humble Address to Her Majesty. If I may say so, he is an old friend. Like many others, I have always admired his modesty, unselfishness and sense of public obligation. Admittedly, he is led astray from time to time. He had some odd words to say about the social charter yesterday. But I have no doubt that his good sense will, as always, return him to the straight and narrow path in due course.
I should like to say a word about the phrase which was used by my noble friend Lord Cledwyn, who said so much with which I agree. He asked: will events outstrip our capacity to manage them? I should like to put one or two thoughts before the House about the way in which we might strive to keep control in what is, I utterly agree, a gathering crescendo of change.
Until now the cold war, together with Moscow's iron grip on the satellite countries, have kept many of Europe's ancient feuds and antagonisms in the deep freeze. The Brezhnev doctrine proclaimed the Soviet Union's right to intervene in the internal affairs of the satellite countries if the communist hegemony was challenged; and it did not hesitate to do so. Mr. Gorbachev has now withdrawn from that position. Each country, he says, is free to go its own way. We give three cheers for that. But we should also remember that the ending of the doctrine could lead to a revival of some of these ancient and long sustained deep-rooted differences. The very freedom of speech and opinion that is a part of democracy can lead to an expression of a very ugly form of nationalism, to the fomenting of the grievances of the ethnic minorities, with the consequential unrest,

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violence and even worse. We have seen some of it already. Indeed, some would say that there is a danger of the Balkanisation of Eastern Europe; for some of these countries, let us remember, do not have the long experience of the conventions and restraints that a democratic system imposes. So far as possible, Europe must manage these changes.
I agree with my noble friend that there is a danger amid the exhilarating and breath-taking events that we have all welcomed that the countervailing difficulties that may arise as communism recedes will demand the utmost attention from us. I make this tentative suggestion. One way would be for the whole of Europe to embark upon a properly structured dialogue to exchange ideas. I suggest that a possible forum would be to revive the conference on security and co-operation in Europe which took place largely during the time that I was Foreign Secretary between 1973 and 1975 and resulted in the Helsinki Agreements. Not enough attention is paid to the consequences of those agreements, which among other things gave a notable holding line for dissidents in Eastern Europe; a charter against which they could measure the deeds of their own rulers and which enabled them to expose the iniquities and shortcomings in some of the communist countries.
There were also many other issues in the Helsinki Agreements. But —I remind the House of the procedure —those discussions and negotiations were not intended to result in an international treaty. They ended in a series of political engagements and declarations unanimously agreed by the signatory states. Every European state took part, together with the United States, Canada, and of course the Soviet Union, but not the European Community. Now that another 13 or 14 years have expired, that omission could be remedied.
It has been largely forgotten that the final act of the conference was to declare that the member states should continue the multilateral processes initiated by the conference by proceeding to a thorough exchange of views on the deepening of their mutual relations, the improvement of security and the development of co-operation in Europe by organising meetings among their representatives to achieve those ends. That was the follow-up paragraph of the CSCE.
If there is, as I believe, a case for starting a structured dialogue on those issues, the CSCE would be a suitable forum in which to focus discussions on a debate which has already begun. I believe that the European Community should be a participant in its own right. It may lead to a greater understanding of the difficulties of each country and of its aspirations. In time it may lead to the discussion of Europe's future security arrangements. I realise that such a conference would need careful planning. However, I envisage that it could mark the beginning of the construction of a new concert of Europe whose prime aim would be to agree an acceptable political framework guaranteed by a credible security system.
I do not believe that such a conference would interfere with or slow down the current discussions between the European Community and East European or other states about association or other
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arrangements. But it may lead to the emergence of a clearer picture of the future role of the European Community. I have no doubt that the Community will be the major force in Europe's development and the centre of gravity for all European states. But so far we are unclear about the development of its relations with EFTA, the neutrals or the non-aligned in Europe. They all exist. In the CSCE there is an instrument ready at hand to discuss the problems. It may lead —as I think is likely —to a closely co-operating group of states making up the core of the European Community and an outer ring of nations with fewer obligations. In that case, I trust that Britain will be inside the central core.
The gracious Speech assured us that the Government will work to complete the single market. However, as the Government understand, much more work on that is required. If Britain is to have much influence on the future shape of the European continent, I believe that the Prime Minister needs to change her style. At present it is not productive towards securing the influence of this country which is commensurate with our real strength. For example, we should now take the initiative in starting discussions on the necessary action to join the European exchange rate mechanism. We should play a full and constructive role in examining the Delors proposals. I agree that in some respect they are futuristic but they contain the seeds of the greater integration necessary for the welfare of our people and the prosperity of Europe as a whole.
Finally, I shall say a few words about the future of the two Germanies. As was said by the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, whether we like it or not unification is on the agenda. The Federal Republic of Germany, and even more when united with East Germany, will form the dominant political and military power in Europe. We have always assumed, as have some noble Lords who have spoken today, that, given the opportunity, the people of East and West Germany will plump for unity. That may still be the case, although I am not as certain as I always was. However, in the changed face of Europe it will be for the two Germanies to decide; that is subject to certain conditions being fulfilled some of which have already been mentioned.
I point out to the House that, 44 years after the end of World War II, there is still no peace treaty between Germany and the allied powers; the Soviet Union, the United States, the United Kingdom and France. That could turn out to be a cause of instability in the new emerging Europe. It is a most sensitive question which embodies not only the relations between the Soviet Union and the former allied powers but also the future borders of Germany. We must pick our way with care and choose our words carefully. Some people say, "Let sleeping dogs lie". However, as has been said, they are already awake.
I remind the House that the official position of the Bonn Government is that Germany's borders remain those of 1937; that is to say, reincorporating into Germany what is now partly Polish and partly Soviet territories. However, a proviso has been made by the Bonn Government, that that will remain its position unless and until a peace treaty leads to an

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alteration. Western powers —ourselves and others —have gone along with that formulation but are by no means committed to it. Here lies a wicked prospect for discord.
I speak with due appreciation of the difficulties arising from what I shall say but it is easier to say by those not in government than by those in government. It would contribute to the stability of Europe if the Bonn Government declared that it finally, completely and unreservedly recognised the present de facto position of the border along the Oder-Neisse line as Germany's definitive border and it firmly renounced the 1937 borders. Incidentally, that would also help Mr. Gorbachev with many of his other difficulties.
There is a second condition to be fulfilled. Is it not an extraordinary development that, in the hope of saving its skin, the Communist Party in East Germany should find it necessary to promise free elections, independent courts, autonomous trade unions, a liberal press and independent scrutiny of the security forces? They have opposed all those things for many years. Those reforms must be carried through. I speak in the context of those who talk of the reunification of Germany. The emergency party conference, called by the Communist Party for 11th December in order to debate those proposals, will be a test of its good faith. But if free elections are held and a democratic government is established in East Germany, and if the definition of the borders in Germany is finally resolved, it will then become possible to discuss a peace treaty. I agree that there are several "ifs". As was said today by the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, what was once inconceivable is now commonplace. Twelve months ago I would not have believed that what I have suggested this afternoon could swim into the public agenda. I believe that if it is not already there it will be upon us in a short time.
I wish to make clear that any attempt to unify the two Germanies in the absence of those two conditions will create massive insecurity. If unification is to occur, and does so as a result of the free choice of the German people, I submit to your Lordships that it must follow and not precede a peace treaty. Who should sign such a treaty? It will be necessary for the leaders of what will be two democratic states of Germany to do so. Joint signatures will help to stabilise their relations with each other. That will free the way for a decision to be taken by them as regards the two Germanies; that is whether they wish to proceed separately or together. It will lead to the withdrawal from Berlin of Soviet, American, British and French troops.
I do not believe that all that lies a long way ahead. I know that the Western powers have been nervous about discussing these matters but I do not hesitate to bring them before your Lordships. I am convinced that the settlement of the future of the two Germanies and their relations with their neighbours and the Soviet Union is the key element in the construction of a new concert of Europe.
4.20 p.m.
Lord Walston: My Lords, we are indeed privileged in this House to be able to listen to speeches such as
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we have heard today from two highly distinguished and experienced Foreign Secretaries, with yet another Foreign Secretary, the noble Lord, Lord Stewart of Fulham, taking part, as are many others of your Lordships who have great experience and distinction in the matters which we are discussing today. Indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, and other speakers have said, this is an exciting and frightening time, but a time full of opportunity and potential for good as well as for evil.
We must realise what a great debt we owe to those wise statesmen who, 40 or 50 years ago, had the concept of the European Community. They realised then the problems which one day would arise, long after they had died, as regards Europe as a whole, world peace and the eventual probability of reunification of Germany. They realised, as did all of us who in our different small ways supported the concept of Europe, that close though our relations were with the United States and great though the power was of the United States and the Soviet Union, something else was needed besides that. The form of government of the Soviet Union at that time, and indeed today, is quite alien to what we stand for here. While the United States has much in common with us, it lacks —and it is just as much aware of this as we are —the centuries of history on which our experience and, I like to believe, our wisdom is based.
It was no good thinking that the individual countries of Europe, the great powers —this country, France, Germany and Italy —could carry the weight that the super powers inevitably would carry and are carrying today. The only way in which the combined wisdom and experience of Europe could be brought into effect and have its impact upon world affairs is by Europe working closely together as one Europe and formulating its own policies. Those policies are frequently similar to those of our friends and allies in the United States but do not always slavishly follow what is said by that great super power.
I hope that I am not being unduly chauvinistic in saying that for Europe to succeed —and although it has had its drawbacks, slownesses and hurdles to overcome, it is succeeding —it is necessary for the voice, wisdom and experience of this country to be heard and to be listened to in Europe itself.
Sadly, we are very close to becoming, economically speaking, the sick man of Europe. I do not wish to encroach on the economic debate which will take place shortly, nor do I wish to descend into party politics. However, there is no getting away from the fact that today, when we compare ourselves with Germany, France or even Italy, we have a higher rate of inflation, the worst balance of payments and higher unemployment than any of them. Therefore, it is not surprising that our voice is not listened to with the respect which we should like and which our great experience warrants.
However, there is another aspect to this problem which is far too often forgotten. We are the only member of the European Economic Community which has ties, and very close ties, with a vast range of countries in other parts of the world and largely in what is called the third world. Of course, I refer

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to the British Commonwealth of Nations. We in this country cherish our ancient monuments. Many of us feel that we do not pay enough attention to them or devote enough resources to them. However, for all that, we believe that we have a national heritage which should be preserved. I suggest to your Lordships that the Commonwealth is one of our great national heritages.
There have been other empires as great as the British Empire; for example, the Roman Empire, the Spanish Empire and the Austrian Empire. They have gone. They have left some architectural and literary monuments but they have left no monuments of their empires as such. Those who presided over what has sometimes been called the dissolution of the British Empire had far more vision. They had a vision similar to that of the founding partners of the European Economic Community. With help from other members of the Commonwealth, they have created the British Commonwealth which now embraces something close to one-quarter or even one-third of the total population of the whole world, and comprises 49 different countries. Indeed, it is a Commonwealth upon which the sun never sets. It is not, as some of those say who rejoice in denigrating such matters, an odd assembly of undemocratic, single party, racialist states intent upon their own advancement or the advancement of their own politicians riddled with corruption and inefficiency. It is not that at all.
Of course, there are things which go on in Commonwealth countries which we do not like. There are things which go on in this country which we do not like. We cannot pretend that we in this country are a model of Westminster democracy when for 10 years we have been governed by a party which received 42 per cent. of the votes of the electors and which today is continuing to lose support among its own members. We cannot hold ourselves up as a model of democracy or, alas, as a model of complete freedom with a lack of racial prejudice or any of the other matters which we condemn certain of our fellow members of the Commonwealth for practising.
Do not let us try to find fault in a small way or even in a large way with other people or, indeed, with ourselves. My remarks are not made for that reason. I mention those matters solely to suggest to your Lordships that the criticisms of members of the Commonwealth which are now becoming increasingly fashionable are not well founded.
It is sad to look back not so many months now to the meeting of the Commonwealth heads of government in Kuala Lumpur. What the people remember about that primarily is the argument over South Africa. However, perhaps I may read to your Lordships the comments of a distinguished journalist who was present at that meeting and who writes:
"It has to be pointed out that although South Africa has once more been made to appear in this country as the subject that dominated the conference once again, the fact is that the Heads of Government spent less than five hours in a six-day meeting discussing the subject …
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"They had much more on their minds than that one subject—they wanted to talk about drugs, climatic change, debt, the incredible changes in the relationships between the super-powers and so forth …
"The other 45 leaders had all gone to Kuala Lumpur agreeing to disagree with Mrs. Thatcher on sanctions. No one wanted a fight again and they were deeply upset to find themselves forced into one".
The Commonwealth is far more than a meeting of people once every few years whose job it is to argue about sanctions against South Africa. They have far more important things to talk about than that. I would remind your Lordships that there are not only the meetings of the heads of government every year or so but that they have periodic meetings of finance ministers, health ministers, law ministers, education ministers, ministers concerned with women's affairs, with youth and with labour, and of course with industry, trade and agriculture. They meet together to discuss all these matters, reach agreement and formulate policies for mutual benefit.
There are various bureaux —the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureau, the Commonwealth Foundation, the Parliamentary Association, as many of your Lordships know —and so on. This commonwealth of nations is a real and living entity. The greatest contribution that we can make to the councils of our colleagues and partners in Europe is that when we come there we bring with us the experience and advice that we receive from these 48 other nations that comprise the Commonwealth.
When we have to help to solve the problems that other noble Lords have already mentioned —and that I am sure those who come after us will increasingly be speaking about —let us not take a defeatist attitude. Let us not say, "Poor old Britain. It is now a third-rate power. It has to play second or third fiddle to its partners in Europe. Nobody listens to it any longer because of its economic decline". That is not so. We still have a major role to play, and part of the importance of that role is our association with the Commonwealth.
I would ask your Lordships to do all in your power —and I would ask Her Majesty's Government to do all in their power —to promote yet further, and create yet closer, ties with the Commonwealth, not only for our sake (and that is important enough) but for the sake of the influence that, through the European Community, we as a member of the Commonwealth can bring to bear on the solution of all these exciting, dangerous and important problems that confront us.
4.33 p.m.
Lord Zuckerman: My Lords, at the outset perhaps I may apologise to your Lordships that I have to absent myself from part of the debate. However, like the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, I sincerely trust that I shall be here at its conclusion.
I think that all of us who have listened to the previous contributions to this debate will agree that it is impossible at the present moment to predict the eventual outcome of the upheavals in Eastern Europe. I had at least hoped when the debate started that we would all agree that no one, no Western power, was going to attempt to exacerbate the

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disturbances, upheavals and changes that are now taking place. I had also hoped, using the words that the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, used, that the question of the boundaries of Europe was not on the present agenda. He disagreed with that. Here I must say that I agree totally with what the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, said on the subject. Until a peace treaty is signed I can see no point even in raising the question of redrawing the boundaries of Western Europe as agreed at the Yalta Conference.
This of course —and this has been said by many —is not the time to lower our guard. That, however, does not mean that we should maintain it without realising that our opponents—mainly the Warsaw Pact powers —have changed, or are changing, their stance. The Vienna negotiations on conventional forces and the START negotiations in Geneva, which were resumed more or less at the same time, were immensely important when they were launched. If they were important then, they are, as the noble Lords, Lord Home of the Hirsel and Lord Callaghan, have said, more important now.
It is six months since President Bush declared that an agreement should be sought in Vienna in the space of a year. I found it therefore rather amazing to read in The Times of less than a week ago that Mr. Tom King, the Secretary of State for Defence, does not believe that the present CFE negotiations will lead to dramatic changes in NATO's military posture, and that no one has yet worked out what impact possible cuts will have on members of the Alliance.
If President Bush and Mr. Gorbachev —not to mention the peoples of this country, of Western Europe, of the United States and the Warsaw Pact powers —are not to be bitterly disappointed a lot of work has to be done quickly. One can only suppose that when he spoke Mr. King was unaware of the news coming out of Washington —and not only leaks from the White House but Mr. Cheney's own speech —that the United States is considering even deeper cuts than those proposed by President Bush six months ago: cuts not only in numbers but cuts in actual armaments, discontinuing certain major and costly projects, and cutting defence expenditure.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Home, about the importance of seeing that disarmament or arms control —whatever we wish to call it —goes hand in hand in our consideration of the changes now taking place in Eastern Europe. I do not believe that significant political changes will take place unless there are parallel changes in the military postures of the two sides.
Perhaps I may remind your Lordships that the aim of the Vienna talks is to reduce the dangers of military confrontation and to eliminate the possibilities of surprise attack by achieving a balance of forces of the two sides at a reduced level. The level will have to be reduced differentially by restructuring forces, by eliminating asymmetries, and by changing deployments.
Because of the nuclear environment I am one of those who over the past 30 years have never believed that there was any chance of an attack by either side except, it is conceivable, by inadvertence. There is
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far less reason today to believe in a possible surprise attack from either side. Therefore the time is now ripe to undertake real measures of arms control without hazarding our security. The public has been promised for too long that such measures are on the way, and it has been disillusioned.
There is disillusionment now about what is happening to the US-USSR agreement to eliminate the dangers of chemical warfare. The news that I have heard is that the US has now proposed an 80 per cent. reduction in stocks of chemical weapons, with production continuing of the more modern binary chemical systems. One may well ask: against whom are these weapons being designed and whom are they going to strike? The US is not going to strike the USSR with chemical weapons. Surely this is no way to encourage other countries to desist from chemical warfare.
I find the nuclear problem of much greater importance. It emerged in congressional testimony four years ago that NATO planners have pinpointed some 18,000 short and mid-range Warsaw Pact targets for nuclear destruction, of which 2,000 were designated as priority targets. I am not exaggerating because these are the figures, and they mean total nonsense. One can only suppose that the Russians have a complementary list. The planners operate in an unreal world. It is to be hoped that General Galvin, the present supreme commander of NATO, has since reduced the size of his target list.
Many of those targets were in Poland and in the east of East Germany and therefore well beyond the range of the short-range so-called battlefield weapons to which the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos, referred in his address. Those targets were assigned to the so-called strategic weapons target list. I hope I am safe in assuming that the START negotiators in Geneva have removed them from the list.
But much more urgent is the need to realise that the issue of eliminating shorter-range nuclear weapons—the so-called third zero option —has been vaporised by recent events. Now that West and East German citizens are mingling freely across what was once a solid wall, these weapons have become even more pointless militarily than they were before. I was interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, indicate more or less the same thing on television the other night.
We now have to realise that the very people at whom NATO nuclear weapons are targeted are the ones who today are demonstrating for democracy. Nuclear weapons will not discriminate between them and the leaders whom they are trying to displace. Nuclear weapons will not help anybody to achieve the freedom they demand and what we take for granted.
Less than a month ago the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, asked a Question about the Government's attitude to a resumption of talks to transform the partial test ban treaty into a comprehensive ban. The noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, replied and told him that it remains a long-term goal of Her Majesty's Government to achieve such a transformation. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, then reminded your Lordships that he

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was the Minister who at the time represented the United Kingdom at the talks which led up to the 1963 treaty. I was his scientific adviser at the talks.
I remember every moment of those nearly three weeks when we sat around the table arguing about commas and full stops in a document that had been prepared for the final discussion. The noble and learned Lord went on to say that he believed that while nuclear weapons exist,
"there is not the slightest possibility whatever of the nuclear powers agreeing to a total ban on tests underground".—[Official Report, 7/11/89; col. 542.]
As scientific adviser to the noble and learned Lord at the time, I agree with him that then there was no such chance. There was no chance of the US and the USSR agreeing to a total ban, but I would differ from him now in the present situation.
He will recall, as I do, that Harold Macmillan, the Prime Minister of the day —the late Lord Stockton —was passionately concerned to achieve a comprehensive test ban. We failed because we were only the junior partner in the negotiations and in the discussions that went before the final talks. We had little influence on the eventual outcome. We knew then that a partial ban on testing would not stop the nuclear arms race. Underground testing has helped it to accelerate.
I have to ask: to what benefit to anybody, from the point of view of security, has the nuclear arms race been over the past 20 years? Mr. Macmillan had told President Eisenhower as long ago as about 1960 that half-a-dozen or so strikes against about six of our major cities by megaton bombs in the existing stockpile would be enough to destroy England. Whatever modernisation of megaton warheads has taken place in the past 30 years, they would do so today. Nuclear deterrence was as real as it is today.
Nor has the elaboration of battlefield weapons of the kind to which we now refer concerning the third zero option helped any field commander to fight his battle against a similarly armed opponent. It is a fallacy that one can fight with nuclear weapons. Their existence deters but their use would not defend. The concept of an exchange of nuclear weapons on European soil is a hangover from the early days of NATO when we in the West had a monopoly of nuclear weapons, and also of the days before our military leaders realised that their destructive effects excluded them from the category of usable weapons. It is worth noting that Mr. McNamara —the architect of what we regard as the present policy of NATO —in the two words "flexible response" has rejected them totally over the past few years. He does not believe that flexible response is a meaningful policy when its final step would be the use of nuclear weapons.
In those early days the main argument against concluding a test ban was the problem of verification. At the time Mr. Macmillan believed that the issue was being exaggerated. I was sent with the noble Lord, Lord Penney —a Member of your Lordships' House —to the United States twice to argue that our seismologists were content with the existing situation; but we lost that debate.
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Today, verification of underground tests —that is, the differentiation between an underground disturbance due to a small nuclear explosion and a natural event —is no problem at all, right down to such small limits of kilotonnage that do not matter. There are those who say that we can go down to a single kilotonne now. It is not only the seismological techniques that have improved; it is a fact that the USA and the USSR have allowed their respective bomb experts to calibrate their testing grounds for underground background noise. It is even reported that they have offered each other the use of their underground hideouts for testing each other's bombs.
Testing is not carried out as a routine measure to ensure that nuclear weapons in stockpiles will go off if fired, as one noble Lord seemed to think was the reason for testing in the exchanges which took place when the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, put his Question. Testing continues today because political leaders on all sides have not yet had the courage to put a stop to the design of new weapons which, whatever their purpose, would make little or no difference to the strategic position of East and West.
Where I differ from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, therefore is in the view that the two super-powers would never be prepared today for a programmed end to testing. Mr. Gorbachev imposed a unilateral moratorium on testing at the time of the INF Treaty and maintained it for nearly two years until it became clear that the United States was not going to follow suit. In 1987, 128 nations voted in the General Assembly for resumption of negotiations to achieve CTB. We, the United States and France, voted against. The USSR was among the 128 in favour. Today a carefully prepared programmed plan for stopping tests has been sent to the White House and to Congress by a group of US experts headed by Cyrus Vance, a previous deputy Secretary for Defence and Secretary of State. I hope it is being carefully considered. A START agreement in Geneva today, without a promise to end testing, will be a poor thing.
I have followed the nuclear debate for too long to be starry-eyed about the future. However, I believe that however long it takes to bring about a CTB, unless the USSR and the US mutually decide how to end their bilateral nuclear arms race and to reduce their stockpiles —the last thing I suggest is a total reduction of nuclear stockpiles —the dream of ex-President Reagan remains a dream today, as it was then. I do not believe that other nuclear power states are likely to move; and non-nuclear states will continue to believe that there is some merit in becoming nuclear powers, unless the US and USSR bilaterally decide to bring about the cessation of tests and the reduction of stockpiles. I go further. Only if the two superpowers act together will there be a chance that the non-proliferation treaty will be renewed in its present form when it comes up for review in 1995.
We should bear in mind that today's world of emerging nationalism is far more hazardous than the one of the late 'sixties when the non-proliferation treaty was concluded. We should not over-emphasise the unique influence that the UK can exercise alone

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in these matters. It will be time to consider our own and the French position as nuclear powers when the US and the USSR act together to reduce —to eliminate if possible —the nuclear menace and to help restrain regional military conflicts.
We are powerless now to do more than cheer them on as they reach their conclusions. My own conclusion is simply this. I believe that in the light of what we have been listening to about events in the Warsaw Pact countries, and in the light of the economic and environmental problems that affect us all, the military confrontation between East and West has become an anachronism.
4.57 p.m.
Viscount Eccles: My Lords, there is no one in your Lordships' House who knows more about nuclear weapons than my noble friend Lord Zuckerman and probably no one who knows less than I do. I hope therefore he will excuse me if I do not follow him but return to Europe.
It alas suddenly become very fashionable to say that this country must join the EMS without delay. I wonder whether that is anything more than a desire to have a dig at the Prime Minister or is it based on a belated understanding of how the EMS works. I asked a number of prominent people —ex-Ministers and the like —if they would explain to me just how EMS would affect our exchange, our interest and inflation rates. I did not receive a single clear answer. In fact the pro-Delors lobby reminded me of Cardinal Newman's great hymn:
"I do not ask to see
The distant scene: one step enough for me".
That will not do. The turbulent events inside Russia and the consequential events outside Russia make it essential to re-examine the distant scene. Tomorrow, Europe is not going to be like it was only yesterday when the full details of the Delors' plan were put on the table. Therefore one asks: what effect should these dramatic changes have on the institutions which are being designed to accompany the single market in 1992? One has to see how the world is changing. Today power is being redistributed faster than at any time in history. The technological revolution has been making every nation dependent not just upon its neighbours but also upon the whole world. That is a process which cannot be arrested; it has much further to go.
The most pressing problems we shall all have to face will be less and less national, or even continental; for example, exchange rates, world agriculture, the environment, terrorism, aid to less developed countries, nuclear weapons and human rights. Would the integration of Western Europe be a useful step on the way to dealing with such global problems? Alternatively should we go straight for groups like the G7, which are so much more practical because they reflect the world distribution of power?
To deal with the consequence of President Gorbachev's reforms, new alliances will have to be negotiated. Harold. Macmillan said that any worthwhile alliance was always held together by fear. What are we afraid of today? The threat of Soviet aggression is much reduced. Leadership, being no
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longer so closely tied to military power, gravitates to economic strength: to Japan in the Pacific and to Germany in Europe. Is that latter movement something to be afraid of? Not if Germany, as we all believe, has learnt the lesson of the two wars and not if a revised NATO takes account of the shift in the nature and spread of power.
I cannot see how America could be left out of the revised treaty, nor how the alliance would work if in the future it did not embrace economic as well as military co-operation. Further, if the door is to be left open for the former Communist states to join, it must be an alliance of sovereign states. The return of sovereignty is a central objective of the emerging democracies.
Nations inside the USSR, as well as members of the Warsaw Pact, are clamouring for the restoration of their separate historic identities. Estonia, for example, has just asked Moscow to give it back its own currency and its own central bank. That is what the people want. If we gave up our currency and the Bank of England to the Commission in. Brussels, I wonder how long your Lordships think it would be before the British people asked for them back?
Our feelings about sovereignty reflect differences between us and those who live on the other side of the Channel. I wonder whether we are sufficiently alike to work harmoniously with them in institutions where decisions are to be taken by majority voting, and where M. Delors' principle of subsidiarity means in effect that the government in Brussels can decide what are those issues which the governments of the member states can be left to get on with.
It is not good enough to say that we shall accept majority voting because we draw our civilisation from the same roots; that is, Greece, Rome and Christianity. Recent experience has left us with some very important differences. Ireland and Portugal excepted, we are the only one of the Twelve who were not defeated in battle, occupied by the enemy or ravaged by civil war. Their sovereignty did not save them. We believe that our sovereignty saved us. That is a distinction which makes a deep mark on the pride and obstinacy of the British people. Perhaps in defeat one learns a delicate kind of wisdom: one learns not to think so highly of the framework within which the disaster occurred. We have not had to learn that lesson and I am glad for that fact.
There is another difference between us and those who live at any rate in the southern half of the Community. Whenever any national interest —which may be quite trifling — is at stake, they are accustomed to break the rules to which they have put their names. As the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, said today, if a judgment of the European Court goes against them, they disregard this and do absolutely nothing about it. I am not calling your Lordships' attention to the superiority of our respect for the law; I am simply pointing out that their standards are different from ours. If one joins a club with rules which some members keep and others think nothing of breaking, trouble is certain. Therefore those who want us to go the whole way with the Delors plan must not be squeamish.

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They must say openly when they go in that they will play the game in the same self-regarding manner as do the others.
That prospect presents us with a very disagreeable choice which the Prime Minister sees very well and which she very much dislikes. If it were put plainly to the electorate I wonder what they would say. My guess is that the older people would not want to go beyond joining the EMS. On the other hand, those born too late to have had any experience of the last war seem to care less about giving up sovereignty over certain important domestic issues.
A young man told me the other day that he would much rather be a successful European living in Europe with his family than remain an Englishman hanging about these narrow and damp islands. He said, "Money is the thing which I and my friends are after. We think that we could make our fortune quicker if we went all the way into Europe". I told him that, apart from the fact that there are other considerations in life apart from money, he would be able to make his pile just as well if we stop at the single market. However, that was some months ago.
The arguments deployed at the Madrid Summit must be looked at again. The Russian economy is on the verge of collapse, the Warsaw Pact is breaking up and the reunification of Germany is a possibility. Naturally those in the Delors lobby do not want to pause and reconsider the distant scene. They know very well that delay would endanger the implementation of stages two and three. Why do I say that my Lords? I say that because the redistribution of power in Central and Eastern Europe, which is now bound to happen, will make it inevitable that fresh alliances are made between the West and the East.
We should proceed with extreme caution until we know how President Gorbachev's reforms will work out. NATO will have to be revised; and if the new treaty does not embrace economic as well as military co-operation, Europe will become top-heavy and dangerous. What President Gorbachev called our common European home is not viable unless American power is with us to balance the power of central and Eastern Europe.
My conclusions are these: let us help in every way to make a success of the single market in 1992; secondly, although I do not fully understand how it works, let us join the EMS, provided that we can stop there and go no further; and, thirdly and much more important, let us revise NATO in such a way as to leave the sovereign member states free to combine ad hoc among themselves, and with nations outside Europe, to solve the world-wide problems that are now on the horizon. I hope that that view is in line with the Prime Minister's policy. Mrs. Thatcher should be supported in her lonely effort to make British common sense prevail over the irritating ambitions of the Commission in Brussels.
5.11 p.m.
Lord Soper: My Lords, I shall confine what I have to say to the part of the general debate which proceeds from the question of defence. I shall take
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the pacifist position and endeavour to defend it; but the introduction to any profitable debate on what should be done now must be a recognition of the gulf that is now spreading, in view of the collapse of certain elements in the contemporary situation particularly ideollogically, upon which the whole of Western Europe and our environment now largely depend.
Your Lordships have heard this afternoon of elements of achievement. The problem is the opportunity that those achievements, or failures, henceforth present. In that kind of emptiness, I offer evidence to support the proposition that we are in desperate need of fundamental thinking, and particularly fundamental practice.
I shall not add much to what has been said about the mess in which the Communist world finds itself. It is long since that I believed that its failure to recognise the national question, and its commitment to general armed violence, would incapacitate it in the long run. I do not now hear in the open air those old arguments about the dictatorship of the proletariat, "workers of the world unite" and the various propositions about the expropriation of the expropriators. I am sure that in many respects classical Communism is a dead duck. There are of course certain elements in it which are by no means dead.
The underlying concept of Socialism on my reading was far more present in Marx than in what Engels thought Marx was talking about; and the commitment under Leninism to the prosecution of the Communist case by the violence that accompanied it over the years are elements in my judgment, such as it is, which would commend to me the belief that there is an opportunity now to present that which underlines the principle of Socialism.
Apart from the question of whether one agrees with Socialism, it is interesting to find in the daily newspapers that the evidence is now accumulating that the proponents of the Marxist argument are now asking us to believe that they have been led astray from the fundamental principles of Socialism and that therefore the knowledge of Socialist principles is largely neglected. That may well be true.
What experience I have of talking in public convinces me that there is a desperate lack of fundamental thinking about the alternatives to Socialism, and I do not find privatisation a satisfactory answer. It is in the vacuum that I shall briefly offer the pacifist case which for me derives from the Christian gospel.
I am well aware that there are meanings and interpretations of the foundation principles of the Christian faith which are by no means ignored and which are entitled to respect. Therefore, with due care I remind myself that the essential case for the non-violent presentation of goodness lies in the fact that it was expressly said by Jesus that those who would take the sword would perish by it; that he refused the preparations for an armed revolt and he refused to be a resistance leader in the general sense in which religious leadership and the dissident leadership proliferated in the days in which he lived.

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It is impossible to correlate the meaning of the Cross even with the most desirable or most understandable requirements of armed violence. The early Church was a pacifist Church, and a Church which has strayed from that is in fault. That is at least a permissible interpretation, which I accept, and which I believe should be introduced into the argument and the vacuum which has now been created. Thank God that some evidence now comes from inside the Iron Curtain countries that in the Christian Church they recognise the fulfilment of those things that they cannot find outside it. I understand that that pacifist attitude will be regarded as fanciful, irrelevant and inoperative. I share the difficulty of seeing how it could operate. However, I pretend at least to know that there is evidence today of a breaking of the logjam in people's minds such as I have not known in my long life.
Where did the youngsters in Eastern Germany, in the various other satellite countries and in Russia learn the freedom which they now express with such vitality? Where did they get it from? Is it not evidence of that final truth that one cannot extirpate the spirit in man, and that even in the worst of circumstances all kind of extraordinary results may follow from the outbursts of that freedom? I therefore take my comfort not from the imprecise knowledge of what would happen if we unilaterally renounced armaments, but from what I believe to be the imperative need to regard all warfare as proscribed; from the evidence of the Christian faith and the basic doctrine of Christianity.
What I cannot say, and what your Lordships would not expect me to try to say, is anything more particularly related to what immediately will happen. However, I believe that nothing as revolutionary has happened in the past 500 years to compare with that which apparently is happening at this moment. I am desperately anxious because the prospect of involvement by people who need to be awakened and are ready to respond will transform the general situation. If one regards that as a fancy, I would remind myself that the evidence of the past few years makes me increasingly doubt whether there is any outlet for the beleagured human race except by the total renunciation of those means of danger and death dealing which have corrupted us for so long. This is a plea, and I recognise it as such, but I believe that it is a plea which belongs to the nature of the circumstances which we see before our very eyes. I remind myself that there is some evidence of this awakening.
I sometimes wonder why at every Armistice time people sing the Christian hymn, or rather the Jewish psalm which includes the words:
"Sufficient is thine arm alone,
And our defence is sure".
I think that they want to believe it, and in some sense, of course, I do. I am reminded that in the evidence that is to be found in the Old Testament, some famous walls of Jericho were not breached by shooting but by shouting. There is, I commend to your Lordships' House, an element of hope in facing these unprecedented events and in believing that the once satisfactory idea that war is the last implementation of justice should be replaced by a
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new conviction that under no circumstances whatever can a believing Christian have any part to play in the exercise, the preparation and the prosecution of war.
I know that this is a plea. I make it in a vacuum very largely created by our past mistakes and I venture to hope that in unilateral disarmament we shall discover some way out of the difficulties in which we find ourselves and achieve the rescue of the kind of society in which we live.
5.22 p.m.
Lord Gladwyn: My Lords, there can hardly be anyone who does not rejoice at the destruction of the infamous Berlin Wall and at the explosion of popular emotion which occasioned it and which bids fair to result in the establishment of some kind of democracy in the DDR. These events in East Germany will also undoubtedly assist in the general revolt against one-party Communist rule which has already been successful in Hungary, largely successful in Poland and even Bulgaria and which will probably soon move to Czechoslovakia too. However, at the same time we can hardly avoid being disquieted by the possible results of this revolution —for that is what it is —unless it is handled with the greatest care. In 1848 Europe was in turmoil, but things hardly worked out in the way the revolutionaries wished.
One factor which has dominated all discussion of these recent events has been the possible reunification of Germany. As a result, one thing is clear. If the East German Government become genuinely democratic and pluralistic and decide that they want to join Western Germany, nothing, save possibly Russian intervention, can prevent them from doing so. But there seems to be substantial agreement among many forward-looking politicians in both countries that the Germans just do not want reunification, anyhow not for a considerable time.
Outside Germany there is also considerable unease at the obvious possibility, or probability, that reunification would result in the virtual dissolution of the two existing alliances and the consequent departure of American troops from Europe. Indeed, any reunification would inevitably have this result. Congress simply would not vote the money for United States troops when Germany seemed quite capable of defending herself.
As I see it, there are two or perhaps three broad possibilities. First, the most likely one in the near future, is a continuance in some form of the two alliances, even if the relations with the West of the Soviet satellites, including East Germany, are materially improved by some form of association with the present European Community. That includes the United Kingdom, which should retain its capacity for political development. This —the maintenance of the European Community as a political entity —is indeed necessary if West Germany is to remain in the West and is not to slide off into some sort of "European house". which we shall come to in a moment.
This assumption implies the continued maintenance of at any rate some Russian forces

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between the Elbe and the Soviet frontier and substantial United States forces in West Germany. This will no doubt by itself ensure that the Soviet Union never invades that country. The last thing that the present Soviet Government, or indeed any successor wants, is war with America. But they might conceivably put successful pressure on the West Germans if the Americans ever quit.
The second broad possibility which we must now contemplate, along with Mr. Gorbachev, is the virtual abolition, in the not too far distant future, of the two alliances, with all national forces being withdrawn to their own countries and, more especially, the Americans to America and the Russians to the Soviet Union. That is what is suggested. This would involve the effective reunification of Germany and the probable economic domination of Eastern Europe —or Mitteleuropa —by that country, to say nothing of some calling in question of the Eastern frontiers of the new vast German Reich, whose GDP would probably exceed that of the United Kingdom and France together. The noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, has rightly drawn attention to that grim possibility.
It is quite conceivable however that Russia, while remaining a superpower, might agree to all this, subject to certain conditions. After all, Mr. Gorbachev would have achieved what is probably the main object of his foreign policy, namely, the withdrawal of the Americans from Europe.
However, it is very doubtful whether any British Government emerging from the next elections —to say nothing of the French —would welcome the virtual abolition of NATO, if not of the North Atlantic Alliance, the almost certain disappearance of the EC in its present form, and its replacement by some vague European house, perhaps including Russia. How exactly this European house would be organised is far from clear. Pending world disarmament would it have any defence capacity, to say nothing of a common foreign policy? How would it take decisions? Where would its centre be, other than Berlin? Would Russia west of the Urals be a member, or the whole Soviet Union? Probably in the long run either Germany or Russia, or both, would have to impose some kind of order in the face of the many conflicting and unrestrained nationalistic emotions that would arise.
Surely it is much more sensible from the point of view of Europe as a whole, and in accordance with what I suggest are the real interests of the German people, to contemplate the independent existence, in close association with each other and with the EC, of three German states —Austria, Prussia and the Federal Republic. The latter would continue to be a full member of the European Community. After all, we should remember that the whole German people have only once been united under one ruler. That precedent is scarcely encouraging.
I may well be wrong, but it has always seemed to me that Eastern Germany —that we may call Prussia —had a rather different Weltanschauung from the old Confederation of the Rhine. It was more Protestant than Catholic, more disciplined,
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more authoritarian and more socialistic in a sense. I remember many years ago reading a work entitled Preussentum and Socialismus by Oswald Spengler. Who knows, when its present love affair with the West —this applies to other Eastern countries too—inspired by 40 years of communist misrule wears off, East Germany may conclude that there is much to be said for a largely independent existence.
It need hardly be added —this is the last and gloomiest possibility —that in the perhaps unlikely event of a total break-up of the Soviet Union and ensuing anarchy or civil war, all bets are off. A highly dangerous situation, including a possible attempt by Great Russian nationalists to restore the empire by force of arms, would arise which the West would have to deal with when and if it came to it.
That is all the more reason to guard against such a possibility by pushing ahead with the union of Western Europe which should also retain some defensive capacity of its own. The same applies to conventional defence generally. The prospects for arms cuts seem for the first time to be reasonably good, but only if we proceed on the lines that it is negotiation for agreement between the two alliances that really matters and not unilateral declarations of reductions by one side or the other.
But, whatever our hopes or fears for the future in the light of recent events, and whatever our views on the likelihood or the inevitability of the reunification of Germany, one thing is evident. We should stop being in a perpetual minority of one in the Community and not oppose the general view that only by the acceptance—this is subject, of course, to negotiations and subject to all parties doing what they have already agreed to do —of some further steps towards the pooling of sovereignty can we form that European political union of a new type —not a federation —which we have repeatedly said is our ultimate aim. This is now essential if Germany is not to go the wrong way. It is also essential since, by its very existence, it can increase the chances of some fruitful association with the possibly more socialistically minded nations of the East.
Let us hope that our reconstructed Government will in practice be guided by such principles at Strasbourg and that we shall not be left clutching our Union Jack in no doubt splendid isolation but, in fact, in a state of impoverishment, and stranded.
5.35 p.m.
Lord MacLehose of Beoch: My Lords, the Minister and other noble Lords have referred to events in China and their impact on Hong Kong. I am sure the Government are right to continue to base their policy on implementation of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, as the Minister said. There is of course immense underlying strength in Hong Kong, in its economic capacity, in its resilience and in its capacity to get on with its great neighbour. Given time, current difficulties might be expected to pass and intergovernmental business could be pursued in a calmer atmosphere. But unfortunately time will not wait, and, as the Minister indicated, the Government have several thorny issues that will have to be addressed this Session.

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The Minister mentioned the return to Vietnam, in accordance with international practice, of those arrivals who are not refugees qualifying for settlement elsewhere. This implies, sooner or later, compulsory repatriation. The distastefulness of such a course and the criticism that it will provoke are obvious. However, I believe the criticism would at least be less than that resulting from leaving those unfortunates in prison camps in Hong Kong, and thus from not forestalling further arrivals from Vietnam when the south monsoon starts to blow in March and April. The worst possibility of all is that of a breakdown of patience in Hong Kong, with all that that would involve. This problem is all the more difficult for the people of Hong Kong to absorb because of their preoccupation with the final drafting of the Basic Law which will be their future constitution. One of the major issues left to settle is the method of election of the Legislative Council and the speed of the stages by which it is introduced.
The pace of democratisation in Hong Kong is of course closely related to that. I believe the Minister said that the Government would await a clear view from Hong Kong. I hope that as soon as the Government are satisfied that there is a substantial majority of people in Hong Kong in favour of any particular formula they will go ahead and announce their plans and thus end the present field of controversy and uncertainty.
However, I am told that the issue that is most important to the people of Hong Kong is still nationality. The demand for British citizenship for all British dependent territory citizens has been rejected by both the Government and the principal opposition party. However, something has to be done. The Minister indicated that the Government were working on a package to give key people an assurance that they may remain in the territory. I await those proposals with great interest. That course is a second-best option and unavoidably it will be divisive. However, it could still be valuable and work, but only if it provides two things. First, it must provide a right of abode in the United Kingdom without having to leave Hong Kong to qualify, because the whole point will be to encourage people to stay and to continue to manage the success of Hong Kong.
Secondly, the numbers must be large. Favouring a small isolated group just would not help. With the prospect of lack of support from large numbers, the people in that group would simply leave. The number must be large enough to have a major psychological impact. It must also include the dependants of those key people as well as the individuals themselves. Therefore, to have the desired result the potential number will have to be very large indeed. I shall not bandy figures about the House tonight because the matter would be much more suitable for a separate debate on some other occasion. Of course none of this would be so fraught were it not for the over-arching perception of China in Hong Kong. That has not been helped by tensions in relations since June.
In conclusion, there is just one point I should like to make about those relations. In the past the key to the success of Hong Kong-China relations has been
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the steady application of prudent, commonsense restraint about what was done or said, or perhaps more importantly what was not done or said, by both sides. That fact of life was generally well understood. However, after the events of June something seems to have gone wrong. I shall say nothing today about what China should do to repair the situation. But from our side we must remember that the principle of one country, two systems is double-sided. It is easier for us to know what we mean by China not interfering in Hong Kong than to define what should be done in Hong Kong to avoid appearing to interfere with China.
I was therefore glad to read the governor's wise words in his speech last month about the importance of people in Hong Kong not becoming directly involved in China's domestic politics and to hear of the support that he has since received from senior figures in Hong Kong. If those facts of Hong Kong life are observed a calmer atmosphere could be achieved, to which the Chinese Government might respond and in which the urgent problems to which I have referred might be addressed to the advantage of Hong Kong, China and ourselves.
5.42 p.m.
Lord Stewart of Fulham: My Lords, I do not believe that there is anyone in the House who can speak with greater authority on the affairs of Hong Kong than the noble Lord who has just spoken. I am sure that the Government will pay great attention to what he said. I shall not attempt to follow him into that subject, which requires a special knowledge which few of us possess.
I should like to say a few words about the problem of the reunification of Germany. I accept that that problem creates a number of potential headaches. There are several steps that need to be taken before reunification could take place, not least the holding of genuinely free elections in East Germany. I trust that the Government will not manoeuvre themselves into a position in which they appear to oppose the reunification of Germany because I believe that reunification of Germany ought to happen. It was never the intention of the Western allies that Germany should be so divided. It happened because the Soviet Union was determined to make the part of Germany which it occupied a Soviet satellite. Therefore I say that the reunification of Germany ought to happen. Moreover, it will happen.
Although support for reunification is not yet as great in East Germany as I believe it will be, I am quite certain that it will grow as the months go by. There is already evidence that that is happening. Since it ought to happen and will happen, we should be very ill-advised even to appear to oppose it.
As I said, one necessary prelude is genuinely free elections. That also applies to our attitude towards the other nations of Eastern Europe. We are all aware that although there has been immensely encouraging progress towards freedom in the past weeks, we do not know whether that ground is yet firmly held and will be retained.
I remember that when I was endeavouring to learn the German language the textbook that I used had

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at the end of each chapter a few quotations from German writers and German proverbs. One of them ran:
"Gegen Demokraten hilfen nur Soldaten";
that is to say that against democrats only soldiers are of any use.
That is a view which is evidently held by a number of governments, or if not governments, people who have been in government. There have been ugly scenes in Czechoslavakia and Mr. Honecker of East Germany seems to have studied that proverb. Our approach to Eastern European countries must be conditioned by whether they hold genuinely free elections giving an opportunity for public opinion to form and to contest elections.
Some of those countries already have parties other than the Communist Party, but they are only parties which are permitted by the Communist Party. They are shams and not really representative of public opinion. There will have to be time for public opinion to form and for genuinely free elections to be contested.
I believe that that can be done, but the governments that result will be heirs to a very unhappy economic legacy. Their countries will be desperately poor and surrounded by great economic difficulties. There is a risk that the new, and, one hopes, democratic governments of Eastern Europe will become increasingly unpopular owing to the enormous economic difficulties with which they will be struggling. The whole process might slide back into discouragement and despair.
It is here surely that the West must be ready to give economic help to the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe. I was very glad to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, had to say about that in his opening speech. I hope that we shall be kept regularly informed as to what progress the Western countries and the countries of the EC are able to make to help the countries of Eastern Europe. If the EC is to do its job properly it will need to be united and work together. Here I share the regret of the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, that the Government always seem to find themselves out on a limb and to be on their own in European arguments.
The noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, addressed us on the subject of sovereignty. Several times in our relations with Europe we have followed an illusion of sovereignty to our disadvantage. It was sometimes used as an argument for not entering the Community at all. We must consider that if we stay outside European monetary arrangements in a sense we shall have sovereignty —the right to have the exchange value of our currency tossed about by the winds of chance and fortune instead of the discipline of a system devised for Europe as a whole.
The search for that kind of sovereignty —saying that we shall have it our way even if we cannot really control events —is similar to the advice that King Canute's courtiers gave to him. They endeavoured to persuade him that one could exercise sovereignty over the tides. One cannot. One cannot exercise sovereignty over the movement of economic affairs in the whole of Europe. If we want to be an effective
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force in the West we have to see that the Community becomes a more united force. The Prime Minister in particular is preventing us from doing so.
I ask therefore that we should play our part in trying to make the Community a more united and closely knit body. One of the purposes of that at the present juncture is to give effective help to the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe. If we can see emerging from Eastern Europe governments which are genuinely based on free elections we shall be on course for solving the much more elaborate problems such as were spelt out by the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn. We shall be in a better position to deal with those problems once we have a closely knit Community in the West and emerging democracies in the East, with the possibility of genuinely free elections.
5.50 p.m.
Lord Whaddon: My Lords, I also wish to take this opportunity to air a few thoughts on the collapse of the Marxist systems of Eastern Europe and particularly to comment on the position in Poland. In so doing I must begin by expressing an interest since I have been involved in trade with those countries for the past 30 years. Events there have moved with astonishing speed, but they are the culmination of strains which have built up over decades and there have been indications of such developments.
When I first visited the area in 1960 the Stalinist system was in full flower with all the factories organising cartels under central administration, all the foreign trade conducted under a monopoly of trade organisations and the whole organisation administered by the Nomenklatura —the system of trained Marxist administrators. To a man or a woman —there were many women among them —they were virtually all enthusiastic idealists who believed that they were building the system of the next century.
It was inevitable but in its way quite sad to see the disillusionment of those people set in over the past 30 years. They were able to explain away and rationalise to themselves fairly easily the problems in the GDR in the 1950s and even the Hungarian uprising in 1956. Those countries had been with Germany —with the Nazis—during the war and Communism had not had time to take full root. The Prague spring of 1968 produced a much greater crisis of confidence because that country had been opposed to the Nazis. It had a long Socialist tradition, yet here was a Communist Government against a Communist Government. That caused considerable disillusionment among the Communist Nomenklatura. However, even there, many people rationalised away the problem because so many intellectuals were involved in the Prague spring and not so many members of the working class.
I wonder how many noble Lords have noticed certain other indications at the very highest levels of the Communist hierarchy. I was particularly taken by the BBC's television coverage of the funeral of Mr. Chernenko at which, to my astonishment, I saw two Orthodox priests stood by his body —something

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which was blasphemy in Marxist terms, yet there it was on television. Shortly after it was reported that Mr. Malenkov had joined the Orthodox Church. That was quite astonishing; but obviously the Marxist philosophy had begun to be eroded. I believe that it has now completely collapsed. One now has great difficulty in finding a single serious Marxist in Eastern Europe. One finds a few here, but one does not find them in Eastern Europe.
The watershed —the point at which Communism began to collapse as a belief—came with the rise of Solidarity in Poland. That country was foremost among those which had opposed Naziism. It was not a rebellion of the intellectuals in that country. It was a move on the part of the working classes and, above all, of the young working classes —the very people who had never known anything else, had grown up under Communism and were supposed to have benefited from it most. So that intellectual basis upon which the convinced Marxists had run their country was rapidly eroded once Solidarity fell into its stride.
What have the members of Solidarity demanded? I have known and spoken to many of them over the past decade. It is easy enough to find out what they are against. They are against Communism, but many of them are also critical of Western materialism as they call it. We must not assume that they will automatically embrace full market forces. They want prosperity, but they also want security. Only two weeks ago an enthusiastic supporter told me that they want the efficiency of competition in their industry, but they do not want to see their children sleeping on the streets, as happens in London.
It therefore seems to me that the most likely way in which Solidarity will develop —although there are a number of strands to its thinking —is as a kind of social democractic movement similar to that in Sweden. That is not certain, but it is likely. Premier Mazowiecki has made a most encouraging start. He has declared himself in favour of evolution, not revolution. He has kept the Nomenklatura in place. Without them, the whole system of everyday administration would have collapsed. That pragmatic approach is greatly to be welcomed, but the problems that he faces are mountainous —a unique complex of financial and organisational problems, and the problem of motivating the Polish people into enthusiastic co-operation and production.
On the financial side, our Government have uttered most encouraging words. I am sure that they will keep them, but I beg them to realise the urgency of the problem. The problems mount week by week and inflation becomes hyper-inflation day by day. This morning I learnt that a man I know went into a shop in Lodz only yesterday to buy a washing machine. The system there is that one goes to the counter to order the goods, then goes to the cash desk to pay. He went to the cash desk to pay, and between paying and going back to collect the goods he sold his receipt for 50 per cent. more. Tremendous hyper-inflation is setting in. The intervention of the IMF is imperative, not within months, but within the next week or two.
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I should like to ask the Minister whether he is urgently considering the replacement o f the ECGD. That was suspended in 1981. It has been reintroduced in a limited form, but, if trade is to blossom, it is imperative that the ECGD be restored in full at the earliest possible moment. It is good not only for the Poles but also for our exporters.
On the structural side, Poland faces massive needs in its industry. In the long run, foreign help is not enough. The vast majority of the effort must come from the Polish people themselves in their own factories. They must be inspired to enthusiastic effort. However, joint ventures, which the Polish Government encourage, can be of considerable assistance. We must not waste time on this matter. German industry is leaping into the opportunities with both feet while we tend to drag our feet. Joint ventures can be of great assistance, partly by bringing in foreign investment and partly by bringing our know-how into the Polish marketplace.
However, I must remind your Lordships of Bismarck's saying: "The big decisions are easy; the devil lies in the detail". There is plenty of difficulty in setting up the joint ventures. I was involved with setting up one of the very earliest. Clearly it was a good idea from the word go. It took us only eight weeks to arrange the agreement in principle. It then took 18 months to arrange the detailed documentation of the agreement. Although the business heads on each side agreed very rapidly, the lawyers and accountants simply did not speak each other's language or understand each other's psychology, and they did not dare trust each other in case they were making mistakes. So training in capitalist and Western methods is of the greatest urgency.
There are two things that the Government can and should do. I should like to urge the Government to institute a channel of education in this country to inform British industry of the opportunities. Her Majesty's Government carried out an enthusiastic campaign to inform industry of the implications of the 1992 single market. A similar effort is necessary to inform British industry of the opportunities in joint ventures that are to be had in Eastern Europe and in particular in Poland before our friends on the Continent take away all the opportunities before our noses.
With regard to trade, I must offer the Government my congratulations on the £25 million grant which they have already announced. That is a great help. More will be necessary in due course. However, do they think that it is being used in the best possible way? The British Council is to administer it. Does the noble Lord believe that the British Council has the necessary commercial and industrial expertise? It is a wonderful body but would it possibly be better to have a special attaché and staff attached to the British embassy in Warsaw? Would he consider that course? Moreover, I suggest that, when we bring Poles to this country to study, sandwich courses—possibly between our polytechnics and industrial offices and factories —would be of the greatest value.
By history, inclination and culture, Poland is a mainstream European nation. It has suffered more

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than any nation should suffer. As its economy is rebuilt along lines held in common with its Western neighbours, we must be prepared to welcome Poland into ever closer relationships with us. One iron curtain has crumbled away. We must not imprison Poland in a new cage of debt and tariffs. We have willed the end; we must be willing to vote the means.
6.3 p.m.
Lord Greenhill of Harrow: My Lords, at this stage of the debate there is bound to be a certain sameness about the speeches. I apologise in advance should I repeat some of the points that have already been made, even if I do so less eloquently.
First I should like to hark back to the debate on the Address in June 1987. I quoted then from an article written at that time by Mr. Davidson of the Financial Times. With remarkable foresight he wrote:
"I have the strongest sense that we may be standing on the threshold of a period of change and movement unlike anything we have seen for 40 years".
I agreed with what Mr. Davidson said then and I thought that there was, as never before, an urgent need for speculative examination of long-term possibilities in international affairs. I ventured to suggest to the Government, and especially to the Foreign Office, that they should try to look far into the future and be ready for great change. But in fact those changes have now occurred with surprising suddenness and we are faced with policy decisions of great difficulty and immense importance in both the economic and political areas.
How are we to react? Events have climaxed in the past few weeks. Eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union, has long been in a parlous state economically, but now its peoples are demanding political and social changes of a revolutionary character. The temptation for some is to try to race ahead and create a new Europe —even a new world —in the shortest possible time. In my view that would be a serious mistake. My impression is that most Members of this House share that view.
We all need time. The people who have initiated these remarkable and unexpected changes need it especially. They need time to make up their minds about where they wish those changes to lead. They need time to create the constitutional means to take the right democratic decisions and to weigh the consequences.
From where are the colossal resources to come to revolutionise their economies, and how rapidly can those resources be applied? The noble Lord, Lord Home, referred to the possibility of some kind of Marshall fund. Certainly enormous sums of money are required. They will be expected to come from Europe and from the United States —and why not from Japan? Japan has already invested in Eastern Europe. I do not know what the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, thinks, but no doubt Japan could be attracted and might well be interested if money is being applied to Eastern Europe.
We in the west, in the European Community and the NATO Alliance, equally must think carefully how much or how little we want to alter the scenario
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to which we have long been accustomed. What is certain is that the United Kingdom Government must play an appropriate part in reaching future vital decisions. It is still not clear how President Gorbachev will deal with the problems of his patchwork empire; nor is the future of Poland, Hungary or Czechoslovakia fully assured.
At the centre of these problems may lie the question of the possible reunification of Germany, which personally I regard as ultimately inevitable and indeed necessary in the long run for a stable Europe. It is a question that concerns us all and is one in which the Soviet Union has a major and legitimate interest. If it is handled without willing Soviet acceptance, all the progress that has transformed the international atmosphere will be destroyed. If the German people decide to unite, the decision must be seen by the world to have been taken in an unquestionably democratic manner. Only in that way can acceptance by the Soviet Union be reasonably demanded.
Nevertheless, the Soviet Union must be expected to strike a bargain and seek guarantees. That bargain assuredly would require a fundamental and possibly beneficial change in its defence arrangements and in ours. For myself, I hope to see the present EC, now I believe in danger of being overtaken by events, transformed and broadened. Nothing that the EC does in the immediate future should make it more difficult for other countries to participate in the membership of a new, broader and better conception of a European Community, democratically accountable and without the extremes of political integration. In what forum can all these interlocking questions best be argued out? It is a very complex problem. I was very interested in the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, about the use of the Helsinki pattern. But there has obviously to be governmental consultations for a long time, including a very wide number of players.
I should also like to see the present military alliances eventually made into an instrument for maintaining peace, not only in Europe but —perhaps this is fanciful —even assisting the United Nations to assume a more authoritative role in the settlement of worldwide disputes.
It is inevitable that Europe tends to occupy our minds at the moment. However, I should like briefly to mention three other matters. The first is the Middle East situation. It has been repeatedly discussed here. If I remember correctly, on the last occasion there was a general agreement that an early solution was beyond reach. I do not expect that many of us would see reason to change that verdict. I certainly do not. Slightly ambiguous statements by Yasser Arafat caused a brief euphoria, but since then the PLO leader has done little except to confess on television to being a small millionaire. Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians seem near to discussion, which would tackle the fundamental problems. Indeed, there is a good deal of disturbing mystery about what is going on in the area.
Of course sometimes it is better not to advertise what is happening, but I hope that Her Majesty's Government have a clearer idea than the public. There are events which are inadequately explained.

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For example, rumours surround a huge explosion in Iraq. Chemical weapons are clearly in production. What is the purpose of these sophisticated armaments? Are they purely defensive? It would be helpful if the Minister could tell us more of the truth, for if that can be told it must be relevant to our defence plans for the future.
The second subject is South Africa. I agree with the Prime Minister's stand on sanctions at the Commonwealth Conference. I have had a certain experience of Commonwealth conferences over several years and I am not too impressed by their sometimes emotional and often ill-informed resolution. Like the noble Lord, Lord Walston, I have a great respect for the Commonwealth. However, the work through the conferences is not always of the best. The meeting at Kuala Lumpur was in many ways a re-run of the 1971 conference in Singapore when Mr. Edward Heath, the then Prime Minister, was a special object of attack about South Africa. But on that occasion the Australians and the Canadians were more realistic and more conscious of their own shortcomings. President Obote led the attack on the United Kingdom, only to be deposed on his return to Uganda by Idi Amin who did immense damage to the moral claims of all Africans. Only the most prejudiced can deny that President de Klerk has achieved much in South Africa in what has been a short time. There are now signs of important black groups talking among themselves —the ANC, and Chief Buthelezi's group. Could this be a prelude to talks with the government? But even if the ANC and Chief Buthelezi's group agree, they do not adequately represent all black opinion. All sides need time, understanding and help. To my mind the best way is not to harass them but to leave them, as we should leave the Germans, to work out their own solution to the situation which, if mishandled by however well-intentioned outsiders, has the seeds of a great catastrophe. If we are invited to help, we should do so.
Lastly, perhaps I may refer —as I have done before in debates —to a widely different subject: the administration by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the remaining islands of the British Empire. I exclude Hong Kong. I exclude the Falklands. I have St. Helena particularly in mind. I should like to be assured by the Minister that the affairs of these small territories, for which we are wholly responsible, are not being neglected and that the best traditions of the old Colonial Office are maintained and indeed improved upon.
6.16 p.m.
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, with much of the analysis of the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill of Harrow I agree, although the conclusions that I would draw from it are not always the same. I do not believe that time is on our side. Events are moving very rapidly. We must be ready and prepared to deal with those events. We are seeing events in Europe which have no parallel since the decline and fall of the Roman Empire a thousand and more years ago. We are seeing Russia withdrawing within its own borders. We are seeing the liberation of the occupied territories. That inevitably leaves a power
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vacuum in the centre of Europe; and it is essentially and primarily for Europeans to fill that vacuum. It is not primarily for Americans or for Russians. We owe a great debt to the Americans, both in relation to the last war and to the period of reconstruction in the times of great tensions which followed that war. But this does not mean that the future of Europe should for all time be determined by the United States of America.
On the other side, Russia is withdrawing from Europe. But, I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, that what emerges in Europe, if not acceptable to the Russians, at least must not result in violent reaction from them.
However, we as Europeans have to shoulder this burden. In that connection it means that it will be the European Community which will take the lead in this matter. It means that the Community must be strengthened and developed. It does not mean that development in the Community should stop or that the Community should be weakened.
The Community is now making steady and purposeful progress towards fuller economic and ultimately political integration. I wish to make it clear that by political integration I do not refer to a pattern such as that of the United States of America. As I have said on many occasions, the United States is too unitary and centralised a system to prove a useful pattern for Europe. However, I believe that nearly all the member states will go to full economic union. Most of them ultimately will go to political union.
Interestingly, a great impetus to this movement was given by the Prime Ministers' speech at Bruges. I do not think that that is what she intended but that is what happened. One could see that the following day from the immediate reaction of Prime Minister Martens of Belgium; of Federal Chancellor Kohl, of President Mitterand, of President González of Spain and of the Italians. Many of us who believed that economic union was more than enough for our own lifetime and that political union could await a new generation, now believe that if we are put in the position where we have to fight, all right, we have to fight. The gauntlet was thrown down and a large number of people picked it up. Therefore, the European Community will form the focus of the development of Europe in the future.
There are already in existence a large number of association agreements of one kind or another made between the Community and other countries. The most important are the free trade agreements between the Community and the EFTA countries. But, in addition, there are economic co-operation agreements, free trade agreements and other forms of association with a large number of other countries, not only in Europe but also on the borders of the Mediterranean sea. In addition, we are now seeing a number of countries applying for Community membership.
It is now essential to create a structure in Europe which will accommodate these developments in a rational, acceptable and stable fashion. There is no doubt that for many countries the free trade area, or free trade association, will prove to be the system of

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choice. But the countries in EFTA where there has been a free trade agreement since 1959, wish to go much further. For example, we have the Luxembourg declaration of June 1984 which envisaged a development of relations between the Community and the EFTA countries beyond free trade. I am glad to say that when I was in the Commission I was able to do a great deal to further the progress of that effort. A great deal of work is now in hand in the EFTA countries and in the Community to hammer out a closer form of association.
I believe that the most promising form that might take will be an extended customs union. The essence of a customs union is that there is a common external tariff and a common external trade policy. In addition, and subject to that, once goods have lawfully entered the territory of the customs union they have the legal right of free circulation throughout the whole of that territory. If that approach were extended to services it would form the kernel of what we know as the "1992 Programme".
As was said by my noble friend Lord Brabazon of Tara, it is not the position that our Government fully support the single market programme. They do not; they fully support those parts with which they agree. However, that is a little different from the original programme as I launched it in the White Paper in June 1985. It was endorsed by the heads of government at Milan in the same month and incorporated in the Single European Act. I say that only because it is the kind of structure which, as an extended customs union, is very close to what is already the United Kingdom's interpretation of the 1992 Programme.
If we had that kind of structure in Europe —that is, a community associated with it and not members of it; and that distinction is crucial —we should have a group of countries which formed a customs union extended to cover services as well as goods. Beyond that we should have free trade agreements with those countries which wished to enter into such a relationship with the Community. If we had such a structure it would be stable and flexible. It would be stable because people could, if they so wished, stay where they were. Alternatively, and subject to agreement, they could progress from free trade to the extended customs union and from that to the full European Community. That is quite different from the traditional argument about a two or even three-speed Europe. The Community would be a separate body and the other two groupings would be associated with it in the way that I have suggested.
I shall say a few words about monetary union because the subject has been introduced. It is not the work of bureaucrats in Brussels. Monetary union is deeply embedded in the policies of the Community. It formed part of the Community acquis when we joined and we were committed to it by the Treaty of Accession. It was reaffirmed in the solemn declaration on European union which was signed in Stuttgart in June 1983 by the heads of government and their foreign ministers. They are by no means bureacrats, particularly bearing in mind that two of the signatories were Mrs. Margaret Thatcher and Sir Geoffrey Howe. It would be rather derogatory to describe either of them as "Brussels
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bureaucrats". It was reaffirmed once again in the Single European Act which was approved by a substantial majority on a Vote in the other place. Therefore, it is an accepted part of Community policy.
I turn to the Delors Committee. Even my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has described it as being a group of technical monetary experts. It was not. It consisted of the 12 governors of the central banks of Europe, two former finance ministers, two other bankers and one leading academic. They were not merely technical monetary experts; they were people of great standing and experience.
The document containing the Treasury's response to the Delors report —and presumably by "the Treasury" we mean the British Government —is headed, "An evolutionary approach to economic and monetary union". There is no pretence that we are rejecting economic and monetary union. All that the British Government are doing is setting forth an alternative approach to the same objective. However, it suffers from one serious flaw. That is, that it is based on the philosophy of "every man for himself and the Devil take the hindmost". However valid that philisophy —and I shall not discuss that point today —it is quite inconsistent with the philosophy of the Community, which is based on co-operation, cohesion and mutual assistance. That is why this approach is unlikely to be adopted by the Community as a whole.
Perhaps I may also take up a point which was touched upon by the noble Lord, Lord Stewart of Fulham. Our Government seem to have drawn some solace from the fact that the president of the Bundesbank has made some comments which might be seen to support the approach in this document. How naive can you get? The reason that Doctor Pohl has supported that approach is set out on page 3 of the document, which reads as follows:
"Greater use will be made of low inflation currencies at the expense of high inflation ones".
What will happen? If that policy is adopted, the pound sterling will disappear from the scene and the deutschmark will in fact become the single currency of Europe. Of course that is supported by Doctor Pohl because it would then mean that he would determine the whole monetary policy of Europe without the disagreeable necessity of talking to the governors or representatives of the other eleven member states. The only way in which we can possibly support and defend our own interests as a nation, as a country, is if we go into the formation of monetary union and take a full part in its development.
My own view, one which I have expressed on many an occasion, is that we shall see a single currency in Europe by the end of this century. The only question which is open is whether we in this country join in or whether we stand on one side. However, there is more at stake than just whether or not we join in a European movement, because if we do not join in the monetary union, what will inevitably happen will be that the financial centre of Europe will shift from London to Frankfurt. If that happens, neither this generation nor future generations will ever forgive us.
6.32 p.m.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, the noble Lord will understand if I do not follow him; but I express my appreciation of his great knowledge and expertise in his particular subject. That was made transparently clear in his speech this evening.
I thought it was right that very early in his speech this afternoon the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, should mention Cambodia. That is probably one of the most horrible situations which now exists, and it will be recorded as such in mankind's history. It is the south east Asian holocaust.
With the assistance and help of the Government Chief Whip's Office, I had agreement before Prorogation to raise a debate on the Floor of this House on that subject. But the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, quite rightly and properly pointed out to me that due to his enormous workload, he could not do justice to the debate unless he was given more time. In consequence, the debate was postponed.
I have mentioned that because many people who understood what might take place wrote to me. They were very disappointed. I tried to explain that was the sensible course, and that ultimately we shall have a debate on the situation in Cambodia.
We cannot pretend that the situation does not exist. I ask the House to note that tens of thousands of people including children were put to death under the Khmer Rouge and the evil Pol Pot so that their dead bodies could be used as compost to create new forests. I should have thought that that would shock and shatter everybody in this Chamber, as I am sure it does. I hope that if I am privileged to open a debate on the situation in Cambodia this House will make it quite clear where it stands. I say quite clearly to the Government that while I realise they appreciate the situation, appreciation of such bestiality is not in itself enough. Something must be done. The international forces and great national powers of the world must make their contribution to stop the bestial activity which is going on now.
I should also like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, for mentioning Argentina. It is very sensible that we should now commence an increase in our trade with that country. I hope that more people will visit Argentina. Trade and aid are two good things. Of course, the more trade there is, the less aid one has to give. Also, on another view, jaw, jaw, is better than war, war. Therefore, let us continue to talk and increase trade. That will be good for Great Britain and good for Argentina.
The situation in the Middle East is probably one of the most appalling paradoxes at present in mankind's history. We can all remember what was happening in the mid-thirties when it was an appalling offence to be a Jewish person. Some of us went to Germany to see for ourselves. We did not really know what was happening to our fellow Jewish human beings and of the terrible holocaust which was revealed at the end of the war. I am very proud that it was my country which first started to take on that wretched, evil organisation known as German Nazism. Perhaps I may say to the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill of Harrow, that with the aid of decent people and with the aid of the British
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Commonwealth, we made the largest contribution to wiping out Nazism. Therefore, let us not be too eager to run down either Britain or the British Commonwealth because that was one of our greatest achievements.
That was followed by a very sad situation. I remember that some of the young soldiers under my command, as the war in Europe eased to an end, were sent to the Middle East. They did not know much about the Balfour Declaration —and nor did many other people come to that. It was very agonising, and I know people who lost sons. In those early days British soldiers were slain by Israeli terrorists. It cannot be said that it is quite all right for Israeli terrorists to kill British soldiers and that it is only other forms of terrorism that are wrong. In this House this evening I condemn that yet again because those British lads were totally innocent. They were there to do a difficult job. They were doing it in a typically British fashion with a good sense of humour and with the understanding of ordinary people. I was very sad that those killings should have taken place.
In addition to that, what has happened since is also a terrible paradox. We all know and have seen the horror of the European holocaust and what happened to Jewish people. However, not one single Arab was involved in that. The perpetrators of those crimes were European Christians, were they not? Therefore, once again, we have this terrible paradox.
It is wrong for any country to invade another's land. If it was wrong for the Germans to try and occupy my country, it is wrong for the Israelis to occupy Palestinian land. The quicker they get out the better, because if they do not, there will be a real change of attitude internationally. Possible progress might have taken place many years ago and the problem could have been resolved due to the wonderful work carried out by Mrs. Golda Meir and King Abdullah. Unfortunately because of his civilised approach to the problem, King Abdullah was assassinated. However, there is now hope that the Egyptian President, Mr. Mubarak, and the Israeli Minister of Defence are slowly coming together to try to work out in a civilised way how peace can be restored and then kept for ever.
I have found in many lands —Arab lands, the Far East, Africa —that one thing is pointed out to me. When I was in Tunisia a few weeks ago I went to the local synagogue and I had been to the mosque. I could not find a church, but that did not really matter as I have my bedside at which I can say my prayers. There was something these people were pointing out to me. They said, "Look, my very good friend, our families have known each other for hundreds of years. They are Jews. We are Moslems. We have never had any problems whatsoever, and we do not have them now". Things of this nature were said to me in Israel. What is remarkable is that they were said not by great intellectuals or massive military men. They were just ordinary people who had lived together in a civilised and peaceful way for centuries. I hope that their example will in the end triumph; and after these momentous and remarkable happenings over the past few weeks, we have to hope for the same thing. It is hardly believable.

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In 1961 we heard of the terrible, communist brutality being exercised among East Germans, some of whom were alleged to have been communists themselves. Under Stalin and Brezhnev it did not matter what you were, whether capitalist or communist, if you did not toe the line, you had to pay with your life or with appalling beatings. That went on in other countries in Europe as well. The agony was that we in the West could do very little about it. We knew of it; we were sorrowful; but there was not much that we could do.
This House —government and opposition parties —acknowledged the remarkable breakthrough that has taken place in the last few months. That was created in the main by Mr. Gorbachev. In years to come, that will be a name as honoured as Winston Churchill, Aneurin Bevan, Ernest Bevin, and our good and great colleague the noble Lord, Lord Carrington. In that list of good, famous people will be the name of Mr. Gorbachev. He has now given us an opportunity. It is not going to be particularly easy.
There is something that we have to note for the future. Whenever a fascist or an extreme communist wants to make a move, he has one priority. It is not to get rid of judicial systems or Members of Parliament, but to get rid of the local trade union movement. That was Hitler's first move. That was Stalin's first move. Destroy the trade unions, and you have taken the guts out of any nation. Anyone who tries to find excuses to damage trade unions in this country or in any other is treading very softly in the footsteps of both Hitler and Stalin.
This has been said earlier, but it is worth repeating. Now that Poland, Czechoslovakia and other countries are getting their freedom, the freedom of Poland was won by that great trade union movement, Solidarity, led by Lech Walesa. That is probably now one of the most famous trade union movements in the world. They deserve our support, but they need more than support.
This also has been said, but I have to repeat it. I hope that our country and our British Commonwealth will set about seeing how much we can do to help economically those countries that have been brutalised by communism and rendered bankrupt by communism. I hope that we will now give aid in any way that we can.
I conclude with this suggestion, which I hope the Government, the trade unions, the CBI and all the big organisations in our country will consider. As soon as it is reasonably possible, I hope that members of the CBI, the TUC, and our youth movements will start to visit all these countries. I hope that there will be an exchange of visits of ordinary people, specialists, trade unionists, commercial folk, Members of Parliament and Members of this great House.
This action too has a vital contribution to make. The name of this country —which the world has heard of as always standing up for the rights of ordinary people —will be quoted to these Eastern European countries in order that they may understand what sort of people we are. Above all,
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they will recognise that we are folk who can be trusted as well as honoured, as indeed we are honoured in Eastern Europe. If we can do those things, it will not merely be good for Great Britain, it will be a good and wonderful thing for the people of Eastern Europe. They are now groping forward towards a freedom that they dream of and which they can now see is going to become a reality.
6.45 p.m.
Lord Hooson: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, will forgive me if I do not follow him in what he has said, but I am sure that the whole House particularly appreciated his remarks about Cambodia, as it did the speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon earlier. The House needed to have its conscience quickened, as it were, by reference to that matter.
The noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, concluded his speech —a remarkable speech in many ways—with words to the effect that the confrontation between NATO and the Warsaw Pact was probably now an anachronism. He is almost certainly right about that matter. With his great experience of these matters, it was a significant ending to his speech. It does not mean that we should get rid of NATO, but it means that we should reassess the position of Nato vis-à-vis the Western world and vis-à-vis the Warsaw Pact. The Warsaw Pact itself should revise its own position. I suspect that in NATO it should quickly lead to a two-tier or a two-pillar approach to NATO, which we have never really had —the European pillar and the North American pillar joined together in an Atlantic alliance.
The noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, put forward an attractive proposition; that is, that we should use the procedure that led to the Helsinki Agreements as a framework, or an umbrella, to try to bring Western and Eastern Europe together at the present time. There is a great deal to be said for that. But I thought that the noble Lord was on much less sure ground when he pointed out that there had not been a peace treaty after the war, and suggested that we should revise this matter as a means legalistically —as I understood it —of controlling procedures hereafter.
It seemed to me that the noble Lord had partly forgotten that the Treaty of Versailles, brought into being only a year or two after the First World War, in no way inhibited Hitler's Germany from attacks. There is a great danger at the present time in accepting a legalistic approach on these matters.
When the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, said that time was not on our side, I suspect that he was right. I suspect that the pressure for a unified Germany is going to be much greater than the pressure for a unified Western Europe at the present time. That may carry with it serious consequences. One of the most valuable suggestions I have heard made before, but today it came from a great authority. It was the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Home, that we need a Marshall Plan. I am certain that it is in the interests of Western Europe and of the world that all possible material help should be given to the Eastern European countries and the Soviet Union.
That brings me to the main burden of what I hope will be my short speech this evening. This is a matter

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suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill: what about Japan? It is right that we should ask the question: who actually won the cold war? Inadvertently I think it may have been Japan, if there was a winner. Historically it never planned this. It was non-aligned in the early years. It certainly took no active part in it. By a series of historical accidents plus, let us face it, the ingenuity, the resource, the industry and the drive of its people, 40 years after the cold war began Japan is economically and financially the most powerful country in the world. Its per capita income is now 10 per cent. ahead of that of the United States. Who would have foreseen this 40 years or 20 years ago?
We have a good deal to learn from Japan, and I am sure that Japan has a great deal to contribute at the present time. I believe that we have a good deal to learn by looking at the process by which Japan achieved this position. Basically, the reason lies in what happened after the war. Japan lost the war and there is no doubt that it was absolutely shaken by what occurred at Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The policies and procedures of General MacArthur put Japan on the right path. It had a constitutional prohibition on a defence establishment. While the United States, Western Europe, Russia and the Iron Curtain countries were spending trillions on defence, Japan was not.
We have to face the fact of Japan's predominant industrial position. God forbid that it should ever turn to the production of armaments, because if it wanted to and did so Japan could become one of the most powerful —if not the most powerful —military countries in the world in a matter not of years but of months. As the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, quite properly pointed out, the speed of change at the moment is fantastic.
Another reason for Japan's predominance is that under the Bretton Woods arrangement for exchange rates the Japanese yen was fixed at something like 360 yen to the dollar. That rate was not changed until the abandonment of the fixed exchange rates in 1971. The figure did not even reach 200 yen to the dollar until 1986. The springboard for Japan's rise to its industrial and financial position, which is probably the highest in the world today, was the undervalued yen. That is a lesson for us in this country when we are trying to maintain an overvalued pound and endeavouring always to support the City of London at the expense of our own national industry.
A further factor is that Japan is in the van of the telecommunications revolution that is taking place. The noble Lord, Lord Soper, is not in his place at the moment. I am sure he was wholly right when he said that the human spirit is expressing itself in East European countries. He asked the question: where did they get their ideas from? I am sure that it is partially due to the normal reaction of the human spirit in countries which, after all, share, or did share, the Christian ethics which we inherited in Western Europe. There were the same foundations in Eastern Europe. They were also greatly assisted by the telecommunications revolution.
The Berlin Wall may have been all right for keeping in people but it could not control the sound
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waves, the television pictures, the telephones or the modern communications systems. Since a great deal of the telecommunications development came from Japan, that country had a part to play in the changes that have taken place. I am particularly concerned about the help that Japan can give through the way that it has developed. There are lessons to be learnt by Europe in particular from the accession of Japan to the position of probably the individual country which is in the strongest position to help in the world at the present time.
Japan has already 400 units of production planned or in place for the 1992 developments within the Common Market. It is going to be in a position to influence Eastern Europe a great deal. Therefore it is a tragedy that Western Europe has not proceeded further on the way to integration. I entirely agree with the approach of the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield. He has rendered a signal service to this country by coming to the House and giving us his views based on his great knowledge of these matters.
It is impossible to concede that we can in any way revert to the idea of the sovereign nation state as being an acceptable status for any country to make a contribution in the world at the present time. It seems to me that we are trying to fight tomorrow's battles with yesterday's approach in so many instances.
I have already referred to the telecommunications revolution. It has ensured that the pace of change is going to be very fast indeed. Because of the way in which Japan has developed I believe that it has a contribution to make in all these matters, and for the sake of the world it should be brought into consultation. It has a tremendous contribution to make in the rehabilitation of Eastern Europe and in teaching it some of the techniques of production which are necessary. The sooner that Eastern Europe is in a much happier position economically the safer will be the world.
6.55 p.m.
The Earl of Cork and Orrery: My Lords,
"Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour".
So wrote Rupert Brooke, celebrating with the high exhilaration of youth the outbreak of World War One. Now, 75 years later —75 years of weariness and experience —we may reasonably repeat those words for an exactly opposite reason, believing as I do that there is at least a chance of peace in our time and a peace not based on and secured by the Independent nuclear deterrent.
To me this is a far better cause for exhilaration and excitement. Some might say —some certainly do say —that as soon as we are sure beyond a doubt that the cold war is over, there will be no more reason to keep or to manufacture nuclear weapons. No more there will, as far as the USSR is concerned. But these weapons can never be wholly abolished from the world. Even if we leave the USSR out of our calculations altogether, we still live in a dangerous world in which something like a dozen nations already have either the ability or the potential ability to construct nuclear weapons.

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As long as this is so—it will always be so, and probably worse —it would be madness for us to give them up. Defence against the Warsaw Pact may become a necessity of the past. I believe it will, and it is almost so already. But the necessity for defence in general will remain until the end of foreseeable time. That is why we must keep these weapons though in fewer numbers, not as a deterrent against the Warsaw Pact, but for the safety of the nation.
The Labour Party has never agreed with this but now, since its own policy study and the party conference at Brighton, we learn that the party also means to retain the weapons. You must admit that it is a bit weird, or would be if it were true. For years it banged the drum of unilateral disarmament and then suddenly, when the possibility of a nuclear exchange between NATO and the Warsaw Pact seems to have shrunk almost to invisibility, and after some hearty arm-twisting by its own leader, it decides to go multilateral, like the Tories. Do you believe this, my Lords? Do noble Lords really think that Labour policy has performed this spectacular volte face? Of course, it has not.
I personally know of nobody in that party who has actually stated that it has. It will surely be agreed that a defence policy is a policy for the defence of the nation and keeping it safe. This newly-announced policy of the Labour Party is a policy for winning the next general election and has nothing whatever to do with defending the country. The truly extraordinary matter is that everyone knows this, and it was frequently referred to even by members of the party themselves at the conference. But none of the media seems to think it worth more than passing notice.
The Labour Party has been agonising, perfectly openly and properly, over the problem of how to become electable. I believe it is important that the electorate should understand that this great party is up to something pretty unusual. It is engaged in a process unique in British parliamentary history; indeed, so far as I know, in parliamentary history in general. Nobody has ever before witnessed the spectacle of a great fully-formed party looking for a policy. Parties come into being for a purpose. People do not form themselves into a party and then fall into discussions as to what they are there for.
The Labour Party, for example, was formed to support the trade unions and to improve the lot of the working man. These objects have been achieved so successfully that with the general decline —to use a rather mild word —of socialism the majority of the electorate has decided that the party has done its job and is now redundant. Where then is it to go? Logic answers loud and clear:
"… fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away".
The party is naturally reluctant to do that and we have the spectacle of a party looking for a policy; for an escape from the dustbin of limbo; for a raison d'etre. The policy document is the result.
There is nothing in any way improper about that. I am making no accusations. The party saw, with a clarity of vision induced by successive electoral defeats, that it had become unelectable like, say, the
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SDP or the PDSA, or whatever it is called. This policy document is simply designed to make it electable again. Your Lordships may think it a somewhat basic, even embarrassing, ambition for a party to have to admit to; but there it is and reasonable enough at that, as I think your Lordships will agree.
It is also a bit weird, as I indicated just now, to decide to keep the independent deterrent at almost the exact moment when, as some might think, it really looks like becoming unnecessary. It is tempting to wonder —and nobody succumbs to this temptation more readily than I —whether we are not witnessing a demonstration of a large-scale missing of the point, for it is not just the Labour Party that has become non-electable but socialism itself. All over the world —yes, even in China —belief in public ownership as a means of production, distribution and exchange is sliding inexorably into the discard. This is true whether the said socialism is practised under totalitarian regimes or in the homelands of party democracy. It appears to me now that the decline of the Labour Party into irrelevance began with the untimely death of Hugh Gaitskell. Think how much more firmly it would be placed now if it had kept the independent nuclear deterrent and abandoned Clause 4.
I do not think, therefore, that there is any serious danger of the Labour Party winning the next or any other general election. If I suppose that, or I do not think there is this danger, why should I worry about what the Labour Party is up to? The answer is that I may be wrong. There is also the unforeseeable future to be considered and there is still plenty of time for some self-inflicted disaster on the part of the Tory Party. That is not an unheard of event. I may be asked: what then? Has not the Labour Party said that it will keep the independent nuclear deterrent, and is that not what everyone wants? Of course it is what I want; but is that what the party said it will do? I do not think so.
True, the Labour Party conference said so, but it also voted for a sizeable cut in defence spending and it was promptly and publicly announced that that would not appear in the manifesto when the time came. If the national executive committee is not bound by the decisions of conference in one case, why should it be bound in the other? Has it ever been bound by anything yet? I do not think so. My guess is that when election time comes the so-called multilateral decision will appear in the manifesto. If it did and if, thanks to its appearance, a Labour Government were returned to power, what then? Well, manifestos are not written on stone. This particular policy, or pseudo policy, having achieved its quite openly admitted aim of getting the party elected, could and no doubt would be quietly dropped. And why not?
Defence and foreign affairs, which occupy the composite field which we are debating this afternoon, are uniquely hedged about by secrecy. What could be easier than for a new Prime Minister or Minister of Defence to change his mind on reading all the hitherto hidden —that is, hidden from him —and unseen intelligence assessments of the outgoing government? If this should happen the rest

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of us would be in no position to say that we had been treated in any way dishonestly. It would have been a trick, certainly, but performed before your very eyes —like the conversation going on just across the Chamber from me —like a three card trick or a thimble rig. If we fell for it we should have only ourselves to blame.
I referred earlier to hearty arm-twisting by the party leader. Is he then the leader newly dedicated to the cause of multilateral disarmament, or not? If he were, he would be bound, in order to retain any shadow of credibility whatever in this particular field, to have resigned from the CND which, with him, is dedicated to unilateral nuclear disarmament. The Labour Party is engaged in a confidence trick, a perfectly honourable one, but a confidence trick none the less. Your Lordships have been warned.
7.7 p.m.
Lord Pitt of Hampstead: My Lords, I do not intend to travel down the road that the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, has opened up for me. I merely say that I should have thought it much more sensible, if you have got a weapon and negotiations are taking place, to agree in those negotiations about the use of the weapon. That seems to me to be all that the party is saying at this moment.
I want to speak about other matters. We are living in very interesting and exciting times and I suspect that this Session of Parliament will be a very testing one. I agree with the noble Lords who have greeted the changes in Eastern Europe with joy and expectation. However, the present developments in Eastern Europe, while they are pregnant with opportunity, are equally pregnant with danger. I hope therefore that they will be handled with the utmost care.
It is not only in Europe that there are changes taking place. It is these changes in other parts about which I wish to speak this evening. There are changes taking place in Southern Africa. They are connected with what is taking place in Eastern Europe, as your Lordships can imagine, because they have both been affected by the coming to power of Mikhail Gorbachev; by the consequential improvement in East-West superpower relations, and by the desire of the Soviet Union to reduce much of its extra territorial obligations and to concentrate on reforming and improving its economy. What is happening in Eastern Europe and in South Africa owes a lot to that.
Now —and I can say joyfully —23 years after the United Nations General Assembly revoked South Africa's mandate over Namibia and ordered South Africa to withdraw; 22 years after the establishment of the United Nations Council for Namibia (which was supposed to administer Namibia on the United Nations' behalf until independence but which, of course, was never allowed even to enter the territory); 18 years after the International Court of Justice gave its opinion that South Africa occupied Namibia illegally: after all that time we have had elections in that territory to elect a constituent assembly to draw up a constitution for an independent Namibia. The constituent assembly has met and elected a chairman
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and has now embarked upon its task. The hope is —and this must also be accompanied with a prayer —that the progress to Namibian independence will continue unimpeded and that no further obstacles will be placed in its way.
The assumption that independence will be achieved means that an independent Namibia will need a great deal of help and support. I say that because although Namibia is one of the wealthiest countries in Africa, with rich mineral deposits, fertile coastal fishing grounds and plenty of good stock farming land, the majority of Namibians live in extreme poverty. That poverty is a result of the economic, political and social policies and structures which were imposed upon Namibia by South Africa. Therefore, after independence, huge problems will remain.
The international community must be prepared to help the new Namibian Government to cope with such problems. It must also insist that Walvis Bay, which is Namibia's only deep water port and which was annexed by South Africa, be returned to Namibia, so that it can play its essential role in the economic development of the country. The United Kingdom has a long association with South Africa and also with Namibia. We must be in the forefront of the endeavour to secure the return of Walvis Bay to Namibia. After all, Walvis Bay was annexed by Britain in 1878. Therefore, we have some residual responsibility in the matter.
It is expected that after independence Namibia will join the Commonwealth. We hope that there will be concerted Commonwealth help for this new country. It is also expected to become a signatory of the Lome Convention. There again, I hope that all the help which Britain can give will be given.
As regards South Africa, it would seem that the Government have understood —at least, I hope that this is so —that the military option to resolving political differences is too costly. At present, South Africa's economy is in great difficulties. There is a substantial flight of capital from the country and resources are stretched to the limit in the government's attempts to control legitimate black opposition and organisation. Moreover, the attempted destabilisation of its neighbours —which is one of the really sad aspects about South Africa's behaviour —is proving expensive and adding to its isolation.
Through their new president, the present government have been making statements which suggest that they realise authoritarian government is not the way to a successful future and that a way must be found to enable the people of South Africa to live together in equality and freedom.
The National Party's manifesto and its five-year plan, although a big document, at least recognised the need to negotiate. However, the problem is the agenda. Moreover, a Law Commission report released earlier this year called for the enactment of a Bill of individual rights approved by the entire nation, regardless of race and colour, to be preceded by the abolition of residual apartheid laws. Such an enactment requires a common franchise. I cannot see how it can be approved by the whole nation

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unless the whole nation votes for it. If this report is accepted, and there is a proposal for its implementation, this would certainly create a new climate.
The release of all political prisoners, the unbanning of the African National Congress and other exiled political movements and the abolition of the state of emergency are all essential prerequisites to the opening of negotiations. It is important that the South African Government recognise that the abolition of the Group Areas Act, the Population Registration Act, and the other Acts which have been used to underpin apartheid, is as important as any of the other matters to which I have referred.
The South African Government seem to a certain extent to have recognised that fact. They have removed some of the fringe features of apartheid. In fact, they have promised to abolish the Separate Amenities Act which prevents people from using beaches, parks, sports facilities and other such amenities. However, they have not yet shown a willingness for more fundamental changes. There must be more fundamental changes. If the right climate for negotiation is to be created, the government need to be encouraged to take bold steps. They have the power to do so. All the matters to which I have referred are actions which can be taken by the South African Government at this time. Further, if such actions had been taken, the climate would be quite different.
The British Government have a duty to spell out this need to the Government of South Africa. I say that because it seems to me, after listening to the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, that the Government and their supporters insist it is friendship with South Africa which will enable changes to take place. Therefore I say that it is the duty of this Government, and of those who think like them, to spell such matters out to the South African Government. It is no use the South African Government believing that all they need to do is to make a few superficial gestures, while ensuring in the final analysis that they continue with white rule. That policy is not on. They must be made to understand that fact.
I want to say a word about sporting contacts with South Africa because that subject seems to arise a great deal. The ban on sporting links with South Africa must be regarded as a sanction which is no different from the ban on the sale of arms to South Africa. It has been imposed to bring pressure to bear on South African society so that pressure is brought to bear on the government to bring in change. It does not carry a legal sanction, but under the Gleneagles agreement governments undertook to use their utmost endeavours to discourage sporting contacts with South Africa. I doubt whether the British Government use their utmost endeavours to discourage such contacts.
Whenever a rugby or cricket tour to South Africa is announced, the Minister for Sport says that the Government disapprove of it, but in the same breath he goes on to say that people are free to go if they wish. The Government should indicate, in the
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strongest possible terms, their opposition to such contacts and should explain to the sportsmen that they are wrong when they think that they are not taking part in politics, because they are making a political statement in support of apartheid when they accept an invitation to play in South Africa.
Sporting contact with South Africa cannot be justified on the basis that it contributes to the development of non-racial sport within the country, because the very structure of South African society and the actions of the white minority government necessarily confine non-whites to second class participation in sport just as they confine them to a second class participation in all other aspects of South African society.
Nothing can justify giving comfort to the apartheid regime or, what is equally important, undermining the position of other sportsmen and sportswomen who remain faithful to the Gleneagles agreement. The Government should spell out that fact to sportsmen and sportswomen in this country because they should understand what they are doing.
Finally, I wish to speak about the Lomé agreement. The news that I receive suggests that we are not meeting the needs of the ACP countries in the new agreement. The present Lomé negotiations are affected by a climate in which commodity prices are low; there is the debt question; and the fear of the consequences of 1992 on islands such as those in the Caribbean. The people fear that their bananas will be unable to come into Britain on the same terms as they formerly came in and that they would be subject to competition from bananas from Latin America which could wipe out the industry. Coffee producers fear the consequences of the Uruguay round. All those difficulties surround the negotiations.
The information I receive suggests that, as usual, this country is dragging its feet with regard to the European Development Fund. I hope that on this occasion we will not, as we have on previous occasions, force the Commission to provide funds lower than other members wish to have. I hope that the Minister can give us an assurance that that will not happen this time.
7.34 p.m.
Lord Thomas of Swynnerton: My Lords, the international situation seems to me at the moment to be so heartwarmingly encouraging that I am surprised my noble friend the Minister did not begin his speech by intoning, as Lord Curzon did in 1919 at the end of the First World War, the first strophe of Shelley's "Ode to Hellas":
"The world's great age beings anew,
The golden years return …".
It is encouraging to be present at a debate such as this when there is general agreement that the cold war seems to have come to an end. It is especially satisfactory when that should have occurred in a year when we are marking the French Revolution. How splendid to have a satisfactory counter-revolution in that year, and one which so far, as I understand it, has been attended by no bloodshed. It is also satisfactory to notice that the

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remarkable change in events in relation to the destruction of a creed (Marxist-Leninism) which believed that the role of the individual was of no importance in the realm of human affairs has been brought about primarily by the energy of one individual—Mr. Gorbachev. In respect of him, another line of English poetry comes to my mind. It is that of Marvell in relation to Cromwell, who he said did,
"By industrious valour climb to ruin the great works of time Casting the kingdoms old into another mould".
I am sure that, as with Lord Curzon, my noble friend the Minister and his right honourable friend the Secretary of State will soon find, if they have not already done so, that the problems of peace are as complicated as those of conflict. For example, the President of the United States, Mr. Bush, recently said that he expects that in future it might be possible to move on from the containment of communism to a period when the Soviet Union might play a part in global co-operation. It would be a great achievement if the United States were to persuade the Soviet Union to play a positive rather than an obstructionist part in the United Nations. I wonder if we have thought enough about whether the United Nations, as it now is, is the right organisation to preserve peace in the last 10 years of the century. I have not seen any evidence that any thought has been given to that point. It may be that the organisation which was set up in 1945 on the inspiration of my noble kinsman Lord Gladwyn, and probably others in the Chamber, does not need any form of revision. If it does, this may be the moment to consider it.
However, there is of course the qualification that the chance of the Soviet Union playing a positive part in global co-operation depends upon its holding together, and that may be an assumption we cannot make.
Events in Eastern Europe plainly make it necessary for us to consider the future of NATO. NATO has played an astonishingly important part over the past two generations. Now we are faced with war between the great powers being apparently more unlikely than at any time since 1933 and perhaps since the end of the last century. Obviously in the short term NATO must remain as a guarantee of Western security and the possibility that things may go wrong in the Soviet Union and against the fact, to which our attention was drawn by my noble friend Lord Home, that the Soviet Union still has a colossal armoury in Europe. Perhaps NATO can play a part not just in securing disarmament in Europe, especially central Europe, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, said, on a larger scale than that. However, that is a very imaginative leap. I suggest that the fuure of NATO will have to be considered, just as the future of the United Nations will have to be considered, in the next few months and years.
Even more important than the challenge which these events make for the organisations I have already mentioned, there is the challenge which they pose to the European Community. First, there is the beguiling concept mentioned today of the common European house which has been spoken of by Mr. Gorbachev on so many occasions. When I first heard
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it discussed in Moscow during a meeting of the Anglo-Soviet Round Table, before Mr. Gorbachev was in power in 1984, it seemed fairly clear that the concept of a common European house was propaganda. I remember a distinguished Soviet lady speaking of it and saying, "Why don't we all collaborate? After all, we are all Europeans". That of course meant that we were not Americans.
Now we have suggestions that all 36 members of the European Security Organisation which first met in Helskini in 1975 might be looked on as members of a common European house. Surely that is far too broad to be an effective organisation. I say this with all due respect to the interesting comment on the matter made by the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan. It certainly seems that Mr. Gorbachev speaks sometimes of the common house as a synonym, or another way of saying that he, like Peter the Great, wants a window on the West.
Then there are the events in what used to be referred to as the satellite states. We have become used to referring to them as Eastern Europe, but before 1914 we spoke of them as Central Europe. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister was entirely correct in her speech in Bruges when she insisted that the cities of Warsaw, Cracow, Dresden and so on were as much part of the heartland of Europe as any of those which are in the European Community. Of course they are. They played a great and important part in European culture and history.
Once the states of which those cities are the capitals or important cities have emerged from communism, carried out elections successfully and become able to be defined as democracies, it is difficult to imagine that they would not think of applying to join the European Community. Under Article 237 of the Treaty of Rome. confirmed by Article 8 of the Single European Act —the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, will correct me if I am wrong —it is difficult to imagine that their applications would be turned down.
The idea therefore must be that within the next 10 years or so we may have about 10 more European states seeking to join the European Community. How will this affect the future of the Community? Will it mean that the Community will disintegrate; or, on the other hand, that we shall have to devise a central political authority of the kind which we have not yet devised, in order to cope with the challenge that these applications by ihemselves will pose?
Then there is the question of Germany. I personally feel that the application of East Germany to join the European Community is not likely to be such a demanding challenge as applications from some of the other countries of which I have spoken. After all, once East Germans get to West Germany, they are looked upon as West German citizens and therefore, presumably, as European Community citizens. I suppose that if they wished they could come here immediately and do what they liked—perhaps found water companies in London or whatever undertakings members of the European Community may be expected to carry on in the next few years in this country. That does not seem to be such an important matter.

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The question of European unification is of a different character and I quite agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Stewart of Fulham, when he insisted that we should not give the impression that we were hostile to that. Anything we ourselves might do on the matter is not likely to be of determining importance.
Those who feel anxious about such a possibility may perhaps feel less so if they recall that the Germany of 1989—even if we include both Germanies —is only three-quarters the size it was in 1937 and only two-thirds the size of Germany in 1910. Perhaps those people would also be comforted to reflect that, after all, the German birth rate is declining and not increasing. Finally, if those points do not satisfy them, they may come to the conclusion that the best approach to the problems of East Germany might well be to ensure that the great historic states of Saxony, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg might be enmeshed successfully in a European union.
All these events occur at a time when the future of the European Community itself has once again entered a period of controversy. I as an observer feel that I have some sympathy with both sides on this question. I have no doubt that noble Lords will feel that that is an irritating position to take up. All the same, I can see, on the one hand, that we have all tended to neglect the remarkable achievements of President Mitterrand in the past eight or 10 years in taking France away from its Gaullist position of isolation and converting it into a country which is willing to collaborate and to lead in Europe. Certainly in many ways it is collaborating in NATO.
I can also partially sympathise with the position of M. Delors, although I do not think it would be good if 80 per cent. of the major economic decisions were taken in Brussels, any more than I think it would be good if 80 per cent. of the economic decisions were taken in London, in respect of the British economy. I do not agree with him there. However, I sympathise wih him in his dilemmas. It is rather as if he were a rugby player who had spent a long time during the match in the scrum and had seen the opportunity for an opening. That player knows perfectly well that he has to bruise his way over if he is to get anywhere at all.
In exactly the same way—and I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, would agree with this—anyone who works with 11 or in this case 12 European democratic countries and sees an opportunity of getting them together on any issue must feel that he has to act as quickly and forcefully as he can, since such an opportunity will surely not recur.
On the other hand, I have every sympathy with those in the Government who are reluctant to make further concessions on sovereignty, given the large number of concessions on sovereignty that we have already made since 1973. They are so many that it seems to me that Mr. Nigel Lawson's reflections on his desire for "a Europe of nation states" was rather out of date when he gave that interview on television. We have made so many concessions that I can perfectly understand that those responsible for our
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affairs must act with caution about the timing of entry into organisations if they are not certain which is the best mechanism.
Nevertheless, I was persuaded by the arguments against the Treasury's proposal for competing European currencies which were put by the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield. It also seems to me that if we are to make a success of the Common Market, the single European market to which we have committed ourselves and devoted such attention and patience, in the end a single currency may well be the right course.
I am glad to see that the gracious Speech makes it plain that the Government are going to throw their weight as forcefully as they can behind the idea of some form of monetary co-operation. However, the language is rather cold, or not as warm as the firm commitment implicit in the 1987 Conservative electoral manifesto. That manifesto quite rightly stated that this was a Government who had taken Britain away from the sidelines of Europe to the mainstream.
The word "mainstream" is important as the essence of the Community is that it is a stream flowing onwards towards further integration. I hope therefore that the Government will regard it as one of their major responsibilities from within the European Community to assist in the formulation of a satisfactory political framework for the future. That should certainly involve fighting against excessive centralisation or new regulation, seeking a proper democratic accountability, making it possible for other European nations from the East to join and preparing the country as a whole for a European future in a Europe of diversity. That will be a Europe des patries no doubt which I would interpret as a Europe of nations, but which cannot be a Europe of nation states. The difference seems to me fundamental. The mood which I hope the Government will breathe as regards our and their European future is that of Churchill who (in relation to social reform) said in 1910 that he did not fear to see the changes which were to come.
7.42 p.m.
Lord St. John of Bletso: My Lords, Her Majesty's gracious Speech drew attention to the need for Her Majesty's Government to:
"encourage the forces for peaceful change and reconciliation in Southern Africa".
Many noble Lords have spoken of the exciting political changes in Eastern Europe. I believe that southern Africa is going through a similar historical potential breakthrough. With the constraints on time in this evening's debate, I wish to focus specifically on South Africa which has been my home for over 28 years. After the obvious stalemate position of the past decade, a real sense of realism seems to be emerging for peaceful negotiation. The recent successful elections in Namibia, the withdrawal of Cuban and South African forces from Angola and the new leadership under President de Klerk in South Africa have raised a hope and belief that residual apartheid can be eradicated and that a new constitution, recognising the vote of all persons in South Africa, can ultimately be successful.

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Central to any chance of success in South Africa is the need for a climate of mutual trust. That will be a major hurdle. We all welcome the recent repeal of the separate amenities legislation. That point was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Pitt of Hampstead. Further, we welcome the release of many political prisoners and the partial lifting of the state of emergency through the non-interference by the police in the recent defiance campaign launched by the mass democratic movement. Obviously now the call must be for the unbanning of all political parties, particularly the African National Congress.
The recent election result, although totally excluding the black vote, showed a clear vote for reform. In previous speeches that I have addressed on this issue, I have raised three categories of South African white voters. There are the so-called thousand year reich Nationalists who believe that the status quo can continue for the rest of their lives and their children's lives. There is the après nous ledéluge movement which is constituted of those who believe that the situation will perpetuate for their lifetimes, but perhaps not for those of their children. Then there is the more liberal moderate movement. The recent election showed a clear move to the more moderate liberal movement with a real realisation that black majority rule is inevitable. In his most recent address to the Foreign Correspondents' Association on 13th November, the state president said:
"We South Africans must learn to understand one another and our country better. We must bridge the gulf of ignorance, misunderstanding and distrust which still separates our people. The future of South Africa will ultimately be influenced much more by communication than by confrontation. We stand on the threshold of great developments in Southern Africa".
Clearly there are a number of complementary objectives between the orchestrators of reform and those of revolt. These are the objectives of one nation, one constitution, one citizenship and the preservation of a strong economy. Despite a major disinvestment campaign from South Africa, the economy has remained reasonably resilient. The noble Lord, Lord Pitt of Hampstead, remarked on the efficacy of sanctions, and more specifically sporting sanctions. Being a very keen sportsman myself, while I initially supported sporting sanctions against South Africa, I cannot but feel that the international community has moved the goalposts. When the initial Gleneagles Agreement was brought into force, its aim was to discourage countries from playing sport with South Africa until the latter changed its domestic sport. It was not a ban. Surely now the aim of the call for sanctions, specifically sporting sanctions, appears to be that none of the international sporting bodies should play against South Africa until there is a total change of government. Sanctions in targeted form may have a certain amount of assistance psychologically, but it is the threat of sanctions more than their implementation that has been effective. I certainly welcome the policy of Her Majesty's Government regarding their strong stand against this unnecessary measure.
Dr. Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, the former leader of the opposition Progressive Federal Party, succinctly summarised the current position by distinguishing
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between three distinct but interrelated processes that currently take place in South Africa. These are talking about negotiation or position bargaining; creating the conditions for negotiation or determining who will shape up to bargain; and negotiation on bargaining itself or settling an acceptable alternative constitution. I believe that South Africa is still involved in the first process and is tentatively moving towards the second.
There are so many issues I should have liked to raise in this evening's debate, but I shall merely list a few of what I believe are the moot points that could be raised in future debates on this issue. Black urbanisation will jump from 57 per cent. to 75 per cent. within the next two decades. South African cities are politically unprepared for the socio-economic consequences. If apartheid legislation is not scrapped, it will ultimately be ignored.
There is currently almost a 3 per cent. population growth rate with the economy battling to rise beyond a 2 per cent. growth rate per annum. The skills for a future economy will increasingly depend on today's black youth. There are 19 educational bodies in South Africa. Surely this is a complete farce and a total waste of money. A single educational body must be achieved.
I wish briefly to raise the issue of the interdependence between South Africa and its neighbours. South Africa has 63 per cent. of the paved roads, 56 per cent. of the total rail lines, and 50 per cent. of the ports. Gavin Relly, the current chairman of the Anglo-American Corporation, at a recent address at the Centre for European Policy Studies, remarked:
"Southern Africa cannot hope to develop without the participation of South Africa. Any attempt to de-link the economies of Southern Africa from South Africa and to pretend that aid and assistance from the international community can more than make up for the natural linkages and participation of South Africa will perpetuate rather than eradicate the problems faced by the region".
In conclusion, I do not believe that there is any "quick fix" for the South Africa dilemma. The ritual mantra of releasing political prisoners, removing the ban on the exiled movements, and abolishing the state of emergency as the essential prior steps necessary to initiate negotiations should not be taken as a one-off package of immediate change. It should rather be seen as part of a purposeful process of change which is not amenable to simple timetabling.
The noble Lord, Lord Pitt, raised the issue of the Nationalist Party five-year plan. I agree that it is a particularly vague document. However, at least it recognises the need to negotiate. Further reform in South Africa will be beset by risk and many difficulties. I believe, however, that a true democracy in South Africa is now a reality and not just a pipe dream. I warmly support Her Majesty's Government's endeavours to encourage that process.
7.52 p.m.
The Earl of Selkirk: My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord who has just spoken. I believe that he is correct in saying that there is a great deal of unjustified prejudice in this country

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against South Africa. I met someone recently who said that he had seen no sign of apartheid during his visit to South Africa. I am aware that South Africa has great problems, but I believe that it is trying to tackle them.
I should like to say a few words about what the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Swynnerton, said. It is worth remembering how we have arrived at the present extraordinary situation in Europe. I should like to recall the background. At the start of the war in 1914, everyone said that if only politicians could get round the table they would settle the matter. I believe that probably that was true. That is exactly what is being done now by the President of France. He has called people together to consider what is happening.
What is happening? Seven or eight countries are experiencing the start of what looks very much like a French revolution. People are gathering in their hundreds of thousands to say that they cannot tolerate the way the government is being conducted. How did that situation arise?
After the First World War there was the Versailles Treaty. The Versailles Treaty was founded on hatred of Germany and a desire to punish Germany. Noble Lords may recall the words of Edmund Burke that one cannot indict a nation. One cannot indict a nation today. To do so was the gravest of errors.
I was a student in Germany at that time. Anything that went wrong in France was a matter for great pleasure in Germany. Anything that went wrong in Germany gave great pleasure to France. That was an intolerable situation, but it provided the fertile soil which gave rise to Hitler. If one was in Germany and realised that Germany was held in disrepute all over the world, one could readily understand how a leader like Hitler could gather the country together. I could see that: it was as clear as crystal that something would happen, even in the very early 'thirties. Something did happen.
What happened then? What happened after the six years of the Second World War? The whole of Europe was handed over to Stalin. That I am afraid is what the American President agreed to and what we were unable to prevent. I asked a Hungarian how his country became in that situation. He did not know. Hungary had suddenly found itself under the control of Russia. Now there have been revolts. The position is unique. It may not last long. How are we to use the opportunity?
There are many options, most of them calling for democracy. Democracy is a delicate instrument which needs very careful handling. Democracy is not a test of wisdom, it is a test of opinion. One has to recognise that the majority decision is not by any means necessarily the right decision, but it is the way in which one gets support behind it.
We can help very much in the way that those countries set themselves up. I believe it is not a question of the theory of politics that we should teach them but how to handle democracy. I should like, like the noble Lord, Lord Stewart, to make a German quotation from Goethe:
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"Grau alter Freund ist alle theorie, and grün des Lebens goldener Baum".
Theory is grey; it is the golden tree of life which matters. That is what we could teach those countries—the golden tree of life; how they can manage their affairs properly.
Where does the European Community come into this? The European Community should make itself as easily available as possible to the countries of Eastern Europe. I have to say with respect to my noble friend Lord Cockfield that I do not believe that we should tread too far on the political side. The Queen's Speech refers to the free market. I hope that we shall achieve that. However, I do not believe that we should think of going further on the political side until we have had real experience of how the market works.
I do not want to detain your Lordships longer than necessary. However, the European Commission has to show itself as being more competent. We know very well that large sums—not millions but billions—have gone astray. Professor Tiedemann, German professor of economic crime, has said that the common agricultural policy is the greatest incentive to crime in Europe. I say to my noble friend that that has to stop. The Commission has some 3,000 employees and can stop the crime. It is up to the Commission to see that it is done. It should not set a bad example.
Countries from Eastern Europe will not be attracted to join an organisation which cannot keep its hands on money and cannot prevent crime. I believe that that has to be put right before the European Community can look forward to the day when the eastern European countries can join in a common market covering almost the whole of Europe. That is important.
I believe that there is a great incentive. I do not believe that we should worry too much that the Prime Minister is in a minority. I believe that the Prime Minister is more often right than wrong and that criticisms, particularly on television and elsewhere, are not justified. We have an opportunity and we should not let it pass.
7.59 p.m.
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, with this number of speakers it is difficult to say anything new, but I want to emphasise some points that have already been made and to consider another which I believe is a major factor in regard to the future.
At the outset I should like to digress for a moment to make the point that governments should not simply be categorised as democratic or communist. There are, and should be, half-way houses. I do not believe that our own type of democracy is completely exportable to developing countries where, initially, for them, a more autocractic regime might be necessary. Experience seems to support that view. It may also apply to former communist regimes if too sudden changes are made. Most of us here think that capitalism is the only way to promote economic efficiency, but it must be controlled to avoid its potential excesses. Again, a half-way house and some new thinking might be the right answer.

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Returning to the subject of the debate, I must say that I have always been fearful that, if autocratic communism was breached, there might be chaos because the public and their leaders went too far too quickly and a situation like that in China resulted. To a relatively minor degree, that happened in Czechoslovakia and may happen elsewhere, even in Russia. My guess is that a return to rigid communism in the West will not result. It was once said by Shakespeare, and repeated later by the German Iron Chancellor, Bismarck, that there is no power equal to an idea whose time has come. I think that that is true today in Russia.
However, my fear is that the Red Army, whose members will lose some of their prestige, jobs and promotion prospects under the Gorbachev changes, might resolve to bid for a takeover in Russia. That possibility does not seem to have been fully appreciated in previous defence debates, probably because Gorbachev's ideals were not so clear then as they are today. With that in mind, we must support him as far as we can. What would happen if the Russian army took over power is anyone's guess, but there is little doubt that we should need strong NATO forces in a way which some might question while the present euphoria lasts.
What worries me today far more than Russia is the new nuclear capability being acquired by some of the smaller nations. A small 100 megawatt nuclear power station might be able to produce enough weapon-grade plutonium for a nuclear bomb in one month. That is up to 10 bombs a year —a frightening statistic, even allowing for the difficulty of extracting pure plutonium from the fuel rods.
Perhaps I may pose a hypothetical question. What would happen if, for example, a near Eastern extremist leader started using a nuclear weapon? Would it initiate a major nuclear war with the superpowers becoming involved? I hope that this and other possibilities will be discussed between the major powers, Russia included.
I have not mentioned chemical warfare. Again, there is the probability of smaller nations acquiring that capability. Unfortunately, the time has passed when the West could effectively control those developments, but we should continue to try to slow them down. It is time that the anti-nuclear lobby targeted the threats which I have described.
Even if we can largely eliminate the ridiculous over-kill of the American and the Russian nuclear arsenals, we must keep a massive superiority in relative terms against newcomers in the nuclear field until the time when we can eliminate all such arsenals.
8.5 p.m.
Lord Geddes: My Lords, with the forbearance of the House, I shall return to the subject of Hong Kong. Until July 1997, and indeed thereafter, the people of Hong Kong are our responsibility. Those people are not being granted independence. Not to mince words, we are handing them over to a country whose values presently have little in common with our own. The freedom of the individual, the freedom of the press and an independent judiciary are an
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integral part of our life which we take for granted, but those concepts are alien and almost unknown to the people of China. Can we depend on the Chinese to allow the people of Hong Kong to enjoy those basic rights without ensuring adequate safeguards? The whole world knows what happened in China earlier this year.
As was said in the gracious Speech, the basic premise from which all subsequent negotiations must stem is the Joint Declaration of 1984. Paragraph 3(5) of that declaration states:
"Rights and freedoms, including those of the person, of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of travel, of movement, of correspondence, of strike, of choice of occupation, of academic research and of religious belief will be ensured by law in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region".
But the Basic Law which is supposed to put the Joint Declaration into practical effect must surely be seriously undermined, if not nullified, by the provisions that the powers of interpretation and amendment of that Basic Law are vested in the National People's Congress.
In his excellent opening speech, my noble friend the Minister mentioned the probability that Hong Kong will have a Bill of Rights. As I understand it, it is proposed that Hong Kong should adopt the human rights provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and that the People's Republic has agreed to that. But China does not recognise the covenant and it is, to say the least, questionable whether the covenant itself will be enforceable.
The Chinese may have pledged that the present social and economic systems in Hong Kong and the lifestyle enjoyed by its people will remain unchanged, but they must be given incentive to keep that pledge. The only incentive available is Hong Kong, as it is now. Its buoyant and hugely successful economy is, and should continue to be, of tremendous benefit to China. But if the people who make that economy successful—those hard-working and (I say this advisedly) brilliant entrepreneurs—are no longer there, that incentive goes with them.
The only real safeguard that we can offer the people of Hong Kong is to hand the territory over to China in its present form and to do that, its people must be given the confidence to stay. There is only one way of encouraging them to stay and that is to give them the freedom to leave in the future. At the moment the brain drain is running at around 42,000 a year and it is expected to rise to about 55,000 next year. About 24 per cent. of those emigrants are professionals—technical, administrative and managerial—who in turn make up only 5.5 per cent. of the total population. We are therefore talking of a core number of about 300,000 professionals. If 13,000 of those people leave each year—supposing that that rate does not increase further—nearly one-third of that vital core of the population will have left by 1997.
A Hong Kong devoid of those people is of no value to China. Those people do not want to leave their country. Indeed, why should they? They live in one of the most invigorating and exciting places in the world. I had the very real privilege of living there

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for three years. They are leaving because they fear for their future. We have the power to allay their fears by granting them the right of abode.
The fact that the Government recognise the truth of that proposition was demonstrated in his speech by my noble friend the Minister. However, he was silent on numbers and referred only to "key people". I have heard mentioned a figure of 150,000. Although that would be a good start, it is still a woefully inadequate number. If the British Government were prepared to grant the right of abode to a substantial number of British passport holders —I agree with my noble friend Lord MacLehose and I shall not be tempted into trying to double-guess what that number should be, but I repeat "a substantial number"—surely other countries, not least in North America, in all probability would follow our example. A team of British economists led by Professor Corry of London University came to the conclusion that, even if all the 3·2 million British passport holders were to come to the United Kingdom, that influx could well be of great benefit to this country.
However, the reality of the situation is that it is highly unlikely that many Hong Kong people would want to leave Hong Kong, let alone come to the United Kingdom. In a recent poll conducted by Survey Research in Hong Kong 62 per cent. of those polled said that they would stay in Hong Kong even if they were granted the right of abode in the United Kingdom. Only 6 per cent. said that they would emigrate to the United Kingdom.
As I did last week at Question Time, I refer again to the situation in East Germany. The citizens of that country now have freedom of egress and right of abode in West Germany, but most of them have chosen to stay in or return to their own country. Cultural ties should not be underestimated.
The greatest danger of all is that position in which China inherits a Hong Kong which is of no benefit to it. There is then no incentive for China to keep its promises and those who can do so will leave Hong Kong. The world may rally round and accept those new refugees, but the British obligation will be the greatest. We shall be forced to accept possibly the weakest members of the refugee population which would impose on us an enormous burden.
In an ironic way that burden would not be totally dissimilar from that presently imposed on Hong Kong by the influx of Vietnamese. My noble friend the Minister has given the numerical scale of the problem. It does not need a statistician to appreciate that the equation is hopelessly unbalanced. The number of Vietnamese in Hong Kong is growing at an alarming rate. However unpalatable it may be in theory, in practice mandatory repatriation is the only available solution. The conditions in which those people already live are overcrowded in the extreme and border on the inhumane.
Quite simply there is nowhere else for them to go. Hong Kong itself is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. If we do not act now, an already grave situation will become a serious crisis. Those who have been refused refugee
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status—the economic migrants—must be returned to Vietnam as a matter of urgency. It is to be hoped that that in itself would prevent many more from leaving. For that to happen, we must have the co-operation of the Vietnamese Government. Clearly it cannot be a one-sided decision.
The Vietnamese Government themselves have made very clear that economic aid is needed to persuade them to take back their citizens and restrain further departures. One may well feel that that is tantamount to being held to ransom. I do not disagree, but it must be the better of the two solutions. To put it in its simplest terms, the choice is either to pay the Vietnamese Government to take back their economic refugees and allow them to make some kind of life for themselves, or to incur vast expenditure, keeping them in the appalling camps in Hong Kong. Realistically, there can only be one answer: mandatory repatriation.
The reference to Hong Kong in the gracious Speech included two words of key significance: "restore confidence". In this country we have a number of fundamental duties in that respect. Such duties must include insistence—I use the word quite deliberately—that Peking demonstrates in both word and deed that it will honour all aspects of the Joint Declaration. We ourselves must demonstrate our total commitment to Hong Kong and its people by granting them the right of abode in this country and by taking an even stronger lead in resolving the Vietnamese refugee problem.
8.16 p.m.
Lord Cocks of Hartcliffe: My Lords, given the remarkable events in Eastern Europe, I think it perfectly natural that many of the speeches this evening concentrated on that aspect. The noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, observed that there is very little to say that is new. That is probably correct if one takes that limited European scene.
I should like to turn to a subject not mentioned in the gracious Speech but first I shall refer to a sentence about the Middle East that did occur in it; namely, that Her Majesty's Government
"will continue to work for a peaceful solution to the conflicts in the Middle East".
The Speech went on to mention Cambodia. During my time in politics, I have often wondered why there is such an enormous concentration on the affairs of Israel. Israel is a country which is the size of Wales and has a population of some 5 million people. Yet the attention paid to it is out of all proportion. Such attention derogates from the consideration of other extremely serious problems that are facing the world.
The noble Lord, Lord Molloy, is one of those who persistently raise in this House the question of the Middle East and Israel. In his speech tonight he regretted the assassination of King Abdullah. I hope that he equally regrets the assassination of Palestinians who try to work with the Israeli authorities to improve the situation. There is an almost obsessional interest in Israel, the latest manifestation of which appeared in a report in The Mail on Sunday which reported a visit to Israel of

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the British Council of Churches and commented on a report since produced. Hugh Muir, the man who wrote that report says in the second paragraph that the report compiled by the British Council of Churches:
"compares the suffering of Palestinians during the creation of the state of Israel with that of the Jews during the Holocaust".
That seems to me to be absolutely grotesque. I wish to draw attention to a situation that I believe is desperately serious and far worse than anything that may be described in the British Council report. Earlier the right reverend Prelate said that he would stray from the main theme of the debate up to that time by mentioning two places: El Salvador and Cambodia. He said that he would introduce two fresh places and I thought at first that one of them might have been the Sudan because there is a substantial Christian community there.
The noble Lord, Lord Molloy, mentioned Cambodia. I heartily agree with his remarks about the situation in that country; but it is not dissimilar from the situation in the Sudan. I welcome his interest in Cambodia and invite him to join me in pursuing the problems of the persecuted minorities and the people in the south, in particular in Sudan, who are suffering so gravely. Sudan is the largest country in Africa. It is a million square miles, with some 25 million people. Yet I believe that I am the first speaker in this debate who has mentioned it. It is an incredibly diverse country and yet little is heard of it.
I have been inquiring about Sudan in the past few weeks. Some of the information on the problems there has been given on an entirely confidential basis because if the source became public very grave consequences would flow for those who have supplied the information.
However, there has been a good deal of comment over the years in the press. In the summer of last year James Grant, the director of United Nations Operation Lifeline Sudan, wrote an article discussing the historic agreement between the Government and the SPLM which allowed the safe transit of food supplies to the war ravaged south. In his article he outlines some of the problems. He states:
"Two years ago, there were roughly 6 million people in southern Sudan. And in the last two years of civil conflict, 1·5 million of them have fled to the north, nearly 500,000 to Ethiopia, Uganda and other places, and 300,000 or 400,000 to beleaguered garrison towns like Juba and Wau".
He continues:
"Well over 300,000 have died in those two years",
and writes of the impact that this has had not only on the economy but on the whole structure of the social pattern of the country.
In May last year the Independent carried a headline stating, "Sudan's Dinka Tribesmen 'Facing Extermination'". The article refers to women, children, teenage boys and the elderly herding together in conditions that are virtually like those which were known in Auschwitz.
In the same month The Sunday Times referred to,
"horrific evidence of genocide, slavery and mass starvation in southern Sudan".
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The article referred to,
"'walking skeletons', and a missionary has described the scene in one camp as 'like Treblinka' ".
Under the heading "Sudanese Refugees facing Starvation" the Guardian described the appalling conditions. Other newspapers such as The Times have lately carried accounts of the appalling catastrophe. Yet it is a country which has the resources to sustain a good standard of living. But such has been the deterioration in the economy that it is now described as a complete economic disaster, and it is forecast that economic activity as such will come to a standstill almost completely in the comparatively near future.
In this House we cannot always deal with every problem which is facing the world and different continents. However, at least we ought to try to share out our concern and to make sure that there is not over-concentration on one particular area to the detriment of conditions such as I describe, and as the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, described earlier with regard to Cambodia. We should widen our horizon and try to get away from over-specialisation.
The Times describes the problems in particular with the southern area and the slavery which is practised by Arab raiders, to which I shall refer shortly in a little more detail. One of the problems is that the junta which is at present in control is trying to impose sharia law on the entire country. This obviously gives rise to very great difficulties. A report in The Times of 27th July this year refers to,
"a revival in government ranks of sympathy with Islamic fundamentalists and a stress on the country's ties with the Arab world, factors which do not augur well for reconciliation with the Christian and animist south".
I hope that this can be surmounted. One would draw attention to the very great tolerance in this country of minorities. Indeed, only recently your Lordships' House rejected an amendment which would have removed the protection from Sikhs on building sites. We have an honourable tradition in this country of respect for minorities and I hope the Government will attempt to persuade the Sudanese authorities that this should be extended to their own country.
The last quotation with which I shall weary the House comes from News From Africa Watch of 25th September this year. In the first paragraph an article states:
"Sudan's new military government has dismissed dozens of judges who objected to the violation of the rights of civilians facing trial in special military tribunals. It has also closed down all independent newspapers, has detained lawyers and trade unionists and threatens to move against its critics in the university".
It is an appalling picture that I have described. The leader of the SPLM, Dr. Garang, has said that it is not a simple problem as some would try to say: that it is north against south. It is central control against the regions which make up this great country. There is a substantial Christian community in this country. I had hoped that from the Bishops' Bench we might hear some concerns expressed. I do not refer to the right reverend Prelate who is present. Over the past few years there has been no contribution from any of the right reverend Prelates with regard to the Christian community in Sudan.

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There is a need for a latter-day Gladstone to take up this cause and crusade for these people as he did for the Bulgarians during the famous Midlothian campaigns which set the pattern for modern campaigning. I was glad to hear today that under the auspices of a former American President, Jimmy Carter, there is to be a meeting in Nairobi on 1st December when peace talks are to be resumed.
Many people said they were unaware of the excesses that were being perpetrated in Nazi Germany until it was too late and nothing could be done about it. I hope that this appalling situation in Sudan will be fully discussed in your Lordships' House. I hope that the Government will do what they can to exert pressure to bring about a peaceful solution, and that when these horrors are fully detailed we shall not have to say, "If only we had known we would have tried to do more about it".
8.25 p.m.
Lord Gisborough: My Lords, this has been an extremely interesting debate, travelling north, south, east and west. I should like to go further south than the noble Lord, Lord Cocks, and draw attention to a country about which some noble Lords may not have heard. I had not heard about it until I went there. It is a country called Bophuthatswana. It lies between Botswana and South Africa. It is an independent country and yet it is unrecognised as such. It is fully democratic with universal franchise and a sound and expanding mixed economy. It has over 1,100 schools with good education; 10 hospitals; 145 clinics; a good health service; a social security system; a university with about 2,500 students; an ombudsman who looks after human rights; and a self-funding development corporation with about 450 factories creating 40,000 jobs. Last year the corporation showed a good profit. It is the world's third largest platinum producer, producing 35 per cent. of the world's supply. Its economy depends on tourism, mining and commerce. It is a place where black people from the republic can acquire land on which to live. It is a multiracial country where everyone lives in harmony. Its philosophy is that it is a Christian country with free enterprise and it is fully democratic. Its motto is "people are people" regardless of their colour. The president is elected every seven years. Its parliament has 108 seats, to which 72 are elected, 24 are appointed by tribal nominations and 12 are appointed by the president.
Sadly, because South Africa granted independence to Bophuthatswana—which I shall now call "Bop" —it is not recognised by the world even though there is no apartheid and it is obeying all the rules and criteria of an independent country.
I turn to its history. In 1871, through the Keate award, the British Government awarded all land north of the Vaal River to the Batawana, the people who live there. In 1885 Sir Charles Warren set aside the Bechuanaland Protectorate by a British Order of Council; that is to say, the area of Bop and Botswana. In 1888 the British Government promised not to incorporate British Bechuanaland into the Cape of Good Hope. Seven years later, and without
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consultation, they incorporated the southern part of the country into the Cape.
Under the Act of Union 1910 the Southern Batawanas were put into union with South Africa and they were made second-class citizens with no political rights. Under the Land Act 1913 the Southern Batawanans were deprived of all their traditional land, and their tribal rights were abolished.
That situation remained until 1977 when at last they regained their independence from the RSA but they were not recognised by the world. That is most unfair because Lesotho and Swaziland are recognised merely because of their different history.
Does Bop meet with the criteria for international recognition as a free country under the Montevideo Convention? Are the boundaries clearly defined? Is there effective internal autonomy? Does it have control of its foreign policy? It has clearly-defined borders. It is not a big country but the Vatican is a lot smaller. The borders are defined, yet many countries such as Israel, Kuwait and Kashmir have disputed borders. It is a disjointed country, but that is not unusual. For example, the United States of America is disjointed; Alaska is disjointed from the mainland. The Greek Islands are also disjointed. Bop has total internal autonomy and full responsiblity for all its administration. It has elected government, universal franchise and good administration. It is an example to many other African countries. It is more democratic than most other black countries. It is economically viable and perfectly capable of having its own foreign policy if it is allowed to do so.
However, one asks how that can be so when it is surrounded by South Africa. There is a mutual defence pact. That is not unusual because almost every other country, including ours, has such a pact. It receives financial help from the RSA to the extent of 20 per cent. of its budget. Bop could survive without that, but it says that if the money is there it might as well have it. But that is not unusual because every African country receives help from the West. Indeed, we did not lose our sovereignty when at various times during our history we received help from the United States.
There is also the argument that there is an umbilical cord to the RSA. That is no more true than it is of any other front line state. As a result of its financial strength that is less true than in many other countries. Opponents of independence may sneer but its government is independent of the RSA, which does not interfere. However, that does not mean that it is not friendly. There is nothing unusual about trying to be friendly to your neighbour. It is successful, enlightened, democratic and independent. Yet it is denied recognition by other countries of the world, many of which have no human rights, few if any elections, are economically dependent on hand-outs and unable to pay their debts.
One argument against independence is that when there is no apartheid in South Africa there will be no need for an independent Bop; the need will be deemed to have disappeared. However, it will not have disappeared for the Batswana. They do not

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want to be part of South Africa. They do not want to be part of the RSA. They do not to be part of black South Africa because they would be swamped by the Zulus and the Causa. The Batswana are intelligent and peaceable people compared with the Zulus and Causa, who are largely warlike and aggressive.
The Batswana are as different from the Zulus as are the English from the Germans or the Italians. It is racially arrogant to lump all black people into one country merely because they are black. It is the same as a black country drawing a line between Hamburg and Trieste and saying that because everyone is white it will put everyone to the left as one country and everyone else to the right in another.
The ANC want Bop to be part of the South African electorate in order to swell the numbers. Yet while the ANC speaks from self-appointed leaders with their influence founded on terror—as it is —the wish of the Batswana is expressed through the ballot box. They have made their decision and they want an independent Bop controlled by the Batswana.
If we believe in self-determination —and presumably we do or we would not have gone to the Falklands or kept Northern Ireland —why should the Batswana not be able to have the type of government they wish? Unlike the ANC they are democratically elected. They know that if there was one man, one vote in a unitary South Africa Bop would be swamped. Yet that appears to be the only thing which will satisfy the rest of the world. If they cannot be independent they would at least like to be joined with Botswana or, at worst, in a loose federation with South Africa.
Why do they need recognition and independence? They need academic and technical assistance. They want British Council scholarships. They need scholarships to UK universities and they want access to City and Guild places. They want loans from the world's banks. Other nations receive soft loans which sometimes they squander. On the other hand, Bop's financial discipline and record is exemplary. They also want to join the Commonwealth.
Furthermore, Bop cannot be declared as a country of origin. That is peculiar because Taiwan, which is not recognised, can be so declared. Yet here is a country helping itself down the road that the world wants Africa to go and it has something to offer. It is extraordinary that it is denied recognition. It is also extraordinary that the British Government refuse to find out the facts about what is going on. They are determined to remain prejudiced by not sending officials to discover what is happening.
There are 2 million people in the country receiving no help from Britain. They have taken themselves out of the apartheid situation. They are developing a democratic country regardless of colour. They have dignity and status and they deserve recognition. I do not request that the Government recommend that they receive world recognition, but merely that they should send officials to discover the facts so that Britain's policies can be based upon what is happening rather than upon prejudice.
8.40 p.m.
Lord Alport: My Lords, I believe it is a very agreeable feature of our debate that amid all the great issues which we have been discussing my noble friend Lord Gisborough should have the opportunity of bringing before us the problems of a small and isolated country, semi-independent or independent, as he would claim, in Southern Africa.
I follow him only in that most of my remarks will deal with Africa, because the real theme of our debate today is that we are living through days of immense historic importance. The events in Europe have been so remarkable that I can think of no parallel in peacetime, except in the year 1848. In that year, Sir H.A.L. Fisher has written:
"Constitutions came down in showers from the trembling hands of penitent and dissembling princes".
At the end of the next century they will be the hands of palsied and frightened presidents. It is as if some giant has shaken the kaleidoscope of European politics and produced a new pattern of colours and shapes, the consequences of which no one can today accurately assess.
However, as I said, it is not the problem of Europe at which I wish to direct my remarks this evening, except in one aspect. It is certain that the security of the balance of power in Europe, which we have had for generations, will be radically changed. There are dangerous years ahead for Britain, as the Secretary of State for Defence said last week. In those years we shall need all the friends we can muster.
The handling of our relations with our fellow members of the EC over the past couple of years has raised antagonism against our Government and country which will not easily be forgotten or forgiven. Our special relationship with the United States under the Reagan administration is now replaced by a special relationship between President Bush and Chancellor Kohl. Britain, weakened industrially and increasingly isolated politically, needs all the friends it can muster and the friends with whom I am concerned are our fellow members of the Commonwealth.
I was appalled by the isolation in which the British Government found themselves in the latter stages of the Commonwealth Conference in Kuala Lumpar and even more by the reaction to the outcome of that conference in the predominantly conservative UK press. The gist of that comment was that it was high time that the Commonwealth was abolished and that Britain should forthwith cease to be a member. It was reported that that line followed guidance given unofficially by some spokesmen of the British delegation in Kuala Lumpar.
I can understand the indignation to which the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill of Harrow, referred in his speech at being lectured by Mr. Obote in Singapore. No doubt it is annoying to be criticised by leaders of countries whose records are not above reproach. However, the fact is that by the end of the conference Britain was in a minority of one, not only opposed by the new Commonwealth but the object of unrestrained and bitter criticism by the Prime Ministers of Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

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The problem of South Africa which caused that unprecedented and deplorable situation to arise has immensely greater significance for the rest of the Commonwealth than it has, apparently, for the United Kingdom. What is more, countries such as Zimbabwe are heavily involved in the South African situation and have a greater sense of realism about it than seems to be apparent here.
Leaving aside for the moment the question of how effective sanctions can be, the fact that the leaders of the core anti-apartheid movement regard them as an essential way of bringing pressure for change and the fact that 48 out of 49 Commonwealth governments agreed, let us look at the real situation, as I see it at any rate—which is not the same as the view of the noble Lord, Lord St. John of Bletso—of that beautiful and bedevilled country.
The problem is simply one of power: black power or white power. The Financial Times got it right when it said:
"Nearly 80 per cent. at the last election voted for either crude apartheid and a bizarre version of a white homeland or a modernised version of white domination concealed in the rhetoric of 'group rights' and 'power sharing'".
Power does not mean allowing blacks to sit on benches in the public parks in Pretoria or surf on the beaches of Muzanburg. It does not mean allowing a few old men out of gaol after a quarter of a century or even the elimination of the Group Areas Act. It means the transference of political power from 5 million whites to 30 million blacks.
Already the political initiative is passing from the old ANC generation to the new young activists. As their impatience breeds extremism, resistance among the Afrikaner nation will grow. I realise that the noble Lord, Lord St. John of Bletso, was talking from the liberal point of view in South Africa, which is widespread among the population of British origin. However, I am concerned about the position of the Afrikaner nation, which has the power in South Africa at present. When the crunch comes, as it may and will do, the Afrikaner majority will take up arms and fight it out.
Two or three years ago I asked a leading spokesman of the then National Party whether he thought that in certain circumstances there could be a military coup. He said that that was a distinct possibility. I am quite sure that that will happen unless the pressure by the international community is so great that even the isolated Afrikaner nation, with all its historic memories and racial prejudices and fears, can be made to face up to the realities of their country in the present day.
I remind your Lordships that in Rhodesia, where the ratio of white to black was less, where the Afrikaner element was small and the liberals much more numerous than they are in South Africa today, it took seven years of civil war and 20,000 dead to achieve the transference of power from a white minority to a black majority.
To suppose that the mild-mannered President de Klerk with the rump of the National Party or the pallid idealism of democrats can solve the problem of power in South Africa is an illusion. Obsessed by
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that illusion, as I see it, the British Government have forfeited their leading role in the Commonwealth and have alienated friends which they so badly need in the old and new Commonwealth alike. They will be stigmatised internationally, as the situation in South Africa between now and the end of the century unfolds, as being the only major government who sided with apartheid. Their motives will be said to have been not to prevent unemployment or distress among the black population but to protect British interests in South Africa's industry and mines.
I find it extraordinary, perhaps from a historical point of view, that the Government should have appeared to side with elements in South Africa which have historically always been anti-British against the judgment and sensibilities of the countries of the Commonwealth, old and new, which have been our friends. For the latter, membership of the Commonwealth with all its links of history in the field of trade, the professions, parliamentary governments, public services, armed forces, language and institutions remains of great and continuing significance. The welcome return of Pakistan to the Commonwealth shows how strong are those ties, and we shall be dealing with legislation facilitating that in a very short time. For Britain, the strength which its influence in the Commonwealth gives it —not as an imperial power but as the origin of so many of the values and institutions which the Commonwealth countries enjoy —is just as important.
On all that, I believe that there is general agreement. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Holderness in his excellent speech yesterday referred to that. To throw all that away by clinging obstinately to the pursuit of a line of policy which will increase the basic resistance to change in South Africa, which will intensify the probable violence in the outcome and leave Britain isolated and impotent and alienate this country from Commonwealth friends, seems to me to be inexplicable. Fortunately, Commonwealth members are politically sophisticated. They have seen aberrations of judgment by British governments before; for instance, Suez. On that occasion quick and effective steps were taken to mend Britain's Commonwealth fences under a different leader.
I hope that the Government, with a new Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, will seek actively during the immediate future to repair the damage done to British interests and Commonwealth unity at Kuala Lumpur. I hope that the Minister when he replies will give some assurance that this is now the Government's firm intention.
8.51 p.m.
The Marquess of Ailsa: My Lords, I wish to say a few words about the Horn of Africa, and in particular about Somalia. Somalia has been an independent state for 29 years following the independence given to the former Protectorate of British Somaliland and Italian Somalia. This year, 1989, is President Said Barre's 20th year in office. Until last year, 1988, Somalia had a very unhappy and unsettled relationship with its neighbour, Ethiopia. It had open warfare, aerial bombardments, invasions and every other means of difficulty thrust in its way.

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However, last year, fortunately, an accord was reached between Ethiopia and Somalia. I am given to understand that that accord is working well. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for what is happening within Somalia itself. In May 1988 a group of Somalis who had previously been in Ethiopia invaded northern Somalia. During the last 18 months there has been much bitter fighting, with an exceedingly high death toll and a considerable amount of damage covering vast parts of the country but mainly in the north, and considerable human misery has been caused. The government's reaction to this has been extremely severe. Many anti-government individuals and groups have been imprisoned or detained.
As for refugees, while prior to 1988 the numerous refugee camps in Somalia were occupied by persons who had come from Ethiopia, since the troubles began in May 1988 the camps have removed themselves to Ethipia. They are populated mainly by Somalis who have fled from the various towns and bases to try to get away from the exceedingly fierce fighting that has been taking place around them.
So far help has been provided by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and by the various voluntary agencies. All this though has had a vital effect on Somalia's precarious economy. Somalia has limited material resources, and in the past has received various kinds of aid, both bilateral and multilateral, but the effects of the present civil war situation have been catastrophic. Unfortunately, many of the development projects and ideas have had to stop because of the security conditions. Equally, a number of governments have been reluctant to proceed with their aid programmes owing to the suggestions that there have been violations of human rights.
The Somali Government itself is very much aware of the problems within its country and is endeavouring to restore normality. It has declared an amnesty for all those who are in rebellion against it. It has released—and is releasing—vast numbers of political prisoners. It has set up commissions to investigate the reasons for people's discontent, and it is seeking discussions with all dissenting groups. It is also amending its constitution so that the elections that will take place for the Somali general assembly in 1990 will be open to everybody from whatever party they come. It will be a multi-party election.
I hope and trust that Her Majesty's Government will watch events in Somalia, and that Her Majesty's Government will, with others, do their utmost to encourage all the various and varied Somali groups —both those supporting the government and those against the government—to come together and support the 1990 elections and to bring the present tragic situation to an end. If this can be done not only will it be exceedingly beneficial to Somalia, it will do a great deal of good within the Horn of Africa.
8.56 p.m.
Lord Kagan: My Lords, the tidal wave of change sweeping through the East has delighted us all. But
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should we be surprised? I think not. Soviet leadership, ever since Stalin's death, fully realised that a centrally-directed 100 per cent. planned economy was a terminal cancer in the state. It could only be sustained by total terror and would inevitably lead to the eventual destruction of the Russian empire. This was known from Kruschev onwards.
From the very beginning of his peace offensive, President Gorbachev stated his aim clearly. It was a common European home, and was also to create a European superpower in which Russia hopefully could play a leading and decisive role. This was President Gorbachev's aim in starting his peace offensive, and the natural partner for Russia to achieve this is —and since Bismarck was—Germany.
With German help it could hold its empire and its satellites together. Russians and Germans feel comfortable together because the Germans had Hitler to live down and the Russians have Stalin to live down. They do not feel as comfortable with the West, because there has always been this sort of inferiority complex. They want to play the role in world politics that their economy justifies.
The guiding principle of German imperial policy always was to look East for its development opportunities. This was welcomed by Russia seeking industrialisation. If you visit the Russian railways, the steel industry in the Urals, the coal mines of the Ukraine, you will find German names from 1908, 1912, etc.
Even Hitler shared that vision. In 1941, when the German army invaded Russia, the local populations of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, the Ukraine and White Russia received the German troops with open arms as liberators from Stalin's yoke. I was there at the time and watched it. On Hitler's instructions the occupation was handed over to the Gestapo and the stormtroopers, much against the will and over the heads of the professional army. Hitler, indulging in his paranoia, started the brutal mass killing and genocide. The local people realised that their future under Hitler's Germany would be as sub-human slave labour for the master race. Only then did resistance arise. Had Hitler not done this he would have cut through the Soviet Union like a knife through butter.
President Gorbachev, with his consummate insight and skill, has seen that the vision of Russian-German co-operation may again be realised. The only price required would be the shedding of the communist straitjacket and with it the artificial division of Germany. The reaction to this in West Germany was ecstatic. We all saw Gorby-mania when Mr. Gorbachev visited Germany. In Western Europe there is not the same enthusiasm for this idea, but rather puzzled apprehension. I suppose that we found ourselves in the classical dilemma that sometimes "God punishes us by granting our wishes."
The United States might very well welcome the emergence of a strong superpower from the Rhine to the borders of Japan as a counter-weight to the emergent Japanese-Chinese challenge of the nineties and possibly the third millennium. NATO and the EC will have to accept the eventual fact of German

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reunification. If the two Germanies do not get our approval they will live in sin together and, if necessary, without our marital blessing. No matter how much they protest that they are merely good friends that will happen.
Germany will concentrate on its opportunities in the East, in central Europe and the Balkans. It will be much less interested in, and certainly less dependent on, the EC and NATO. It will not be hostile to those organisations but disinterested. The borders of Europe have shifted from the Elbe to the Rhine. As far as Russia is concerned the so-called German threat is becoming the German promise. Germany's success and popularity in the Soviet Union will be easily achieved. The impact of German managerial skills on Russian industry will easily raise the standard of living from the abysmal low level that exists now. After all, all that the people who live there want now is not a second home or a second car, but soap, razor blades and toilet paper. These are the luxuries. The German impact will certainly get a warm response from the Russian labour force.
Where does this situation leave the rest of Europe and these islands? In my opinion we must get closer to our partners in Europe. The special relationship with America, pleasurable as it was, will not be available. American troops will leave Europe as soon as it is safely possible. The Americans may love us and we love them but, alas, with the communist threat gone they do not need us. But the French, the Italians, the Spaniards, the Dutch, the Norwegians and so on need us and we need them for collective survival if we wish to stay in the first league on the world stage.
Our Prime Minister may not like M. Mitterrand and he may not prefer our Prime Minister. But it might be prudent for them to enter into a marriage of convenience for the sake of the identical and complementary interests of the two countries. Internally, we may have to resist the full luxury of adversarial politics and return somewhat to the discipline and consensus politics of the type practised by Winston Churchill during the war. In those days Britain's survival was at stake and Churchill offered, and the nation accepted, blood, sweat and tears to avoid defeat.
Nowadays it is not military confrontation, but economic competition and defeat that can be just as painful. A military confrontation is not likely to happen again, but the economic challenge is right here. If we cannot meet it we shall simply decline to third world status. That would mean that our children will inherit a quaint island of great interest to tourists and an industry as a sub-contractor for assembling Japanese cars and American washing machines. It may be that our leaders will have to offer the nation happily not blood this time but sweat and tears in order to hold our own and to regain our position.
Whatever party finds itself in power it will need to have the support of the other major parties to carry out measures that may be necessary but not popular. Ever since 1945 British Prime Ministers have known very well what was required and to quote one of them, the trouble was not the difficulty
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in establishing the diagnosis, but getting the patient to take the medicine. It was almost axiomatic that if the government did what was economically right it would prove to be politically disastrous; if they did what was politically right it would prove to be economically disastrous.
Therefore, in the national interest it will be necessary to create a broad band of national objectives agreed and supported on a bipartisan basis more or less on the American lines. If this challenge is accepted, our chances are good. This island is blessed with abundant energy and is the only major power in Europe which is. Effectively it is a block of coal swimming in a lake of oil. Our universities produce innovators and scientists second to none. English is the universal language in the financial world and as a financial centre we give way to no one. Therefore the future is in our hands.
9.8 p.m.
Lord Willoughby de Broke: My Lords, this afternoon we have heard many eloquent expressions of welcome for the moves to freedom and democracy in Eastern Europe. However, as we watch these extraordinary events unfold, I have to remind your Lordships that while so many lives will be changed in the most radical way for the good by this rush to democracy, there is one place where the reverse could happen. I refer to Hong Kong. There in 1997, under the joint agreement with China, we are due to hand over 5½ million people to the last great totalitarian regime; where personal freedom is circumscribed; where political freedom is non-existent and where the only answer to peaceful protest is brutal repression.
The joint agreement between China and Britain is a fact. The people of Hong Kong, although not consulted on the terms of the agreement, have to accommodate themselves to the arrangements made on their behalf. Their safeguard that the agreement will be honoured by China in both its letter and its spirit lies in the Basic Law, which is due to be presented to the National People's Congress for enactment in 1990.
My noble friend Lord Geddes has mentioned two particular points in the Basic Law dealing with the independence of the judiciary and its civil rights guarantees which need further clarification. There is at least one further question which needs to be addressed; that is, who will be responsible for declaring a state of emergency in Hong Kong with all that flows from this? Will it be the elected chief executive or will it be a figure from the mainland?
A further safeguard which the Hong Kong people would now welcome is to have in place a fully democratic system of government by 1997. Progress to this end should be swifter than hitherto, and I suggest that it would be an insult to the people of Hong Kong to imply that they are not ready for democracy. If we do not foster a fully representative government sooner rather than later, can anyone seriously believe that the Chinese Government will do this for us after 1997? If we believe that, we will believe anything.

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A Basic Law that genuinely reflects the letter and spirit of the joint agreement and quicker progress to fully elected government are two of the ingredients in a package to guarantee a future for Hong Kong in the face of the increasingly aggressive line being taken by China. The third ingredient is one that has been dealt with ably by the noble Lord, Lord MacLehose, and my noble friend Lord Geddes, but it is of such paramount importance that I hope your Lordships will bear with me while I make my own small contribution. This is the question of passports; specifically, the number of full British passports to be issued giving their holders rights of a vote in this country and the countries of the EC. I am sure that your Lordships do not need reminding that until 1962, and the Commonwealth Immigrants Act, all 3 million holders of British dependent territories passports had the right to enter and remain in this country.
The principle that Britain should give passports to certain Hong Kong citizens is not in question. It is the numbers that make both the Government and the people of Hong Kong jittery, though for very different reasons. I recently visited Hong Kong and it was emphasised to me in the strongest terms that it would be damaging to Britain's own interests, a savage blow to the future of Hong Kong and a negation of our responsibilities if a really generous offer of passports is not forthcoming.
It has been argued that it would be irresponsible to give a large number of passports based on the theory that they will not be taken up; in effect, to write an insurance policy on which we are unable to meet a claim. This insurance policy analogy is dubious at best. No insurers write their policies on the basis that all policy holders will crash their cars or have their houses burgled. There is a careful calculation of the risks involved. Surely if the Government have confidence in their arrangement with China they should have nothing to fear by issuing passports, for very few people would then wish to leave. However, it cannot be repeated too often that the purpose of giving these passports is to give people the confidence to stay in Hong Kong. These are people who enjoy political and economic freedom in Hong Kong; people who would not wish to move from their jobs and their families and who are at home with the climate, language and culture. They live in a society which epitomises the virtues of self-reliance and enterprise and all of them still have strong family ties with mainland China.
We now have a once and for all chance to get the passport figure right. The passport package should include not just senior management and executives but also people in public service, education, medicine and transport as well as foremen and technicians. There should also be room for those who at a lower level have given loyal service in the public and private sector—in short, the people who make Hong Kong tick.
Were Britain to take a really generous lead in the matter, there is no doubt that other countries would follow. Indeed, at the recent Heads of Commonwealth Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore offered 25,000 passports to Hong Kong to be taken up over the next five to 10 years
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without—and this is the important part —a period of residential qualification in Singapore. I believe that Canada and Australia have indicated that they are prepared to help, but they are waiting to see the colour of our money. The USA, as Hong Kong's biggest single investor, would surely be persuaded to join such a scheme.
However, we must take the lead and develop a plan along the lines already indicated by Singapore. All residential requirements to acquire citizenship in the country concerned should be waived in favour of the requirement to stay in Hong Kong for the qualifying period. This would at a stroke staunch the present outflow of skilled people which is so damaging to Hong Kong. In the end, can we really do anything less if we are to hand over to China a stable and prosperous society as the Joint Declaration requires?
Those are some of the measures which are needed to restore confidence in Hong Kong. I was pleased to hear from my noble friend the Minister that this is the firm intention of Her Majesty's Government. I join with the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, and other noble Lords who have asked that an early debate on the subject of Hong Kong be arranged. Time is not on our side.
In conclusion, I shall quote from a letter which I received recently from Hong Kong. It reads:
"The course that Britain takes will be judged not only by its own subjects in Hong Kong, but by the international community. We in Hong Kong have always believed in the fundamental fairness and decency of British people. We believe that they will see that Britain has both a moral obligation and a constitutional responsibility to support its subjects in their hour of need".
I share that sentiment and hope sincerely that the Government will heed the arguments which have been put forward today.
9.16 p.m.
Viscount Buckmaster: My Lords, I wish to speak this evening as briefly as I can on various aspects of the Middle East situation, some of which may not be well known to your Lordships. I shall also speak on the continuing problem of human rights violations. Once more both these subjects were mentioned in the gracious Speech; but it is sad to relate that, in striking contrast to the amazing détente in East Europe, there has been no real progress in either of these spheres in the past year. I should perhaps mention here that I speak as vice-chairman of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding.
Further, despite the peace-making efforts of President Mubarak and others, the stagnation on the Arab-Israel front continues to be especially disturbing. Indeed, this was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Greenhill. The Arab resistance to the Israelis, the intafada, continues undiminished, as does the Israeli repression of the Arabs. I should mention here that this is the eighth year in which I have spoken in this sense in your Lordships' House. One is inclined to say with Shakespeare,
"a plague on both your houses".
Moreover, there is still no sign of the international conference on the Middle East problem, which has

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been referred to many times in this House; indeed, a great many questions have been asked about this by the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, and other noble Lords. The problem is that without the participation of the PLO such a conference can make no real progress. Yet, as I am sure noble Lords are aware, neither the Americans nor the Israelis are prepared to recognise that body.
The American attitude is well illustrated by recent happenings in the village of Bait Sahour. These have not been prominently reported by the British press. It is a village—or perhaps one might call it a small town—near Bethlehem. It is supposed to be situated on or near the site of the shepherds' fields. The problem there is that the Arab inhabitants have refused, and steadfastly continue to refuse, to pay the taxes demanded by the Israeli authorities. As a result of that refusal, the Israeli authorities turned the whole area into a closed zone, cutting telephone communications with the outside world and forbidding any sort of access to the area. Later, they started confiscating property of the non-payers, who constituted the greater part of the town.
On 7th November, the Security Council condemned that action and ordered the return of the confiscated goods, but the Americans used their veto to oppose that motion, which otherwise won universal support; a strange attitude that, but one which illustrates all too clearly that the Americans are still hand in glove with the Israelis, whatever they say. It is perhaps worth mentioning that our man in Jerusalem managed to overcome the Israeli blockade of Bait Sahour, much to his credit.
Let me turn briefly to the problem of the Israeli closure of Arab schools in the occupied areas. That subject has also been discussed several times in your Lordships' House. It is perhaps the most harmful example of Israeli repression in the occupied areas. Unlike Shakespeare's schoolboy who,
"creeps like snail unwillingly to school",
the Palestinian Arabs welcome education with open arms because it offers them the possibility of escape from their restrictive surroundings.
Most of the primary and secondary schools in the Arab areas have remained closed for all but two months in the past two years. However, they began reopening again in July-August of this year, but were recently once more closed until late January 1990. However —this is an important point which I do not believe has been brought out hitherto —all the Palestinian universities have remained closed since October 1987. I see the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, nodding his head at that. Perhaps the Minister will tell us whether Her Majesty's Government have protested against that action and, if so, with what result.
I shall say a word or two now about the recent Jordanian general election. It was the first to be held for 22 years and followed one of the most open and clean campaigns in the whole Arab world. Of the 80 seats, the Moslem Brotherhood, a fundamentalist group, won the largest share (20 seats) and other radical groups were fairly well represented, despite King Hussein's call for moderation. However, with
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the help of tribal leaders, the liberals and others in parliament, King Hussein will probably be able to resist pressure for the implementation of the more severe of the Islamic codes and a change in his pro-Western policy, which of course we should all regret.
I now turn to human rights violations, about which, as your Lordships know, I feel strongly. I have mentioned this subject in various ways on several occasions in the past few years. The latest Amnesty International report, which I do not have time to discuss in detail, regrettably reveals little change on those of previous years. It is sad that many of the new Commonwealth countries in Africa and elsewhere remain on the black list. That terrible pattern of terror, torture, senseless slaughter, degradation and despair appears to remain as before. I hope to raise that problem in more detail in your Lordships' House on a future occasion.
In regard to the Ugandan situation, about which I spoke some nine or 10 months ago, I should like to put on record that President Museveni has been working hard to overcome human rights violations, and according to my latest information there has been some notable improvement in the northern part of the country.
I should mention the Sudan, where trade unionists, government officials and others have recently been detained without trial. I must also refer to the continuing oppression of the Iraqi Kurds by the Baghdad Government which the noble Lord, Lord Kilbracken, revealed to your Lordships in such distressing detail earlier this year.
Finally, I wish to pay a tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, who was the greatest help to me in replying to various speeches, both when he was wearing his home affairs hat and also when he was dealing with foreign affairs. Perhaps I may congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, with whom I have had some amusing exchanges on railways and other related subjects. It is splendid to see his translation into this new sphere, where I am sure matters will be most adequately dealt with.
I also wish to say, as regards the two fronts of the Middle East and human rights—I am sure all Members of your Lordships' House will echo this —how much we regret the deaths of Lord Chelwood and Lord McNair, whose counsels and contributions in these spheres were of great benefit to your Lordships' House.
9.26 p.m.
Baroness Strange: My Lords, I must apologise to your Lordships for being unable to hear all the debate as I have temporarily been incarcerated in the Tower! Many of your Lordships have already said what I was going to say, only rather more elegantly and eloquently. So your Lordships will be especially relieved that I shall be even more brief than usual. I should like to congratulate my noble friend Lord Brabazon of Tara. It is very nice to see him on the Front Bench.
There is an old Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times". My Lords, we do. We now see

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the results of perestroika and glasnost. The Iron Curtain is creaking down; people are pouring out of East Germany; the Berlin Wall has cracked; the Czechs are parading in the streets. Every day some new drama unfolds; another piece of freedom emerges. It is like a huge glacier rushing into a greenhouse-warmed sea. The slow, solid ice is cracking into boulders, icebergs and rocks.
To escape the Chinese curse, we must remain calm. We must make our times less interesting. Now more than ever it is important for us to remain strong, to preserve our NATO alliance. We must do this for two reasons. First, the Warsaw Pact countries are still closely involved in their alliance. If we push too hard against that alliance and try to fragment it a new system of deep freezing may emerge. The
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warm springs of humanity may be smothered and refrozen into blocks of ice. When our hands are icy cold we do not plunge them into hot water to thaw them; the pain is too great. They must unfreeze gradually in cold water. We must all have time.
Secondly, when we are in a river full of floating and dangerous rocks we need to keep ourselves secure. My youngest noble kinswoman recently went white water rafting in Nepal. When the water became turbulent she held firm to the paddle. If she fell, she fell into the security of the boat, not among the rocks and the rushing water. In this way she continued until she reached calm waters. We too must stand firm. We must not push too hard. We must not relax our defences until we are all safe in the still, calm waters of democracy and peace.
9.30 p.m.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, the debate has revealed some sharp differences of opinion, sometimes brilliantly expressed, on Britain's role in the Community. I thought that the balance of argument went in favour of the position set out at the outset of the debate by my noble friend Lord Bonham-Carter. But at the same time it seems that there has been a total consensus on the reality and importance of the Gorbachev revolution.
It has long been evident, and has been stated many times from these Benches, that Mr. Gorbachev has been wholly committed in his international policies to drastic cuts in Soviet military expenditure, and to disengaging the Soviet Union with as much dignity as possible from its former domination of the East European countries. The subsequent changes in East Europe have divided and vastly weakened the Warsaw Pact. I feel it is an anomaly that in spite of this there has as yet been no official announcement at all of any change whatever in the future level of British defence expenditure or in our defence policy. Perhaps the Minister who will reply tonight will give us some indication of whether our policy is totally unchanged from the days of Brezhnev, in spite of all that has happened since.
Our policy as set out in this year's White Paper takes pride in the fact that our conventional capacity is increasing and will continue to increase in the 1990s. It takes pride in the fact that we are spending more on defence than before and that our expenditure will increase in the years ahead. It commits us once again to insisting on the modernisation of NATO short-range nuclear weapons, to replacing our own free-fall nuclear bombs, and of course vastly increasing our strategic nuclear capability with the prompt completion of the Trident project. However, there is an anomaly here. I hope the Minister who is to reply can help us here. The fact is that the Government have been slow to accept the genuineness of Mr. Gorbachev's intentions. Last year, and this year still, we were told that we must judge by actions and not words. We were told not to believe the assurances of Mr. Gorbachev that he intended to cut the defence budget, and not to take seriously the withdrawal and destruction of Soviet tanks from Eastern Germany.
We were told constantly that there was no change in British defence policy. We were also told that strength and firmness of policy were essential and successful when communism was strong. However, these past few months that has not been helpful when communism was collapsing. What was needed then was something different. Reassurance, conciliation and help to Mr. Gorbachev were needed. I regret to say that the Government have not really complied with that. They still take the view, as they have consistently done and as they did in the debate we had on the Defence Estimates, that we had to prepare to deter aggression by the Warsaw Pact.
In his extremely positive and interesting speech today, the noble Lord, Lord Home of the Hirsel, having made a most interesting and helpful suggestion that a Marshall Plan is required for Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, then made
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the surprising statement that he was worried about the threat of aggression from the Soviet tank force in Germany. I find that hard to believe. Indeed, I believe that the Government themselves have conceded that there is no present threat of conventional aggression at all. When one looks at the threat of possible future conventional aggression, one has to make a whole number of unusual assumptions before the threat becomes credible. One has to assume a new backlash regime in the Soviet Union that is hostile to the West. One has to assume that the regime succeeds in re-unifying the peoples of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and succeeds in re-indoctrinating them against the West so that they feel the West is an enemy rather than something to be copied and a friend.
Even after that one has to assume that the new regime has reversed the run-down of Soviet military forces while at the same time so strengthening the Soviet economy as to be capable of sustaining conventional war. That is not credible, even as a future threat. It certainly does not justify the present level of defence expenditure of the NATO countries and of this country.
An unusually high proportion of our GNP is devoted to defence. I was taken to task in the debate on the Defence Estimates in July for suggesting that the proportion of our GNP spent on defence should be cut. I should be interested to know whether that is still the view of the Government. Perhaps the Minister can tell us when he winds up.
The Government of the United States have taken a much more realistic view of the implications of the changes. They have already announced their proposals for a major cut in defence expenditure, including a major manpower cut in American forces in Europe. I believe that America's allies in NATO are entitled to complain about the manner in which those decisions have been taken, without consultation either with NATO or the Soviet Union. They have made the cuts unilaterally, precisely according to the method recommended in this debate by the noble Lord, Lord Soper, and according to the policy of CND. That is most unusual. The Russians have also been making unilateral cuts.
One has to wonder how that will affect the validity of the CFE talks on disarmament. It would certainly be very odd if the multilateral negotiations, with their insistence on reciprocity and watertight verification, were to act as a brake, rather than a spur, on the scale of disarmament.
Be that as it may, we on these Benches are in agreement with the Government on a number of points. I do not have to detail them all. We agree entirely that the integrity of the Warsaw Pact and NATO must be maintained in this difficult period, even if their task is largely to negotiate their own replacement by something more relevant. We agree that reunification is a matter for the German people. We agree that the first requirement must be for free elections, and so on. We agree that aid should be channelled collectively through the Community.
However, we believe that the Government are still under-estimating the speed of change, as they have

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done most notably in the years preceding the breakdown of the Berlin Wall. They seem to assume that some years will pass before the most sensitive and difficult questions reach the agenda. On these Benches we agree entirely with the line taken by the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan. We cannot be sure of that. In particular, the question of German reunification and its implications for the future of NATO and the Warsaw Pact and the question of the German borders are very difficult and sensitive questions. But it is not wise to assume that they are not on the agenda.
The Government argue that. They have some support internationally, both in the East and in the West. Once again, on these Benches we feel that the Government may be taken by surprise. We note that they were singularly unmoved by the warning that they were given from these Benches in the defence debate in July that they should prepare for the collapse of the East German regime. Once again we do not believe that the Government have taken on board the nature, scope and speed of the changes that have taken place.
Who can be sure that the Soviet Union will not quite soon propose formally, as it proposed formally 30 years ago, that the troops of NATO and the Warsaw Pact are wholly withdrawn back to their own frontiers? They could suggest that in Malta. As things stand, I judge that that would not be acceptable to NATO, but it might be acceptable to public opinion in Germany and perhaps in some other NATO countries, not excluding the United States. There is a first class crisis of most dangerous proportions.
Perhaps we may turn to the question of German borders which the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, raised. As the noble Lord realises —and I agree with him that it is not enough —the West German Government have most formally and solemnly abjured any attempt to alter those boundaries other than by negotiation; and they will never be able to alter them by negotiation. Nevertheless, I am sure that we on these Benches agree with the noble Lord that much more needs to be done before there can be a peace treaty and reunification of Germany.
However, all those things seem to be capable of happening quickly. Who can be sure that free elections next year in the German Democratic Republic will not lead to immediate demands for German reunification? There is some danger in refusing to discuss those matters, delicate as they are, until they come our way. It would be much wiser either for NATO and the Warsaw Pact to discuss contingency plans, first within themselves and then together, or perhaps, as the noble Lord suggested, for the CFE organisation to take those matters on board. There should now be discussion of contingency plans in the event that those most difficult and sensitive problems suddenly present themselves. Above all, we must ensure that the security system which has served us well for 40 years and which is now becoming obsolete does not disappear until there is a new security system agreed with the members of both pacts in its place. That is vital.
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I can reassure the noble Earl, Lord Arran, that the House will not expect him to give precise, official answers to all those questions in his summing up tonight. However, perhaps he will say something about whether changes are being considered in British defence policy and, if so, along what lines. A clear answer on that point would be interesting and helpful to the House.
These are great days for everyone in Europe, but perhaps most of all for those of us who, in however humble a role, were involved in the worst of the cold war, who had to try to cope with Vyshinsky and Molotov and who flew into Berlin during the blockade with food and messages of encouragement. It was a great thing to be in at the birth of NATO; and then, with resolute colleagues of all parties, to share in the fight against communism, It is a great thing indeed to now see the Berlin Wall crumbling and the triumph of the ideas for which we have been fighting.
9.43 p.m.
Lord Irving of Dartford: My Lords, it is a remarkable commentary on human affairs that, when an event comes about for which millions of people have prayed—namely, freedom from oppression and fear in many countries of the world —the result should be fear and confusion about what we should do. An ex-bishop speaking from the pulpit conjured up future Nuremberg rallies. Others who are afraid that history will repeat itself begin to make prescriptive statements about what Germans should do. Some still believe that it is all a Russian plot to lull us into a false sense of security when, at some stage or other, they will pounce upon us. Others express the need for caution which, rather than being a rational appreciation of what is happening, is a sign of lack of understanding of what is happening or what to do about it.
We should look upon what has happened as a heaven-sent opportunity to help build a wider, freer, democratic Europe and a more stable peace. In that process the one option not open to us is to do nothing. It is a time for political leadership, vision and imagination. For those who are afraid that history will repeat itself, historians are largely agreed that leaders from Woodrow Wilson to Neville Chamberlain made grievous mistakes. We must try to do better.
The question is: are we getting the political leadership that we need to prevent history repeating itself? Despite the rather fulsome tributes to his own government made by the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, many people will think that we are not receiving that leadership. Of the Mansion House speech the Independent wrote:
"Mrs. Thatcher last night exploited the 'historic changes' in Eastern Europe to bolster her longstanding campaign against greater European unity".
The Guardian was even harsher and called the speech:
"A misbegotten disaster. The UK's contribution, for what it is currently worth, brought nothing of imagination or vision to events which demand statesmanship from statesmen".

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Those are very harsh judgments. However, as one looks around one sees in many fields a series of erratic actions which have increasingly marginalised Britain's influence everywhere. That is true of the EC, true of the Commonwealth and in some respects true of NATO. Many people, including a number of Conservatives, fear that at this critical time, when we should be working with our friends in these organisations to strengthen them, we are isolating ourselves from the main sphere of influence.
Who finds it difficult not to sympathise with the plaintive comment of Mr. Douglas Hurd, a life-long supporter of Britain in Europe, when he said that:
"we ought to be inside helping to shape things rather than being outside throwing stones"?
New thinking and properly ordered change are vital if we are not to descend into chaos or to see change without the prerequisite for co-operation; namely, free and fair elections. We need an orderly reduction of Warsaw Pact and NATO conventional forces.
As it happens, I do not believe that the Warsaw Pact will collapse. In any case we should do our very best to prevent it. I believe that already there are moves, by some members of the Warsaw Pact, which have obtained some sympathy on the part of the Russians, to change the nature of that pact. They are not against change. What they need is what we need: orderly and properly managed change.
We warned the Government of the consequences of pressing for the modernisation of the Lance missiles. We said that it was contrary to the spirit of the INF treaty, that it would not strengthen NATO but destabilise it, and that in any case no German government could agree before the next general election. In the event, President Bush sided with the Germans against Mrs. Thatcher, thus marginalising further our influence with America and strengthening the American-German relations at our expense.
Yet events have shown just how wrong-headed was that policy. We warned that early use of those weapons, which was NATO policy, would kill a lot of Germans and probably many British soldiers too. Now we must add thousands of East Germans with whom we wish to co-operate in future.
The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, said recently that the changes in Eastern Europe had made the modernisation of short-range nuclear weapons laughable. As the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, said, that is a failure to respond to these dramatic changes which mean that the erstwhile policies are no longer relevant in any sense.
Indeed, the doctrine of flexible response is now patent nonsense. We propose that those small nuclear weapons should be included immediately in the mandate of the Vienna talks with the possibility of an agreement on a "third zero". If that were to happen the Soviets would get rid of 14 times as many weapons as we would. As recently as 2nd April 1989 Mrs. Thatcher said:
"The United Kingdom would not be prepared to accept the denuclearisation of Europe which would leave us dangerously exposed to Soviet superiority in conventional weapons".
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Despite Mrs. Thatcher, we believe that the argument about the stationing of nuclear weapons in Germany is over. In both Houses her Ministers were protesting, as recently as the Defence Estimate debates in July, as the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, said, that there was no sign that anything had happened in the Warsaw Pact countries as a result of Mr. Gorbachev's activities. But the International Institute for Strategic Studies tells a different story. In recent surveys it states that the unilateral cuts in the Soviet armed forces which were announced 12 months ago were making a surprise attack 'barely plausible'. The necessary units are being withdrawn. Differences between members of the Warsaw Pact —those holding out against change and those embracing it at a breathtaking speed —render its use for offensive purposes even less credible.
But something of this has been known for the past two years. The Defence Group of this House went to see General Rogers, and the following year General Calvin. They both said that a surprise attack was most unlikely.
According to the press, the Government have rejected plans by the Bush administration to base nuclear capable B25 bombers in Great Britain. This is a significant shift in the position of the Prime Minister which until now has been in support of American nuclear modernisation plans. I think that the action would in any case be contrary to the spirit of the INF Treaty. We welcome the change of heart and perhaps wonder what the Prime Minister's motives have been for the change: perhaps to teach the Americans a lesson for not supporting her in the short-range weapon argument.
The comment of Mr. Dan Plesch of the British American Security Council was perhaps not inappropriate:
"The British Government appears to be all in favour of nuclear modernisation as long as it is in Germany."
Equally the events of the past week or two made Mrs. Thatcher's preoccupation with nuclear weapons, and in particular with Trident, just a fantasy which has cost us a great deal of money, has weakened our conventional contribution, and which, in my view, we shall never get to use in an independent way.
However, what is even more astonishing in the light of the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, is that over the weekend there appeared in the press a very detailed account of a secret defence review that has been taking place with the intention of shifting resources from the army to the navy, with the £1 billion plan for a new battle tank for the British Army of the Rhine, and the anti-tank missile planned for the 1990s being scrapped.
Let me say at once that we have no objection to the navy receiving more money. We have complained on a number of occasions at the failure of the Government to maintain our commitment of 50 ships to NATO. The neglect has been so great that at one time in an emergency only 31 ships would have been available within a reasonable time, to say nothing of the Government's neglect of the merchant marine without which we could not operate even a Falklands style operation.

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Yes, we need a defence review, as the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, said. We have been asking for it for some time. But we are not sure that the secret review by the Government is what this country needs or what the situation demands. In the 1980s a botch was made of the review. We had the extraordinary situation of the noble Lord, Lord Pym, then Secretary of State for Defence, marching up Downing Street with the Chiefs of Staff protesting at what was happening, the preoccupation with nuclear weapons, in particular with Trident, leaving the rest of the forces in a sorry state.
If there is to be a review —and we think it is appropriate that there should be one —let us have a public debate in which everyone who is involved and interested can take part. If we had a public debate in this very changed situation there may well be more agreement than the Government think on many sides of the House.
It seems a strange time, in the middle of great events and before the outcome is clear, to start a secret defence review. However, if there is to be a review it should be a total review, including all our weapons and services. It should address the provision we need in the future when we transform forward defence into what is needed for non-provocative defence. It is important in the stages when eastern countries are not only getting rid of the yoke of communism that we assure as much stability as possible by maintaining and strengthening the institutions which exist and which have served us so well. That applies to NATO. It applies to the EC. It applies also to the Warsaw and NATO security pacts. They are the only instruments through which disarmament can be managed.
I believe that there is sympathy on the part of the Russians for the transformation of the Warsaw Pact into a different kind of pact, including some non-communist people; to change it from being purely military into a political organisation which could conceivably join with NATO in a proper assessment, in the changed situation, of what is necessary to provide proper security in Europe.
Clearly Mr. Bush and Mr. Gorbachev will be the means by which change can be managed. It is hoped that after their meeting in December they will put forward a plan for progress with the requirements necessary to enable the communist nations—or the ex-communist nations—to enter into full co-operation with the West. Democracy with free and fair elections must be the basis and we should assure Russia and others that once that is achieved the West will help in every way possible. We ought not to forget that it was the generosity of the Americans in the Marshall Plan that facilitated the recovery of Europe on democratic lines.
Whether or not there is a new unified Germany, I believe that much of the money and vast savings in Western Germany which are looking for investment will in any event go to East Germany and therefore there will be considerable recovery. I hope that they will advance the cause of disarmament. In my view, that is the key to almost everything else in developing trust and confidence and for taking out of each of the alliances the menace which the other may find.
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Clearly NATO must examine its own priority. I cannot believe that if the process of perestroika should continue and succeed either side will wish to maintain as many troops in Europe as they have done for the past 30 years. I believe that before many more years have passed there will be a public call for the removal of troops in Europe. Success lies in making countries such as East Germany, properly reformed, feel at home in the West. There is no certainty that the East Germans will wish to join with the Federal Republic. In certain fields East Germany has created a persona which makes East Germans feel that the state is worth supporting. That is especially so if the tyrannies, oppressions and so forth are removed and freedom is given.
However, it is important to say that any undue criticism of its right to decide freely what it should do is more likely to drive Germany into neutralism than anything else.
I understand that the CFE talks are making good progress. I hope that Mr. Gorbachev and Mr. Bush will help. I understand that the proposals that Mr. Bush will bring to the Mediterranean will include one for a second round of CFE talks to be much more extensive than the first. We should congratulate Mr. Bush on the way in which he has conducted himself during the past few months. He has been right to do nothing to arouse a suspicion that the United States are seeking to impose a condominium on Europe. I believe that in Malta he intends to assure Mr. Gorbachev that he and those in the United States wish for the success of perestroika and that nothing will be done to destabilise the Warsaw Pact or entice its members to leave. He also hopes to persuade Mr. Gorbachev that it is in his own best interests that they will be served by continuing American presence in Europe, further, that it will be in everyone's interests, including the Soviet's, for the united Germany to be anchored in the Western alliance rather than in a force dominating Central Europe. He attaches great importance to the deepening process of integration in Western Europe. All those issues are very much on the right lines.
America sees the future of a reformed East Germany as a matter for the Germans and unification can come in a number of ways. It can be full federalism to that of a friendly neighbourhood on the Austrian lines with the new Germany becoming a full member of NATO. We face an extraordinary situation when, as has been said, the people of the East are clamouring to join us and not to fight us. It may turn out to be one of the biggest sea-changes in history. However, we shall not be forgiven if we fail to take advantage of the opportunities to reinforce freedom, peace and prosperity in Europe for all.
10 p.m.
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, before I begin my winding up your Lordships would wish to know that we have heard since the beginning of this debate of the death of President Moawab of the Lebanon, who was tragically killed while leaving an Independence Day reception this afternoon. We send our sympathy to his family and to the Lebanese people.
The defence policy of the United Kingdom, as a part of NATO, is intimately bound up with the

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developments in what used to be called the Eastern bloc. In these remarkable days it has become customary —indeed, almost automatic —to begin any remarks on either defence or foreign affairs with a reference to the great upheaval and political change under way in the countries of the Warsaw Pact. So it will come as no surprise to noble Lords, and particularly as no surprise to the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, if I address this subject briefly first.
Indeed, it would be difficult to do otherwise. Apart from the sheer historical moment of the events of recent weeks, the security and international interests of the United Kingdom cannot be sensibly discussed unless it is against this backdrop. How to respond to the new order emerging in the East is the greatest challenge facing NATO at present, and it is in this context that our defence policy must be understood. I shall endeavour not to re-tread ground covered by my noble friend Lord Brabazon of Tara but rather will concentrate on the implications of the current rapid change for our defence policy.
We applaud the recognition of many noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Stewart of Fulham and Lord Greenhill of Harrow, that whatever the speculation about the reunification of Germany the key must be self-determination for the German people. The first step must be genuinely democratic elections in the GDR.
We appear to be witnessing Soviet changes of attitude to the whole question of military power. Military doctrine, it is said, is being re-examined to conform to Mr. Gorbachev's concept of reasonable sufficiency. What this will mean in terms of the structure and strategy of Soviet forces is not yet fully clear. But there is a growing acceptance of the need to reduce the crippling burden imposed by Soviet military spending. This is reflected in negotiations on arms control, on which I shall say more in a moment.
My noble friend Lord Brabazon referred in his speech to some wider perspectives on the concept of security, and the ways in which the Government are pursuing it. I should like to discuss this briefly from a more military point or view. It is argued in some quarters that the threat posed by the Warsaw Pact is diminishing. Certainly we do not believe that the Soviet Union intends to attack the West, and the changes now taking place make it even less likely. But we need to keep absolutely clear in our minds that we have to base our defence on the concrete rather than the intangible, in response to capabilities rather than intentions. And even after the unilateral cuts that have been announced by the Soviet leadership the Warsaw Pact will continue to have a significant superiority over NATO in almost all areas.
That point was heavily underlined by my noble friend Lord Home in what I may say was a typically wise and pragmatic speech. So long as there exists a significant military threat to this country and her allies our first priority must be to ensure that we retain our ability to counter it, and thereby to rule out the option of military aggression as a way of achieving political objectives.
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Perhaps I may say to the noble Lord, Lord Soper, that it is because of the long and steadfast determination of the West to defend itself that Christianity and compassion have been able to flourish in so much of the civilised world.
Never must we lose sight of the fact that in terms of reducing military threats to stability it is NATO that has consistently set the agenda, and it has taken many years for the Eastern bloc to come round to a position from which constructive talks can be held on security and matters of mutual interest. In other words, we must never lose sight of NATO's achievement, a point again strongly reinforced by the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition.
My Lords, I do not believe that you would expect me to disagree with my noble friend Lord Cork and Orrery that it is our steadfast policy of negotiation from a position of strength that has led to this success. When the countries of such a monolithic and ideologically controlled power bloc as the Warsaw Pact begin to reform and liberalise themselves, and the alliance to which they belong begins to take steps towards reducing the instability caused by its military policies, it is only right that the spotlight of world attention should fall on the leadership that has made it possible.
We should applaud Mr. Gorbachev for his vision —as stated by the noble Lord, Lord Irving of Dartford —his courage and his diligence in being willing to contemplate change, and the peoples of Eastern Europe for grasping the opportunities for freedom. Nevertheless, we must recognise, as the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, said, that Mr. Gorbachev is a communist, and we must not delude ourselves that the policies NATO has followed consistently since the Harmel Report in 1967 are in any way losing their relevance. On the contrary, the very turmoil in the East shows us the necessity for NATO to remain consistent and united, a policy which was reaffirmed in the Comprehensive Concept agreed at the NATO summit in May. We would be failing in our responsibilities if we did not bear in mind very fully the unpredictability of events in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe at the moment. My noble friend Lord Alport warned us of the dangers of ignoring this factor.
I would at this point take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, in that we already have an alliance of two pillars, and we in the United Kingdom will continue to make a significant contribution to the European pillar. That is not to say that we should stand idly by at one of the most exciting moments in European history since 1945. Indeed, quite the opposite. We should do all we can to encourage the peaceful change in the East, and to take full advantage of the easier East-West relations to attain lasting measures that will remove still further the possibility of war. But we must move forward responsibly and hold firmly to the maintenance of our security as our first objective, as indeed their own security is to the Soviets.
We also need to bear in mind the effects that an improvement to the security climate in Europe will have on public perceptions. These perceptions shape the internal policies of all members of the alliance,

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and public support for a credible and forward-looking defence policy will be vital. We must continue to ensure that NATO's case is fully understood and appreciated. That is the rejoinder I would make to the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, on his perception of public expectations.
The message of the continuing relevance of NATO's approach must be fully brought home, for it is not sufficient for our policy to be valid and well thought out—it must be clearly seen to be this. We must carry public opinion with us. Past experience has shown that the public are willing to accept reasonable argument, but this will not always be easy at a time when wild and unsubstantiated speculation about the future of our defence is all too readily offered.
An important aspect of this will be demonstrating that our attentions are focused on enhacing mutual security, and we are doing this in the talks on conventional forces in Europe at Vienna. These negotiations, which started in March, have as their aim the removal of disparities in conventional force levels, the elimination of capabilities for massive offensive action or surprise attack, and the achievement of stability and balance in conventional forces at lower levels. These agreed aims themselves are a breakthrough, as they indicate that the Soviet Union has finally accepted the implications of its massive conventional military superiority and is prepared to negotiate on the same terms as NATO in many areas in the interests of creating a safer Europe. As my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defence said, these reductions do not invalidate the tried and tested policies of flexible response and forward defence. Therefore I cannot agree with the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman.
At the same time, the United States and the Soviet Union are negotiating reductions in their strategic nuclear arsenals at the START talks which resumed this year. The objective of these talks is the reduction of American and Soviet strategic nuclear weapons by 50 per cent. Significant progress has been made in recent months with the Soviet agreement to decouple START from the defence and space negotiations, and their acceptance that the Krasnoyarsk radar station is in breach of the ABM treaty, and must be dismantled. In addition a number of further measures on verification and confidence building were agreed when Mr. Shevardnadze met Secretary of State Baker in Wyoming in September. I was most encouraged by the message I received at an international conference which I was attending in Munich yesterday when both the US and the Soviet ambassador to the START talks said that an agreement was in sight.
The third area of arms control talks, and, again, one in which there have been significant developments in recent months, is the negotiation of a convention on chemical weapons. These negotiations are far from straightforward, given the relative ease with which these horrific weapons can be manufactured from legitimate civil sources. In the past couple of months both superpowers have reaffirmed their determination to rid the world of this form of weapon. President Bush has offered to
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cut US CW stocks by 80 per cent. provided the Soviet Union reduces its stocks to the same level, this as a step towards a global ban. Together with an agreement at Wyoming for the bilateral exchange of CW data and verification between the US and the USSR, this proposal marks an important practical move to boost confidence and should give added impetus to the negotiations in Geneva. For our part, the UK has continued to take an active role in the negotiations and has made a particular contribution in the form of our pioneering work on practice challenge inspections.
We share the concern of the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, at the proliferation of nuclear and chemical weapons' capability. We shall continue to do all we can to promote the non-proliferation treaty. All these three areas of negotiations, as well as those on confidence and security building measures, and the defence and space talks show signs of promise, some more immediately than others. In addition, the relationships between Eastern and Western leaders remain close with all the valuable potential that provides for using summits to resolve points of difference and agree broad objectives.
In this context we look forward to the forthcoming meeting between President Bush and Mr. Gorbachev next month. As a number of noble Lords have said, we should not let the remarkable events in Eastern Europe blind us to the importance of the rest of the world. The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, raised a number of points in his speech. South Africa was also touched upon by the noble Lord, Lord Walston, the noble Lord, Lord Pitt and the comments of the noble Lord, Lord St. John of Bletso, were most welcome.
The Government remain firmly of the view that punitive sanctions will create an economic wasteland without ending apartheid. Our contribution to the United Nations' plan for Namibia is 15 million and assistance with the return of refugees. Other forms of assistance have been British election monitors and 170 men for a signals unit there. Cambodia was the main interest of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and of the noble Lord, Lord Molloy. We shall not deviate from the practice of successive Administrations not to comment on allegations of the involvement of special forces. We help to promote a political settlement through the United Nations and the Paris conference, not a military solution.
Together with many other noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Thomas of Swynnerton, the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, raised the question of the United Kingdom's role in Europe. I cannot accept the depiction of the situation put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter. As my noble friend Lord Brabazon made fully clear in his opening speech, the development of the Community is essential to our concept of Britain's future. We shall continue to participate fully in that process.
I listened with interest to the words of my noble friend Lord Cockfield, but I have to say that at the same time I also noticed with interest that my noble friend Lord Selkirk did not altogether agree with

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him. Yes, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister is very much more usually right than wrong, as my noble friend Lord Selkirk quite rightly brought out.
The noble Lord, Lord Whaddon, raised the question of official export credit guarantees for Poland. I can tell my noble friend that no decision has yet been taken to resume these and they are but one of a number of avenues for help under consideration. This course would have the disadvantage of increasing Poland's already large debt burden.
On the subject of Hong Kong, we heard some very interesting words from the noble Lord, Lord MacLehose, and also from my noble friend Lord Willoughby de Broke. We have great confidence in Hong Kong's future on the basis of the Joint Declaration. We are doing all we can to restore the confidence of the people of Hong Kong in themselves. Above all, we want them to stay in Hong Kong to continue the territory's economic success.
Many other points were raised on the rest of the world and perhaps your Lordships will forgive me if I press on with my speech and write in reply to the points which I have not been able to deal with now.
For the United Kingdom to continue to play a major part in the alliance we will need both excellent manpower in the Services and modern and capable equipment. I was rather surprised, if I may say so, that no speaker among your Lordships actually highlighted the British Services. Everything said was directed towards the Eastern bloc. The British Services remain, and will always remain, of the utmost importance to the defence of this country. Our most valuable asset is the quality of our Servicemen and women. But the implications for the Services of the notorious demographic trough are serious and we are continuing to devote much effort to overcoming problems both of recruitment and retention.
To reduce the outflow of trained personnel, we are introducing many measures to improve the quality of life for Service personnel, as well as to increase job satisfaction. We have in place measures to assist the homeowning serviceman, and we are considering what more we might do to help servicemen meet their housing needs. Likewise, we have taken a number of steps to enhance the recruitment effort. Spending on recruitment advertising was increased by more than one-third this year, allowing a number of new initiatives to be taken by the Services. In addition, entry requirements have been adjusted, while ensuring that standards are not affected. In some cases special courses are being run to help bring potential recruits up to the required standards.
Finally in this context, I should mention that we are fully aware of the need to draw on currently under-utilised resources by enhancing the role of women in the Services and increasing recruitment from ethnic minorities.
The noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, made mention again of the war widows. The noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, knows very well from his own experiences as a former Prime Minister the problems and the
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difficulties that relate to war widows. Equally, I hope I made it perfectly clear in Question Time last week that I said I would report the situation and the feelings of your Lordships to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State; and indeed I have done that.
Turning to equipment, the modernisation of our strategic deterrent, replacing the Polaris system with Trident, remains on course for the mid 1990s. The first two Vanguard class submarines are at an advanced stage of construction, and we plan to place the order for the third boat by the end of the year. It is not just in strategic systems that the Royal Navy contributes to NATO. We continue to keep the Navy up-to-date and up to strength.
The Army too plays a major part in Britain's contribution to NATO. The sixth Challenger regiment has now been delivered, and a seventh is on order. As regards the replacement of our Chieftain tanks, we are funding a demonstration phase to allow Vickers Defence Systems to show that it can meet our requirements in developing a new model of Challenger. The Royal Air Force also continues to be updated. The first squadron of Harrier GR5s became operational this year. Four squadrons of Tornado F3s are now operational, and a fifth has been formed.
If we are to meet our NATO commitments, we need to match our resources to them. The defence expenditure plans announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Autumn Statement last week reflect the continuing resolve of the Government to maintain a strong defence and sustain the United Kingdom's responsibilities within the NATO alliance. I strongly stress that point to the noble Lords, Lord Mayhew and Lord Irving of Dartford.
By far the largest single commitment to NATO comes of course from the United States, and there have recently been some suggestions that there may be proposals to make some reductions in its defence budget in future. We are not aware of the details of these proposals, which are a matter for the US Government and which would anyway have to be approved within the administration and by Congress. We are conscious of American budgetary pressures. Nevertheless, it is important that any reductions are consistent with progress being made in arms control, and with NATO commitments. I have no doubt that any proposals by the United States will be the subject of consultation with its NATO allies.
In the field of procurement we continue to refine the policies we have introduced in order to introduce competition into defence procurement and to ensure that we deal with our suppliers in a fully commercial and realistic way.
While 95 per cent. of the United Kingdom's defence expenditure is devoted to NATO, we should not forget the part that our armed forces play elsewhere in the world. Whether they are contributing to the United Nations forces in Cyprus and Namibia, serving in garrisons in dependent territories or responding to emergencies such as Hurricane Hugo in the Caribbean, we should be proud of the role of British servicemen and the benefit they can provide to Britain's standing round

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the world. To take just one recent example, the assistance that we are providing to Colombia in dealing with its terrible internal problems with the drug barons shows the part the armed forces can play. I believe that that assistance is very welcome.
Finally, any talk of our servicemen's tasks world-wide would be glaringly incomplete without a strong and continuing appreciation of their duties at home. I am sure that noble Lords would join me in paying tribute to the continuing dedication of the servicemen and women in Northern Ireland. The murderous intent of the terrorists has been demonstrated brutally in the past week, with the killing of three soldiers at Mayobridge last Saturday and a further export of violence to the mainland in the bombing of a staff sergeant and his wife in Colchester.
Today's remembrance service in Canterbury reminds us of the cowardly attack on the Royal Marine musicians at Deal. These are just the latest in a long list of heinous acts of terrorism that continue to plague the Province. They profit no one—least of all the community which the terrorists claim to represent. The men and women of the armed forces who act in support of the RUC in combating this menace continue to show the courage and the professionalism that we have come to expect of them in the most difficult circumstances.
The wide range of topics that we have discussed today demonstrates not only the extent of the interest and knowledge of Members of this House but also the number of areas in the world where the United Kingdom has a role to play.
I have tried to answer most of the points which have been raised. I apologise if I have not covered at least one point made by each noble Lord who has taken part in the debate. However, my noble friend Lord Brabazon and myself will cover such points. I can assure noble Lords that we shall write to them on these matters.
The debate has shown that no one can doubt that the most momentous events are being played out on the stage of Eastern Europe; few would hazard a guess as to what the situation will be there in a year's time. Such events always produce a fountain of prophesies —already pundits are re-writing the vocabulary of East-West relations, declaring that we shall no longer have any use for terms such as the Iron Curtain or the Cold War. We are told by the newspapers that NATO and the Warsaw Pact will wither away. We are told all sorts of things; but I am sure that some of the judgments are over-hasty. We should, above all, be aware of the new problems and challenges that the situation presents and be prepared to meet them in a considered and far-sighted manner.
This is a time when we must all keep cool heads, as my noble friend Lady Strange, said, and stand by the policies and institutions which have brought us this far. We must tread a careful path. In doing so, we hope for a new relationship in which the people of Eastern Europe are free of military intimidation —a new relationship in which arms control aids all people in turning the seeds of war into the fruits of peace.
Lord Reay: My Lords, on behalf of my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, I beg to move that this debate be now adjourned until tomorrow.
Moved, That this debate be now adjourned until tomorrow.—(Lord Reay.)
On Question, Motion agreed to, and debate adjourned accordingly.
House adjourned at twenty-five minutes past ten o'clock.

  EC BUDGET COUNCIL MEETING
  EC BUDGET COUNCIL MEETING
  SECURITY SERVICE ACT 1989: IMPLEMENTATION
  SECURITY SERVICE ACT 1989: IMPLEMENTATION
  COMMUNITY CHARGE TRANSITIONAL RELIEF SCHEME
  COMMUNITY CHARGE TRANSITIONAL RELIEF SCHEME